Before I begin, let me thank you for not only explaining your thoughts thoroughly, but also taking the time to organize them into something pleasing to read. Now, I do disagree with your points. So forgive me if I seem confrontational. It's just sorta what I do.
Quote from Fyrain;298980:
WARNING, LONG POST. Bolded is tl;dr, as well as the tl;dr at the bottom.
We need to be nerfed. Just us, in general. From the moderate level hundred players, to those crazy level 3000 maniacs, we need to be toned down, we’re stretching the game. We’ve become superhumans, armed with ridiculous weapons, a cavalcade of pets and pots out the wazoo, taking on small armies of fomors on our own, and pwning until the day is done.
Two things. First off, no on nerfing. Players hate to be nerfed, plain and simple. Some of the more rational and reasonable among gamers can recognize that is is often necessary, but those are the rare individuals. In an MMO game, you're dealing with “massively multiplayer†chances are slim to none that 100% of your playerbase is going to be those rare individuals. It is therefore a safe bet as a game designer to assume that nerfs will not make people happy, or want to play your game more.
Knowing that nerfs will piss off most of the playerbase most of the time, game designers are very reluctant to use them, unless the benefits outweigh that likely reaction. So pretty much there has to be a damn good reason (such as gross imbalance that is making people want to quit the game) or some huge amount of benefit (a nerf in one area allowing a boost in another that will maintain balance but please lots of players).
Overall your opening paragraph sets the tone for your post that you feel the playerbase as a whole has gotten “overpowered†and that more or less forms the basis of your various examples. But you fail to take note that what is important in a game is not how big or small the numbers are, it is more important that the numbers are balanced. That a player has enough options and choices to feel they are making their own unique character or taking their own path, but that none of those pathes are strictly superior in all ways to other choices available. i.e. 3+3= 6 is fine, while -3+9=6 is also fine. The two are balanced as both end up the same in the end.
Quote from Fyrain;298980:
Why do I say we’re stretching the game? Look at how the game is structured now, compared to the earlier generations. For example, in shadow missions, the game sends vast waves of multi-aggro monsters, with 50% protection and 20 defense, and 2000 HP just to maybe make a chink in our armour. Now, whenever we die, we can’t chalk it up to being outsmarted. We die because we’re outnumbered, or over-powered, which doesn’t happen that often.
For example, take the new Theatre Mission, Fortinbras’ Expedition. Eventually, you will have waves of 20 or 30 idiot snow trolls, who don’t do anything. Even when their AI works, they simply sit there with counter on, they’re passive, they don’t do anything. Main battle strategy: run directly into the center of the mob, and spam windmill and smash to win. Now, windmill’s the key to victory, because often it’s the only way to win, being our main AoE skill when we’re spammed by 10 monsters breathing down our necks. There’s a reason it has a 10% HP cost every time you use it: it was originally meant to be an emergency escape skill, not a main method of attack. Now, if you die in that mission, it’s because you got hit with one damage after already being in deadly. We’re doing more damage to ourselves than the monsters are.
And don’t even get me started on sulfur spider shadow mission.
Part of the problem with this part of your post is you're trying to appeal to the idea that big numbers are somehow bad. The numbers are merely relative. You even say yourself that those sorts of numbers are needed to put a chink in your armor... I.e weaker stuff wouldn't be a threat to you.
The more relevant part is how you discuss the concept of being overpowered, or outnumber in order to make the opposition a challenge. You say this is somehow different than the enemies of old. Allow me to correct this misconception for you.
Ciar vs Alby. A brand new character with no shield can successfully use the defense skill to reduce a hit from the giant spider boss to 1 in Alby/normal. On the other hand, the golem boss of Ciar/normal could land crits through even a kite shield, and did dangerous amounts of damage even to someone in heavy armor+kite shield without crits. The fire/counter strategy was designed with golems in mind, as a way to avoid ever having to rely on the defense skill or to have to tank hits at all... because the golem would overpower a player. Remember, at this point 18 defense, 5 protection was pretty much top-end tank.
Alby/basic, Fiodh/normal and /basic, and even several flavors of Albey/gem/g1 are also excellent examples of Dungeons that pit players against multi-aggro situations designed to overwhelm the player.
If I have the leway to include all of chapter 1 as “the old days†and include g3, Baol/infiltration is another prime example of “overpower and overwhelm.â€
Very little of mabinogi is based around the idea of complex opponents, especially not in the early days. Golems were probably the toughest opponents around because they could defend, smash, windmill, or stomp. Basically because they had 4 skills + N to deal with, rather than most enemies have 1-3. And sadly, a combination of two skills let you ignore all that complexity firebolt+counter attack. SO much for complicated opponents.
Most “hard†opponents in c1 had some kind of passive defense or more than one. What made Peaca/normal hard back then was the heavy-handed use of different pd's along with stupid-high protection (ghosts) and high hp.
Quote from Fyrain;298980:
When I started playing this game, waaay back in beta, I died. A lot. And I didn’t care; sure, I maybe dropped some armour or a weapon, but a quick trip to Duncan (remember Tir Chonaill? Ciar Basic? Party quests?) would get me back on my feet. And it was good. Now, on my giant, dying is a rare occurrence, unless I take a suicidal mission. So rare, that I get frustrated whenever it happens outside a theater mission, frantically searching for my holy water to re-bless my equips because some Shadow Wizards whittled down my HP enough to kill me. And I’m annoyed, not because I’m outsmarted, but because they’re simply too powerful (or they spam firebolt, and my evade doesn’t work).
This example doesn't even really make any sense at all. You built your character to be a tank, and succeeded. Now the game isn't as threatening to you. Congradulations, you accomplished your goal. That is the point of a tank, to be able to shrug off attacks, and live. By virtue of staying alive that gives you more opportunity to strike back, form plans, and so on. If you want a playstyle that is higher risk, where failure still results in death, but you can speedily take out opponents... try playing an elf instead. Or try playing your giant in a pure damage set of gear such as ancient/darkness light armor, or better yet oblivion/white horse clothing. Try learning to use your various attacks of smash, wm, counter, assault, assault slash, and stomp to deny your opponents the chance to ever hit you unless you make a mistake. You'll find without the vales shield and heavy armor, your giant is a lot squishier.
That said, a kite shield and heavy armor, rank 1 defense and combat mastery offered a lot of tankiness in the old days. This became even more apparent when hidden bonuses of shields were made active all the time, not just when defense was loaded.
Quote from Fyrain;298980:
A lot of the battle systems today violate, I think, the original aims of the game. When mabi was new, you’d go against opponents larger, and more powerful than you, yes, but you could still beat them, by playing smart; playing defensively. Now, when faced with larger opposition, all you need is a ridiculous amount of potions and you’re good to go, either that, or you're just plain screwed. Simply pot up, and you’ll be fine. Pots were meant to be used in an emergency, not as a crutch, that’s why they implemented potion poisoning. They were a punishment, not a requirement. Now in order to keep up with teammates in Shadow Wizard, you need stacks and stacks of stamina potions, or you’ll fall behind.
HP pots and SP pots were available in the old days just as they are now. Players used to stock up on those and use them in ciar/basic and /inter back then just as they do in today’s missions. Once skills became uncapped to rank 1, sp costs of using said skills pretty much forced players to need to use SP pots; otherwise they'd have to sit around ever few rooms and wait for stamina to regen. Are you saying that you would rather sit around doing nothing every few spawns of opponents?
I think your idea that potions are meant to be used in emergencies only is your own invention. HP10's and SP10's drop in droves from newbie dungeons, and you're even given them and x30's as rewards for newbie quests and part time jobs, heck even for just talking to people with your friend of NPC title equipped. The game is actively trying to flood your inventory with potions... for what if not to use them?
Quote from Fyrain;298980:
And sure, we can go back to the good ol’ dungeons that showcase smart AI and interesting enemies, instead of the same set of shadow enemies over and over, except for the fact that we can anhilate any enemy that isn’t in advanced of hardmode simply by staring at it for too long. I can solo Ciar advanced hardmode, and I remember a time when in order to do so, you’d have to be hacking. (Strange that, outside of mods, there hasn’t ever been any major hacking outbreaks in this game, unless you count bots. Note that I am not saying mods are hacks. In the interest of remaining flame-free, I have no opinion on this.)
Gonna go ahead and leave the mod/hack comments alone, as we already have discussions on those in other threads a plenty.
So basically... in this post, you're saying that players can do enough damage to wipe out stuff unless that stuff is in advance/hardmode missions/dungeons.
Players could do that in the old days... it doesn't take much to be able to wipe out ciar/beginner, alby beginner, and the/normal versions of those dungeons. Ciar/intermediate was often preferred for leveling because it was -easier- than ciar/basic. The stuff had less hp on average thus could be killed in a single shot more easily.
In contrast, today's basic missions are often a challenge to new players. Intermediate missions prove to be a pretty big jump in difficulty for newbies hitting total level 100. It isn't til the player stabilizes around total 200-250 that they start being able to have an easy time with intermediate missions... and then guess what, the game ups the ante again to adv missions for them right at 300. I think the levels of the shadow missions were incredly well designed and thoughtful
It really sounds to me like you're a player that is around the 500-900 range, still working on getting to the point of overpowering adv stuff, perhaps even 1k-1.1k level area where hardmode is available but too hard. Of course you're able to walk all over intermediate and basic stuff. You're doing the equivelant of begginer/normal dungeons of old!
Interestingly enough... the dungeons that would be appropriate to your level in the old days would be places like alby/intermediate and fiodh/intermediate... where you'd face things that tried to overwhelm you with multi-aggor and the occasional high-powered giant spider or gorgon or argus would mix things up for you.
Quote from Fyrain;298980:
These additions are changing the way we play this game, possibly for the worse. Unless you’re with close friends, teamwork doesn’t happen. No one talks in shadow missions, it’s just a grind, in our own little world, 8 single players against a computer, rather than 8 people working together. Rarely do we heal each other. Mending isn’t needed, now that we have transformations and demigod powers.
I quickly learned my lesson back in G2, that when you're in a party of people you don't know, you play conservatively, you play defensively, and you don't touch the other peoples' mobs unless doing so would kill the mob and/or save their life. I remember my newbie days of going through ciar/basic with a party quite well. Anyone who didn't follow that basic rule of “Don't Touch†got yelled at, flamed, and typically not invited to the next basic pass. People were also very keen on getting the dungeon finished quickly so they could get to the end chest reward, and get on with the next dungeon to continue their grind. There wasn't much allowance for sitting around and chatting... when it did happen it was because someone(read everyone) forgot to pick up a key, or worse someone went afk with it. The chatting at tha t point was more venting frustration at having to sit around and wait who knows how long til the person came back from afk, or pointing fingers at who should have picked up the missed key.
No, more often than not, random parties with strangers were not all that fun. People didn't just magically start working together back then. People were mean, petty, and vindictive. The people who were not typically ended up making friendships out of that mess-hole called Ciar, and learned to work together.
Quote from Fyrain;298980:
Remember the last time you ate cooked food? At a campfire? With other, random people? For reasons other than the stat boosts? For fun? Hopefully, it wasn’t too long ago, but unfortunately for many of us, that is too far away to remember.
Since most cooked food is fattening, I've turned down most food ever offered to me. If I do sit down to a campfire and someone shares a berry or strawberry, then I tend to accept. I think the recent updates to cooking are awesome though, and getting stats from food that encourages sharing is how it should have been in the old days.
Mabi had a great idea with the whole stamina bar and hunger thing... but then went and made it completely meaningless with paladin transformations. As of G2, food became completely pointless... aside from those weirdos that ate to get semi-permanent stats (anyone in Ruairi probably knows this person).
The whole thing with food is still not really perfect, but they're clearly trying things out to bring that sense of camaraderie back. But that was a very, very long time ago, before my time, where that went on.
Quote from Fyrain;298980:
I almost feel sorry for anyone who joins the game now. We’ve reached a state similar to that of a fighting game that’s been out for years: everyone’s a pro, with no room for the newbs. Any new player who goes into Tir Chonaill would have found, until Hamlet, a couple people, afk. No one to help them out in Ciar or Alby dungeon, shoehorned into a forbidding Shadow Wizard Basic, where they’ll be chewed up and spit out by a horde of monsters, in a party full of 8 faceless people. They might as well be playing with the computer right now.
As of the start of c2, Tir Chonaill is not -the- “starting point†for newbies. It is one of four possible places a player will start... beings as you describe your character as a Giant, I doubt I really need to explain where the other three are.
Yes I know that for a long time Tir maintained the interest of the bulk of the community because all the shops were there, and people would hang out in Tir's square or alby/arena to chat. That place is now Dunbarton square though, and I don't really see why that is a problem. Newbies can get on their feet and learn the game through the newbie quests without dealing with the spam of a bustling playerbase around them, without being teased and ridiculed by the trolls for asking newbie questions, and so on.
If a player does start in Tir, the newbie quests will tend to push that person towards Dunbarton anyway. If the player starts anywhere in Iria, they'll eventually head to Uladh, and wind up in Dunbarton as well. It really is the center of the mabi world, everywhere leads to it.
When players end up heading to Taillteann and end up “shoehorned†into a shadow wizard basic... it really is no different than the old days where players piled up into groups to do Ciar/normal together. I'd like to think the rewards for successfully making it through one of those missions are a bit more attractive than those of ciar/normal. So even if the newbie does flounder a bit, they're still experiencing the same sort of environment that went on in ciar, they're just earning a bit more exp in the process to hopefully let them build their character some and perhaps not flounder so hard.
They're certainly still getting plenty of opportunity to hang out with their fellow newbies, make friendships, rivals, and enemies, and learn the basics of why random parties filled with idiots are not nearly as fun as running by yourself, or with intelligent competent friends if you can find them.
Quote from Fyrain;298980:
Many times, in my guild, we reminisce, long for that sense of wonder when we first entered mabinogi, for the days when dyes were 20k, for the days when skills like campfire, cooking, weaving, etc. were useful for something other than the stat boosts. It’s a game quite unlike any other, at least with regards to how we fight. Now, it seems like it’s blending into all those other MMOs, because the monsters are stupid. They became dumbed down now, though server lag has a lot to do with it. Mabinogi had one thing, for me, that no other MMO had: a FUN battle system. I wanted to fight, because fighting was fun. This wasn’t maplestory, where I had to fight to grind. Now, it’s becoming all too similar.
Dyes used to be a lot lower than 20k. I remember times where I felt like I was maybe gouging my friends because I sold mine as high as 10k to friends, but they were happy to get them that cheaply when everyone else was selling for 12k. I felt I was overcharging because I had been used to them being below 8k. But there are a lot more players in the game today than back then, and the ability to earn gold is higher. You may have a hard time wrapping your brain around the concept but dye prices today are actually equall to what they were back then. 80-100k today is worth 10-20k back then. Dyes are a commodity that always sells in large numbers... it is pretty impossible for them to stay above or below their actual value for long.
Campfire: more useful today than it was in the past, due to the fact that you can actually rank it higher now; you can actually gain a bonus to enchant burn success rate by using a campfire build by someone more skilled. That certainly is no mere stat boost! Further, campfires have often been used by archers as temporary barriers and for the fire arrow effect.
Cooking: Useful now to feed monkeys to get various goodies. Useful to enhance your friends through temporary stat boosts. Certainly not limited to just the stats gained for ranking it. Further, there is a cooking dungeon where better/harder passes require higher ranks of cooking to enter, there is also the Emain Macha cooking contest each week.
Weaving: Used to provide materials for tailoring, handicraft, carpentry, and blacksmithing. Each of those skills used to provide useful materials that players actually buy, sell, and use. Futher, alby/adv has chests who's keys must be woven.
As for the AI's getting dumber... not hardly. They're using the exact same AI's as they have always used. In fact there is arguably only really one AI. It just behaves certain ways based on if it has certain skills or not.
As for mabi getting more like maple... can't say I've really played maple much beyond the newbie stuff. Pretty much all I've seen of stuff above my level in Maple inolves watching higher level players grinding the newbie area I was in, but doing it more efficiently than me with area effect attacks.
That said, Mabi has never truly been a game that rewarded a diverse character all that much. In the begininng, WM was already overpowered and doing anything but spamming WM was simply less effective. What was missing was the power of rank 1, since all skills were caped at what, rank 9? What made fire/counter such a successful strategy, was that a weak character, with only rank F in those two skills could effectively take on any opponent in the game as long as their mp and sp lasted longer than the opponent's hp.
But it was slow. And simple fact is killing faster means faster exp means more levels means more ap means more skill ranks to play with and have fun with the game more.
So yes, like Maple, and any other RPG where it is applicable, spamming area-effect attacks and doing as high of DPS as you can is the key to grinding efficiently. That isn't something Mabi is becoming, it's something all RPG's are, Mabi included.
Quote from Fyrain;298980:
Am I simply crazy? I'm not saying that nerfing everyone will be easy, nor popular, I suppose the changes I suggest are fundamental ones. Maybe a dungeon system where it's only two, maybe three people, with smarter enemies in less amounts. Something to inspire teamwork. I don't know. But G15 needs a major change from dead bodies everywhere. Can you think of anything? All I want, I guess, is the old mabinogi. The G14 private farms look like they might spice things up, community-wise. Maybe. XD
Tl; dr: Old fart says that new stuff isn’t as cool as it can be, we need to be nerfed. Also, windmill is overused.
Your wish is granted. Secret Shadow missions are probably exactly what you are looking for. On top of those, most of the c3 bosses are very different, interesting fights. You say you haven't completed g8-g12 yet? You really should... I think you're missing out on something you'd actually find fun.
As for a nerf... you contradict yourself somewhat along your post. In some senses you think the opponents you face aren't dangerous enough... yet you're sticking around in basic/intermediate level missions. Trust me, hard-level opponents don't only have more hp, they also hit way harder. You also say that things have more HP, yet you hate how people try to use nothing but high-damage attacks to kill them. Oddly enough, melee players are using smash a lot more than they used to, because of the high hp of their opponents. Spamming Wm is sometimes not eough damage, and killing one opponent off with the higher damage of smash puts you in a safer position than if you'd WM'd. Range, though you didn't mention it for obvious reasons being a giant, has also shifted over time to favor magnum shot, instead of spamming AR. Crash shot also adds an area-effect, but otherwise slow magnum-like style of combat that forces a player to think about the composition of their opponents, and decide of they can get more damage out of a crash shot, or if they are better off using a magnum. Magic has gotten its basic bolt spells tweaked around to be a viable and useful set of skills, no longer just a newbie “mageâ€s boltspam.
I think that the game is indeed changing around, and becoming more dynamic. I think the damage output and defenses of opponents we face are simply growing to keep pace with how “overpowered†the players are becoming, and I think g14 especially is going to be bringing back many of the nostalgia feelings you describe.
But I think you suffer from selective memory, and don't remember much of the problems, those I've laid out in my response. I think you're also simultaneously blocking out, skipping, or ignoring those things that are better, or at least the same as they used to... possibly being tricked by the illusion devcat has been weaving about things progressing.
No my friend, the carrot is still there. Mabi is still a game about following that carrot. Most of the basic stuff is just dressed up a little differently. However, we have many more choices today about how we follow that carrot than we used to, and that is always a good thing.