Mabinogi is gearing up for its next big generation release, and pretty much everyone in-game is chomping at the bit. Unfortunately, while a lot of people thought this patch was coming in just 2 days, on Feb 5, it seems that it may just be the release date of another teaser. This comes as a disappointment to many, myself included. You can only build up suspense and excitement so much before people start wondering if anything will ever happen at all.
I think that Nexon's decision to release another teaser rather than the real deal is ultimately going to demoralize their playerbase rather than heighten the excitement, building more irritation than anything. And that's not the kind of tension you should be going for.
I'm personally hoping that G4 will see the release of something a bit more "worth it" for bard characters. At present, the skills Composing and Music Theory have been capped at rank 9 (rank 1 being highest, and F through A being below). This meant a person could get their Instrument Playing skill to rank 7 fairly easily, since you could create scores that would give you skill experience for playing.
At rank 7 playing, however, in order to advance you must resort to playing 'default' music, stock music created by the game designers. When playing default music, the song you play is completely random, so you cannot choose to only play one song, or even songs of a specific difficulty. Despite this, I managed to spam my way to rank 6 of Instrument Playing.
The reason someone would put so much into these skills is that once you have Composing and Music Theory to rank 9, you can create score scrolls that have magical effects. Some regenerate HP, mana, or stamina. Some give boosts to a single stat, such as Strength or Luck. Some of them have other effects, such as charming animals or giving direct combat bonuses. The better you are at Instrument Playing, the better effects you can do, and they affect all party members within a rather large area. Sounds nifty, right?
Problem One:
The type of score scroll you get is determined by random, and it seems that some types are more likely to be generated than others. Furthermore, whether or not your score gets a magic effect (which is determined at creation of the scroll) is also completely random.
Problem Two:
You need to be at least Rank 5 in Instrument Playing before you can use any magical music aside from stat boosts or regen. So I'd have to spam my way with default music through yet another rank. Not so big of an issue, since those types of scores are harder to come by anyway.
Problem Three:
There's only a handful of scores that are actually useful below Playing rank of 5. Strength boosters are good if the party is heavy with melee fighters. Dexterity is good if you have a lot of ranged fighters. Intelligence might be good if you were in a party full of spellslingers (not common at all, even individually) but is otherwise only useful for a quick boost when trying to enchant something. As far as Will and Luck go, the questionable bonus received from a boost to these is hardly worth mentioning.
The regen scrolls, at first glance, seem much more worthwhile. Instead of being a single temporary bonus (that seems to end an amount of time after the song ends roughly equivalent to the length of the song), they would regen the specified amount at regular intervals throughout the playing. Unfortunately, only the mana and stamina regen scores seem to be at all useful, and even then only minutely. The majority of the players are simply too impatient to wait for a slow regeneration effect. Potions already exist that will restore HP, mana, and stamina, and these are both quicker and more plentiful than score scrolls anyway, not to mention bards who can play them. Regen scores are much harder (it seems) to produce than stat-boosters, as well.
Problem Four:
Another reason that the magic music is so relatively useless takes some explanation. The numeric potential of the stat-boosting and regen scores is determined by your Playing Instrument rank, and you need to be at least rank 9 to get any effect at all. No matter what rank you are, however, the value you get is determined within a set range which always starts at zero. If it's zero, then you get a message saying the music seems to have no effect.
Rank 9 playing grants 0-1 for stat boosts and 0-2 for regen, according to information available. When I was rank 9 playing, more often than not my score would work, and I'd get a value of 1 regardless of what type I played, and I figured that was fair enough.
Rank 8 playing grants 0-2 for stat boosts and 0-3 for regen, again according to available info. Once I got to rank 8, the biggest difference I saw immediately was that my score scrolls had zero effect more often than they had before. I very rarely got a value of 2 from a stat boost, and even more rarely a value of 3 for regen.
Rank 7 playing, in theory, grants 0-6 for stat boosts and 0-4 for regen. By this point, I was getting zero effect from my magical scores more often than I got any effect at all, and the majority of the time I was still getting 1's and 2's. Occasionally I got 4 from a regen. I still have never seen anything above 4 from a stat boost, and usually only got 3 at best. Most of the time, if the party needed hp or stamina regeneration and didn't want to use potions, the Rest skill would regen them faster than my music could, anyway.
Rank 6 playing is supposed to give 0-10 for stat boosts and 0-5 for regen. I've only been rank 6 a short while, but so far it seems my success ratio (success being any value above 0, failure being 0) is about 50%, which is an improvement on rank 7 (but still not as good as I remember rank 9). I'm seeing more 3's and 4's from both stat boosts and regen, though not reliably. As I said before, I've never seen anything above 4, which is a shame because a bonus of 10 to a stat like Strength or Dexterity could be a major boon.
So Problem Four is actually two-fold: 4a) The range of the bonus, regardless of playing rank, always starts at 0. 4b) The value you get doesn't seem to be based on anything you can effect. It's not entirely random, or else you'd see more high numbers than now. I suppose you could call it semi-random, erring on the low side with higher numbers being exponentially less likely.
With weapon damage, you have an attribute called Balance, modified by the weapon type and by your Dexterity, which determines where in the damage range of the weapon you're likely to have your hits fall. On average, a damage range of 10-20 with a Balance of 50% will generally mean 15 damage each hit.
With spellcasting, there is Magic Balance, modified by Intelligence, which determines where in the damage range of the spell you are likely to hit.
There does not seem to be any apparent equivalent "Music Balance". If there is, I'm completely at a loss as to what effects or modifies it.
As far as the regen scores go (at least so far), HP is pretty much worthless, both inside and outside of combat. Inside of combat, the Healing spell and hp potions are much faster and more reliable. With a roughly equal chance of getting any effect and no effect at all, chances are your music won't do any healing the first try, and if it does, it's too slow to save anyone's life.
Stamina regen scores are marginally more useful. It can be easy to run out of stamina (which is used up by using skills) in a long fight, and sometimes you don't have the time to quaff a potion, or maybe you didn't realize you were low. Having a constant regen of stamina, regardless of the amount, could actually save someone in combat. Outside of combat, it's pretty much useless. The Rest skill regens faster.
Mana regen is, arguably, the most potentially useful effect below rank 5 Playing. Since mana regen is naturally very slow (faster at night, but still fairly slow), it can be nice to have another method of regenerating it. Again, however, potions are plentiful, especially if you have the Herbalism and Potion Making skills. And like with the HP regen, you're not going to get enough benefit out of it during battle that it's likely to make a difference. Outside battle, it's more useful.
So: HP regen? No use. Stam regen? Potentially useful during combat, but otherwise not. Mana regen? Potentially useful outside of combat, but otherwise not.
Problem Five (What, you thought I was done?):
The musician is rendered immobile while playing. Now, the area of effect is pretty big. I can stand in one corner of a normal dungeon room and reach party members almost in the opposite corner. But stat-boost effects will end early if the song ends early. So if the party wipes out the room and starts heading on to the next one, the bard either gets left behind to finish the song (if it produced an effect worthwhile enough to continue) or to cancel it and catch up so that he can play it again (possibly getting a worse result) in the next room.
Further, because the bard is immobile, and because monster spawns in a room are random in their location, it's quite possible one will aggro on the bard and hit him, ending the song prematurely, before the party can assist. This means a wasted attempt, and the bard has an instrument in hand instead of a weapon to defend himself with, if he's still alive.
So, half the time (or less) you make a scroll, it's magic.
Half the time (or less) it's magic, it's something useful.
Half the time (or less) it's something useful, you can get it to work.
If you get it to work, half the time (or less) it's actually worthwhile.
1/2 of 1/2 of 1/2 of 1/2 = 1/16
So... I guess 1/16th of the time (or less) it's worth playing a bard?
I swear, I'm going to de-rank Music Theory.
Overall I think the biggest problems are the abundance of potions and the impatience of the majority of players, followed by the unreliability of the effects. These are the main factors that make playing a bard so frustrating and, quite frankly, useless.
Funny... I guess I expected bards to be more powerful in a game called Mabinogi.
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