Convoker's Pigaches / Convoker's Pigaches +1 / Summoner Gear

[Nyerieri]

Hello,

A few things. When upgrading from Evoker's Pigaches it reads:

Avatar: Enhances Evasion

When it goes to Convoker's Pigaches, it says

Avatar: Increases Evasion.

Could one phrase be chosen for both?


Also another issue is if you look at Convoker's Pigaches +1

It reads "Blood Pact Damage +6". This may be a long process to fix for all gear, but it would make more sense to read Avatar: Physical BlP Damage +6 or Avatar: Magic BP Damage +6. If it enhances both, leave Blood Pact Damage +6. Sure we could test and find out on our own, but it would save time if the gear stated it. An example of a specific piece of equipment where it stats which Stat it enhances (Acc, Maacc, for Summoner) is:

Glyphic Spats +1 - Avatar: Magic Accuracy+13.

Along with these lines, could Convoker's Spats +1 be changed to say something like Avatar: Physical Accuracy+20? (assuming it is Phys Acc). Again, a very vague description on what accuracy it enhances.

Thank you
Nyerieri

Edit: Thread for reference where they went and standardized all SMN gear:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...Summoner-Relic

[Karbuncle]

Hello there!

Enhances and Increases both essentially mean the same, but I guess that conformity would be nice.

Convoker BP Damage +6 effects both physical and magical, which is why it says "BP Damage", not "Magic BP" or "Physical BP". Same for Empyrean Body, the Earring, and so forth.

And to the spats thing. I'll keep it straight forward. The spats don't need to be changed at all. Every item in the game that enhanced physical accuracy says "Accuracy", and every item in the game that enhances magical accuracy says "Magical Accuracy", exceptions do not need to be made for SMN gear and its certain not vague. Its literally basic game terminology.

Seriosuly: http://www.ffxiah.com/search/item?&d...Accuracy&level

No item in the game reads "Physical Accuracy" anywhere on it. in FFXI since the beginning, the termonology has been:

Accuracy+ = Accuracy for all Melee attacks, including weaponskills.
Magic Accuracy + = Accuracy for magical attacks and enfeebles.
Ranged Accuracy+ = Accuracy for ranged attack, throwing, etc and weaponskills.
Weaponskill Accuracy+ = Accuracy for weaponskills only.

Accuracy, the simple term, has always been used to describe physical accuracy, the distinctions between any other accuracies are always described in the clarification of their names, as described above. FFXI lays "Accuracy" as the base for physical, where other accuracies are specified by type.

Everyone in FFXI knows this, summoners included, it needs no adjustment as the distinctions are already well known in the player base from day one.

Accuracy will always mean "Physical Accuracy", even for pets. I understand that it may be more "Conformed" to have it just say "Physical Accuracy", but seeing as this stat has been in FFXI since day 1, and is already a well known and established concept, the changes seem ill needed.

Thanks

[Nyerieri]

I knew there was a chance there would be a post like this. I posted this on behalf of someone who doe not use these forums. I think it should be left up to the Dev team whether this should be split the terms out (Leave as just BP, or split into 3 categories, Phys, Magic, and BP). If its going to be standard they are never going to add pieces just for Magic, or Phys BP's then it should read something like "All Blood Pact Damage +6" A lot of people are going off assumptions right now on the summoner gear, which is never good. I know a majority of summoners that carry around two sets, one for Phys BP and another for Magic because the stats on some pieces are not clearly defined. There is always room for this game to improve when it comes to summoner.

Also, there is a lot of resources being spent right now overhauling some mechanics of this game for new players. Why not take the "assumption" out of the SMN gear. Let's say I was a new player just leveling summoner, how would I know for sure which it enhanced? Go off another players assumption? You even stated here it would be nice to have it confirmed. Again, I'll repeat it, there is always room for change to FFXI.

Accuracy will always mean "Physical Accuracy", even for pets. I understand that it may be more "Conformed" to have it just say "Physical Accuracy", but seeing as this stat has been in FFXI since day 1, and is already a well known and established concept, the changes seem ill needed. Thanks

I think we should wait to see what the localization team says. For certain the inconsistency has been my pet peeve with summoner. I made a post a while back when they started doing Avatar: Enhances XXX and the old gear would stat Enhances avatar accuracy. Guess what?, they went through and made all the gear as consistent as possible starting with AF1. Consistency is never a bad thing, especially for new players.

Thanks

[Karbuncle]

I think we should wait to see what the localization team says. For certain the inconsistency has been my pet peeve with summoner. I made a post a while back when they started doing Avatar: Enhances XXX and the old gear would stat Enhances avatar accuracy. Guess what?, they went through and made all the gear as consistent as possible starting with AF1. Consistency is never a bad thing, especially for new players.

Thanks

True, I simply wouldn't get your hopes up too high, its been this way for 12 years. Cause the clarification of stuff like this could effect many other jobs, which would mean hundreds of pieces of armor needing to be retroactively changed.

Though if you're simply asking for clarification on say, the armor with "Enhances" and "Increases" in the terminology when they both mean the same thing, that is something would be nice to have corrected to 1 word, as that could lead to confusion, since it makes no sense to have 2 things that do exactly the same thing have different means of expressing it. Still, theres probably a good handful of armor with this issue too, not just SMN.

Personally I'm thankful that all the new armor they introduce isn't vague anymore, and has plainly stated the bonuses they grant. (I.E "Fast Cast"+7 instead of "Enhances Fast Cast")

As far as your friend goes, I'd recommend helping him understand how the game works and the terminology of it, as it is a 12 year old game its understandable if he's a child of modern MMO it might be different than what he's used too. It will benefit him greatly if they don't decide to go back and change the terms on this stuff

[Unelonborro]

Good day, Nyerieri!

Thank you for your report!

With regards to the enhances/increases issue, I agree that it doesn't read elegantly, so I have changed "increases" to "enhances" to better match the terminology in other "Avatar:" effects.

With regards to accuracy vs. physical accuracy and your blood pact question, you raise an interesting point. The short answer is that we have no plans to change either of these at the currect time. For the long answer, let me provide you with a bit of background information.

In terms of amount of text space required to get across your point, Japanese is much more concise than English. In an ordinary sentence, English requires approximately 1.6 times as much space as Japanese, whereas most European languages require approximately twice as much. For example:

命中+10
Accuracy +10

This effect is lessened if the Japanese word is fully katakana and mirrors a concept in English:

ヘイスト+5%
Haste+5%

And then, we have some outliers where the text is more than twice the length:

魔攻+10
"Magic Attack Bonus"+10 --> gets shortened to "Magic. Atk. Bonus"+10, but still really long.


Now, with in-game NPC dialogue, this has never been a problem. Worst case scenario, you have to hit enter twice instead of once to see the full text. When it comes to equipment help text, however, historically we have only had seven lines to work with, not counting the item name and jobs that can equip it. Thus, we have had to take liberties with exactly how we choose to translate certain things, thus "Accuracy" instead of "Physical Accuracy" and "Magic Atk. Bonus" instead of "Magic Attack Bonus." And we had it pretty good--if you have any friends who used to play the French or German versions, ask them about how incomprehensible some of the help text was! The translators had to jump through all sorts of linguistic hoops to get things to fit.

Now, when Seekers of Adoulin was released and item level gear was introduced, the amount of help text started to become unwieldy, and the item planner was having a hard time fitting in even the Japanese help text. If you or someone you know is a rune fencer, take a look at the "Runeist Trousers" item for an example of how bad things had gotten.

Thankfully, around the end of last year the devs agreed to increase the number of lines available for help text by introducing extra windows to scroll through, so more recent items do not have the same problems. However, going back through all the old weapons and armor (somewhere in the vicinity of 10,000 items) and adjusting the help text for our new-found space isn't feasible at this time.

Both the planners and localization agree that we need to find a better way of communicating game systems to fresh adventurers, and we're starting to take the first steps toward enhancing the new player experience. At the same time, an MMO is by definition a communal game, so as a player and a person, I would encourage veterans to reach out and lend a hand to our Vana'diel neophytes.

Sorry for the long post, but hopefully I answered your question!

Unelonborro
Localization Lead

[Byrth]

Thanks for the explanation, Unelonborro!

Now that you do have the secondary description pages and space is essentially a non-issue, have you considered automating translation generation? I feel that I have seen consistency in stat descriptions increase in the last few months, so I thought that maybe you guys were moving towards this. However, minor things like typing errors in Iuitl Wristbands +1's descriptions (iirc it had +71 MND instead of +17) makes me suspect that it is still done manually for the most part.

There are obviously some pieces of equipment whose stats were probably not implemented in a way that can easily be added automatically, like job ability enhancements which might have a hardcoded check in the server code that is executed when the job ability is used, but it seems likely that the vast majority of equipment descriptions could be standardized with a simple script that maps stats to their translations. For instance, I imagine there must exist a database of armor stats with entries for Defense, STR, DEX, VIT, AGI, INT, MND, CHR, Double Attack, Magic Attack Bonus, etc. for each armor. This likely describes the majority of the stat effects for most armors. If you are willing to just let the line/page breaks fall where they may, you could iterate over this database and generate item descriptions for old gear that use the new system (and could do this once every update to include new gear).

Please tell me that they didn't hardcode so many checks that this approach isn't viable. ;;; _ ;;;

Please... ;;;;; _____ ;;;;;

[Unelonborro]

Good day, Byrth!

I would love nothing more than to have an automatic translation done for item names, and we ask periodically if such a thing is possible, but it's just not in the cards.

Even the Japanese help text is input by hand, not generated procedurally, which is why occasionally you see text bugs for equipment help occurring in both languages (see Nyerieri's other post.)

Suffice to say that translating item help text involves a lot of pixel counting and manual line breaks!

Unelonborro
Localization Lead

[Byrth]

Hello Unelonborro!

Wow, no wonder adding new armor is such an arduous task. For that solution to not be both viable and optimal, I can only imagine what a mess the server code is...

I'm envisioning a single database of common armor stats from 2003 FFXI (Defense, base stats, Accuracy, Attack, HP, MP, etc.) and then secondary databases for individual "rarer" stats from old-FFXI, like Magic Attack Bonus, Magic Defense Bonus, Double Attack, Triple Attack, etc. So a piece of armor like Manibozho Boots (id=28339) might have entries in the main database:
28339 - HP=7, MP=45, STR=0, DEX=8, AGI=17, VIT=0, INT=0, MND=0, CHR=12, Atk=12, Acc=0, Evasion=36, R.Atk=0, R.Acc=0

And then it also exists as an entry in separate tables used exclusively for the individual stats that weren't common in 2003:
Magic Defense Bonus database: 28339 - 2
Magic Evasion database: 28339 - 49
Double Attack database: 28339 - 2%
Haste database: 28339 - 41 (41/1024 ~= 4%)


Because it exists in multiple databases, assembling (or inputting) all the information for a single item would take a lot of effort. I can see how unifying the databases would be a lot of infrastructure effort... but . . . . oh man, the terror of keeping them separate and having to hardcode 21,389 item descriptions (previously in 4 different languages) is so much worse. Eagle eye hindsight I'm sure, but making one extensible database back in 2003 would have saved everyone a ton of headaches.

- Byrth

PS. Hats off to the localization department for figuring out how to do any of the German translation and coding. That was complicated.