[dev1047] Thoughts/Feedback on "Legion"

[Yygdrasil]

Pets suck in every endgame event so that is no surprise.

I beg to differ. Summoners a powerhouse in WoE.

[Francisco]

Is it just me, or was the answer to the PUP remark a bit flippant?

Player: My automaton takes like 300-400 damage!

Dev: Thanks for such a detailed remark. And yeah... what were you fighting?

...lol

[saevel]

So basically, legion is VWNM but in an arena and without temps? Sounds like it's a bunch of NM's that spam high damage aoe's and wipe entire groups.

[Glamdring]

Pets suck in every endgame event so that is no surprise.

beg pardon? there's a reason people complain about pet job users soloing stuff too easily, and it's the pet. Granted, it isn't as easy as those commenters think it is, we pet players that succeed have developed a good bit of skill and we are using it, but most chat displays don't show all those actions due to used chat filters. But if you think pets suck in end-game you need to meet some different players. My pet jobs are REQUESTED to come, because they rock, and I'm only a slightly above average skill player with mediocre gear.

It DOES help if you pick your battles intelligently, but that's true of any job. I avoid anything with Ice Spikes like the plague when I'm soloing on dnc since I can't do anything about the spikes and the cool down on healing waltz makes it impractical, especially since the para may block the waltz, but as bard or pup I have no issues with the spikes. That's just an example, every job has their strengths and weaknesses, it's the player's job to know them and use their character intelligentally and/or build their group to compensate. Pet jobs certainly have their place in the mix, the obvious example is anything that can charm; send in the pets and get out of range; there are many other uses.

[Yygdrasil]

@Glamdring

Preach it! \(-.-)/

[Alhanelem]

I would hope that players get a better feel for each stage of battle as they attempt this content.

In case it gives you some insight, I think when people say they want more "exhilaration", I tihnk it is because they expected this content to be more akin to The Swarm event assault- bashing down as many monsters as possible in a time limit. But instead, it's more just a big battlefield with a bunch of HNMs thrown in. I think people expected this to be something more akin to that or maybe Campaign, where any job can participate effectively and just bash stuff to a pulp. As it is, only the jobs normally used for HNMs will get used in Legion.

[saevel]

beg pardon? there's a reason people complain about pet job users soloing stuff too easily, and it's the pet. Granted, it isn't as easy as those commenters think it is, we pet players that succeed have developed a good bit of skill and we are using it, but most chat displays don't show all those actions due to used chat filters. But if you think pets suck in end-game you need to meet some different players. My pet jobs are REQUESTED to come, because they rock, and I'm only a slightly above average skill player with mediocre gear.

It DOES help if you pick your battles intelligently, but that's true of any job. I avoid anything with Ice Spikes like the plague when I'm soloing on dnc since I can't do anything about the spikes and the cool down on healing waltz makes it impractical, especially since the para may block the waltz, but as bard or pup I have no issues with the spikes. That's just an example, every job has their strengths and weaknesses, it's the player's job to know them and use their character intelligentally and/or build their group to compensate. Pet jobs certainly have their place in the mix, the obvious example is anything that can charm; send in the pets and get out of range; there are many other uses.

The issue with "pets suck" isn't so much that the pet sucks, but that their AI is retarded. BST is probably the best pet job due to their AI being direct and easy to control, you even get to pick the special move to use. SMN has serious issues outside of Abyssea, their avatars are just weak period and can only do cool things once per min or so. PUP suffers from it's AI having failed out of kindergarten and their only method of controlling it is via coaxing and hoping it doesn't decide to silena you instead of Cureing you. If SE would allow the PUP to directly control their pet, rather then rely on the maneuver mini-game, then PUP's usefulness would be vastly improved.

Pet jobs are powerful in the right situations, other times they get overshadowed, especially in high AoE damage environments which seem to be the direction SE is going.

[Greatguardian]

In case it gives you some insight, I think when people say they want more "exhilaration", I tihnk it is because they expected this content to be more akin to The Swarm event assault- bashing down as many monsters as possible in a time limit. But instead, it's more just a big battlefield with a bunch of HNMs thrown in. I think people expected this to be something more akin to that or maybe Campaign, where any job can participate effectively and just bash stuff to a pulp. As it is, only the jobs normally used for HNMs will get used in Legion.

To expand upon this, the monsters themselves are just not very exciting.

Straight up. You can take that right to the devs. They're going about this whole "hard monster" thing backwards and, for some reason, seem completely dumbfounded when people just zerg them or don't fight them the way they want them to be fought.

If the FFXI Dev team wants to make interesting, engaging fights, they need to throw away their current AIs and read this shit right here:

1) Stop making everything have stupidly powerful AoE. All it does is encourage zerging. Focus on single-target attacks and then allow monsters to cast AoE spells.

2) Severely decrease monster Attack. Severely increase monster Base Damage. This allows for monsters to be tanked by players with high-defense and not by random DDs without the aid of Temp items.

3) Severely decrease monster HP. Severely increase monster Defense. Add -90% MDT. Do not modify Evasion. This prevents DDs from Hulk-Smashing things into oblivion, equalizes fight times, and increases the relative effects of non-damage Enmity abilities/spells.

4) Implement dynamic reaction-based AI. No, it's not too hard to do. If there's a problem coding it, ask one of the thousands of Sysadmins and programmers playing your game for help like every other successful gaming company in the world. That is to say, give players a reason to time their skills. Give players something to react to rather than auto-attacking giant Fortifications and pressing their WS macro when it's up.

4a) Use the battlefield. Diabolos is a good example of doing this right. Ifrit from FFXIV is a good example of doing this right. Force players to pay attention to their surroundings. Floor tiles may randomly change colors and have various buff/debuff effects attached to them, or straight up explode.

4b) NM Pets. We don't need them to be mage-killers that need to be held or kited. That's dumb. Give us a reason to kill these by making their presence power up the main NM. Have them cast buffs and cures on the NM if we leave them alive too long. Give them interesting kill conditions. For example: Elemental pets that have infinite HP, but instantly die if hit by a skillchain of the element that they are weak to.

4c) Shifting elemental/damage vulnerability types. Give us a visible indicator that tells us which of the 4 damage types (Blunt, H2H, Piercing, Slashing) and which of the 8 elements the monster is weak to (+50%-100% damage) at any given time. Randomly Cycle this indicator at random times or after using certain TP moves.

4d) Allow us to cripple the monsters if we're good enough. AV's 2hour mechanic was poorly implemented but well designed. Don't force us to use our 2-hours, but allow us to lock monster abilities or spells by reacting in a particular way that is non-random and is not job-specific within a certain window after ability usage. For example, lock BIGMONSTER_A from using Thunder Breath if the team fighting it initiates an Impaction or Fragmentation skillchain within 10 seconds of the move's completion.

5) When the players tell you (the Devs) a fight is boring, it's not because we don't know how to play the game. It's because the fight is bloody boring.

[SpankWustler]

The sad thing is, they're totally capable of many if not all of those things (maybe not the AI, but there's one example that at least approaches everything else). This means they either implement a bunch of HP-sacks with horrible AoEs over and over due to limited manpower, or because they earnestly enjoy making HP-sacks with horrible AoEs on some level.

I'm imagining it now. A middle-aged Japanese programmer at the height of euphoria while fine-tuning exactly how many too many HP something should, and exactly how potent the Area-of-Effect attack that inflicts Amnesia and Poison and Doom and Low Self-Esteem should be compared to the Area-of-Effect attack that inflicts Silence and Petrification and Bind and Seasonal Depression.

In the end, he decides on "a lot" and "the same but with different graphics". We can not imagine the satisfaction he feels.

[Yygdrasil]

The issue with "pets suck" isn't so much that the pet sucks, but that their AI is retarded. BST is probably the best pet job due to their AI being direct and easy to control, you even get to pick the special move to use. SMN has serious issues outside of Abyssea, their avatars are just weak period and can only do cool things once per min or so. PUP suffers from it's AI having failed out of kindergarten and their only method of controlling it is via coaxing and hoping it doesn't decide to silena you instead of Cureing you. If SE would allow the PUP to directly control their pet, rather then rely on the maneuver mini-game, then PUP's usefulness would be vastly improved.

Pet jobs are powerful in the right situations, other times they get overshadowed, especially in high AoE damage environments which seem to be the direction SE is going.

I'm sorry. I take issue with a lot of what you're saying. First of all, you start by saying that Pet AI sucks... and then go on to say that BST is just fine and functions well as it is.

Next you're saying that SMN sucks outside Abyssea. I'm sorry but no. I'm not sure about YOUR SMN, but mine does just fine outside Abyssea. In fact, I use mine to participate in Sea, Sky, HNMs, Assault, Salvage, Limbus and Nyzul Isle. I also managed to Solo Alexander Prime and Odin Prime using my SMN. Given the right gear (and not even the best of the best) a SMN can hold his/her own just fine outside of Abyssea. I even used my SMN to get through most of the CoP missions solo... BEFORE the level cap was raised.

As for PUP AI? Yeah... it's a little wonky, but they recently revamped the AI and it functions 100% better than it used to. A lot of our attachments were changed to work more effectively and our AI now prioritizes spells based on the needs of the master in ways that it didn't before. Playing on my PUP, I can do some serious work both solo and in a group. In Abyssea, my BLM Auto does more spike damage than most BLMs can do and it's because of the higher pet damage cap that we have. Sure, we're still at the mercy of our Auto recast timers, but that can be adjusted with the right attachments.

Lastly. I appreciate that you give the nod to Pet Job Powah at the end of your post, but in "high AoE scenarios" we're no worse off than any other job apart from tanks like NIN and PLD. Anything is squishy to a high AoE but there are ways to deal with that. A PUP can use a BLM frame and nuke from a distance outside the AoE. A SMN can just let their Avatar die and re-summon... it's basically what we do already. Our pets are expendable. BST can gear up with a ton of Pet Damage reduction gear and throw out their highest def pets, keep feeding them food and hope for the best.

Honestly, I don't play BST at all, but from what I've seen... if they can't participate in this event... it'll be the only one. 99/100 ain't bad all things considered.

Pet jobs are powerful in ANY situation. How powerful simply relies on who is playing the job.