Enmity System Explanation and Planned Adjustments

[Sasaraixx]

not sure if you understood, but from what I read, they want to basically make a snarl for Summoners... I'd love to have a disposable tank anyday...

Edit: for solo play you'd want your avatar to have all the hate anyway, and yes the prevention of glitch by assault getting 1 non volatile enmity is necessary... however for solo play I believe that a snarl would be perfect, for parties I think snarl would still be perfect, esp if it's like an emergency where you're tank is about to die and the whm can't keep up... ect. great time displacer.

I do not think we read the same post because I saw nothing in it that mentioned adding any ability for SMN, let alone Snarl. The only adjustment note I read was the following:

"When the summoner has enmity, they will not receive +1 to non-volatile enmity when executing a Blood Pact. (The +1 to non-volatile enmity will only occur when the summoner's enmity value is 0.)"

If they want to give SMN a Snarl-like ability on a reasonable timer, then I'm all for it. That would do very little for the party issues I mentioned earlier however. You as a SMN are likely to have very little hate to transfer to your avatar. It would not turn your avatar into a tank in an emergency situation.

[Sargent]

As an adjustment, we are looking into the below:

• When the summoner has enmity, they will not receive +1 to non-volatile enmity when executing a Blood Pact. (The +1 to non-volatile enmity will only occur when the summoner's enmity value is 0.)

"Oh, right. Blood Pacts do generate hate! Lets change that so our previous statement is more or less correct."

In all seriousness, I'm welcoming this adjustment, means unless you activate the Blood Pact prior to the avatar attacking the mob, Blood Pact will now be hate free (since the Summoner is put on the hate list as soon as the avatar attacks the mob).
Only thing Summoner's will have to watch out for when soloing is excessive Cures.

[Karah]

Hello,

Thanks for the feedback thus far since my previous post.

We've seen a couple of questions, so I would like to provide some responses.

Camate, I know that you're just the messenger... but what is this absolute nonsense?

Barspells being cast before the battle is true... but you dont WANT US killing things in 3 minutes... OF COURSE we're going to have to re-apply bar's MID FIGHT...

ARE YOU SERIOUS about giving rdm/nin a hard time about POSSIBLY tanking something again?
If RUN can (it really can't it sucks ((IMO)) tank something... it's really silly to cripple RDM from having it's tools as well.

The summoner/Beastmaster remarks are just flat out incorrect. Abhorrently wrong. > this one was actually addressed, but how do you even make that mistake in the first place...

[Trumpy]

someone mentioned that no one mentioned barspells new duration. i totally did. And im hopefuly they fix it. i think all barspells should last the same time. makes no sense that barparalyze should last 5 minutes and barwater last 3 minutes. They should both last 5 mins, cause i always have to go in to recast. and now its even shorter and it really irks me. Auspice as well is way way too short. especially if i am dual boxing i cant stop and run in with my whm just to auspice again. i dont even bother with is usually anymore. even if i am only playin on my whm i dont.

[SpankWustler]

someone mentioned that no one mentioned barspells new duration. i totally did. And im hopefuly they fix it. i think all barspells should last the same time. makes no sense that barparalyze should last 5 minutes and barwater last 3 minutes. They should both last 5 mins, cause i always have to go in to recast. and now its even shorter and it really irks me.

This is a known bug.

I'm hopeful that the list is just being allowed to grow so it can all be fixed at the end of this month, rather than because the Flying Spaghetti Code Monster has eaten every unpaid intern sent to combat it.

[Edyth]

Greetings,

The information mentioned yesterday about summoner's abilities and Blood Pacts not creating hate seems to have raised some questions, so I'd like to follow up on it.

To be precise, Blood Pacts have a non-volatile enmity value of 1. It's been arranged this way so that some enmity remains on the summoner when having a pet perform an action against a monster. If we were to make it so enmity was not placed on the summoner, once the enmity from the avatar is gone, it would cause bugs to occur (such as monsters becoming unclaimed). It's very similar to the way linked monsters don't come after the summoner once the avatar has vanished (except it would happen to the monster you perform the Blood Pact on).

In the case that the avatar's enmity has a minimum value of 1 for both non-volatile and volatile enmity, when executing a Blood Pact, the summoner will receive +1 to their non-volatile enmity, making a total of 2 non-volatile and 1 volatile enmity. When this happens, the target will go after the avatar.

As an adjustment, we are looking into the below:

• When the summoner has enmity, they will not receive +1 to non-volatile enmity when executing a Blood Pact. (The +1 to non-volatile enmity will only occur when the summoner's enmity value is 0.)

The above adjustment is not a job ability adjustment; it will be a change to the process occurring in the programming, so please give us a bit of time for this.

We had looked into taking another approach by adding an enmity+ stat to avatars like beastmaster's familiars have, and to ease up on the enmity lost when taking damage; however, this was geared more towards solo play and there are times when it would be best for avatars not to take hate during party battles, so we decided to adopt the adjustment mentioned above.

Camate, I thank you for the swift transmission to the development team, I thank them for their swift reply, and I thank you for your swift translation of that reply.

Could you relay also the following information:

*The situations where an avatar taking hate is undesirable are so few that they should not be considered. With unparalleled recast speed, no weakened status, and no items required to summon them, nothing in FFXI is more dispensable than an avatar's life. A new one will be back in mere seconds, and it'll be in tip-top shape, unlike the bloody, bruised avatar who just died. Avatars' damage resistance is also outstanding.
*It would be nice to have a job trait to increase avatars' enmity, or a provoke-type ability for one or all avatars. The Eidolon Alexander in FFXIII has an ability called Lofty Challenge that does just this: that ability could be a universal avatar command akin to Avatar's Favor, or it could also be a Blood Pact: Ward if balance requires it. Because, story-wise and (for the most part) battle-wise, the six sleeping gods (the protocrystal bunch) are superior to the 5 terrestrial avatars (Carbuncle, Fenrir, Diabolos, Bahamut, and Phoenix), I think it would be great if all six sleeping gods had this as a Ward, with the name "Lofty Challenge" signifying their supremacy.

*Other enmity issue: nobody wants Ninjutsu to generate less hate. I'd prefer the enmity for Ninjutsu to be doubled rather than halved.

[RAIST]

Greetings,

The information mentioned yesterday about summoner's abilities and Blood Pacts not creating hate seems to have raised some questions, so I'd like to follow up on it.

To be precise, Blood Pacts have a non-volatile enmity value of 1. It's been arranged this way so that some enmity remains on the summoner when having a pet perform an action against a monster. If we were to make it so enmity was not placed on the summoner, once the enmity from the avatar is gone, it would cause bugs to occur (such as monsters becoming unclaimed). It's very similar to the way linked monsters don't come after the summoner once the avatar has vanished (except it would happen to the monster you perform the Blood Pact on).

In the case that the avatar's enmity has a minimum value of 1 for both non-volatile and volatile enmity, when executing a Blood Pact, the summoner will receive +1 to their non-volatile enmity, making a total of 2 non-volatile and 1 volatile enmity. When this happens, the target will go after the avatar.

As an adjustment, we are looking into the below:

• When the summoner has enmity, they will not receive +1 to non-volatile enmity when executing a Blood Pact. (The +1 to non-volatile enmity will only occur when the summoner's enmity value is 0.)

The above adjustment is not a job ability adjustment; it will be a change to the process occurring in the programming, so please give us a bit of time for this.

We had looked into taking another approach by adding an enmity+ stat to avatars like beastmaster's familiars have, and to ease up on the enmity lost when taking damage; however, this was geared more towards solo play and there are times when it would be best for avatars not to take hate during party battles, so we decided to adopt the adjustment mentioned above.

I think this may have been mt'ed---think it should read:

In the case that the avatar's enmity has a minimum value of 1 for both non-volatile and volatile enmity, when executing a Blood Pact, the summoner will receive +1 to their non-volatile enmity, making a total of 2 non-volatile and 1 volatile enmity. When this happens, the target will go after the summoner.

As that is what appears to be happening.

Not sure if this will be a proper fix though. If we are talking of increases by only 1 point each time the way it is currently, then it should no longer be an issue after the first BP: Rage that lands for decent damage. Unfortunately, as it stands right now, it can happen again when you fire your next BP: Rage. The avatar should have generated sufficient enmity by then to offset a few more points of enmity being added to the summoner from the second BP. Unfortunately, this does not appear to be the case as it is now. There may be a bigger issue at play causing the hate to be skewed so heavily towards the summoner that this removal of 1 point increases per BP does not resolve.

Will just have to see how it all pans out I guess. Just not very confident this will resolve the erratic hate issues well enough, requiring further adjustments.

The idea about giving avatars a +enmity trait like BST pets would be the more appropriate solution that you guys should work on adding as well. Once implemented, this could have it's strength adjusted appropriately to achieve the desired level of balance--if it initially is too strong/too weak it could more or lease just have it's value raised/lowered. (by the way, that is what was mentioned....a trait for the avatars, not a Snarl like ability. This would be an inherent trait to the avatars themselves, like Stout Servant).

[Calintzpso]

The Test Videos I performed have been uploaded.

Three Experiment in short #1 experiment was not uploaded as Fraps takes a LOAD of space for every minute recording. I could not get the monster to seek me out over the course of a 8 minute battle constantly healing my pet with items and wards when I did not resummon the avatar via the traditional: distance between me and the monster/avatar - Resummon, in order to not gain any hate. I didn't attack with the pet, I just stood next to it and issued Blood Pacts.

So Experiment #1 was not uploaded or recorded.

Experiment #2: Youtube: http://youtu.be/VlnC5e5WAlM

I summoned my avatar and began my assault onto the monster. I then used a blood pact and gave myself plenty of distance to re-summon as to not gain any more enmity then my initial attack or be in danger while soloing. I allowed my re-summoned avatar to resume battle VIA auto attack. Upon using a blood pact: Rage The monster shifted towards me but was quickly quelled by my avatars attack. Over constant reuse of this tactic of run and gun with re-summoned via Distance fighting. It will come to a point where the initial auto attack from the avatar would not faze the monster until it has taken a few hits at me. This supports what Camate has said about how after the initial attack we gain 1 non-volatile, and if they make it so after the initial aggression has given that 1 point we gain no more, then the monsters shouldn't ever look at us through extended use of the tactic shown in the video so long as our pets re-engage and we don't gain anymore enmity in its range.

Experiment #3: Youtube: http://youtu.be/nOXGtnY3sz0

This experiment was to show how battling along side our pets, or just pets in general of all jobs now hold no Enmity from the master just about anymore and cannot be done(except in the case of BST Jug pets and Snarl).

It shows that Pets deteriorate their volatile enmity way to fast and needs to be adjusted from what it once was, or they need to have a more solid non-volatile added to their attack rounds and possibly Special Attacks(Ready/Sic/Rages).

I waited 10 rounds of attack, entered battle and whiffed, and you can tell the monster was pissed for a moment, I gained apparently a massive short burst of Volatile Enmity from missing which is completely stupid in my opinion. Just in general it shows that supporting your pet in battle on any pet job shy of Snarl Jug users, is not viable at all as the pets burn Volatile way to fast, and gain the lowest non-volatile I've ever seen in the history of the game.

[Yinnyth]

The problem to me appears to be that they balanced hate gain from damage towards an endgame player with good gear and good buffs. The reason pet jobs are suffering now is the same reason they've always suffered: a pet simply cannot match the damage output of a real player, so their hate deteriorates into nothing.

The fix I would like to see for this problem is not necessarily more enmity for pets or abilities which help them hold hate, but giving pets the same advantage players have. Mostly, the ability for a pet to be buffed and more gear which boosts pet as much as gear currently boosts players.

[Vivik]

Why not just roll back the enmity system until it's working properly instead of making the player-base deal with this crap? It was obviously rolled out before it was ready and has been causing much more problems than "fixes". Scrap it and start over if you have to but do something soon.

Yet another notch in SEs "fix what's not broken" belt.