AV Developers Strategy

[Darkren]

Since groups have been PD-zerging Absolute Virtue for a while now with no nerf on this, have the developers released any more secrets of how it was intended to be beaten at 75 since the video release? i.e how they dealt with meteor spam, how the same players used multiple 2hrs, the time they killed it in, why earth staff pld etc

[Sureal]

seriously?

this was all figured out a loooooong time ago

[Darkren]

I'm asking if SE had released any official notes that were not obvious from the video after its release. You cant exactly figure out how long they fought for etc. Also not talking about player findings just there own written method as they fought.

[Alhanelem]

SE hasn't released anything. Players have figured out most of the secrets. They're just no simple feat to pull off. With the level cap rise AV was left unchanged. Many games have bosses that are impossible or almost impossible and then become more winnable after a content update.

[Sparthos]

It'd be nice if SE came out and in detail explained how they expected lvl75 AV to be defeated. All the smoke and mirrors over the years amounted to nothing but an enormous waste of time.

[Alhanelem]

We know how they expected it to be defeated. It was just too difficult for the average joe to pull off.

Even if you disable him in all the various ways, when he puts his bracelets on, he becomes extremely dangerous. The bracelets phase is what ended things for most groups who made serious attempts on it.

[Sparthos]

And how was that?

[Darkren]

It would be nice if SE did release their notes so we can see how they did their full fight compared to how we have planned our own strategies on fan forums. Since its only really being zerged at the moment they might aswell.

[Alhanelem]

Using 2-hours within a few seconds of him using them locks those 2-hours. From what I stand, these 2-hours are in certain groups. From our wiki:




Beginning at bracelets mode, AV will use the following two-hour combos:



Call Wyvern → Familiar → Astral Flow
Invincible → Benediction → Mijin Gakure
Meikyo Shisui → Eagle Eye Shot x 3
Chainspell → Soul Voice

My understanding is if you lock all the 2-hours in a given group, you will lock that combo in bracelets mode (I could be wrong here, the information available to me isn't completely clear on this).

Basically, with good strategy, strong groups can make it to bracelets mode (the last 1/3). But without locking him down, the combos and his very high damage make it extremely difficult to stay alive.

As you know of course, no one really cares about any of this anymore. PD was very likely intended specifically to put stuff like this to rest. :p

[Sparthos]

The 2hour lock strategy was not 100% if it even worked at all and the main problem with AV was Meteor which spelled game over.

How did they intend for individuals to deal with Meteor? Even if you managed to get AV down to bracelets mode (where the real battle began), it was very likely you'd run into a bout with Meteor.

All this precision 2houring - where exactly were the hints? How exactly would one deduce without SEs help that you need to match 2hours to cause a reaction in Absolute Virtue?

Why was the AV "video" so poorly shot? There is a reason that people mock the "zooming into a chatlog" portion afterall.

[Alhanelem]

Better question is why does anyone care? It doesn't matter anymore.

[Sparthos]

It's more to get insight on what exactly they had in mind when creating Absolute Virtue.

They get asked dumb questions every day, so I figure this one at least gets some developers to let us in on their vision.

[Leonlionheart]

Better question is why does anyone care? It doesn't matter anymore.

I'm actually pretty interested just because it was always that "unattainable goal" that so many players had

[SpankWustler]

It's more to get insight on what exactly they had in mind when creating Absolute Virtue.

I have come to believe that all of Chains of Promathia is a very dense metaphor for a failed marriage of a member of the development team, with Absolute Virtue representing the younger man for whom his wife eventually left him. I bet the design process really helped him work out his feelings from that difficult and painful time.

[Vold]

Better question is why does anyone care? It doesn't matter anymore.An even better question is why does anyone care that anyone cares? It doesn't matter.

You may not care, and I'm happy for you, but there's plenty of people who would love to hear the story behind AV. It involves this thing called curiosity. You might have heard of it. It's only the most basic human trait of like, oh I don't know, all time.

And I guess only average joe's were trying to kill AV all that time. I didn't even know they managed to make it to AV status. No wonder no one ever beat it. The pros were smart enough not to bother with an encounter that can't be realistically won without being thrown a bone on how to do it. Yeah, just don't bother and wait 6 years for Perfect Defense. That's the trick.

[Raksha]

It involves this thing called curiosity. You might have heard of it. It's only the most basic human trait of like, oh I don't know, all time.



Totally stealing that.

[MarkovChain]

Using 2-hours within a few seconds of him using them locks those 2-hours. From what I stand, these 2-hours are in certain groups. From our wiki:

My understanding is if you lock all the 2-hours in a given group, you will lock that combo in bracelets mode (I could be wrong here, the information available to me isn't completely clear on this).

Basically, with good strategy, strong groups can make it to bracelets mode (the last 1/3). But without locking him down, the combos and his very high damage make it extremely difficult to stay alive.

As you know of course, no one really cares about any of this anymore. PD was very likely intended specifically to put stuff like this to rest. :p

Your are ignorant, locking every 2H has been tested and showed no improvement. While we are at it explain PW too because the last phase is zombied since Astral flow was not figured last I checked.

[MarkovChain]

SE hasn't released anything. Players have figured out most of the secrets. They're just no simple feat to pull off. With the level cap rise AV was left unchanged. Many games have bosses that are impossible or almost impossible and then become more winnable after a content update.

You don't know crap. AV 2H were not the problem. Any 2H could easily be survived even manafont with fealthy and clever positionning. The problem is essentially centered around him being able to cast Meteor at any time under 50% HP (or something) without it being predictable.

[SNK]

Better question is why does anyone care? It doesn't matter anymore.

I'm kinda interested myself as well. Sorry that you don't seem to wonder what SE was thinking at the time. Kinda like when PW was 1st introduced. How did they expect anyone to beat that as well I wonder?

[Atomic_Skull]

I'm kinda interested myself as well. Sorry that you don't seem to wonder what SE was thinking at the time. Kinda like when PW was 1st introduced. How did they expect anyone to beat that as well I wonder?

I'm pretty sure we know what they were thinking (http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/9103/trollface450x386.jpg).

[Rosina]

post the old video if you can. My thories had to do with the timing of the fighters weapon skills and what element they used at what time. Sorta like the Zelda ocarina of time twinrova fight. Pretty much it appeared that AV jumped element (to me anyway) and you had to deal a weapon skills that was stronger then that element. again this is based on only watching the video. and was my old theories.

I'm curious as well on the origins of AV and how they expected people to kill him.

[Alhanelem]

Lots of games have almost impossible bosses. Everquest even had a boss that was designed to be impossible to beat (it didn't even have drops), it was only there to rampage kill people) but then someone actually beat it.

Usually they DON'T expect people to kill them. In this case, PD itself may have even been added to lay the whole thing to rest, deciding that no one would ever find the right way.

[MarkovChain]

Except that SE said many time that AV was killable long before PD was introduced.

[uptempo]

Im another one who would love to here the "supposed correct" way to beat it.

[Runespider]

I don't think there was ever a proper way honestly, I think it was added just as something to keep the top tier playerbase thinking. PD was added to make it killable, although the level cap finally nailed it properly.

I think the whole thing was a huge trollfest, the unatainable ongoing puzzle with no real answer.

[Tamoa]

I'd definitely like to know how SE originally intended us to beat AV.

[Darkren]

I don't think there was ever a proper way honestly, I think it was added just as something to keep the top tier playerbase thinking. PD was added to make it killable, although the level cap finally nailed it properly.

I think the whole thing was a huge trollfest, the unatainable ongoing puzzle with no real answer.

I doubt PD was added to make it killable because it was killable using souleater zerg until they nerfed that. If they did use PD to lay it to rest then its quite unfair on the drk strategy which was not really different. This being said. If they are accepting PD as a "correct strategy" then there is no point to keep what they did hidden, especially if we would be level 99 soon.

[Sparthos]

I doubt PD was added to make it killable because it was killable using souleater zerg until they nerfed that. If they did use PD to lay it to rest then its quite unfair on the drk strategy which was not really different. This being said. If they are accepting PD as a "correct strategy" then there is no point to keep what they did hidden, especially if we would be level 99 soon.

Pretty sure SE realized Perfect Defense would make AV killable as the ability does block all of AVs offensive output. The main issue was always the random Meteors which were an instant wipe regardless of curbing regen or your overall strategy.

They nerfed Souleater zerging because at that point in time, the devs still didn't want AV loot circulating like it is today. Someone made a call among the devs to finally quit stonewalling the players and today's AV was born.

Overall however, SE has been trying to scale back on Souleater due to multi-hit weapons being powerhouses.

For some contrast, the original Pandy Warden from the start was doable it's just that someone among the devs didn't realize that with all the forms he originally possessed (serpent generals, vampyr) human fatigue would start to set in and the phenomena known as the "puking pandy" would be born.

A terrible day in the PR department I can imagine.

Pandemonium Warden needed no hints from SE. It's a drawn out battle that was straightforward (adds pt kills lamps, main party handles warden, main and adds party alternate wiping on final form) once players figured out the battle and he was eventually worked him down at the 75 cap by a handful of linkshells.

Absolute Virtue however involved an extremely delicate strategy that to this day has never truly been understood. What was SEs intent? To frustrate or simply to create a challenge that players could aspire to defeat but never actually accomplish?

[SNK]

Lots of games have almost impossible bosses. Everquest even had a boss that was designed to be impossible to beat (it didn't even have drops), it was only there to rampage kill people) but then someone actually beat it.

Usually they DON'T expect people to kill them. In this case, PD itself may have even been added to lay the whole thing to rest, deciding that no one would ever find the right way.


SE stated it was killable with only 18 75s at the time. The video they posted was very vauge as hell and still left a lot of people confused as to what they were trying to show us.

[Shadotter]

I would like to know this too, while PD has made it doable, I highly doubt that was how we were supposed to deal with meteor, it would be nice to at least have a hint as to how we were to mitigate damage from that, on the same note, I don't think we're supposed to include dying as a strategy for PW and wonder if there's a way to mitigate the last form as well. Hell, while I'm at it, I wonder if other HNMs have hidden factors to their behavior that we just never figured out and just worked around.

[Alhanelem]

SE stated it was killable with only 18 75s at the time."possible to kill" doesn't mean that any reasonable player will be able to just pull it off. Like I said many of these fights were ALMOST impossible. They don't expect people to beat them, but it doesn't mean it couldn't be done.

Long story example follows:

Pink Bean in MapleStory was almost unbeatable with 30 max level players within the 1 hour time limit (and its very hard to reach max level in that game) when it was added; it held a lot of uber drops that no one was able to obtain. Later on, they added new item mechanics in an update- basically you could enchant your gear to get percentage boosts to your stats, and after this system was released, people were able to become strong enough to kill it within the time limit. However, only a short while before this update was released, a group managed to beat it with a minute or so to spare. It was discovered that Pink Bean has this ultimate attack (that it only uses once I think), and the clock gets extended by 20 seconds times the number of people that get killed by it when he uses it- so it's possible to get extra time. At first people didn't notice this because for some reason the on-screen clock only updates to account for this if you die; and dying in a big boss fight ususally means you're out of the fight unless you had bishops with you to ressurect (and ressurect has a very long cooldown). Naturally this means buying ressurect items from the cash shop so you can keep fighting after the time limit is extended.

... Long story short, now a strong group can beat Pink Bean in about 15 minutes, and there's a new almost-impossible boss to take his place. Eventually, updates will make that boss easier too.

The point is, this happens in every game, and it's practically for the best to not even try to figure it out and just wait until it gets nerfed.

[Atomic_Skull]

I don't think there was ever a proper way honestly, I think it was added just as something to keep the top tier playerbase thinking. PD was added to make it killable, although the level cap finally nailed it properly.

I think the whole thing was a huge trollfest, the unatainable ongoing puzzle with no real answer.

This is what I have always believed.

[Dohati]

Your are ignorant, locking every 2H has been tested and showed no improvement. While we are at it explain PW too because the last phase is zombied since Astral flow was not figured last I checked.

i've never fought pw, but it was my understanding you just brought 2 alliances, and when he uses astral flow, the 2nd alliance claims him until the 1st alliance is unweakened

[Dohati]

I don't think there was ever a proper way honestly, I think it was added just as something to keep the top tier playerbase thinking. PD was added to make it killable, although the level cap finally nailed it properly.

I think the whole thing was a huge trollfest, the unatainable ongoing puzzle with no real answer.

why would they decide to make AV pop 100% instead of 10% of the time after JoL if AV couldn't be defeated? that's like killing JoL inflicting a doom timer on the whole alliance.

[MarkovChain]

i've never fought pw, but it was my understanding you just brought 2 alliances, and when he uses astral flow, the 2nd alliance claims him until the 1st alliance is unweakened

The group I bought my shenlong to had sams/thfs sneak attack gekko and die. You "zombie" it. PW is not figured, the idea was to zerg the waves with super buffed DD until you reach the point where it must be zombied. Apparently it is broken as it doesn't regen when idle / or bio doesn't wear off when it goes idle like AV..

[Alhanelem]

@PW: It isn't implied that there is or was ever a special trick for the last phase. I'm honestly pretty sure you're supposed to get spanked, then get up and keep fighting. Especially after the short time limit was implemented, there is little else you can do.

[Sparthos]

The group I bought my shenlong to had sams/thfs sneak attack gekko and die. You "zombie" it. PW is not figured, the idea was to zerg the waves with super buffed DD until you reach the point where it must be zombied. Apparently it is broken as it doesn't regen when idle / or bio doesn't wear off when it goes idle like AV..

What? Pandemonium Warden Astrals at 75, 50, 25 making him extremely predictable in his ability to wipe the group. Unlike AVs Meteor which becomes a random "lol you lose" card, Warden takes an extremely long time to actually summon his avatars and then for them to finally ready the 2hour abilities meaning you have enough time to deal damage before being oneshot.

PW is figured out. You drag away lamps, aoe them down, engage the warden with a second party and then finally on the last form have 1-2 people sac him while both parties alternate zergs. The time limit was the most difficult thing given too many wipes meant odds are you'd fail especially when time needed to be set aside for the lamp party to change jobs for final form.

PW continuously flows till everyone is dead so there's no way around the wipe anyway. PW isn't even in the same category as AV at the 75 cap even though he was the second most powerful monster in the game.

PW = marathon HNM.
AV = stop the regen, stop the regen for years on end.

[MarkovChain]

You two are ignorant as the ZNM developpers themselves said you can avoid astral flow.

[Winrie]

Ignoring the bg burnout. How many linkshells actually defeated av pre abyssea? I only know of apathy on remora and chocobogordo on ragnarok did it.

[Tamoa]

Ignoring the bg burnout. How many linkshells actually defeated av pre abyssea? I only know of apathy on remora and chocobogordo on ragnarok did it.

Finale linkshell (also known as Kaolin) on Alexander server did it aswell. That was with multihit drks and souleater though, but yeah, long before Abyssea.

[Alhanelem]

You two are ignorant as the ZNM developpers themselves said you can avoid astral flow.
Uh, no, to my recollection they never said this. Even if there is a way, since he only does it at set times and does it contiously til the group is dead, people just accepted that you have to die each time. I don't see anything wrong with an NM for which death is a requirement.

[Leonlionheart]

I was under the impression it could be done fairly easily zerg style with Alexander soulvoice BRDs and a ton of WARs?

Maybe that was just hearsay.

[Sparthos]

I was under the impression it could be done fairly easily zerg style with Alexander soulvoice BRDs and a ton of WARs?

Maybe that was just hearsay.

We're talking cap when the content was relevant and at its peak.

Pretty sure any group of competent DD can just run in under an Alexander and clean house.

[Kyte]

Uh, no, to my recollection they never said this. Even if there is a way, since he only does it at set times and does it contiously til the group is dead, people just accepted that you have to die each time. I don't see anything wrong with an NM for which death is a requirement.

Actually I do recall them saying something about the Astral Flow, but I think they were just referring to having someone sac it.

[TybudX]

BLU/THF was better against PW due to not suffering from double weakness.

Also, I know at least one group was able to hold AV indefinitely at level 75. It required pretty much perfectly geared Aegis PLDs idling in mdt/mdb/int gear, but it could be done. The problem was that no amount of heavy DDs were able to damage it fast enough while surviving Meteor. Even combining two of the best geared LSs in the game at the time they didn't have enough relics to throw at it.

Alexander was released shortly before the level 80 cap raise, if I remember correctly. The idea was there to use heavily buffed WARs in combination with PD to kill AV within the 90 second time limit, but the server merges had happened by this time. Neither LS had the active membership to pull off the fight (3 alliances plus rotating buffers) by this time since one LS had moved to a different server in order to be more active in HNMs. Shortly after the 80 cap increase a member of the first LS who had been leading the push to defeat AV moved servers and joined what had been Volume, recently merged with another LS in order to have more active members. Shortly after that they recorded their first 'legit' AV WAR kill, using the super-secret tech of DNCs and SMNs that is now well known.

Maybe other groups were doing similar things around that time, but to my knowledge Failure's group was the first to pull it off.

[Hashmalum]

I would like to know this too, while PD has made it doable, I highly doubt that was how we were supposed to deal with meteor, it would be nice to at least have a hint as to how we were to mitigate damage from that, on the same note, I don't think we're supposed to include dying as a strategy for PW and wonder if there's a way to mitigate the last form as well. Hell, while I'm at it, I wonder if other HNMs have hidden factors to their behavior that we just never figured out and just worked around.Old dynamis relic fragment NMs had some sort of complicated system to determine their "mood" and whether they would Warp out and end the fight or not. The developers at some point mentioned a long, long list of things that could affect it. We never figured it out and never cared; they just got zerged down. About the only part that was understood was that using the appropriate relic WS helped.


why would they decide to make AV pop 100% instead of 10% of the time after JoL if AV couldn't be defeated? that's like killing JoL inflicting a doom timer on the whole alliance.Because players asked for it. Which of course proves nothing either way, as it isn't as if it they haven't screwed us with our own requests before.

I'm kind of curious myself about whatever AV's secret is, but if they want to jerk us around with more obscure hints, or they decide to do some BS like release the secret but make AV harder to "compensate", then to hell with it.

[Schrute]

THROW US A BONE ALREADY

[Sureal]

bone was thrown, suck less

kthxbai

[Anethia]

The way I look at it, AV was never supposed to be defeated by just anyone. AV was the ultimate boss of CoP: FFXI. Every FF game has had that ultimate boss fight that was never really intended for the main storyline, it was just a test of dedication and skill. FFVII had the Emerald and Ruby Weapons (part of the story but not necessary fights), FFVIII had Ultima and Omega, FFIX had Osmus and so on and so forth. They were that additional challenge which was supposed to encourage the player to explore everything, obtain every item, gain every skill. Unless you did these things, it was nearly impossible to beat the hardest boss's of the game.

This was the same with Absolute Virtue (and his ToAU equivalent Pandemonium Warden). Unless you were willing to spend the time and effort necessary to obtain the best of the best gear, and learn every possible strategy, you weren't meant to beat them.

If you think about the AV fight as a whole, its kind of like an alliance version Maat. He has his own attacks he does, even when he's mimicing the job you use. But he forces you to play the job with all of your abilities. AV was the same way, but with a small twist. In most situations job's use their 2hr's as emergency measures to survive damaging attacks or take the mob down faster, against AV you had to use the proper 2hr to lock his and keep him from using it again. This meant that linkshells couldn't just go with select jobs they prefer'd to run with.

As an example, you could do entire dynamis runs without some the original 15 jobs and still win (you didn't have to have a brd, drk, mnk, etc). While fighting AV you needed to have all 15 jobs available to lock his 2hr's. That was the point of SE releasing that "hint" video. It was pretty much SE saying, "you're doing it wrong if you only run with certain jobs rather than all of them. If you really want to win, learn how to utilize all of the jobs".

Long Story short: Unless you were willing to accept that every job had a use, AV couldn't be defeated.

[SpankWustler]

Maybe I'm remembering something incorrectly, but wasn't successfully locking Absolute Virtue's 2-hours based just as much on guessing correctly and using OnEvent (or something similar), as any palpable strategy?

[Shadotter]

and as far as other superbosses are concerned, the main reason why AV is so legendary is because even the people with the best gear and the best strategies couldn't beat it even after 2hr locking was discovered. We had to wait until Alexander became available before we could beat him in a way that wasn't considered a glitch or cheating.

[Atomic_Skull]

SE stated it was killable with only 18 75s at the time. The video they posted was very vauge as hell and still left a lot of people confused as to what they were trying to show us.

They were just trolling.

[Kaisha]

I'd still love to see the full video of them killing AV that they spliced into that 2min 'hint' video.


And when they do that, I picture the next thread of this kind being "Wtf was the dev team thinking of making PW an 18hr+ endeavour initially". Actually on that note, I'd probably prefer a blog post or something documenting their thought process for creating these ludicrous beasts and how they go about play testing them.


Last time I remember the devs speaking about their creation process was ages ago with the special effects crew.

[Twille]

AV is a joke.

[Raesvelg]

Ignoring the bg burnout. How many linkshells actually defeated av pre abyssea? I only know of apathy on remora and chocobogordo on ragnarok did it.

It happened a few times by way of various exploits; each time it happened, SE would fix the exploit and it would be back to square one.

When they readjusted AV/PW to be killable within a more reasonable time scale, a lot of shells Souleater zerged it down, but that doesn't really count; it was another exploit, effectively, just one that SE should have seen coming and as a consequence nobody got punished for it.

At the time, of course, we were concerned that it might land us in trouble, so we only did it the once.

Count me in as one of the people who would love to know what the trick was supposed to be, prior to the various added player abilities and AV nerfs.