Surreptitiously

Logged in just to pitch in.

Hasidim has many things that you can get by, his charge can be evaded (Although its not at a 100% chance) or dodged with Anchor Rush. His Orbs can also be outrun on a pet, or evaded, or completely blocked with Shield of Trust. However that is generally unreccomnended due to it leaving you open to get your rear end torn asunder by his Mineral Hail. Additionally, mana shield is extremely crucial to surviving against Hasidim, even with techs/high def+prot (Which until you finish g23, you wouldn't have Dampen Shock and Blunting Field).
For Tagar, you have to give twice the range for her scythe linear and horizontal attacks. Her windmill you should generally run straight in one direction asap, preferably with a pet if you lack wavesweeper/fleet/racial bonus. The slow, I don't remember any counters to it, but it should be able to be dodged (again, by anchor rush), and there should be a set time frame where the zone locks. Using pet link can actually make Tagar a bit easier, as if you place your pet and tell it to sit by one of the Pillars, and keep a short distance from Tagar, you can rely on your pet taking the heat while you focus on chipping her down.
The doppelganger, I actually don't even recall in g21. I had to actually look up where it was, probably because I shredded it that fast, and that was with a mediocre firebolt on a wimp connection. Which for this fight looking at the wiki, again, recommends Pet Link, and if the doppelganger uses shadow spirit, resetting its AI with windmill. Which is a feature by the way, not a glitch/bug.
For the Talvish fight, the biggest issue I remember most people having is trying to kill him with the skills that he has 80% plot reduction towards (Firebolt, Final Hit, Bash, Chain Impale), and not avoiding his instant kill with Shield of Trust. Other than that, he's manageable.

All in all, its G21. Its the finale for an entire chapter, and a lot of the issues you've explained are simply not using longevity and skills that you have access to and should be used to using, or aware that they can be used to make life easier. I have a bit of an opposite view for G21, and G22/23. I liked that there was things that I couldn't simply blast through and be half asleep in the meanwhile. But that's just one opinion. I'd reckon that if you used Divine Link and Mana shield, may end up having a bit of an easier time in what is essentially endgame content story-wise, not saying you'll breeze through it, but it shouldn't be nearly as painful and impossible as you make it out to be.

Gaea wrote: »

Greta wrote: »

I'm actually surprised that someone participated in this.

Oof.

I actually hate this image but I'll use it just for you.

HaruHime20 wrote: »

No, I know that the idiot Merlin was sadly important to the Story. I'm just saying that they picked the wrong character. The game didn't appeal to the entire player base.

I think, just bear with me a moment here, it is very difficult no matter what you do, to appeal to everybody.

HaruHime20 wrote: »

There is hundreads of NPC's but they settled for the least important, least wanted character. Maybe if Merlin didn't act like he is 13 and seeing a girl for the first time, his character would be better, but I swear the whole time it seemed like he was hitting on my character.

Did you miss the part where he's literally the greatest mage who ever lived combined with donte from DmC?

HaruHime20 wrote: »

And if there was never any intimate relations with Merlin, why would he act like there was? Why say anything at all. It was uncomfortable because it wasn't a girl saying Jokes like that. I just don't like Merlin, and I don't know anyone who does!

Jokes on you I actually like white haired mahou shounen DONTE.

Also, implications =/= what actually happened. Chances are he just got dead drunk and started rambling on about anything and everything zzz. Inference from a story is up to the reader and if you take things that negatively I think you might need to chill.

Menuoden wrote: »

Summary for people who lack the insight to understand why the full package reading is important: AFK events are abominations that wear down the game and only encourage more Gold-Farmer/Exploiter mentality players to log on 15 accounts, AFK, win everything repeatedly, destroy the value of items relevant to said event, then waste the time of devoted players because they'd of had the SAME OUTCOME if they'd just had AFK'd or played. This is a bad event model. STOP. USING. IT. EXCLUSIVELY. This model should NEVER be used as the sole basis of 'how to get said event item'.

I see that you are either missing information, uninformed, ignorant, living in the past, or just not up to speed, combination of any of them included.

Firstly there have been changes to reoccuring events that have changed them into less exploitable versions. For instance the current one, with very good rewards might I add, used to be farmable heavily. I actually have an alt that has low CP, a marble brig, r1 icebolt, and a beginner chaincast ice wand just to sit by raccoons to farm one of the previous iterations of the event. Its a feature pls no ban. Regardless, its impossible to put all your effort into pre-emptively trying to make sure nobody will exploit anything by any means they can. You're just going to waste a lot of resources, especially if you don't have that many to invest in the first place, just to hit the same end result. Learning from past actions is a much better investment and its not going to kill anybody.

Secondly, if we were using it exclusively, I'd have to request a test from your doctor for Alzheimer's. We quite literally had Capture the Watermelon and Mission Point Event. One of my main issues that I'm thankful for in the change is that we don't have constant working events as we did years past. This burns out people far too much.

Menuoden wrote: »

Let's first address player types before I get into the meat of this we have Casuals (2-4 days played a week), Regulars (5+ days played a week), Extreme Casuals (Less than 4x a month.), Merchant Alts (AFK to keep stores open, ignore them), Exploiters/Gold Farmers (Read above, this model of player should be banned and frankly they're cancer in a otherwise very very promising MMO).

THE AFKING ISSUE
Q.) Why cancel the AFK-Event Model?
A.) Simple, the risk/reward to this... doesn't exist. There's no alternate sources, the model rewards round-about-dubious means. This means no amount of player skill in playing legit (1 player, 1 character, playing the game) will award you more, no. The reward comes in how much you want to abuse/exploit the intended play style and how many computers you own, or just how crazy strong your fewer PCs are.

While I'm big on giving everybody the same thing, there have been many issues in the past. One of them is with the hot time events. They used to be you HAD to be online at a certain time to get the item. If you weren't, Well you were out of luck. The only possible way to abuse this other than obviously having multiple accounts online via any numerous dubious and flat out illegal methods was an error within the server (the two channel clusters ages back used to eventually become desynced. Ch1-3 would be ahead/behind of Ch4-7. You could actually change channels to the one behind and get twice the items. Safe to say this happened only once or twice.)

So, now the hot times are a large span of time (normally a weekend or a day) so anybody who can't really let their PC sit while they're at work can get the item. Sure people who have a bunch of accounts can farm all they want, but nobody is going to go away without something.

Menuoden wrote: »

Q.) Is there a GOOD application for the AFK rewarding?
A.) Certainly, no idea is a bad idea, it's all about how you work it into the system and how it's balanced, even ridiculous things can be beneficial. (Look at 2D link walking on walls) However, if a person is to have a model where CCing/Relogging resets your timer, AFKing instantly becomes preferable (Channel locked). If this is already preferable then it becomes that much more 'salt in the wound' for a true player that these gold-farmer mentality types are getting Twice, Thrice, Or even x20 the reward we are each reward phase. That said, it should never be the sole method of acquisition.

I will say that sticking onto a single channel is a downside to it. However if it was fixable, chances are it would have been a while ago. People who run shops or advertising signs are no stranger to having to sit on one channel however. This is a tough point to actually fix or contest in all honesty.

Menuoden wrote: »

Q.) Why are AFK-Exclusive events on the whole bad? Isn't it just more rewards for more people with the means?
A.) Try finding a dungeon IG just wandering around some time, you'll be met by a veritable wasteland of players who never respond, never notice your efforts to communicate, never adventure with you. A huge appeal of mabinogi is it's a low-resource MMO so many people are able to play it that may not be able to play more modern games; that means our niche is wider thanks to that. If you have people seeming like statues and silent non-entities then the game will feel dead and lonely, as if you turned on a single player where the other "Party Member Viables" are lifeless and idle. Other events encourage more team work, playing, and general fun -- these draw in larger numbers which means lag for us real players.

Even when there aren't AFK events the game feels more empty than Fallout. This is coming from someone on mari, the literal afk with your fashion out server.

Also, our niche is nothing. The playerbase for this game is cultist level. A lot of veterans who are invested, find no interest in other games, and haven't left for various reasons relating to friends, content, hope, and others. Bringing new players into a game that requires a decent amount of time investment, graphics that while are still good have many issues that haven't been fixed, content scaling that disregards older items in favor of new ones, so on and so forth. The only niche mabi has is that the combat system isn't generic horsedung and it has a different style than most games coming out now that aren't straight out "its an anime-like game xDDDD".

Menuoden wrote: »

THE NEVER WIN ISSUE
- Many existing events, this bingo roulette one in particular suffer from a disease many online games suffer where their RNG is infact, not at all like real life chance. Rather than a 1/6 chance to roll a 6 on a six sided die, on mabinogi it's more akin to a 1/42, and the game even goes out of it's way to help you fail, it wants you grinding. This means...

- You may not ever actually achieve your event goal, or it may take obscene measures (300+ bingo coins) to fill a board ONCE. But it's not just bad because of the unpredictable RNG...

- You may get 'numbers' you've drawn before... FOREVER. This exists in a lot of the events in a lot of varied ways, for many events it's just repeatedly getting HP Potion 30's or equal item almost every draw, versus say... Bingo removing 9's after you get 9 until the next card, Box-events refusing 'repeat rewards' within the next 5 draws (If you get a HP 30, you cant for 4-5 more boxes, inverse same would be true of wings/rares back to back being gone).

- As covered extensively above, if someones AFKing and getting a total of even 5:1 coin ratio to you, they're still winning 5x as much, for 0 effort or reason aside from reasons FEW other game-devs would consider acceptable. (Most games call what they do 'Botting'.)

- This event is SO rigged to AFKers, SO rigged in terms of the "Lets give you the same # again!" and SO hopeless feeling, I logged out to play Pacman 256 after the 15th hour of trying to get TWO numbers, when I had already acquired every possible number on the list, 'except them'. Does this sound like a review that encourages more of these? P.S - Pacman 256 causes me high blood pressure, so you REALLY need to evaluate your event model if im choosing that.

Nexon RNG is based so you never win. Also the way the bingo is coded is made to make players rip their hair out. It doesn't roll 1-5 and spin it 360 degrees before a separate calc for where it lands, it just rolls 1-25 and psuedo-spins. And again, the rewards for the bingo are actually fairly decent, but if they were given coin-hunting from previous bingos, without pots to pretty much water it down to nothing it'd be oh-so-exploitable to folks who like grinding to hell and back for these things.

Menuoden wrote: »

THE ALTERNATIVES
- Events that require activity, even mini-games, Fate board game, protect dunbarton, Unique Shadow mission spams, the SAO tower event, etc.. etc... *even the old amazing race*, all encouraged rewards based on effort and 'PLAYING'.

- Events that encourage playing make the game more alive, encourage team work, and encourage a more vibrant community, AFKing alone will 'NEVER' do this.

- Events that encourage playing discourage Gold-Farmer mentality sorts, since the AI for the Bots often times isn't quite up to snuff, and there should STILL be a gachapon rewarding system for ban-reporting these cysts.

Again, we had Mission Point and Capture the Watermelon last month. If you're in the Mabi Forums discord Nkeona took suggestions down on a list for events folks would like to come back. So expect some of the events folks liked to come back along with whatever holiday events we get this year from GLORIOUS KOREAN OVERLORDS. The inherent system of the game itself encourages grinding and gold-farmer mentality. Furthermore, if we do away with AFK events entirely, we'd actually either get work-work-work events one after another until you burn yourself out, or we'd for the first time in six years actually go any significant portion of time without an event.

I do respect that you have a decent train of thought and a sound idea. But there's no real problem to AFK events other than the "abuse" that will happen regardless. There's no point in punishing everybody, flat out denying rewards to people, or cutting things out just because people can't play nice. And people will regardless afk with signs up, their latest "daddy's-credit-card-funded" gacha-exclusive outfit that's twice the price of the last one with the oh-so-cute pose, and not actually respond to the unfortunate newbie surrounded by ornate grotesquely colored statue-players. Somehow doing away with some of the bonus incentive to do it isn't going to magically fix it.