November 2019 FINAL FANTASY XI Digest

[Yoji_Fujito]

The latest FINAL FANTASY XI Digest is now available! The digest covers key features from the most recent version update. Check out the video, try the version update, and leave a feedback based on your experience of playing the new content.

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[Gwydion]

...But you didn't actually adjust anything for Beastmaster! Please address this. :(

[Isola]

So... yeah... about these "updates" this month, time for a mulligan. Cause yeah.

[Safiyyah]

I'm so disappointed in the beastmaster "update", which is two fairly useless pets. Please address the job with a substantial fix to the broken mechanics.

[Beastorizer]

Ok, I am not part of the "Change the range" Or "We do not need new pets crowd" but you kind of duped both crowds.

I am part of the "Give me new pets crowd," but these are not new pets, unless the mandy knows amnesia....

Next time, at least if you are going to give out new pets, can you actually give out NEW pets. As in pets we do not have?

It is like having an ice cream store, but you only sell vanilla ice cream. However, the way you present it is in a variety of colorful cartons. It is still vanilla ice cream man......Can we have new flavors?

Need some help, I can link the bestiary here if you have trouble finding it.
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Bestiary
You may be a bg fan...
https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Category:Bestiary

[Mavrick]

BST got the exact same pets they had before.... all you did was change the color. This is a sad trick. Why does SE hate BST :(

[Voidstorm]

SCH update did more for WHM, BLM, & RDM than it did for SCH...
anymage not SCH 12+ minute sublimation, so you won't get slept. <6min for SCH and the rate didn't even increase to make it comparable to Refresh III. (a sublimation +4 hat is really +2 since we can wear refresh +2 hats; +5 body is really +1 since Jhakri+2 exists)
Klimaform... SCH duration: 5min; RDM duration: 15min with composure.

Ya know what, let's have a WHM & NIN update where Afflatus Solace/Misery & Innin/Yonin are unlocked when set as subjob!

[Rwolf]

This was not an update to either BST or SCH.

BST got pets that are reskins of existing pets but worse. Sweet Caroline has lower defense and Max HP than a pre-existing mandragora, Sharpwit Hermes.

The distance for pet actions needs to be longer on BST. It doesn't encourage melee from master and it's not fun to manage my positioning. Other pet jobs don't have to think about this for actions.

Add melee traits but keep Fencer focus. Another piece of ready recast gear not tied to weapon. Add shields. Run Wild and Spur could work on the master if engaged. Something.

SCH only received adjustments that can be taken advantage of as a support job. Nothing to spells that really need updating.
Adloquium doesn't scale with modern TP gain.
Animus Augeo/Minuo needs to be a separate buff from equip cap.
Enmity & Magic Accuracy stratagems are too weak.
Libra needs more use.
Modus Veritas needs to land 100% and remove stacking.
Embrava needs regain back, can keep refresh.

This was very disappointing. :(

[Alhanelem]

What's the point in releasing inferior jug pets to what's already available? The only valid reason might be ease of obtainment, but I have no idea how it compares because well I don't play BST lol. But these pretty easily qualify as the lamest job adjustments out of all of the ones done this year.

(And seeing all the BST i know not getitng their concerns addressed definitely doesn't make me want to play the job more, and if the new jug pets are just NQ/altered pets that already existed before, that's basically an insult disguised as an update. I really don't mean to be rude here, but really, from what context or angle was this supposed to improve anything?)

[ejdiii3074]

Hello! Thank you guys for another great update! Its been 2 full years since we had a Dragon Quest/FF14 crossover event. Can you please do this crossover event again soon? Thanks!!

[Dragoniks]

The world of Vana'diel is home to a plethora of monsters and fauna of all shapes and sizes!
PLEASE PICK SOME FOR BEASTMASTER



Everything has been told, "new pet" means something different for "US" players and "YOU" developpers.
- New pets for players mean new type of pet as new monster family, a family of monster we cannot charm before and could charm now.
- New pet for developpers mean new color from existant monsters to save money in the processus of creation.
Thanks for your effort in adding stuff each mouth, but you need to focuse more on what players actually need.

You should make a new survey asking players what they want and follow that as best you can.

[Zuidar]

While SCH quality of life adjustments are welcome, but after seeing that doubled Sublimation and boosted duration to Klimaform seems underwhelming than I had thought as my impression that it was a bit more for some of the other abilities go for as scholar would of been affected by adjustments. Klimaform could use more potency or scale more with dark magic. Strategem Recast would of been nicer, maybe adjust the merit point "Grimoire Recast" and add a reduction recast of Strategems by 1-2 seconds per merit level. Stormsurge...well I haven't any ideas anymore with how low the stat bonuses give. Enlightenment could allow a brief use of either Embrava/Kaustra. Remove Modus Veritas effect from Category 1 merits in favor of something else because Modus Veritas is really useless.
Scholar at it's core specializes more in Regen/Helix spells overtime as White Mages favor more to direct Cure Spells, as I recall SCH has access to Regen V and makes use of it much more than WHM and yet whms has gifts/gear (Cleric/Piety relic body) that boosts Regen Potency more than SCH.)

[Xvii]

New jug pets? really?

Im speechless. Beastmaster was clearly the job needing the most changes to make it viable again and you give us more useless pets. Its not even a class change! its like giving a new katana to a ninja, or a new shield to the paladin... wow.

Do you dev even read these forums? I dont think so. Its been said numerous times that the job feels clunky since you reduced the range to Ready. You could have at least given us some yalm to fix that.

[Elesar]

I gave up on the developers ever doing anything meaningful to Beastmaster. Get ready for more reskinned jug pets everybody!

[Zuidar]

Thank you SE for adding extending the list of supported augmented Items to be deliverable to same-account Characters. I apologize for this one being off topic but can you look into changing Omen Caturae scales to be deliverable to same-account characters? They are used with job cards to upgrade to +3 artifact armor but job cards can be deliverable to same-account characters. Relic shards/void items were initially undeliverable but were changed to be deliverable. Need some way to store or mule to Omen Scales for inventory

[Beastorizer]

What's the point in releasing inferior jug pets to what's already available? The only valid reason might be ease of obtainment, but I have no idea how it compares because well I don't play BST lol. But these pretty easily qualify as the lamest job adjustments out of all of the ones done this year.

When people who do not really play BST are questioning the adjustments, you know it is bad lol........

[Ilisidi]

The background picture looks really interesting.

With last month's objective having been 'watch Chocobo Racing', there's one thing I have been missing for a very long time: The Gold Trophy.
The storied Chocobo Races have Bronze Trophy and Mythril Trophy, but we never got a Gold Trophy. Maybe we could get one for handing in a CS Gold Stand with 500 wins inscribed?

[Smokenttp]

In my opinion SE kinda deviated the way it actually wants BST to work but if they want the master to fight alongside the pet they need to allow us to do so so here is a couple of sugestions in that regard/things it should consider:

Reward range should be reverted (pupetmaster pets does have the same HP base on tank mode and can be healed from afar, no reason why we cant heal a pet tanking from the front of a dragon while we satay on the side wing to avoid breath damage).

Charmer merlin should lose the -ready recast time and BST should get an extra gift that gives the same -Ready Recast time (1200 job points does not sound unfair for this) wich would allow us to actually not gear swap and get benefits from REMAS aftermaths and maybe even from fencer and shield usage if we desire (more play options = more fun).

More Hybrid gear should be released sugestion of status would be : ACC for both master and pet, -Damage taken for both master and pet, triple/double attack/store tp for master only , the closest we get to this is ambuscade gear (only give ACC) and the superior 3 armor (again only ACC, and while in that subject the pet enmity from it has some people arguing over that it should apply extra enmity to the pet once snarl is used, as for me i am not really sure since this ja does work fundamentaly different then Ventriloquy, but extra enmity control on bst pets might be interresting so i just decided to throw this here anyway).

Last but not least new job abilities , something in line of spirit bond but rather then let the master recive the extra damage let the pet recive said damage instead maybe reward heling the master as well while the ja is active? (altough this might be a bit too much).

Also the new Luccani pet should have an fragmentation propriety rather then fusion, we really lack an solid fragmentation pet.

[Nyarlko]

Please issue an immediate apology for calling the addition of 2 jugs (which are little more than reskins of existing pets) a "Job Adjustment." It's false advertising. This is the equivalent of adding a couple new arrows and calling it a job adjustment for RNG. It's a direct insult to the intelligence level of your customers if you believe that we'd simply accept it and move along. You need to issue an immediate statement that this is not everything planned for BST (and maybe SCH too since the changes are really only going to noticeably affect /SCH subjob.) You need to do so even if you were hoping to get away with doing nothing else for the job that needs the most adjusting.

There are inherent problems with BST mechanics that NEED to be addressed, some of which are functionally bugs that were intentionally introduced into the game by the long-overdue-to-be-reverted kneejerk overnerf to JA range. Even if I didn't play BST, it would still be irritating to me as a player that an entire job was crippled to less-than-melee range. It's an inexcusable failure of game design to leave any job in a state as unreliable and glitchy gameplay-wise as BST has been for YEARS. I say this as someone who still considers BST to be my main job.. but I still know better than to inflict myself on others as BST and relegate it to a solo-only skillchain engine. Even a full reversion of the JA range nerf to restore all JAs to their original values would have zero actual risk of affecting job balance as doing so would cause no actual increase in our pitiful-for-a-"frontline melee" master+pet combined damage output. There are no valid arguments to support leaving JA ranges as-is.

Some questions that I would love to get answers to:
Is there a logical reason behind why BST is the only 1h primary weapon "frontline melee" job that does not have access to native Dual Wield independent of subjob?
Why are there zero native JA/JT to support master melee if we are intended to be meleeing? (No, a few measly Fencer gifts does not function as functional encouragement to be whacking things with an axe.)
Why are we still dependent upon a non-ilvl weapon (Charmer's Merlin) for proper pet performance, that directly conflicts with single-wielding due to how pet levels are determined by mainhand weapon AND conflicts with master melee due to TP constantly being reset every few seconds due to weapon swaps?
Would it be impossible/overwhelming on a technical level to basically copy/paste/modify the code used for PUP to shift BST pet level determination to a new ranged weapon slot item instead of being based on mainhand weapon? Bake in some Ready recast- like SMN gets (along with a lower bound of 10sec minimum charge recast,) and that solves the issue with Charmer's Merlin as a bonus.


Why do you hate us? :( We've been left to stagnate for the last several years equipment-wise (even getting practically identical AF/Relic reforge sets, and little things like being unable to get Pet:MAB/Pet:MAcc on the same Reisenjima augment unlike SMN/PUP,) player pleas and complaints about the gameplay implementation have been officially ignored and have consistently gone unanswered, our pets don't scale properly for high-end content unlike other pet jobs, there's no synergy between master+pet meleeing, etc.

[RandomCanadian]

If you had not called the new pets a BST job update, maybe people would have received it better... Please try taking an actual look at the job abilities and problems with the class and address them. Its a bummer seeing DRG get more powerful while BST languishes.

This update is just inv -2 :(

[Beastorizer]

If you had not called the new pets a BST job update, maybe people would have received it better... Please try taking an actual look at the job abilities and problems with the class and address them. Its a bummer seeing DRG get more powerful while BST languishes.

This update is just inv -2 :(

I agree

Even then though, their wording still fails, because the jugs are not "New" perse lol. It is just really bad.

[larrymc]

I am very disappointed in the BST update. At a minimum the BST pets should have had superior stats to any existing pet, not inferior. BST has really been trampled on ever since the distance nerf. While other pet jobs like PUP have indestructible tanks from any distance (and excellent DDs too), along with SMNs zerg potential. There does not seem to be any logic to the BST treatment by Square Enix. I know it is not a popular job for the Japanese players, but it was quite popular for others before the nerf. I sincerely hope this issue is addressed.

[Jerbob]

I've only recently started playing as Beastmaster, but I was really excited when I saw BST was next for updates. Seeing it was just new pets earlier this month was pretty disappointing. Finally seeing that it's just recycled pets that are somehow worse than the originals is really concerning. I'm very disappointed with this update.

I was really hoping you'd fix some of the stuff about BST that's broken.

BST still has to use a level 75 pair of trousers and a level 89 axe to reduce Ready recast time. This is absurd!
The range nerf is still unacceptable. Even ignoring that it's unacceptable, the pet commands still just don't work sometimes.
Charm, Tame, Gauge and Sic are essentially unusable - and Charm is one of Beastmaster's iconic abilities.

Depending on pre-99 gear for something so game-changing and essential as -10 to Ready recast is insane. These absolutely need to be job traits or Gifts that don't stack with the existing gear. I know that in the past, SE representatives have asked us to make the choice between the -5 Ready on the axe and being competent in melee - this is absolutely, utterly absurd. We didn't have to make this choice when the axe was new - why do we have to make it now? Why is such a fundamental aspect of the job considered a "choice"?

I get that you want us to be in melee range with our pets. I want that too, most of the time - given the choice, I will be. But sometimes it's not safe. Sometimes I can't. Other pet jobs don't have this penalty. Why do we? If you want us to be in melee, give us the ability to do it safely, not by forcing it through insane penalties. You also mention that you "designed BST to be in melee range", but I see almost no evidence of this. What about all those levels in the past when the only option for us was to charm mobs and pit them against one another? Meleeing solo was incredibly unsafe then, but there was no comment on that. Why is this suddenly a thing? I have to be honest - I don't believe it.

Charming monsters when I was levelling up was the most fun I've ever had on BST. It was an absolute blast. Now it's basically worthless. Charming monsters is hard because Charm doesn't scale well. Because combat has changed so much, charmed monsters can't hit anything or do any damage. Jugs are more powerful - we have no reason to Charm. Gauge doesn't even work properly anymore. Sic moves are atrociously underpowered. I'm not saying ditch jugs and go full on Charm - jugs are good, jugs are fun, jugs are necessary. I just want to be able to choose.

This is a list of things that are BROKEN for Beastmasters. I'm not even asking for an update - I'm asking you to give BST back things that have been taken away from it over time. I'd be satisfied with that - not impressed, but satisfied. Just.

Please, if you do anything, start with the following:


New job trait "Ferocity" with tiers at levels 75 and 90 reduce Sic and Ready recast by 5 seconds.
Sic and Ready recast delay removed from all other equipment.
Fully revert the job ability distance changes or, failing that, at least increase the distance. Some actual justification for this would be nice too.
Do something to make Charm worth using again. Don't change it completely into something else - charming is great conceptually, charming was great fun levelling up. I desperately want to use it. Be creative!

Please do NOT:


Try to "fix" BST with new pets. New pets are nice (if they're actually new!), but they are NOT a fix.
Outdate our current pets with new ones and call it an adjustment. Add options - I love choice, not a rolling Best Pet For This Year.

Even with that said, these are just critical fixes. I think it's reasonable to expect broken aspects of jobs to be fixed as a matter of course. An actual update - "adjustments" in the vein advertised for this Year of Job Adjustments - should be something new or interesting.

Oh, and could you also do something about the Pet Poultice? Its regen effect is really weak - it has almost literally no effect whatsoever.

[Hohito]

I was relieved at the update to Scholar's Sublimation. It was a welcome change. I might need to try out Beastmaster again also to see about the new pets that lower the enemy's accuracy.

[Ferth]

Not sure if there is a better place to bring this up, but was the reward for accruing 290 deeds via the monthly ROE supposed to be a voucher for the base ambuscade weapon? That seems like a really mediocre reward for this many deeds.

[TullemoreAsuraFFXI]

-> @ Ferth it's a fantastic supplemental progression as everything is cumulative the way that the "Total hallmarks" functions for ambuscade. No deed totals are ever consumed. This encourages players to try out a new job that they haven't before or allows new/returning players a somewhat accelerated journey, for at least a single job choice, modest assistance towards acquiring minimum itemization requirements for starter tier ilvl battles.

[Ferth]

-> @ Ferth it's a fantastic supplemental progression as everything is cumulative the way that the "Total hallmarks" functions for ambuscade. No deed totals are ever consumed. This encourages players to try out a new job that they haven't before or allows new/returning players a somewhat accelerated journey, for at least a single job choice, modest assistance towards acquiring minimum itemization requirements for starter tier ilvl battles.

I understand how deeds work. But the reward for accruing 170 is a pulse weapon, which I would assume almost everyone uses to actually finish an ambuscade weapon, and the tiers for artifact deeds consistently get better the more you accrue. Ambuscade weapon vouchers are ridiculously easy to acquire so having to spend 9 months to get one via deeds seems mismatched.

[Beastorizer]

Meh, I just grow tired of them treating this like a F2P mmo.

They don't want to do any real updates, Monstrosity, jobs, RMT (Which I am willing to give them a slight pass on), etc. I feel like, if you release content & jobs, you should constantly update it. I understand that the Rhapsodies was the finale, but the updates have been lazily implemented. These few jobs which have been "Updated" are simply the latest example.

I feel like the effort is not there with this game. It is in maintenance mode. The only problem is, you are charging people a monthly fee, but not putting in the work. I am playing until this free campaign is over, then I am jumping on Pokemon.

(Hence is why I was not posting recently until November 8th......If you get my drift).

[Alhanelem]

At least it turns out one of the pets sucking was a bug... so it hopefully it isn't crappier than the previously existing pet now lol

[Gwydion]

At least it turns out one of the pets sucking was a bug... so it hopefully it isn't crappier than the previously existing pet now lol

No, it's still marginal improvement over the original and hardly a job adjustment. Beastmaster, as a job, has broken mechanics, mis-matched job abilities, irrelevant job traits and mediocre 119 pets. Nothing about the current state of Beastmaster makes any sense. This is very worrisome.

Edit: Providing a link to show the output of /checkparam which indicates that the HQ pet had it's HP modifier fixed, but all other stats appear to be identical: https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/45830/killer-instinct-the-beastmaster-compendium/74/#3467953

TLDR: Mediocre re-skinned jug pets are not a job adjustment. :(

[Beastorizer]

The range was not game-breaking perse. No idea why they felt the need to change it. Took them a decade to realize that? I think not...

Now, giving the pets JAs & Magic pending their job. I do think this may be somewhat OP. The crabs would probably be able to tank bosses, and DRK monsters are nasty with SE. Then again, I came back from a 2015 break. So I have no idea what type of numbers DD are putting up now and days. Maybe it wouldn't be OP...

I feel like they may end up doing a BST re-haul soon. I say that because they continue to shoot themselves in the foot. If the pets were new & powerful, it would have calmed the crowd. To release reskins as people are asking for adjustments & not pets simply put gasoline on the fire. I mean, you were asking for a revolt at that point.

Lets all be rational for a moment, what did they think was going to happen as people were asking for no new pets, but you go ahead & release pets that are not new nor powerful.......lol....

[Coffeegood]

Why make an event then remove the voidwatch portals? Please add them back, thought we would enjoy our day off today by playing the game and doing Voidwatch event.

[Isola]

Why make an event then remove the voidwatch portals? Please add them back, thought we would enjoy our day off today by playing the game and doing Voidwatch event.

Because there is an exploit present. If they put them back they will have to ban more people. It's funny isn't it.

And a bump for adjusting Final Heaven. No I haven't and we haven't forgotten.

[Alhanelem]

Why make an event then remove the voidwatch portals? Please add them back, thought we would enjoy our day off today by playing the game and doing Voidwatch event.
There is an exploit present which some people were absuing to make stupid amounts of money and/or complete mythic weapons. It needed to be done to provide some semblance of security.

[Seish]

Hello,

I don't talk much on here but I want to give my two cents. First off, to the developers I have to say I feel your effort and heart in the game. As someone that has played since 2003, I have seen the evolution of it. It has been clear to me, that the Final Fantasy development team is finally listening to the fans. I hope that the game can continue so that others can feel the hard work put into it like I have. But while I give praise, I may make a suggestion at the same time. Currently, WOW has gone back in a surge since they launched "Wow Classic". Many players love the old challenge of Final Fantasy XI and I believe you would see a huge surge of people returning if a "Final Fantasy XI Classic" is brought back. As many in our community know, there are private servers of Final Fantasy XI out there--with Nasomi and Eden being the most Notable. Some of these servers have a population of roughly about the same as servers in Retail.

Several people have gone there because they miss the old FFXI and many said they would return to FFXI if there was a classic mode. I am happy in Carbuncle, but I know a lot of people are looking at this. And honestly, seeing how these private servers are operating, it makes sense to look into a classic FFXI. Now I am not saying to play in these private servers, as honestly it's better--and more stable--to play in Retail but I listed the example as a case in point. Maybe even tweak some small parts here and there with a scalable level sync, slightly easier crafting and fishing, augment HNM claims, but something that captures the essence of FFXI back in 2002. As WOW has proven, it's not graphics that makes a game, but gameplay. And the hardcore gamers are only looking for that challenge. I am not saying to shut down the current servers. Those should exist as long as Final Fantasy XI is supported. But I do think that to help restore the game, a modified Final Fantasy Classic would be a good idea to attract both new and older players alike. I feel the effort the Team put into it and all I want is that same feeling to be felt by other players.

I mention it on here, because it's related to the updates in general. Their hard work, and posting a video for us to see, is coming a long way to when the dev team was closed and barely told us what was going on. I think going forward, the game can grow. Please look into my suggestion.

[Alhanelem]

"classic mode" or "classic servers" will never happen, and there's a few reasons for that-

-Unlike some games that have done this, there is not a lot of agreement among players suggesting it as to when "classic" is. WoW Classic goes all the way back to before the first expansion, i.e. completely vanilla. It also won't go past that, so it's going to be completely stagnant once it reaches the last update before BC. here in FFXI, some ppl want to go back to TOAU, some people want to go back to just before abyssea came out (citing it as the thing that killed the game), some people want to go back to CoP, etc. Although nobody really wants to go back to FFXIV 1.0, which is actually before the North American release, and before a lot of spells and things that we've depended on since we started playing game along. There'd also be no NIN/SAM/DRG (SMN probably not, but it isn't actually a Rise of the Zilart job, even though it was released with the RoZ pre-patch). WoW Classic will only be populated until it stops receiving updates- They aren't developing new content, and it will not go past the day before Burning Crusade. Once people do all there is to do, they'll go back to standard or find another game to play.

- The devs are running on a skeleton crew, and I don't think they'd convince SE to let them expand the team for a project like this. There's no way they'd be able to do it without halting development on the current game, which has its share of players enjoying it and it wouldn't be fair to stop updates for them to create a classic server. They just don't have the resources that the WoW devs have.


- Doing so would fracture the community.


- The number of people who would actually pay to play it, given that it wouldn't get updates, is probably not high enough to be worth the development cost and effort. It would not be surprising to me if they have in fact done a CBA (cost-benefit analysis) on this already.


- A lot of the people who want this already play on private servers and since they're playing the game for free, there is little chance they would want to pay to play an official version.


- This isn't a confirmed fact, but I had read that in the early days, SE wasn't keeping every build of the game in an archive, and in fact they might not be able to bring it back even if they want to as a result.


- Oh, and Playonline probably can't handle it. It's a source of a lot of problems for the game (i.e. not being able to seperate the game from PoL itself, net rate/packet size, etc). POL imposes some significant limits on the game itself and being that it holds the system that manages characters and subs and stuff, this could get in the way.


Besides that, do you really want to give up the useful conveniences we have today, like mounting almost anywhere, teleporting between home points, and such? There's also already been a massive discussion about this in a thread specifically on the subject- if you want to discuss it further, post in that threat, as much as it pains me to suggest bumping it.

[Ilisidi]

I'd rather have a fully single player version than classic.

[Alhanelem]

Also I considered coming back to WoW for Classic, but when I found out I couldn't use my old character from that point in time I didn't feel like grinding the levels out again lol.

And I'm not gonna lie, I'd have a similar feeling about a classic server for FFXI. I don't really want to go back to needing 6 real people in a party to gain any significant EXP on a special server that will undoubtedly have a lower population than any given server did back in the day. You'd basically be forced to only play the few most popular jobs if you wanted to make any progress at all.

Even in the current gsme, I'd rather play with others where I can, but I have the option to use Trust if I don't want to wait / nobody wants to invite me.

[Zehira]

Hello.

I think would be nice if we have FFXIV's quick synthesis in FFXI like /lastsynth [number 1-99] so you can enjoy some coffee while your character is crafting. People can feel tired of crafting the same thing over and over for the shield without an addon.

Thanks! :)

[Alhanelem]

you can just do that with one of those newfangled gaming keyboard things.

[Zehira]

you can just do that with one of those newfangled gaming keyboard things.

No, thanks. I'd rather to pay the dev team more than that expensive keyboard. Not everyone has a super computer though.

[Seish]

I don't agree. It takes money to make money and what you mention on the part of the company not being able to do it is pure speculation. Fracture? Nah. People will make their own accounts. But look this game is meant to be played with others. I don't think you have read where SE said if the game gains popularity they would continue to support it. They said that, and one of the things they wanted to do was invest in newer servers--again not my words. They also said they have a decent size in that same year and that they set the goal for 2021 because they wanted to ease the tension and have their team not feel pressured. But as far as POL, trust me it can handle A LOT MORE traffic. This game at its peek had 500k subscribers. POL will be fine.

I have read what you talked about with regards to the "build". Instead of it being a build, what was said was they didn't save the source code. It is why they needed the PlayStation 2 Devkits to develop for this game to this day--because they do not have the existing source code. That is different than them not having access to the original game without updates.

As far as the private servers is concerned, SE can just make a C&D and be done with it. The game is SE's property and they are in it to make money. If they were to do it or not, that's on them and I am sure many who host private servers expect it and those that play on them know this is a strong possibility. Nothing wrong with SE protecting their IP either. I don't see where it can't be done. I see the disenfranchisement but this game doesn't stop people from having two characters. Now, one can have their opinion the matter, and that is a personal belief on splitting the community and a valid discussion to have. But I think for sure, the other points aren't a concern.

[TullemoreAsuraFFXI]

Let me interject; I realized that people are still unfamiliar with all of the accommodations within the menu interface. You can do this with your mouse if you wish or of 'course the proper way to play FFXI with your keyboard. Anyhow from the Menu -> 5th selection down is *Synthesis*. Click on that. Another menu will appear, click on *History*. This will display your recent synthesis actions. Click on the recipe you'd like to repeat from that history list. As long as you have the required materials in your inventory when you select *Ok* it will repeat that synthesis.

There is also a sub-menu to access from the synthesis history list that allows you to designate *Favorite* as you wish or *Unfavorite* (self-explanatory).

[Alhanelem]

No, thanks. I'd rather to pay the dev team more than that expensive keyboard. Not everyone has a super computer though.

A basic gaming keyboard costs less today than the standard membrane keyboard I bought for my MS DOS machine like 25 years ago. You don't need a "super computer" to use one either. It is child's play to program your keyboard to automatically press enter every so often.





This will display your recent synthesis actions. Click on the recipe you'd like to repeat from that history list. As long as you have the required materials in your inventory when you select *Ok* it will repeat that synthesis.For clarity to others, this is what I'm referring to, and it's how you can essentially press enter a bunch of times to repeat syntheses.

[Alhanelem]

I don't agree. It takes money to make money and what you mention on the part of the company not being able to do it is pure speculation. Fracture? Nah. People will make their own accounts. But look this game is meant to be played with others. But I don't think you have read where SE said if the game gains popularity they would continue to support it. They said that, and one of the things they wanted to do was invest in newer servers--again not my words. They also said they have a decent size in that same year and that they set the goal for 2021 because they wanted to ease the tension and have their team not feel pressured. But as far as POL, trust me it can handle A LOT MORE traffic. This game at its peek had 500k subscribers. POL will be fine.

I have read what you talked about with regards to the "build". Instead of it being a build, what was said was they didn't save the source code. It is why they needed the PlayStation 2 Devkits to develop for this game to this day--because they do not have the existing source code. That is different than them not having access to the original game without updates.

As far as the private servers is concerned, SE can just make a C&D. That simple. The game is SE's property and they are in it to make money. That simple. If they were to do it or not, that's on them and I am sure many who host private servers expect it and those that play on them know this is a strong possibility. Nothing wrong with SE protecting their IP either. I don't see where it can't be done. I see the disenfranchisement but this game doesn't stop people from having two characters. Now, one can have their opinion the matter, and that is a personal belief on splitting the community and a valid discussion to have. But I think for sure, the other points aren't a concern.

I mean, you can live in a fantasy land where this will happen all you want, but it's not going to happen.

And yes, it will fracture the community. Even if just a small number of people leave live for classic, it will cause harm. It will force the devs to divide resources- Something has to happen with "classic" or people will grow bored and stop playing. It can't just stay frozen in time forever.

Look, I will try to relocate the past discussion there was on it for you, but it is true- they don't have archives of the early builds of the game.

And as I said before- even if they can do it, the community needs to come ot an agreement about what they consider to be classic. The game didn't release globally at the same time like WoW did. For North America and the rest of the world outside Japan, Rise of the Zilart *is* the beginning. But for Japan, the game was out for a long time before it came to the US and the game was very different then from w hat most of us remember.. Then there are the people who just want to go back to before abyssea allegedly ruined the game (which is an argument I don't agree with but opinions vary wildly on this subject).


It is not going to happen. There have been people coming here and elsewhere asking for it for years, and it was essentially shot down by SE a while back. It. Will. Not. Happen.

as an extra bonus:
A lot of people who ask for this suffer from the rose-tinted glasses effect. Even if you get to have a server from XYZ year in FFXI's past, you'll find that it isn't just the same:
-You've done it before, so you don't get the same feeling from completing it again.
-Many players will tell you, half of what made FFXI so fun was the community- grinding together, doing contents together, since FFXI made you group for almost everything. But only a certain subset of the population wants to do "classic server" in the first place, and some people are just done with the game entirely and a classic server won't bring them back. So the population will be much lower than any real FFXI server ever was- It will be harder to group and that sense of community will just not be there the same as it was originally.
-Many people who play on classic servers become discouraged when they discover they have to start over from the beginning (i.e. can't have your old character in the state it was at the time) and don't really want to go through the grind all over again. This is the exact reason I didn't bother with WoW classic. I did like vanilla better than anything that came after. But the only thing I was truly interested in was doing Alterac Valley (before they changed it from an epic ongoing battle to just a short thing) and maybe UBRS, which I never beat while it was current. But I didn't want to spend dozens of hours leveling up a new character from the beginning to do those two things.


Feel free to read the lengthy thread on the subject here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/44240-Classic-Server

and as one of the later comments in that thread notes, you can play "classic" on any server on the live game already. All you have to do is not complete the limit break quest past level 75 (or level 50 if you want to limit yourself more to the content available at JP launch). If you want to play with others, just use the level sync feature or find friends willing to subject themselves to the same limitations. This is something you couldn't do in FFXIV btw, because it doesn't require any special quest or anything to raise the level limit, it's merely base don the expansions you have on your account.

[Seish]

Dude I was about to post but your edit to your shorter post to this longer one killed it. As you said in that post, it is the communities to descide. I agree and with the success of WOW classic, and looking at how many posts on here, and in other forums, asking and pleading for this to be a thing suggests there is enough die hard players who want it. So what if people are gonna redo it. Games have something called replay value. It's why the used game market is huge.

I have read the topics concerning the original build, but it wasn't called a build it was the source code. And as you said, that was heresay. You can have the original game history and run with that. But you cannot recreate the wheel easily outside of that without the source code. It's why they use the PlayStation 2 Devkits even when the PlayStation 2 is no longer supported.

But look it seems you are invested in your character. No one is telling you not to. But if a classic came out, people could have multiple. And you see this with people that play on here and in Eden and Nasomi. It's a thing, people will play both. And I think that at the end of the day that's enough for us. But you also need to remember a company is in it for the money too. They have people that they have to pay, and if a game doesn't make it gets cut out. So if Square could make money on this and make the game relevant, as to what you pointed out that it has been brought up a lot in the past, then there should be strong consideration, on both sides, the merit of it. But the game can handle it and the infrastructure is there and would be invested if there is potential. Nasomi doubled in size the moment Ninja went there, for example. And who isn't to say in the age of streamers and professional gaming that it wouldn't take? I think it would.

[Alhanelem]

But look it seems you are invested in your character. No one is telling you not to. But if a classic came out, people could have multiple.I think you'll find that most people are / were invested in their characters to a point that they wouldn't want to start over for a classic server. And as I added to the previous post- You can easily make the game "classic" already, minus job adjustments and QOL additions. Just don't complete the level 80 limit break quest, and bam. You're locked to doing content a level 75 can do. Find some like minded friends and you're all set. You don't need a special server or mode.

FFXI was just never a big enough game to begin with for a special server to be financially viable.

[Seish]

Tell that to the people who have asked and brought it up before me and the growth of private servers. Now you are speaking of how you personally feel about it. But SE needs to bring people in. That is the remedy for the problem.

[Typral]

A basic gaming keyboard costs less today than the standard membrane keyboard I bought for my MS DOS machine like 25 years ago. You don't need a "super computer" to use one either. It is child's play to program your keyboard to automatically press enter every so often.




For clarity to others, this is what I'm referring to, and it's how you can essentially press enter a bunch of times to repeat syntheses.

You're advocating for automation, that is against the rules actually. With the keyboard thing.

[Ilisidi]

I consider CoP classic, because that's when I started playing with game getting released in the EU game, that's where the game was at.


Tell that to the people who have asked and brought it up before me and the growth of private servers. Now you are speaking of how you personally feel about it. But SE needs to bring people in. That is the remedy for the problem.

Aren't those private servers free to play? They aren't a measure of how many people are willing to pay for a classic server.

[Alhanelem]

Tell that to the people who have asked and brought it up before me and the growth of private servers. Now you are speaking of how you personally feel about it. But SE needs to bring people in. That is the remedy for the problem.
Nothing is going to get people who already play on privates to start paying for the official release again.

I consider CoP classic, because that's when I started playing with game getting released in the EU game, that's where the game was at.

Well the NA release was Zilart and the JP release was the base game. Therein lies the problem.

[Seish]

Nothing is going to get people who already play on privates to start paying for the official release again.


Well the NA release was Zilart and the JP release was the base game. Therein lies the problem.

I know a ton that play on private servers and they said they would if SE made it. And if a C&D was sent to these servers, people would have no other option but to. Which as I stated before is SE's right. As to your second point, I agree with you. But that is why the community should discuss what we should consider classic. The classic we commonly call it is known to those that play private servers as "Era". Era includes the base game all the way to ToAU--which is all content up til the end of 2005. Do we go with Era, or do we go to the base game itself? Those directions are honestly up to the community but it's worth floating around. But if SE played its cards right, people will come if those servers started to shut down and if a classic has been provided.

[Nyarlko]

You're advocating for automation, that is against the rules actually. With the keyboard thing.

What he is describing is a common feature in 3rd party controllers known as "Auto-Fire". No, using something like that which can only spam a single button/key is not against the rules.

[Nyarlko]

The discussion about "Classic" and "Private" servers really does not belong here.
It also needs to die in general as a discussion topic.

In the hopes of killing it, I'll just point out that a few years ago, the devs went on record during a live event that there will never be "Classic" servers, so the entire argument is moot. (Due to legal/licensing reasons I believe, so this qualifies as a "can't" rather than "won't" issue even if the company wanted to do so.) In the same event, they also said that FFXI will never go F2P, that they won't/can't accept crowdfunding for FFXI, and that there won't/can't be any ports to new hardware platforms. It doesn't matter how hard you plead, or how pinpointed your desired content specs are, or anything else that you want to try to use to justify your desire, if it is a literal impossibility.

@Seish: If I were you, I'd be careful about any "Private" server discussion on the official forums in general beyond condemning the practice. It is straight-up stealing both IP and revenue from the company after all.

@DevTeam: Can we please get a response to this thread? I want to have reassurance that this is not all that you are planning for BST, and to stop feeling disgusted and insulted that you were hoping to get away with counting the addition of two types of ammo as a "job adjustment". :( If you are simply not sure about what adjustments the job actually needs or that players want, might I suggest opening a thread officially requesting player feedback for ideas? Most of the vocal BSTs in the community are very reasonable people and would be overjoyed at the opportunity to provide reasonable feedback for improvements that won't damage game balance. ^^

[Seish]

I am only bringing it up for the sake of what SE has to face going forward as a challenge for the game. I have even offered remedies to handle that and it is plain as day I am not condoning any sort of piracy. So your attempt to derail something that is going on and accusing me of supporting private server play is nefarious and is trying to derail the merit in the discussion. Now I see that you want a single player game. Are you aware how much money that would cost? Where would they start with? The UI, the mechanics, the engine. What quests to keep and gut? There's a lot there that they need to figure out, as this game is MASSIVE.

And SE said a lot of things they would never do and reversed their decision. The Limit Point system was supposed to kill any need to raise the cap to 99. But here we are. They mentioned Abby was the last main content, but we get SoA. And revisiting the classic, and restressing my point, is that there's a market and there's a need. SE can take swift action to control these pirate servers and create a classic server. But let's not think of hypotheticals. In the Blizzard community, they actually discuss in detail the difference between the two and why going to WOW Classic is better leading up to the release of the reboot. They discouraged private downloads, like I am, and explained the merits of playing a rebooted game with the support of Blizzard. The players have asked in our community, and I think it's fair to have the discussion.

So rather than accuse me of condoning piracy, please look carefully how I said SE should send a C&D. That is legal term for Cease and Decist. It's an action warning a party that company A will go after a person if the Organization B doesn't cease their actions. That is me condemning it completely and there's no way to twist it.

Edit: Nice including @devteam after my post. I'm glad we moved away from accusing people of falsehoods.

@Devteam I have explained the warrant for my initial post and I defend it as being, though a tangent, related and hope that any feedback would be seen and considered as this topic has been brought out countless times.

[Nyarlko]

@Seish: Not one word of your last post has anything to do with the November 2019 update, so it has no place being in this thread. I also did not accuse you of anything, other than posting about an irrelevant topic to the thread, which also happens to be a dangerous topic on these forums to be discussing as a general rule, unless you are actively trying to get yourself banned from here. ^^;;

Back on topic, are there any SCH-main players who have any feedback about what they gave to /SCH? XD I don't really play the job, so I'm not that familiar with what would work as "good" adjustments and can't give any feedback beyond laughing at how /SCH benefits far more than SCH/ from the changes.

[Seish]

I did explain in my first post on this thread why it mattered, but your kind words are noted.

In that post, I said the following:

"I mention it on here, because it's related to the updates in general. Their hard work, and posting a video for us to see, is coming a long way to when the dev team was closed and barely told us what was going on. I think going forward, the game can grow. Please look into my suggestion."

As this was an update with respect to BST, while expressing how I felt about how many in the community felt about gameplay with Bst in "Era" and seeing I had a comment about gameplay in general, the post is at worst, a tangent but related. I didn't break a rule. Unless of course condemning it is wrong, which I highly doubt. But when you have Ninja play in Nasomi, who is a paid game influencer and sponsored by several gaming companies and merchants, it's hard NOT to say that it's a thing. Pretending it isn't is wrong, but encouraging SE taking swift legal action is absolutely correct. That's what I did.

[Zehira]

Back on topic, are there any SCH-main players who have any feedback about what they gave to /SCH? XD I don't really play the job, so I'm not that familiar with what would work as "good" adjustments and can't give any feedback beyond laughing at how /SCH benefits far more than SCH/ from the changes.

My alt is a mastered SCH with its most expensive and well-geared equipment designed mainly for healing. I'd say this adjustment didn't help much even Sublimation helps more and you can use it as /SCH though.

I'd love to see SCH to get either Cure V or make Regen V duration longer with Perpetuance. Since SCH has more nuking spells from the Job Point system and everyone prefers SMN instead of BLM (weird right?). I'd probably drop it and go with WHM instead since everyone prefers WHM for healing. Therefore, multi-boxing with both GEO and SCH does a magic work. What I know SCH is only good for when they need SCH in order to MB (like in Omen). Just want something what SCH is good for. :(

[Seish]

It's a versatile job and is very difficult to enhance it too much without making it OP. A lot of jobs are having this issue honestly and is why I pointed in a previous thread that SE should point us to where they are taking the game. It seems a LOT of jobs are at this point it feels like.

Knowing that, would that change your mind? How would you enhance it without it intruding too much into what other jobs currently do?

[Zehira]

It's a versatile job and is very difficult to enhance it too much without making it OP. A lot of jobs are having this issue honestly and is why I pointed in a previous thread that SE should point us to where they are taking the game. It seems a LOT of jobs are at this point it feels like.

Knowing that, would that change your mind? How would you enhance it without it intruding too much into what other jobs currently do?

Currently, I am fine the way SCH is for now. It has its limited stratagem (5 charges) for using both accession and perpetuance (Regen V + Indi-Refresh FTW). It's just not as good as WHM, a reason is if you use Cure IV too much it builds more hate than Cure V can do. Cure V is not compatible with accession because SCH doesn't have that spell. What else can make it better? I don't know. This adjustments just gives /SCH more love while main SCH is happy with Sublimation improved so I don't need any Refresh. While SCH only has Cure that up to tier 4, I use my other GEO to balance healing enmity.

[Alhanelem]

You're advocating for automation, that is against the rules actually. With the keyboard thing. It's not against the rules for me to use my hardware's built in functionality. And even if it was, to the PC it's just normal inputs. Gaming input devices today can do this at the hardware level. This isn't a bot or a script, it's just repeatedly mashing a key. Something any human being can do. And I do not advocate walking away and leaving the game unattended. I only advise it as a means to reduce the number of keys you have to press.

These devices do not interact with the game software in any way. This is no different than putting a clamp on a controller button to hold it down.

If you want to press the enter key 100 times to synth a couple stacks of items, be my guest. but my keyboard doesn't enable the game to play itself- it just saves me from carpal tunnel.

FFXIV now lets you synthesize repeatedly with a simple checkbox ingame. Until SE does that for FFXI, I see no reason not to leverage my PC's innate ability to make that easier without any third party programs.

(Disclaimer: I don't even craft much at all, much less actually use keyboard macros) but I don't appreciate the insinuation I'm some kind of cheater if I were to use my keyboard's built in features to ease a repetitive task.)

I mean really: are turbo buttons on controllers cheating? I don't agree that it is. Turbo buttons are doing something I can do already, just without injuring my hand.

By your logic, using in-game macro features to simplify tasks is against the rules, because it's no different- one ingame macro saves you from many dozens of keystrokes. You can in fact do *most* of this with ingame macros- it just doesn't reduce the number of keypresses by as large of a number.

[Seish]

It's no different having those gaming keyboards that have hotkeys. In a sense, it's kinda like automating, but the difference is that it's done with hardware and is a function that is not exploitatious. You aren't going to be able to do the same thing again and again and again of complex tasks like a bot. But it's like rapid-fire for a controller, which exists. Are they cheating? No.

[Alhanelem]

The discussion about "Classic" and "Private" servers really does not belong here.
It also needs to die in general as a discussion topic.

In the hopes of killing it, I'll just point out that a few years ago, the devs went on record during a live event that there will never be "Classic" servers, so the entire argument is moot. (Due to legal/licensing reasons I believe, so this qualifies as a "can't" rather than "won't" issue even if the company wanted to do so.) In the same event, they also said that FFXI will never go F2P, that they won't/can't accept crowdfunding for FFXI, and that there won't/can't be any ports to new hardware platforms. It doesn't matter how hard you plead, or how pinpointed your desired content specs are, or anything else that you want to try to use to justify your desire, if it is a literal impossibility.

@Seish: If I were you, I'd be careful about any "Private" server discussion on the official forums in general beyond condemning the practice. It is straight-up stealing both IP and revenue from the company after all.

@DevTeam: Can we please get a response to this thread? I want to have reassurance that this is not all that you are planning for BST, and to stop feeling disgusted and insulted that you were hoping to get away with counting the addition of two types of ammo as a "job adjustment". :( If you are simply not sure about what adjustments the job actually needs or that players want, might I suggest opening a thread officially requesting player feedback for ideas? Most of the vocal BSTs in the community are very reasonable people and would be overjoyed at the opportunity to provide reasonable feedback for improvements that won't damage game balance. ^^
Thank you for doing what I wasn't capable of.

[Alhanelem]

@Seish: Not one word of your last post has anything to do with the November 2019 update, so it has no place being in this thread. I also did not accuse you of anything, other than posting about an irrelevant topic to the thread, which also happens to be a dangerous topic on these forums to be discussing as a general rule, unless you are actively trying to get yourself banned from here. ^^;;

Back on topic, are there any SCH-main players who have any feedback about what they gave to /SCH? XD I don't really play the job, so I'm not that familiar with what would work as "good" adjustments and can't give any feedback beyond laughing at how /SCH benefits far more than SCH/ from the changes.
With all due respect though, you aren't a forum moderator and don't make the rules. Whilst I agree that the tangental discussion is better served in another thread (if at all) It isn't your place to tell people where they can and can't post things. If the community team/SE has a big enough problem with it, they'll take action. Don't be a backseat mod. As a moderator on various other forums it REALLY irritates me when users try to take moderation issues into their own hands.

[Nyarlko]

With all due respect though, you aren't a forum moderator and don't make the rules. Whilst I agree that the tangental discussion is better served in another thread (if at all) It isn't your place to tell people where they can and can't post things. If the community team/SE has a big enough problem with it, they'll take action. Don't be a backseat mod. As a moderator on various other forums it REALLY irritates me when users try to take moderation issues into their own hands.

I've seen people get banned from here for less potentially-objectionable-to-the-devs posts, so my advice really was given in the spirit of a friendly warning to a fellow player. There are few enough of us who bother to type in these forums these days for me to just idly stand by and watch someone throw themselves face-first into a banhammer. :(

I will admit that I was probably getting a tiny bit irked at that point because I got a full screen rant in response to a two sentence warning to be careful, all of which had nothing to do with complaining about this update's "job adjusments". ^^;; Since I happen to play BST and can talk to the shortcomings it has currently, personally, I want to focus on the slap in the face that I received this month in the thread dedicated to this month's update. Can you really blame me for that? lol

BTW, I would be offended as a player if they did this with any job, even one that I don't personally enjoy. I just don't know what to really make of the SCH adjustment, (other than the obvious joke about it being a great update for /SCH,) and even the few people I know who do play SCH couldn't come up with any sane improvements, so I'm also curious what anyone else has to say about it.

[Zehira]

I just don't know what to really make of the SCH adjustment, (other than the obvious joke about it being a great update for /SCH,) and even the few people I know who do play SCH couldn't come up with any sane improvements, so I'm also curious what anyone else has to say about it.

I just leave it to BLM vs SMN problems. It's their own problems. Not to try to use FFXIV jokes. I'd rather to balance WHM instead though.

[Seish]

I will admit that I was probably getting a tiny bit irked at that point because I got a full screen rant in response to a two sentence warning to be careful, all of which had nothing to do with complaining about this update's "job adjusments". ^^;; Since I happen to play BST and can talk to the shortcomings it has currently, personally, I want to focus on the slap in the face that I received this month in the thread dedicated to this month's update. Can you really blame me for that? lol

It doesn't matter if you had a bad day, or if you had whatever, you divest emotions and try to remain logical in a discussion that had no personal attacks thrown to anyone--at all. Bad grades, bad day, disagreements with others, or a job nerf on a video game, shouldn't be motivation to personally attack someone. And if you disagree with me, keep it with the topic not deviate and personally attack the indvidual. Don't try to scare me into submission. I read the rules and I posted what I did knowing that I won't get in trouble. I understand your frustration. When MNK got nerfed to the ground, my one and only job, that I honestly cared for the most, was not the same and my motivation for playing went away. It took my motivation to play. So seeing that you are passionate about a job that you are willing to defend it makes me happy. We need the community to continue that passion--no matter the opinion for that matter. Ergo, why I brought up trying to create a classic server, from a job mechanic perspective--to include BST which we can get into.

I don't take offense personally what you said, knowing that your passion is what drives this. But the biggest takeaway is try to divest emotions from it. There is a ignore list if you really dislike what I say and I would encourage you to utilize that resource if you feel any ill emotions towards me. But we are all in the same community, and like you I want to see it grow.

[Beastorizer]

I have serious question for the devs. I am not trolling or flaming. This is a serious question.

Why do you insist on releasing repeat jug pets instead of actual new ones? I would really appreciate an answer. There has to be a reason, right?

[Gwydion]

Hoping this thread receives an official response from the DEV team. It has been years since an update received such an overwhelming response on these forums.

[Yoji_Fujito]

Thank you for the large number of feedback responses.
We understand that there are many requests to increase the range of beastmaster abilities, such as Ready.
However, upon careful discussion with the Lead Job Designer, we have decided that the range of these abilities will not be adjusted.

▼ Beastmaster is designed as a frontline job.
I’d like to provide a brief history of beastmaster from a developer perspective.
Some points may greatly differ from player opinion, but please give it a read.

The original concept of beastmaster was a frontline job based around Charming monsters to turn the tide of battle.
The process of Charming would sometimes result in direct combat with the monster, so beastmaster was given the equipment and damage output to thrive until they succeeded in gaining control over a monster.

As time went on, Battlefield content became the main focus of the game.
This was difficult to enjoy as a beastmaster as many BFs do not feature monsters that can be Charmed.
Our solution was the addition of Call Beast and broth items, which allowed players to call out monsters as obedient pets.
These pets always obeyed commands, providing a sort of consumable battle resource for beastmaster and stabilized the state of the job.
Things were good up until this point.

▼ Balance Issues caused by Pet Adjustments
As stronger enemies were introduced over time, it became apparent that beastmaster and their pets weren’t keeping up.
Unlike other jobs, pet-based jobs had to be balanced around both the player character and pet, which in turn made it difficult to implement powerful new equipment or pets.

In order to resolve this situation, we made major changes in the very first version update in 2015.
Monsters were now able to participate in skillchains and magic burst, making them an overwhelmingly powerful source of damage.
While this method required some preparation, the changes allowed beastmaster to easily catch up and deal high damage more effectively than any other job.

Ultimately, this allowed beastmaster to issue commands from a safe distance, while pets that were far stronger than the beastmaster themselves would continuously fire off powerful abilities.
Pets also had decent survivability, and even if they were defeated, they could be called out again at full power after a five minute cooldown.
At this point, beastmaster was capable of battling with almost no risk to themselves.

Player skill was not involved in this version of beastmaster, since no matter what attacks enemies had, they could be defeated by endlessly sending out powerful pets.
This was even more effective in parties with multiple beastmasters, which created some extreme cases where pets did all the fighting and players didn’t battle at all.
Battles were streamlined into a monotonous process, and enemy mechanics became meaningless.

▼ Corrective Measures and the Future
To address this, we kept beastmaster’s strength while making sure its equipment and traits were used to fulfill a frontline role, and shortened the range of commands to bring back a sense of risk to the job.
While these adjustments lowered beastmaster’s capabilities, it was compensated for with the continued implementation of various meals and equipment, and that brings us to today.

With this history in mind, we don’t have plans to alter the job’s design as a frontline role and would like this source of damage to be accompanied by some risk.

As we’ve often mentioned, these job adjustments aren’t final, and we’ll continue making adjustments to improve its frontline capabilities.

[Yoji_Fujito]

If possible, we’d like to create a final stage for Chocobo Racing, but we haven’t had the time or resources and the idea keeps getting pushed back.
We’re hoping to implement it at some point in the future, so we ask you to please wait until then.

[Akihiko_Matsui]

If we made scales shareable account-wide, there will be players who want them for secondary characters, or those who don’t need them right now but want more for later.
This may result in a situation where those who actually want them right now would be unable to obtain them.
It would also allow players to simply create one powerful character with the necessary equipment to make scales easier to obtain for the rest of their characters.
Since this is relevant to the final stage of artifact enhancement, and we’d like to maintain a difficulty appropriate for capabilities, we currently aren’t considering making scales shareable account-wide.

[Mikah]

Um, if that's the problem with BST, how about SMN? I edited your post for SMN. It's identical.


At this point, SMN was capable of battling with almost no risk to themselves.

Player skill was not involved in this version of SMN, since no matter what attacks enemies had, they could be defeated by endlessly sending out powerful pets.
This was even more effective in parties with multiple SMNs, which created some extreme cases where pets did all the fighting and players didn’t battle at all.
Battles were streamlined into a monotonous process, and enemy mechanics became meaningless.


Oh. And, adjust Final Heaven. K thanks.

You do really need to slap some sense into the designer. BST commands REALLY need some amount of range increase, not to keep them "danger free" but to make them functional. There is a LARGE area between where commands used to work and where they work now. It doesn't have to be either or, you've got 19 yalms to play with. There is no safety difference between 1 yalm and 8 yalms. There are times you can literally be standing on top of your pet and the commands will fail to activate, in what world is that acceptable.

[Safiyyah]

Thank you for the large number of feedback responses.
We understand that there are many requests to increase the range of beastmaster abilities, such as Ready.
However, upon careful discussion with the Lead Job Designer, we have decided that the range of these abilities will not be adjusted.

▼ Beastmaster is designed as a frontline job.
I’d like to provide a brief history of beastmaster from a developer perspective.
Some points may greatly differ from player opinion, but please give it a read.

The original concept of beastmaster was a frontline job based around Charming monsters to turn the tide of battle.
The process of Charming would sometimes result in direct combat with the monster, so beastmaster was given the equipment and damage output to thrive until they succeeded in gaining control over a monster.

As time went on, Battlefield content became the main focus of the game.
This was difficult to enjoy as a beastmaster as many BFs do not feature monsters that can be Charmed.
Our solution was the addition of Call Beast and broth items, which allowed players to call out monsters as obedient pets.
These pets always obeyed commands, providing a sort of consumable battle resource for beastmaster and stabilized the state of the job.
Things were good up until this point.

▼ Balance Issues caused by Pet Adjustments
As stronger enemies were introduced over time, it became apparent that beastmaster and their pets weren’t keeping up.
Unlike other jobs, pet-based jobs had to be balanced around both the player character and pet, which in turn made it difficult to implement powerful new equipment or pets.

In order to resolve this situation, we made major changes in the very first version update in 2015.
Monsters were now able to participate in skillchains and magic burst, making them an overwhelmingly powerful source of damage.
While this method required some preparation, the changes allowed beastmaster to easily catch up and deal high damage more effectively than any other job.

Ultimately, this allowed beastmaster to issue commands from a safe distance, while pets that were far stronger than the beastmaster themselves would continuously fire off powerful abilities.
Pets also had decent survivability, and even if they were defeated, they could be called out again at full power after a five minute cooldown.
At this point, beastmaster was capable of battling with almost no risk to themselves.

Player skill was not involved in this version of beastmaster, since no matter what attacks enemies had, they could be defeated by endlessly sending out powerful pets.
This was even more effective in parties with multiple beastmasters, which created some extreme cases where pets did all the fighting and players didn’t battle at all.
Battles were streamlined into a monotonous process, and enemy mechanics became meaningless.

▼ Corrective Measures and the Future
To address this, we kept beastmaster’s strength while making sure its equipment and traits were used to fulfill a frontline role, and shortened the range of commands to bring back a sense of risk to the job.
While these adjustments lowered beastmaster’s capabilities, it was compensated for with the continued implementation of various meals and equipment, and that brings us to today.

With this history in mind, we don’t have plans to alter the job’s design as a frontline role and would like this source of damage to be accompanied by some risk.

As we’ve often mentioned, these job adjustments aren’t final, and we’ll continue making adjustments to improve its frontline capabilities.


This is a terrible response. Terrible.

Summoner avatars can skillchain. From a safe distance. And do powerful abilities, stronger than beastmaster while under the effects of Astral Flow and Astral Conduit. Their pets don't have a recast cooldown and are totally disposable. And parties of summoners can take down powerful enemies faster than a balanced party, trivializing Reisenjima HELMs and Warder of Courage.

The logic of this does not follow. Not at all.


The result of your design decisions for beastmaster is that we can't be easily used in fights where summoner and puppetmaster flourish, like the new Odin high-tier battlefield, or any of the many Ambuscade fights where SMN can burst it down from distance. And we do not have strong melee damage, either. We do less melee damage with the master than support jobs like corsair or bard.

Please rethink beastmaster's current design. It is not working in the current game environment.



Some points may greatly differ from player opinion, but please give it a read.

What I just said is not player opinion. It's fact. Stacking Astral Flow and Astral Conduit, summoners can outdamage beastmaster, safely from a distance, and the effect is that fights which should be challenging are trivialized. So that's balanced, and beastmaster doing a lesser version of the same thing is imbalanced?

[Alhanelem]

▼ Corrective Measures and the Future
To address this, we kept beastmaster’s strength while making sure its equipment and traits were used to fulfill a frontline role, and shortened the range of commands to bring back a sense of risk to the job.
While these adjustments lowered beastmaster’s capabilities, it was compensated for with the continued implementation of various meals and equipment, and that brings us to today.

With this history in mind, we don’t have plans to alter the job’s design as a frontline role and would like this source of damage to be accompanied by some risk.

As we’ve often mentioned, these job adjustments aren’t final, and we’ll continue making adjustments to improve its frontline capabilities. You guys continue to miss the point. This isn't about whether beastmaster is a front line job or not. It's about the fact that your changes intended to force BST to play on the front line actually hinders players that ALREADY ARE on the front line. You can modestly increase the range of pet commands to a value between what it used to be and what it is now to reduce frustration without allowing the player to performe actions completely safely. Since the BST hast to literally almost be standing on top of their pet to issue commands, if you're not willing you may as well just get rid of the pet entirely and move all its features into the player.

I understand that Summoner was designed to be played at range while BST was not. However, BST was never substantially more powerful than summoner as a provider of safe damage, especially in that capacity. BST has a cooldown to call a new pet while SMN does not.

There are many potential ways for you to promote your vision of the job without making it so immensely frustrating for the player. Instead of limiting command range, why not add a trait which enhances the power of both master and pet when they are close to each other? This would make battling alongside the pet preferable for higher DPS without essentially physically chaining the player to the pet monster.

Playing BST in its current state feels a bit like playing the NES Classic Edition with those controller wires that are too short.

[Alhanelem]

(That said, unless you're a really bizarre player like me, SMN doesn't have the survivability to be anywhere near a dangerous foe, so they have every right and need to be doing DPS from afar under normal circumstances, so please make BST great again, but not at SMN's expense <3 )

Next thing you know, the Fun Police are going to give summoner pet commands a MINIMUM range so I can't do solo darkness with my own pet using Clausturm. It isn't really better than the way most people summoner but knowing SE I half expect them to dump on my playstyle just for the sake of doing so....

[Beastorizer]

A BST pet is not stronger than a SMN's pet. A BST at distance are not using their axes. So, if your argument is "A BST master has higher damage potential than the SMN master," you are correct. However, A BST standing a mile away eating popcorn are not using his/her damage potential, because they are not DDing.

So, the BST standing back are weaker than a SMN because they are not using their axes. Thus, changing BST ready range was null & void.

Therefore, forcing people to be at close range is null & void. If BST pets had higher dd potential than a SMN's pet, you would have a point. However, that is not the case.

& I am a guy whom got into an argument with nearly everyone in the BST community, You can check the BST section for proof. As a close range BST, this aint it chief....

[Beastorizer]

Oh, & you still didn't answer why you constantly release duplicate jugs.

[Gwydion]

Thank you for the large number of feedback responses.
We understand that there are many requests to increase the range of beastmaster abilities, such as Ready.
However, upon careful discussion with the Lead Job Designer, we have decided that the range of these abilities will not be adjusted.
....
As we’ve often mentioned, these job adjustments aren’t final, and we’ll continue making adjustments to improve its frontline capabilities.

"Not final"?!...but Beastmasters have waited almost 4 years for an adjustment! To receive duplicate pets is very insulting!

[Gwydion]

Thank you for the large number of feedback responses.
We understand that there are many requests to increase the range of beastmaster abilities, such as Ready.
However, upon careful discussion with the Lead Job Designer, we have decided that the range of these abilities will not be adjusted.
...
▼ Corrective Measures and the Future
To address this, we kept beastmaster’s strength while making sure its equipment and traits were used to fulfill a frontline role, and shortened the range of commands to bring back a sense of risk to the job.
While these adjustments lowered beastmaster’s capabilities, it was compensated for with the continued implementation of various meals and equipment, and that brings us to today.

With this history in mind, we don’t have plans to alter the job’s design as a frontline role and would like this source of damage to be accompanied by some risk.

As we’ve often mentioned, these job adjustments aren’t final, and we’ll continue making adjustments to improve its frontline capabilities.


Dear Director Yoji Fujito,
Thank you for providing a detailed response on the current status of Beastmaster. You have made it clear that for better or worse, Beastmaster simply is not a development priority and over the past 3 years, have made no new frontline capabilities or otherwise meaningful adjustments to the Beastmaster job. Similarly, adding new jug pets with only cosmetic differences and calling it a "job adjustment" is dishonest and dubious. It serves as an unfair disservice to the players with whom, Square-Enix has built a relationship with over the past 18 years. The sporadic updates and lack of meaningful change to the Beastmaster job have left me with no other choice but to retire. Due to limited inventory constraints, I have decided to remove Beastmaster-specific items from my inventory. Thank you for taking the time to reply.

https://i.imgur.com/UsZdCsQ.png

[Ferth]

To be perfectly honest, I didn't expect a range increase for the ready ability. This response explains exactly why I wouldn't have expected one, but what it doesn't address how is insulting this update was. There are still things about beastmaster that need to be addressed, without changing the range for ready, and this "update" ignored all of them in favor of cosmetic changes to pets that already exist in the game. To even call this a "change" is disingenuous, nothing changed, and certainly nothing is better because of it.

As these updates roll out it becomes patently clear that the devs don't really understand what is going on with most of these jobs. The merit category spells being converted into scrolls and replaced with different merits is a noble goal, but in most cases the new merits being added aren't better than the ones that already existed and in some cases they are actively making the job worse *coughninjacough*.

I fully understand that the budget and development team for this game aren't even shadows of their former selves, but in fact are shadows of shadows... but rather than trying to crank out job specific updates every month, most of which that are paltry, some of which that are insultingly shallow, and even a few that needed to be reversed (or should be reversed, like ninja.) maybe you should take more time with these updates, and better consult the people who actually care about these jobs, since there is a clear disparity in the quality of these updates for certain jobs.

[Rwolf]

With all due respect, I'd like to provide a brief history of Beastmaster from a player perspective. This is a long post and may differ from your developer opinion but please give it a read.

▼Beastmaster's journey with parties.
BST always had trouble with parties in the beginning. Your pets level would ruin experience gained and that deterred players to invite them. This stigma was furthered by a few players who would charm and release higher level monsters onto parties.

This lead to players classifying it as a solo job. So for veteran BST players we struggled to get to level 75. As you've stated the game has made major changes over the years to remove that EXP penalty, to add Call Beast and other abilities.

▼Beastmaster's dance with enmity and backlining.
BST was always a dance of enmity. To melee and draw hate onto yourself to speed up fights or sit back and let the pet do damage. BST is the only pet job that can rest with pet attacking, so there was some design that BST would backline when necessary. Trying to charm an Incredibly Tough monster and lock them in with familiar was an amazing feeling. So while we meleed, we also backlined.

In Nov. 2007 at the beginning of Wings of the Goddess you gave us Snarl. Now we can just dump all of our enmity and pet commands were reduced to the same timers. This made it easier to melee but still risk-oriented so it's a good example of trying to encourage melee.

▼Abyssea and Charmer's Merlin...
Next comes the Abyssea era where Charmer's Merlin was introduced. Our melee prowess would be forever locked to this weapon as the -5 seconds to Ready was too valuable even then or now to dismiss.

BST power still remained too low and too stigmatized for players to include in group content. So BST continued to solo, duo or trios but finding a full party of them was very rare.

▼The first big Beastmaster update.
In comes the 2015 update where BST ready moves were revamped. There was no increased BST players yet. We continued to solo or lowman content to ourselves. Content became more and more difficult to stand in range. So groups relied on ranged damage in Ark Angel merit BCs and soon after Magic Burst setups.

▼The dreaded Beastmaster meta and bandwagoning.
Then came the era of where Sinister Reign, Escha and Omen began. Monsters were too difficult for melee still. Unable to reach accuracy caps and so dangerous. BST became the primary job to play because the pets higher stats was the only reasonably safe and reliable solution.

Then after a period of vitriol from a vocal minority, the very punishing distance nerf was implemented. This changed nothing, it didn't and doesn't increase any risk. As players just lined themselves up and ran in and out between TP moves and spells to use commands.

▼The end of Beastmasters in pick-up groups.
Then a series of updates changed everything. Monster evasion was lowered. AoE damage was lowered. Monster combat skills was lowered. Bard gained huge changes to accuracy and attack songs. Players received easy to obtain high combat and defense gear from Ambuscade. Higher JPs became more commonplace.

That's what changed things away from using BST backline only strategy from being commonplace. Power creep on enemies was so high, it took several updates to even the playing field. Jug pet damage without extreme support is lackluster and that same support with SMN, PUP, or melee DD will do far more so the general thought is BST is a solo class again so we party only in pet linkshells.

▼No one is disagreeing that BST shouldn't be a frontline job. Our distaste is you can't effectively melee like other frontline jobs.


You have to stand with the pet at all times. Harder to manage with multiple monsters on your pet's hate list.
Fencer and Damage Limit is the only native damage traits. Fencer is weak compared to Dual Wield. Damage Limit is something all DD jobs mostly got.
Charmer's Merlin is a pre-item level weapon and would serve better to just be implemented not tied to weapons.
The Relic set is focused on outdated Charm.


You want BST to be frontline and have risk and we understand. I guarantee you if you give the master a considerable way to melee, players will do it. I don't think pets need to be rebalanced or penalized as they've fallen way behind damage dealers since 2015.

▼Closing Remarks
Alternative ideas to distance penalty:

Better damage from master through traits and gear.
Ready recast called at 10 through merits, JP gifts, or armor not weapons.
Making it so master being in range increases pet survivability to discourage standing back in Pet damage reduction gear. Maybe a WS like Primal Rend can heal the pet as an added effect or provide a shield to the pet.
Maybe BST can spend some TP on pet maintenance abilities. Similar to the mechanics of waltz and sambas.


There are fun ways to make players use melee and the distance nerf as a veteran BST player is very frustrating. Please consider this.

[Voidstorm]

Rwolf, you're reminding me of the times I actually loved playing BST.
Charm an IT mob, familiar. send it to fight my enemies and melee after it builds hate for a couple seconds.
or charm cycle 2~3 pets, so I can always have at least one EM pet at 100% to swap to while EXP'ing.

I have another idea in addition to your closing remarks. job traits for each pet job to transfer over some master boosts to the pet.
examples:
Familiar's Allowance: Master's current Haste, Store TP, PDT, MDT, BDT, & DT are copied to your pet. Accuracy is contverted to P.M.R. accuracy (physical, magic, ranged). Attack is converted to P.M.R. Attack.
Avatar's Guidance: Master's current Haste, PDT, MDT, BDT, & DT are copied to your pet. Magic Accuracy is converted to P.M.R. accuracy. Magic Atk. Bonus is converted to P.M.R. Attack. Conserve MP is converted to Store TP.

This would make buffs like March help pets as well which is half of why pet jobs are hated in the buff heavy system we currently find ourselves.
And run old gear through an algorithm to convert stats so hopefully pets don't take too big a hit.

[Smokenttp]

With all due respect, I'd like to provide a brief history of Beastmaster from a player perspective. This is a long post and may differ from your developer opinion but please give it a read.

▼Beastmaster's journey with parties.
BST always had trouble with parties in the beginning. Your pets level would ruin experience gained and that deterred players to invite them. This stigma was furthered by a few players who would charm and release higher level monsters onto parties.

This lead to players classifying it as a solo job. So for veteran BST players we struggled to get to level 75. As you've stated the game has made major changes over the years to remove that EXP penalty, to add Call Beast and other abilities.

▼Beastmaster's dance with enmity and backlining.
BST was always a dance of enmity. To melee and draw hate onto yourself to speed up fights or sit back and let the pet do damage. BST is the only pet job that can rest with pet attacking, so there was some design that BST would backline when necessary. Trying to charm an Incredibly Tough monster and lock them in with familiar was an amazing feeling. So while we meleed, we also backlined.

In Nov. 2007 at the beginning of Wings of the Goddess you gave us Snarl. Now we can just dump all of our enmity and pet commands were reduced to the same timers. This made it easier to melee but still risk-oriented so it's a good example of trying to encourage melee.

▼Abyssea and Charmer's Merlin...
Next comes the Abyssea era where Charmer's Merlin was introduced. Our melee prowess would be forever locked to this weapon as the -5 seconds to Ready was too valuable even then or now to dismiss.

BST power still remained too low and too stigmatized for players to include in group content. So BST continued to solo, duo or trios but finding a full party of them was very rare.

▼The first big Beastmaster update.
In comes the 2015 update where BST ready moves were revamped. There was no increased BST players yet. We continued to solo or lowman content to ourselves. Content became more and more difficult to stand in range. So groups relied on ranged damage in Ark Angel merit BCs and soon after Magic Burst setups.

▼The dreaded Beastmaster meta and bandwagoning.
Then came the era of where Sinister Reign, Escha and Omen began. Monsters were too difficult for melee still. Unable to reach accuracy caps and so dangerous. BST became the primary job to play because the pets higher stats was the only reasonably safe and reliable solution.

Then after a period of vitriol from a vocal minority, the very punishing distance nerf was implemented. This changed nothing, it didn't and doesn't increase any risk. As players just lined themselves up and ran in and out between TP moves and spells to use commands.

▼The end of Beastmasters in pick-up groups.
Then a series of updates changed everything. Monster evasion was lowered. AoE damage was lowered. Monster combat skills was lowered. Bard gained huge changes to accuracy and attack songs. Players received easy to obtain high combat and defense gear from Ambuscade. Higher JPs became more commonplace.

That's what changed things away from using BST backline only strategy from being commonplace. Power creep on enemies was so high, it took several updates to even the playing field. Jug pet damage without extreme support is lackluster and that same support with SMN, PUP, or melee DD will do far more so the general thought is BST is a solo class again so we party only in pet linkshells.

▼No one is disagreeing that BST shouldn't be a frontline job. Our distaste is you can't effectively melee like other frontline jobs.


You have to stand with the pet at all times. Harder to manage with multiple monsters on your pet's hate list.
Fencer and Damage Limit is the only native damage traits. Fencer is weak compared to Dual Wield. Damage Limit is something all DD jobs mostly got.
Charmer's Merlin is a pre-item level weapon and would serve better to just be implemented not tied to weapons.
The Relic set is focused on outdated Charm.


You want BST to be frontline and have risk and we understand. I guarantee you if you give the master a considerable way to melee, players will do it. I don't think pets need to be rebalanced or penalized as they've fallen way behind damage dealers since 2015.

▼Closing Remarks
Alternative ideas to distance penalty:

Better damage from master through traits and gear.
Ready recast called at 10 through merits, JP gifts, or armor not weapons.
Making it so master being in range increases pet survivability to discourage standing back in Pet damage reduction gear. Maybe a WS like Primal Rend can heal the pet as an added effect or provide a shield to the pet.
Maybe BST can spend some TP on pet maintenance abilities. Similar to the mechanics of waltz and sambas.


There are fun ways to make players use melee and the distance nerf as a veteran BST player is very frustrating. Please consider this.

Pretty much this, we do understand the risk reward part, however right now the risk part does not fit the reward... speaking of reward i specifically mentioned it because its not a damage ability, so while surviveability might be seen as an issue it is still very frustrating not being able to properly heal your pets (specially after a knock back, or if you out run a tp move and your pet eats a spell while you are trying to return to combat, or worst of then all if you are engaging an larger enemy like a tiger, scorpion, wyvern etc and need to manuver around it just to heal your pet), thats why i mentioned the new drg job ability as an creative alternate way to allow pet and master to be in range, bst is needing this kind of love right now. The player base is aware of the power of skill chains and we do realize the potential of its uses however as it is charmer merlin and issues we are mentioning before are preventing bst to fully captilize those.

[Beastorizer]

I feel like we have two sides here. One side firmly believes BST is a powerful functional DD (The devs).

The other sides are the players who feel otherwise.

The only way to solve is, imo, to Stream adjustments as other companies do. Other mmo devs stream adjustments in a party setting, showing players what was adjusted, & the result. I would like to propose devs to live-stream job adjustments.

When someone tells you they can bench press 400 pounds, we say "Show us."

When someone has a new invention, we want them to show us how it works.

When someone has new tech, they show us how it works.

When other companies make adjustments in their mmo, the devs show us how it works.

I am proposing that devs show us how it is done. Enlighten us. Someone is wrong here, we need to get down to the bottom of who it is....

[Xilk]

Fujito-san

Thank you very much for the lengthy perspective. Also thank the team for listening to the player community and taking another look at the pet command range for Beastmasters and for telling us about your thoughts.

I also appreciate the player perspectives shared in this thread about the beastmaster experience as a player.

I am, of course, a fan of the Beastmaster Job. I have always liked the challenge of charming creatures and using the terrain to manage a a battle.

I do think that the limited range actually makes it more difficult to play the Beastmaster job from up close. The difficulty is with medium to large model enemies. Positioning is incredibly difficult. Often pet commands fail because I am not in range of my pet even though we are both close and engaged on the enemy. also, when kiting an enemy, I cannot use reward on my pet. These are the issues that bother me most about the tiny range for pet commands. It would be great if the range increased only 2 or 3 yalms even from what it is currently.

However, the part I really don't understand from the developer perspective is how the concerns about Beastmaster fighting from a range do not also apply to Puppetmaster and Summoner? I think it is great that summoner and puppetmaster function the way they do. I do not understand why it is different for beastmasters from the developer perspective..

Is it because Beastmaster's pets have more HP? Most Avatars have around 1200 ~ 2000 HP I believe (though i'm really not sure), and puppetmaster will have between 1600 and 4000, while beastmaster pets at level 119 have between 3500 and 6000 hp. I don't understand why this would be such a large factor, but it is the largest discrepancy I can think of at present.

it is a common strategy to use a Puppetmaster as a party or alliance tank while the master stand far out of range. Also the summoners stand far back and simply issue commands with their Avatars.

The rationale for Enemy Mechanics breaking down under this strategy would *apparently* still exist for puppetmaster and summoner, but not for beastmaster.

However, It also appears to me, especially in the Dynamis Divergence event and the recent High-Tier Mission Battlefields for Odin, Alexander, Cait Sith, and Lilith, that new gimmicks completely counter the strategy of having the pet masters stand safely out of range. Or completely destroy the usefulness of Astral Conduit.

I think this also ignores the difficulty of protecting one's pet and master at the same time as a beastmaster. Because support players cannot cure the pets like they can cure other players, keeping one's pet alive often requires equipping only defensive equipment on Beastmaster. (Summoner can quickly and easily resummon pets without a significant cooldown time, while puppetmaster has more ways to cure the pet and adjust its defensive stats while sacrificing minimal offensive stats thru attachments). The beastmaster must often keep full pet defensive equipment on. This means that master and pet damage is severely limited while engaged.

the challenges in Gear for offensive and defensive gear for both master and pet make are a very large balancing factor for Beastmaster more than other pet jobs or any other job. Five Minutes, in many fights is a terribly long time to keep both master and pet alive when both are fully engaged.

Interestingly there are several ambuscade fights which showcase this as well.

I think it also ignores the fact that Beastmaster pets are FAR more susceptible to Enfeebling magic than summoner Avatars or Automatons.

I do not wish for Summoner and Automaton pet commands to be reduced at all. That would be far more damaging to those jobs than it has been to beastmaster, in my opinion. However, these jobs showcase a major contradiction to the position that Beastmaster is overpowered by having greater range for issuing pet commands.

[Alhanelem]

I legitimately want to see the data SE has that shows, *at any point in FFXI history,* when pet-kiting BSTs were doing more damage than SMN or any other popular DPS job for that matter. I really want to know because I've never seen that happen.


@ Yoji Fujito, how many BST players have to quit before you take their concerns seriously? That you (or the job designer, whoever) continue to ignore or legitimately not understand the real issues facing BST players is one thing, but that you didn't really put real effort into the changes you did make is another entirely. Players of the job are upset that not only did you not address their biggest issues (whatever they may be), you added "new" pets that are just direct copies of ones that already exist with slightly different stats (or something). If you say you're going to add new pets, at least add NEW pets- there's hundreds of monsters out there you could have chosen and you just duplicated pets that already exist and therefore don't fill any hole or need of any sort. That's the real insult to BST players. Some of them might have been able to overlook you not really fixing the job if they actually got something new to play with, but they didn't even get that.

You seriously need to consider coming up with a compromise that will ease the frustration for BST players without making them as overpowered as you apparently think they are (Again though, I'd really like to see the data on BST pet DPS, because I don't really know of a time when BST pets were ever as overpowered as you suggest).

[Xilk]

Oh, Also, recent updates make pup do alot more damage than bst.

I'm not complaining that pup can do damage, I like pup. but it just does not make sense calling these balance issues for bst when pup can do it.

[Alhanelem]

Oh, Also, recent updates make pup do alot more damage than bst.

I'm not complaining that pup can do damage, I like pup. but it just does not make sense calling these balance issues for bst when pup can do it.
Careful lol... PUP was seen as mostly useless for the LONGEST time, I'm happy to see them wanted for stuff these days. But you're completely right. Also, PUP does commonly fight with their pet- they didn't need to be forced to do this, so SE's logic about why they needed to force BST to be at close range doesn't hold much water to me- Most BST I ever saw did that as much as they reasonably could already.

[Seish]

I will go out on a limb and defend the developers. You have two types of people in this game; those that want a restoration to hard content and real battle mechanics and those that want an easy button. What you all are saying is because this job has X, I need something to be just as powerful. They can do that--and they have for quite a while--until it eventually dulls out the job and makes the fights mindless. They keep telling us again and again that they want to retain the original idea of team building and player cooperation. Yet you all continue to cry about what you all want. This is why I suggested my classic server, so those that enjoy the easy content can get exactly what they want. You want to do things solo, or play to enjoy the game. But as someone said, and I've said before, this game is about the adventure. The road to endgame the road to the perfection of your character. It's about joining others in that difficult quest to actually have a meaningful experience and being able to reflect on all your accomplishments. As a vet that played back in 2003, I can tell you this game has aged well. I can recall my first time going to Sky, doing Dynamis, all the times I wiped. The cutscenes that were sad and moving, to really down right trying to help my friends and failing badly. But all wrapped in that, was a well thought out game that the developers detaild out for us.

Now there were some things I didn't like back then. I didn't like that the devs wouldn't talk to us. I didn't like that they made content that was in 2 occasions that were not reasonably beatable in the manner they saw fit. I didn't like their "hints" in handling difficult content but really didn't tell us much. And I didn't like that in some cases, the game had unreasonable barriers to enjoy the adventures with other friends. In a lot of ways, they fixed everything I mentioned. They talk more, they had a public test server--which they need to bring back. They are transparent with us, though I could use a roadmap that breaks down their plans. And most of all, they are interactive. Very few games has this level of involvement between the developers and the player base. First before you complain and rant, understand that they are doing more than most online game in this level of interaction and should be praised.

You don't have to like their response and I see you all are very passionate about it. Embrace that passion and don't be disparaged in trying to get what you want. But also remember that there are a lot of people on the forums asking for harder content and more challenges. To do that requires adjusting all the jobs and bringing back in mechanics that existed back in the day. I eventually expect a lot more jobs to be adjusted--in many cases, unfavorably. Understand that if they don't do this, then what will happen is the game won't evolve and change. It will continue to be easy.

So going forward, the arguments in my opinion, should be shaped to how we can enhance a job without changing what the devs are trying to do. Someone in this thread asked about SCH and I replied how would you enhance it without intruding on other jobs? Her reply was that she didn't know. Same with BST; how would you enhance it without it impeding on other jobs? Because since I came back, I've seen some significant overlap in the game with jobs having in some cases too much versatility. But I ask the devs with respect to be more transparent like they have in the past and give us a roadmap. If we can have that, we can see what they plan to do with the game, and be able to make adequate feedback with respect to their goals and help make change.

With that stated, I think the time of us wanting an easy button should be over. I can't speak for you all, but for me and what I've been reading, I feel that this is what everyone is asking for. IMHO, I personally want the current content to be more challenging. While I am interested in a classic server, I too have had my characters since 2003 and would love to continue playing on it on existing content. But I would like to see a better party dynamic that utilizes advanced mechanics and mastery of a job. And from what I've been reading, SE is trying to restore the balance that made this game beautiful.

[Alhanelem]

@ ^

I understand the developer perspective on this, the problem really is their solution to balance the job ended up hindering its usability even in the playstyle they were trying to promote. They need to come up with a solution to promote the play experience they want without frustrating the people who were already doing that to begin with.

The user experience for BST is just bad. Pets can vary in size and for the larger ones you actually have to move within their collision radius to get pet commands to work. When you can be visually next to your pet and still unable to execute commands, that really seems like a problem to me.

[Seish]

@^,

I agree and I think that they are in a bind. So what we should do honestly is figure out how to enhance a job without OPing it. I think in doing so, it will help them with augmenting a job. But I think the devs need to be more transparent of their plans. I have stressed this point by stating this in my previous post, where I state:


So going forward, the arguments in my opinion, should be shaped to how we can enhance a job without changing what the devs are trying to do...I've seen some significant overlap in the game with jobs having in some cases too much versatility. But I ask the devs [to] give us a roadmap. If we can have that, we can see what they plan to do with the game, and be able to make adequate feedback with respect to their goals and help make change.

This is a two way street. Just informing us as a job is about to be adjusted one month prior isn't enough. We need a very broad roadmap so our input can be gathered. Only then will this community have enough information to help progress the game. They did this before and had a test servers to try new things out, but for whatever reason they stopped. Please bring it back devs.

[Alhanelem]

I already made two proposals in that regard:


1) either a trait or an ability (like avatar's favor but just for the master), which grants some form of enhanced combat capability to the master while they are within range of the pet.
2) adding more melee-centric job traits for the master to give them more motivation to be in melee range by raising their share of the damage potential of the job.

[Rwolf]

The distance doesn't make BST OP. I wish that word would stop being used as a descriptor for the distance nerfing. The change has had zero effect other than frustration to execute Ready moves even in melee range.

The goal of the developers has been made clear. They want BST to be on the front line with their pets. We hear them, we are ok with it. I don't think anyone has even contested being on the front lines ever.

The frustration is why does it have to be such a severe distance penalty and can't be something else to encourage melee. There has been countless feedback since it's inception that the range is broken. It's too close and nothing else in battle mechanics is that aggressively restrictive. So it is not an unreasonable stance.

They just stated job adjustments aren't final and they are open to feedback so that's what this is, feedback and clarity that it's not been fun. We're mostly all adults, it's constructive criticism and feedback concerning mechanics that don't work.

The answer isn't to go well they do lots of stuff for us so give them a break. No one is griefing the developers, we're passionate about the game they made. It's why we're still here. We're trying to get them to listen, don't need to white knight them by calling everyone wanting an easy button. It just derails from the topic where everyone has to say they appreciate the game versus explaining why this doesn't work well and provide alternate ideas.

[Seish]

They outlined why though and clearly state that they felt it was too overpowered being a backline job. Now maybe the community never abused this, but perhaps they saw instances in which people did. I do like the suggestion that Alhan made. The devs should respond to that. Though my general comment was to those complaining that the devs are out of place. I don't think that they are. But the way they handled this situation, as I've said in previous threads, is not right. They need to communicate better.

[Reain]

I’d like to provide a brief history of beastmaster from a developer perspective.
Some points may greatly differ from player opinion, but please give it a read.


The problem is in 2015, after 12 years you basically said "You are playing Beastmaster wrong" and nerfed it in a way that drastically reduced the enjoyment of playing the job. There were better ways to encourage the master onto the front line. People are never gonna agree with you after playing a job a certain way for over a decade. Especially after already losing charmable monsters in nearly all content through no fault of their own.

And then when the player base said if you want us to be able to play on the front line we need you to move the "Sic" and "Ready" recast delay -5 from Charmer's Merlin from a level 89 Axe you just ignored them. Would it have been that hard to make it a level 87 trait instead? or moved it to another piece of equipment?

I think the 1hr abilities Unleash/Astral Conduit were/are unbalanced and instead of changing them you changed everything else instead and don't want to admit it.

Announcing the November version update as Beastmaster job adjustments was insanity. You can't possibly have thought that 2 mostly reskinned pets would have been well received?

[Rwolf]

BST wasn't overpowered in backlining. The issue was how extreme the jump in stats was for monsters at the time and BST just happened to be how players dealt with it.

To state it's overpowered would suggest game imbalance, which isn't accurate. It's more accurate to say they would prefer BST be on the frontline.

What bothers me is how rigid they are being with BST despite countless examples of flexibility.


WHM changes to Esuna/Sacrifice were changed back immediately after player protest despite devs wanting Misery used more.
They didn't like NIN bring used to tank, but saw players did and added enmity tools and gear.
SMN and PUP can backline the same way BST was doing but faster and with actual endless pets.


BST players will melee if encouraged. Imposing a severe penalty with no benefits just frustrates players versus us enjoying the playstyle the devs would like us to do.

It's especially horrible in groups of monsters. BST pets have their own enmity list. If a mob aggros my pet and it goes chasing after that mob. I have to now run after my pet to stand next to it to retrieve it.

Bind and Gravity now are essentially Amnesia for BST because the distance is that aggressive.

[Alhanelem]

The problem is in 2015, after 12 years you basically said "You are playing Beastmaster wrong" and nerfed it in a way that drastically reduced the enjoyment of playing the job. There were better ways to encourage the master onto the front line. People are never gonna agree with you after playing a job a certain way for over a decade. Especially after already losing charmable monsters in nearly all content through no fault of their own.

And then when the player base said if you want us to be able to play on the front line we need you to move the "Sic" and "Ready" recast delay -5 from Charmer's Merlin from a level 89 Axe you just ignored them. Would it have been that hard to make it a level 87 trait instead? or moved it to another piece of equipment?

I think the 1hr abilities Unleash/Astral Conduit were/are unbalanced and instead of changing them you changed everything else instead and don't want to admit it.

Announcing the November version update as Beastmaster job adjustments was insanity. You can't possibly have thought that 2 mostly reskinned pets would have been well received?
Stop bringing up summoner, the last thing we need is for them to ruin yet another job., even if the one in question (BST, for clarity) may never have been that amazing in the first place, seeing as all they've done for any job in all these updates is either changes that sound nice but don't really do anything or nerfs. The hand to hand / PUP tweaks might be the only exception all this year.

It is better to draw the line between both PUP and SMN with BST, whom is inferior to both. Bring BST up to their level, not the other way around. We're going to need a united front to effect any change.

Seriously though, I want to know and see what the "overwhelmingly powerful source of damage" from BST was. with the right buffs, BLM can magic burst a SC for the maximum possible 99999 damage. Has BST ever been able to do anything like that, even with multiple supports? SMN is also capable of that (once an hour) and some other jobs are just as sick in terms of ovealll DPS over time, but I've never seen anyone talk about how overpowered BST is. I'm just not seeing it, so as I've said before, I want the devs to show us what exactly the BST did that was so "overwhelmingly powerful."

[Seish]

Again, people keep saying to not use it but SE strongly hints why. They specify that they could stand in the side and without penalty give commands and when their pet dies to easily be able to resummon the pet. That means in difficult fights that should require a team, they could sit there all day soloing. They were very clear about what they meant and I do not see what you all do not get. Now if you have a problem with anything I said, please bring that up with SE, because they not only put players straight with what the role of BST is, but as to their reasoning for the nerf. Now that aside, I will restress that they went too far. They could have done this more tactful and is why I think if they had the public test servers back up we would be able to test these adjustments and provide feedback. I also press the fact that they haven't given us a roadmap. Please SE, you owe us these two things.

[Seish]

...As stronger enemies were introduced over time, it became apparent that beastmaster and their pets weren’t keeping up.
Unlike other jobs, pet-based jobs had to be balanced around both the player character and pet, which in turn made it difficult to implement powerful new equipment or pets.

In order to resolve this situation, we made major changes in the very first version update in 2015.
Monsters were now able to participate in skillchains and magic burst, making them an overwhelmingly powerful source of damage.
While this method required some preparation, the changes allowed beastmaster to easily catch up and deal high damage more effectively than any other job.

Ultimately, this allowed beastmaster to issue commands from a safe distance, while pets that were far stronger than the beastmaster themselves would continuously fire off powerful abilities.
Pets also had decent survivability, and even if they were defeated, they could be called out again at full power after a five minute cooldown.
At this point, beastmaster was capable of battling with almost no risk to themselves.

Player skill was not involved in this version of beastmaster, since no matter what attacks enemies had, they could be defeated by endlessly sending out powerful pets.
This was even more effective in parties with multiple beastmasters, which created some extreme cases where pets did all the fighting and players didn’t battle at all.
Battles were streamlined into a monotonous process, and enemy mechanics became meaningless.

▼ Corrective Measures and the Future
To address this, we kept beastmaster’s strength while making sure its equipment and traits were used to fulfill a frontline role, and shortened the range of commands to bring back a sense of risk to the job.
While these adjustments lowered beastmaster’s capabilities, it was compensated for with the continued implementation of various meals and equipment, and that brings us to today.

With this history in mind, we don’t have plans to alter the job’s design as a frontline role and would like this source of damage to be accompanied by some risk.

As we’ve often mentioned, these job adjustments aren’t final, and we’ll continue making adjustments to improve its frontline capabilities.


Tell me, what did they say wrong about any of this? And is this an example of overpowered?

[Beastorizer]

To Seish's point about instances were they felt people may have, a Master three star BST can use Unleash on a 15min recast, and the damage can be boosted by 40%. Ready can be boosted to do an extra 20% fully maxed. I assume those stack, so that is 60% extra damage while under unleash which is on a 15 min recast. So, I see what he is saying.

I feel like this can be an opportunity for BST to throw out suggestions. They implied this discussion was open for suggestions. Perhaps we should simply suggest.....

My Suggestion....

Fill out the bestiary; No more repeats, ever.......We are capped at 119...We are not going any higher....Unless you are doing things like the Hippo, Raptor, Turtle, or the Red lynx.

(& stop taking moves like frenzied rage & pounce away.....)

These repeats are an easy out to recolor the Homunculus & call it an update. If this was never a thing, we would have gotten a real update last month. Easy to do......Not going to fix everything, but it gives off the impression that "We are trying." These repeats gives off the impression "We are not trying."

It is more than looking cool, powerful pets, having a neat looking pets, etc, it is about the perception of effort imo.

Combine the repeats

Combine the distance nerf

Combine removing many moves from jugs

Combine the lack of "front line" oriented JA/JT, it seems like you are doing everything in your power to nerf BST, instead of improve it. I can't name one thing the devs did to BST & say, "Wow, they really improved us." Ready damage, maybe...

[Seish]

@^ Finally someone said it.

As far as the suggestions are concerned; some have suggested and that's what the Devs need to respond to. Then there are those that are insisting that BST was a backline job and later got angry at the reply SE gave showing why they were wrong and threw their gear and said they quit. That kind of behavior, and those that just complain without a solution--though understandable--doesn't solve anything. It's coming up with a solution through suggesting how to fix the problem that will remedy the issue at hand.

To those that are suggesting, please keep it up. It's the only way to get some change you want.

[Gwydion]

@^ Finally someone said it.

As far as the suggestions are concerned; some have suggested and that's what the Devs need to respond to. Then there are those that are insisting that BST was a backline job and later got angry at the reply SE gave showing why they were wrong and threw their gear and said they quit. That kind of behavior, and those that just complain without a solution--though understandable--doesn't solve anything. It's coming up with a solution through suggesting how to fix the problem that will remedy the issue at hand.

To those that are suggesting, please keep it up. It's the only way to get some change you want.

I have a lengthy post history of saying what Beastorizer said. See my post on page 8.

Regardless, we're all on the same page. SE has done little to improve beastmaster. I don't think equipment or food counts as the director stated in his reply either.

I hope they do something tangible for Beastmaster.

[Seish]

We are. And I am glad we are all on the same page. Now we came with suggestions and all we can do is wait. If more ideas come feel free to post. But to those that already came with them, all I have to say to the @Devs, please take the time to look over the suggestions and let us know what you think.

[Rwolf]

I don't want to derail the thread further. If anyone chooses to call BST or its original distance for over 15 years as OP, I can't stop you. Just know it will only validate the inaccurate stigma and cause any further development to be based on it.

Per your request and hopefully I don't get banned, I will explain which parts were not accurate.


we made major changes in the very first version update in 2015... ...the changes allowed beastmaster to easily catch up and deal high damage more effectively than any other job.

It was true that BST was dealing high damage more effective than most jobs at the time, but not all. Magic Burst parties were more effective especially with Death MB but it required more work. BST didn't have any major thresholds on JP or gear so it attracted the masses.

The comment leaves out an important reason why it felt very strong. Monsters have higher native stats than players. It was easier to cap a jug pets acc/atk than a player on content in 2015.

As mentioned previously there was a lot of adjustments made to monsters, bard songs, accessible gear and even JP acquisition when Apex became easier to fight as a result. Now other DD easily surpass pet damage and the only decent MB nuke is a water one you can only do every 30 sec with max ready recast.


Pets also had decent survivability, and even if they were defeated, they could be called out again at full power after a five minute cooldown.
At this point, beastmaster was capable of battling with almost no risk to themselves.

Player skill was not involved in this version of beastmaster, since no matter what attacks enemies had, they could be defeated by endlessly sending out powerful pets.
This was even more effective in parties with multiple beastmasters, which created some extreme cases where pets did all the fighting and players didn’t battle at all.
Battles were streamlined into a monotonous process, and enemy mechanics became meaningless.

Even after the distance nerf, players ran in range between attacks to issue commands with Utsusemi shadows so the risk was minimal to none. It didn't encourage melee either.

5 minute recast ≠ endless pets. SMN and PUP do what is described honestly not to throw them under the bus. MB strategies have no risk at all. Not to mention unlike the other pet jobs, your jug pet is lost when zoning and most battlefields.

Players stood back and didn't melee because:

It was too dangerous.
Master damage was worse than other DD with even less gear choices and no traits.
Charmer's Merlin causing TP issues and being more valuable than master damage.



To address this, we kept beastmaster’s strength while making sure its equipment and traits were used to fulfill a frontline role, and shortened the range of commands to bring back a sense of risk to the job.

Equipment? Traits? Fencer and Damage Limit II isn't enough melee traits. Relic+3 doesn't have anything unique. Fencer but no great shields so it practically forces subjob for Dual Wield.


While these adjustments lowered beastmaster’s capabilities

Sure did, greatly.


it was compensated for with the continued implementation of various meals and equipment, and that brings us to today.

I disagree. Relic+3 that has no unique additions. Pet food and armor really should be equally beneficial for master and pet. Inventory restrictions don't help non-career BSTs want to carry TP and WS sets.


we don’t have plans to alter the job’s design as a frontline role

Then there are those that are insisting that BST was a backline job

Who is saying BST is supposed to be a backline job? Absolutely no one. Players are frustrated with the distance because it doesn't work well even in melee range.

Instead of approaching it as how should be punish players for not doing what we want. Approach how can we encourage players to stay in range. Because they aren't, even with the nerf.


To Seish's point about instances were they felt people may have, a Master three star BST can use Unleash on a 15min recast, and the damage can be boosted by 40%. Ready can be boosted to do an extra 20% fully maxed. I assume those stack, so that is 60% extra damage while under unleash which is on a 15 min recast. So, I see what he is saying.

I just wanted to point out that Unleash is BST's SP ability and it's a 45 minute recast. You might be referring to Run Wild which is 15 minutes and nowhere near as strong. Run Wild also makes the pet disappear after 5 minutes.

When you throw out a bunch of percents, it sounds menacing but BST doesn't hit the numbers that heavy DD or other pet classes are doing. I won't explain in detail why because players have gotten banned here doing that.

I would suggest looking at the BST sticky in FFXIAH. Falkirk has done some great work with showing just how much damage a jug pet can do with maxed pDIF. It pales in comparison to the other pet and a lot of DD jobs.

[Rwolf]

Gwydion, what you did and said has my admiration and respect. I think it's more impactful and the 22 likes shows the support it has from the community. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise that you haven't contributed simply because they don't agree with your decision to drop Aymur.

[Zehira]

If we made scales shareable account-wide, there will be players who want them for secondary characters, or those who don’t need them right now but want more for later.
This may result in a situation where those who actually want them right now would be unable to obtain them.
It would also allow players to simply create one powerful character with the necessary equipment to make scales easier to obtain for the rest of their characters.
Since this is relevant to the final stage of artifact enhancement, and we’d like to maintain a difficulty appropriate for capabilities, we currently aren’t considering making scales shareable account-wide.

Don't worry about that. Please think of SCH in the future. Thank you. :)

I wish it didn't come with BST at a time. (laughs)

[Seish]

Who is saying BST is supposed to be a backline job? Absolutely no one. Players are frustrated with the distance because it doesn't work well even in melee range.

Gwydion in another thread did call it a back line job. That is why SE had to stress the history of BST and I felt that Yoji did a good job about it. But as Gwydion said, we all are on the same team. But I disagree with you thinking it wasn't OP as outlined by Beast's post found on the very top. I see that you went point by point, which is healthful and I think constructive. But the point SE was making is being able to resummon after you do a massive spike dmg is in their mind is OP with the pet's survivability and the massive dmg spike you can have--regardless if their time being summoned is shortened or not as you can easily resummon them. One could say that takes away from them having to feel any risk involved in tight situations where other jobs would have because of their wide range to give commands. And while you say that they front lined, you clearly mentioned the following:


Players stood back and didn't melee because:

It was too dangerous.
Master damage was worse than other DD with even less gear choices and no traits.
Charmer's Merlin causing TP issues and being more valuable than master damage.


What you said aligned with what I quoted earlier, stating they did not want BSTS to stand back when times got difficult. And if a party were to wipe, they would want them as one of the first players to feel the wipe. That is not hard to understand and makes sense from their perspective. For convenience, I shall include that quote here with a bold lettering to assist the point they are making:


...As stronger enemies were introduced over time, it became apparent that beastmaster and their pets weren’t keeping up.
Unlike other jobs, pet-based jobs had to be balanced around both the player character and pet, which in turn made it difficult to implement powerful new equipment or pets.

In order to resolve this situation, we made major changes in the very first version update in 2015.
Monsters were now able to participate in skillchains and magic burst, making them an overwhelmingly powerful source of damage.
While this method required some preparation, the changes allowed beastmaster to easily catch up and deal high damage more effectively than any other job.

Ultimately, this allowed beastmaster to issue commands from a safe distance, while pets that were far stronger than the beastmaster themselves would continuously fire off powerful abilities.
Pets also had decent survivability, and even if they were defeated, they could be called out again at full power after a five minute cooldown.
At this point, beastmaster was capable of battling with almost no risk to themselves.

Player skill was not involved in this version of beastmaster, since no matter what attacks enemies had, they could be defeated by endlessly sending out powerful pets.
This was even more effective in parties with multiple beastmasters, which created some extreme cases where pets did all the fighting and players didn’t battle at all.
Battles were streamlined into a monotonous process, and enemy mechanics became meaningless.

▼ Corrective Measures and the Future
To address this, we kept beastmaster’s strength while making sure its equipment and traits were used to fulfill a frontline role, and shortened the range of commands to bring back a sense of risk to the job.
While these adjustments lowered beastmaster’s capabilities, it was compensated for with the continued implementation of various meals and equipment, and that brings us to today.

With this history in mind, we don’t have plans to alter the job’s design as a frontline role and would like this source of damage to be accompanied by some risk.

As we’ve often mentioned, these job adjustments aren’t final, and we’ll continue making adjustments to improve its frontline capabilities.

But that aside, I think that you raise good points. Moreso, it echos what we all have been saying. They didn't do it the best way and they should figure out a better way to remedy it. Ergo why I keep pointing to us coming with solutions.

[Alhanelem]

Tell me, what did they say wrong about any of this? And is this an example of overpowered?
I mean, SMN has been kiting monsters as long as it has existed, and more easily than BST and it wasn't consdiered overpowered (I suppose because it is very slow compared to doing things the normal way and some enemies were strong enough that you couldn't get enough distance to recast). BST has a lengthy cooldown on call beast, and while its pets do have more HP it's not so much more that they could kill 5 minutes to resummon every time. SMN was *always* better at pet kiting, although PUP can (sort of) do it too with deus ex automata.

I also honestly don't know whch monster attacks do so much damage that BST could be seen as overpowered in general. I rarely ever had a BST in a party, but I don't remember the damage from their pet's special attacks being remarkable.



What you said aligned with what I quoted earlier, stating they did not want BSTS to stand back when times got difficult. If you're trying to refute something here, I don't think it's working. He listed off multiple reasons why many BST players didn't find fighting alongside pet to be attractive or worthwhile (limited gear options, more dangerous for them than other melee jobs, having to sacrifice TP to get the most out of pet attacks). SE's solution didn't address any of that. All it did was tell people you have to melee whether it's actually any good or not."

They had a problem that needed careful sculpting and tweaking to address and instead of doing that, they just slammed a sledgehammer over it and called it a day.

[Seish]

I think I did the moment I cited what SE said in BOLD. If you have a problem with it. Take it with them but they are very clear. They want to bring risk to a job that doesn't front line when things get bad. And they want to end BST burns.

He can cite what he wants, but the moment he said they distince themselves form the mobs because things get rough, that is exactally why SE did what they did. I maintain that they didn't do it right. But their reasoning with what he said is clear.

[Alhanelem]

I think I did the moment I cited what SE said in BOLD. If you have a problem with it. Take it with them but they are very clear. They want to bring risk to a job that doesn't front line when things get bad. And they want to end BST burns.
Risk is fine if there's a reward for it. The problem is there isn't much to gain from it. BST master DPS is pretty low, probably not that much better than I do as a relic summoner, because they have basically no combat traits beyond their support job. To use their pet abilities efficiently requires them to lose TP and thus lose potential weapon skills, constraining their DPS potential. If BST is to be a risky job, then it needs to have better damage output than other jobs with better survivability skills. And as it stands, it really doesn't. I don't know a single person who's ever sought a BST for their party, citing their superior DPS.

This is all aside from the fact that even people who already were meleeing as BST are inconvenienced (to put it mildly) by the changes that were made. If they wanted to eliminate pet kiting they could have done so without causing a large amount of frustration for people that were already doing it the way SE intended. And it only went so far in discouraging pet kiting / playing from a distance. As was said by others, you could still play the old way with relative safety with the right sub job, running in to do commands and running back out. They didn't really even eliminate the style of play they were trying to stop- they just made it a lot more inconvenient.

[Seish]

And I agree with you in the way they handled it. They did voice their concerns I felt and they answered it well. And if you change subs to lets say NIN, you are nerfing your dmg and with that alone, they obtained what they wanted. How many mobs now have DOT and AOE spells that kind of make it harder to do this? What you're gonna try to sit there and cast to be interrupted when you're getting hit and possibly die? That's the risk they want. But let's be real, we both argued with a specific player how BSTS did front line and it was viable. The point I am making is that they are right in their reasoning, but wrong in implementation. We are all on the same boat.

EDIT: Let us not forget BST burns were also a thing and that they were also looking at stopping this due to what a full party--or in some cases alliances--could do with no risk involved.

[Alhanelem]

I remember a BST "burn" of Tiamat or w/e the Wyrm in attowha chasm is. It took them like 5 times longer than any normal group would have done.

[Voidstorm]

I remember a BST party actually killing Vrtra after she was patched to be basically unkillable with a ton of dawn mulsum.

[Seish]

Glad someone does and the fact they had this ability to safely do it, with time not being an issue, is why SE took action.

Edit: while the need to act was justified. The way they did it wasn't.

[Alhanelem]

Glad someone does and the fact they had this ability to safely do it, with time not being an issue, is why SE took action.

Edit: while the need to act was justified. The way they did it wasn't.
If you actually saw one of these, you'd know it was far from safe. Mainly because they had to use charmed antlions and not call beast pets (not enough HP). These fights were a cluste*&#^$ of chaos with the wyrm constantly changing targets, doing AOEs in practiocally random places every time. They tied up legitimate groups who were capable of doing it normally for hours whilst waiting to see if they would wipe or not (more often than not, they did)

And this usually took more than a full alliance of BSTs- people would swap in and out as others got KO'd. It wasn't easy or optimal, they just had something to prove.

[Nyarlko]

Thank you for the large number of feedback responses.
We understand that there are many requests to increase the range of beastmaster abilities, such as Ready.
However, upon careful discussion with the Lead Job Designer, we have decided that the range of these abilities will not be adjusted.
Please reconsider this stance. As many have said before, the current range is insufficient for stable gameplay and is the source of what are in practice, bugs. Increasing the range of BST job abilities does not have to be an all or nothing case. Increasing the range to a barebones minimum of 9y-10y should be enough in most cases to prevent failure due to being "out of range" during reasonable gameplay while meleeing with your pet on the same target. 11y-12y should be enough to totally fix this aspect of the job without enabling the master to command the pet from total safety. I'd like to note that even with the old 18y+ range, using the pet-only playstyle included the demerit of 0dmg from master, and while other jobs have benefitted from impactful gear improvements over the last several years, BST pets have not so the concept is fundamentally going to be slower than just about any other job.



▼ Beastmaster is designed as a frontline job.
I would genuinely like to know what parts of the job design have ever indicated that BST is intended to be a frontline job other than our highest weapon skill rating being a 1h axe. Objectively speaking, there is nothing in the job trait list, nor in the job ability list, that would point players in that direction. If we were truly intended from the beginning to be designed as a melee, then why is there nothing in the job's implementation to encourage doing that?



Monsters were now able to participate in skillchains and magic burst, making them an overwhelmingly powerful source of damage.
While this method required some preparation, the changes allowed beastmaster to easily catch up and deal high damage more effectively than any other job.
This is no longer the case by any measure, and already was not the case by the time that Escha-Ruan was released. SMN was already quite capable of 99,999 Blood Pacts plus 99,999 skillchains with minimal buffs even back then. I witnessed this firsthand in late 2015 when a friendly SMN in my linkshell steamrolled thru all of the T1 caturae for me (which none of the parties that I'd been in had been capable of defeating,) using Apogee, Trusts and with me on my somewhat functional GEO. In the current day, we are already in an era where any delay-capped damage-dealer job is capable of self-skillchaining nearly non-stop for considerably more damage than BST's master+pet is capable of.

I feel the need to ask at this point.. Have you not seen the damage output of every other job in the current game? ._.
I'm not being facetious, I'm seriously asking this question because as it stands currently, I would not be surprised if a WHM with a proper melee set will output higher damage than BST can currently, even compared to combined master+pet damage. I am absolutely certain that "support jobs" like RDM and COR are quite capable of demolishing our DPS numbers. Then there is simply no contest when compared to any job that's classified as a damage dealer, and that's not an exaggeration, it's verifiable fact. We might beat PLD sword/shield potential output? That's a pretty sad state when the only job we have a reasonable chance to naturally outdamage is fully intended to be little more than a wall.



Player skill was not involved in this version of beastmaster, since no matter what attacks enemies had, they could be defeated by endlessly sending out powerful pets.
This was even more effective in parties with multiple beastmasters, which created some extreme cases where pets did all the fighting and players didn’t battle at all.
Battles were streamlined into a monotonous process, and enemy mechanics became meaningless.
Sounds like SMN except Blood Pacts hit harder than Ready moves, and unlike BST's 5min Call Beast timer, SMN pets can be resummoned at will. :/ I honestly don't see what the perceived problem here was/is when a stronger version of the exactly described playstyle exists on another job already and is considered acceptable.



▼ Corrective Measures and the Future
To address this, we kept beastmaster’s strength while making sure its equipment and traits were used to fulfill a frontline role, and shortened the range of commands to bring back a sense of risk to the job.
While these adjustments lowered beastmaster’s capabilities, it was compensated for with the continued implementation of various meals and equipment, and that brings us to today.
Again, I must ask, what traits are used to fulfill a frontline job role? The bit of Fencer that we get from Job Point Gifts is far from enough to qualify as supporting the proscribed playstyle. Where is the equipment that compensates for the lack of any actual job-based melee enhancements? As is, a BST who is perfectly geared for master melee is comparable to a poorly geared WAR who has no job abilities. Even WHM has combat support abilities and buffs! Let's also not forget that any gear that's tailored for master melee will almost certainly be at the expense of pet performance due to the way that augments work, nor the fact that being expected to gear both master and pet implies roughly double the cost and effort and inventory space, nor the fact that we are constantly resetting TP to 0 due to frequent weapon swaps with every Ready (and often several other pet-oriented job abilities like Spur and Reward.) Food items being included in job balance decisions is simply absurd. Last time I checked, there aren't exactly any job-specific foods that improve BST performance more than any comparable job/role, so the end result is that we remain just as weak in comparison to others, food or no.

Have you considered the burden on player inventory space to accomplish master+pet peak performance versus other "frontline melee" jobs? I regularly carry 100+ equipment for BST, and I am geared solely for pet-only playstyle. Do you genuinely believe that it is acceptable for any "melee" job to require a minimum of two full bags of inventory space?



As we’ve often mentioned, these job adjustments aren’t final, and we’ll continue making adjustments to improve its frontline capabilities.
Please, for the love of Altana, include this statement when releasing minimal patches! If something like this one sentence had been included in any of the official statements regarding the November "job adjustments", it would have gone a long way towards preventing player anguish. A simple "This is not all that is planned for adjustments to JOB" when releasing very small updates like this past month's would be very much appreciated going forward.


I don't understand how it's possible that you believe in the stance that BST is in a good state unless there is something flawed in your testing methods. There are just far too many inconsistencies between the official stance on what BST should be when compared to what players are telling you that BST actually is, and it's been this way for the last several years.

Have you verified that all of the results you are seeing during testing can actually be achieved on the live server version of the game?
Have you confirmed that, with actual equipment swaps and macros and client/server latency, (and preferably with a subjob that does not grant Dual Wield to ensure proper evaluation of the job itself,) that the job plays and performs on par with other frontline jobs the way that you envision that it does? What damage output results are you expecting from the other jobs that you are comparing BST to?
What buffs and debuffs are you assuming are in play and are they feasible to achieve for players in groups that are not specifically tailored to support only BST at the expense of the performance of other melees?
What families and level range of targets are you testing against?
Furthermore, have you actually tested BST performance in current endgame content such as Dynamis-Divergence where monster levels are very high?

Before dismissing these questions, please remember just how many years monster magic evasion was bugged for before the bug was caught...

[Seish]

If you actually saw one of these, you'd know it was far from safe. Mainly because they had to use charmed antlions and not call beast pets (not enough HP). These fights were a cluste*&#^$ of chaos with the wyrm constantly changing targets, doing AOEs in practiocally random places every time. They tied up legitimate groups who were capable of doing it normally for hours whilst waiting to see if they would wipe or not (more often than not, they did)

And this usually took more than a full alliance of BSTs- people would swap in and out as others got KO'd. It wasn't easy or optimal, they just had something to prove.

I have and it was very safe for a lot of content and the testimonials of what BSTS did is out there. You had one BST already explain they understood what I said giving weight to the claim SE is leveraging. But at the end of the day, they addressed it wrong. Regardless of my argument, I still agree with you all that they could have done this better.

[Seish]

I am geared solely for pet-only playstyle.

BST has and always will be a front line job. It was seen when BST dual wielded Juggy and Man eater and with the pet "in era", produced some massive damage. The issue wasn't that BST couldn't do dmg with the pet, and it hasn't been today. Be careful what you say about history, you are only talking to the lead person for Final Fantasy XI. I am sure he knows more about this game than we do from the backend and the history of this game. The issue BST had back then was that if they charmed a pet or used a jugg, the EXP would drop. They later fixed this and because they did, enough BSTS were no longer front lining, as well as some people pointing out that they would pull back to a safe distance when things got rough, to the point that SE took action.

As far as the gear is concerned, that goes with how dedicated one is with their gear. I know melee players that have a ton of augmented gear for different situations. But what I hear coming out of this, is that your backline strategy was impacted. Good! This was what SE wanted to stop and your complaining on here, showing this no less, is why I support it. You were fed a low risk job for too long and I think the adjustment is forcing you to put yourself at risk which you do not like.

They explained briefly the history of BST to give you a rationale. As a person that played since 2003, I agree with their statement and all I see here are players that are wanting an easy button. Some of you have came with nice suggestions, while others just want what other jobs have. To those that came with suggestions and had civil dialogue, I applaud you and I hope SE listens. To those that just want that easy button, I am sorry but this game was never meant to be easy.

I promise you, if this nerf holds, abet adjustments that slightly increase range, then the sad truth is that the jobs mentioned by other players--SMN and PUP--will likely be nerfed for similar reasons as to return the game to a proper balance. SE cannot do that if everyone still has easy buttons. When you can do Omen, where the alliance makeup is made up of SMNS, tank and a healer with the rest of the ally leeching, there's a problem. A big problem with party balance. And BST seemed to be first up on the chopping block. I felt nerf--oh boy trust me I did. When I returned a couple years to see my MNK was nerfed made me angry. So I get the problem. But if they nerf BST, they better do it with first player input, as well as looking at other jobs who do the exact same thing. And I am for it. I want there to be a risk in this game. I don't want to sit AFK watching SMN's clear an entire zone for me. That's not fun for me at all.

But I hope in all honesty, that SE makes the suggested changes and later opens a test server for us to test new things. The devs need to understand how we perceive the game when trying to adjust the game. It's why I keep saying that we need SE to give us a roadmap again. I also think they need to adjust the difficulty and bring back mechanics that are gone. And it seems like that's what they are trying to do.

[Beastorizer]

The comment leaves out an important reason why it felt very strong. Monsters have higher native stats than players. It was easier to cap a jug pets acc/atk than a player on content in 2015.

This is why I am an advocate of boosting BST through pets; it is easier to do.

Also, I was referring to the Master rank job gifts, which reduce 1hr abilities by 15 minutes. I meant the 15 min reduction, not 15 mins.

As for the percentages, they are correct. I am not talking about a standard CP party situation; I am referring to a instance where BST will be under Unleashed. I am not talking about spreadsheets which illustrates pet dmg; I am referring to BST under Unleash with JP boosts, which is a special situation. Tegmina Buffet can be fired off like every 5 seconds or so, for an entire minute.

Besieged, old content, I get it.....Regardless, I cleared an entire episode by myself pretty much with that grasshopper. Looked around to see SMN, WARs, MNKs, DRKs not doing as much dmg as my pet was, to the same dated mobs while under unleashed. I was naked, save the Relic Gloves & a 119 axe, because I was harvesting prior to the besieged.

My Fantod > Backheel almost broke 100K, about 20-ish K off maybe? Can't remember.....

In a normal situation, I am sure those DD would have mopped the floor with my pet. This is where spreadsheets would come in handy. Non-Unleash situations are more common than Unleashed situations.

I am not one of those guys who cater to the BST community's current popular opinion, because it is the popular thing to do. Or, that it gets you likes/votes. Nor I am going to conform to the devs opinion when it is contradicting. I am going to be objective & call it like it is.

BST under Unleash with those insane percentage boost may be what the devs are referring to. The contradicting part, other jobs can do the same...BST will not always be under Unleashed. If they are not referring to an Unleashed BST, that makes their point even worst.....

We are on the same page in terms of the devs comments being contradicting, this is what matters.

[Beastorizer]

But what I hear coming out of this, is that your backline strategy was impacted.

Pretty much..

That is why the heat against me is very....... personal.......lol.....

I have nothing against them really, nor the devs. I just want to see effort from the devs regarding the job. That is all....

[Seish]

They're just trying to fix an issue that exists. It impacts some players, but case in point. I was in Reisemenja and I remember getting a ton of CP with my friend using the grasshopper to AOE kill mobs. To lv, they need to be in the front lines putting him in danger. What other people need to remember is that front lines doesn't necessarily equate to fighting. But it does put you in the danger. Now I remember BSTs fighting in retail and I completely think that they have in the past and they could now and be enhanced in the future. But what I am happy is it seems SE is finally taking a stance on this game and is ready to finally make it a bit challenging.

[Alhanelem]

My issue predominantly was and is people who were already duoing with their pet having their quality of life compromised by needing to stick to their pets like glue instead of being able to stand on opposite sides of the mob or even just a short distance apart. The people already playing SE's way have had their experience degraded by SE's attempt to punish pet kiting.

[Seish]

And I think we are all on the same page. The way they did it impacted the people who weren't abusing it is sad. I don't think SE will reverse their decision on trying to let the master play from afar without some risk being associated. But something needs to give so they can be more enhanced near their pet. Like idk a trait to enhance their axe dmg if they are close to their pet. Or a defense trait or hell, give the pet a cover trait to cover them? There's so many ways they could do this.

[Alhanelem]

And I think we are all on the same page. The way they did it impacted the people who weren't abusing it pretty badly. I don't think SE will reverse their decision on trying to let the master play from afar without some risk being associated. But they need to enhance them if they are going to be with their pets somehow.

While I have qualms with them trying to force a playstyle in the manner in which they did (especially considering other jobs' alternative play styles eventually were embraced by SE after becoming mainstream) it would not have recieved the same kind of backlash that it did had they gone the route of making melee DPS generally superior. BST needs tools to excel there which it currently doesn't have. If they did something that made people say "Wow, BST is an awesome melee fighter", people would only pet kite or play like a ranged if they had no choice, and it probably would have been left alone. Instead we get a heavy-handed, bludgeon-with-a-sledgehammer type of solution that hits a lot of things that shouldn't have been affected. I guess that's classic SE, like with WS like penta thrust pre-TP nerf, RNG post-range scaling nerf, etc. (crap, that's another thing they could have done, scale pet command effectiveness based on range...)

[Seish]

You would think they would figure those things out before taking the more drastic route.

[Safiyyah]

They ended BST burns 4 years ago, but in the process they destroyed the entire beastmaster job, and their explanation for why is entirely clueless.

[Ilisidi]

If possible, we’d like to create a final stage for Chocobo Racing, but we haven’t had the time or resources and the idea keeps getting pushed back.
We’re hoping to implement it at some point in the future, so we ask you to please wait until then.

Thank you that answer.
It's good to know that it hasn't fall under the table and there is interest in doing it once there's a reasonable chance.
I like the Chocobo Racing quest line.

[Alhanelem]

Thank you that answer.
It's good to know that it hasn't fall under the table and there is interest in doing it once there's a reasonable chance.
I like the Chocobo Racing quest line.

And 10 years later after they finally do that, maybe we can get a monstrosity update.

[Seish]

They ended BST burns 4 years ago, but in the process they destroyed the entire beastmaster job, and their explanation for why is entirely clueless.

They had a clue, and their response shows it. But it had unintended consequences. When you have a BST player explain they understood their actions, you can't say they didn't have a clue. They went about it the wrong way. Everyone on the forums, regardless your stance on their rational or not, agrees unanimously that they went too far. It's about time they listened to suggestions.

[Beastorizer]

And 10 years later after they finally do that, maybe we can get a monstrosity update.

Based upon the 50 response Monstrosity thread, I think we need to get this thread to 51 pages for them to consider helping BST or PLD. Why should they listen to players about jobs they play extensively? I mean, players are just paying customers.....Nothing special....

[Mikah]

Based upon the 50 response Monstrosity thread, I think we need to get this thread to 51 pages for them to consider helping BST or PLD. Why should they listen to players about jobs they play extensively? I mean, players are just paying customers.....Nothing special....

You think you're being sarcastic, but this is accurate. Paying means you're perfectly fine with whatever they do. Complaining here most of the time doesn't accomplish anything unless you're in the JP section.

You want an actual vote, your money voted yes already.

[Seish]

This is coming from a person (you) who said it's smart to pay for gil. I don't think anyone will listen to what you have to say anymore. You basically condone cheating.

[Gwydion]

I am still upset that after 3 years of no updates, Beastmaster's job adjustment is re-skinned pets and we're told that these changes are "not final" but also, that they won't do anything about our requests. This is a tremendous breach of trust for paying customers. All we want is Beastmaster abilities to consistently activate, 100% of the time and we can't do that today. :(

[Zehira]

I am still upset that after 3 years of no updates, Beastmaster's job adjustment is re-skinned pets and we're told that these changes are "not final" but also, that they won't do anything about our requests. This is a tremendous breach of trust for paying customers. All we want is Beastmaster abilities to consistently activate, 100% of the time and we can't do that today. :(

I know. I feel like if we need to fix the relationship with Square Enix. I know I already tried but they still don't like mean people and trolls. They just can't stand it. We are basically "Hopelessly addicted." :(

Japanese players usually get more official responses than we get.

[Beastorizer]

Companies do indeed take advantage of an "Addiction." However, I have never been addicted to an mmo. As I mentioned before, I played FFXI on & off since like, 2003-ish. I came back from a 4 year hiatus; that is pretty much how I play mmo. I have no issue dropping them for other stuff. That is actually the plan with my CPA coming up.

I have not touched PS02 is like 6 months, DCUO is like 2-ish, FFXIV....I re-subbed, & played it like, twice (That was a waste of game-time...). Wanted to log into GW2, forgot my password...Been too long. Decided to try WoW again.....Forgot that password & email address........I just never been the addicted type.

When mmo shutdown, like Marvel Heroes, I was never sad about it. There were people in a grieving state, I could never relate. I may spend more time on mmo forums than the games. Being in business, I am a social interaction guy, so that may have something to do with it.

That may also have something to do with my passion against selling duplicate products to a fan-base but calling it new (Kind of a contradiction from a business person...I know lol...). In this case, it is jug pets. I see this stuff a lot, and it is kinda like LOL, this looks very "Familiar."

The closet I got was maybe Sonic the Hedgehog marble stages when I was a kid. I was just eager to beat it. To be the best. I never really cared about being the best in an mmo.

I like video games, I like weight lifting, I like TV. Being balance was always important to me. I do not like to bee too invested in something. I was that guy who would camp HNMs, etc...then I though to myself "What am I doing........?"

[Jerbob]

I died as BST today because my pet decided to take a tiny detour around a bump in the ground and moved out of range. This is ridiculous!

I may still be new to BST (which may be obvious from the anecdote above) but my experiences match up with a lot of the negative feedback here.

With regards to Mr. Yoji Fujito's response to feedback:




Mr. Yoji Fujito's response to feedback also didn't address any Beastmaster concerns beyond the range nerf. To reiterate my previous point from page 3, there are a lot of things about Beastmaster that are still literally broken. The most important factors remain:

BST still has to use a level 75 pair of trousers and a level 89 axe to reduce Ready recast time. These two items are essential to ensuring that our familiars can keep up - if they weren't people wouldn't still be using a level 89 axe against level 150 monsters. This is not compatible with your vision of a frontline BST.

40% of our non-merit job abilities - Charm, Tame, Gauge - are essentially unusable. Charm is iconic, but unusable. This feels very wrong.

New pets are not a fix. They are nice, if they're truly new (or even if they're reintroduced old pets that have been below level cap for a while), but they are not a job update.

Please, please understand that the developer's vision for BST is not working. We understand the motivations - they don't need to be reiterated - but here on the ground, it's not working.

[Jerbob]

Some ideas that could make a real difference to Beastmasters:


I'm sure veteran and career Beastmasters (if there are any left :() will have more/better ideas, given the chance to express them.

[Beastorizer]

Well, I am out.

My sub ends soon, thus, an active account is required to post on the forums. Therefore, being unsubbed, I will no longer be able to post. Not going to make one of those "Goodbye" threads, because the nature of mmos allow players to come back at will.

I returned to FFXI in June, after years of not playing. Yep, I am checking out mere months later. When I was away, I was really away from the game. I did not even know what the latest jugs were. To my surprise, they were much of the same.

I may be back, if something changes with Monstrosity or BST. However, I doubt I will be aware. Like I said, when I was away from XI, I was AWAY from XI lol. I discover updates super late lol. Anyway, peace, for now....Maybe.....

[TullemoreAsuraFFXI]

Jan patch bringing more BST focus. I believe they're incrementally proofing changes in very small amounts as to not overwhelmingly disrupt balances or difficulty pertaining to NMs.

[Alhanelem]

well they can't just add mroe bst pets twice in a row especially after a thread like this and responding to complaints, so hopefully it's at least something mechanical whether it's any good or not lol.

[Zehira]

Hopefully, it would be a good thing. I have my BST mastered for a while but it doesn't mean I am an expert. :)

Enjoy the Holidays / 休暇を楽しんでね to all you adventurers and the FFXI team (developers, producer, director, community reps, STF, forum moderators, and game masters)! Even though, I will be very busy during the Holidays. :(

Best wishes for the New Year! / 新年が良い年でありますように! :o