My stance on the metagame, as posted on the Nexon forums.
Quote from ENDYMION;10784926:
What new skills would they have? This is just brainstorming for harder content.
With the exception of field bosses, we don't see much "out in the open" threats anymore. Even then most field bosses are poo.
I suggest little skills for any/every mob to increase the awareness a bit.
My thoughts:
Critter mobs like foxes, rats and raccoons should have a "theft" skill where they quickly spin around you and run away, de-spawning after 10 seconds. This skill allows it to steal 1 random food item from your inventory.
4 legged types like boars, Ixions, and rhinos should have a charge skill. (How do they not have one...?)
humanoid mobs like goblins and werewolves should have a berserk skill where their movement speed/ attack increases.
Bone/Shadow monsters need to have tactic-based skills. Archers should have spider shot skill, fighters should have final hit, lancers should have windmill, and warriors should have charge.
Any other ideas?
Enemies should retain their skill load times. Threat telegraphy is an important facet of good game design.
While players have grown exponentially more powerful, enemies have not advanced whatsoever. The few content additions featuring more difficult enemies are wasted due to a lack of accessibility or poor rewards. You cannot continue to pump out slightly stronger content the way DevCat has done as of late as that over-centralizes the meta-game, akin to the influence of the martial arts tournament.
I'll narrow it down to four key items which must be addressed.
1.
Curbing player strength
We are VERY OVERPOWERED. I'm level 15,000 but I have a few alts of varying levels. What used to be the 222 Broadsword is now the Shadow Hunter Spike Focused Rainbow Beam Sword. They released an item into gachapon that's worth around 500~700k on Alexina THAT OUTPERFORMS the Sword of Elsinore. However, this is only a prelude to the problem.
We are overpowered in two very critical ways; relative character strength and our threat reduction abilities. I'll talk more about the latter in a bit. In order to curb player strength, it's best to take a look at the most glaring offenders.
Piercing levels absolutely trivialize monster bulk and render anything without it horribly obsolete (over-centralization), Way of the Gun is simply far too consistently powerful as observed from most KR gameplay videos as of late. Most everything else is arguable. Elemental reforges are too powerful; talents which need them to keep up cannot stand without them.
These items don't really need to receive nerfs. They just need to be less universally dominating. The only things which should receive definite nerfs are STRENGTH and piercing. Namely, the defense bonuses awarded from strength. That should be reduced from 10/1 STR/DEF to 20/1. Piercing should simply be reduced to negating 3~4% protection per level.
AOE pet summon skills are the single worst addition to Mabinogi, concerning skillful combat. They negate poor performance with zero opportunity cost. They debuff, damage, and stun enemies while buffing and healing players. They are absolutely abysmal to our metagame. Rain Casting, Lullaby, Shadow Bind, and Crisis are similarly troublesome.
They should negate AOE summon effects in content considered to be at Hard difficulty or above. If it's supposed to be "hard" why do we have a million get out of jail free cards?
2.
Increasing the threat
This is one of the biggest issues. I'll dive right into how they should change it.
- Universally increase monster damage. People will start considering more defensive tactics instead of bum rushing everything when monsters start dealing more than 1 damage. You should be scared to explore while running around Iria. That being said, this coincides with making content more rewarding. Not everything needs to be scathach scary but you shouldn't feel comfortable leaving your upper-middle character AFK surrounded by freaking bears.
- Add new skills to monsters. Magic Shields will be more viable if more enemies have stronger elemental attacks. Lancers should have lance charge, archers should have crash shot or arrow revolver, melee enemies should have access to berserk (perhaps past an HP threshold), etc.
- Enemies should have increased bulk, though this depends on the content. Most bears don't really need to have more health but individual uroborus should definitely NOT die in one hit, from ANY attack. Perhaps making it so that certain bosses require X number of hits in addition to having increased health (ala macha)
3.
Reducing predictability
Crisis > Blaze > Repeat
I just summed up the martial arts tournament. Imagine if you spawned in that arena and were instantly snagged by crisis without the ability to spam AOE pets. Fair, huh?
How about instead of spawning the group in a nice little cluster at the opposite end, you sometimes spawn them with the enemies at all four corners? Maybe in a nice line down the middle? Boom! Massive difficulty spike.
Perhaps implement a 1% chance for enemies to spawn during content as ancient monsters?
How about making it so more enemies have elemental affinities or passive defenses? No longer can you shooting rush an entire spawn. Don't make it random (make it obvious), make your reaction to the situation less predictable. e.g. Mages in elite missions have mana deflector level 3. Enemies with shields or armor have Heavy Stander level 2~3. No longer does your Fire 6 level smash through everything because they're all neutral.
4.
Improving content value
This is essential for any of the above to matter. In order for content to be tackled, it must be
accessible and
rewarding.
Theater Missions, Secret Missions, Abyss Dungeons, and Wine Missions are fantastic examples of inaccessible content. People are reduced to spamming NPC, raids, falias, and shadow missions partly because most other options are either very difficult to access or gaining access isn't rewarding.
The solution? Make this content accessible. You can still award upgrade coupons through wine making but open up the wine missions for everyone. Add daily dungeon/theater mission bonuses and increase the gold/experience that these award. Heck, bump everything up and make it so that experience gained decreases as you spam it. NPC would only give 8% its normal exp/gold after the fifth time you ran it that day.
Theater Missions, Secret Missions, Lord Missions, Wine Missions, renes, and purification are great examples of content which isn't rewarding. Nobody wants to run lord missions because they award paltry gold and experience and their exclusive enchants are exceedingly rare. They should provide far greater rewards than daily shadow missions because they're much more difficult to tackle and they require a bit of teamwork. People want to be rewarded for their effort, namely their character development.
When the best items and rewards are handed out via events or gachapon designed for everyone; it diminishes the value of the time you invest into the game. Why spend five years playing when you're only 3% stronger than someone who started playing four months ago? Why rank the blacksmithing skill when it has no conceivable benefit aside from petty and meaningless stat bonuses?
The solution? Increase the rewards for different types of content. Add new, rewarding daily bonuses to existing content. Create permanent or long-term solutions to this issue instead of using quick-fixes. Increase crafting bonuses and allow players to forge or tailor pre-reforged items. Reward reforging toolkits at the end of purification at an acceptable rate. An 8% drop rate gives an eight person party a 85% chance of receiving a toolkit. That's not bad.