Sep 3, 2024

Producer's Letter: End of 2024 Upcoming Content

Mabinogi - Elebon

Dear Milletians,

Happy 20th Anniversary, Mabinogi! While only 16 years for us, Mabinogi itself has celebrated its 20 year anniversary just recently in June with the 2024 Fantasy Party. Community Manager Arciellia and I traveled to Korea to attend and celebrate this wondrous and momentous occasion! Today I want to talk about our trip with you, as well as share more details about some upcoming content we can expect to see soon.

At the Fantasy Party event, through rain, sweat, and tears– the feelings of excitement, love, and past memories bubbled to the surface. 16 Years of Mabinogi for me and you. There is such a level of nostalgia and happiness that comes from experiencing new content for the first time. A plethora of new adventures and memories to make together, and a moment of reflection on memories past. It is my greatest excitement to be preparing and working with the developers at this stage of Mabinogi. Mabinogi Eternity is a dream come true. The concept of a new Erinn, a fresh rebirth for our world, new moments to discover together. Hearing the crowd of rain-soaked Milletians cheering for each trailer touched my heart and brought such a glittering reverie to me about how far we’ve come and the future of Mabinogi.

With each new update, as dazzling as the upcoming Astrologer talent, and with every new Eternity blog, video, or screenshot, the dream becomes drawn more clearly. Adorable outfits, electrifying skill effects, smooth animations, rain, cute animals… these are only a few of the beautifully detailed elements that have been showcased lately, and I can’t wait to see even more come to fruition. My team and I are definitely still awaiting the happenings of Eternity – including, how will it go? Maintenances, updates, events? So much to prepare, I’m sure…!

While abroad, we also had the opportunity to visit the Nexon Korea office. Immediately I could feel a love for Mabinogi built by passions, challenges, and everything in between. The joy I felt walking sleek modern hallways, decorated with all the character cutouts for Mabinogi, figurines, wall prints, and the rows of office desks with Mabinogi peeking behind open documents on computer screens. As a long-time Milletian myself, it gave me surreal feelings that I will surely hold dear to my heart as a core memory!

In our meetings with the Development Team, we discussed various game updates and intentions behind the changes. Discussing changes that we’d like to see based off of your suggestions, our organic discussions in-game and out, and through all of the shared comments we’ve read throughout the year was my main intention. We are continuously focusing on what our community would like to see and how we could represent the best vision of Mabinogi. While we adjust our strategy to explore Eternity, it is a chance to learn about how we can evolve our longstanding game through a modern lens while still keeping the charm we adore.

With an abundance of game updates already released this year, there have been many contents to play, but there are still many to look forward to! Realistically, game updates come with challenges we must endure: from the many bugfixes for both new and existing contents, lengthy text polishing and UI reorganization, to web integrations, these items take time and energy. The Mabinogi Team has encountered more than just sunshine and rainbows but I believe in my team wholeheartedly and they have proved that whether rain or shine, passion and excitement outshines those difficulties.

For the second half of 2024, we first focused on providing a new and improved combat experience through adjustments to our existing combat content. These improvements include a significant rebalance of the Elemental Knight and Harmonic Saint Arcana talents, as well as a new Elite difficulty for Glenn Bearna. We also wanted to freshen up older content and make it accessible to a larger audience, which you'll have a chance to experience for yourself in both the revamped Fahmes Ruin dungeon and the upcoming release of the Royal Artisan system.

Lastly in winter, we want to provide a new talent, 'Astrologer' to you, Milletians, who are the shining stars of Mabinogi, who can become anything and express mastery of all talents. Of course, you cannot miss out on the various events you can expect as well!

We’ve prepared an exciting infographic to share all of the soon to be expected content updates. I hope you enjoy a glimpse of what’s to come.

Additionally, I’d like to share the video we’ve put together to celebrate Mabinogi’s 20th Anniversary in Korea. ✨

MabiNerd also produced a creative documentary piece to share the experience. We love this video and it was such a joy and honor to have him join us on a truly Mabi-filled adventure. 💗

I also want to give a shoutout to our Milletians who made it out to the Mabinogi Mag Mell Mixer event that we held in July this year. We’d love to organize more opportunities to meet in the future. Thank you for your support in person and in spirit! ☀️

Thank you for continuing to give Mabinogi a place in your heart. Collectively, we have millions of moments that play on in our minds and many more awaiting us.

Until next time,
~ GM Mewlynne, a Milletian who Wishes to see the Stars
Mabinogi Producer

Mewlynne gazes at the stars, visualizing new magics. Her speciality hones that of frost,
Before her eyes, she sees the electric pulse of energy awaiting her next move.

Sep 3, 2024

What's next

Broadside Renegades - BroadsideRenegade

First and foremost, thank you everyone for playing my game! Also thank you to everyone who's given me feedback, it's always helpful and welcome!

Started my day job back up Monday, and taking a few days this week to mentally recover (launch takes a toll, as exciting as it is). I'm now starting to formulate what the future entails for both me and Broadside Renegades.

First and foremost, the main negative feedback (and looking at achievement data) is that the game is either too hard, or not doing a good job of on-boarding players. The combination of ship like controls, and the nature of the more "hit and run" style of broadside combat is thrust upon the player, and ramps up quickly once it starts. I have three (or all) possible avenues in the short term to address this:

1. A ship designed to offload the broadsiding while you learn to steer. I'm considering a 3rd starting ship, probably that controls like the first. I am still brainstorming, but imagining it having either autofiring, or partially autoaiming broadsides. This would allow players to get a hang of steering before having to learn steering AND timing shots at the same time. I am also trying to find a way to present the ship in a way that explains it is "easier" without discouraging players from trying it.

2. An outright easier difficulty. I actually have a ton of control over scaling, spawning, and even some unused built in multipliers (ie enemy damage -50%). This would be very little work. It's really a menu and some variables away. (This also means I can go the other way, but I'm not sure anyone's asking for that yet)

3. Expanded tutorial or practice room. This ones the largest undertaking, but will most likely happen in addition to the first two. Currently the tutorial explains the basics, but then thrusts you into the main game at full difficulty before you've gotten to use your new knowledge. I'm thinking of adding an intermediate level with some real enemies and cargo ships to get a hang of things better in. The big thing will be expanding how I present the player knowledge here. There's some tactics that probably arent immediately apparent, like how POI grant more gold the farther you warp, or that warping resets a portion of your threat level (buying you time, you arent expected to beat bosses when they first show up, run!).

I don't want to make grand promises yet, but in addition to this, in general my list also consists of:

1. Adding a ui element for "right" and "left" that turns with the ship. I could say port and starboard but that isn't helping the onboarding process.

2. New map type, that just needs an asset or two to make sense adding

3. I am going to test a new boss at some point, but will only add it if it is good. The idea is a bit elaborate so I'll need to see how it plays

4. I have some work done today on a very simple "cutscene/end graphic." I had cut the idea near launch, but I want to add a little more weight to winning.

5. I actually have a small cache of content that is almost finished, or even actually finished and disabled in game. As this is my first launch, I leaned on minimal bugs or crashing, and put a lock on adding new content early. I still do art for leisure, and some things were WIP, so there's things that it wouldn't make sense not to get in the game.

If you've read this far, thank you! I try to check the community hub often so it's a good place to reach me!

Sep 3, 2024

New Build - Version 0.044

Deep Space Directive - One Wheel Studio

This update rolls out a ton of new QOL improvements based on feedback and watching people play. Fewer clicks, tutorial skipping, and more.

Keep that feedback coming! If there’s something you think could be better, let’s hear it.

New Features

Skip the Tutorial! If you've finished the tutorial once, you should now have the option to skip it on your next play through
When powering down a building the workers will get returned to the nearest HQ or storage building. No need to destroy a building to redistribute workers.
Edge scrolling can now be toggled on in the options menu - you asked for less clicking :)

QOL

Less Clicking!
Mobile units are now ready to move when they’re selected.
When placing buildings you no longer have to hold shift to place an additional copy. Same is true when placing tiles.
Space lasers are now automatically on when the window opens.
When placing tiles, the blue placeholders now have a tool tip - letting you know you can cancel the placement with a right click!
When the game is paused the camera movement should be fully functional.
Supply ships are now automatically connected to HQ or storage buildings to make it easier to receive “buy” orders.

Bugs Fixed

A few more “reload” bugs squashed.
A bug triggered by losing a mobile infantry unit that broke parts of the day/night cycle and could cause enemies to freeze has been fixed.