Remove or decrease race penalties [Archive]

Economizer

12-06-2012, 01:27 PM

aside from HP/MP the races are not very different

Pretty much this. While an 11 point stat bonus (that merits do nothing to fix mind you, since everyone merits STR) is a pretty big difference, it won't really affect your DPS as much as having 445 more HP (difference between a Tarutaru and a Galka on MNK/WAR).

On the other hand, I'd argue that the 417 or so more MP (Tarutaru vs. Galka on SMN/WHM) won't make a difference at all, and just require different gear during macros, since with the amount of Refresh max MP only matters during really fast usage of your MP such as Chainspell (hard to cover if you're nuking, but for stuff like Chainstun, it won't even matter), Manawall (macroing in max MP gear can cover, although having more HP would too), or for using Perfect Defense (currently easy to cover with max MP gear, however it is being changed and might be slightly harder).

Basically, you can't macro in better gear for Max HP because everything you wear sacrifices your stats for other things and you almost always need Max HP (unless macroing for a Devotion Macro), but you can almost always macro for Max MP because it is only needed momentarily. Additionally there are some piece of HP gear that boost by a percentage (every percent is a 4 HP bonus for Galka over Tarutaru). Combine this with breath weapons and Soul Eater (however nerfed they are on "hard" content) and you get the problem even worse.

While you might be able to shrug off 11 STR or whatever the difference is, if you get hit for a certain amount of damage and having around 445 more HP would have helped, your DPS drops to nothing, which is a much, much bigger difference.

Basically, Tarutaru is the worst race selection right now because melee is the best way to deal damage, and Tarutaru not only has a slight disadvantage (lower STR) but it has a major, major disadvantage (way lower HP). Short of the best pieces of gear having latents just for Tarutaru (such as by bringing Tarutaru HP up to Hume levels, something like a 220 HP difference), nothing is going to fix this either.

Incidentally, Galka is the best race to play due to their major HP advantage and no real downsides, but the difference isn't so major that a Mithra, Hume, or Elvaan are totally out in the cold. (HP more then Tarutaru each has is Hume/Mithra: 220, Elvaan: 316, Galka: 445.)

Mirage

12-06-2012, 02:24 PM

Maybe there should be a refresh buff that was affected by max mp? Refresh x% of max mp per tick, for example. That would help tarus with their huge MP pool more than other races.

If it was 0.25% of max MP, it would give 2 mp refresh if you had 800 mp, but 4 mp refresh if you had 1600 mp, for example.

It's not exactly uncommon among various games for mana regeneration to be affected by how big a mana pool you have. It's actually something I've been wondering why isn't in effect in this game.

I am not a taru myself, but I definitely think this is a real issue for tarus. My idea (not really mine, it's been around for ages) would improve things a bit.

-edit-
Only now I realize that i typed hp instead of mp. It was pretty late last night when i made this post. Let's see if it turns out better now.

Plasticleg

12-06-2012, 02:36 PM

Maybe there should be a refresh buff that was affected by max hp? Refresh x% of max hp per tick, for example. That would help tarus with their huge MP pool more than other races.

If it was 0.25% of max MP, it would give 2 mp refresh if you had 800 mp, but 4 mp refresh if you had 1600 mp, for example.

It's not exactly uncommon among various games for mana regeneration to be affected by how big a mana pool you can have. It's actually something I've been wondering why isn't in effect in this game.

20+ refresh is easy to hit with gear/set up from fellow players. The game is designed with the co-op to be vital for not only efficiency, but also success. It would only be a giant issue because the majority of people who are on mage jobs aren't career WHM/SCH/SMN/RDM/BLMs, they're usually just people who don't have the decked out DD's required for the event, so they go on their ok-geared mage job that they have leveled and geared to be "passable".

Mirage

12-06-2012, 02:42 PM

I know it is easy to hit 20+ refresh with gear and support. What I'm saying is that it would be nice if someone who had a much bigger mana pool also regenerated their mana faster than those with smaller pools.

An issue that was brought up in this thread is that there is little benefit in having a super-sized mana pool, because it is how fast you can regenerate your MP that really matters. This means that a lot of the supposed-advantage that tarus were meant to have on the magical side is lost, while the magical disadvantage for galkas is diminished. It could be partially turned around again if there was gear that increased refresh rates based on maximum MP, instead of a flat rate.

Plasticleg

12-06-2012, 02:49 PM

Economizer

12-06-2012, 05:40 PM

Try laying down a few curaga3-4's, remove debuffs, and maintain a haste cycle on a Galka MP pool outside of [A]/VW without taking a breather.

Inb4 /RDM
It's bad, and you should feel bad for thinking about it.

Okay, let me tell you why that's bad and you should feel bad.

First off, you should be /SCH unless you have a very good reason. It has better MP management, and is the only way to get the best barspells possible, and the easiest way to get Enhancing in general. Not to mention faster recast times, which are more important then the slight casting time reduction advantage. Toss in the occasional Penury or Celerity and you have the single best subjob for White Mage, hands down. In comparison, /RDM is bad, and you should feel bad thinking about it.

You know how much a Curaga 3/4 costs for a White Mage when properly used? 0 MP. If you don't know why this is, stop playing White Mage now or start wearing the right pants. At best you'd be undercuring for your MP refunds because your party is full of idiots who don't under the concept of party positioning (y'know the folks, the ones who don't understand that "Gather together. Shellra." is code for "STAY RIGHT HERE"), you're using the wrong tier, or just the inevitable slight mismatch that still leaves the Curaga spell costing less then a single target cure.

Refresh sources gives you 20 MP/minute per 1MP/tic given. Sublimation charges 3MP/tic, but has a 30 second time when it isn't charging between usage and setting it to charge again, but charges to 25% of your max HP. Mathing that out, that's a 252 MP charge for a Tarutaru's base 1011 vs a 364 MP charge for Galka, favoring Galka for Sublimation. This would be about 53MP/minute for a Tarutaru's base HP vs. 55MP/minute for a Galka's base HP.

Refresh is 3MP/tic for cases in which you have support (although in this case, you can probably delegate Haste cycles so you can do the more important work), which will give slightly better numbers then Sublimation with 60MP/minute (44MP/minute if self cast).

Refresh from gear should at least be 2MP/tic from your body piece, although if the situation is low on refresh/temps (such as the hypothetical you suggest), you'd also be wearing some more gear to bring it up 1~2MP/tic, and macroing in other gear to bring it up to 7MP/tic when casting things other then cures or barspells. This would range you from 60MP/minute to a full 140MP/minute, so I'd imagine you'd be getting enough to give a low number of 75MP/minute (with some real work getting squeezing you even more then that).

Haste costs 36 MP if you are doing it right, and if you are in situation where you need to cover the full party with it that somehow doesn't have someone else doing it so you can spam your almost-free cures, that's 72 MP/minute. Cure costs are a bit more ticky to calculate with the refund and not being sure how much you're dumping in a minute, but based on information back from the Cure Formula Changes thread (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/17433-Cure-Formula-Changes), we'll just assume something like 20HP/MP (which is fairly low unless you think Cure VI is your goto spell) without calculating cureskin, then assuming that your tank is losing something like 1000 HP/minute not counting AoE moves the mob does to your group (which are either or almost free to cure), that would cost something like 50MP/minute to cover. Compare the rough gear refresh and sublimation totals of about 130MP/minute against the rough guess of a need for 122MP/minute and you'll see that if you're not gearing like a dualbox trashmage (but by no means geared like a king) you'll do okay.

If you really have troubles with that, such as for short fights where you have to dump absurd amounts of MP, you can open a fight with a full charge of Sublimation boosted with gear and top it off with some max MP gear to open with, but I can't really think of many fights outside of Voidwatch or Abyssea that require much of that, and the ones that do would be well served by having a Bard or even just a Corsair to make things easier. Any on the ones that do, I don't think 467 MP more at the start of a fight is going to change things - since I busted out the math, any retorts I see should at least have an example of a fight that requires six people, can't have a Bard, or even a Corsair, or even a Red Mage who for whatever reason can only cast Haste and Refresh II (seriously, 2~3 minutes into the fight, a Red Mage covering Haste cycles and Refresh IIing you would negate any advantage a Tarutaru has in terms of an MP pool)

You can't gear to have 450 more HP for the whole fight if you're the tank, but you can gear to have 470 more MP at the start of a fight. A Galka might have to work slightly harder, but in no case should that MP break them at 99.

-

In the interest of fairness, since someone brought up possible solutions in regard to making a Tarutaru's max MP actually matter, I'd like to counter with talk about things that make a Galka's max HP not matter as much - Migawari: Ichi, Earthen Armor, and SSentinel's Scherzo come to mind. Of course, these abilities are straight up better with more max HP, but I suppose they at least exist.

Kincard

12-06-2012, 07:02 PM

Having chosen Tarutaru years ago for both aesthetics and melee/mage considerations years ago, I would really love for this to be done, even moreso than a race/gender change system. I'm attached to my Taru avatar now and don't really want to change my race. Aside from melee/mage being a pretty useless combination in most situations, the idea went out the window as soon as Dancer was introduced, so any advantage I had for playing a melee/mage combo is completely nonexistant now. There's no way I could've known all this at the time I made my character, so I would really love it if either:

1. Stat differences eased between races
or
2. Allow the choice of race and a stat spread (Decided at character creation and only changeable through payment like the race change idea). That is, I can play a Taru with Galkan stats, or a Elvaan with Tarutaru stats.

As far as base stats go, I'd say the only one that makes a massive difference is DEX, because of how the stat spikes towards the end of the curve, and of course only in certain circumstances.

saevel

12-06-2012, 07:53 PM

The stat differences between the races has actually gone down since 75. The number is bigger but the percentage is smaller. The sole exception seems to be HP/MP which continued their growth at previous rates.

11 STR difference from the strongest to the weakest is small potatoes.

Now HP / MP on the other hand is an entirely different story. MP restoration is more important then max MP in a similar way that HP restoration is better then maximum HP. Max MP is now long a mage can go without support, its the buffer time they have. A taru WHM will have a longer period they can go without support then an Elvann / Galka WHM, though both will need support eventually. In the same way an Elvann WAR has a longer grace period from damage -> cure then a Taru WAR. It's for this reason that I went 15/15 HP merits and started packing a PDT/DT set, to extend my life expectancy in a battle.

Kincard

12-06-2012, 08:36 PM

HP restoration is not better than max HP if we're talking about regen on equipment, which is the whole problem. Aside from the fact that mages actually have opportunity to idle in their refresh while melees don't get chances to idle in regen during combat (not that it'd matter- mages idles in 4+ refresh even with average gear, melees have to stack a ridiculous amount of gear to get maybe 20/tick at most? Each point of MP is worth like 10x HP), restoration doesn't matter when SE decides to make all endgame monsters do ridiculous amounts of damage now. A Galka NIN is at 1600 HP at 99 (Before merits) and a Taru is at 1200, with the rest sitting around 1400. That 200-400 HP is more than enough to make the difference between getting one shotted and surviving, so some way of changing this would be welcome. I'd be more than happy to trade away some max MP and/or INT so I can get some more HP.

EDIT:

Perfect timing too, Matsui just made a post (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/28900-タルタル弱いんですけど?p=384222#post384222) about this specific topic, because JP Tarus are thinking the same thing...he thinks the effects are very far reaching and quite a major change if it's considered, so he has to think about it for a while.

Good to know it's being considered!

Kristal

12-06-2012, 08:53 PM

What about racial merits? You can spent 5 upgrades of 30 points each.
If you are a taru, you can spent points on hume, mithra, galka and elvaan. Put 1 point into galka, and your character will have 80% taru stats, 20% galka stats. Put em all in galka, and your stats will be fully galka while still looking like a taru.
If you decide that it's not to your liking, drop the merits and you got your original stats back for the race.

Mayoyama

12-06-2012, 08:58 PM

God.. google translate really didnt translate that post well.... xD But I got the general idea from my limited JP skills

Kincard

12-06-2012, 08:58 PM

That idea would work, yeah- would allow variance between how much people want stats to look like, too. I like it.

At least we don't have a SE representative coming in to tell us to wear RSE gear to make up the difference whilst totally missing the point, lol.

God.. google translate really didnt translate that post well.... xD But I got the general idea from my limited JP skills

He's basically just saying that it's something that's a pretty big change so he has to think about it for a while (There's some conflicting opinions on the JP boards just as there are here), and how closing the gap between races would also require a consideration of how the stats curve from 1-99 VS respective level content and not just at the cap. I'm sure we'll get an official translation in a few hours.

Mirage

12-06-2012, 09:01 PM

Mmmaybe. Being fully a galka while actually a taru might be a bit much. Maybe 5 merits could make you a half-galka instead. Still lots of hp to be gained.

Kincard

12-06-2012, 09:12 PM

I'm sure if they were going to do the idea it'd be a simple "one race's stats or the other" sort of thing, since Matsui brought up the whole "balance from 1-99" aspect of it. It'd be weird to level up from 98 to 99 (or 74 to 75 I guess) and then instantly have my MP pool drop to half of what it was, so having to rebalance stats for 1-99 for a 2/5 Galka, 1/5 Mithra, 2/5 Taru character probably isn't something they'll want to invest time in.

Byrth

12-06-2012, 09:13 PM

I'm of a similar opinion and posted about it here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/28559-Sentinel-s-Scherzo-and-Earthen-Armor-fail-to-negate-severely-damaging-attacks

The gap between race max HPs needs to shrink, and ideally player stats would converge by 99 instead of just paralleling each other since 75. This is very similar to the merit-uncapping debate, in that it will remove artificial uniqueness from your character but overall make the game easier to balance because it removes variability. I can see why monsters one-shot tarus. They wanted to have monsters that hit a galka for 80% of its HP in appropriate damage down gear so the next hit would kill them if they didn't get a cure. The problem is that tarus only have 75% of a galka's HP to start with so they can't do events where galkas are supposed to be fearing for their lives.

Mirage

12-06-2012, 09:23 PM

Maybe we just need higher hp/mp values in general past 75. It feels a bit lame to only have ~10% more HP now than I did 24 levels ago. Perhaps all races should see an increase in hp/mp, but galkas would just see a smaller relative increase than the other races, and same for MP with tarus.

Byrth

12-06-2012, 09:50 PM

We have about 18-20% more HP now than we did at 75:
http://bellsouthpwp2.net/k/i/kinematicf/FFXI/StatCalculator/

This is regardless of race (and jobs except Monk, I think).

I was one-shotted last night by the Tier 1 turtle in hall of An when he double attacked my scholar for high-400s + mid-700 damage crit. I had max HP and was wearing my PDT set, which is either 42% or 48% PDT depending whether it's day or night. Options that would have let me survive that:
1) Be any other race
2) Get a D-ring (maybe) and/or PDT earrings from that quest (fuuun)

Afania

12-06-2012, 10:21 PM

Basically, Tarutaru is the worst race selection right now because melee is the best way to deal damage, and Tarutaru not only has a slight disadvantage (lower STR) but it has a major, major disadvantage (way lower HP). Short of the best pieces of gear having latents just for Tarutaru (such as by bringing Tarutaru HP up to Hume levels, something like a 220 HP difference), nothing is going to fix this either.

Taru has higher AGI than a hume(that means better ranged DD, better WF and last stand), hume is the worst race with nothing stand out and gimp at all jobs... ;< Worse DD than Elvaan, worse COR RNG than Mithra, lower HP than galka so can't take AoE dmg as well, and barely gets advantage from avg stat for everything when only a few stat shines.

IMO Mithra is the best race though, it's only weakness isn't important, everything else are balanced. High DEX and AGI if I remember correctly.

Mirage

12-06-2012, 10:38 PM

We have about 18-20% more HP now than we did at 75:
http://bellsouthpwp2.net/k/i/kinematicf/FFXI/StatCalculator/

Really? Always felt like less. Maybe it just felt that because the values are pretty low to begin with. I still think it should be a bit more, though. Perhaps galkas could get an additional 15% more than lv75 values, and tarus would get an additional 20-25% more than 75 values. How do you think that would turn out?

Naturally, the same would be true for MP values too, where galkas would get a bit more than tarus again.

saevel

12-06-2012, 11:34 PM

Kincard

12-07-2012, 12:04 AM

It's obvious you're the one missing the point of the thread (or you have no idea how the game works) if you think cures somehow save people from being one-shotted. That's the reason the adjustment is being asked for in the first place, which was what I was trying to point out. Your original post makes 0 sense anyway, why are you comparing cures (a direct restoration of HP) to Refresh (gradual restoration of MP)? Shouldn't you be comparing it to Devotion? Hate to break it to you, but MP kind of gets the short end of that deal, too. Try thinking before you post.

By the way even if we were discussing it from the perspective of HP restoration through cures, your point is still nonsensical, because cures still don't do anything when someone's taking a dirt nap after one hit.

Vortex

12-07-2012, 12:50 AM

Taru has higher AGI than a hume(that means better ranged DD, better WF and last stand), hume is the worst race with nothing stand out and gimp at all jobs... ;< Worse DD than Elvaan, worse COR RNG than Mithra, lower HP than galka so can't take AoE dmg as well, and barely gets advantage from avg stat for everything when only a few stat shines.

IMO Mithra is the best race though, it's only weakness isn't important, everything else are balanced. High DEX and AGI if I remember correctly.

DO you actually have any idea what you are talking about? Hume is the middle ground, they have no "worst" stats but they have no "best" either unless you count CHR.

mithra is pretty much almost the same as hume except a little more dex which isn't really something significant as any race can match or top it with gear. you really should actually look at a humes stats on jobs before you make such a judgement.

Now then.

It seems Tarus suffer the most in DD department because they are low in the 2 primary stats that helps them in the front line. which is HP and STR. but it seems they were just made to mainly be mages. this is the primary reason i picked a hume so i don't have to go through this lol. i knew i would eventually pick diffrent jobs and hume is great and using different jobs without suffering from stat penatlies other races do.

Camate

12-07-2012, 04:24 AM

Greetings everyone!

There seems to be a large discussion going on over on the Japanese forums in regards to this topic as well!

Here is a comment from Producer Akihiko Matsui:

Matsui here. I’ve been reading through all of your opinions.

The comments from everyone seem to be quite split, as the feelings on this differ from person to person.

If there is a big enough request for this, I’m thinking we can seriously look into it. However, I consider this an extremely difficult theme due to the fact that regardless of how we change it, the ripple effects would be considerable.

Even if we were to close the gap a bit, which I believe would be an easier method comparatively; there would be a need to totally revamp the balance for growth per level, and the balance between monsters and content for all levels. (For all of you actually playing, I am sure you would feel ever more variations.)

While I cannot give an answer immediately, I will think on this a bit as a continue to read over all of your comments.

Zhronne

12-07-2012, 04:29 AM

The difference between stats is negligible. It's like 11 STR between an Elvaan and a Tarutaru at level 99?
It's something that doesn't break the game, but makes you feel a bit different from other races, it's all good in my opinion.

What's not good probably is the HP/MP issue, and more in specific the HP ones since MP matters much less these days.
As a very competent friend of mine was making me notice, there are abilities that can oneshot you if you're a taru even if you wear full PDT/MDT sets.
This is not particularly fair and should be addressed.

Personally my point of view on the issue, which may differ from the majority of people here, is that I like to be differences between races. I don't like other games where races are just for looks.
At the same time in most other games you have one character per class, here you have one character per many classes, so I recognize there is an issue.

I just wish this could be addressed in other ways instead than through homogeneization among races.
Maybe through merits? Could raise the cap of HP/MP merits to 20 and make so each point is worth 20 hp/mp instead of 10?
Or maybe they could make it dynamic, and make so each point you spend there gives you different results according to your race? Say HP merit would give 5 hp to a galka and 25 to a tarutaru?
Just an idea.
It would be a smart way to offer people means to address the issue, but at the same time keep the diversity among races and give players the power to choose.

Think about it Matsui-sama please :)

Masekase

12-07-2012, 05:27 AM

Even though would like stats made more equal between the races. HP is the main thing I would like increasing esp for taru and same with mp on galka.

Masekase

12-07-2012, 06:00 AM

Arcon

12-07-2012, 06:07 AM

May be wrong but think taru gets hit on VIT stat too. I think that race takes biggest hit with having 4 stats lower than others hp str vit and mnd

Only STR, VIT and MND aren't really that relevant. Sure, it may reflect as a 0.5% deficiency on a battle phase, but a lack of HP is really the only thing that's noticeable without a parser, and the only thing that can make or break a player.

TheTrueMarth

12-07-2012, 06:49 AM

All MMORPGs have different races, each with their strong point and weak point. FFXI is no different.
Tarutaru = Mage, high MP pool, high INT and high MND.
Galka = Tank, high HP pool, high VIT and defense.
Elvaan = Damage, high STR and attack.
Mithra = Something... High DEX and AGI.
Hume = Jack of all trades.

This has been around since the game came out, and I'm sure everybody knew this and chose the race accordingly based on what they like most. To come up 10 years later and all of a sudden say this needs to change, everything needs to be equal is throwing in your "Game it too easy, make it easier so I literally don't have to do anything and throw my money at SE." If you don't like your races weak point, you have 3 choices.
A. Make a new character that has the stats you want. Exp isn't hard to get.
B. Pull up your big girl panties and get over it.
C. Quit.

Honestly, the 5 races SHOULD have strong and weak points, that's the way of any MMORPG. If we want to nit-pick things SE needs to address why not direct your attention to Red Mage, Puppetmaster (I know this isn't the PUP thread, but enough with the mage gear and give PUP DD gear) Legion, Neo Nyzul, Odin V2 etc. Why pick the one thing that's been around for 10 years that makes the most sense, and the people have already dealt with? /rant /thread.

Motenten

12-07-2012, 06:54 AM

Greetings everyone!

There seems to be a large discussion going on over on the Japanese forums in regards to this topic as well!

Here is a comment from Producer Akihiko Matsui:

Akihiko_Matsui View Post
Matsui here. I’ve been reading through all of your opinions.

The comments from everyone seem to be quite split, as the feelings on this differ from person to person.

If there is a big enough request for this, I’m thinking we can seriously look into it. However, I consider this an extremely difficult theme due to the fact that regardless of how we change it, the ripple effects would be considerable.

Even if we were to close the gap a bit, which I believe would be an easier method comparatively; there would be a need to totally revamp the balance for growth per level, and the balance between monsters and content for all levels. (For all of you actually playing, I am sure you would feel ever more variations.)

While I cannot give an answer immediately, I will think on this a bit as a continue to read over all of your comments.

There should be no need to 're-balance' things (except possibly racial-specific gear) if all you do is change the scaling grades used. Only a couple of changes need to shave off the extreme ends of the imbalance, and should have no impact on anything that was already balanced against the standard Hume baseline.

Recommended changes, given the current grade spread of A through G:

Galka: Increase MP by 1 grade, from G to F (puts them about 200 MP behind hume instead of 270)
[aside: Elvaan is at grade E, and Hume at grade D, so F is the highest you could raise Galka MP and still keep those three races different]

Taru: Increase HP by 2 grades, from G to E (puts them about 100 HP behind hume instead of 200)

Taru: Increase Str by 1 grade, from F to E (puts them 3 str behind hume instead of 5)

Taru (optional): Increase Dex by 1 or 2 grades, from D to C or B (puts them 3-5 dex ahead of hume instead of even; for reference, Mithra is 7 dex ahead).
This would just be a slight compensation for Taru having no significant positives on the physical side, even with the above adjustments.

All: Increase the rate of HP gain for levels 76-99 by 33% to 50%, so that a 33% increase in level corresponds with a ~33% increase in HP, instead of the current ~20% increase. Note: this change -does- potentially require a rebalancing effort on mobs in general. It may be easier to leave as is and instead take another look at the damage done by the highest level mobs.

Kyte

12-07-2012, 07:07 AM

Tarutaru = Mage, high MP pool, high INT and tied for the worst MND.

ftfy. I don't know why people seem to think this.

Masekase

12-07-2012, 07:08 AM

TheTrueMarth

12-07-2012, 07:23 AM

My mistake on MND, I'm not Taru. Thanks for correcting me. I stand by my point though. All races SHOULD have strong and weak points. Tarutaru SHOULD out-nuke me. Galka SHOULD out-tank me, Elvaan SHOULD out-damage me, Mithra SHOULD out... Theif me... I hate to play "SE automated response" here but... Balance... Making all races equal is giving every kid a "participation trophy" for taking a single step past the start line. Every race should have their perks and weakness, it's called being unique.

tyrantsyn

12-07-2012, 07:45 AM

You now I my get a ration of crap for this, but I really don't care for this idea at all. The point to having differently race's goes hand in hand with stat's and HP/MP difference. Elvann's and Galka's should always have a damage dealing advantage in melee combat over a Taru. Just as no Galka should ever be able to out nuke a Taru.

If anything I would make the difference more pronounce. And give certain race's perk's that only they could take advantage of. Taru's with native refresh and MAB, Mithra's with crit and evasion bonuses, Galka's with native defense and regen. Elvann's with increase melee skill bonuses. I'm not so sure where I'd put Hume's on those? Maybe bonuses toward crafting? Seeing that their really not suppose to excel at anything stat wise. But are not the worst either.

In my opinion if your going to bring every one's stats closer together, than there's not even a point to having different races. Everyone would just be a cookie cutter of the next.

Zohno

12-07-2012, 07:45 AM

People made a choice when they picked their chars. Some for look, other for stats even if didn't like the look and some lucky ppl got both. I don't understand why those people should see their choice lose its value now.

Tamarsamar

12-07-2012, 07:46 AM

Regarding the "Tarutaru getting one-shotted for low HP" issue since I think we can all agree that that's the only remotely relevant racial factor at high levels (which used to be balanced when MP was relevant, but all the other base stats were pretty much always purely for flavor purposes):

Retooling racial stats at all would be completely unnecessary if players had access to more effects like Migawari, which prevent being "one-shotted" regardless of HP.

/2gil

Motenten

12-07-2012, 07:51 AM

Honestly, the 5 races SHOULD have strong and weak points, that's the way of any MMORPG.

Strong and weak points, yes, but you can still have those differences without being quite so extreme. Taru's current HP pretty much completely removes their ability to participate in Legion as a melee. Galka MP on drk and pld can make their casting ability horribly hindered unless they merit it.

It's quite possible to shift some of these extremely low stats up a bit without changing the general order of racial strengths, while at the same time making it more feasible to use these jobs in a comfortable way.

On the Str/Dex/etc stats, there's some minor annoyances in the differences that I think could be toned down slightly, but overall they don't need much, if any, change.

Adding unique racial buffs, as tyrantsyn suggests, brings out a huge rebalancing problem, and I don't think that is a viable tack to take right now. Certainly not something I'd suggest for this game, though it would be interesting if you were designing a new game from the ground up.

solidous

12-07-2012, 08:09 AM

HP is a huge problem, and really the only one that truly matters. My main job is drk, being a taru not only hurts my damage but limits the way I could play the game. My favorite food is carbonara.... and not for the store tp. I am reluctant to use diabolic eye because why lower my already low hp, I rather miss and live than get one shot by anything over 1100 damage. which is not that hard with last resort and berserk up. If closing the hp gap is not possible then please allow for a race change.
I pay if that is what it will take. I don't usually post but its looks like Dev's are finally listening. (Please listen) Akihiko Matsui!

FrankReynolds

12-07-2012, 08:12 AM

All MMORPGs have different races, each with their strong point and weak point. FFXI is no different.

That's why we want it changed. I'm not really sure why you think being like every other MMO is a selling point.

This has been around since the game came out, and I'm sure everybody knew this and chose the race accordingly based on what they like most.

No video game start screen should ever feature a selection process that will haunt you for upwards of a decade and no, everyone did not pick appropriately. Why the hell would a person who just picked this game up know enough about the game to determine that the choice of race they made at start up is going to be good for the next ten years? Have you played this game? It's huge and it changes continuously. If you happen to be on a race that is good for your job of choice then you got lucky.

Honestly, the 5 races SHOULD have strong and weak points, that's the way of any MMORPG. ... Why pick the one thing that's been around for 10 years that makes the most sense, and the people have already dealt with? /rant /thread.

Because this is lame and it's always been lame. I don't need my imaginary midget character to actually be handicapped. This is a video game. In here you can be 2 feet tall, carry a 200 pound axe and smash deities with your thoughts.

And for the record: I don't care what topic you are discussing or who you are discussing it with. If your answer to any problem, ever is "if you want that then you should go spend weeks/months/years re-gearing / re-leveling a new character..." then you are wrong. Plain and simple. Wanna know the fastest way to make a person give up FFXI forever? Tell them to start over. Some people will do it. Most will not.

Dantedmc

12-07-2012, 08:40 AM

If people are so worried about keeping variety, why not keep stats separate from the physical appearance of each race. For example I want to be a taru. I like the way it looks, but the lack of hp is truly detrimental. Why can't I just be a taru with galka stats? Just change the race benefits to a different name and allow us to chose our race separately from stat bonuses.

TheTrueMarth

12-07-2012, 08:42 AM

That's why we want it changed. I'm not really sure why you think being like every other MMO is a selling point.

Because if every race had the same stats, we might as well be playing an MMO were all characters are Hume. Delete Taru, delete Galka, delete Elvaan and Mithra. The whole point behind different races is to have different options, not just cosmetics. That's one thing MMOs have in common for good reason.

No video game start screen should ever feature a selection process that will haunt you for upwards of a decade and no, everyone did not pick appropriately. Why the hell would a person who just picked this game up know enough about the game to determine that the choice of race they made at start up is going to be good for the next ten years? Have you played this game? It's huge and it changes continuously. If you happen to be on a race that is good for your job of choice then you got lucky.

I've been playing the game since NA relese. I picked Hume M solely on the fact the stats were balanced. I knew Elvaan had more STR, I knew Galka had more HP/VIT, I knew Taru had more MP/INT. I knew Mithra had more DEX/AGI. I picked Hume for the stats. It's not unheard of for someone to actually study before making a decision. I've never once regretted Hume or wanted to change.

And for the record: I don't care what topic you are discussing or who you are discussing it with. If your answer to any problem, ever is "if you want that then you should go spend weeks/months/years re-gearing / re-leveling a new character..." then you are wrong. Plain and simple. Wanna know the fastest way to make a person give up FFXI forever? Tell them to start over. Some people will do it. Most will not.

If people are going to complain and beg "Papa SE" over the smallest things like this, maybe MMOs aren't for these people. There are more and far bigger things to deal with other than "My Taru can only do 3100 damage when an Elvaan can do 3300". You find ways to deal with it and cope or you don't.

saevel

12-07-2012, 08:43 AM

Raistlinratt

12-07-2012, 10:05 AM

Please please please give this serious consideration! I picked my tarutaru race almost 10 years ago? I am a main DD and i'm very good at it. However, the penalties to taru HP are very harsh and almost unplayable in some content where you are 10x more likely to die instantly than elvaan or galka. Could the dev team give serious thought to

1: reducing racial penalties, your race shouldn't make or break your chances of winning something. It's more of a cosmetic choice, slight penalties are fine.

2: Giving us an option to purchase "Race Change". I think this would be pretty easy to impliment and I would be more than happy to pay gil or crysta to enact it.

I love playing this game and being in the top tier of damage dealers. I hate the fact that I can't do anything to survive sometimes in mul legion. elvaan getting 300+ more HP on same job vs job is pretty broken when the monsters are hitting for 500-1200 (yes I have hybrid sets with cap haste/most PDT you can get - usually around 34%).

This game has changed a lot since I made my decision to be TaruTaru, and i'm penalized heavily for it. Max MP is nowhere near as crucial as Max HP these days. Please give this careful consideration!!!

Camiie

12-07-2012, 10:16 AM

Eh, I don't see what would be so horrible about there being more stat balance between the races. Heck, it wouldn't bother me a bit if everyone had the same base stats to be quite honest. I'd rather race be purely a cosmetic choice and have zero affect on game play.

FrankReynolds

12-07-2012, 10:30 AM

Because if every race had the same stats, we might as well be playing an MMO were all characters are Hume. Delete Taru, delete Galka, delete Elvaan and Mithra. The whole point behind different races is to have different options, not just cosmetics. That's one thing MMOs have in common for good reason.

You're sorely mistaken if you think that people won't choose different races anyways despite them all having the same stats. Some people just think tarus are cute. Some guys wanna look tough on galka. Some guys wanna roleplay on a mithra. There are already genders, hair types sizes etc. Why doesn't any of that bother you? It's fine for an Elvaan to be stronger than a taru because they are bigger right? But why isn't the large Taru stronger than the small model? Doesn't seem fair to me. I say make them all equal. There are plenty of jobs to try. You won't suffer an identity crisis. I promise.

I've been playing the game since NA relese. I picked Hume M solely on the fact the stats were balanced. I knew Elvaan had more STR, I knew Galka had more HP/VIT, I knew Taru had more MP/INT. I knew Mithra had more DEX/AGI. I picked Hume for the stats. It's not unheard of for someone to actually study before making a decision. I've never once regretted Hume or wanted to change.

Good for you. I'm glad that the stats you wanted also happened to be on the character model that you like. For other people the two things don't always line up. I picked Hume for the same reasons as you. Unfortunately I actually like galkas better, but couldn't choose one because I wanted to play a mage class. Not fun.

Studying for 20 years isn't going to change the fact that people who prefer the taru model will have to choose between shitty melee stats and shitty looks. I could understand having varying stats if we were able to change our races like we change jobs, or even if we could only change them once in a while. But knowing that people have been stuck with these choices for years on end makes that whole stat difference more of a nuisance than a perk.

If people are going to complain and beg "Papa SE" over the smallest things like this, maybe MMOs aren't for these people. There are more and far bigger things to deal with other than "My Taru can only do 3100 damage when an Elvaan can do 3300". You find ways to deal with it and cope or you don't.

Perhaps the same could be said of you. I don't think you get to decide who MMOs are for and Who they aren't for. People who play this MMO want to be able to play whatever race they want without it impacting their ability to play the game. Maybe you need to cope with that (although I'm not really sure why you are against this other than to be a nay sayer out of principal) or just don't play?

If they put this into effect, you are still free to gimp your stats through gear if you really miss that lower stat feeling. People who want higher stats cannot easily do that. People should be better at this game because they are better at the game.

And for the record: This game is almost entirely about doing 3300 damage instead of 3100. You wouldn't have stats at all if it wasn't.

Byrth

12-07-2012, 10:49 AM

To anyone who thinks the 11 STR difference between Tarus and other races doesn't matter, make a WS set on an Elvaan using only NQ pieces and then make it again on a Taru using enough HQ pieces to even it out (if you can, which is unlikely). Then calculate the difference in price between the sets. That racial difference is worth millions of gil.

Still, I care less about the STR difference than the HP difference. It's annoying being denied the ability to participate in content because my HP is too low.

Camiie

12-07-2012, 10:56 AM

Still, I care less about the STR difference than the HP difference. It's annoying being denied the ability to participate in content because my HP is too low.

Exactly. There's more than enough ways to exclude people from content. Race shouldn't be one of them.

Economizer

12-07-2012, 11:15 AM

To anyone who thinks the 11 STR difference between Tarus and other races doesn't matter

While I'd like to reiterate that the focus of our grief is HP based, I'd also like to add that the 14 point or so INT difference between a Elvaan and a Tarutaru doesn't seem to match up to the 11 STR difference either. Yes, it is still millions of gear difference, but mages aren't as good a damage option as melee by far, and as far as I know 14 more INT doesn't make as big a difference to damage as 11 STR (although I might be wrong on this one, if anyone cares to math it out).

Lienn

12-07-2012, 12:41 PM

I'd leave race penalties as they are and, instead, remove the merit restrictions regarding HP, MP and attributes.

It would be much better just having a progressive increase of merit points cost and a hard cap for max base attributes like, as example, 110 for attributes, 1500 for HP and 1200 for MP.

This would give players freedom to enchance their characters as much as they want if they feel like putting a decent amount of effort on this.

Example:

Assume my character has 100 STR as WAR and 80 STR as SMN. I could keep putting effort on STR...if i raise +12 STR it would end with WAR having 110 STR (hard cap reached) and SMN having 92 STR...and if i raise STR by +30 it would end with both jobs having 110 STR. This would remove the gap between some race/job combos when race favors it and when it doesn't.

If a taru wanted 110 STR he just would need to put way more effort on this than an elvaan, just like a galka would be required to put way more effort on raising MP than a taru to reach this cap.

Also, to prevent everyone to getting all attributes at cap for all jobs too fast, just increase drastically the merit point cost of attributes past the current caps. At least ppl would have something else to do.

ManaKing

12-07-2012, 03:47 PM

I have no interest in making all the races equal. I leveled 4 different characters in 2003 to figure out which race I liked the best. Guess what, it's Elvaan.

If people want to complain about having Taru tarus, then they should make another character. Taru make good mages and AGI based jobs. Everyone knows that. Just because Elvaan is more attractive at current end game doesn't mean that Taru should magically get to be #1 again. Taru didn't share their over-sized MP pool back in the day, why should anyone feel sorry for them now?

It's not like it's hard to build a character in about a month or two if you actually know what you are doing.

Babekeke

12-07-2012, 04:03 PM

Seems kinda odd to me that people complain at how low Galka's MP is, when I see Galka SMN matching my smn for mp, yet they beat my HP by a good 400-500.

The only thing that needs balancing out in my opinion is how little difference MP makes per race, compared to HP. Either give tarus another 200~ HP at 99, or double our MP to make it a valid trade-off.

saevel

12-07-2012, 04:07 PM

11 STR is exactly
+2.75 fSTR
8.25 Attack

And if your using 100% STR WS (Resolution, Stardiver, Ruinator, Shoha)
+9.35 WSD
If your using a 60% STR WSC (Ukon, Vere, MS, Kaiten, Fudo)
+5.61 WSC

We're still in the single digits for percentage difference. STR, like most melee stats, has decreasing returns the more of it you get. 11STR is not a big deal.

Now HP on the other hand isn't just a taru problem, though they are the worst effected by it. Since 75 our HP has not scaled properly with the monsters output potential, this in turn has created many scenarios where DD's are killed within seconds of not having PD / Fanatics up. As an elvann with 15/15 HP merits I still get one shoted sometimes, it's just a fact of life now. SE needs to increase HP/MP across the board by 30~50% minimum. Elvann and Galka will still have the highest HP but Taru's would be high enough to not be in danger so much.

Afania

12-07-2012, 04:15 PM

DO you actually have any idea what you are talking about? Hume is the middle ground, they have no "worst" stats but they have no "best" either unless you count CHR.

mithra is pretty much almost the same as hume except a little more dex which isn't really something significant as any race can match or top it with gear. you really should actually look at a humes stats on jobs before you make such a judgement.

Do you have any idea what I mean by the worst? Not having best useful stat is what makes it worst. If I'm DDing on melee job, Elvaan does more dmg than me. If I'm spamming WF, Taru does more dmg than me. If I'm spamming CDC and dDEX not capped, mithra does more dmg than me, if I'm meleeing with shitty AoE, I die before galka too. Match it with gear is irrelevant, because other races can wear same gears too.

What's so good about hume? Nothing. CHR etc isn't useful, and nobody cares if Hume has higher other state. Job change is irrelevant, nobody care about CHR for BRD nor MND for WHM. As stated before, if you play 20 jobs, you probably get best out of Mithra/galka/elvaan, but just not hume. And even taru is better WF job than hume when HP isn't a factor outside of AoE range and taru has higher AGI.

Edit: Just rechecked race stat, it seems that Mithra has a little bit lower STR than Hume, but DEX and AGI is way higher. VIT CHR MND's lower than hume but those 3 stats are pretty much useless anyways, so what's so good about Hume having those useless stats higher?

Afania

12-07-2012, 04:29 PM

Also, to prevent everyone to getting all attributes at cap for all jobs too fast, just increase drastically the merit point cost of attributes past the current caps. At least ppl would have something else to do.

Pretty lame way to design the game and keep ppl playing by making players grind more merit points.

Afania

12-07-2012, 04:40 PM

All MMORPGs have different races, each with their strong point and weak point. FFXI is no different.
Tarutaru = Mage, high MP pool, high INT and high MND.
Galka = Tank, high HP pool, high VIT and defense.
Elvaan = Damage, high STR and attack.
Mithra = Something... High DEX and AGI.
Hume = Jack of all trades.

This has been around since the game came out, and I'm sure everybody knew this and chose the race accordingly based on what they like most. To come up 10 years later and all of a sudden say this needs to change, everything needs to be equal is throwing in your "Game it too easy, make it easier so I literally don't have to do anything and throw my money at SE." If you don't like your races weak point, you have 3 choices.
A. Make a new character that has the stats you want. Exp isn't hard to get.
B. Pull up your big girl panties and get over it.
C. Quit.

The point is that certain stats are fairly useless. I have np with races make a difference, but when certain stats are pretty useless, it become a penality.

I picked Hume because brandy guide(or w/e guide that's old) told me Hume is jack of all trade and best for jack of all trade jobs like RDM and BLU, and I wanted to main RDM or BLU when I started.

Only to turn out that for BLU STR and DEX are most important stat and hume sucked. Hume has balanced INT MND VIT CHR MP etc and all those are useless for BLU and majority of other jobs. Then I leveled COR and Hume still sucked with AGI compare with cats and tarus.

Reroll a char? No way I'm starting all over again just for a few stat boost, but it feels bad that everytime that another race is doing more dmg than me in same gears when I have 0 advantage over them. I have np staying as jack of all trade Hume forever, but only if other stats become useful. Currently any stat that's not HP STR DEX AGI are pretty meh.

Masekase

12-07-2012, 04:41 PM

Siiri

12-07-2012, 05:07 PM

Taru make good mages and AGI based jobs. Everyone knows that. Just because Elvaan is more attractive at current end game doesn't mean that Taru should magically get to be #1 again. Taru didn't share their over-sized MP pool back in the day, why should anyone feel sorry for them now?
.

Do people forget how obnoxious the "taru black mages" were back when black mage was popular? Seems like a lot of mad tarus in this thread. You made your choice.

Kristal

12-07-2012, 06:39 PM

Llana_Virren

12-07-2012, 06:54 PM

Instead of modifying HP and MP directly, it could also be done by giving different races damage and MP consumption reductions.
So a taru would get 20% less damage from any source, but a galka would consume less MP per spell.

The other stats would need a different approach, although equalizing them across all races would do the trick (if a bit boring).

I always thought that tarus should recieve +50% damage taken, and galkas should recieve -100% EXP-per-kill, personally.

Kincard

12-07-2012, 07:31 PM

Do people forget how obnoxious the "taru black mages" were back when black mage was popular? Seems like a lot of mad tarus in this thread. You made your choice.

I don't. I didn't even play BLM back when it was popular. Sounds like you're just making stuff up. Also, was your Elvaan BLM ever denied to nuke at Kirin/Fafhogg back in 2005? No.

Taru Melee, on the other hand, are often denied to play in Legion because their low HP is a liability.

Thats the issue here. The problem isn't that a racial difference exists, it's that the game has changed to a state where extra HP is the only thing that matters between different races. Extra MP doesn't matter when you get 20MP/tick even outside Abyssea.

A few years go the "racial differences have strengths and weaknesses" argument would hold some water because it was actually true. These days a Galka or Elvaan SCH does every bit as well as a Tarutaru because if you're running low on MP, it's because your group is doing something wrong. Getting one-shot on a Tarutaru melee, on the other hand, just isn't something people can control, and it will put you out a DPS for 3+ minutes.

So either make MP actually matter again (Which isn't going to be easy because of massive refresh choices), or make HP matter less. With the upcoming change to Embrava, we can potentially get like 40MP/tick if you have every refresh buff up. They better plan on adding some amazing spell that costs over 1000 MP and generates no enmity if they want that MP pool to matter.

Afania

12-07-2012, 08:39 PM

Instead of modifying HP and MP directly, it could also be done by giving different races damage and MP consumption reductions.
So a taru would get 20% less damage from any source, but a galka would consume less MP per spell.

The other stats would need a different approach, although equalizing them across all races would do the trick (if a bit boring).

Or just get rid of one shot moves in this game.

Other states needs to be more important too, I'm fine with every race have weakness and strength, but if certain stats are nearly useless than weakness/strength system is pointless to have too.

Byrth

12-07-2012, 09:09 PM

Dissociating the stat packages from race would be fine with me too. If I could choose any set of stats at the moment, I'd probably choose Elvaan or Galka. I agree that I don't really want to give up being a Taru, although I'd be fine with a different haircut at this point.

FrankReynolds

12-07-2012, 10:25 PM

I have no interest in making all the races equal. I leveled 4 different characters in 2003 to figure out which race I liked the best. Guess what, it's Elvaan. ...

It's not like it's hard to build a character in about a month or two if you actually know what you are doing.

That's exactly the problem. You had to waste months leveling in order to make what should be a simple choice of aesthetics. What a horrible waste of time and a major turn off.

And don't give me that "oh it only takes a month or so to build a character" stuff. Nobody in their right mind is going to to throw out their hard work and re-roll unless it's to build a mule. And it takes a lot longer than a month (not to mention a shit ton of money) to re-level crafts, get AF3+2, do limit breaks, quests, COP/ToAU/ZM/VW clears etc. etc. .Having one or two jobs leveled does not a character make. Nobody should have to do all that to change a simple aesthetic. That is a terrible idea.

Demon6324236

12-07-2012, 11:03 PM

While I agree with you mostly, you are somewhat wrong. "it takes a lot longer than a month (not to mention a shit ton of money) to re-level crafts, get AF3+2, do limit breaks, quests, COP/ToAU/ZM/VW clears etc. etc." Crafts, yes. AF3+2 is fairly easy especially if you have a LS your obviously putting this new character in, limit breaks are cake, and getting easier every few months even, quests are so so, they can take time, but depends which you are talking about, CoP takes 1 week, ToAU takes 1~2 weeks, Zilart is able to be done in a single day, VW is a pain because it can be hard to find people for win runs. I wouldn't say most of the things are hard to do, the only real problems I see are luck based drops. Getting back your Mekira body and your Corus from Qilin are going to be your real pains to get back.

Byrth

12-07-2012, 11:31 PM

I've got 99 Ragnarok, Ukonvasara, Twashtar, and Terpsichore, along with 110 Alchemy. Please tell me again how re-rolling is a viable option.

Demon6324236

12-07-2012, 11:47 PM

Its not, its stupid, I agree, but most things are not hard to get back. Ukon/Twash are annoying, but easy, Mythic is a bitch to do again, and Rag is time. My point is that most things that are not severely luck based can be gotten back much fairly easily, so long as your resources did not change much since.

Mindi

12-07-2012, 11:55 PM

There should be a SE-sercive (you pay it like a monthly fee to play the game or to servertransfer) to change your race. Should not touch the race-differences at all, if ppl want to change their race should make them pay for it. If those who complain about their race are really bothered that much they can also pay a few €/$.

The Race-differences ingame should remain untouched.. beside.. all races wouldnt mind a HP boost.. like 20% for each race.

Mirage

12-08-2012, 12:22 AM

I too think that HP values across the board have not increased enough since lv75, compared both to the monster's damage output, and the healing power of white mages. Something like 35% more HP for all races (maybe a tiny bit more for tarus) would probably be healthy for the game. At the same time, reduce Cure 6's MP cost to around 170, and give Cure 5 to red mages.

Godofgods

12-08-2012, 01:55 AM

tyrantsyn

12-08-2012, 02:10 AM

You know the problem with a Taru's HP not being up to snuff with end game content goes a lot deeper than what you guys are making it out to be.

1: TP set ups are not optimal for taken damage in. While some race's can get away with it, because of their stats. Other's can't. One ideal fix for this is armor that reduce damage, ad's HP, and add's to haste and x-hit build's all at the same time. ATM there's little to none that offer this.

2: Content is way to over powered in some cases, in order to make it challenging. And in the case of the Taru's HP that couldn't make it, need's to be taken into account and adjusted. There's plenty of ways this could be done with out giving Taru's a HP upgrade. I'd refer to 1 on this.

When I first came to the game, I started on RDM. And I hadn't realize for a long time how much of a favor I had done for myself by doing this until I try out BLM. The MP pool on a Galka sucks, but can be counter by a good refresh rate. It never bothered me that the Taru next to me had 1000 mp. Because I had made a good choice for a job that would keep my MP pool going even as I went deeper into a battle.

Now, I noticed this earlier and I just wanted to bring attention to it. But if you a Taru and your front of the line job is DRK than you sir/madam have some big brass :):) 's
You know you have a weak hp pool and you know your on the front line with one of the most self destructive job's there is in the game. So how would some one who chooses to do this combo going to complain after the fact. You have set yourself up with a challenging combination and you need to take that into account before you suit up and head out.

Mirage

12-08-2012, 02:24 AM

I've got 99 Ragnarok, Ukonvasara, Twashtar, and Terpsichore, along with 110 Alchemy. Please tell me again how re-rolling is a viable option.

I'm sure you noticed the tarutaru disadvantage long before you got all those weapons :)

Kincard

12-08-2012, 03:32 AM

I don't understand how people can say "oh it only takes this many hours to reroll your character". Those hours I could've spent doing something else? Even just getting through CoP is probably a whole day just due to all the walking around you have to do. Do none of you value your time at all or something?

Seyomeyo

12-08-2012, 03:52 AM

HP Boost on a taru at the very least. We're way too squishy :(

Raborn

12-08-2012, 09:44 AM

Guys Girls Guys and Girls......
Don't you get it?

It's all about Balance

Maruraba

12-08-2012, 10:07 AM

I'm a tarutaru and I'm against changing things. Some may have chosen our characters purely for cosmetic reasons, but plenty of us like having our race specialties and advantages. When we encounter a weakness, we deal with it and compensate for it. Knowing how to cast a black magic spell and walk the line on enmity to the point of NOT getting killed is part of the deal for a black mage, and using gear and food are part of the deal for those of us who want to be on the frontline. Having different races with different stats means having different play styles and requires you to think about how you play your job as an individual and in a group. It would be dull and silly to just lump everyone into one group.

For those who really feel that strongly about it, I say let them have an option, a time-limited race change thing like the ability to change servers. You want to be a hume instead of a tarutaru? Okay, fine, try it out once every 90 days or so. If people really feel that strongly, then we can give them that option, but there's no reason to deprive everyone of such a key feature/mechanic of the game. Variety is good and it should remain.

FrankReynolds

12-08-2012, 10:42 AM

Having slightly diffrent stats across diffrent races is part of what makes in interesting. And it fits the storyline to. I wouldnt want to see a galka with more mp then a tarutaru. And i wouldnt expect to see a tarutaru out strength a galka. Their is a reason for that. Leave it the way it is.

You know damn well that if all the races in this game had had the same stats back when you bought it, that you wouldn't have even noticed the difference. You would have picked whichever race seemed the coolest to you at that time and played away happily in ignorant bliss. And if someone had suggested "I think I should be better at mage jobs than you because I'm small", you would have laughed and told him to F*** off. Years later some dummy would suggest it here on this forum and you would be arguing about what a stupid idea that is and how there are thousands of games where race / character have absolutely nothing to do with stats and players are happy about that.

Plasticleg

12-09-2012, 01:42 AM

a rant of irrelevance
You realize I said that subbing RDM is gimp...right?

Food for thought

1) Melees don't always stay in place for Curaga's.
2) The cost penalty of accession + Cure4 to another party.
3) Melees don't always stay in place for Curaga's.
4) It's never smart to let your melees get low enough for Curaga3 to cost 0 MP with the current game.
5) 3 second Job ability delay for Sublimation coupled with that 30 seconds + time it takes to fill up, renders it only useful for "Oshit" moments.
6) Melees don't always stay in place for Curaga's.

Did I mention, melees move around after they get hit with a knockback?

Godofgods

12-09-2012, 02:13 AM

Kincard

12-09-2012, 11:47 AM

Variety is good and it should remain.

I agree. I don't think anybody is truly in favor of totally getting rid of racial differences because they would make us lose on advantages too, but doing what Mot's suggested (closing the gap between Taru and Hume from 200 to 100) or allowing the separation of race and stat choice would allow variety to exist while still allowing us to play the race we simply enjoy playing.

This game was always about letting us play a single character because of the job system. Having race now being a determining factor for whether or not I'm being allowed to participate in endgame activities is pretty crummy.

saevel

12-09-2012, 12:12 PM

I agree. I don't think anybody is truly in favor of totally getting rid of racial differences because they would make us lose on advantages too, but doing what Mot's suggested (closing the gap between Taru and Hume from 200 to 100) or allowing the separation of race and stat choice would allow variety to exist while still allowing us to play the race we simply enjoy playing.

This game was always about letting us play a single character because of the job system. Having race now being a determining factor for whether or not I'm being allowed to participate in endgame activities is pretty crummy.

That is entirely due to SE's poor planning. HP from 76~99 scaled the same as previous levels while the monsters damage output tripled. Monsters can still one / two shot my Elvann at 15/15 HP merits, Taru's just make it more noticeable. Adding 100 HP won't really change that, we (as in all races) need 30~50% more HP then we have right now.

Kincard

12-09-2012, 03:46 PM

I really don't see what an across-the-board HP increase for everyone would do other than provide a temporary solution. They insist they balance current content based on the stats we can achieve, so if they were to increase our stats they'd just make future hard content do more damage so it'd be the same as if we didn't have the HP increased to begin with.

I'm not against it though, since I do think feeling far more powerful at 99 than we did at 75 is a nice thing.

FrankReynolds

12-10-2012, 04:02 AM

Actually.. i never paid any attention to the stat diffrences between races anyway.

Then this won't affect you, but it will help others out considerably.

Rubicant82

12-10-2012, 07:15 AM

I like the racial differences, it makes the game more dynamic.
I chose a tarutaru knowing I would never be the best Tank or DD, but knew I would make a killer Black Mage. I have friends who chose a Galka because they wanted to be the better tank. Yes thanks to gear any race can be any job, sometimes that doesn't quite work out (as mentioned earlier about the one-shotting tarutarus HENSE the term; You've been taru'd). But one idea that was tossed out there was merit category increases. What if the there was a Racial Merit group. Where each race had their own merits that would increase those stats that are low to equal that of a hume?

example;
Taru Racial:
HP 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Str 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Mnd 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

where 10 is a bonus that would make the current stat equal that of a Hume.

If you are serious about changing the stats I think this would be a better idea, then just a modification.

Godofgods

12-11-2012, 02:37 AM

Then this won't affect you, but it will help others out considerably.

I said it didnt effect my race choice. Not that it doesnt effect me period.
If you want some excitment to the game then you need a heartbeat line. Not make everything flat line.

FrankReynolds

12-11-2012, 02:47 AM

I said it didnt effect my race choice. Not that it doesnt effect me period.
If you want some excitment to the game then you need a heartbeat line. Not make everything flat line.

Yeah, without those racial stats we would all be exactly the same... well... that is after we dump all of our merits, de-level all of our jobs, de-level all our crafts, toss out all of our gear and erase all of our macros etc. but other than that, then yeah, These racial stats are pretty much the only thing that makes us different at all so it totally should be the most permanent decision that you ever make in the game.

Dude, there are 700 other people walking around PJ with the exact same character model as you right now. Just sayin.

Maruraba

12-11-2012, 03:49 AM

You know damn well that if all the races in this game had had the same stats back when you bought it, that you wouldn't have even noticed the difference. You would have picked whichever race seemed the coolest to you at that time and played away happily in ignorant bliss. And if someone had suggested "I think I should be better at mage jobs than you because I'm small", you would have laughed and told him to F*** off. Years later some dummy would suggest it here on this forum and you would be arguing about what a stupid idea that is and how there are thousands of games where race / character have absolutely nothing to do with stats and players are happy about that.

I know this wasn't directed at me, but it touches on some of the same points I made.

Of COURSE I would be complaining if originally there were no differences between races and then suddenly people argued that there should be. And I would be right to complain about it then as well because it would be forcibly changing the way people play the game to their strengths/against their weaknesses in a way that was always fundamental to the game. The race differences are a significant factor in how many people chose their characters and how skilled players choose to play now. It wouldn't be right to require them to change just because a handful of players have remorse.

Give them the option to change, just don't lump everyone into the same group.

FrankReynolds

12-11-2012, 09:48 AM

The race differences are a significant factor in how many people chose their characters and how skilled players choose to play now. It wouldn't be right to require them to change just because a handful of players have remorse.

That is a major problem. Returning players or those making mules may know what they are doing, but expecting a person who has never played before to know what class is going to suite their play style for months / years to come is asking way too much.

Even if you make an incredibly well informed decision as to race, that doesn't mean that SE isn't going to hit the F.U. button and nerf/ignore the job that you had in mind when you picked your race into oblivion (I'm looking at you red mage), forcing you to change to a main job that is less optimally geared towards your race.

If I had known that they would turn red mage into such a crapfest back when I made my hume character, I would have chosen galka or elf instead and not worried about mage related stats. As it is, I sacrificed what I wanted and picked a hume when I would have preferred a taru because I was worried that I would get screwed even worse by choosing Taru and it was a wise decision apparently based on how things turned out. The long and the short is that there are 20+ jobs and most people can't get by in various endgame events without having one or two from each class geared up. Meaning that the whole "You should have chosen more wisely" argument is pretty much out the window. You can no longer choose the correct race for your job. You now have to choose the race that sucks at less jobs than the other races.

Give them the option to change, just don't lump everyone into the same group.

How would they implement that without giving some advantage either to people who didn't use it or people who did? IE if they just raise stats across the board to make them even, who on earth would choose to pass on that? And if they lower stats to make them even, who on earth would choose to do that?

Thegreatmonkey

12-13-2012, 03:21 AM

That is a major problem. Returning players or those making mules may know what they are doing, but expecting a person who has never played before to know what class is going to suite their play style for months / years to come is asking way too much.

When I fist started to play this game (way back when it first came out in NA), I made a Hume knowing that there stats were more even. I later made a Tarutaru because I wanted the INT bonus and the races itself makes the game more fun. Tarutaru having low HP for just about any job they play and they have to keep that in mine when going to do events and what not. I don't think anything should be changed to make the races have more even stats as this dose add more divinity into the game. So what if I play a melee job on my Tarutaru, I will take that into account and add my own play stylist to it, to make up for the stat lost that I do not have for that job. There are a lot of ways that new players coming into the game can look at what each race stats start at.

Chocobits

12-13-2012, 05:35 AM

Wow you have an army of Taru's demanding more HP and to a lessor degree more STR but not willing to balance that out with other stats.

I'd prefer an overall increase in HP not making Taru's have as nearly as much HP as everyone else while still maintaining their INT and MP advantage.

Seconded. The marginal differences on base attribute stats adds flavor and realism.

An X% increase in HP/MP across the board for all races would be a nice fixer for a start. Also, re-examination of HP/MP allotments per job is something I've long felt overdue.

Llana_Virren

12-13-2012, 08:08 AM

That is a major problem. Returning players or those making mules may know what they are doing, but expecting a person who has never played before to know what class is going to suite their play style for months / years to come is asking way too much.

Logic error. "Returning players or those making mules" learned the lesson based on the current system; they didn't automatically know. There's no difference to new players, except new players now have a gross amount of information available to them (that we didn't have in 2002); so they should be more prepared to make that decision than experienced players were.

Arcon

12-13-2012, 08:52 AM

FrankReynolds

12-13-2012, 09:11 AM

Logic error. "Returning players or those making mules" learned the lesson based on the current system; they didn't automatically know. There's no difference to new players, except new players now have a gross amount of information available to them (that we didn't have in 2002); so they should be more prepared to make that decision than experienced players were.

That whole paragraph was a "Logic error". I know more about this game than most people would care to know, but I still don't know what race is going to be best for geomancer and I certainly don't know what race will do best as a used car salesman or whatever other job they choose to develop in the future. Neither do you or any one else on this board. So give it up with the "Oh people should just choose wisely" nonsense.

When I fist started to play this game (way back when it first came out in NA), I made a Hume knowing that there stats were more even. I later made a Tarutaru because I wanted the INT bonus and the races itself makes the game more fun. Tarutaru having low HP for just about any job they play and they have to keep that in mine when going to do events and what not. I don't think anything should be changed to make the races have more even stats as this dose add more divinity into the game. So what if I play a melee job on my Tarutaru, I will take that into account and add my own play stylist to it, to make up for the stat lost that I do not have for that job. There are a lot of ways that new players coming into the game can look at what each race stats start at.

That's all good and fine, except that you can't adjust your playstyle to get into my group because I know that your going to get one-shotted and I'm grabbing a galka instead. Sorry if that sounds rude, but the same crap happened to galkas back before massive refresh was added to the game. They used to get denied on mage jobs for lack of MP. I find it hard to believe that any of that enhances your enjoyment of the game, even if you think it does. These are the two most obvious problems, but definitely not the only ones.

Thegreatmonkey

12-13-2012, 09:42 AM

That's all good and fine, except that you can't adjust your playstyle to get into my group because I know that your going to get one-shotted and I'm grabbing a galka instead. Sorry if that sounds rude, but the same crap happened to galkas back before massive refresh was added to the game. They used to get denied on mage jobs for lack of MP. I find it hard to believe that any of that enhances your enjoyment of the game, even if you think it does. These are the two most obvious problems, but definitely not the only ones.

Well for any end game events I'll be going a mage job class. I know I can get one-shooted by a lot of things but I am also able to control how much hate I build up on the mob so I never pull hate. I'm a mage person at heart and dont really care for melee jobs except for THF.

Arcon

12-13-2012, 09:50 AM

Well for any end game events I'll be going a mage job class. I know I can get one-shooted by a lot of things but I am also able to control how much hate I build up on the mob so I never pull hate. I'm a mage person at heart and dont really care for melee jobs except for THF.

Unless their 30' AoE gets off. Or even 20' AoE, which will often screw you.

Thegreatmonkey

12-13-2012, 12:31 PM

Unless their 30' AoE gets off. Or even 20' AoE, which will often screw you.
OK, you got me there. The AoEs the new enemy's have is really big and should be reduced to maybe 15' or 10' and the amount of damage it dose could also be reduced. I am able to live thought one of the cast if I have Stoneskin up yet normally they get a 2nd one off before I can get stoneskin back up and fully heal myself but I also run away after I lose stoneskin to put it back up to fully heal myself.

Gear and stats do not really do much for a person. These only help out the players who know how to player there job well.

Llana_Virren

12-13-2012, 12:59 PM

That entire paragraph is one gaping logic error, at two fronts. First, when a new player makes their character they don't read everything their is to know about it but proceed to make it based on their preference, and even if they do, it's misleading because they get the wrong impression about stats. Newbies think STR or VIT matters a lot, or that having much MP is essential for mages, so they make their decisions based on misconceptions.

Second, what does it matter that they're more prepared now than returning players were when they first started? He mentioned new players now versus returning players now, and since we live in the now and not in the past, that's the only relevant scenario.

"Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."

Those who chose a race based on either a practical or aesthetic preference is still their decision.

1. Are you seriously saying that the reason why race stats should be mitigated is because players are too lazy or apathetic to the information? If they didn't care when they chose the race, why care now?

Many parts of the game have changed and yes, these changes have had direct and indirect impact on a player's choices (race, merits, time spent on an event prior to difficulty nerfs, etc). However, that doesn't directly address how the race stats ought to be removed or decreased. I started the game as a Mithra Red Mage. I knew that the status quo was "Tarus make better mages" and "Elvaans give more MND." But despite my choice I was still able to play the job more successfully than most because I learned the mechanics of the job.

If you're suggesting that picking a certain race hurts your gameplay, then I'm sorry but you're playing wrong. I don't think that's what you are actually suggesting, but I know some people think this.

However, if you're suggesting that picking a certain race will increase your performance (albeit marginally) and you want to make up for having that few less STR than say a Hume or Elvaan (which I think is the argument), I'd call that "buyer's remorse".

Differences in race play a role in creating an immersible fantasy world. I know this sounds like a cop-out explanation, but the psychology of MMOs in general require a certain amount of "fantasy" to be mixed with a certain amount of "reality." This is needed to allow players to fully engage with their avatar and enjoy the gaming experience. This is the same reason why collision detection exists, amongst other things. Historically Taru are mages, and thus their stats lean towards that specialty. Humes are known in almost all gaming universes as being the most "neutral" and adaptable race. Elvaans are known to be knights (specifically PLDs) and thus their stats gear towards those jobs.

I acknowledge that the stats are poorly adjusted from 75-99; especially in the area of HP. However the argument that players do not care so it shouldn't matter is a failed argument.

2. As my response started, "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it." In the now, players (across many games) are spoiled and want immediate reparations for bad decisions... being able to request end-game or expansion-based rewards isn't enough. The issue, as I see it, is player identity. Players make their character into who they are through their gameplay and social interaction. As I said, being a Mithra didn't impact my ability to play RDM because I dedicated myself to the job.

What I suspect is happening is not that players think that race traits are irrelevant. What I think is happening is players are attributing the marginal differences in stats between the races as to why "Player A does more damage than me" and the reasoning is that if you baseline all the races, they'll be on more equal footing. Anticipating a player's change of heart in what job to play is not SE's responsibility. Their role is to ensure that the jobs are balanced. (No, they're not doing a good job at this, but that's another topic altogether).

What I think would have been nice is if the EXP grind was less arduous; and if all gear was deliverable to accounts under the same ID. This would allow you to simply pick different races... (maybe even give them the same name!) and level, merit and gear them appropriately.

However to mute the differences between the races, in my opinion, minimizes the fantastical and real aspects of the game, it reduces player-contribution to character development, and perpetuates the overwhelming irresponsibility of future MMO playerbases.

Arcon

12-13-2012, 04:17 PM

"Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."

A bullshit saying that history teachers use as their sole justification for why learning history is important.

1. Are you seriously saying that the reason why race stats should be mitigated is because players are too lazy or apathetic to the information? If they didn't care when they chose the race, why care now?

They do care, but that information is not readily available. It doesn't say anywhere accessible that HP is the most important of them. You call someone lazy or apathetic because they don't wanna read through fifteen 100-page NM strategy threads where they see that people get one-shot due to lower HP? This entire argument is a lie.

Also, I never said I was even in favor of this, I just said your argument was bullshit. I do believe the HP/MP discrepancy is too high, but personally I don't care too much about the rest.

If you're suggesting that picking a certain race hurts your gameplay, then I'm sorry but you're playing wrong. I don't think that's what you are actually suggesting, but I know some people think this.

It wasn't what I suggested, but it is very true, and you have the IQ of a deck chair if you don't see why, especially because it's been said at least five times on every page of this thread. Picking a Tarutaru will get you one-shot easily, while picking a Galka won't. How is that not a significant gameplay disadvantage?

However, if you're suggesting that picking a certain race will increase your performance (albeit marginally) and you want to make up for having that few less STR than say a Hume or Elvaan (which I think is the argument), I'd call that "buyer's remorse".

And why shouldn't that be addressed? This is the worst kind of buyer's remorse, because it's permanent. It's not just some money lost that you can make again. I paid 5 euros last night to go to the Sneak Preview, knowing there was a chance they could show the same shitty movie I saw the week before in another cinema, and it happened. So I walked out. Buyer's remorse, I made a mistake. But even though it cost me real money I'd still prefer it over a mistake in choosing a race, because it's a mistake that sticks with you throughout your entire FFXI career and there's nothing you can do about it.

It's actually a FFXI-unique issue, because in other games races and classes are often tailored to one another, and mistakes like this do not happen. But in FFXI, where one race can play every job, it is a noticeable problem.

However to mute the differences between the races, in my opinion, minimizes the fantastical and real aspects of the game, it reduces player-contribution to character development, and perpetuates the overwhelming irresponsibility of future MMO playerbases.

That is the only argument there ever was against this change, everything else is, as you described it yourself earlier, a cop-out explanation. And this is subjective. I personally believe variety comes from the people playing the game, not from stat difference. It's like the people saying being allowed to merit everything reduces player variation, which is equally wrong. Stats do not make a player, only people make a player. Variation will always be there as long as humans play this game.

Llana_Virren

12-13-2012, 10:32 PM

A bullshit saying that history teachers use as their sole justification for why learning history is important.

If you think that this only applies to your History 101 class... then you're not gonna understand what it means at all.

They do care, but that information is not readily available. It doesn't say anywhere accessible that HP is the most important of them. You call someone lazy or apathetic because they don't wanna read through fifteen 100-page NM strategy threads where they see that people get one-shot due to lower HP? This entire argument is a lie.

Also, I never said I was even in favor of this, I just said your argument was bullshit. I do believe the HP/MP discrepancy is too high, but personally I don't care too much about the rest.

It wasn't what I suggested, but it is very true, and you have the IQ of a deck chair if you don't see why, especially because it's been said at least five times on every page of this thread. Picking a Tarutaru will get you one-shot easily, while picking a Galka won't. How is that not a significant gameplay disadvantage?

Tarutaru have always been imperiled by HP, the whole NM-can-oneshot-you arguement is how entire alliances can be decimated and the few survivors picked off at will. However:

And why shouldn't that be addressed? This is the worst kind of buyer's remorse, because it's permanent. It's not just some money lost that you can make again. I paid 5 euros last night to go to the Sneak Preview, knowing there was a chance they could show the same shitty movie I saw the week before in another cinema, and it happened. So I walked out. Buyer's remorse, I made a mistake. But even though it cost me real money I'd still prefer it over a mistake in choosing a race, because it's a mistake that sticks with you throughout your entire FFXI career and there's nothing you can do about it.

Here's the thing... it ISN'T permanent. You can make as many characters you want. You are not bound to one race for all eternity. The problem is not that the races are unfairly different... the problem is that the game was not designed in a way that made levelling multiple characters convenient enough to be viable or using the same character for everything. And I actually made this point, if your reading comprehension was invested into what I was saying rather than why you disagree.

It's actually a FFXI-unique issue, because in other games races and classes are often tailored to one another, and mistakes like this do not happen. But in FFXI, where one race can play every job, it is a noticeable problem.

Tarutaru are(were) tailored to mages; Elvaans and Galka tailored to jobs such as DRK, WAR, PLD, MNK; Mithra tailored to RNG and THF. However allowing races to play every/I] job means you [I]didn't have to start second/third characters.

That is the only argument there ever was against this change, everything else is, as you described it yourself earlier, a cop-out explanation. And this is subjective. I personally believe variety comes from the people playing the game, not from stat difference. It's like the people saying being allowed to merit everything reduces player variation, which is equally wrong. Stats do not make a player, only people make a player. Variation will always be there as long as humans play this game.

I said that it might look like a cop-out, and rather than try to figure out what I was saying, you went along with it.

And LOL if you think having every player in the game have all merits maxed (read as: all merits maxed if you missed that) will somehow create variation. The merit system is borked because there are clear winning/losing merit options; everyone having all merits capped means merits are meaningless.

FrankReynolds

12-14-2012, 02:17 AM

If you think that this only applies to your History 101 class... then you're not gonna understand what it means at all.

I think he fully understands it. Probably more so than you. Your usage of the phrase was incorrect. You used it because you had no real counterpoint.

have always been imperiled by HP, the whole NM-can-oneshot-you arguement is how entire alliances can be decimated and the few survivors picked off at will.

While it is a neat piece of trivia, this does not support your point of view in any way.

Here's the thing... it ISN'T permanent. You can make as many characters you want. You are not bound to one race for all eternity. The problem is not that the races are unfairly different... the problem is that the game was not designed in a way that made levelling multiple characters convenient enough to be viable or using the same character for everything. And I actually made this point, if your reading comprehension was invested into what I was saying rather than why you disagree.

It's permanent to my character. If I'm going to have to erase all my work and start from scratch, I'll do it on a new game and so would most other people. Only crazy people enjoy having to repeat all the same work the have already done in order to get back to exactly where they were before. Do you quit your job every year and reapply in hopes of starting at the bottom and working your way back up the ladder again? Here's a final fantasy specific quote for you:

"Anyone who rerolls in order to change their race to one more fitting for their favorite job is destined to have their favorite job change and have to reroll again... and again... and again".

Tarutaru are(were) tailored to mages; Elvaans and Galka tailored to jobs such as DRK, WAR, PLD, MNK; Mithra tailored to RNG and THF. However allowing races to play every/I] job means you [I]didn't have to start second/third characters.

Except that it does mean that you need to level second and or third characters if you want to excel at your job and let's be honest. This entire game is about excelling at your job.

I said that it might look like a cop-out, and rather than try to figure out what I was saying, you went along with it.

It is a cop out. There are only a few races. You are not original because you picked a cat woman. There are 40,000 other people with the exact same character model. Individualism comes through deciding which events to do and what gear to wear and how to write your macros or choosing to not use them at all. It comes through choosing subjobs and casting spells at the appropriate times. It comes through interaction with other players etc. etc. etc... If there were only three people on the whole server and 2 of them were Taru, but you were mithra, you might have a point. That is, until another guy logged in and picked mithra. Then you're no longer a special snowflake until you find a real way to differentiate yourself from him.

And LOL if you think having every player in the game have all merits maxed (read as: all merits maxed if you missed that) will somehow create variation. The merit system is borked because there are clear winning/losing merit options; everyone having all merits capped means merits are meaningless.

Merits are already meaningless in that sense. Everyone picks the same ones and the end result is exactly the same as if everyone had maxxed them all. The only difference is that it adds a new reason for people to grind out merits and a touch of convenience.

SpankWustler

12-14-2012, 04:20 AM

Are you seriously saying that the reason why race stats should be mitigated is because players are too lazy or apathetic to the information? If they didn't care when they chose the race, why care now?

I'm pretty sure that information on how vital max HP would be to melee in Legion, and potentially other future end-game events, wasn't available to anybody who created a character long before Legion existed.

The extreme lows and highs that Tarutaru and Galka have for HP and MP could be softened a bit without changing the flavor of the five races, though, and those are the only two race-statistics that have any negative effect on game-play.

FrankReynolds

12-14-2012, 05:02 AM

The extreme lows and highs that Tarutaru and Galka have for HP and MP could be softened a bit without changing the flavor of the five races, though, and those are the only two race-statistics that have any negative effect on game-play.

How much would people pay to add 11 strength and 8 attack to <insert piece here>? I'm guessing that some people would spend months / millions working on that sort of upgrade. But Joey over there got it just for clicking "Select". Doesn't seem right in a game that revolves almost entirely around miniscule upgrades does it?

Thegreatmonkey

12-14-2012, 05:41 AM

One of my friends made a good point, she said:

Defense and Vitally needs to be fixed. It's crazy being hit for a large variety of damage when u have protect/phalanx up. 50 one time and 180, non-crit, the next. Unless the all mobs have some kinda trait that doesn't matter what your defense is.

I found out after I selected Elvaan that it wasn't the "best" for mage jobs but I didn't care. There are merits, gear, and learning a way around the "handicaps" the races have.

I think SE should just fix these two as they have been broken for sometime now. Defense and vitally means you take less damage over all from mobs.

Llana_Virren

12-14-2012, 08:17 AM

Stuff

How are you proving your point by disproving your point.

If there's enough customization, then changing races or merits wouldn't be needed. You're suggesting blanding the races so that players can do better with a race choice that doesn't match the jobs they want to play. That's not logical and that's not how MMOs work.

We're agreeing that everyone needs more HP but you're saying that Taru having less HP naturally makes them more likely to get one-shotted... well thats part of the race. Less HP but more MP. The HP argument (or STR/VIT/insert stat here) argument isn't about one race out-sucking another. Those are not taru-only problems. And since they need to be adjusted over-all, there's no real need to go vanilla on race differences.

This isn't a cop out if you actually take the time to look beyond the "I want more STR but maxed it out on gear" argument, which is the real argument that no one wants to admit to.

Llana_Virren

12-14-2012, 08:20 AM

One of my friends made a good point, she said:

I think SE should just fix these two as they have been broken for sometime now. Defense and vitally means you take less damage over all from mobs.

The problem is that players don't want to just work around the handicap of a race choice. They want to be able to deal the same damage as everyone else while still being a Taru. All the gear in the world and that damned Elvaan DRK still has more STR!

FrankReynolds

12-14-2012, 08:35 AM

How are you proving your point by disproving your point.

If there's enough customization, then changing races or merits wouldn't be needed. You're suggesting blanding the races so that players can do better with a race choice that doesn't match the jobs they want to play. That's not logical and that's not how MMOs work.

Apparently you read that wrong. See, I can change my merits, gear etc. any time I want. Race is permanent at this time and that's why racial stats are an issue. You don't get to decide how MMOs work. That is what MMO developers do (in this case they are not sure yet if that is how their MMO will work in the future, hence the debate).

We're agreeing that everyone needs more HP but you're saying that Taru having less HP naturally makes them more likely to get one-shotted... well thats part of the race. Less HP but more MP. The HP argument (or STR/VIT/insert stat here) argument isn't about one race out-sucking another. Those are not taru-only problems. And since they need to be adjusted over-all, there's no real need to go vanilla on race differences.

This isn't a cop out if you actually take the time to look beyond the "I want more STR but maxed it out on gear" argument, which is the real argument that no one wants to admit to.

I'll happily admit it. If I quest the same gear and put in the same merits then I expect the same performance. I shouldn't be gimped by a decision I made 10 years ago that was rendered meaningless by the addition of 16 jobs.

Arcon

12-14-2012, 10:30 AM

If there's enough customization, then changing races or merits wouldn't be needed.

That's the point. They aren't needed.

You're suggesting blanding the races so that players can do better with a race choice that doesn't match the jobs they want to play. That's not logical and that's not how MMOs work.

You are mistaken in assuming race has anything to do with jobs. That is not how FFXI works. FFXI's unique job system allows people to play all jobs regardless of race, and nothing else limits their job experience either, so why should race?

Making a new character to be good at other jobs is not an acceptable solution, the fact you even mentioned it shows you have no grasp whatsoever of how MMORPGs work.

Byrth said it very well:

I've got 99 Ragnarok, Ukonvasara, Twashtar, and Terpsichore, along with 110 Alchemy. Please tell me again how re-rolling is a viable option.

Choice of race is permanent for most people, regardless of how your mind works.

We're agreeing that everyone needs more HP but you're saying that Taru having less HP naturally makes them more likely to get one-shotted... well thats part of the race.

It's part of their race to suck at something but not be better at anything else? Tarutaru is objectively the worst race to play because of the importance of their worst stat, and non-importance of their good stats. INT may be arguable, but it's still nowhere near as important for mages as HP is for melee.

This isn't a cop out if you actually take the time to look beyond the "I want more STR but maxed it out on gear" argument, which is the real argument that no one wants to admit to.

Why would anyone even want that? What's so great about 11 extra STR? The (very unlikely) 1% damage output increase?

Attributing tens of millions of gil to 11 STR is not wrong but can be misleading. People pay that much for STR at the end of the spectrum not because 11 STR is actually that good, but because it is that rare. The hardest HQ items are hard to come by, both crafted ones as well as dropped ones. Price does not scale linearly, so looking at the end of the spectrum isn't representative for how good the stat is, but only how much the stat is worth. Which can still be a lot, because that doesn't mean that people wouldn't actually pay that much to get 11 STR. But that price is not representative for the stat as a whole, because it's determined by player desires and not by objective worth.

Thegreatmonkey

12-14-2012, 10:31 AM

The problem is that players don't want to just work around the handicap of a race choice. They want to be able to deal the same damage as everyone else while still being a Taru. All the gear in the world and that damned Elvaan DRK still has more STR!

Yes, I agree that there are very few of us who will work around it. And those few players are better at the job then others and over all can put out more damage vs other players. But if SE would just fix Def. and Vit, a lot of the "one shooting" would go away....amusing the player knows how to play the job and work the game to there linking. And while Tarutaru are more likely to get one shooted, With most of the new NMs out today, it dose not matter if your Galka, they will and can still get one shooted.

saevel

12-14-2012, 04:22 PM

Yes, I agree that there are very few of us who will work around it. And those few players are better at the job then others and over all can put out more damage vs other players. But if SE would just fix Def. and Vit, a lot of the "one shooting" would go away....amusing the player knows how to play the job and work the game to there linking. And while Tarutaru are more likely to get one shooted, With most of the new NMs out today, it dose not matter if your Galka, they will and can still get one shooted.

DEF and VIT are "fixed" you just gotta understand the defense formula to realize how much defense is required. Monsters have a different pDiff floor then we do, you'll never get their pDiff so low that their hitting for 0's. Their also wielding DMG 200~300 delay 240 weapons so that even if you floor their pDiff their still going to hit you for a ton of damage. 4VIT reduces their DMG by exactly one, so instead of a DMG 300 weapon their now hitting you with a DMG 299 weapon, not much changed.

Conversely we abuse this formula to do maximum damage, though SE's LCF imposes an artificial cap on the amount of damage we can do. If SE were to make VIT / Def "more important" then our damage output would suddenly drop like a rock. The whole battle system is kinda screwed up as it was balanced for level 50 (not 75 as some people think) back in 2002 and only slightly altered for the 2H update.

Byrth

12-14-2012, 09:51 PM

DEF and VIT are "fixed" you just gotta understand the defense formula to realize how much defense is required. Monsters have a different pDiff floor then we do, you'll never get their pDiff so low that their hitting for 0's. They're also wielding DMG 200~300 delay 240 weapons so that even if you floor their pDiff their still going to hit you for a ton of damage. 4VIT reduces their DMG by exactly one, so instead of a DMG 300 weapon their now hitting you with a DMG 299 weapon, not much changed.

Conversely we abuse this formula to do maximum damage, though SE's LCF imposes an artificial cap on the amount of damage we can do. If SE were to make VIT / Def "more important" then our damage output would suddenly drop like a rock. The whole battle system is kinda screwed up as it was balanced for level 50 (not 75 as some people think) back in 2002 and only slightly altered for the 2H update.

Is this not exactly the problem with VIT? lol

Also, monsters get +5% Ratio for every level they are above you. IIRC they were shown not to have a Ratio floor beyond that, but they do have high attack.

Say you're fighting Ig'Alima, who is 21 levels above you and has over 1059 attack. Even if you had 1100 defense (which you probably won't), he'd still have a Ratio of ~2. 2 is the Ratio cap for 1H weapon users against monsters of equal or lower level. So even if you gear/buff for defense, the best you can do is even him out player vs. EM monster levels of Ratio. Now, tack on that he has really high base damage and see how reasonable it is to tank him.

Okay, apply all that to Gallu in Legion and add in Mighty Strikes, which pushes his Ratio up to 3. Now his melee attacks are essentially MS WSs. 4 is the cap for monsters. Without defense buffs he would have a 4.0 Ratio. Instead he has a 3.0 Ratio. How is Defense useful, again?

saevel

12-15-2012, 01:16 AM

How is Defense useful, again?

Umm .. you realize you just agreed with me right .....

Really look back over it again, I said exactly what you did, that defense is largely useless as the amount we'd need to be remotely useful is so high as to be unrealistic. I also said that VIT works exactly the same for the mobs as it does for us, if SE was to make VIT "more important" it would nerf our damage on monsters as they would also the effect.

Demon6324236

12-15-2012, 01:26 AM

DEF and VIT are "fixed" you just gotta understand the defense formula to realize how much defense is required.This line can mislead to the idea your saying that its fine as is, even if your not.

Byrth

12-15-2012, 01:53 AM

Yeah, or as saying that Defense has any real effect at all. In order to make it so DEF and VIT have an effect:

Remove the level correction Ratio boost that monsters get and we do not.
This exists, so changes to Ratio calculation obviously don't have to affect both players and Monsters in the first place. This would largely solve the problems in the previous post, and doubling your defense would halve monster Ratio regardless of its level.

Make it so monsters use fSTR2 instead of fSTR
This would make it so that monsters gain 1 point of base damage per 2 dSTR instead of 4, so player VIT becomes more important.

Change the negative dSTR behavior of fSTR so that it's possible to substantially lower base damage by increasing VIT.
This would have little/no impact on players but a large potential impact on monsters if we stacked VIT gear.
Example:
* dSTR = -16 = Base Damage -24
* dSTR = -40 = Base Damage -60
* dSTR = -100 = Base Damage -150
Currently the problem is not only that 4 VIT lowers monster base damage by 1, but also that VIT becomes less and less effective as you pass monster STR. 22 more VIT than the monster's STR? Congrats on base damage -4.

There, now stacking VIT and Defense make a reasonable difference.

saevel

12-15-2012, 05:14 AM

This line can mislead to the idea your saying that its fine as is, even if your not.

I never said it was fine, just that it effects us the same as monsters and we already abuse that. It's not just the LCF effect though Byrth is using that as an example on higher monsters. Go inside abysesa and brew something, notice how it's still hitting you for damage even though you now have 9999 defense and it most certainly doesn't have 1000+ attack? Monsters have a ratio floor that prevents their pDiffMin from ever hitting 0, no amount of defense will get the monster to hit for zero. Byrth's idea was for certain effects to only apply to us and others to apply to the monster so that the attack formula favors us instead of them, decent idea if SE is willing to go along with it.

Byrth

12-15-2012, 05:25 AM

saevel

12-15-2012, 11:26 AM

Well, two things:
1) Even at the Ratio floor, you still hit for a mix of 0s and damage. I've hit for damage on level 45 monk in Abyssea.
2) The "ratio floor" that you think exists for monsters is an outgrowth of the level correction that I talked about. There's no ratio floor for an EM monster.

Except mobs under your level don't get LCF yet they won't hit you for 0 without phalanx / stoneskin up (negative fSTR zeroing out their base damage notwithstanding)

Go fight a level 38 goblin as a BLU/WAR with defender + cocoon / harden shell up. It's ratio should be way under .5 and thus pDiffmin should be 0. You should see 0's yet you'll see low numbers but not 0's. You see this with brews inside abyssea, go brew Itzpapalotl and let it hit you. You have 9999 defense, its a level 92~95 NM so without a doubt Decent Challenge and absolutely no LCF. It also does not have 1000+ attack, very few NMs have that much. It should be hitting you for straight 0's (50% of time), yet it doesn't.

Monsters have a ratio floor just like we do, except in their case pDiffmin can never hit 0. There is a point at which adding more defense will not do anything, and it's something that easy to hit provided the monster isn't 5+ levels above you.

Llana_Virren

12-15-2012, 02:28 PM

That's the point. They aren't needed.So if you don't need to change races (meaning the change provides negligible to non-existent bonuses), then therefore reducing or eliminating race differences is equally unnecessary.

You are mistaken in assuming race has anything to do with jobs. That is not how FFXI works. FFXI's unique job system allows people to play all jobs regardless of race, and nothing else limits their job experience either, so why should race?I was responding to the suggestion that players chose a race for the job they wanted to play, only to have SE change that job and force the player(s) to chose a different job. Don't take my response as an original idea to make it sound less credible. The original suggestion wasn't credible and that was the point of my response.

Making a new character to be good at other jobs is not an acceptable solution, the fact you even mentioned it shows you have no grasp whatsoever of how MMORPGs work. So you've never played a game like, oh, I don't know, WoW, or DND? You've never played a game where you select race -and- job and they're frozen (aside from sub/secondaries)?

Why would anyone even want that? What's so great about 11 extra STR? The (very unlikely) 1% damage output increase? "11" was an example, but the fact remains that the argument to lower (or reduce) race differences is fundamentally so that DDs aren't "gimped" my something so trivial.

FrankReynolds

12-16-2012, 04:39 AM

So if you don't need to change races (meaning the change provides negligible to non-existent bonuses), then therefore reducing or eliminating race differences is equally unnecessary.

Or we just don't need to have them at all. The real question is not whether or not the racial stats make a difference. The question is whether or not they enhance the enjoyment of the game. A few people think they are a good thing because they think that it somehow makes them a more unique and special snowflake. While others (myself included) find them to be a nuisance which causes a lot of problems without any real tangible benefit.

I was responding to the suggestion that players chose a race for the job they wanted to play, only to have SE change that job and force the player(s) to chose a different job. Don't take my response as an original idea to make it sound less credible. The original suggestion wasn't credible and that was the point of my response.

You were insinuating that it was the players responsibility to pick a race based on the jobs they want to play, which in a game that never changes would still be a difficult task because a person can't really know what they like until they have tried it and at that point it is too late to change.

In reality though, the devs keep adding jobs and events which means that a players taste is highly subject to change. It is virtually impossible to choose the correct race if you play for any reasonable amount of time.

For example: Joey picks his race based on his desire to play red mage. The devs continuously make red mage suck (true story. You can check on this). Joey decides that even though he loves red mage, he must become a monk to be successful in end game and contribute to events with his friends. Didn't joey get shit on enough already by having his job become weak and undesired? do you really need him to have to re-roll his character and waste months / years redoing everything now too? Why are you so sadistic?

So you've never played a game like, oh, I don't know, WoW, or DND? You've never played a game where you select race -and- job and they're frozen (aside from sub/secondaries)?

This game has 20(22) jobs that you can change to at any time. It has nothing to do with WoW's job system and that is one of it's biggest selling points.

"11" was an example, but the fact remains that the argument to lower (or reduce) race differences is fundamentally so that DDs aren't "gimped" my something so trivial.

And why should they be?

Llana_Virren

12-16-2012, 05:09 AM

Or we just don't need to have them at all. The real question is not whether or not the racial stats make a difference. The question is whether or not they enhance the enjoyment of the game. A few people think they are a good thing because they think that it somehow makes them a more unique and special snowflake. While others (myself included) find them to be a nuisance which causes a lot of problems without any real tangible benefit.

You were insinuating that it was the players responsibility to pick a race based on the jobs they want to play, which in a game that never changes would still be a difficult task because a person can't really know what they like until they have tried it and at that point it is too late to change.

In reality though, the devs keep adding jobs and events which means that a players taste is highly subject to change. It is virtually impossible to choose the correct race if you play for any reasonable amount of time.

For example: Joey picks his race based on his desire to play red mage. The devs continuously make red mage suck (true story. You can check on this). Joey decides that even though he loves red mage, he must become a monk to be successful in end game and contribute to events with his friends. Didn't joey get shit on enough already by having his job become weak and undesired? do you really need him to have to re-roll his character and waste months / years redoing everything now too? Why are you so sadistic?

This game has 20(22) jobs that you can change to at any time. It has nothing to do with WoW's job system and that is one of it's biggest selling points.

And why should they be?

So the major crux is, "reducing race differences serves no purpose, so therefore, its valid and should be done."

Because if you think you're "gimped" by being on a certain race, yet you think its playstyle, not race choice, that determines a players' mettle, then you're running down your own argument.

Either race differences matter, and therefore should remain in place because they are designed to matter, or race differences don't matter and therefore should not remain in place because of a non-existent way that they do matter while not mattering.

Demon6324236

12-16-2012, 06:22 AM

FrankReynolds

12-16-2012, 07:53 AM

Either race differences matter, and therefore should remain in place because they are designed to matter, or race differences don't matter and therefore should not remain in place because of a non-existent way that they do matter while not mattering.

It's already been shown in this thread that there are differences in damage output (albeit small, they are still there) and that the differences in HP and to a far lesser extent MP can be game changing. These things create an advantage / disadvantage. Stop saying they don't exist. The differences have been spelled out.

These advantages should be removed because they are outdated. Everyone has their own opinion as to why the were placed in the game in the first place. I contend that that reason no longer exists and that they have become detrimental to the game (if they were ever good in the first place) and should therefore be removed.

Here's the bottom line. If they release a job that uses <insert stat here> as the basis for damage calculation or as the basis for damage reduction etc., I shouldn't get screwed out of being good at that job because I picked a race 8 years before they created the job. That's not how you treat long time customers. Anyone who says otherwise is full of crap.

Llana_Virren

12-16-2012, 07:56 AM

Here's the bottom line. If they release a job that uses <insert stat here> as the basis for damage calculation or as the basis for damage reduction etc., I shouldn't get screwed out of being good at that job because I picked a race 8 years before they created the job. That's not how you treat long time customers. Anyone who says otherwise is full of crap.

And if you think that your difference in STR, or MP, or even HP between one race and another, is the difference between being good or not at a given job, then you have bigger problems.

Byrth

12-16-2012, 08:40 AM

Except mobs under your level don't get LCF yet they won't hit you for 0 without phalanx / stoneskin up (negative fSTR zeroing out their base damage notwithstanding)

Go fight a level 38 goblin as a BLU/WAR with defender + cocoon / harden shell up. It's ratio should be way under .5 and thus pDiffmin should be 0. You should see 0's yet you'll see low numbers but not 0's. You see this with brews inside abyssea, go brew Itzpapalotl and let it hit you. You have 9999 defense, its a level 92~95 NM so without a doubt Decent Challenge and absolutely no LCF. It also does not have 1000+ attack, very few NMs have that much. It should be hitting you for straight 0's (50% of time), yet it doesn't.

Monsters have a ratio floor just like we do, except in their case pDiffmin can never hit 0. There is a point at which adding more defense will not do anything, and it's something that easy to hit provided the monster isn't 5+ levels above you.

This does not indicate that there is a non-0 ratio floor. Ratio has a minimum of 0 as long as monster attack is a positive number, and monster pDIF is different from Player pDIF. Similarly, player pDIF doesn't have a non-0 "floor."

In order to show that their Ratio is floored to a non-0 value, you'd have to:
1) Set yourself up with a certain VIT
2) Let them hit you enough that you're pretty sure you've seen their entire damage range
3) Increase your Defense without affecting your VIT
4) Show that their damage range is unchanged

Then you will have shown that they are Ratio floored. As a side-note, you'd need a monster with high enough base damage that you can detect small changes in their upper damage/swing limit even when you have very high defense.

Byrth

12-16-2012, 08:42 AM

And if you think that your difference in STR, or MP, or even HP between one race and another, is the difference between being good or not at a given job, then you have bigger problems.

BRB, re-rolling as an Elvaan DD with NQ gear because stats other than HP don't matter.

Llana_Virren

12-16-2012, 08:55 AM

BRB, re-rolling as an Elvaan DD with NQ gear because stats other than HP don't matter.

If they didn't matter you wouldn't be re-rolling.

Just because they do matter, and it works against you, doesn't mean it should be changed.

FrankReynolds

12-16-2012, 09:18 AM

If they didn't matter you wouldn't be re-rolling.

Just because they do matter, and it works against you, doesn't mean it should be changed.

Yes, it does. He pays the bills. Who do you think they keep this game going for? The martians?

They are probably reading these forums to see:

A) Are there lot of people who want this changed ?

and

B) Do they have a good reason?

So far our reasons seem to be:

A) Current game mechanics make this a major issue for some races. Tarus in particular.
B) Re-rolling sucks
C) Being held back by something you cannot change sucks
D) Every other aspect of your character can be modified after the fact and we enjoy that about this game.

You don't seem to have the majority vote. Most people agree that they should be balanced out in one way or another although not everyone agrees on how, so you better come up with a more convincing argument than what you have so far.

Demon6324236

12-16-2012, 09:52 AM

And if you think that your difference in STR, or MP, or even HP between one race and another, is the difference between being good or not at a given job, then you have bigger problems.I assure you, you can be the greatest Taru WAR ever, if mobs still kill you in 1~2 attack rounds because of your HP while an equally badass Galka takes 2~4 hits, there is a problem.

Llana_Virren

12-16-2012, 11:48 AM

Yes, it does. He pays the bills. Who do you think they keep this game going for? The martians?

They are probably reading these forums to see:

A) Are there lot of people who want this changed ?

and

B) Do they have a good reason?

So far our reasons seem to be:

A) Current game mechanics make this a major issue for some races. Tarus in particular.
B) Re-rolling sucks
C) Being held back by something you cannot change sucks
D) Every other aspect of your character can be modified after the fact and we enjoy that about this game.

You don't seem to have the majority vote. Most people agree that they should be balanced out in one way or another although not everyone agrees on how, so you better come up with a more convincing argument than what you have so far.

Unfortunately this isn't a democracy, so regardless of who here gets the most support we're still at the mercy of SE and their "infinite wisdom" in creating balance.

Nevertheless:
A) If the argument is about HP, then I whole-heartedly aggree that players should have more. But we shouldn't give Tarutaru all the props of other races (read as: more HP, more STR) just to blandify the race differences.
All players should get at least 5-10% more HP, purely because the ratio of "DMG Taken:Max HP" is broken beyond Lv75 for players.

B) Re-rolling does suck, and my original argument was that SE should have made it not suck.

C) Whole-heartedly agree. However, just because it sucks doesn't mean it needs to be fixed. It sucks that I had to wait for Lightsday to do Arka trials... but that's just how some things are.

D) This is not entirely true. Take merits for example. You "can" invest these merits in other locations, however it doesn't happen. Why? Because those changes aren't realistic. If you need the extra STR that you normally wouldn't get as a Taru, you're certainly not going to change your STR merits to say... CHR. So while you "can" change your character after the fact, they aren't realistic or responsible adjustments for a serious player and shouldn't be used as a "model" for a "successful end-game character development system".

I have and I continue to cede that players should have more HP. This is obvious to anyone who's compared the game at 75 versus 99.

I do not, however, think that the other stats of races should be less-different just because they hold you back "100 points of dmg" on a WS.

Demon6324236

12-16-2012, 12:04 PM

No one cares about their STR, VIT, or anything else, they just don't wanna die instantly from bullshit attacks, thats all they are asking for...

Llana_Virren

12-16-2012, 02:23 PM

No one cares about their STR, VIT, or anything else, they just don't wanna die instantly from bullshit attacks, that's all they are asking for...

No, it really isn't all they're asking for. Or else they would say (as its been said by me and at least one other person) that players need at least 5% HP across the board. This is about the other character stats, but people do not want to admit they think its the reason they do less DMG.

Here's my queue:
If everyone here has already agreed that players should all be at higher HP (since the scaling of HP is borked post-75)... then what's the argument about?
Or is HP not the only reason to be against race stat differences? I think Tarutaru having less STR/VIT than say, Hume; or Galka having less DEX/AGI than Mithra, is intentional and relevant to the game-world sociopolitical backdrop....

Arcon

12-16-2012, 03:38 PM

saevel

12-16-2012, 04:30 PM

This does not indicate that there is a non-0 ratio floor. Ratio has a minimum of 0 as long as monster attack is a positive number, and monster pDIF is different from Player pDIF. Similarly, player pDIF doesn't have a non-0 "floor."

In order to show that their Ratio is floored to a non-0 value, you'd have to:
1) Set yourself up with a certain VIT
2) Let them hit you enough that you're pretty sure you've seen their entire damage range
3) Increase your Defense without affecting your VIT
4) Show that their damage range is unchanged

Then you will have shown that they are Ratio floored. As a side-note, you'd need a monster with high enough base damage that you can detect small changes in their upper damage/swing limit even when you have very high defense.

Melee data
BLU/SCH with 643 defense (wasn't trying for super high def) and 93 VIT. Target was a single 63~65 spider outside Whitegate

33
17
17
31
32
32
48
49
17
22
38
18
37
17
27

Two crits for 67 and 92 respectively.

No 0's, the monsters pDiffMin never got to 0 even though it's obviously under 0.5 and that monster sure as hell doesn't have 300+ attack.

You can't argue around this, once your pDiff hits 0.5 the pDiffMin should be 0 and you should get 0 damage hits. The monster could have a 9999 DMG weapon and if it's pDiff ends up being 0 then it'll hit for 0. Unless you want to argue that a number multiplied by 0 doesn't equal 0?

That was data for a single spider, I fought 9 others while testing out Blue spells, at no point in time did I see a single 0 damage hit. Those are level 63~65 WAR monsters without any form of attack / defense buff or debuff present, this is how I'm positive I was at more then 2x their attack.

saevel

12-16-2012, 04:37 PM

No, it really isn't all they're asking for. Or else they would say (as its been said by me and at least one other person) that players need at least 5% HP across the board. This is about the other character stats, but people do not want to admit they think its the reason they do less DMG.

Here's my queue:
If everyone here has already agreed that players should all be at higher HP (since the scaling of HP is borked post-75)... then what's the argument about?
Or is HP not the only reason to be against race stat differences? I think Tarutaru having less STR/VIT than say, Hume; or Galka having less DEX/AGI than Mithra, is intentional and relevant to the game-world sociopolitical backdrop....

It's simple really. Many players rolled taru's back in the day either cause they were cute or they wanted to play mage jobs. That or they rolled Hume to "play it safe". That worked fine and was a great thing back then, I remember feeling a little regret on choosing Elvann due to the INT, DEX and MP hit I took.

Flash forward, it's now 2012 and melee spam with STR WS's is all the rage. Magic damage and MP has taken a decidedly smaller roll in the overall strategy of the game. Monsters now use high damage AoE attacks and you need high HP and a good DT/PDT set to survive. What used to be a liability is now a minor foot note, and what was a minor foot note has become a major bonus.

People who chose Taru, or even Hume want to get the benefits of Elvann / Galka without having to give anything up. An across the board HP boost would raise all boats and those players don't want that. They want to be "the best" and don't want their race becoming a liability.

Byrth

12-16-2012, 11:31 PM

Melee data

Where's the second set of melee data that shows increasing defense does not continue to decrease damage? You aren't showing a ratio floor; you're showing that monster pDIF is different from player pDIF.

Also, what's your basis for saying the monster doesn't have 300+ attack? Every attempt to determine monster attack has returned much higher values than we expect based on the level/stats. Check out Ig-Alima, who has 1059 Attack "naked." That's approximately 2x what we'd expect a player wearing only a weapon to have.

Based on player calculations, we'd already estimate that level 65 spiders have about 280 attack (227 skill + 35 from STR + 8 base + 10 attack bonus 1). I'm pretty sure we can easily get another 20 out of whatever the difference between monster and player attack calculations are that inflate their attack so much, and it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to expect the spider's attack to be >400.

saevel

12-17-2012, 12:19 AM

Where's the second set of melee data that shows increasing defense does not continue to decrease damage? You aren't showing a ratio floor; you're showing that monster pDIF is different from player pDIF.

Also, what's your basis for saying the monster doesn't have 300+ attack? Every attempt to determine monster attack has returned much higher values than we expect based on the level/stats. Check out Ig-Alima, who has 1059 Attack "naked." That's approximately 2x what we'd expect a player wearing only a weapon to have.

Based on player calculations, we'd already estimate that level 65 spiders have about 280 attack (227 skill + 35 from STR + 8 base + 10 attack bonus 1). I'm pretty sure we can easily get another 20 out of whatever the difference between monster and player attack calculations are that inflate their attack so much, and it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to expect the spider's attack to be >400.

Bulvine Scatology. Regular monsters do not have stupidly high attack, NM's are a different story. Regular monsters do not wear gear, eat food or use JA's. Their attack isn't that hard to estimate and a level 63~65 spider does not have over 300 attack and definitely not over 400.

I deliberately picked a target that would be easy to figure out it's attack and that I could just as easily get more then double it's attack in defense. I can go smack around level ~20 mobs (prevent fSTR from going to 0) and get the exact same results. I actually did this a LONG time ago as a 75 RDM/BLU on different levels mobs to see if there was a point at which adding more defense would help (cocoon + meat vs cocoon + taco for soloing stuff), the answer was no. Once your at slightly more then twice the monsters attack all additional defense means jack squat, it won't even overcome LCF as that seems to be applied after ratio floor.

This isn't that hard. Monsters have a ratio floor that is between 0.5 and ~0.8 with pDiffMin never going to 0, I'd estimate it to be between 0.25 and 0.4 as an absolute minimum.

Llana_Virren

12-17-2012, 02:21 AM

I can't speak for others, to me HP is very much the only reason. And increasing HP across the board will solve fuck all. That's not a solution, that's wasting development time. Because all that will happen is new mobs will be released that deal even more damage and the balance is completely broken again.

I've heard all I ever want to hear from you in this sentence:

If you truly believe that you should not be allowed to live with or near people or associate with them, because that mentality is an absolute danger to society. This is one of the dumbest hings I've heard people say on here, and that's from a board that allows Pchan, Starcade and Rosina talk uncensored.

If something sucks, not only should it be changed, but it must be changed. If you don't see why you're beyond help.

You definitely misunderstood. I'm talking about the fact that some things suck (such as, Tarus get less STR) but that's the nature of the beast (read as: the choice you made). There's a difference between changing something because it is bad design, versus changing something because you dislike the design. If you willfully ignore that in attempt to make your rainbow world more realistic, then that's your right. But to somehow suggest that anything that sucks, even if it sucks based on your own choices, should be renegged is just unrealistic, immature, and equally dangerous to a society that has grown to believe that no action should have consequence.

Arcon

12-17-2012, 02:27 AM

Bulvine Scatology.

I cringe every time I hear that. It's bovine, not bulvine. Use proper English instead of this bullshit.

FrankReynolds

12-17-2012, 05:03 AM

There's a difference between changing something because it is bad design, versus changing something because you dislike the design.

Okay, but this is in fact bad design no matter how much you like it. Putting a decision on the start screen that will either enhance or fuck up your game play for the next 8-10 years is an incredibly mean thing to do. This is a video game. FFS it takes less time to change your major and move to a different college than it does to reroll from a friggin taru to a galka and rebuild just one melee job with a 90 e/r/m. You don't think that's a little bit too much pressure to put on a person the second they start a video game?

Byrth

12-17-2012, 05:09 AM

Bulvine Scatology. Regular monsters do not have stupidly high attack, NM's are a different story. Regular monsters do not wear gear, eat food or use JA's. Their attack isn't that hard to estimate and a level 63~65 spider does not have over 300 attack and definitely not over 400.

Okay, so where is your proof?

Avatars use monster pDIF calculations. Avatar attack at 75 was 504.
kegsay.livejournal.com/5510.html

A naked WAR at 75 had about 350 attack with their Great Axe on.
276 Skill + 56 from STR (using 3/4 even though we know monsters technically use 1H weapons) + 8 base + 10 attack bonus = 350

mizukanji

12-17-2012, 07:00 AM

I like the race stat things but i do wish we got a small amount of stats though i wish we had a guide in game .. i mean throwen in completely loss is bad

Motenten

12-17-2012, 08:01 AM

saevel:

For a proper test, you need a couple issues worked out. First you need a baseline run to get the base damage, and that baseline should give you a solid estimate of its attack as well.

If you think its attack is somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 (+/-50 or so), set your defense to be 300 and get the range of damage it can do to you. 50-100 hits should be fine.

From that info you can determine its base damage, and from the range + base damage you can estimate its attack.

After that, you can do the run with the extremely high defense value so as to determine the full effects.

I will note that the data you provided does indicate some degree of flooring, due to the high frequency of the damage value of 17. Curiously enough, 17 damage is also one of the values of damage I took (depending on mob, though most mobs in a single area gave exactly the same value) when I guarded hits against various mobs years ago when I was playing around with levelling guard.

If I were to take a random guess, I'd figure it to be 25% of the mob's base damage rating.

Llana_Virren

12-18-2012, 02:31 AM

Okay, but this is in fact bad design no matter how much you like it. Putting a decision on the start screen that will either enhance or fuck up your game play for the next 8-10 years is an incredibly mean thing to do. This is a video game. FFS it takes less time to change your major and move to a different college than it does to reroll from a friggin taru to a galka and rebuild just one melee job with a 90 e/r/m. You don't think that's a little bit too much pressure to put on a person the second they start a video game?

I agree that re-rolling is unfeasible but the reason that it is more and more unrealistic is due to the tenure of the game. Don't get me wrong, I do not think anyone actually needs to re-roll to be good. If you're re-rolling because the lack of HP is holding you back, that's a game flaw. If you're re-rolling to get the extra STR... that isn't a flaw in the game, that's a personality issue where you want to maximize your potential while accepting no consequence or counter-positive.

Back in 2004-2005 re-rolling wasn't much of an issue... obviously with the amount of time the game has existed, re-rolling a character is a problem simply due to the amount of time needed to level the character's zone access and progress, let alone the job and gear.

Which leads me back to my point: mules should be able to share all gear (including Ex/Aug) because they all share the same account. I think mules also should, based on perhaps certain quests, share progress from the main account after meeting certain conditions (meaning you shouldn't have to redo RoZ/CoP for sky/sea, etc). And every race should recieve 5% HP bonus at a minimum. Personally I think 10% is more appropriate. Or, perhaps, the merits should be %HP rather than a static value (ie .1-15% versus 10-150 HP).

Re-rolling should be for name change or avatar change. The need to change race for HP is problematic, however changing race for the minor increase in another stat (such as STR or AGI) is not something that needs to be addressed as an issue.

Also, just to be clear, when I say "you" I am referring to any player; my intent is not to isolate you or imply a specific person.

Demon6324236

12-18-2012, 03:33 AM

No, it really isn't all they're asking for.Perhaps you should go back through this thread and learn what they want because yeah, HP is about it... OP has not posted in 10 days, last post was on page 6, since then basically everyone who was posted has wanted HP changed, so far as I can tell they are all smart enough to not care about other stats, especially if it would mean since they want all stats flatlined, they get nothing, rather than just wanting and getting HP.

Godofgods

12-18-2012, 03:46 AM

pretty much every final fantasy in the series has had this in one for or another. Certain ppl are better inclined to using various things. Some times its equipment types, some times magics, better at defending or attacking. Race differences are just another form of that. I don't want to see that change. Things should have a difference between them.

Demon6324236

12-18-2012, 04:07 AM

Other Final Fantasys are not Final Fantasy XI, they are not a MMO, they are not a game that has new content still coming after 10 years, they are not a game where people can choose to bring you or not, and they are not a game that allows the enemies to basically kill you in 1~2 hits in a real time situation no matter your gear or level. Other Final Fantasy games should almost never be used as an example for why something should work in this game or XIV because the rest are all Single-player JRPGs, this is a MMORPG, completely different genre and a whole different monster to tackle.

FrankReynolds

12-18-2012, 06:27 AM

If you're re-rolling to get the extra STR... that isn't a flaw in the game, that's a personality issue where you want to maximize your potential while accepting no consequence or counter-positive.

Where do you get these ideas? Is this game owned / run by some educational institution? Since when is it required that all video games include lessons about sacrifice and reward or that every decision should have consequences? I don't need a video game to teach me that I can't have everything in life. Life does a sufficient job of that on it's own and I was fully capable of grasping that long before I ever picked this or any other game up. I hope this is true of everyone else playing this game as well.

Which leads me back to my point: mules should be able to share all gear (including Ex/Aug) because they all share the same account. I think mules also should, based on perhaps certain quests, share progress from the main account after meeting certain conditions (meaning you shouldn't have to redo RoZ/CoP for sky/sea, etc). And every race should receive 5% HP bonus at a minimum. Personally I think 10% is more appropriate. Or, perhaps, the merits should be %HP rather than a static value (ie .1-15% versus 10-150 HP).

Re-rolling should be for name change or avatar change. The need to change race for HP is problematic, however changing race for the minor increase in another stat (such as STR or AGI) is not something that needs to be addressed as an issue.

Also, just to be clear, when I say "you" I am referring to any player; my intent is not to isolate you or imply a specific person.

Wouldn't it make more sense to just adjust the merits so that a fully merited taru has the same HP as a fully merited galka only it would take far more merits for a taru to reach that cap than a galka? If they did that for all stats, they could keep the Consequence / Benefit thing that people seem so in love with without making race choice a permanent pain in the ass. It would still be unfair to taru's because they lack in the only stat that people would really feel required to merit, but people seem to like the idea of getting screwed by picking a cute character instead of a big character so why not?

Motenten

12-18-2012, 07:01 AM

Basically, there are three categories of changes being brought up:

Flatline all stats across all races. Arguments for or against this change are pretty much inconsequential. Whether there are differences between the races or not is a pure design (artistic-level) decision, and changing this would be changing the "vision" the developers have of the game. It's not something you can argue for based on mechanics or past FFs or whatever. Essentially, there's no 'argument' to be made here, merely a note on preference.

Changes to base stats, excluding HP/MP. This is largely a minor change due to personal preferences of the "it would be nice if..." type, but there's still a valid argument to be made that weighting is imbalanced among the stats. Personally I'd probably argue for keeping the 28 point distribution*, but weight Chr at 0.5 per stat point, and Str at 1.5 per stat point. I can't see any significant relative difference in the value of the remaining stats.

Changes to HP/MP. Technically balanced with an 8 point sum between the two stats, but the 7/1 and 1/7 combinations (Galka and Taru) seem notably imbalanced compared to the others. If this were a game where you were restricted to specific jobs based on your race, this would be less of an issue, since clearly the jobs would be tailored to the races that could use them. However in a game where every race can be every job, and where not every job has some balanced value between HP and MP (ie: every job has HP, not every job has MP), the advantage/disadvantage to be had on the MP side is not properly balanced against HP. This is compounded further by the issues that have been brought up elsewhere.

* Just realized I'd posted my findings on point distributions elsewhere, but hadn't copied it here. Here's the writeup I did:

Addendum on weighting distribution for general stats:

Economizer

12-18-2012, 07:21 AM

Wouldn't it make more sense to just adjust the merits so that a fully merited taru has the same HP as a fully merited galka only it would take far more merits for a taru to reach that cap than a galka? If they did that for all stats, they could keep the Consequence / Benefit thing that people seem so in love with without making race choice a permanent pain in the ass. It would still be unfair to taru's because they the only stat that people would really feel required to merit, but people seem to like the idea of getting screwed by picking a cute character instead of a big character so why not?

This would be so great, everyone could merit everything to a super race level of stats too - you could have the HP and VIT of a Galka, the MP and INT of a Tarutaru, the STR/MND of an Elvaan, the DEX/AGI of a Mithra, and the CHR of a Hume. My only caveat would be that this should be a separate and new merit category from everything else.

And for game logic, here's this - you'd need to have beat CoP (and of course unlocked merits) to unlock these new merits, since you've "broken" your chains - the primary game logic for race differences if you will. There could even be a quest for it, and if it really kills people that hate Tarutaru or obsess about a game needing to be weighed down with morals and life lessons (aside from the standard "don't be a jerk" that happens when you play with other people), the quest or meriting could be harder for Tarutaru like everything else is in the game.

Flatlining the stats in this way, by bringing it to everyone's strengths, and by having a bit of game logic, will make the design easier to deal with since the devs won't have to worry about making another set of RSE at 99 that somehow is competitive with the wholly better gear we have now, nor will they have to worry about shutting out Tarutaru from entire events by making mobs hit too hard, nor have to worry about making Tarutaru actually have any amount of advantage to balance out the biggest disadvantage ever by making MP pools worthwhile or INT based magic damage competitive (although they should do this regardless) with melee jobs.

But I guess if making things even between races is so unpopular we can remove the quest and key items to open those weighted doors in Quicksand Caves, and start working on more ways to make life worse for anyone who isn't the Galka masterrace.

Llana_Virren

12-18-2012, 09:36 AM

Where do you get these ideas? Is this game owned / run by some educational institution? Since when is it required that all video games include lessons about sacrifice and reward or that every decision should have consequences? I don't need a video game to teach me that I can't have everything in life. Life does a sufficient job of that on it's own and I was fully capable of grasping that long before I ever picked this or any other game up. I hope this is true of everyone else playing this game as well.

Wouldn't it make more sense to just adjust the merits so that a fully merited taru has the same HP as a fully merited galka only it would take far more merits for a taru to reach that cap than a galka? If they did that for all stats, they could keep the Consequence / Benefit thing that people seem so in love with without making race choice a permanent pain in the ass. It would still be unfair to taru's because they lack in the only stat that people would really feel required to merit, but people seem to like the idea of getting screwed by picking a cute character instead of a big character so why not?

You're still trying to sell me on the idea of making it possible for "Player A" regardless of race, have the same stats (not counting gear) as every other Player.
And that's the single idea that I will refuse to bend on. To keep it simple, a fully merited Taru should not, under any circumstances, be able to have equal HP or STR or VIT or whatnot, of a fully merited Elvaan. Period.

Yes everyone needs more HP.
Yes we should have better-organized and designed merits (I'm looking at you, RDM).
No, we should not make it so that race is purely cosmetic.

Dantedmc

12-18-2012, 10:17 AM

No, we should not make it so that race is purely cosmetic.

Why is this a bad thing? Game changing, permanent stats should not be tied to physical appearance.

Arcon

12-18-2012, 10:17 AM

No, we should not make it so that race is purely cosmetic.

You can't say what we should or shouldn't do, because this is simply a matter of opinion. You think variation is good, others think it's pointless. Yet others think there's a useful middle ground.

Increasing HP across the board would not help at all, it's not a solution to this problem. A solution would be to diminish the difference between the races. Leave some difference there for people who want to be special snowflakes, but make the races functionally similar. HP is the only outlier in this regard. The difference in HP is currently at about 30% while the MP difference is at up to 50% (between Galka and Tarutaru), while all other stats hover in the 10% range. And that's despite HP/MP being a lot more relevant and noticeable. If Tarutaru's advantage in MP would be reduced to 10% and HP disadvantage reduced to 10% it would already be a huge help, and it would still be a larger difference than all other stats.

Llana_Virren

12-18-2012, 01:45 PM

It's a safe rule of thumb that on the internet, "yes" and "no" are 99/100 opinion, so I'm saving the few characters of typing "in my opinion" after each yea or nay.

As far as races, and we agree that we're now talking about stats -other- than HP and MP:
The game did change dramatically, however you can't just say "well guys, its been a nice run, but since we don't need all this MP anymore let's just change it into HP so that we don't suffer any of the penalties as DD, that everyone else did playing mage all these years".

You're not talking into account that these stats are both positive and negative. Mithra naturally excelled as both Thieves and Rangers, and were supposed to based on the role of their race in Vana'diel. The same applies to Tarutaru, who throughout lore sacrificed great physical strength for magic power.

So should any willy-nilly Elvaan or Galka be on equal footing to a Mithra as a THF or RNG (or NIN, by extension)? Or any Galka or Hume be able to out-nuke a Taru? The idea that "everyone is equal" and "everyone can do whatever he or she wants to" is all well and good, but it contradicts the entire premise of having different races.

(The lack of significant importance to magic damage hurt everyone equally, so that is not an unfair swipe against Tarus. However the need for significant HP to survive attacks has always been the bane of being a Taru. The problem is not how little HP Taru have, but rather how minute the increases in HP between 75-99, and that also affected everyone.)

Again, we keep going back to HP/MP, but I've already said that should be handled on the side. We're really talking about STR/VIT/DEX/AGI/MND/INT/CHR now, and those were tilted one way or another to offer diversity... and it does. The game might have changed to tilt HP and MP one way or another, but the remaining stats have remained somewhat true to form (*cough* CHR on DRK WS...).

To emphasize... again... for HP... everyone should get substantially more than they have now; but by increasing it across the board racial alignment becomes unnecessary.

Lastly, permanent stats are not tied to physical appearance, they are tied to race-as is the case in virtually every RPG...ever. The appearance is chosen after the race. You can't deliberately switch the two in attempt to argue that appearance somehow affects gameplay, because it doesn't.

Byrth

12-18-2012, 02:54 PM

FrankReynolds

12-18-2012, 02:56 PM

As far as races, and we agree that we're now talking about stats -other- than HP and MP:
The game did change dramatically, however you can't just say "well guys, its been a nice run, but since we don't need all this MP anymore let's just change it into HP so that we don't suffer any of the penalties as DD, that everyone else did playing mage all these years".

Actually you can. They pretty much do that to some group or another every single time they change something. That's why you don't full time B.Haidates any more or grind for 7,000 hours to get one level anymore. Does it suck a little for the people who lived through the shitty part? Yeah, a little. But not nearly as bad as continuing to endure the shitty part for all eternity. Wishing that others suffer just because you have suffered is quite a problem don't you think?

You're not talking into account that these stats are both positive and negative. Mithra naturally excelled as both Thieves and Rangers, and were supposed to based on the role of their race in Vana'diel. The same applies to Tarutaru, who throughout lore sacrificed great physical strength for magic power.

I'm taking into account the positive and the negative. I don't like either.

They can rewrite this whole thing with robots and gummy bears as the main characters if they want or make everyone talk like Samuel L. Jackson. There are a million things in the lore that are inconsistent with the way the game actually works anyways. Don't try to take issue with this one minor inconsistency just because it suites you.

So should any willy-nilly Elvaan or Galka be on equal footing to a Mithra as a THF or RNG (or NIN, by extension)? Or any Galka or Hume be able to out-nuke a Taru? The idea that "everyone is equal" and "everyone can do whatever he or she wants to" is all well and good, but it contradicts the entire premise of having different races.

How do you know that they didn't just make the different races to fit the story line? What makes you so sure that they must have designed different races just to meet someones desire for different stats being permanently placed in the game? Every piece of fiction of this nature that I have ever read has featured different races like elves and dwarfs and crap. Sometime the dwarfs are crazy tough warriors. Sometimes the elves are tiny. Sometimes they're huge. Sometimes the cat people are magicians. Sometimes they are too stupid to fit any job really. Who are you to say what that JP guy was thinking when he wrote that stuff? What makes you think that the guy who wrote the lore knew anything about how stats work at all?

In my personal opinion, the people who wrote the story line and the people who designed the stat / battle system probably didn't give each other requirements like that. I suspect that someone wrote a cool back story and then some other guy went "oh, cool. I guess I'll give elves some of this and tarus some of that". I doubt that he ever really considered whether or not that would make the game fun. How could he possibly know that it would be annoying the crap out of people who were stuck with that crap 10 years later? Do you really think he would be too married to it to change it? Because, he is considering it.

Lastly, permanent stats are not tied to physical appearance, they are tied to race-as is the case in virtually every RPG...ever. The appearance is chosen after the race. You can't deliberately switch the two in attempt to argue that appearance somehow affects gameplay, because it doesn't.

You didn't notice that the races all look different from eachother? Or are we having a misunderstanding about the definition of appearance? And again, who cares about what other RPGs are doing? I don't pay them money. They don't make FFXI. In Halo I can dominate the rocket launcher and PWN your face all day. That is not allowed in this game. Should they add it just because some other game did it?

Mirage

12-18-2012, 03:57 PM

Perhaps a solution could be to add merits that were inversely proportiona(or something)? The less HP you have, the more HP the merit would give you per point put in it. Then do the same with all the other base stats as well.

Every race could still increase any stat they wanted, but a galka wanting to raise his HP further would get less out of it than if he had increased MP, and less out of it than a taru putting the same amount of points in HP.

There could be some sort of formula developed to control how much of each stat you'd get. I wouldn't know what it would be like cause i'm no mathematician.

Llana_Virren

12-19-2012, 02:54 AM

No. If you increase HP across the board then SE will keep making monsters that can kill Galkas with WS+melee hit (and thus one-shot a Taru). We need to bring the HP of frontline jobs close together so that they can design monsters that are difficult but don't alienate one of the more popular races.

As a premise I would agree, that all "WAR" would have one value for base HP, all "WHM" or "BLM" their own, job-dependent HP value. The issue however isn't with HP so much as the other stats. We already agreed that players need more HP. (And yes, I'd also bet that SE would just get up and make even more retarded NM moves to account for the HP increase... because, well, SE is retarded like that).

The problem (as I see it... better?) is that the argument is that all "WARs" (for example) should have matching base stats for everything (no consideration for Race stats), not only for HP.

Frank says he doesn't like Race-affiliated stats, and he is correct that not every RPG maintains the same "lore" for what Races are (or even what constitutes its own Race, for example Elf versus Wood Elf versus Dark Elf versus Changling, versus et cetera ad nausium). However I did not say that SE did this with FFXI to appease any individual, but rather they took the "model" and put their own twist on it. And traditionally in Final Fantasy, smaller characters (usually denoted by job, Race or age) had lower HP but with job-based stats. So to use that as a model, a Taru WAR could in theory have higher attack than an Elvaan WAR ... but still significantly less HP.

The proposal is to make it so that Races served no purpose beyond cosmetics, and I think that in order to do that, you have to say that Races should serve no purpose. It is specifically this point with which I disagree, based on the precept of what a Race is and how it correlates to the RPG environment.

Rambus

12-22-2012, 06:44 AM

Greetings everyone!

There seems to be a large discussion going on over on the Japanese forums in regards to this topic as well!

Here is a comment from Producer Akihiko Matsui:

There is problems when you get "You can't play pld because you do not have enough hp to live though an attack. After putting all that DT, MDB and so on you only have enough room to do so much to pad hp.

(Kinda taking a comment of someone else posted here about there being problems because HP values are too low for the current mobs.)

I am a taru mage but I pad Hp because 90 hp might prevent me getting one-shotted.

Max mp is meaningless anyway because of how people can control MP management and MP restore. So if max Mp is meaningless, then it tilts an imbalanced favor for max hp because HP is meaningful in this game.

I also feel STR for melee is tilted more for melee effects then INT is for mages. So then you have an imbalance of liking melee setups/races as apposed to mages. All zerg strategies are melee orientated because buffs pad them better. So you have those imbalances too.