Elfvie

AlmostNotsuper wrote: »

It's a no for me. I know people want more variety in magic, but I think it'd be difficult to do such a thing without A.making magic skills seem cheap or B.making magic so OP and versatile that there's little point in using archery anything else (it's already kind of like that though). In a game like Mabinogi, wherein you aren't locked into any class (although you have to pay to unlock archery's full potential), it's very important that no two skills (or at least not much more than two =T) do the same thing the same way, even if one outclasses the other (especially if one outclasses the other). Even if you don't care that multiple 'classes' can do the same thing, there are only so many ways you can reskin a skill and have it be interesting.

However, I do think it'd be neat if there were more types of magic, light and dark themed in particular. I'm just not sure they should be generic magic skills. I'd like to see them either as separate skillsets, or as accessory skills. I know some people have proposed necromancer type talents multiple times in the past, so I'm sure people would be eager to see something like that. I've been thinking it be neat (and potentially simpler) to make summoner skills, based on the magic used in fomor scrolls (maybe give us more details about the fomors in the process). I also thought battle mage skills would be kind of cool: more stuff like blaze, and that could be light themed. It could be inspired by the shamans, maybe we could learn it from them. I was actually going to make a UGC thread for this back when that was a thing, but I gave up because too much work for no reason.

Going back to what I said in the first paragraph, I personally believe that any new skills should be made with a unique purpose in mind, and any talent should be made with a 'flow' in mind (the skills need to work together somehow). This is kind of difficult, especially in the case of Necromancer type stuff, which people always want to feature some type of minions. It's kind of a pain to make a minion type thing that's sufficiently different from golems, puppets and pets. And then there's the problem of deciding how they should be controlled, if they can be controlled. And if they don't have to be controlled, what's limiting the player? (Most likely, it's just be the fact that the summons get in the way more than they actually help, thanks to bad AI). The battle mage thing is a little simpler since there are no minions involved, but there's still the question of how to make it good without having it replace close combat entirely (this was before bash was a thing, so close combat was pretty lackluster aside from lances).

Now I think adding battle mage skills as an exclusive supplement to fighter would be a good way to make it worthwhile again. Maybe they could release more magical knuckles too. The summoner thing I mentioned is pretty much a simplification of some of the necromancer suggestions I've seen. Instead of any actual minions, I'm thinking it would be better to summon an intangible helper (kind of like support dolls or mercenary scrolls) which only performs a single function for the duration of its summons (maybe knocking enemies back, buffing the summoner, stuff like that). I originally thought of this as a way to make up for nerfing bolt magic (which I still think should be done by the way).