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Special Upgrade Revamp!

BloonkBloonk
Mabinogi Rep: 1,080
Posts: 39
Member
edited June 10, 2017 in Feedback and Suggestions
Ask anyone how many upgrade stones it took to get step 5 or 6 on their weapon. you will get mixed answers.

"It took me 6 stones in a row! EZPZ B) B) "
"it took me around 25 stones, but at least i'm there :* :* "
"I have gone through 80 stones and i'm still step 1. I'm gonna quit mabi! :'( :'( "

Special upgrades are extremely important in high-level content. They boost your damage by huge amounts, but they are also HUGE money sink. player's are usually forced to wait for an event that gives out Stones of Luck or Stones of protection before they can reliably get a step 5 or 6 weapon. And when u go through so many stones and are punished for it, it doesn't make for a rewarding gameplay experience.

What are some ways to fix the problem, and make special upgrading better?

Make them more common
The biggest issue with upgrade stones is how rare they are. The cost to upgrade itself isn't that bad, only from 30/50k per attempt, but obtaining them is a different story. In Alexina, red upgrade stones are usually 100k each. so going through 10 of them is gonna hurt your bank account a lot. And unless you commerce and buy them for 250k ducats each, there's no sure-fire way to farm them. You either buy them from other players or hope you get lucky. Some changes that would be nice are:
  • make them available for purchase with adventure seals
  • make them rewards for daily shadow missions or dungeons

Increase the Success rate
This is a no-brainer. If you just increase the success rate, it might be a better system. less stones would be necessary, and then the price of stones would go down and newer players could actually afford special upgrades. I know the special anvil in Alban Knights Training Grounds can help a lot, but getting that is a whole other struggle.
If you don't wanna flat-out increase the success rate, you could implement a kind of bad-luck protection into special upgrading. Some ideas are:
  • The more stones you use on a particular weapon, the higher the success rate becomes for that weapon
  • there's a chance when upgrading that the next step will be 100% regardless of what it is (Maplestory has this feature with star-force enhancements)

Add some kind of Consolation Prize
Honestly, burning 2 stones and 60k and getting nothing out of it (from step 1 to step 0) is infuriating. It makes you think "why bother special upgrading when I could spend my money and actually get something out of it?" And it's a completely fair point to make. There needs to be something you get even if you fail. Some things that could be changed are:
  • there's a chance the stone isn't consumed in the failed upgrade, or that the upgrade level doesn't go down.
  • Every time you special upgrade you get a shard of that stone, and you can combine 5 into a new stone.

Special Upgrade Transfer
A problem I often have is getting a weapon, and then special upgrading it, and then getting a better weapon. it would be cool if you could Transfer your special upgrade level from one weapon to another. even if it destroys the old weapon in the process, it would be well worth saving the agony of trying to special upgrade the new weapon. It probably wouldn't work for step 6 and higher, because then you could just keep trying for step 6 on daggers and then transfer it onto your new weapon.

Just don't lower my weapon's rank when I fail
Come on. It honestly isn't fair. And there isn't any lore reason for it. Did you accidentally make your weapon weaker by using an upgrade stone on it? Did the weapon get SO STRONG that it lost a rank? If you were to change anything, this is the easiest and probably most effective fix, especially with a success rate as low as it is.

Anyway, tell me what you think! What ideas do you have to improve special upgrading? Do you think the system is fair? How many upgrade stones have YOU burned away trying to step 6 your Baby?
Sebastian

Comments

  • AeolysAeolys
    Mabinogi Rep: 5,115
    Posts: 469
    Member
    I have to agree that special upgrading is full of getting punished severely.
    Here's my idea of change:
    Special upgrade failures do not rank down.
    After each upgrade, the chance of success reduces. Example: [100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20%, 10%], [50%, 45%, 40%, 35%, 30%, 25%], etc.
    If you fail an upgrade, add a 5% increase in the chance to upgrade. After a success, the bonus is removed.
    Upgrading from 5 to 6 shouldn't explode your weapon. Too much rng and wasted materials. Too much crying. Too much shying away from doing it. Too much relying on event exclusive stones (bad design!).
    With this method, a weapon will hit step 6 eventually. Yes, it will expensive, but gold and upgrade stones are a renewable resource.
    AlmostNotsuper
  • DarkConductorDarkConductor
    Mabinogi Rep: 975
    Posts: 37
    Member
    edited June 19, 2017
    I like the whole premise overall and I hope I can see something like this in later future. I.e I don't see any too big flaws in there that I don't like. But why not sell protection stones at some high gold price (I don't want to involve nx usage in here because hey pay to win) at stores?
    Aeolys wrote: »
    I have to agree that special upgrading is full of getting punished severely.
    Upgrading from 5 to 6 shouldn't explode your weapon. Too much rng and wasted materials. Too much crying. Too much shying away from doing it. Too much relying on event exclusive stones (bad design!).

    Pretty much the very main reason that stops people from upgrading from step 5 to step 6. If the employees are scratching their heads why no one is using the "new" step 7 stone, it's the very reason of things being blown up.. not that they'd actually look and care anyway.
  • AlmostNotsuperAlmostNotsuper
    Mabinogi Rep: 3,240
    Posts: 288
    Member
    I like the whole premise overall and I hope I can see something like this in later future. I.e I don't see any too big flaws in there that I don't like. But why not sell protection stones at some high gold price (I don't want to involve nx usage in here because hey pay to win) at stores?
    Aeolys wrote: »
    I have to agree that special upgrading is full of getting punished severely.
    Upgrading from 5 to 6 shouldn't explode your weapon. Too much rng and wasted materials. Too much crying. Too much shying away from doing it. Too much relying on event exclusive stones (bad design!).

    Pretty much the very main reason that stops people from upgrading from step 5 to step 6. If the employees are scratching their heads why no one is using the "new" step 7 stone, it's the very reason of things being blown up.. not that they'd actually look and care anyway.

    I agree that it's a problem, but that's not why. It's because they're a pain to obtain and are better used for something else: making that ridiculous sword, among other things.
  • AeolysAeolys
    Mabinogi Rep: 5,115
    Posts: 469
    Member
    I like the whole premise overall and I hope I can see something like this in later future. I.e I don't see any too big flaws in there that I don't like. But why not sell protection stones at some high gold price (I don't want to involve nx usage in here because hey pay to win) at stores?
    Aeolys wrote: »
    I have to agree that special upgrading is full of getting punished severely.
    Upgrading from 5 to 6 shouldn't explode your weapon. Too much rng and wasted materials. Too much crying. Too much shying away from doing it. Too much relying on event exclusive stones (bad design!).

    Pretty much the very main reason that stops people from upgrading from step 5 to step 6. If the employees are scratching their heads why no one is using the "new" step 7 stone, it's the very reason of things being blown up.. not that they'd actually look and care anyway.

    I agree that it's a problem, but that's not why. It's because they're a pain to obtain and are better used for something else: making that ridiculous sword, among other things.

    No, that's a completely separate issue that stacks with problemness with this problem. It is not that the sword is the problem and the special upgrades exploding is okay. Celtic Royal Sword hard to get = bad. Exploding special upgrades = bad. Bad + bad = very bad.
  • KyriaanKyriaan
    Mabinogi Rep: 100
    Post: 1
    Member
    To be honest everything would be fine for me if it didn't rank down. I'd be fine if s4->5 has a 10% of a chance to upgrade, but damn 67 stones and I'm back at step 0.. it hurts man. It just feels like you've made no progress whatsoever after blowing millions.