Developer Appreciation: Mabinogi Combat System

Today's Dev Appreciation is focused on the cutesy MMO Mabinogi, which still has the best basic combat system of any MMO I've played so far. Unlike everything else which is basically trying to maximize your DPS rotations, fighting here is at a much slower pace using a rock paper scissors type format. A regular attack can be blocked or countered, a smash attack defeats defending stances but can be interrupted by a regular attack, and a counter stance makes you immobile and drains stamina for as long as you take it.

More skills, like this jump smash, came in later.

It's simple and effective, and given most of the NPC enemies have the same skill set also meant a talented player with a newbie character could still beat harder boss-type foes, while an advanced character with a less skilled player could still be losing quickly to lowly wolves. That's the way it should be.

I also quite liked the upgrade options of gear. Usually any piece can only be upgraded 3 times out with around 5 options on each occasion. The options add and subtract various stats, and the measurement of "balance" for weapons played a significant role. For example making a sword heavier gave it a wider damage range but throttled the balance of the weapon meaning an untrained character would always be on the lower numbers, but a character with high enough dexterity to make up for the terrible damage would thrive using such a weapon.

About Me: More Viable Opinions

A continuation of prompts from End Game Viable - imagine if I only answered one of these a day! :P

What makes a game a “survival” game?

I'd say death mitigation, and not the type where you have to dodge out of "red circles" though that's possible too. More along the lines of, if your character stands still in a safe spot, with no hostiles of any kind around, they are still constantly dying. Something has to force the players to take action to survive, and idleness equals death.

How many different games can you comfortably play on a daily or weekly basis? What happens if you play too many?

Usually two at most. That way I still remember the story / controls / what I was doing or planning to do without requiring a "retraining" session. If I try for more, one just naturally gets pushed to the "play it later" section of my brain.

Do you prefer a silent protagonist or a voiced protagonist in your games?

I don't mind a silent protagonist but I always prefer a well voiced one. The key word is "well". If the protagonist is going to sound like a douche bag or woodenly reading lines, then it's better if they were silent to begin with. :P

I have a theory that most bloggers play healers or tanks in their groups, and a significant number of them are or were guild leaders.

While I was one of the founding members of my guild, I'm not the guild leader. We are both and have always been DPS classes though he's experimenting with tanking now (8 years in, lol).

Mabinogi: What the hell G19?

So, I've been one to always (usually) sing praises about this cute little game especially on its core combat mechanic which is like a more complicated rock-paper-scissors affair where the skill of the player can often make up for a weak character. Guess what they did in Generation 19?

They've thrown that out the window for the new story line, and have made the majority of the regular spawns have heavy stander. For those that don't know what that means: If you previously countered an enemy, they would get knocked back. If you defended an attack, they get stunned. If you smashed them, you knocked them back and bought room to prepare a defense or counter again. Heavy Stander negates all of that.

Now you counter, you do damage but they continue to attack. You defend, it blocks one attack but they continue to attack. You smash, they take damage and continue to attack. Ehhhh?

This does give new weaknesses for the AI when they defend though because usually a knock back triggers the AI to change their move. Now when they defend, you spam smash and when they counter you spam windmill.

But that's just the normal spawns. Wait till you run into a -full powered- Gigrashiy (winged form), the first of whom you must beat in a solo mission. Definitely way worse than Glas!

Wearing a pink sea bream robe probably didn't help. 

• It is an HP sponge.
• It has a strong staff swing (evade by being behind it)
• It poisons you from range (unavoidable, hits through mana shield).
• It can pick you up and stab you with the staff (unavoidable).
• It can freeze you in ice which does damage when it explodes (unavoidable).
• It can fly up and land right where you are, dealing damage (unavoidable even if blocked).
• When <20% health, it summons a shade of yourself where you are which runs towards it.
• If your shade reaches his hit box he gets healed, and you die. Instantly.
• He can and does spam all the above. 
• You need a specific skill set to fight them which you won't have yet at this fight.

Not sure who thought up of changing the combat system like this but I for one hate it. No point in thinking what to do, nor can you have fights where you take no damage if you time the correct moves. Now it's just "use your most damaging attacks". Yep, just like all the other mmos out there.

Correction: I think I found who thought up of this change.

Stupidest design decision ever. Way to kill your own uniqueness, Mabinogi. If I want to just DPS my way through fights I'll just go play Neverwinter Online.

MMOs: Level Restriction and Threat

[Part of my MMO Design Folder]

Have you ever heard of the tale where a great knight ventured to the entrance of an evil lair then began screaming out to the world for a healer and a wizard or rogue to join him? This happens a lot in MMO's, and is in fact referred to as "the holy trinity" where one person plays the role of "tank" keeping the monster's attention while absorbing the monster's damage, the "healer" uses their skills primarily to keep the "tank" alive, and everyone else being "DPS" (damage per second) either on said monster or crowd control ("CC" used to be "DPS"). Personally I only ran into the "holy trinity" term when I began Guildwars 2, because people were either angry or happy that it wasn't there. I actually had to ask what it was, and now that I know I find it rather stupid.

I can see how it came about though, simply by how some games handle "threat" or "aggro" (as in, which of you the monster most wants to eat) and more so by the definition of specific classes to play "roles". Neverwinter Online's five classes are a good example of this:

Thief - highest single target DPS, quite squishy (killable)
Wizard - highest area effect DPS, but not as high on single target as thief. Very squishy.
Great Weapon Fighter - less squishy than the above and out performs them on their weaker side but is not as good as their specialty.
Cleric - provides healing and buffs and some decent area damage
Guardian Fighter - Tank. Only class with a shield, and only class that "blocks" instead of evades.

While most MMO's tout that you can be "whatever you want", other people will look down upon a wizard who tries to be the "tank", or a cleric focused on attacking instead of healing, or a tank who chooses not to wear armor (and be squishy) - especially is said people are more interested in being "efficient", the type that sit down and actually number crunch for the best build for their specific role and more often than not the first requirement of which is to max out your level to the highest it can be.

I feel this is the first problem. Skills and abilities can have levels, sure. You get good at doing "stuff" by doing said "stuff". Maybe Bob the sniper is more accurate than Hank, while Hank the messanger can outrun Bob. However, Bob shouldn't be able to magically become a fantastic swordsman  by baking cake. As humurous as that sounds, that is actually possible in GW2 which only has one overall level track, and not many little tracks for skills. In comparison Ultima Online offered incredible freedom. No overall levels, just skills which meant you can be a spell sword, a fisher knight, or whatever. It's a similar case in Mabinogi where skill ranks are more important than your overall level. I'm over level 2000 there but I can still lose to a bear if I don't fight perfectly.

Swordsmanship has increased by 0.1%!

The second problem is monster aggro or threat. Tank classes generally get skills to make monsters pay more attention to them instead of all the other people damaging it. Some games use strange maths to then calculate stuff like if player A did 100 damage to me, but player B healed player A for 200 HP, I should kill player B (Rappelz). For me it should be simple. Just like in real, predators (especially in a pack) should always go after the thing they can kill fastest first.