MabiPro: The Authentic Old-School Mabinogi Experience

I'd like to start this thread by saying I strongly appreciate the GMs. I don't know who is in charge of what, but as far as maintaining the integrity of the old combat system and hosting, I personally love you guys. How could I not? I really enjoy classic Mabi and you guys are doing a lot for it.

Whenever I try to discuss this, I'm usually answered by the same few with "WELL YOU DON'T HAVE TO PLAY ON THE SERVER THEN!!". That is true, but it's beside the point. I can understand why a few individuals would take what I say as personal attacks but it isn't meant to be.

The one(s) in charge of balance if anyone, I'd urge them to take suggestions from players, perhaps veteran players. I'd personally nominate "Jean". He's got a good head on his shoulders, but I don't know if we're going to get him back.

My point is, the same mistakes are being made that Nexon did. The same mistakes are being made that had players run away from the live server.

Specifically, the thoughtless events/content that destroy item rarity really should be more closely examined. I understand, it's your server and you can do whatever you want(That's the general knee jerk response after I have someone exhaust all their excuses, "It's their server. Quit if you don't like it") this server could be so much better though. You could have more than 10 dedicated players. I've seen so many people quit over the same thing.

I'm not saying anything radical. I've talked to a lot of the player base and so many say the same thing. They just don't want be the ones to bring it into limelight. This is apparently a dead horse. They "know" they'll be brushed off or obliterated by the staff and their close knit groupies. It sounds dramatic but that's what I've gotten.

Ignoring these things and having them blow over isn't a solution. It's a band-aid to the immediate conflict, that doesn't solve the core issue. Players who don't feel represented don't just "get over it", especially the active and dedicated players. Most just quickly grow tired, lose interest, and quit.

Any discussion from anyone is invited.

I agree with much of what you said—saying something like "Quit if you don't like it" simply discourages constructive discussion.

But in the midst of mentioning such things, it seems like you forgot to explain what the issue actually is. Could you give examples of the content that destroys item rarity, point out the detrimental effects that have been caused by said content, and suggest possible improvements?

This is already being done, but you don't hear about it because that would invoke unwanted leaks/negative attention to players who help in balance.

I intentionally opted out specifics to avoid any content creators taking anything personally. I think I was a bit too sterile, you're right.

Production pouches cost fabric. I haven't checked all ingredients but the pattern I'm seeing is that each pouch costs 40x fabric the type of pouch it is. So, a finest pouch of any kind costs 40 finest fabric. I've been buying finest fabrics for a month now, and I've obtained 31 total finest fabrics. There is no market for fabric. The only sellers of them are people who are ranking weaving to a high rank and that IS if they want to sell it. Sure, I can spend a few days shooting for a single finest pouch, but that isn't realistic.

The problem isn't that they missed the mark by a bit, they've missed it by a continental landslide. If the said pouches costed even 10 finest fabric, nobody would make them.

If production pouches were meant to be used at all, they should have a different main ingredient entirely. I would personally suggest leathers. I think 20x leather + 1x fabric + something else (idk) of the type would be fair. Not super easy peazy to make and obtainable. I question whether any of the creators have any real tangible experience within mabi or oldschool-mabi.

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Enchantable slates are another one. The GMs will be selective between what is Nostalgic and "Whatever-we feel like" and these are one of these things. Corundum + Wild boar will give you 9 damage. Four of those things are 36 damage. On top it it, I believe they add an extra 5 max + 5 min for rangers, which translates to about(more than) 6max for rangers. That is, PER SLATE. So those badboys add an extra 60 damage for rangers? Is this a joke? The already strongest class in the game gets 60 max damage? If this information is incorrect, please correct me.

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Re-introduction of past exclusive items to only become meme-event/easy drops in the future; violin, white horse fishing, dexterity fishing, ghost robe, i believe reaper is in this event too. I wasn't around for all of this so I'm sure I have some details wrong.

I can keep going but you get the point.

Everything hasn't been bad. A lot of good content has been created, just many things that involved balance weren't properly thought out. That's why someone who understands balance should exist.


I would suggest taking advice from other players then. The players you're getting advice from right now aren't giving you proper and well-thought out information as far as balance goes. I know it'll be hard for those making suggestions to stomach.

Since it is a topic of constant debate, I'll discuss the Range vs Melee vs Magic vs Alchemy thing as well. I'll bold things for the sake of TLDR.

Which playstyle should be dominant if any? Should they all be equal? There's nothing wrong with different things having different advantages like "higher dps", "safer", "faster here", etc... I'd just like a clear answer; "We are creating content to benefit rangers, period. There is no thought in balance and we're just messing around here".If that's the case, fine. At least I'm not fighting a phantom here.

So, range. Do you know the advantage of range? That it's RANGE. No game that has any interest in balance makes something more safe and stronger just for the sake of it. Dex requires work in life skills, I understand. Do you know the advantage you should get for that? Yeah, same as before, RANGE.

Melee by virtue of being melee, the most risky playstyle should have some kind of clear advantage. You pick up the most agro. You have the least amount of options. You are in the action. I don't get how this is a point of contention. I mean I do. People have worked on their DEX and they want to maintain their position as a dominant power, but I don't understand how that information is taken seriously by anyone that has any respect for balance. "BUH RANGE HAS TO AIM". You shoot your first shot at a still target. If by some unholy curse you didn't blow away every mobs body and essence your first shot, you tap your second target with a pet, or you're on a horse, or you're behind some barrier spikes. What are you even talking about?

I've seen so many people abandon their giants and humans to play horseback-brainblasting elves. Range is the fastest, strongest, most diverse, and only real viable class. Yes, you can literally do any content with "playstyle", but god damn is some shit difficult. The reaction I often hear from the above is, "DOOD, JUST PLAY RANGE YOURSELF THEN". Ok, sure. That doesn't make it balanced though.

As it stands, the only way to do new content effectively is to play range. That's how the content has been created. Range is the best and it appears it is either balanced around that, or it's random and not balanced around anything at all. A good starting point (I think) would be to nerf range considerably. I'm not saying to do it, but it is an option. I know people want to come out of the woodworks to fight me on this. I understand you have no respect for balance and just "wanna be the best". Sure.

For actual content, maybe create rooms that benefit diversity of skills. Have rooms for mages(I include most alchemy skills in this category), others much more effective for rangers, and others more effective for melee. Maybe some rooms benefit one specifically and others benefit having numerous types in your party at once. It promotes both teamplay(a community) and balanced-diverse gameplay. And if you're a solo type, it benefits anyone that has a lategame character that has spec'd into numerous skillsets.

Maybe numbers in skills can't or shouldn't be tampered with. Perhaps much of the communal fallback to such a large change would hurt the integrity of a nostalgic server. I still believe the more risky something is, the more benefit it should have (in general). You shouldn't punished for risk. That promotes a boring stagnant game. If the staff(whoever you are) are willing to go beyond Nostalgia for the sake of superior content(which it appears you are by the new content), there are some simple changes that could greatly improve the flow of the game. That doesn't mean breaking old-school content. It means maintaining that old-school feel and improving current systems. There is no shame in taking a knee if a person hasn't done a perfect job. You guys are great. I'm just expressing a shared opinion of many players.

I'm glad the team is listening to most veteran players and not just people you're personally friends with and/or yourselves.

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Anyway though, I greatly appreciate this post, Yin. It's something that's been touted for ages, so I don't really see a huge discussion coming from it (I'm not that endgame at all, haven't done raids, etc, so I don't have much to say), but hey, I like what you've written here a lot. It's nice and neatly constructed and has many good points that, apparently, nobody who runs the game cares about.

So that's lame. But you're not lame. This argument to try and change up the way new content/mechanical changes are made is certainly a good one, but as it stands, the only people who agree with that sentiment are the people that the devs say "You're wrong and I don't care" to.

Simple ways of making melee more viable and enjoyable, like decreasing the cooldown on AS (something that can be done by the way) or giving Smash a buff outside of Giant (oh no the horror, who would want humans, the ""STRONGEST"" race to be even MORE powerful) or like, I dunno, not making all of the custom content being anti-melee as fuck (because there's nothing balanced about enemies being immune to knockdowns and thus being immune to assault slash and there's nothing fun about enemies spamming ranged attacks and having ADV heavy stander and making melee wholly unviably outside of WM spam which isn't fun), would greatly improve the fun aspect of playing melee and its viability.

Is this game all about grinding? I mean, yeah. It's a KMMORPG. Does that mean that the content you do to grind has to be boring as hell and feel unrewarding? Does that mean that the endgame content has to be difficult to the point of unfairness and honestly have no clear balance to it? Does that mean that anything is fine as long as you, the person creating new content, personally don't have to suffer through the stuff you've made? I mean, maybe if you don't play the game and don't actually care about things other than what you're personally concerned with, that'd be fine. Y'know, if you just made stuff you liked and put it out, or if you just made crap that you personally like and used it and shared it with your buds and had a great time of it while 99% of the playerbase is just scratching their heads going "Why??? Why would you add this content??? Who is this targeted towards??????????"

Anyway though, yeah.

Buff AS, stop making it impossible in custom content. And melee having juicy Smash numbers outside of Giant would be cool. And stop making everything require WM spam if you're melee even though apparently WM is """overpowered""" because apparently balancing is really difficult and nobody thinks these things through too much. And stop putting ADV heavy stander on so much stuff like it's a good balance decision. It's not. It's artificial difficulty and discourages melee entirely, and it's just not fun to fight against at all. But I guess games aren't supposed to be fun or balanced or have cohesion in terms of what its content is trying to test in a player.

Now if only I were good at this game.

I have also been involved with content creation a few times. Is it really any surprise if the GMs don't want to consult players who are known for creating negativity and aggressive fighting? It's plainly obvious they want no part in that type of fiasco, it's not about consulting "friends only," it's about avoiding trolling and endless argument. The way suggestions are presented matters, so threads like this one can help if they stay civil. Like it or not, it's what gets better results.

I know in group content there is a desire to add enemies that can't just be easily locked down by one player, so that's where some of that came from... not that it's any different if they can still do it with range. If anything I think we're seeing a lot of leanings towards magic users, and alchemists are who get the shaft, at least the non-golem types. Granted I haven't actually run the new falias mission, and I like the idea of leaning to need multiple skill sets at once.

I don't quite know where that "GMs don't want to consult negative players" bit's coming from, considering I'm the only person who's being negative here and my advice really doesn't matter I guess, but. I assume you're talking about long-time veterans who're like that? I mean, I personally don't know who you're referring to, but I know some veterans who don't try to cause a fuss or garner negativity but get ignored, so that's neat.

I dunno! Regardless, new content certainly seems unfair and unfun, and rewards range from "impossible to get but useful" to "super easy to get, but who cares about healing/charge enhancement really", so it's like, ???? At least, that's my perspective, but as the person who's not endgame and is being slightly aggressive, guess that doesn't mean much, huh.

If only people with well-bodied responses and less aggression said the same thing but in a nicer way. Or like, if only people who make those well-bodied response and had cool temperaments were taken into consideration instead of just being brushed aside because nobody in charge thinks that melee/ranged on human is in a disadvantaged spot and needs help.

This post won't be very constructive but hell I feel like saying something. This probably feels better suited to another thread and I'm very bad at conveying my thoughts but whatever.

I'm going to chime in for the first time to say that a lot of enemies in new content are horrendously anti-melee in their design, to the point where it's really no wonder why a good amount of long time human players are rerolling to elf. I was going to make a post on the forums, if Ihzi didn't, called "stop making enemies with kd immunity like demigods/spiders/flagbearers/bog creatures as this only really heavily punishes one archetype". I love the idea of Viridius, and would run it even if the rewards were not necessarily worth it (and they aren't), but the fact that almost nothing in there is fun to fight makes me think twice. The mob designs are heavily flawed (if not flawed they're broken and thus not fun to fight for anybody, not just melee). I could go on and on about them.

Like not give heavy stander enemies redundant PDs that just make everything hell, or untargetable plants that also shoot unavoidable arrows in a gigantic aoe. I get that plants are supposed to be "danger zones" that you are supposed to avoid, but again this only really heavily punishes one archetype. If danger zones are dangerous to mobs as well or something, it'd actually be a very interesting gimmick that melee could utilize.

It's a pretty common opinion that Ghasts are terribly designed so why are we getting mobs like Bonefish who are not only kb immune but also melee immune? Aside from pet aggro swapping nonsense what is the legitimate way to kill them? Just tank, drink more pots, and kill it before it kills you? Unavoidable damage isn't difficulty, it's essentially just a healthcheck, and guess who spends most of their time windmilling their health away and playing with 0 will? Melee was already a high risk low reward playstyle in my opinion, and we keep getting content that punishes melee/windmill and not elfspam or magic/alchemy in the same way.

I'm not saying all content should be designed around melee, but all other playstyles are very one dimensional in their style of play compared to melee which has to play a guessing game often due to load times, fast mobs, pd, finnicky hitstun mechanics etc, and those other playstyles are not punished nearly as much. I know many people won't understand this point because "hurr wm spam so ez and broken" etc so I will elaborate.

I'm going to take golems and to a lesser extent Ruins Gargoyles as an example. Golems are fast, one of the fastest enemies in the game, and they hit hard. You throw heavy stander into the mix, suddenly I can't normal because it's extremely unsafe. No normals means that if a Garg/Golem decides to smash and I don't have windmill or counter loaded, I'm ded. I could use a pet or run in and normal and hope to god PD doesn't activate which is obviously unsafe. Both these mobs know stomp too which will force an approach, and if I don't have smash loaded I am similarly ded. If you are guessing the golem will try to stomp, you approach with smash, and the golem just decides to run at you and hit you, you're boned. If you guess the golem is going to try to normal but instead loads stomp, you're boned. They can also load windmill which really throws a wrench in things for melee, but the point is everyone else can straight up ignore these aspects of the combat system. I hope this illustrates an example of why melee often even has to wait because of being unsure, and stuff like smash not being a good spam skill despite it being highest dps. What's funny about this also is golems in most incarnations have uncapped multiaggro, meaning your options are reduced even more.

The problem with this is mabi absolutely does not reward generalization. It mostly heavily rewards specializing in one skillset, but that is a whole other can of worms.

On the topic of unavoidable damage, it's an idea that has essentially never been done by Devcat. I'm not going to count cerberus heads as it's pretty much the only legitimate example, and it warns you beforehand. I could go on in more detail but I feel like I've said enough to give a general idea. I don't want to beat this horse too hard as Ihzi has already done for a month or two now.

I also agree with rewards in new content being overall too niche for the general populace to enjoy. Demigod set is nice but it's a gimmick, healing is pretty much useless as long as injury exists, etc etc. I know you can pretty much complete these sets in a day as well, whereas we have to spend 5 weeks in bouquet for something like a 0 mag bohe wear. Relevant players are "talked to" but I know myself and quite a few people have no legitimate reason to run the new content because no reward is really "worth it" to them. My group was running it, but we gave up due to the tedium and complete boredom of running coill for rare passes. Just my 2cents.

tl;dr New content punishes melee more than other archetypes, rewards don't really cater to most players.

There's a problem with doing this. Only the player who gets the finish on a monster gets the drops from it. There's less incentive for someone to help another player kill a mob if they're not going to get any reward for it. Why waste your time helping someone when you can similarly help the team and get loot by taking on mobs yourself? Unless if you make a workaround so that players have an non-altruistic incentive to fight the same mob, this sentiment against mobs that have no solo counterplay will remain.

What about... Making the outcome worth the income of the scenario? If people have to spend 10 MP100 potions, 2 entire durability points and a ton of HP pots to complete a single wave of enemies, the reward should be adjusted accordingly and with gradually increasing value after every wave

If you're playing the game exclusively for yourself and mostly desire to screw your partymates, don't be surprised when the dev team refuses to cater anything to you when they're trying to create group content. That is not cooperative gameplay. You benefit by completing the mission, almost no significant drops come from single enemies at that level. The incentive to work together, therefore, is "being able to defeat the mob in a less risky manner."

Having a group focused on the goal is important. I believe that's what you're expressing. Correct me if I'm wrong. You can't have everyone divided in an idea or people yelling over each other, otherwise nothing gets done. That's why you have a leader(hopefully one competent) who can make the final decision.

That being said, it seems like staff/groupies has an echo-chamer of ideas and opinion. The content would be proof of that. I'm not saying all the content is bad. There are actually a lot of cool ideas, I think they could use some work though, mostly balance. Even if content is imperfect, so long as the mark isn't missed by too much, I think it'd be fine. It wasn't missed by a foot though, was a landslide. If anyone part of content-creation is taking anything I'm saying personally, I'd urge otherwise. Take a knee. You aren't good at balance. It's not a big deal, I'm not a great swimmer and I never learned to juggle. Nobody is perfect.

Balance is hard and I think it should be recognized as being hard. That's why I doubly think someone who's "good" at balancing should be in charge of that field. I'm not saying it's the GMs obligation to do so, no. It's their server and I'm not telling them to do anything. I'm expressing that it'd be a huge benefit to the server if it was done and there are a handful of knowledgeable players who I'm certain would hop at it if given the chance. And if that is the goal of the GMs to have a server desires to have a fun game, improve player retention, and build a community, it would be wise to consider balance more closely.

Who's talking about screwing other people over? Could you clarify with a quote?

You seem to believe this is how I personally play the game, which I absolutely don't. This is how the average person would view it subconsciously. This is how a majority of the community plays, whether you like it or not, and even if you grabbed a population from somewhere else, it'd still be the same. Therefore, you need to design content with this in mind, otherwise it will never work the way you want it to.

A lot of good points and issues have been raised in this thread. I'll comment briefly on a few of the topics raised.

Regarding custom enemy design:
Many of the custom enemies that have been put out in recent updates, but mostly in A1S2, have little to no counterplay. This is true whether you are fighting alone or in a group. The combat system in Mabinogi is one that really shines for 1v1 combat, and in my opinion, fun designs should play into that strength. Monsters that have mechanics like the ability to avoid being knocked down (hereby referred to as kd resist) really punish melee more than any other archetype because it limits followup options. You can't assault slash mobs that can't be knocked down, and after you smash them or windmill them or whatever, they're now out of your range, and you have to start playing silly guessing games with the mob over what it's doing, or rely on skills like counter (which does very little damage and is avoided by many AI, among other problems). Punishing melee users for using windmill is not good. People use windmill often because it is one of the only good/"safe" melee skills. When you windmill a kd resisting mob, they will just run towards you again and smack you before you can react, and then you have to rely on pets. Anyway, that's to say that kd resist seems to be a common mechanic that punishes melee more than any other archetype. Ranged archetypes never have to deal with the issue of attacking/knocking stuff out of their followup range, and don't care whether a mob is knocked down or knocked back. In fact, ranged users may even prefer to fight kd resist mobs because of how hits cause the hitstun to "reset" if not timed correctly while a mob is knocked down. Spamming ranged attacks/flameburst/magic on a kd resist mob is pretty much the same or better than doing so against a mob without that.

To elaborate on this topic on a broader scope, mobs punishing individual archetypes or designs that favor punishing one archetype (i.e. many, many mobs being very "anti-melee" when it is the riskiest archetype) isn't even the biggest problem with the monster design in new content. The issue is that the mobs have very little or no counterplay. Monsters like the Sporangium (little flying plant bulbs in the cavern depths) don'to have many or any reliable strategies to fighting them, for example. They have natural shield and mana deflector, instinctive reaction, teleport into range after you knock them back and instantly attack you, load chaincasted icebolts and mess you up, poison you, the whole 9 yards. Melee cannot touch these because trying to hit them with anything other than windmill, you will get hit by instinctive reaction (even when buffering with a pet hit). If you windmill, the mob can teleport at you before you have time for anything else, and will start hitting you (and probably kill you with a normal combo because they are insanely strong). If you try to use ranged attacks, hitting natural shield will cause them to teleport towards you and normal attack you. If you use flameburst or other magic, similar things happen. The best way I have personally found to kill them is to magnum shot them with a fast bow and spam ranged attack (as elf) or arrow revolver (as human) to finish them off, but it's unreliable. Alternatively, flameburst sometimes works, but it all depends on passive defense procs and the AI on that particular day. All this to say there is very little you can do to safely kill this mob. That is not fun design and just makes the player feel powerless. Creating mobs that have unique strategies to killing them or force the player to play a different way than they usually might is cool, but creating mobs whose only counterplay is "gang up on them" is not fun. That is taking away the mob's ability to act, doesn't feel clever, and isn't interesting design.

Likewise, mobs that are untargetable and fire projectiles at you from very far away is also just annoying and is often unfun because there is nothing to do about them. The untargetable floor plants in the depths could be killed with counter between waves of monsters prior to the most recent update. I thought this might have been intentional hidden counterplay, but it is clear that the intent is for there to be no way to dispatch these mobs and to forever have them interrupt you while you fight other enemies and hit you from across the room, meaning you can do very little to avoid them. This just creates frustration for the player and makes them feel powerless. Not a good feeling. Good game design rewards players for smart play and overcoming obstacles through ingenuity - not through brute force and persistence, like these mobs would have you do.

The topic of melee versus ranged versus alchemy versus magic

I've been over this one a lot. I will write a quick summary with very little explanation so I doubt it'll be super helpful. The gist of my feelings on the issue is that in high level content, melee struggles due to having to "play by the rules of the combat system" the most, while other archetypes can pretty much ignore most of the decision-making melee has. Sushiburger's example described this pretty well. In his example with the golem, a ranged user for example would never have this problem with a golem, because they would just spam magnum shot on it and if they missed, a pet would stall the golem long enough to resume hitting it with magnum shots. On top of having to make the most decisions, melee have difficulty following up and putting out DPS. Assault slash has a long cooldown and is the only followup to smash to that leads to more damage and doesn't lead to "wait with a defensive skill loaded that the mob will camp in front of you with until you cancel it and then start attacking you" or "wait with windmill loaded and put yourself deeper and deeper into deadly/pot poison, reducing all your will and crit". Even when using full combos like smash -> assault slash -> wm in later content, you will not kill the monster in front of you and then have to resort to heavy pet micro and face many difficult situations that ranged classes do not face. Note: none of these things are true for early/midgame content because melee is very powerful in that context, being the most efficient and fastest to rise to power/effectiveness archetype. It just falls off really badly in the lategame. Early on, melee gets you out of combat the fastest with the ever powerful dual-wield wm clearing rooms easily, and few mobs surviving the bread-and-butter smash-as-wm combo. Melee's problems are in the late/endgame, which is where every player that sticks around will inevitably end up. It is hard to fix these problems, but one thing I've always felt would help is to lower assault slash's cooldown, if not eliminate it altogether (and no, this does not allow you to repeatedly spam assault slash on knocked down mobs - it doesn't work that way, I've tested). For humans specifically, allowing humans to charge without a shield equipped (somewhat of a challenge, but happy to discuss ways to do this with anyone interested) would also be helpful towards making melee more consistent. Lowering minimum range is also helpful in giving melee more followups (but this change currently favors giants heavily). If it were possible, like live did at some point, lowering the animation time/startup lag/endlag of melee's animations would help them keep up. Not being able to move or act for a long time after windmill, smash, and using normal attacks, and even counter (but no one uses it anyway) is hugely hindering in high pressure situations and again just increases melee's idle time where they aren't doing damage (which is high compared to archery, the other "primary" archetype).

Alchemy, particularly flameburst, is pretty great in higher level/grouped contexts where the prep time is rewarded with high dps on mobs that actually require that damage, and is very safe when played correctly. In early game content it falls flat. Outside of flameburst and golems though, and life drain, alchemists don't have a whole lot in the toolkit, but I do not see it as a primary skillset in the same way I see melee and archery. I also view magic as a secondary moveset as it is highly situational and resource intensive. Only when you view alchemy as a primary skillset does it look like it has a problem, in my opinion. If the goal is to make alchemy a primary skillset, it will require a lot of work, as the issue is not damage, but core mechanics.

Elf archery is the safest and most powerful archetype with every required tool under their belt (good AoE in crash shot, reliable/fast spammable single target dps in magnum shot, good transformation with hugely powerful AoE in magic missile, ability to shoot mounted). People may have the impression that archery is weak if they haven't played the game much because it is bad at lower levels. With 800 levels or so into a character though, elf archer soon begins its climb towards being the most powerful archetype in the game with all its tools and access to the most of its stat (dex) available to them compared to other archetypes. The ability to shoot while mounted is not to be disregarded as it is an aggro manipulation tool (dismounting "resets" mob aggro and causes mobs to drop skills for a second before cycling over) and a way to stay at close quarters to aim very quickly, and also a way to very quickly clear SMs/farm. On top of all of this, elf archery, if not already powerful, benefits from campfires in Tail SMs (the most profitable missions for exp/gold) which raises their damage by 50%. No other archetype has access to any such damage buff.

Human archery in comparison has long load times and low damage/dps. Arrow revolver does very low damage, and humans must rely on it a lot because magnum shot's load time (1.5s for humans compared to the 0.5s of elves) is too long in many practical situations. Because of its clunkiness, it does not serve well as a primary skillset for humans. This is mainly due to the two points I've raised above (low AR damage, slow magnum shot). Further, not having access to mounted archery hinders humans' ballistic capabilities. Buffing AR's numbers (I know this has challenges due to the damage values not being exposed in the files), decreasing Magnum Shot's load time (from 1.5s to 1s, for example -- a very easy change), and/or giving humans mounted archery (I also know this is challenging) would be helpful to helping human ranged be more viable.

Magic, as I mentioned before, I also view as a secondary skillset due to being highly situational. However, with the now very reliable hailstorm, it is possible to be a pure mage in the endgame. Hailstorm is super safe and beyond its initial load (which you can usually do safely out of range), it is very reliable. Magic's only problems are that it requires a ton of mana pots to use. This is a mechanical problem and not a balance problem. However, personally I feel that one way to help address this would be to add MP30s to vendors. The common argument to not doing this is that mana shield is in the game, but the only archetype that abuses mana shield really well while spamming mana potions (and thus potion poisoning yourself and lowering strength) is the elf archer or pure human archer (kek). These archetypes can already very efficiently utilize mana shield with MP100s, which are very accessible to anyone who's trying to get them. NPC shop MP30s don't really change this much. Even as mage, you'd have to spam the crap out of MP30s to keep up the mana pool. I think losing all your strength and being locked out of melee would be a fair tradeoff if your conviction is really to be a pure mage.

Lastly, let's quickly talk about giant melee. Giant melee, and giants in general, are way more powerful than people would give them credit. Their weapons give them a ton of max damage and trade off some crit for it. But with the right gear you can still hit 110 crit (the golden standard of crit for elite missions) while wielding preferred weapons (mace + warhammer, or 2h sword + shield). Battleswords are often quoted as the "OP" weapons. While they shine as far as swords go, they are not the penultimate weapon by any means. Warhammer has very comparable stats in all respects. Iron mace ego has a ton of max damage and because of that, giants dual wielding will outdamage humans anytime with similar gear. Being able to charge with their preferred weapons is a huge deal and something humans do not have in their toolkit. Not to mention giant charge does way more damage. Additionally, large strength growth per level, access to fullswing, a 1.6s and 600% damage smash and large windmill radius due to model size (I almost never see people talk about this) make giants by far the superior melee users. The newly buffed smash also means giants will smash for 828% with all possible smash bonuses, and 690% while dual wielding. Because giant smash is easier to do (n+smash possible), this means they have a more reliable source of single target DPS. Giants not having access to ranged attacks and being locked out of a skillset is not that big of a deal because having access to multiple/versatile skillsets is not highly rewarded in Mabinogi content that is worth doing consistently (i.e. shadow missions -- the bulk of the content that a player will be doing on a day to day basis), but high damage in a specialized skillset is. The takeaway from this is that giants are mostly doing fine, and in fact are now incredibly powerful in my opinion, but still do suffer from melee's problems in the lategame/endgame.

The issue of content team/developers not communicating well with veteran players:

My understanding of this issue boils down to a few points:
- Developers work on this game for fun and as such will often cater to their own agenda (because that's what's fun for them)
- Developers are not veteran players and are often not knowledgeable about many of the game's nuances (I say nuances, but they are more like core rules/mechanics to a veteran player) and various aspects, so balancing often goes ignored or flies out the window when new content is developed
- When developers do reach out, they may not get the best advice, because most of the playerbase is unfit to comment. This seems elitist, but hear me out. If you look at mabinogi.ir/highscores, you will see that the bottom of the list starts just barely at 1000 (and this is a recent development). This means that only roughly 100 players are even at level 1k, which is the level required to participate in all content in the game. Many of the players on this list are inactive, and very few of the active players here are vocal. To me, anyone who has not even played long enough/dedicated enough time to reach level 1k, and has not experienced all the content, does not have all the information they need to make accurate judgments or comment accurately about the game's balance.
- When developers are "misinformed", they don't even know because they don't have an accurate frame of reference.

My proposed solution for these problems, if there is willingness to resolve them, would be the following:

Have a council of players (maybe 4-5) that are trusted and come from different social groups (because this community is small and has a lot of tight-knit cliques, and let's face it, there is a lot of circlejerking), or have demonstrated that they are level-headed and mostly unbiased. These players should be veterans and should be on the highscores page at a minimum so that they are able to consider balance problems with a proper frame of reference. This group of players could be part of balance discussions or maybe even given the absolute power to make certain types of balance decisions when they come into question. For reference, I have seen this model work for a very (financially) successful private game. The developers in that game also did not play at a competitive level, understood this, and knew that the future of the success of their game was contingent on having knowledgeable players weigh in on balance issues.

This post ended up being way longer than I initially intended it, and I couldn't even fit in everything I'd have to say on all of these issues. If there are any developers who would truly be interested in having productive/civil discussions about these topics, I would be more than pleased to join a voice chat conversation with them to humanize the discussion and be able to address some of these points more in-depth.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU-

I do find that I mostly agree with Ihzi most of the time. But this is not a good medium for voicing concerns in large paragraphs. We should have a podcast/ interview/ livestream type thing with or without the devs. For personal use.

- Easily cover tons of areas and topics in a short amount of time
- Find common ground, agreements and disagreements in a sensible, live discussion
- Have questions prepared beforehand by other members
- Can choose the gravity of each topic


I'd even be happy if there was a dedicated voice channel for hour-long discussions on interesting/ important topics. Like how Steven Crowder sets up a random table and asks people to change his mind.

"Elves are lewd. Change my mind."

Well it's good that information is there at the very least. Some people will want "opinions", others will want "reasons".
Feelings are really only opinions at most, which is fine.

Izhi gave us some good reasons and "numbers" which is refreshing in this... very "feely" climate.

It'd be cool to have a chat to have proper conversation though.

As a (currently 1.7k) human archer I can say that lowering magnum to 1 second wouldn't be enough to balance the class out with elves, though I'd prefer mechanical changes to AR over pure buffs to magnum. I dont think a slight numbers increase like live did is the right solution either, it would have to be something like guaranteed knockback on 3rd and 5th hits to make knockdown cycle more manageable, or adding guaranteed poison effect to the 3rd hit and removing the 4th and 5th hits while re-balancing the damage to account (maybe something like 100/113/123%) while removing the bonus aim for the first attack. As is AR does almost no damage due to defense flat damage mitigation affecting every hit, is only able to be fired 3 times before knockback causing the following shots to either have to be fired at a delay or reset their balance and cause them to run at you while you have nothing loaded, and overall is only really useful as a normal arrow with slightly faster aim speed in almost every scenario. And then at that point elves have you beat still since their default attack already has 2 arrows and can be used while running. Magnum may be worse on humans than elves but I personally would rather them diversify the different classes further than try to homogenize them. Same goes for mounted combat imho. I know this is asking more of the content development team, but it doesn't seem right to just try and make all the classes the same when more elegant solutions could allow for more diversity of play styles and more unique character development as a result.

That said that's just like, my opinion, and would require much more effort on the content creation team to make it a reality, so I dont know how balanced/feasible it is.