Mabinogi Heroes, otherwise known as Vindictus in the western market, recently celebrated its 10th anniversary in South Korea. Nexon held a live event and exhibition to mark the occasion, and representatives from developer devCat took to the stage to reveal features which are arriving soon. Of course, selected players of Mabinogi Heroes were present to ask questions as well. Seen below are some of the many details (summarized), so read on!
● The key new feature announced was Bond Skill, an ability made specially for co-op gameplay. To put it simply, Bond Skills are tag-team abilities which 2 specific heroes can use during raids (PVP not mentioned). If I get the details correctly, players must reach level 5 intimacy with a certain character to activate this powerful skill. So technically, 2 bond characters with level 5 intimacies. The first Bond Skills arrive in the summer of 2020.
● The development team understand the call to increase Mabinogi Heroes’ maximum frame rate beyond 60hz to 144hz, but there are some parts of the game where these 2 rates are slightly different and will affect the overall experience. Another issue is the concern that lower-end computers cannot support 144hz. However, they are looking into the possibility of auto-detecting a PC system’s specifications to allow 144hz.
● Mabinogi Heroes was first developed for 32-bit systems using 4GB of memory. Over the years, there have been issues trying to upgrade the whole game. Thus the development team has come to a difficult conclusion and challenge: providing a 64-bit client for Mabinogi Heroes, where all technical issues will be and can be resolved.
However, it is not that easy as the game uses many 3rd-party libraries to run, and these functions need to have 64-bit versions too. However, not many does. Hence, the challenge is to replace all these outdated 3rd-party libraries, physics engines, and so on with 64-bit versions. The team conceded that this big change is not 100% and might fail, but the game client team is now working hard on this 64-bit upgrade. More details will be revealed later.
● New male characters (s) are being worked on for the summer 2020 update in Korea.
● 2 out of the 5 characters from devCat’s 2014 April Fool’s joke have officially been made into real characters, Delia and Miul (Eira in Vindictus). The team remained coy as to the rest of the 3 male characters are the ones being prepared for summer 2020, but did not rule out the possibility. As usual, more details will be provided when possible and ready.
