Helsa

Coffee: Black
Tea: Clear
Scotch: Neat

Getting a shield is not a bad idea. When you get more comfortable with using your skills then you can go back to using duel wielding. If you do get a shield though get a Guard Cylinder, that's a shield that has an alchemy cylinder in it. Then you can use it to shoot Sand Burst, Windblast, and what-have-you into the mix.

Imbalance of the game-races is an unsolvable problem, unless you make their differences cosmetic only. Allowing free unlimited rebirth to different game-races will reduce complaining but not solve the problem. Making the game-races different by more than cosmetic reasons is inherently more interesting though but then does not solve the imbalance problem. So what can be done? I think the problem lies in how the "ideal" situation is envisioned.

The ideal situation is envisioned as having a game-race that's best at melee, one that's best at range, and one that's best at technomancy. There are two problems with this approach.

First, such a solution, assumes a World of Warcraft raid-like approach to the game where you have your tanks, damage dealers, and party auxiliaries whom are usually healers and buffers. Such an approach requires many players cooperating. What about folks that prefer solo play? In Mabinogi there are A LOT of them.

Second, this approach does not break the game down to what is fundamentally happening in it. It all comes down to this: you are either fighting PC's or NPC's. When you do the former, it's called PvP. When you do the later it's called PvE.

PvP is inherently a soloists activity. In one-on-one combat melee versus range versus technomancy can never be balanced; one will always be best. If game-races are divided down these lines then one will always be best at PvP. Change how these combat styles work and you may change which game-race is best at PvP, but in the end one and only one will always prevail.

You can make similar arguments for PvE, but PvE need not be a soloists activity. The thing is there are many solo players who prefer PvE to PvP, so they will be sensitive to game-racial imbalance.

If you allow unlimited rebirth to differing game-races (which I think they should) you could, say, rebirth to the best PvE game-race, and build up your supply of AP. Then, you could rebirth as the best PvP game-race, spend those AP, and go to town.

So, now we get to the core of the problem: we have two approaches to the game but three game-races. The issue with game-racial imbalance is not with the weakest game-race but with the middling game-race. Depending on if you are PvP or PvE focused the weakest game-race to you will be the one that is strongest to the folks focused on the other approach. That leaves a game-race in the middle that is not bad at PvP but not best and is not bad at PvE but not best. This is hardly something to be excited about. With unlimited game-race changing rebirth why would you bother with such a game-race at all other than to complete your skill collection.

Can we come up with a third approach; a PvX? Well, not really. But there may still be something we can do. In combat games, some units are good at one-on-one but lousy at many-on-many and vice versa. Take the very first Warcraft game: a single Demon will always beat a single Water Elemental. Two-on-two is a toss up, while above that the Water Elementals always win. Perhaps the middling game-race can be made to have an emergent advantage when there are many of them together; an advantage that is beyond what numbers alone give the other two game-races. Then, for activities where groups matter, that would be the game-race of choice.

There are some achievements in the game that require you to be part of a group, so that middling game-race would best see you through that hurdle.

Bronzebreak wrote: »

DARKCloud wrote: »

Anyone figure this out??

http://forums.mabinogi.nexon.net/discussion/18399/moderation-guidelines

'Necro- Bumping

If a thread is necro-bumped after 30 days of the last activity and it is not a marketable thread, this will result in the thread being closed and the user being sent a PM as to why the thread was closed and reminding them of the rule in the Code of Conduct. (This will not count as a verbal warning.)'

Dark Cloud what this means is you /should/ have made a new topic and then, in the first post, put the link to THIS topic and THEN asked your question, because that would be better ... apparently.