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sakraycore wrote on 2016-09-12 04:42
1) lack of east coast server, despite that this is the game that is most sensitive to lag
2) overpowered new skills that made old skills redundant
3) new content making older content redundant
also most importantly, because of this certain new MMO that I shall not name lol
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ironwoman wrote on 2016-09-12 12:42
It's a lot more than that, I'll go over your points and list more (your points are still very much so relevant)
1. This can be said about any other parts of the US except the west coast. Then there's also people from Latin America, Europe, Oceania, etc. The simple truth is that Nexon simply isn't big enough outside of Korea and Japan
2. More like mechanics and buffs. Notably Firebolt, FH buff, and Lightning Rod. There are still old skills that are relevant, like Magnum, Crash Shot, Rain Casting, etc. In every game, there are skills that are arguably weaker than others, and Mabinogi is no exception. Balancing is a hard thing to do, and while this topic is worth bringing up, thoroughly thought out balancing suggestions would be beneficial.
3. And this is just another symptom of progressive RPGs, not just Mabinogi. To their own credit, they did do Dungeon renewal, which gave incentives to actually run the "old" contents, though Shadow Missions and Theatre Missions are still long overdue for an update. I don't think this is a big issue, at least as I see it, they will address the old contents at some point.
Now to bring on my points...
First, Mabinogi lacks a solid support team. While the compensation and whatnot have been better than compared to say, at least four years ago, it's really nowhere near satisfactory. Generally the most known faces of the game don't know much about the game (I mean, they even say it themselves), and the people generally don't really seem to be qualified to introduce contents to the players, due to lack of knowledge of the game (like mispronouncing in game contents). With a support staff that doesn't really understand how the game works, I highly doubt the main branch knows too much about it either (at least in NA). And not just the game, where the players come from. In short, the people who work for Nexon NA are group of people that players really don't relate to at almost any level.
Second, the NA community. Yes, you heard that right. Why is this a problem? Now, I'm not saying NA people are degenerates or anything. But the number of times where players get into dumb situations with each other (involving real life issues) is pretty ridiculous in NA, considering its population. You see so many people get catfished, scammed, etc. And this is largely due to lack of internet security awareness that seems to be pretty prevalent in the US in general. Another contributing factor is Nexon's unwillingness to punish the players that have done wrong, because from what I can see, the KR team and NA team take almost 180 degrees on this matter. In KR server, players are punished every week, and their names are posted publicly by a GM. In NA, you could basically get away with anything. I mean, you can get a bad rep I guess? But who gives a shit, amirite
Third, NA-exclusive gachas. I'm talking about the guns with unattainable grades, Backbreaking ES. Others I'm actually fine with, largely due to because other foreign servers got something similar or same to them. But the gachas I'm talking about lessed the in game competitiveness. You can realistically obtain Backbreaking without ever going to WD, which is a red flag in my eyes. Keeping competitiveness up would be the better thing to do in long run for Nexon in my opinion.
Fourth, outdated ideology of grinding. The idea isn't anything new or revolutionary. The hyper grind idea is prevalent in lots of Korean MMORPG, though you could argue the return has been getting better for each year for new games. Mabinogi sadly still rests on this idea. There are some improved aspects, like higher chance of Long Lasting, Heroic and Ensemble dropping, some skills getting reworked in training, but the simple truth is that it's still way too much grind for so many people. And this is coming from a person that only has one damaging stat not capped (INT). Nexon has been throwing double rainbow and stuff, but the truth is certain skills simply have to be easier to train.
Fifth, the game being a non traditional MMORPG. Many players come to this game unprepared. Now, for any game, you could say a new player is not prepared, but Mabinogi is a different case. In here, you don't have a set class. You raise whatever the fuck you want. Normally, people are stuck with a mindset, "Oh I should go Mage and be like Gandalf), "I'm gonna be a tank", etc. And soon they realize that doesn't work out and get behind others that kind of know what they're doing but not really, and they lose interest. I've seen so many people asking how to tank and justify a tank class, when the truth is it simply doesn't work in Mabinogi combat, where "tanking" is basically Divine Link or Mana Shield (or Vales shield if you're a Giant, but that's only 1 hit).
And I'm sure others have plenty more to say. I don't think Mabinogi is dead, but it could be doing hell a lot better with better recruitment of NA staff and Korean developers.
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koishi-sempai wrote on 2016-09-12 14:50
btw, a lot of these issues are affecting MMOs in GENERAL, not just Mabi. Especially the grind part. Yes there are people who will ascribe things to laziness but at the end of the day it's a game not a job. That's why people are kinda moving over to Mobas and FPS like Overwatch because many gamers are getting tired of RPG grind style gameplay.
I noticed in another thread where a poster says how "easy" it is to get op and steamroll content...yet I still know hordes of casual players who get frustrated at dying a lot or who have played for years and are under 3k. It's easy to just look down on them but there are a lot more of those types of players than of tryhards.
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bob wrote on 2016-09-12 20:38
Things that killed mabi NA:
1. Nexon America
/Thread
Sent from my potato using Tapatalk
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lolzor wrote on 2016-09-12 21:33
1)Definitely true. Mabi relies a lot on ping unlike some other MMOs, and with the server situation we suffer from it.
2)I don't think this is actually killing Mabi. There's always a meta, and Mabi definitely needs some rebalancing, but there's enough viable skills for it to be fun. A problem is that unlike games that have more resources for balancing and development, mabi doesn't do balance updates frequent enough. We don't need it quite to the extent of stuff like LoL, but doing a monthly pass through where they update useless or outdated skills would be much appreciated and make the game feel better maintained.
3)I don't think this is a huge issue either. Some of the content could definitely use a revamp due to the fact that even new players can completely overlook them (hello iria dungeons and theater missions), but given the choice between completely new content and updating old content, I'd take new. I've already done Defeat the Shadow Wizard and Conflict! enough, and wouldn't mind if some new content made them obsolete. Also sometimes you just want certain content for certain level ranges. When Burning Crusade was released, no-one was crying for a level 70 version of Deadmines; they were into all the new dungeons and raids.
On Ironwoman's points:
A: It definitely could be better, but honestly most support teams barely know how their game works. On the plus side, they actually want to make us happy even though they suck. It hurts that they don't know where we come from, but I think what hurts more is stuff like their constant crusade against mods, where if I've been told correctly, some other countries specifically allow modding.
B)This definitely hurts. A lot of the community is very cliquey, many are trolls, many are elitists that deliberately try to screw over newbies, and when reporting an NX selling scammer on the forums gets *you* banned, there is a definite problem. It doesn't help that in a "p2w" game there's no system like PLEX either that lets us trade safely.
C)I wouldn't necessarily say it's the NA exclusive ones, as I've heard KR had some pretty messed up stuff like robes with enchants. Over-reliance on gacha and p2w type stuff is a big problem though for many players, and having stuff like Fierce accessories even exist when the best in-game obtainable accessory suffix is a measly 6 max damage makes doing content feel unrewarding. Gacha Dowras are also a problem that still bothers me, though it wouldn't bother me very much at all if they at least boosted the Celtic Dowra Ace minimum rolls so that they outclassed a cheap gacha weapon.
Personally I'd spend more money on this game if they just charged $5 for every generation after the first 3. I'm not sure if there's enough players like me to balance that out, and f2p models are always hard to perfect, but I think it's worth examining.
D)Agreed. Grind is a double-edged sword: if you don't have enough, there will be no sense of accomplishment and players will just leave, but Mabi has enough grind in some instances where you can ram your head against the wall for thousands of real life hours, then get frustrated and leave. In terms of gear, I think the problem is very much RNG based. As an example, even though it's horribly overpriced in the seal shop, Oblivion ES is there. I'd be much less frustrated if, for example, we got incremental rewards for more content. Like in Alban, we get a handful of runes guaranteed every run, but what if we could trade in 1,000 runes of mind for an Awakened ES or 1,000 runes of body for Heroic? That way you could still have the thrill of finding rare drops, but even the horribly unlucky people feel like they're making progress. And apply thought process to more content. Let you craft Upgrade Stones of Protection from normal stones, have dragons drop "bits" that you can craft into dragon pieces, etc. But instead, we have stuff like Bhafel Hunters that have items with 1/1,000 drop rates, that once you get the mats for, you have a 1% chance of failing, a 90% chance of getting a terrible roll, a 55% chance to destroy going for Step 7, and laters upon layers of RNG when it comes to enchants and reforges. Seeing so much RNG often makes me just feel "why bother" and then want to buy it from someone for $200 instead of hunting everything myself just to get screwed over along the way.
On skills, a lot of the skills were designed this way to encourage cash shop purchases, but when the abundance of events starts making them less relevant, it might be time to just rethink them completely.
E)I think this is actually one of the things keeping Mabi alive. It is definitely unintuitive, and it keeps it from ever reaching WoW levels of popularity, but being a niche MMO can be okay if it is the best MMO in that niche. And there are very few other games that work like Mabi, and many of them suck.
There's a lot to be said for abandoning the holy trinity. You can get really unique builds and combine classes to get some cool effects. You keep all your progress on one character, instead of making different identities to try out different classes. And if you ever do get into a theoretical situation where your guild needs 8 tanks or 8 healers, you don't have to start from scratch, you keep all your gear in one spot, and you can swap back to your old style when the next content decides it needs 10 mages. There's definitely some problems with it, but overall I'd call it an asset rather than a liability.
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Kingofrunes wrote on 2016-09-12 22:04
I'd say Gachapons, money grabs, and reforges did it. In addition to poor tracking of people's items in case something were to go wrong.
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koishi-sempai wrote on 2016-09-12 23:20
I think the thing people are missing is that people aren't leaving for other MMOs for the most part, they're leaving for League/Overwatch/PS4/XBox360 because the main issues with Mabi are common to almost every single MMO.
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Kingofrunes wrote on 2016-09-13 00:30
Quote from koishi-sempai;1298205:
I think the thing people are missing is that people aren't leaving for other MMOs for the most part, they're leaving for League/Overwatch/PS4/XBox360 because the main issues with Mabi are common to almost every single MMO.
This is very true. I admit that I'm pretty burnt out on the whole MMO genre which is why I'm moving to more console gaming and of course overwatch. I think the only MMO i play currently is Runescape and that's just on a casual basis. Something to pass the time.
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Yanm wrote on 2016-09-13 04:04
Quote from koishi-sempai;1298205:
I think the thing people are missing is that people aren't leaving for other MMOs for the most part, they're leaving for League/Overwatch/PS4/XBox360 because the main issues with Mabi are common to almost every single MMO.
Really? I googled this briefly just to see and found some articles from 2 years ago talking about MMO's declining and what not. But MMO's are but one part of PC gaming, they aren't what completely defines it. I have my consoles solely for the exclusives and PC for everything else. I know that's not what everyone does, but I guess I don't fully grasp why people leave MMO's just to go back to consoles when there are other options that PC has as well.
@sakraycore What game did you have in mind? My guess is BDO, or Blade & Soul.
@Topic There's a few things that really killed Mabi in my opinion.
1. G16 Genesis: This was the biggest thing for me. I liked Mabi's initial combat system, and when they introduced this, it really killed a lot of love I had for the game. I liked that Mabi was unique in that it had a different style instead of just using skills, waiting for cooldowns, etc like every other MMO does. Add to the fact that mobs have the OLD combat style and we're really broken in that regard. If a mob hits you back then, you lost the fight and took some damage if it's not a multi-aggro situation. Nowadays, if something does get a hit on me, I can immediately counter/def to block/avoid the rest of their combo.
2. Skillsets that ignore Mabi's bread and butter. I fucking LOVE gunner, it's my favorite skill set. But it, ninja, puppets, and fighter weren't really good things to add just because they ignore the basics of mabi's combat style. Fighter completely outclassed Melee back in the day and now it can't do much of anything because everyone has the insta load times and we have Bash. Puppets helped set up stuff, but mobs don't react to them any differently than the normal stuff. They just completely ignore the mobs we're so used to because they weren't made with the initial mechanics in mind to be fair and balanced.
3. Artificial difficulty. This began kinda with Elite missions. Same mobs, just more hp/prot and shit. Nothing else really different. This is also kind of a thing with Adv HM dungeons, but each dungeon still had their own unique niche and enemies. 2/3 Lord missions were some of the only ones that didn't follow the higher hp and prot, but same AI. They had different objectives. Rabbie Phantasm is a step in the right direction, bur rather than just making some skillsets useless, I'd rather they balance them. I liked adv dungeons back then just because they all had their niches. Rabbie Adv? Don't bring range there and have some explosion resist. Rundal Adv? Fk archers and warriors, bring mages because those black ship rats are pieces of shit. Peaca? Bring EVERYTHING, because something in that damn dungeon will resist you.
As it is right now, I'm still playing for 1. Nostalgia and having put so much time into Mabi. and 2 To accomplish the last of my goals. I already achieved 2 of them, (1 being getting a 50% BFO, which I got last year and the second being make the Frozen dick/Langu Lance). Once I achieve my last goal, I'll probably move on from Mabi, but still stop by every now and then to check on the game I loved dearly.
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Intimacy wrote on 2016-09-13 06:58
I'm really enjoying bdo as a mabi and tera replacement, the combat is fluid, the game is one giant sandbox for you to do what you want, there's lots and lots of progression to keep yourself entertained and quite frankly there's no pay to win, there's pay for convenience, or pay 120 dollars every week to save yourself ... 10? hours of grinding for money. (cash shop is very limited with what can be sold and only 5 items a week can be sold.)
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ironwoman wrote on 2016-09-13 09:40
Quote from lolzor;1298202:
On Ironwoman's points:
A: It definitely could be better, but honestly most support teams barely know how their game works. On the plus side, they actually want to make us happy even though they suck. It hurts that they don't know where we come from, but I think what hurts more is stuff like their constant crusade against mods, where if I've been told correctly, some other countries specifically allow modding.
B)This definitely hurts. A lot of the community is very cliquey, many are trolls, many are elitists that deliberately try to screw over newbies, and when reporting an NX selling scammer on the forums gets *you* banned, there is a definite problem. It doesn't help that in a "p2w" game there's no system like PLEX either that lets us trade safely.
C)I wouldn't necessarily say it's the NA exclusive ones, as I've heard KR had some pretty messed up stuff like robes with enchants. Over-reliance on gacha and p2w type stuff is a big problem though for many players, and having stuff like Fierce accessories even exist when the best in-game obtainable accessory suffix is a measly 6 max damage makes doing content feel unrewarding. Gacha Dowras are also a problem that still bothers me, though it wouldn't bother me very much at all if they at least boosted the Celtic Dowra Ace minimum rolls so that they outclassed a cheap gacha weapon.
Personally I'd spend more money on this game if they just charged $5 for every generation after the first 3. I'm not sure if there's enough players like me to balance that out, and f2p models are always hard to perfect, but I think it's worth examining.
D)Agreed. Grind is a double-edged sword: if you don't have enough, there will be no sense of accomplishment and players will just leave, but Mabi has enough grind in some instances where you can ram your head against the wall for thousands of real life hours, then get frustrated and leave. In terms of gear, I think the problem is very much RNG based. As an example, even though it's horribly overpriced in the seal shop, Oblivion ES is there. I'd be much less frustrated if, for example, we got incremental rewards for more content. Like in Alban, we get a handful of runes guaranteed every run, but what if we could trade in 1,000 runes of mind for an Awakened ES or 1,000 runes of body for Heroic? That way you could still have the thrill of finding rare drops, but even the horribly unlucky people feel like they're making progress. And apply thought process to more content. Let you craft Upgrade Stones of Protection from normal stones, have dragons drop "bits" that you can craft into dragon pieces, etc. But instead, we have stuff like Bhafel Hunters that have items with 1/1,000 drop rates, that once you get the mats for, you have a 1% chance of failing, a 90% chance of getting a terrible roll, a 55% chance to destroy going for Step 7, and laters upon layers of RNG when it comes to enchants and reforges. Seeing so much RNG often makes me just feel "why bother" and then want to buy it from someone for $200 instead of hunting everything myself just to get screwed over along the way.
On skills, a lot of the skills were designed this way to encourage cash shop purchases, but when the abundance of events starts making them less relevant, it might be time to just rethink them completely.
E)I think this is actually one of the things keeping Mabi alive. It is definitely unintuitive, and it keeps it from ever reaching WoW levels of popularity, but being a niche MMO can be okay if it is the best MMO in that niche. And there are very few other games that work like Mabi, and many of them suck.
There's a lot to be said for abandoning the holy trinity. You can get really unique builds and combine classes to get some cool effects. You keep all your progress on one character, instead of making different identities to try out different classes. And if you ever do get into a theoretical situation where your guild needs 8 tanks or 8 healers, you don't have to start from scratch, you keep all your gear in one spot, and you can swap back to your old style when the next content decides it needs 10 mages. There's definitely some problems with it, but overall I'd call it an asset rather than a liability.
Things to clarify as well as correction as it doesn't seem like you understood my message correctly.
A. Most doesn't mean Mabi should fall into this category as well. There are plenty of qualified people within the game that could easily be better support team. And I don't know where you heard that about mods, but whoever told you that is a liar. In fact, KR literally criminalizes mod writers because it's literally against the recently passed law (the law states that hacking tool used to assist games are punishable. This is largely thanks to big number of people scripting in KR LoL, and yes, Mabi's modding falls under this category). Users aren't punished heavily, but developers are. And the modding witch hunt in NA stems from this.
C. By NA exclusive ones, I meant the items that other servers didn't have the same level of. Fierce Ribbons don't count in this one because other servers got items just as broken as those ribbons. Backbreaking ES and the unattainably high grade guns, on the other hand, are the issues. Giving out more free damages that were meant to be done with in game trials in a server that is already not that populated? Even less competitiveness.
E. It keeps the old players, but doesn't appeal that much for newer players, who are more used to the quicker paced character progression or just game play in general that other games offer currently, as well as lack of definitive class system and lumping the whole combat meta into damage.
Quote from Yanm;1298208:
@Topic There's a few things that really killed Mabi in my opinion.
1. G16 Genesis: This was the biggest thing for me. I liked Mabi's initial combat system, and when they introduced this, it really killed a lot of love I had for the game. I liked that Mabi was unique in that it had a different style instead of just using skills, waiting for cooldowns, etc like every other MMO does. Add to the fact that mobs have the OLD combat style and we're really broken in that regard. If a mob hits you back then, you lost the fight and took some damage if it's not a multi-aggro situation. Nowadays, if something does get a hit on me, I can immediately counter/def to block/avoid the rest of their combo.
2. Skillsets that ignore Mabi's bread and butter. I fucking LOVE gunner, it's my favorite skill set. But it, ninja, puppets, and fighter weren't really good things to add just because they ignore the basics of mabi's combat style. Fighter completely outclassed Melee back in the day and now it can't do much of anything because everyone has the insta load times and we have Bash. Puppets helped set up stuff, but mobs don't react to them any differently than the normal stuff. They just completely ignore the mobs we're so used to because they weren't made with the initial mechanics in mind to be fair and balanced.
3. Artificial difficulty. This began kinda with Elite missions. Same mobs, just more hp/prot and shit. Nothing else really different. This is also kind of a thing with Adv HM dungeons, but each dungeon still had their own unique niche and enemies. 2/3 Lord missions were some of the only ones that didn't follow the higher hp and prot, but same AI. They had different objectives. Rabbie Phantasm is a step in the right direction, bur rather than just making some skillsets useless, I'd rather they balance them. I liked adv dungeons back then just because they all had their niches. Rabbie Adv? Don't bring range there and have some explosion resist. Rundal Adv? Fk archers and warriors, bring mages because those black ship rats are pieces of shit. Peaca? Bring EVERYTHING, because something in that damn dungeon will resist you.
1. The problem isn't the dynamic combat, but rather mobs not being updated.
2. Fighter actually didn't really outclass melee back in the day because Lances existed, as well as lack of AoE clear from Fighter, usually a Lance Windmill and Crash Shot were good enough. Fighter is in the position it's at currently not because of the dynamic combat patch, but because of its flawed design. Low damage scaling and lack of AoE. It really says a lot when you can reach higher damage with a Gloomy Sunday than a knuckle. Puppets are on the more outdated style as it's really used for utility now since there are better AoE options available.
3. Alban was also a bit of a right direction in my opinion. But for there to be a true Artificial Difficulty, you would need more than rebalancing of skills. For example, handicaps (like 50% max Alban stone). But even then, the game needs more, and that's for devCat to decide.
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Zeo wrote on 2016-09-13 10:21
I have two biggest complaints about Mabinogi... at least for NA version.
1. Drop rate not being adjusted to fit in with NA Mabi's population and Nexon won't even do anything to fix the issue with drop rate so we're stuck with some items staying non-existent such as Soluna Blade or the Succubus Queen stuffs from Phantasm runs unless we see the mats and stuffs being thrown into gachapon. I mean... I can understand why the drop rate was very low for KR Mabinogi as their population are MUCH LARGER compared to NA Mabinogi which mean they have more players doing the same content thus more items are being generated even if it's a very low drop rate... but like I said... some of those items basically stayed non-existent for NA Mabi because our population are pretty small thus not enough players to do the content to actually make specific items show up (the legendary Breastplate Armor as a very rare drop from Gem Arrow Longa dungeon, anyone?)
2. This one I have to agree with Ironwoman on... NA Mabinogi team need to be MUCH MORE strict with how they discipline the players.... lot of the bad apples never even got banned once and they just continue to harass, haze, and slander players that REALLY hurt the community. NA Mabinogi's community really sucked too. I wish NA Mabinogi would follow KR Mabinogi's step... or at least NA Maplestory where they actually discipline the players for bad behavior - they'd make a thread each time a player (the player's name is on the thread too) get banned and explained a reason why they got banned instead of leaving most of us good players wondering when they'll actually discipline the players for their behavior.
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koishi-sempai wrote on 2016-09-13 20:58
@Yamn
If we take the nostalgia goggles off, the "mabi combat system" was already broken in beta/G1. Archery and to a lesser/greater extent magic (Lesser because magic was really costly and extremely difficult to maintain, greater because even low-rank magic was absolutely busted for the content back then) already broke the "combat basics" as existed back then. The break was finally complete when Crash Shot and old Golems were released.
(btw we should really discuss that a single skillset has been tier 1 to tier 0 for most of the game's existence, and has never NOT been tier 0 in a low latency environment)
@Intimacy I considered BDO but honestly I dislike the gear system and the PVP focus in conjunction with said gear system. Also Daum from what my BDO friends say is pretty sketchy in its own right, but then what game company isn't.
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sakraycore wrote on 2016-09-15 16:32
@Yanm
I was thinking of Tree of Savior, but it's got its own problems as of late and has me on the verge of quitting depending on whether or not they implement the circle reset or not.
As for mabi's combat, the start of the downfall began when they introduced alchemy which is at G8. The golems did triviallized a lot of the older content and skillsets.
Remember windmill grinding? Yea, you don't need to grind that if you got a r1 golem with superior windmill lol.
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Yanm wrote on 2016-09-15 17:46
Quote from koishi-sempai;1298220:
@Yamn
If we take the nostalgia goggles off, the "mabi combat system" was already broken in beta/G1. Archery and to a lesser/greater extent magic (Lesser because magic was really costly and extremely difficult to maintain, greater because even low-rank magic was absolutely busted for the content back then) already broke the "combat basics" as existed back then. The break was finally complete when Crash Shot and old Golems were released.
(btw we should really discuss that a single skillset has been tier 1 to tier 0 for most of the game's existence, and has never NOT been tier 0 in a low latency environment)
@Intimacy I considered BDO but honestly I dislike the gear system and the PVP focus in conjunction with said gear system. Also Daum from what my BDO friends say is pretty sketchy in its own right, but then what game company isn't.
Nostalgia goggles aside, I still enjoyed pre-genesis more than post-genesis. On the topic of magic and range, I can agree with that. I looked past magic more because it was hard as fuck to use, with the lack of mp pots being the main thing. Range did fuck over the combat system, that is true. And I'm not going to get into CS and all that jazz. Also, explain your whole tier 1, tier 0 stuff.
Quote from sakraycore;1298231:
@Yanm
I was thinking of Tree of Savior, but it's got its own problems as of late and has me on the verge of quitting depending on whether or not they implement the circle reset or not.
As for mabi's combat, the start of the downfall began when they introduced alchemy which is at G8. The golems did triviallized a lot of the older content and skillsets.
Remember windmill grinding? Yea, you don't need to grind that if you got a r1 golem with superior windmill lol.
Ah, Tree of Savior. I never did bother to check out that game lol. I remember the days of golems. WMing every spike in Provocation.