I think the whole familiar system is good in concept, but it is a really bad system as it currently stands.
Some points it needs:
~Being a lot simpler for players to use and upgrade their familiars.
~More emphasis on going around Maple World to encourage players to explore and collect different familiars, and remove grinding on the same map for hundreds of hours so you can power up your familiars and gets the potential lines you want (still have an aspect to this however).
~Rebalance values and update values.
~Add to what familiars can give for their potential lines so that the system is more interesting and players can customize their potentials to their liking based on class and/or playstyle of that player.
~Keep and add even more for fun line effects (like makes your character entirely black), while not being intrusive (is separate to) to the potentials that players want to have for combat purposes.
~Remove the decay to familiars and they can be summoned infinitely with no timer.
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Here is my concept for a new familiar system:
Hunt monsters and have a chance for them to drop their familiar card.
- These are an USE item. The first card of that monster you consume will activate that familiar to be able to be used and rank up.
- All other familiar cards of that same monster can be used to function identically to how Solid Cubes function for equipment.
Every monster is unique and you can only summon one of each monster (impossible to have duplicate monsters) for your familiars.
- You will still be able to summon 3 familiars at the same time, but as 3 different monsters.
- There will be a Familiar Collection Book (a literal in-game book) to keep track of your collection and keep things organized where you flip the pages to view your collection and this is where you go to upgrade, roll for potential lines, and select your familiars that you want to summon.
When a familiar attacks and fights alongside you, that familiar will gain exp and after enough exp they will level up.
- All familiars start at level 1 and can go up to level 100.
- Every level requires more exp than the last to level up.
- Familiars deal 1% per level of your damage every time they attack.
- If the original monster was between levels 1-99 they deal 1 line of damage, between 100-199 they deal 2 lines of damage, and between 200-300 they deal 3 lines of damage. (i.e. a level 90 snail familiar would deal 90% damage 1 time, but a level 30 familiar from Arcane River or Grandis would deal 30% damage 3 times)
Familiar potentials, ranking them up and rolling for lines, will function the same way as cubing and they can rank up all the way to legendary rank.
- Familiars always start at Common Rank then they rank in order at a chance outcome to Rare Rank > Epic Rank > Unique Rank > Legendary Rank.
Bonus Potentials and Special Potentials:
- Bonus Potentials would be for Interactive Worlds only, functions similarly to equipment Bonus Potentials.
- Special Potentials is something that can occur at a rare chance when that familiar is at Legendary rank only and is entirely an additional line only for fun stuff that does not influence combat performance for both Heroic and Interactive Worlds. (It will occur at any line roll and changing to a new set of potential lines will change or remove the special line.)
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Familiar Shop:
Two different styles based on world type:
~ Interactive Worlds can choose to purchase items by using either Spell Traces or Maple Points for every item. Items are trade-able and can be purchased with mesos by ways of the Mesos Market.
~ Heroic Worlds can only purchase items by using Mesos.
Examples for some purchasable items:
- Random Familiar Card (functions like how the familiar card pack works, but only gives you 1 random familiar card)
- Glowing Card (functions like Glowing Cubes, but for familiars)
- Bright Card (functions like Bright Cubes, but for familiars)
- Bonus Glowing Card [Interactive Worlds Only]
- Bonus Bright Card [Interactive Worlds Only]
- Familiar Exp Card (grants your familiar a flat amount of bonus exp to help level it up)
The shop has a total maximum amount of cards you can purchase per week, shared among all of the items within.
- For every 1 unique familiar you have collected will add to the purchase limit by +1. (i.e. you have 97 monsters in your familiar collection you can purchase 97 total cards in the familiar shop for that week.)
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Possible Potential and Special Lines outcomes, plus "Set Bonuses":
IMPORTANT NOTE:
- Familiars will be counted as equipment, relevant for things like hard caps for certain stats.
- These values will not be the same as you see them on things like Equipment, Inner Ability, Legion, etc.
- Values change based on the rank of the familiar.
- Some options can only be seen on Unique and/or Legendary rank.
- Not all options are equally weighted chances among each other, i.e. Nearby Ally / Party Healing could be a very high chance while Weapon/Magic Attack % is a very low chance.
- There are 3 potential lines and 3 bonus potential lines. Potential and Bonus Potential lines have different values to each other.
Potential Line Ideas:
~ Boss Damage %
~ Normal Monster Damage %
~ Damage % Against Abnormal Status Targets
~ Ignore Enemy Defense %
~ Critical Damage %
~ Critical Rate Chance %
~ STR/DEX/INT/LUK %
~ All Stat %
~ HP %
~ Weapon / Magic Attack Flat Value
~ Weapon / Magic Attack % Value
~ Item Drop Rate %
~ Mesos Obtained %
~ Chance to Skip Cooldown %
~ Cooldown Reduction %
~ Cooldown Reduction Flat Value
~ % Increased Healing from All Sources
~ % MP Cost Reduction from Skills
~ Increase to MP / Demon Fury [Demon Slayer] / Time Force [Zero] / Mana [Kanna] / etc. Flat Amount
~ Increase to MP / Demon Fury [Demon Slayer] / Time Force [Zero] / Mana [Kanna] / etc. % Amount
~ This Familiar's Attacks Restore MP Flat Value
~ This Familiar's Attacks Restore % MP
~ Periodically Heals Self Flat Value [Ignores Anti-Healing Mechanics such as Verus Hilla and Phase 2 Will]
~ Periodically Heals Self % HP [Ignores Anti-Healing Mechanics such as Verus Hilla and Phase 2 Will]
~ Periodically Heals Nearby Allies Flat Value [Ignores Anti-Healing Mechanics such as Verus Hilla and Phase 2 Will]
~ Periodically Heals Nearby Allies % HP [Ignores Anti-Healing Mechanics such as Verus Hilla and Phase 2 Will]
~ Periodically Heals Party Members Flat Value [Ignores Anti-Healing Mechanics such as Verus Hilla and Phase 2 Will]
~ Periodically Heals Party Members % HP [Ignores Anti-Healing Mechanics such as Verus Hilla and Phase 2 Will]
~ Ignore Elemental Resistance %
~ Abnormal Status and Elemental Resistance
~ Buff Duration %
~ Minion Duration %
~ Increase Duration for Stuns by % Amount (Maximum Total Increase of 5 Seconds) [Does not increase duration for Absolute Stuns.]
Some Ideas for Special For Fun Lines (A Rare 4th Line for Heroic Worlds / 4th/7th Line for Interactive Worlds):
~ Character Becomes Completely Black
~ Character Hovers Above The Ground
~ Character Can "Swim" in Towns
~ Character Can Jump Infinitely in Towns
~ You Now Have "Fun" Vision When Attacked for 2 Seconds (5 seconds cooldown) [Your screen becomes a drunken-like state.]
~ Killing Monsters Causes Them to Explode into Confetti
~ Mesos Monsters Drop Appear as Toy Animals
~ Character Walks and Attacks Backwards [Would be slightly disorientating, but does not affect combat; basic attacks and skills still fire in the correct direction.]
~ Character is Always Walking on Ice in Towns
~ Character is Invisible
~ Character Occasionally will Trip and Fall Down in Towns
~ Character Now Walks and Jumps like on the Moon. Jump Height is Tripled. Only Occurs in Towns.
~ Character is in Slow Motion in Towns. (All actions are in half speed for walking, jumping, skill animations, etc.)
~ Character is in Fast Forward in Towns. (All actions are doubled in speed for walking, jumping, skill animations, etc.)
~ Character appears to be burrowing in the ground while walking on the ground.
~ Character slowly descends while in the air in Towns.
Familiars will have "Set Bonuses" for equipping either 2 or 3 familiars of the same set (i.e. three familiars from Princess No monsters) or have all different familiars.
- Current badge system would be removed in replace of a "set bonus" type of system.
- "Set bonus" would be 1, 2, or 3 Familiars equipped; i.e. one set could have 10/30/50 All Stat while another could have 5/15/25 Weapon/Magic Attack. This will allow players to choose to either focus into one set if they want one particular stat or spread their familiars out for a little bit of 3 different stats, or they just simply choose their 3 favourite monsters for their familiars and play Fashion Story.
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Post further feedback and suggestions below to further improve this post, and hopefully we will see a better Familiar System because the current one is really bad for acquiring familiars, leveling them, and struggling to find the lines you want.
The current familiar system really only benefits a very small niche group of players that can farm for hundreds of hours non-stop and everyone else barely can interact with the system.
Plus I want to see a system that allows players more freedom to play how they want to play the game and customize their character, rather than choose lines that directly give more damage (like attack or boss damage %), with the addition of a lot more utility lines like cooldown reduction, chance to skip cooldown, or even extending stun (bind) durations!
Comments
Collect a monster? Now it's in your familiar system, provided it's not an immobile monster or boss.
This gets rid of the issue of having to regrind familiars for badges on any mule you want to level, as well as giving people another reason to participate with the Monster Collection system.
For balance purposes i'd change the values in this to those that you can get from Inner Ability, with a few adjustments (e.g. Normal Monster Damage is 20% instead of 10% now, HP% has been decreased to 10% like ATT/Stat% are now) and the exception of lines new to the familiar system like 4 seconds of invuln after being hit or the HP regen, or new lines like Ignore Elemental Resistance.
There's now a max of 20% Boss Damage per line, but that's offset by the fact that on interactive servers you can now get 18 different rolls of it, and no-one on Heroic servers managed to roll double boss damage on a Legendary Familiar from the Goo Island event's Red Familiar Cards.
IED is now capped at 25% per line.
Crit Damage is capped at 5% per line.
Playing around with 100% Cooldown Skip (5 lines) would be fun, as would being able to ignore all of the Elemental Resistance of an enemy.
Familiars' absurd drop rate boost has been removed. In return, you're able to get over 100% droprate increase from familiars if you get 3 2lines.
Bonus Potentials would be slightly lower in power than what Potentials, or at least for some of the stats, can give for things do not become too crazy overpowered.
Lines work like Equipment: At Legendary Rank, 100% chance for 1 line, 10% chance for 2 lines, and 1% chance for 3 lines to be Legendary status and if not Legendary lines 2 and 3 would be Unique status. And all 3 lines roll randomly, Bright Cards allow you to choose between current or new lines, but cost almost double to purchase over Glowing Cards.
100% CD Skip would be way too strong. The Legendary lines would probably need to be 4% chance per line and Unique be 2%, but 9 lines of this would be 24% with CD skip (or 36% in an insane high roll scenario with triple Legendary lines on each fam) and with 20% inner ability and 7.5% legion artifact would have a total of 51.5% chance to skip cooldowns which would make CD skip classes do some crazy things (with an absolute high of 63.5% CD skip, even higher for Interactive Worlds).
Item Drop here would work like normal item drop does on equips (so it will work on chance of mesos bags dropping), item drop and mesos obtain lines probably both be 20% per line at Legendary, but would have Common through Unique values unlike equipment, i.e. you can have, let's say, 15% drop/mesos on unique making it a lot easier to have more than 20% drop/mesos on the familiars than getting it on accessories making it easier to have a 3 line Legendary-Unique-Unique setup for 50% drop or 50% mesos.
Ignore Elemental Resistance would need to be something like +2% per Legendary line since it functions the same as boss final damage, but double the power at base (2% with no other ignore elemental resistance is 4% final damage); while Abnormal Status would need to be very high to be competitive so something like 30 or 40 per Legendary line, stack this with a lot of lines and you can almost completely ignore abnormal status in boss fights.
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Monster Collection is KMS content, Familiars is non-KMS content, probably better to keep the two separate, though the would have a similar feel to the systems.
And this setup I created uses the same familiar card beyond the first one to function like how solid cubes do for that same familiar, and finding only 1 familiar card would be easier and more fun to do than the monster collection system, plus it allows for trading of cards in interactive worlds (and rare familiar cards can be sold in the market to make big mesos).
And having another 50% ATT wouldn't be? 4% is a joke, make it like 10%. It doesn't affect 5th job skills or Origin.
That's exactly what I mean about item drop rate.
Abnormal Statuses basically don't exist outside of Pink Bean and Horntail. It's objectively an unviable stat since it got changed years ago to affect the duration rather than being able to PREVENT statuses.
CD Skip could be 8% legendary lines and 4% unique lines, so 3 line would be between 16% through 24% cd skip for one familiar (double and especially triple legendary on the same would be near impossible)
Will, Gloom, Darknell, Seren, Lotus, etc. all have status ailments.
Will has a mechanic. The others don't.
I'm not treating the stun time you suffer for skill issuing to be a status ailment. If Abnormal Status Resistance was a chance to ignore, it'd be useful. But it doesn't matter at all in the current state of the game, even if you're stunned for a single frame you end up losing your keydown skill.