Hello,
This is my first time on the forums, and I’m not sure what the typical format is. I started playing Mabinogi back in college around 13 years ago. I stopped playing around 10 years ago when my cheap laptop could no longer keep up with the large areas being added like Tailltean. I recently resumed playing in early 2022, and have found the game significantly improved; however, there are some key issues that need to be addressed to keep the game from dying completely.
Streamline the Monetization
As a free-to-play game, I know Mabi has always tried to needle people into spending money on the game. But, I’ve seen the gacha/lootbox mechanics that they’ve added since I played in full effect. Multiple players I’ve talked to admit to spending 100s of dollars on these to get the items they want. So why are we still spending money on bonus inventory space or to use the style tab for 30 days? Every time these features expire, it just turns people off some of the game’s strongest features. For example, someone spends $150 trying to get a costume for their character. Then their style tab expires and they can’t wear the set they spent all that money on in a Shadow Mission because it’s purely cosmetic! People that hear about this will avoid engaging with the gachas entirely because they know they’ll have to pay a month subscription to wear clothes in a video game.
The two ways around this issue are to make the style tab and masterplan inventory space permanently free, or at least have a free way to earn the currency to unlock them for the more casual players. If the casual players leave, the whales have no one to show off to and leave as well. This is F2P economics 101.
Cut Down the Grind
During this event, I was able to get 6x Skill training experience and hunkered down to train Meteor Strike from rank A to rank 1. I NEVER even CONSIDERED training that skill prior to this point, and it hit me why. For the first time, I felt like I could set a goal and achieve it. It’s one of the most basic things your video game needs. Currently, dailies barely nudge any of your skill training (assuming you don’t have r1 in everything already). For skills that have specific requirements, like hit 9 enemies at once, you have to find specific training scenarios to make progress. Despite all this, the requirements vary from a few hundred to a few thousand uses in those scenarios. So for the 8,000 distress heals for Master of Healing or the 100 dragon attacks for Meteor Strike, I just wrote those as impossible goals because the FEEL impossible until you get those skill multipliers.
Similar to the monetization problem, the mechanics are depressing the players from engaging with the game. They are too hardcore to keep casuals playing, and without casuals the hardcore players get bored as well. My suggestion to address this problem is to CUT SKILL REQUIREMENTS IN HALF ACROSS THE BOARD. I didn’t feel like I was making progress until it was cut into 1/6th the requirements, but ½ should be the minimum change. If grinding was easier, players may even bother to train up their alts. By trying to get players overly invested in the grind, Mabi is preventing any sort of replayablilty. If you could realistically keep a male and female human, male and female elf, and male and female giant up-to-date and explore the armor builds for each, imagine how much easier it’d be to keep players in the game.
Incentivize Community
One of Mabi’s strongest suits is providing places for players to hang out and chat. It’s one of the easiest games I’ve played to make friends in. So, why are ALL the later generation quests solo-only?! If players want a challenge, they can be lone wolves, but what’s the point of making friends if you can’t help each other with anything until the endgame content? That’s 1000s of hours where you have to isolate yourself to engage with the core game mechanics and unlock abilities.
All the generation content needs to be revamped to allow parties to join in and help. You don’t have to add party members to cutscenes, just let people join and help out. If people WANT to RP being the solo hero in that content, let them go it alone. But for the rest of us that get stuck and frustrated, let us bring friends in to feather each other, share strats, point out weakness between attempts, FORM STRONGER BONDS! This game is wasting so much potential, and I don’t understand why.
Let players get bonus experience for helping lower-level players, don’t cut the experience points to make the grinding worse. Give players more skill experience for groups. Party Healing requires healing 3 or more people at once, but all the typical content silos everyone away so you’ll be lucky to find 3 people in an actual run to heal anymore! EVERYTHING in the MMO should be easier, simpler, more fun in groups. The Divine Knight abilities go on cooldown so you have to work together to chain them. Why not let more skills chain that way. Let someone stun with magic, another shoot with an arrow, and so on without knocking back enemies if they come from different players. If working in groups gives infinite hit stun like Fynni Pets, players would have an easier time working together instead sabotaging each other on accident by messing up the enemies get-up timing. MMOs live and die on communities, so start pushing the community back together. Currently, chatting in Dunbarton and training/leveling are separate experiences. And that’s not even touching how little the game provides guilds to do. Luckily my guild does its own events through Discord, but that’s a lot of extra effort you’re forcing on guild leaders.
FIX YOUR BUGS
I had to write this post in a Word document and copy it over because even this forum code is outdated and buggy.
Comments
Either make it last like the training skill potions where the timer pauses when you're not actively playing, or just remove it entirely and make it a one time purchase.
The unfortunate issue is that Nexon is a company and they need revenue, so losing any kind of subscription monetization like that would definitely cut into their profits.
I'm also in the idea of a Storyline skip service. Yes, story skipping.
- I don't want to re-run my alts to make them learn Tech skills, Transformations, Content locked by Generations,
- Most people don't have the patience to make two characters run the same story. (This is the other races you didn't pick)
Obviously, this only works if your main character has completed the storyline, to prevent abuse.
Another idea would be a "Premium" Event package. Users under a certain level are considered Event Beginners. With this purchase, they are considered "legit" users and able to participate in events. This idea, while is questionable, is designed to limit the mules flooding the market at the moment. I don't know. GMs, do something and at least ban/kick/flag these mules for muleing!
And if anyone thinks these ideas are *****, Idea one is used by WoW. Idea two is used by FFXIV. Idea three is used by CSGO.
I'd say any revenue lost with a free style tab could more easily be made up for elsewhere. People that spend that money on the game out of habit might just find something else to buy - like gachas or alternate rebirth looks. Players that see the outfits more frequently due to EVERYONE having the style tab at all times may ask where to get them and engage with the gachas more frequently. And less negative sentiment towards monetization gets more players to recommend the game to friends, increases the install base, and raises total sales in the cash shop from the law of averages.
Conversely, the more people that get fed up with the style-tab subscription, realize that collecting outfits was one of the last fun things they were doing with the game, and quit to play other stuff has the opposite effect. It lowers the install base, which lowers new player recommendations, which lowers potential spending. They keep having to merge servers because the playerbase on each server is shrinking so much, and even those merged servers only 1/10 channels is ever busy (let alone full). Their top priority should be retaining and drawing in new players! They may lose like $10,000 in one quarter from one fewer microtransaction and gain $500,000 - $2 million in the next few years from the shift in momentum.
1. The revenue ideas how I posted are such examples I would totally buy- Story skips and character boosts? SIGN ME UP. I always wanted to play as the other races, but I don't have time to do the story. Revenue for Idea 3 of Events, while again, Questionable, I know that some players would eventually cave in and buy it in order to participate in events. Or they grind until they're in a certain level on both Total level and Talent level.
1a. Another idea for revenue is having a service of selecting an item you want of a dungeon and having its drop rate increased- Not getting it in a run increases it's rate, until it is a 100% drop. Limitation would likely be untradable, trade restriction, or rate reset if another player gives the item to you to prevent abuse, If someone wants to make it worth more, then All Rare and uncommon items get their rates increased on a non-drop run.
2. One of the problems with the Server Merge is unable to damage the Raid bosses. Couldn't get contribution before players kill it like a TAS.
2a. I remember my brother's friend discussed he wanted to play Mabi. 4 players (includiong myself) joked about the issues of mabi. Reforges, HP sponges, RNG, Badly made DPS gates, Gimmick Mechanics, Story Locked content, Skill locked Content... It was enough to convince him not to play.
2b. I also wanted a Steam friend to play Mabi. Unfortunately, even with the top gear (no reforges, lm not of that much money...) given to her, she decided it wasn't worth the time grinding, hardships, problems in 2a, and she left with me saying "Keep the items". Even my steam review is "I can't recommend this game at this state".
I'd completely given up on leveling up my elf and giant alts, and now I'm keeping an eye out for elf and giant gear. I also see a lot of other players with egg icons, so I think other people are finally using their alts as well.
I also appreciate the Grandmaster changes. I'd been sitting on 5 Warrior Skill Seals for months. Every time I rebirthed as a Warrior, it felt like a waste not giving the skill EXP to a talent that was underleveled just to make incremental progress (max 6/20) to Grandmaster on the weekends. Now, not only can you take the tests for talents you aren't actively using, but skills are easy enough to train that not EVERY second of the game feels like it has to be optimized to be useful. I got Grandmaster Warrior, and I'm halfway to Grandmaster Mage.
It used to take multiple wiki page references, setting up raids in runs no one does anymore (Crusader skills), and/or advice from veteran players just to get one skill up per week. I've been playing probably 25 of the last 48 hours, and I've lost count of how many new rank 1 skills I've gotten. I wish this didn't overlap with my Thanksgiving holiday trip, so I could get the most out of this event!