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Hi. I'm here today to talk about the current state of the game, and why I feel it's time to move on. As mabinogi stands right now, it's a time sink that feels unrewarding and honestly frustrating to play. The game is almost unplayable without breaking tos to reduce lag or increase FPS in most cases and I don't want to be banned for simply trying to play the game. I've done everything multiple times and even new content isn't exciting for long, if at all.
We've had lazier and lazier events, not to mention ones that spit in the face of the veteran community and support botting en mass and the servers are worse than they've ever been. The player base has been steadily declining for a while now, and alexina seems to be dying at a rapid pace after being excluded from the server merge. The community here is small, and we had finally a light of hope, only for a large portion of the community to be left out for what reason?
I'm taking this chance to leave while I still hold so many precious memories, and friends before I end up resenting Mabinogi. Here's to everyone that's been here from the start of the forums that I've basically grown up with, and to everyone I've met and played with in game over all these years. It's been good, I've had a lot of fun but I feel like it's time to close this book. I'll probably hang around in game once in a while for nostalgia or to chat with friends but yeah.
Comments
I'm not hopeful for a merge, the one we had already was botched beyond belief and they left half their playerbase high and dry. I think a merge at this point would probably be too little too late. The last relevant content (as in something to do aside from RSI inducing ego feeding) we got was kraken, and the only content we have coming up is the pet update, which doesn't add new content and even KR doesn't have anything new yet. We're looking at another 8+ months before new content is added and with how things have been going lately I'm not too sure about that.
they should have done a full server merge from the start. choosing to do a partial server merge has caused a pointless civil war all over the forums since this whole mess happened. all of it could have been avoided by simply including everyone in the server merge. if they do a full server merge I don't care what name tag I get or how annoying my name change process will be. Nao server went through all that once and they shouldn't have to go through it again. just give name tags to all the Alexina players when it happens so Nao server doesn't have to suffer again and increase their 10 channels to 14 channels and the only thing it will cost Nao server is a long server maintenance. not wanting a full server merge simply cause you dislike a certain server or player is a childish reason and not worth the forum war this whole mess has created. our community is already extremely small compared to some other mmos out there and staying divided hurts the entire mabi community.
I'll never understand how that came to be, we're all in this sinking boat together just because your end doesn't have water in it yet... The merge should've been all servers from the start.
We're in the middle of an epidemic and no one is going outside, of course you'll see more people online. The only stat we see is steam charts, and even though we're all stuck indoors right now we're sitting at a lower playerbase than january last year and the average is about the same, that's really bad given the circumstances. I know you probably haven't tried, but trying to get a kraken party together right now is slow which is pretty abnormal.
I didn't even start g24. It doesn't offer anything except several hours of super tedious fetch quests. I'm finding that I don't love the game, so much as I treasure the memories and friends I've made along the way, and it's because of this that I'm deciding enough is enough. The last year has been me trying really hard to keep interest, but it just isn't there. Between the lag and constant headache that playing is it's just not worth it.
As for the game "dying", all games die. The folks that have lost passion for it seem to all be those with end-of-game characters and capabilities. That they are bored with it should not really be a surprise; this happens with all games. The only way for a game to stay fresh for such folks is if it has a player versus player quality to keep it interesting. My guess is that most of the players who are bored with Mabinogi are end-of-gamers that don't PvP. I've been building up alts lately, and what I've rediscovered is that the non-end-of-game parts of the game are actually quite fun.
Yes, overall, the player-base is, as mathematicians say, non-increasing, but that happens with all games; how old is Mabinogi?
When the endgame consists of a 2m click for a .1% chance it doesn't feel rewarding, fun or anything at all. I'm not even really bored of content, there's just nothing to work towards. A lot of older content is simply that, older content. It's not fun, there's no mechanics just punching bags with a lot of HP.
I did, a while ago. I came back to the forums to say goodbye/have a discussion once more because there's a lot of people still here that I wanted to hear from, as it's been a awhile and once this post dies out I'm gone. Forums are for discussions after all.
That's the nature of combat PvE games from the get-go. At the end-of-game, in all games, the tactical approach to combat is much more limited than at the beginning. In the beginning, cleverness and patience make a difference, in the end it's all just about power; of course that's boring.
Calm down. Your screaming doesn't help at all.
Yes, the current combat-system will get «boring» for many people after a while, namely because the result is just turning targets into what are essentially «punching bags» and not so much doing any interesting form of combat or doing choreograph-style combat-sequences in conjunction with other Milletians in order to win against a difficult boss as long as everyone maintains their timing (and not necessarily requiring a specific skill-set like they forced upon the Girgashy missions/dailies/weeklies/orders/etc).
To suggest that the problem with Mabinogi now was moving skill load time to cooldown time is incorrect. The old combat system was only enjoyed by a few, while everyone else HATED it. Changing it was a good thing. The issue now is that Nexon's attempts to keep end-of-game content challenging is not based on clever design but on nerfing the strategies and tactics that players use against monsters and reducing their toolkit to a simple contest of power only; booooooring.
Also, when it comes to business, although it is one thing to try and cater to people to try and increase the conversion-rate (enticing people to go from f2p to paying customers without feeling forced into it), some schools of thought believe in what is taught in business-academics and/or business-economics or academic-marketing as the 80/20 rule (although in actual «on-line» practice it is more like the 99.99999 to 0.00001% rule), and it is true that it is easier to «sell» products/services to those who have already purchased something from you before (just as long as they were satisfied with their previous purchase/s). Ultimately, the decision is about providing what people are willing to buy, and various combat-systems could have been designed in a manner to where we could have them on rotation (somewhat like the different weekly bonuses), certain modes of combat available to VIP-users as options, and for people who want «harder challenges» even though you mentioned that there was apparent «backlashes» towards the idea that the mobs ought to be upgraded to also have the newer skill-sets, for the sake of «catering» to this apparently «niche» market, they could still update the skills, but leave them remaining dormant until some web-shop item is used on them or as a mission-altering (or dungeon-altering) token, indicated by the party-window being displayed in a glowing colour instead of the default grey-coloured box for party windows so that those who don't want to join that/those version(s) of dungeons/shadow-missions can just choose to not join the leader.
Anyway... more is going on outside of the world of Mabinogi's Milletians that I do need to (eventually) tend to for the sake of humanity's future...
This is part of the issue I have with the game/community in general. End game is far more interesting because you have all the tools in a set to fix a problem, instead of looking at a broken sink and going "I have some gum, a bent fork and some half used tape" you have a full professional way to fix it. Both are really fun and have all their own perks, but lets not pretend that the game is more complex when you don't have half the skills in the game. As far as old mabi combat goes no, it wasn't more strategic because anything that wasn't windmill was basically garbage. Old mabi combat was bad, is bad, and is outdated. The Pserver is a perfect example, it's super super dead even though people constantly go on about how much better old mabi was. End game is much more mechanically intense, between elite techs and hasidim but it loses its charm when you feel like you're grinding for no reward.
There definitely is a misunderstanding here because chain sweep isn't a very good skill in the end. It has a resource management tied to it, it's an animation lock, and it's super slow, compare that to the almost 0 CD kunai storm on an ego 100 erg 50 shuri, it's not even a comparison to make the ninja skill set blows chain out of the water. Between KS spam, instant load sakura abyss and crits resetting the CD of the skills... Even magic with all the issues it has is the best skillset for clearing alban heroic SS. I feel like a lot of misunderstanding comes from people not understanding what the meta is. Again, it's not a bad thing either most people don't care and that's fine but it makes having conversations about game state impossible. Even alchemy though it requires erg45 ego100 at the bare minimum is an insane and one of the only reliable ways to clear feth fiada elite, and probably the best way to clear most of kraken.
Edit: got off topic, not the point of this thread. Anyway the game feels dated regardless and hasn't been fun for a while and we're not getting anything to do for at least 8 months, and the power creep from gacha stuff lately has been insane.
What staff? The leftover maplestory 2 staff, or the staff that was fired/quit/replaced? There's not a whole lot to sway. But no, I've constantly been trying to get back into the game after breaks and every time I do it's been shorter.
Sure, they have Girgashies which require «timing» but have «pigeon-holed» it into a specific three-combo skill-set, rather than say updating «Defense» into one where if everyone was equipped with a Shield, and they all loaded Defense together with their Shields in proximity (similar to Fusion-Bolt), or even the Magic-Shields from the Magic-Tab, then a special-effect could be created from it (e.g.: whole entire PT loaded Defense could cause in impenetrable Dome-Shield to manifest and as long as PT-members remain within said dome for its duration they take no damage [or at least significantly reduced] from any physical-attack, and another version for Magic-Attacks, and another Hybrid-Version, etc).
And yes, the Boss of Sidhe sometimes requires you to get out of the way, lest you be hit with a gigantic explosion and have your movements slowed, which I think is at least alright to help make the battle a bit more interesting, but attacking it is still mostly about just spamming whatever your «highest DPS» particular available skill is for the duration of the majority of the battle.
Also, lots of the newer-content spawns have plenty of high-grade prot/def, and in thinking about how I was going to respond, I remembered that I am a fairly big fan of debuffs; in fact, for most games I have ever been active on where debuffs exist, I will usually stack as absolutely many «debuffs» as I can on whatever I happen to be fighting, and there is a browser-game where the «EX-Abilities» that I set for all of my Party-Configurations is usually always going to be a Defense-Debuff. Currently, there is not much in the way of «debuffing» beyond Brionac, and just plain «Piercing» weapons. With «debuffs» being introduced (beyond Brionac) it might bring an incentive to those Veteran-dungeons (although probably not since most-likely people will more-likely use it for raid-spamming and periodically for spamming AAHM or other such dungeons).
Anyway, they could still introduce a «timing» factor, and I think it is good and healthy for combat-mechanics (as well as interesting) to allow for there to be some form of telegraphing what the opponent is about to do so that you can prepare your next most-effective move in anticipation. How so ? I have my own ideas, although I am not going to get too detailed (describing/explaining and typing this stuff out takes time after all), they could design the «mobs» in such a way or at least add in a «weak-point» where, with an indicator to help players «telegraph» when to «time» a particular skill (or sequence of skills), similar to those Nightmares changing colours, a brief icon with a 321 count-down could display next to (or above) the «mob» and leave a 2-3 second window for specified skill (or specific element-type attack) that not only guarantees a «critical» attack but simultaneously lands various status-debuffs.
Yes, I know there are similar things that occasionally trigger with certain spirit-weapon configurations, but those are dependent upon Proc-Percentages, and not so much about the «timing» of when you used your particular skill against any particular target in question.
Anyway... this probably warrants creating a thread eventually titled something like...: «What does "Strategy" mean to you ?»
Those who say nothing and just leave, stay gone.
But cya later.
Game is lame now.
Even though I badly want to leave, I can't bring myself to completely uninstall the game, I just lurk around and see if something interesting happens, and well, that's going great....