Game is not calculating Sword Attack correctly.

[Razielrinz]

Problem: Game is not calculating attack properly with swords, No matter what two swords I have equipped it is not calculating my Attack properly. I have verified it is in the game by asking three other people to confirm the same thing. Also the game is not adding base damage to attack for any weapon wielded in offhand.

Platform: Windows

ISP: Comcast

Type of Internet Connection: Cable

Internet Connection Speed: 36 mb/s

Date & Time: 10/16/2012 12:30 am Est

Frequency: Anytime I change swords whether dual wielding or not.

Character Name: Rinza

Race: Mithra

World: Valefor

Main Job: Blue Mage

Support Job: Red Mage

Area and Coordinates: Port Jueno

Party or Solo: Solo

Steps:
1: Equip Mageblade in my main hand and Runic Anelace in off hand
2:Check my attack, it's 440
3: Equip Bronze Sword in main hand and offhand
4: Check my attack, it's still 440
5: Repeat and its still the same.

Dual wielding does not add attack either no matter what weapons your wielding.

[Arcon]

That's because damage is not attack. I think you're just confusing the two terms.

[Razielrinz]

Nope if I change my great katana to a higher damage Great katana it raises my attack, on sword it does not.

[Quedari]

I'm going to make a guess and say that you have higher great katana skill than sword. Also, are you changing jobs for sword and great katana or are you on the same job for both? A job change could also create a STR difference, which will (slightly) affect your attack. The "DMG" rating on a weapon won't actually change your "Attack" number. The only things that will change your "Attack" number are attack+ gear(or weapons with attack+, like magian STR trials), STR gear/weapons, skill+ gear/merits and your actual skill level, and job abilities like berserk.

[Verytus]

Hello Razielrinz,

It appears Quedali and Arcon have possible explanations for why you are nto seeing a higher attack with different weapons. Please see if that they say is true, and if not, let us know so we can move forward with the report.

Thank you,

-Verytus

[Mirage]

Attack rating will stay the same when you have a sword equipped in the main hand and switch around offhand weapons. This is because the displayed attack rating is the attack rating of the weapon in you main hand.

When you take on and off a great katana, you go from using hand to hand skill (because bare-handed is technically a weapon type) to using great katana skill, therefore the attack rating changes. When you go from one sword to using two swords, you use the sword skill to calculate attack in both cases, and therefore the attack rating does not change.

[Razielrinz]

Neither explanation is correct. As stated me and 3 other people from my server have tried this with Blue Mage and other jobs that can use Swords. Any other combination of weapons changed when you but higher base damage weapons in main hand. With swords they do not. Also my Sword skill is capped and so is my dagger on Rdm and when I change out my Mageblade (base damage 54) with my Aluh Jambiya (base damage of 51) my attack is higher on the dagger. This is with no other gear on as well. Also I am not a complete Noob I have been playin for 9 years I know how in game mechanics work. This problem still persists. If you change from having 2x bronze swords in your main and off hand to having a Runic Alemace and a Mageblade the attack should go up to take into account the higher base damage. It is not doing that. And when it happens to multiple people on same server with max sword skill then its a bug.

[Razielrinz]

It appears that combat damage is being calculated properly its just not calculating swords right in the Equipment Menu area. This was tested on gobbys in Valkrum Dunes.

[Arcon]

Neither explanation is correct. As stated me and 3 other people from my server have tried this with Blue Mage and other jobs that can use Swords. Any other combination of weapons changed when you but higher base damage weapons in main hand. With swords they do not. Also my Sword skill is capped and so is my dagger on Rdm and when I change out my Mageblade (base damage 54) with my Aluh Jambiya (base damage of 51) my attack is higher on the dagger.

Aluh Jambiya has 15 Attack and 10 STR on it. Assuming you have the same amount of dagger and sword merits and no skill gear, the dagger should give you 20 higher Attack on the screen that when you have a sword in the main hand.

Attack is entirely unrelated to weapon damage, and has always been.

[Mirage]

Weapon damage has never affected attack rating. They are entirely unaffected. Attack is only affected by skill level, attack stats on your gear, strength (and strength on gear), food and other buffs.

edit
And job traits, of course.

[Razielrinz]

That is correct but changing from Bronze Sword (level 1 base damage of 6) to Mageblade (level 90 base Damage of 54) should make the base attack go way up. And it does not.

[Razielrinz]

I posted the one about combat damage cause a friend was afraid that if it was not calculated properly on the equipment screen that it might not be right for damage on mobs either. And its fine on mobs just not displaying right on the equipment page.

[Arcon]

That is correct but changing from Bronze Sword (level 1 base damage of 6) to Mageblade (level 90 base Damage of 54) should make the base attack go way up. And it does not.

Why should it? There's absolutely no reason. Applying Attack is an entirely separate process from applying weapon damage. They cannot be shown as one stat at all, because there is no one stat containing both. It always depends on the attacker/target STR-VIT difference as well, so the value would be different depending on the mob. There is no one way to combine the two.

[Razielrinz]

It always does! When I change my main hand Axe or my main hand Dagger it changes. Why should it not change for Sword?

[Khiinroye]

If the swords do not have different +str or +attack values, then attack should not change. If you were to go from mageblade (lv 90, dmg 54) to a centurion's sword (lv 30, dmg 19) you should see your attack go up by 4, because the centurion's sword has "attack +4" on it. If you had a STR/attack shikargar, your attack would go up 27 or 28 if you switched from mageblade to that.

This doesn't mean that the centurion's sword will do more damage. it will just hit slightly higher on its damage curve than the mageblade, but the damage curve for mageblade is set at a much higher level.

The displayed attack is based off of your skill (including +skill gear), your STR stat, and +attack gear that you have equipped. As Arcon stated, since rdm has the same dagger and sword skill, the only factor that would change by going from mageblade to aluh jambiya is that the dagger has +15 attack and +10 str (yielding +5 attack). This would be a total of +20 attack when you switch from mageblade to aluh jambiyah. If you were using +sword skill gear, you would lose the attack gained from that, and if you had gear with +dagger skill, you would gain attack from that.

For damage dealt, the simplified equation is

Damage = Base Damage x pDIF
The DMG rating on the weapon factors into Base damage, as does the STR vs mob VIT comparison.
Attack factors into pDIF. pDIF is also where the randomized factor on damage comes into play.

[Byrth]

http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Attack

"Skill" is your current main-hand weapon skill. Only your Main slot attack is displayed.

You also obviously need to account for food, +Attack from equipment, and Attack Bonus job traits.

[Arcon]

It always does! When I change my main hand Axe or my main hand Dagger it changes.

Because of differences in either skill or attack. Not because of different damage.

[Mirage]

That is correct but changing from Bronze Sword (level 1 base damage of 6) to Mageblade (level 90 base Damage of 54) should make the base attack go way up. And it does not.
This is where you are wrong, though. It should not.

The two stats are separate. "Damage" shows the damage potential of your weapon, while attack is compared to the target's defence to determine if you will hit for less than the damage-rating, roughly the same as the damage rating, or more than the damage rating. They are two separate stats. Attack rating affects final damage output, damage rating affects final damage output, but they are not the same stat.

It's like a car, for example. The Damage rating is the engine, while the attack rating is how good a grip your tires have on the surface. Equipping better tires won't make the engine output more horsepower. Giving the engine more horsepower won't give the tires better grip. However, both things play an important part in the total performance of the car on a track.

[hiko]

Neither explanation is correct. As stated me and 3 other people from my server have tried this with Blue Mage and other jobs that can use Swords. Any other combination of weapons changed when you but higher base damage weapons in main hand. With swords they do not. Also my Sword skill is capped and so is my dagger on Rdm and when I change out my Mageblade (base damage 54) with my Aluh Jambiya (base damage of 51) my attack is higher on the dagger. This is with no other gear on as well. Also I am not a complete Noob I have been playin for 9 years I know how in game mechanics work. This problem still persists. If you change from having 2x bronze swords in your main and off hand to having a Runic Alemace and a Mageblade the attack should go up to take into account the higher base damage. It is not doing that. And when it happens to multiple people on same server with max sword skill then its a bug.
you clearly don't !
the "attack" displayed doesnt care about base damage, its just the value of your" attack modifer"

That is correct but changing from Bronze Sword (level 1 base damage of 6) to Mageblade (level 90 base Damage of 54) should make the base attack go way up. And it does not.
no!


It always does! When I change my main hand Axe or my main hand Dagger it changes. Why should it not change for Sword?
because your hand axes/daggers have attack/str/skill stats

[Ophannus]

This is what we get for having new players level from 1-99 in a single day in Abyssea. gg SE.

[Demon6324236]

I would say more that this is what we get for SE not directly telling us how the game works, and rather they choose to let us do everything on our own.

[Afania]

This is what we get for having new players level from 1-99 in a single day in Abyssea. gg SE.

But he said he played for 9 years and not first day!


http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/27442-To-Dev-s-are-there-any-plans-to-fix-Neo-Nyzul-Isle?p=365867#post365867
He said he played for 7 years 2.5 weeks ago though, I guess his time goes faster than me


I would say more that this is what we get for SE not directly telling us how the game works, and rather they choose to let us do everything on our own.

All the currently discovered game mechanics can be found on bg-wiki and wiki, it's not like dmg not affecting attack is not being discovered yet. Also which MMORPG or even single player RPG you played have dev tells players every single game mechanics in game? Most of them are still found by players, or posted on the forums that you have to research for it.

[Demon6324236]

I don't often look at instruction books/guides, and don't expect everyone to use the wikis for how damage works. Either way you are correct probably that most don't tell you exactly how it works, it just annoys me the level at which we have to experiment with things to test them, because it leads to things like this I believe. Were we told how exactly these things work out mathematically, we could have alot more clarity with players, so we see less people asking questions about how things work or being confused by how things work, when they are not spelt out so clearly such as in this case.

[Danita]

You guys are being trolled. No level 99 could be this ignorant.

[Demon6324236]

One would hope, however I have met some people who are rather clueless about the games more basic workings such as this, so honestly wouldn't be surprised either way.

[Kincard]

All the currently discovered game mechanics can be found on bg-wiki and wiki, it's not like dmg not affecting attack is not being discovered yet. Also which MMORPG or even single player RPG you played have dev tells players every single game mechanics in game? Most of them are still found by players, or posted on the forums that you have to research for it.

This isn't about specific mechanics...its about really basic information on character statistics. In actuality many other MMOs have tooltips on weapons, stats and other info that tell you how much an increase in strength or agility or what have you will increase your attack power, and in some cases it even outputs DPS for you in the stat window.

FFXI's still stuck in the Everquest design philosophy in telling the players basically nothing about how the game works. It worked a lot better in incredibly flexible/open-ended games like UO but for such a PvE-focused game it just makes the game really inaccessible to new players. Long-time players might get irritated by people like OP, but it's certainly understandable why someone wouldn't understand how something as "basic" as D rating and attack works, because it isn't really intuitive at all.

Though the OP's attitude of "I know what I'm doing!" when he clearly doesn't isn't going to encourage anybody to help him learn. =P

[Monchat]

the devs themselves have no idea what the random stats they put on weapons do in reality, which is the reason why most of the gear they bring each update is usesless.

This has been the case forever even before the level cap increase.

[Afania]

This isn't about specific mechanics...its about really basic information on character statistics. In actuality many other MMOs have tooltips on weapons, stats and other info that tell you how much an increase in strength or agility or what have you will increase your attack power, and in some cases it even outputs DPS for you in the stat window.

FFXI's still stuck in the Everquest design philosophy in telling the players basically nothing about how the game works. It worked a lot better in incredibly flexible/open-ended games like UO but for such a PvE-focused game it just makes the game really inaccessible to new players. Long-time players might get irritated by people like OP, but it's certainly understandable why someone wouldn't understand how something as "basic" as D rating and attack works, because it isn't really intuitive at all.

Though the OP's attitude of "I know what I'm doing!" when he clearly doesn't isn't going to encourage anybody to help him learn. =P

I agree that FFXI's stat description certainly has room for improvement, which is mainly lacking acc/racc/rattk/mdb/DT-/DPS/evasion etc. However, I don't think base dmg doesn't affect attack needs description. Base dmg not affecting attack, is more about 2 stat being seperated, and pretty easy to notice if ppl can pay more attention even without reading the forum.

If you change sword A(or any weapon) with no additional stat on it to sword B, you see attack doesn't change. You try another weapon without STR/skill/attack and it's the same, thus it's easy to get the conclusion that base dmg doesn't affect attack. This more about the game design and mechanics, less about having stat description clearly. You don't even need to know how dmg in this game is calculated to notice base dmg and attack are seperate values, they're just simply nothing but 2 different stat.

In FFXIV you get to see more stat that you can't see in XI, such as acc, DPS and so on. However, they still don't tell every game mechanics. DPS doesn't determine weapon hierarchy due to other factors affecting your output, and something like stat cap isn't explained either. This applies to every RPG(including single player RPG) I've played too, there are always game mechanics that left for players to explore and they don't outright tells everything in game manual. If I go pick up a random new RPG I never play and never visit forum, there's no way I can tell how much dmg I can do every move until I try it out no?

I don't feel telling ppl base dmg doesn't affect attack is needed, they need to tell ppl more stats, but other stuff such as game mechanics or weapon hierarchy isn't all that needed IMO. Dmg formula, enmity formula, cure formula or weapon hierarchy are there for players to find out.

[Afania]

I don't often look at instruction books/guides, and don't expect everyone to use the wikis for how damage works. Either way you are correct probably that most don't tell you exactly how it works, it just annoys me the level at which we have to experiment with things to test them, because it leads to things like this I believe. Were we told how exactly these things work out mathematically, we could have alot more clarity with players, so we see less people asking questions about how things work or being confused by how things work, when they are not spelt out so clearly such as in this case.

It probably doesn't apply to everyone, but some of the fun from playing games is to explore, discover and learn. You got a new weapon, and you try to see how good it is at doing dmg, or should you use another weapon with supportive stat over offensive stat. You learn a new spell, you want to try how effective it is. You try to see how much dmg increased when you crit, you try to see what happen when you increase your A stat or B stat etc. If the game tell you how everything is right from the beginning, half of the fun will be gone. That's why ppl have discussion on forum about gears all the time, or players post test result for certain gears/JA, there won't be anything to discuss or test about if the game tells you everything.

[Plasticleg]

It probably doesn't apply to everyone, but some of the fun from playing games is to explore, discover and learn. You got a new weapon, and you try to see how good it is at doing dmg, or should you use another weapon with supportive stat over offensive stat. You learn a new spell, you want to try how effective it is. You try to see how much dmg increased when you crit, you try to see what happen when you increase your A stat or B stat etc. If the game tell you how everything is right from the beginning, half of the fun will be gone. That's why ppl have discussion on forum about gears all the time, or players post test result for certain gears/JA, there won't be anything to discuss or test about if the game tells you everything.

This so much. With the information out there now, you really have to "choose" to be ignorant to the game mechanics.