Enmity System Explanation and Planned Adjustments

[Tamarsamar]

The enmity value of provoke was figured out long ago...
Do the devs not realize that we actually have enmity values for many (if not most) of the spells/abilities in the game?

Given the attitude that I highlighted in my above post, I'm pretty sure that not only do they know about that, but that's the only reason that they gave us any details/values at all . . .

[ManaKing]

There are several new SPs that deal with Enmity rather closely. Is the reason we still haven't gotten new SPs implemented because the Enmity system needed to be overhauled first so that they could be adjusted properly, or are they just not far enough along in actual development?

Will we see the changes to the Enmity system or the new SPs before the release of the expansion?

How about the other topics covered in Overall Battle System Adjustments for the Future?

I don't personally need a date so much as I want to know which one is going to come first, any/all of the adjustments or the expansion. It sounds like the Expansion is coming first, but that's just a very unfounded assumption.

[Nebo]

I have to laugh at a company that makes a big reveal/release post like this about formulas and mechanics that have been known to to the player base for years?

It makes me wonder though: Just how out of touch with the player base are you really?

I mean, short of burying your head in the sand, covering your ears with your hands and screaming "la la la la la I'm not listening"....taking literally no interest in any conversations happening about FFXI...Surely you must know that we, the player base, already know these mechanics....right?

See, I think you DO know that we already know these things. The question I have is: Why do you pretend like you don't know that we know this already?

That is a huge statement about your opinion of us...and it isn't good for business. It's a farce. It's a sham. It's a lie. It's disrespectful. But most importantly, it speaks volumes about the state of communication, not just on the forums or the "community" that you have tried to show the illusion of creating to discuss your product, but the effect on more direct marketing communications and other functions of doing business.

You must also know that eventually, should you ever make a success out of FFXIV, the largest segment for that game is going to come from players of FFXI, initially...and their friends, and referrals, etc.

I'll give you another hint: Treating the largest pool of leads you have (for the cash sink [FFXIV] that you have bet all your chips on) with such disrespect...is BAD for business lol. It won't matter how good FXIV is. Competition in this market is fierce and they are doing a much better job than you in this area.

Do yourselves a favor: get on board with this "communication" thing. Your developers are obviously on too busy a development schedule to do it effectively (and quite frankly, it shouldn't be their job to keep the conversation going). Give your "community team" a larger pool of information to work with and empower them to cultivate conversations and content freely, based on that information.

They seem to play the game and have a much greater (cultural and localized) understanding of the issues that you are so good a pissing people off about. Give them the power to participate more in those conversations.

This whole "hush hush...we don't want to give information about this or that." is really a thing of the past. There is a time and place for it, but your timing and placement needs serious reevaluation. ESPECIALLY for a game in this stage of its product life cycle.

[Keyln]

I have to laugh at a company that makes a big reveal/release post like this about formulas and mechanics that have been known to to the player base for years?

It makes me wonder though: Just how out of touch with the player base are you really?

I mean, short of burying your head in the sand, covering your ears with your hands and screaming "la la la la la I'm not listening"....taking literally no interest in any conversations happening about FFXI...Surely you must know that we, the player base, already know these mechanics....right?

See, I think you DO know that we already know these things. The question I have is: Why do you pretend like you don't know that we know this already?

That is a huge statement about your opinion of us...and it isn't good for business. It's a farce. It's a sham. It's a lie. It's disrespectful. But most importantly, it speaks volumes about the state of communication, not just on the forums or the "community" that you have tried to show the illusion of creating to discuss your product, but the effect on more direct marketing communications and other functions of doing business.

You must also know that eventually, should you ever make a success out of FFXIV, the largest segment for that game is going to come from players of FFXI, initially...and their friends, and referrals, etc.

I'll give you another hint: Treating the largest pool of leads you have (for the cash sink [FFXIV] that you have bet all your chips on) with such disrespect...is BAD for business lol. It won't matter how good FXIV is. Competition in this market is fierce and they are doing a much better job than you in this area.

Do yourselves a favor: get on board with this "communication" thing. Your developers are obviously on too busy a development schedule to do it effectively (and quite frankly, it shouldn't be their job to keep the conversation going). Give your "community team" a larger pool of information to work with and empower them to cultivate conversations and content freely, based on that information.

They seem to play the game and have a much greater (cultural and localized) understanding of the issues that you are so good a pissing people off about. Give them the power to participate more in those conversations.

This whole "hush hush...we don't want to give information about this or that." is really a thing of the past. There is a time and place for it, but your timing and placement needs serious reevaluation. ESPECIALLY for a game in this stage of its product life cycle.

Because there are people out there who may not be familiar with the inner workings of the enmity system, and the explanation is for them. You may know it already. Good for you. Doesn't mean other people do.

Now, if you understand the system as well as you say you do, how about coming up with some real suggestions?

[Economizer]

If you all weren't so stubbornly tight-lipped and more freely shared information in general

This was especially frustrating when it came to finding the Cure Formula Changes.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not asking them to release every little secret on how new monsters or armor works, maybe the game has some aspects of discovery as a matter of the design. But something so common as cures and we can't even get numbers at the time you're asking for feedback on major tweaks?

We know exactly how they work, we knew before they were implemented to the official servers... but did you have to waste our valuable time reverse engineering some numbers just so we could give you some feedback on it?

I don't even think they listened to any feedback we gave on the new cure formula at all to be blunt, especially since it took us some time to disseminate the information to the Japanese players so they could give feedback as well. When a group of English speaking players are a better source of information on something so banal as how cures work then the development team that speaks the same language, you know you have a major problem.

[Nebo]

Now, if you understand the system as well as you say you do, how about coming up with some real suggestions?

If there were any indication or acknowledgement that the Developers read anything at all on the NA forums, I might.

But it seems likely that they don't read them, or don't get them translated, or don' get them translated accurately due to "emotionally charged tone," or perhaps they just don't give a sh*t what you filthy Gaijin have to say. Who knows? There is never any Acknowledgment or communication at all in that regard so it leaves these unanswered questions in customers' minds...and also to a great deal of dissatisfaction.

But lack of proper analysis, testing and truly great ideas (from people much smarter than I am) on these boards is not the problem.

The problem is lack of communication, acknowledgement, responsiveness, information management, conversation management...blah blah blah.

To that end, I did make a suggestion in the post you quoted. The developers are clearly too busy....developing stuff to do this job with any kind of acceptable level of effectiveness. How many times has the producer himself apologized for not being able to produce forum content on time?

The answer seems simple to me: don't make managing the flow of information (and as a result the conversation) their job. Empower your community team to do what their job SHOULD be to do. Unless the idea of being a not-so-glorified translator really does appeal to them?

[SpankWustler]

The Development Bros seem to really grasp the main issue about enmity: hitting stuff in the face provides way too much of it compared to literally every other type of action. I like that adjusting spells and abilities that produce static amounts of Enmity is still on the table, also.

So, I'm optimistic that the enmity adjustments will go down as well as the Cure formula changes went down. That wasn't a particularly innovative or complex solution, but it worked out great.

Because there are people out there who may not be familiar with the inner workings of the enmity system, and the explanation is for them. You may know it already. Good for you. Doesn't mean other people do.

It's not about whether or not the explanation was needed. It's about treating information that players already know like a super spy's super secrets while providing that explanation.

There's no point in being discrete about information that the playerbase itself has already made available to the playerbase. It would be easier for them and less insulting for our intelligence if they just explained using numbers that both parties already have access to rather than providing such a long and roundabout explanation to avoid revealing information that is no longer secret.

I don't even think they listened to any feedback we gave on the new cure formula at all to be blunt, especially since it took us some time to disseminate the information to the Japanese players so they could give feedback as well. When a group of English speaking players are a better source of information on something so banal as how cures work then the development team that speaks the same language, you know you have a major problem.

They probably listened long enough to note that players felt Cure VI was "even more pointless" and "a bit insane" in regards to its extreme MP inefficiency. This confirmed that they had successfully included something pointless or insane in spite of the general awesomeness of the Cure formula changes. They have a quota to fill.

[Camate]

Greetings everyone!

Thanks for all the posts thus far. We’ve been forwarding them to Producer Matsui who has been reading each and every one. He was planning to make a post last night, but unfortunately he was unable to secure the time, so for the time being I will post in place of him. With that said, the man himself will post in more detail once he has the right amount of free time.

For those of you who took the time to read over the entire post, I think you generally got a good understanding of how the system works, but might have been left feeling “okay, I got it, but what are you guys gonna do?”

To put it really simply, we will be making it so that players do not get stuck at the enmity cap in battle anymore (the current situation where the enmity control system is not functioning properly). Apologies if the main basis of our adjustment plan was not clearly spelled out.

While we have seen a good amount of suggestions for ways to adjust this, we are taking them all into consideration and have various other adjustment plans in mind, but to start out we will first be setting a new standard damage value when Seekers of Adoulin is released. The main reasoning for this is that if we were to cram all of the adjustments in at once, we wouldn’t really have a grasp of where the problems are coming from.

[sweetidealism]

This is an excellent step forward, and I am thoroughly thrilled to hear it.

Now that tanking will be possible again, are there plans to make tanking desirable again? In many of today's events, it seems like it doesn't matter who the monster attacks (so long as it's not attacking a backline job) because nearly all incoming attacks are area of effects that hit all frontline jobs. As a result, having mitigation for just one person doesn't help much. Personally, I would like to see this changed moving forward.

[Mirabelle]

The whole brokenness of enmity is the whole loss of utility of PLD, RNG and BLM in many battles. PLD can't hold hate from hasted/buffed DD. No one wants RNG and BLM to pull mobs away from hasted/buffed DD's because of missed WS's and low defense characters getting AoE'd to death.

So the question for this enmity adjustment: Is it enough to make PLD, BLM and RNG relevant again? Or are they going to be limited as always to the occasional kiting fight where 90% of the battles remain zergs.