Why Accuracy is a Terrible Stat to Balance a Game Around

[Aysha]

Just as the title says, I am now going to talk about why I think Accuracy is a terrible stat in general to put in a video game, and why it stinks to balance all the endgame content around loading your character down with it.

First, let's talk about why we as humans play RPGs (especially MMOs) in the first place. We play J-RPGs and MMORPGs because we enjoy making progress on our character, bit-by-bit.

Whether it is by leveling up, or gaining a new spell, or ability, or piece of equipment, getting progress on your character fires off all the right synapses in our brains, that triggers a pleasurable sensation.

MMOs are built and designed around this concept, and sometimes MMOs exploit this with Skinners' Boxes (I'm not going to go into that here though, nor am I blaming FFXI or its devs for this). Either way, this is the core concept around an MMORPG: Character Progression.

Accuracy is the worst stat that anybody could have thought up of, for character progression. It was so bad that World of Warcraft learned its lesson and outright removed it entirely, first for tanks and then for everybody else an expansion later. If I recall correctly, the same is being talked about for FFXIV.

May I ask, why are we still designing around accuracy today in FFXI?

I am not saying we can, or even should, remove Accuracy from FFXI -- that would create all kinds of balance problems, and require a lot of work. What we can do, however, is make new content not require so much accuracy to do that it might as well be meaningless to care about Accuracy.

Why do we want to do this?

Because Accuracy is anti-fun. Bear with me here for a moment, and I will explain why. Let's say you play a melee job, and you oftentimes engage in solo content, whether it be farming, questing, or just gaining some XP or Job Points on the side. You're not going to care about Accuracy for these things: No matter what you do, you will never get above 95% chance to hit your enemy.

So, when you do Endgame, and you get weapons and armor that are simply loaded down with accuracy (such as Ambuscade armor...), you're going to go out and do your farming... but that nice shiny new piece of armor you just got? It doesn't feel any better than the piece you were using.

To be honest, I would find this absolutely disheartening if I went through the trouble of getting an Ambuscade Body+1 only to find out that it didn't increase my damage whatsoever at all unless I'm doing Endgame Content. The entirety of the game shouldn't revolve around Endgame Content, though, because that's the trap every other MMO falls into (and that's why they are all boring to me).

Part of the reason I'm playing FFXI, is because there is so much stuff to do that I can work on freely without worrying about the typical Endgame stuff (finding people, finding a linkshell, being available when other people demand me to be available, blah blah). There's plenty of things to do outside of Endgame.

However, with Accuracy.... it's "You must have _____ Accuracy to do this!"

I hate that. When I get a new shiny piece of armor, I want it to cause me to do more damage. I want to see better performance at all tiers of the game, and Accuracy simply doesn't do that. I don't want to sink dozens upon dozens of hours into Ambuscade for a +1 Body that only marginally increases my character except for Accuracy.

Accuracy doesn't give you the same pleasure as other stats. When I grab a piece that has 20 more strength or +weapon skill on it than the piece I was wearing, I'll notice that I'm hitting harder. Maybe my THF hits for 320-350 instead of 270-290. Maybe her Exenterators are hitting for ~2800s on certain mobs, when I was only doing ~2500s. That's performance I can SEE.

When you get above 85% or so Accuracy, you're not going to notice a difference in your character's performance unless you are at Endgame unless you parsed your logs and did some number-crunching. +300 damage average on weaponskills? Yes, you see that. The occasional extra miss that is missing? No, you're probably not going to notice that while you're fighting. It's a big enough deal that everybody wants you to wear Accuracy Gear and eat Sushi, but yet it's not big enough that you can actually eyeball the chat log and notice the difference.

And on the subject of Sushi......why are we still eating the same foods that we were using back during Treasures of Aht Urhgan? That's a separate subject I'll be covering later, but still. Sushi. Sushi. Sushi. Don't come without Sushi. *sigh*

Accuracy just doesn't make a player feel good like good ole fashioned raw damage does. It's an empty stat that's there, just for the sake of being there. Other MMOs are starting to see how much the stat is anti-fun and they are removing it, and I think we should (essentially) do the same ourselves. Not remove it, just reduce the Accuracy requirements of endgame battles so that it doesn't become the be-all and end-all of melee.

[Afania]

If I read it correctly your entire argument is based on "Because it's not fun" or "I want to participate in the highest tier content without doing the gear ladder climb". And since fun is subjective, from game design perspective I can't agree with your opinion.

This is MMO, so there needs some sort of mechanics to prevent people that just ding 99 and start doing the hardest content. Anyone who ding 99 must first start with easiest content, then 2nd easiest content, then move up until they can do the hardest content. I'm pretty sure you understand this MMO gear ladder climb already.

In order to filter out undergeared DD for the hardest content, there are only 3 ways that I can think of:
1) Filter them out with higher acc requirements, so DDs must get better gears for more acc to hit them.
2) Filter them out with massive dmg from NM, so DDs must get better gears with higher def, meva, HP to survive.
3) Filter them out with higher NM HP, so DDs must get better DPS gears to deal dps before time out.

Apparently No.3 is what you're asking for, however if SE focus on DPS output to gate people out, it'd run the risk of

1) All the easier content becomes WAY too easy. It's already possible to deal 30k~50k+ WS in high end content on some of the Melee DDs and I've even seen 70k+. Imagine you do even MORE damage in delve, or ambuscade vol2. How much more damage are you asking for? 99k WS on those? That's just way too much in FFXI and it'll turn FFXI into WoW or FFXIV when top tier of DD gears are light years ahead of previous tiers.

2) It kills room for DPS improvement in the future. Again, when we're already doing 30k to 50k or even 70k WSs with buffs, imagine how much dmg we'll do after 5 years when SE release 5 more tiers of DD gears? The game damage caps at 99k and there already aren't much room to improve dmg already.

3) You mentioned that DD dps doesn't improve in FFXI outside of accuracy, this is actually incorrect. The gap between top tier DD and avg tier DD is way bigger than 75 era nowadays, thanks to stat vomit and new DPS gears release every once a while. Even at capped accuracy, a DD wearing full DM/HQ abj armor with optimal REMA weapon will deal way more dmg than 119 DD without any DM/HQ nor REMA. So if you fun with bigger numbers, you DO get them with better gears already. You just aren't going to see WoW level of increase because this game is not WoW. If you compare ws avg in 2013 delve when 5k was good, then look at WAR and DRK spamming 50k resos these days, it's already increased by 10x.

4) One of the selling point in FFXI has been small stat increase between each tiers of gears, this is unlike WoW or FFXIV. It's FFXI tradition, and I certainly don't want to see everyone in FFXI running with 99999 HP hitting things for 99999 each swings WoW style. I mean, if I want to see massive numbers I'd just play wow....

5) Accuracy requirements also creates variety for jobs. Some jobs such as BLU, DRG, DNC, RNG has innate higher acc, which gives them an advantage over low acc jobs like WAR, DRK, COR. This is variety, and strength and weakness of each jobs. Some jobs excel at boosting DD accuracy, such as RDM and BRD, this is strength and weakness of each job. If you reduce accuracy, how there are less room to implement strength and weakness of each jobs.

Not to mention the way the game is designed, acc is part of pt configuration.

6) SE already reduced accuracy requirements, so acc is already not so much of an issue for a buffed pt.

7) Your reason of wanting acc requirement removal is because you want to participate in highest tier content without gear ladder climb, but changing the requirement from acc to dps threshold does the same thing and I personally don't see a point. You still can't participate in endgame without doing the gear ladder climb.

Unless you're asking SE to remove gear ladder entirely and allows undergeared DD participate in highest endgame and still win. In that case it just lowers game lifespan, since everyone would just ding 99, get a set of ilv 117 gears and clear T4 with it in a week then quit.

8) Finally, making acc less relevant means the entire gear progression, DD and support job balance, endgame content needs redesign, and possibly remove the 99k dmg cap. At this stage it's completely not reasonable to ask dev to do this with limited development resource. Personally I think it's just a waste of development resource when more content could be created.

[Aysha]

Please don't put words in my mouth, or, well, keyboard.

I never said I wanted to skip tiers, or "participate in the highest endgame" without doing the gear climb.

I just hate how stupidly important accuracy is in every stinking thing, where you gotta eat Accuracy Food, gotta wear every accuracy gear you got, accuracy this, accuracy that, it just gets old and I see other games successfully remove Accuracy, and nobody seems to notice after a few initial gripes that they are "dumbing down" the game, but yet the game seems to do quite fine after it is removed.

I dunno, maybe it is too late for this game to try something like that, but I really don't like how stupidly important accuracy is to get anything later done. If you wanna go into Ambuscade, it's "Eat Sushi!", blah blah.

Maybe we could have allowed higher-than-119 gear instead, and used that instead (attempting to fight, say, 150 with 119 gear would result in you getting your butt handed to you in a hurry), at least then you could tell what gear is better without having to compare stats side-by-side and even then sometimes it is somewhat obtuse what piece of gear is actually better. Now, this will make earlier endgame activities easier to solo, but..... so what? Sounds like that's already the case, kinda.

It's just that accuracy is a very boring stat, and it never feels "good" to dump more accuracy on your character. And 70k weaponskills? lol. I've never seen it. Maybe the very very endgame gear might be able to do that, but how many players actually have that kind of stuff?

[Afania]

Please don't put words in my mouth, or, well, keyboard.

I never said I wanted to skip tiers, or "participate in the highest endgame" without doing the gear climb.

I just hate how stupidly important accuracy is in every stinking thing, where you gotta eat Accuracy Food, gotta wear every accuracy gear you got, accuracy this, accuracy that, it just gets old and I see other games successfully remove Accuracy, and nobody seems to notice after a few initial gripes that they are "dumbing down" the game, but yet the game seems to do quite fine after it is removed.

I dunno, maybe it is too late for this game to try something like that, but I really don't like how stupidly important accuracy is to get anything later done. If you wanna go into Ambuscade, it's "Eat Sushi!", blah blah.

Maybe we could have allowed higher-than-119 gear instead, and used that instead (attempting to fight, say, 150 with 119 gear would result in you getting your butt handed to you in a hurry), at least then you could tell what gear is better without having to compare stats side-by-side and even then sometimes it is somewhat obtuse what piece of gear is actually better. Now, this will make earlier endgame activities easier to solo, but..... so what? Sounds like that's already the case, kinda.

It's just that accuracy is a very boring stat, and it never feels "good" to dump more accuracy on your character. And 70k weaponskills? lol. I've never seen it. Maybe the very very endgame gear might be able to do that, but how many players actually have that kind of stuff?

1) Super buffed warrior MS warcry reso or THF SATA can do 50k to 70k ws. I've seen super buffed DRK did similar damage too. And you actually don't need super endgame gear to do that, my WAR has like 20 pieces of gears from ambuscade only, and I use an NQ GS, no REMA nor HQ/NQ abj gears, and I've done somewhere around that number on T1 a few times.

So yeah, anyone can do that as long as they play certain jobs that just has high ws numbers.

2) You don't need acc food to hit stuff in Ambuscade vol2 VD actually.

3) Again, back to my point, if you don't use accuracy stat in an MMO, how are you going to separate gear sets, DD jobs, support jobs in this game? And yes it's definitely "dumbing down" the game in FFXI's case lol, unless everything is being redesigned.

I don't know about other MMO, but other MMO tends to be more action oriented, and less gear set reliant like FFXI. Without stats from gear and gear set planning half the fun in FFXI is gone.

4) You asked for character improvements via dmg. But like previously stated, the gears these days already have massive improvement since 2014, like, massive(bolded for the importance) to the point that you can easily eyeball. Stats like weaponskill damage +%, it's straight increase to weapon skill damage and it's very easily eyeball-able. If you can't eyeball dmg increase via gears this days then idk what to say >.>

[Nyarlko]

The massive accuracy requirements for higher level combat are indeed unfun and function as a barrier which reduces the attractiveness/viability of many jobs due to simple-to-compute numbers.
The massive accuracy requirements for higher level combat eliminate the attractiveness/viability of the vast majority on non-augmentable armor (outside of niche/macro use) due to the lack of the needed accuracy stat.

As far as I can tell, fighting ilvl enemies ups the accuracy requirements by acc+34 per mob level over yours. (I haven't bothered trying to pinpoint the start point for this formula, but it works for ilvl119 players.) The last adjustment to monster evasion did help by quite a bit and lowered the majority of non-NM targets into a reasonable range for non-BIS players. Unfortunately, it really only helps up to a certain point in practice due to the linear increases that occur as mob level gets further away from ours. A lv130 target only requires ~1200acc to cap hit rate on, which is a reachable target w/ gear+food+1xSupport. A lv140 version of the same mob would require ~1550acc to cap hit rate on, which is not exactly reasonable to expect us to be able to reach w/o zone buffs like vorseals. A lv150 version would require ~1900acc.... Um.. yeah..... -_-;;;

This would limit solutions to:
1) Raise player ilvl. Devs have stated they have absolutely no plans to do so, and honestly, it seems a bit late to be doing so at this point since it would obsolete the majority of existing gear by default.
2) Increase native accuracy. Increasing the amount of accuracy we get from DEX for instance >might< help enough to lower "impossible" down to "theoretically possible" but in practice would be more likely to lower the difficulty of lower level fights without impacting the higher level fights much at all. (Doesn't matter much whether you have 1200acc or 1400acc if it takes 1800acc to cap.)
3) Reduce the impact of level adjustment. I've suggested this before, but reducing the lvl+1 value and/or changing it from a linear increase to a sliding scale (so the higher end gains less per level) might work. Personally, I see this as the best current option as it would have little/zero impact on lower tier content but potentially reduce the reqs on top tier content down to the realm of "non-impossibility" for the vast majority. The overall impact would depend on which route the devs run with and what values are chosen, but could more easily be tuned over time when necessary if stat creep starts to trivialize too much content.

I agree that accuracy as a stat has eclipsed all others in priority and something does need to be done about that. I also agree that it does have a place in this game and that it is far too entrenched to actually remove given just how many things are directly connected. I believe that there is a middle ground where accuracy remains important, but has its priority reduced to a point that we can reach cap reliably without having to dedicate every gear slot we have to it.

[Domille]

The only thing I'm going to say on this subject, is the caps are absolute fail.

When I can be 119 with 1700 accuracy and miss a level 0 rabbit, somethings wrong with the world.

5% floor no matter what is sad. I absolutely despise missing catastrophe, the only time I generally use it is when i really really need it and it never fails to let me down at least 5% of the time.

Floors, all floors need to go. Synth breaks, misses, resists. They've never been a good or productive thing.

*you should be able to miss, but forcing a 5% miss rate is what I'm talking about

[chiefhunglo]

Screw the gear climb.

[Nyarlko]

The only thing I'm going to say on this subject, is the caps are absolute fail.

When I can be 119 with 1700 accuracy and miss a level 0 rabbit, somethings wrong with the world.

5% floor no matter what is sad. I absolutely despise missing catastrophe, the only time I generally use it is when i really really need it and it never fails to let me down at least 5% of the time.

Floors, all floors need to go. Synth breaks, misses, resists. They've never been a good or productive thing.

*you should be able to miss, but forcing a 5% miss rate is what I'm talking about

It should be a 1% miss rate with main hand weapon. If you can demonstrate otherwise, please do and file a proper bug report. ^^

[Marada]

My piece or this, and maybe was already mentioned because I'm too focused on killing a stupid 9 hour spawn rabbit for Alamce (Hate that stupid rabbit). My Main is PUP. For us we need to sacrifice Accuracy for either the Master or the auto. Even if we can get gear that would be a balance to both, it still doesn't get us close enough to the mark where I can have both master and PUP on the same accuracy level so we can both hit the stupid mobs in end game content. I would like it if I could have as much access as my auto so I'm not told I'm useless on a job I enjoy playing. Also I'm at the point where the gear ladder is the end game content I now need to level jobs and work on jobs I don't enjoy playing just to get there. So your argument of 'fun' being subjective is also met with with the argument of there should be a balance where fun can at least be had by all.

Don't make the content easier, but at least make it balanced.


Also I know this rabbit has a 90 minute window after ToD, but still.....it can take up to 9 hours or more to pop. SE should at least make that not a thing anymore. But that is a different post in another thread.

[Shiyo]

Accuracy adds immense depth and decision making to gear choices, buff choices, debuff choices, part composition choices, food choices, etc.

Do not agree at all. Accuracy is VERY good to have in the game.

Accuracy was removed from ff14(as every other rpg element), go play that if you hate decisions, strategy, and gear choices.

Screw the gear climb.

So you just want to log on and have the game give you rewards mailed to your box?
This game is about the journey, not the destination. Perhaps install one of the DOZEN(if not hundreds at this point, honestly?) wow clone MMO's that are instant gratification. Do not try to change this game.