Remove or decrease race penalties

[Economizer]

Wouldn't it make more sense to just adjust the merits so that a fully merited taru has the same HP as a fully merited galka only it would take far more merits for a taru to reach that cap than a galka? If they did that for all stats, they could keep the Consequence / Benefit thing that people seem so in love with without making race choice a permanent pain in the ass. It would still be unfair to taru's because they the only stat that people would really feel required to merit, but people seem to like the idea of getting screwed by picking a cute character instead of a big character so why not?

This would be so great, everyone could merit everything to a super race level of stats too - you could have the HP and VIT of a Galka, the MP and INT of a Tarutaru, the STR/MND of an Elvaan, the DEX/AGI of a Mithra, and the CHR of a Hume. My only caveat would be that this should be a separate and new merit category from everything else.

And for game logic, here's this - you'd need to have beat CoP (and of course unlocked merits) to unlock these new merits, since you've "broken" your chains - the primary game logic for race differences if you will. There could even be a quest for it, and if it really kills people that hate Tarutaru or obsess about a game needing to be weighed down with morals and life lessons (aside from the standard "don't be a jerk" that happens when you play with other people), the quest or meriting could be harder for Tarutaru like everything else is in the game.

Flatlining the stats in this way, by bringing it to everyone's strengths, and by having a bit of game logic, will make the design easier to deal with since the devs won't have to worry about making another set of RSE at 99 that somehow is competitive with the wholly better gear we have now, nor will they have to worry about shutting out Tarutaru from entire events by making mobs hit too hard, nor have to worry about making Tarutaru actually have any amount of advantage to balance out the biggest disadvantage ever by making MP pools worthwhile or INT based magic damage competitive (although they should do this regardless) with melee jobs.

But I guess if making things even between races is so unpopular we can remove the quest and key items to open those weighted doors in Quicksand Caves, and start working on more ways to make life worse for anyone who isn't the Galka masterrace.

[Llana_Virren]

Where do you get these ideas? Is this game owned / run by some educational institution? Since when is it required that all video games include lessons about sacrifice and reward or that every decision should have consequences? I don't need a video game to teach me that I can't have everything in life. Life does a sufficient job of that on it's own and I was fully capable of grasping that long before I ever picked this or any other game up. I hope this is true of everyone else playing this game as well.



Wouldn't it make more sense to just adjust the merits so that a fully merited taru has the same HP as a fully merited galka only it would take far more merits for a taru to reach that cap than a galka? If they did that for all stats, they could keep the Consequence / Benefit thing that people seem so in love with without making race choice a permanent pain in the ass. It would still be unfair to taru's because they lack in the only stat that people would really feel required to merit, but people seem to like the idea of getting screwed by picking a cute character instead of a big character so why not?

You're still trying to sell me on the idea of making it possible for "Player A" regardless of race, have the same stats (not counting gear) as every other Player.
And that's the single idea that I will refuse to bend on. To keep it simple, a fully merited Taru should not, under any circumstances, be able to have equal HP or STR or VIT or whatnot, of a fully merited Elvaan. Period.

Yes everyone needs more HP.
Yes we should have better-organized and designed merits (I'm looking at you, RDM).
No, we should not make it so that race is purely cosmetic.

[Dantedmc]

No, we should not make it so that race is purely cosmetic.

Why is this a bad thing? Game changing, permanent stats should not be tied to physical appearance.

[Arcon]

No, we should not make it so that race is purely cosmetic.

You can't say what we should or shouldn't do, because this is simply a matter of opinion. You think variation is good, others think it's pointless. Yet others think there's a useful middle ground.

Increasing HP across the board would not help at all, it's not a solution to this problem. A solution would be to diminish the difference between the races. Leave some difference there for people who want to be special snowflakes, but make the races functionally similar. HP is the only outlier in this regard. The difference in HP is currently at about 30% while the MP difference is at up to 50% (between Galka and Tarutaru), while all other stats hover in the 10% range. And that's despite HP/MP being a lot more relevant and noticeable. If Tarutaru's advantage in MP would be reduced to 10% and HP disadvantage reduced to 10% it would already be a huge help, and it would still be a larger difference than all other stats.

[Llana_Virren]

It's a safe rule of thumb that on the internet, "yes" and "no" are 99/100 opinion, so I'm saving the few characters of typing "in my opinion" after each yea or nay.

As far as races, and we agree that we're now talking about stats -other- than HP and MP:
The game did change dramatically, however you can't just say "well guys, its been a nice run, but since we don't need all this MP anymore let's just change it into HP so that we don't suffer any of the penalties as DD, that everyone else did playing mage all these years".

You're not talking into account that these stats are both positive and negative. Mithra naturally excelled as both Thieves and Rangers, and were supposed to based on the role of their race in Vana'diel. The same applies to Tarutaru, who throughout lore sacrificed great physical strength for magic power.

So should any willy-nilly Elvaan or Galka be on equal footing to a Mithra as a THF or RNG (or NIN, by extension)? Or any Galka or Hume be able to out-nuke a Taru? The idea that "everyone is equal" and "everyone can do whatever he or she wants to" is all well and good, but it contradicts the entire premise of having different races.

(The lack of significant importance to magic damage hurt everyone equally, so that is not an unfair swipe against Tarus. However the need for significant HP to survive attacks has always been the bane of being a Taru. The problem is not how little HP Taru have, but rather how minute the increases in HP between 75-99, and that also affected everyone.)

Again, we keep going back to HP/MP, but I've already said that should be handled on the side. We're really talking about STR/VIT/DEX/AGI/MND/INT/CHR now, and those were tilted one way or another to offer diversity... and it does. The game might have changed to tilt HP and MP one way or another, but the remaining stats have remained somewhat true to form (*cough* CHR on DRK WS...).

To emphasize... again... for HP... everyone should get substantially more than they have now; but by increasing it across the board racial alignment becomes unnecessary.

Lastly, permanent stats are not tied to physical appearance, they are tied to race-as is the case in virtually every RPG...ever. The appearance is chosen after the race. You can't deliberately switch the two in attempt to argue that appearance somehow affects gameplay, because it doesn't.

[Byrth]

No. If you increase HP across the board then SE will keep making monsters that can kill Galkas with WS+melee hit (and thus one-shot a Taru). We need to bring the HP of frontline jobs close together so that they can design monsters that are difficult but don't alienate one of the more popular races.

[FrankReynolds]

As far as races, and we agree that we're now talking about stats -other- than HP and MP:
The game did change dramatically, however you can't just say "well guys, its been a nice run, but since we don't need all this MP anymore let's just change it into HP so that we don't suffer any of the penalties as DD, that everyone else did playing mage all these years".

Actually you can. They pretty much do that to some group or another every single time they change something. That's why you don't full time B.Haidates any more or grind for 7,000 hours to get one level anymore. Does it suck a little for the people who lived through the shitty part? Yeah, a little. But not nearly as bad as continuing to endure the shitty part for all eternity. Wishing that others suffer just because you have suffered is quite a problem don't you think?

You're not talking into account that these stats are both positive and negative. Mithra naturally excelled as both Thieves and Rangers, and were supposed to based on the role of their race in Vana'diel. The same applies to Tarutaru, who throughout lore sacrificed great physical strength for magic power.

I'm taking into account the positive and the negative. I don't like either.

They can rewrite this whole thing with robots and gummy bears as the main characters if they want or make everyone talk like Samuel L. Jackson. There are a million things in the lore that are inconsistent with the way the game actually works anyways. Don't try to take issue with this one minor inconsistency just because it suites you.

So should any willy-nilly Elvaan or Galka be on equal footing to a Mithra as a THF or RNG (or NIN, by extension)? Or any Galka or Hume be able to out-nuke a Taru? The idea that "everyone is equal" and "everyone can do whatever he or she wants to" is all well and good, but it contradicts the entire premise of having different races.

How do you know that they didn't just make the different races to fit the story line? What makes you so sure that they must have designed different races just to meet someones desire for different stats being permanently placed in the game? Every piece of fiction of this nature that I have ever read has featured different races like elves and dwarfs and crap. Sometime the dwarfs are crazy tough warriors. Sometimes the elves are tiny. Sometimes they're huge. Sometimes the cat people are magicians. Sometimes they are too stupid to fit any job really. Who are you to say what that JP guy was thinking when he wrote that stuff? What makes you think that the guy who wrote the lore knew anything about how stats work at all?

In my personal opinion, the people who wrote the story line and the people who designed the stat / battle system probably didn't give each other requirements like that. I suspect that someone wrote a cool back story and then some other guy went "oh, cool. I guess I'll give elves some of this and tarus some of that". I doubt that he ever really considered whether or not that would make the game fun. How could he possibly know that it would be annoying the crap out of people who were stuck with that crap 10 years later? Do you really think he would be too married to it to change it? Because, he is considering it.

Lastly, permanent stats are not tied to physical appearance, they are tied to race-as is the case in virtually every RPG...ever. The appearance is chosen after the race. You can't deliberately switch the two in attempt to argue that appearance somehow affects gameplay, because it doesn't.

You didn't notice that the races all look different from eachother? Or are we having a misunderstanding about the definition of appearance? And again, who cares about what other RPGs are doing? I don't pay them money. They don't make FFXI. In Halo I can dominate the rocket launcher and PWN your face all day. That is not allowed in this game. Should they add it just because some other game did it?

[Mirage]

Perhaps a solution could be to add merits that were inversely proportiona(or something)? The less HP you have, the more HP the merit would give you per point put in it. Then do the same with all the other base stats as well.

Every race could still increase any stat they wanted, but a galka wanting to raise his HP further would get less out of it than if he had increased MP, and less out of it than a taru putting the same amount of points in HP.

There could be some sort of formula developed to control how much of each stat you'd get. I wouldn't know what it would be like cause i'm no mathematician.

[Llana_Virren]

No. If you increase HP across the board then SE will keep making monsters that can kill Galkas with WS+melee hit (and thus one-shot a Taru). We need to bring the HP of frontline jobs close together so that they can design monsters that are difficult but don't alienate one of the more popular races.

As a premise I would agree, that all "WAR" would have one value for base HP, all "WHM" or "BLM" their own, job-dependent HP value. The issue however isn't with HP so much as the other stats. We already agreed that players need more HP. (And yes, I'd also bet that SE would just get up and make even more retarded NM moves to account for the HP increase... because, well, SE is retarded like that).

The problem (as I see it... better?) is that the argument is that all "WARs" (for example) should have matching base stats for everything (no consideration for Race stats), not only for HP.

Frank says he doesn't like Race-affiliated stats, and he is correct that not every RPG maintains the same "lore" for what Races are (or even what constitutes its own Race, for example Elf versus Wood Elf versus Dark Elf versus Changling, versus et cetera ad nausium). However I did not say that SE did this with FFXI to appease any individual, but rather they took the "model" and put their own twist on it. And traditionally in Final Fantasy, smaller characters (usually denoted by job, Race or age) had lower HP but with job-based stats. So to use that as a model, a Taru WAR could in theory have higher attack than an Elvaan WAR ... but still significantly less HP.

The proposal is to make it so that Races served no purpose beyond cosmetics, and I think that in order to do that, you have to say that Races should serve no purpose. It is specifically this point with which I disagree, based on the precept of what a Race is and how it correlates to the RPG environment.

[Rambus]

Greetings everyone!

There seems to be a large discussion going on over on the Japanese forums in regards to this topic as well!

Here is a comment from Producer Akihiko Matsui:

There is problems when you get "You can't play pld because you do not have enough hp to live though an attack. After putting all that DT, MDB and so on you only have enough room to do so much to pad hp.

(Kinda taking a comment of someone else posted here about there being problems because HP values are too low for the current mobs.)

I am a taru mage but I pad Hp because 90 hp might prevent me getting one-shotted.

Max mp is meaningless anyway because of how people can control MP management and MP restore. So if max Mp is meaningless, then it tilts an imbalanced favor for max hp because HP is meaningful in this game.

I also feel STR for melee is tilted more for melee effects then INT is for mages. So then you have an imbalance of liking melee setups/races as apposed to mages. All zerg strategies are melee orientated because buffs pad them better. So you have those imbalances too.