Overall Battle System Adjustments for the Future

Can blame them, have them take 5 seconds to tell our rep to let us know we don't matter to them, not to hard.

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Originally Posted by Demon6324236

Can blame them, have them take 5 seconds to tell our rep to let us know we don't matter to them, not to hard.

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But that would dispel the illusion of the dev team giving a damn about what we have to say! :(

So. PUP is getting a buff from accuracy, but except retarded content like legion, the accuracy bonus is not very useful to 1 handed DD. On the other hand if it end ups being an accuracy nerf for 2H DD, it's going to be hilarous. Somehow I think they'll stick to content where accuracy doesn't matter like they always did...

In regards to damage taken on Mage jobs, and in particular SMN, I would like to make a suggestion. Can you increase the range on using Pet Commands to equal that of casting spells. Since Blood Pacts etc are essentially the Summoner's spell against the mob, this should make sense.

I particularly like the "1-handed Accuracy" proposition (though I would need to drastically rethink my equipment if it were to go through), but as mentioned earlier, unless you equalize the Ratio caps for both weapon types, there will still be imbalance.

Honestly, as utterly broken as Duel Wield is, the way things are inherently designed right now, 1-handed weapon users need it just to play catch-up! If Dual Wield ended up being problematic again after increasing the power of 1-handed weaponry, I would rather nerf Dual Wield itself than all 1-handed weapons in general.

Twilight scythe is cool as it is. I would however not be opposed to additional weapons with special damage types being added. Of course, with their own strengths and drawbacks. Having certain weapons that ignore some types of defences or resistances while at the same time perhaps not having optimal stats or WSes attached to them would just bring more variety to the game, and allow people to develop alternate tactics for certain fights. It's all fun and excitement.

And I dunno about you others, but in my head, it have always made sense that one-handed weapons would be more accurate, while two handed weapons would hit harder. I'm not sure if it would be enough of a buff, but I really think 1-handed weapons should let the user get a significantly higher innate hit rate than if using a 2-handed weapon.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

And I dunno about you others, but in my head, it have always made sense that one-handed weapons would be more accurate, while two handed weapons would hit harder. I'm not sure if it would be enough of a buff, but I really think 1-handed weapons should let the user get a significantly higher innate hit rate than if using a 2-handed weapon.

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I feel like if you look at doing something IRL, you'll be both more accurate and hit harder if you grip something with 2 hands.

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Honestly, as utterly broken as Duel Wield is, the way things are inherently designed right now, 1-handed weapon users need it just to play catch-up! If Dual Wield ended up being problematic again after increasing the power of 1-handed weaponry, I would rather nerf Dual Wield itself than all 1-handed weapons in general.

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Matsui at one point talked about adjusting how powerful Haste was as a stat, hopefully he'll think of Dual Wield too if the dev team decides to do something with that.

Because of the delay cap, the place where 1-handers really fall behind (high buffed situations VS high level monsters) Dual Wield often ends up being a hindrance, because a lot of the time you end up overgearing in DW and you shave off TP-per-hit for no benefit. You can work around that by removing DW gear as needed (NIN's ideal gear with double marches keeps only Suppa as DW gear now), but this is highly annoying because you need to create multiple gear sets based on if the bard use marcato, if the bard has aoidos manchettes +2, gjallarhorn, langeleik or fairie piccolo. Before the hopes /DRK Last Resort for 1Hers was stomped by the devs, people were actually discussing having BLUs drop DW spells in the middle of battle based on their last resort up/down status. This isn't really strategic or fun; it's just annoying.

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Originally Posted by Caketime

But that would dispel the illusion of the dev team giving a damn about what we have to say! :(

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What illusion? If it was any more clear they would have just come out and told us, so very thin line between where we are, and where we should (at very least) be right now at least. Though in reality we should be just a bit behind the JP community in terms of importance, and the fact we are not gives me the feeling of being ignored, especially when our responses are not that of real responses, but rather the words meant for the JPs, translated, and given to us. Which means were still ignored as much as ever, but the JPs might get some influence.

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Originally Posted by Okipuit

As was suggested in feedback, we will be looking into various ways to do this such as increasing the amount of light armor with damage reduction or increasing the amount of evasion gear.

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The only way evasion currently works as a defensive option is if you have utsusemi to soak up some of your bad luck. Defense is not the only underused defensive statistic that needs adjusting.

utsusemi is great and all but if the monster spams AoE shadow wiping moves it pretty useless. or moves that go thru shadows, I never understood this other than a gimmick for certain fights. This wont make pld the goto tank if mnks and such can do jsut as well.

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Originally Posted by detlef

I feel like if you look at doing something IRL, you'll be both more accurate and hit harder if you grip something with 2 hands.

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Well, you're more likely to hit what you aim for, but you'll also be more limited in what you can aim for. If you're just getting glancing blows against your targets, it's harder to change approaches. Also, it's a lot easier to predict where that huge hammer is going than that quick little rapier, so easier for the target to evade. That would be an effective reduction in accuracy (ie: +evasion = -accuracy) even if the accuracy itself didn't change.

Basically, there's plenty of "real life" arguments that can be made either way, so it's not worth getting hung up over.

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Originally Posted by Okipuit

I'd like to respond to a couple of questions and feedback that were brought up regarding the battle system adjustments.

Damage and Defense



To briefly reiterate what was announced previously, we will be making adjustments so that:

• The maximum value of damage received is increased higher than what it is currently.
• It will be possible to reduce damage more than currently.

We've also seen quite a lot of comments mentioning that backline jobs as well as lightly armored jobs would be affected negatively from the aforementioned defense adjustments.

As a general direction on this issue, while the defense of heavy armor jobs and light armor jobs will not be the same, in order to prevent this from becoming too large of a disparity we will be making it so there will not be situations where a certain job is unable to rush in and attack.

As was suggested in feedback, we will be looking into various ways to do this such as increasing the amount of light armor with damage reduction or increasing the amount of evasion gear.

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So to be clear: You're planning on Increasing the importance of defense by increasing damage taken, increasing damage reduction from defense and adding new gear that has more defense and / or completely negates damage to compensate?

This sounds like a move to add new gear that features different stats instead of gear with better stats. How clever of you. Now people won't have to complain about how they have to do 5,000 hours of one event to add .03% to their DPS. Instead, they can do one event for 5,000 hours in order to get a piece of equipment that adds .03% to their defense.

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Originally Posted by Okipuit

Regarding Weapons



Please understand that the adjustments that we are currently looking into for weapon adjustments are not the end. We would like to have each weapon have their own special traits, and the adjustments will take place step by step.

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I hate to be the one to say this, but you really need to test all of this stuff on the test server and then go live with it all at once. If you do this in bits and pieces it will be incredibly aggravating for the end users to constantly have to adjust to.

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Originally Posted by Okipuit

Finally, in regards to weapons that deal non-elemental damage, specifically the Twilight Scythe.

The below is a simple compilation of the opinions we've seen on the forums:

• Leaving it the way it is currently is fine
• It needs to be adjusted
  • Leave the effect as it is and lower the damage value
  • Change it to the same effect as Murasamemaru (WS are non-elemental damage)
  • Increase the jobs that can equip it

Due to the fact that adding more jobs to this weapon doesn't lend itself very well as a solution, I'd like to remove this as one of the options; however, we would like to hear everyone's opinions for and against adjustments to Twilight Scythe. We would like to proceed carefully with this, but please keep in mind that just because one opinion is greater in volume does not mean that we will base our decision solely on that.

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Why are you adjusting niche weapons that most people don't care about when you have literally thousands of requests for changes to mythics/Relics/Empyreans that actually matter?

I say leave it how it is and fix some more important weapons / weapon skills instead.

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Originally Posted by Okipuit

We've also seen quite a lot of comments mentioning that backline jobs as well as lightly armored jobs would be affected negatively from the aforementioned defense adjustments.

As a general direction on this issue, while the defense of heavy armor jobs and light armor jobs will not be the same, in order to prevent this from becoming too large of a disparity we will be making it so there will not be situations where a certain job is unable to rush in and attack.

As was suggested in feedback, we will be looking into various ways to do this such as increasing the amount of light armor with damage reduction or increasing the amount of evasion gear.

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As any fixes through gear are considered, please keep in mind inventory restrictions. If there are no plans to increase the bag size, having to carry around extra pieces for defense could indirectly force backline jobs to further gimp themselves in other areas just to survive.

The same consideration should be given for the proposed changes to elemental magic. I wouldn't bother going for that extra variety of earth and water nuking if it required adding higher INT gear to my bag that replaced pieces from my other sets.

Greetings everyone!

Producer Akihiko Matsui's hip hasn’t been feeling all too well lately, and he wanted to say thanks to everyone who was concerned and gave him some kind words. He also wrote a short message about what he has been up to and his plans for an upcoming post, which I would like to share with you.

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Originally Posted by Akihiko_Matsui

Last weekend we were able to implement roughly 90% of the monsters’ special attack data for Adoulin (still needs adjustment though).

This week we will be discussing and finalizing how we will be implementing the even more special aspects. Up until two years ago this was work that I was doing myself, but since I had been gone for a bit I consulted with the current lead to cautiously perform the implementation work. Honestly, it was a lot of fun (hopefully I was of some use to the lead).

There is still a ton of other things to do, but I would like to make a post as promised about the logic and calculations related to enmity, what is going on currently, and how we plan to fix it heading towards Adoulin. Hang in there just a short while longer.

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In regards to the 2hand vs 1hand, I do have an idea, increase the crit hit rate of 1handed weapons, (at least melee hits). IRL, a gsword or say a big hammer has to smash through armor, where a small sword or dagger can slip in between layers of armor to strike the flesh underneath.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Greetings everyone!

Producer Akihiko Matsui's hip hasn’t been feeling all too well lately, and he wanted to say thanks to everyone who was concerned and gave him some kind words. He also wrote a short message about what he has been up to and his plans for an upcoming post, which I would like to share with you.

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I hope he gets to feeling better, and I am happy he still continues to give us updates, however, there are two subjects which seem to be getting skipped over and I would like them to be addressed at some point if possible, preferably in our next update on all of this.

VOIDWATCH DROP RATES & NEW SP ABILITIES!?

We have had a very long time since our last update on the new SP abilities, and in the adjustments for VW, there was no mention of anything to do with drop rates. These both need to be updated, and we need to know how Producer Matsui feels about both of these currently as well as what he plans to have changed. VW drop rates are still a massive, and growing, problem with players obtaining items from VW, as time goes by, more people get the gear, and stop doing that NM, which leads to more and more people stopping. The ability to use Voidclusters to remedy that problem does not work because the cost is much to high. As for the SP abilities we need to know what to expect so that we can inform you of adjustments we would like as well as prepare for the inclusion of the abilities so we know what ones are useful where, and how to use them correctly, rather than getting them and being clueless.

In what nonexistant version of FFXI are DRK and Twilight Scythe too powerful, and where can I get it?

For God's sake, leave the scythe as it is.

either increase the jobs that can use twilight scythe or leave it alone.

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The ability to use Voidclusters to remedy that problem does not work because the cost is much to high.

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Indeed. Significantly lowering their cost, say 10K instead of 100K each, would work to make VW more accessible to more players. Lest you be concerned about VW becoming too easy or something, please recall that you already set up the system to only allow players to buy 5 per conquest tally, so it's a non-issue.

Also, when are we going to get that effort:reward system that we suggested ages ago? A particular number of kills, trading dozens of Crystal Petrifacts, a combination of both, it doesn't matter (to a certain extent) just make a system where we can make progress. And, no, Pulse cells don't count because, you know what? I can't actually get any Cells for, say, Ephemeron because no one has them to sell because no one does wants to do Aello. It's all about Qilin.



As for the Twilight Scythe, leave it as it is. People barely use already but it has a niche function, which is fine because at least it has a function. And in regards to more jobs wanting to be on it, maybe the fact that more jobs want to use a weapon that they have no skill in is indicative of the utter inefficiency of casting magic. This issue extends beyond Black Magic by the way (BLU "magical" magic spells") so don't just adjust Elemental magic when the time comes for adjustments.

I also say, leave twilight scythe as is. I see no way in which is is overpowered. It merely provides a tactical option in certain cases and a little extra variety to a job that, in my opinion, could use it.

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Originally Posted by Motenten

Well, you're more likely to hit what you aim for, but you'll also be more limited in what you can aim for. If you're just getting glancing blows against your targets, it's harder to change approaches. Also, it's a lot easier to predict where that huge hammer is going than that quick little rapier, so easier for the target to evade. That would be an effective reduction in accuracy (ie: +evasion = -accuracy) even if the accuracy itself didn't change.

Basically, there's plenty of "real life" arguments that can be made either way, so it's not worth getting hung up over.

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That's what I was getting at. I get the impression that you would telegraph your attacks more when using a huge, two handed weapon.

Maybe this is the vodka talking, but has anyone on the development team considered raising the -delay cap for 1handed weapons in addition to the other changes the team has proposed? Giving 1 handed weapons the old -90% delay cap or close to it should be an option to consider even if for at least the light armor jobs.

Speed(-delay cap): One-handed weapons > Two-handed weapons
Accuracy: One-handed weapons > Two-handed weapons
Damage: One-handed weapons < Two-handed weapons

This maybe be a good place to start, then workout the advantages of individual weapon classes/types and better define them from there.

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Originally Posted by Silvers

Maybe this is the vodka talking, but has anyone on the development team considered raising the -delay cap for 1handed weapons in addition to the other changes the team has proposed? Giving 1 handed weapons the old -90% delay cap or close to it should be an option to consider even if for at least the light armor jobs.

Speed(-delay cap): One-handed weapons > Two-handed weapons
Accuracy: One-handed weapons > Two-handed weapons
Damage: One-handed weapons < Two-handed weapons

This maybe be a good place to start, then workout the advantages of individual weapon classes/types and better define them from there.

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the thing is, delay reduction increases damage more and more as the delay gets reduced and reduced. so an extra 10% delay reduction at the HIGH end would probably work out to an insane amount of DPS.

so it would absolutely improve 1-handers standing, but it might end up swapping positions entirely when taken with the ratio change they were talking about earlier.

Any reason that we can't have the same max HP scaling that we had in the earlier levels, all the way up to 99? This alone would decrease the chance of being 1-shotted (and give cure 6 some use).

Greetings everyone,

Below is a message from Akihiko Matsui in regards to adjustments to Twilight Scythe.

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Originally Posted by Akihiko_Matsui

Greetings,

I appreciate all of the posts discussing the Twilight Scythe. I'm especially thankful that there was feedback that was both for and against making adjustments.

I also saw posts that were extremely emotionally charged that didn't offer reasons why they didn't want it to be changed. Though I have taken note of your feelings, I cannot use posts with these types of statements and feedback as reference, regardless of whether or not they are for or against adjustments.

With that said, based on the feedback we have received, the development team has looked into this again and has decided to make adjustments to the stats of Twilight Scythe.

Looking at each job individually, there are variations in what they are good at and what they are not so good at. (This would be the aspect known as job characteristics.)
These variations are altered through the addition of equipment/items and through job adjustments, and linked to the compatibility of content. Furthermore this is linked to the variations within a job itself.

These variations are a matter of degrees and will become a topic of where we draw the line; however, there are various methods to perform adjustments.

For example:
Adjustments to jobs
Adjustments to equipment and items
Adjustments to content
So on and so forth…

With that said, we feel that currently dark knight’s level of variation is much higher than that of other jobs, and since it seems that you share the same understanding we have come to the decision to revamp the stats on Twilight Scythe.

While we are still fleshing out the specific adjustment plan, we are thinking about the below:

• Add a risk to the weapon, such as when equipping Twilight Scythe, every time an attack is made, you lose HP (overlaps with the effect of Soul Eater)
• Add the effect as an enchantment which would decrease the frequency of it activating
• Have the effect activate at a constant rate only when remaining HP is below a certain value.
  Additionally, make it so the rate is increased depending on the amount of HP left.

In regards to other weapons and weapon skills that deal non-elemental damage, we feel that at the current point in time they are within the allowable range and will not be adjusting them.

Also, in regards to the power of elemental magic, once we have performed the revamps we will make a decision for this. (Of course, we will be letting you know about new adjustment plans and ideas as we go.)

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I think somebody needed to spell out to him why Twilight Scythe is actually an underwhelming weapon as it is right now.

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Originally Posted by Akihiko_Matsui

...didn't offer reasons why they didn't want it to be changed.

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I think a lot of people outside Japan feel this way about it BEING changed, because nobody understands why you're doing it. You want reasons but you're not doing any better yourself.

People don't want it changed because it's only useful against a couple mobs in the game anyways. On everything else, people will use their already better weapons such as relics/mythics/empyreans.

I just find it odd how SE makes adjustments to things that have already been out for ages only because they make new content that doesn't work with older stuff. This is just like the "adjustments" to things like Perfect Defence (In the game for years without issue) and Embrava. Things were fine until you added content that demanded their use. The game events/designs themselves are broken, not the method which the players use to beat them.

In case it wasn't blatantly obvious, the reason why it should not be changed is because the weapon is a useless piece of crap. To be totally honest, I really don't care, because the weapon is so entirely useless that I would never use it anyway. You can change the scythe's base damage to 1, and it wouldn't affect a single thing. That's why this change is pointless, but, by all means, go ahead.

How about this for an adjustment:

Every time you equip the twilight scythe and attack, including weaponskills, the additional effect "death" might backfire and proc on the player instead.

This would dissuade the overuse and correct the imbalance of using the twilight scythe.

When this NERF is carried out, could the name of it be changed to "Drop Me", since it's situational usefulness will no longer exist. This will let us know that it's time to get rid. Thanks.

But Okipuit, Twilight Scythe isn't overpowered! You shouldn't change it. I don't even have drk leveled so this isn't just bias talking.

Well if you wish for a reason for it not to be changed at this time if you have a monster with 75% or more pdt but a weakness to magic with twilight as it is now we have only 2 jobs that can reasonably keep hate off the mages, those being a mnk which can use any weapon it has with its formless strikes, the other being Drk with twlight which in all honesty even with formless' slight dmg penalty (10% at full merits and poping it with relic body) does not even remotely keep up with Mnk. Only advantage twilight would have would be access to a magical weapon skill, tho sadly its kinda weak, and only some gear to support it, and to make matters worse drk really isnt a Damage over time job there something like 28% tping dmg 2%magic dmg 70%weapon skill dmg which when compared to mnk, which is 50-70% tping dmg and the rest weapon skill its rather easy to see who has the advantage there.

Now some people might be saying why did i not include sam or the jobs using req, well the sam weapon is rare, tho in truth much much much more powerful than twilight, sam it self is like 5-10% tping dmg with the rest being weapon-skill dmg, which with that gk not only is doing non-elemntal dmg the weapon itself( 111 dmg which excluding the R/E/M is the 3rd highest dmg gk before considering its +15 str) is rather high on the dmg end, and gains an attack bonus of up to 33%. That gk with sams natural ability to gain tp while doing nothing easily puts it ahead of twilight and in most cases ahead of formless as well.

Now on to req really its a 1handed weapon skill so at best 45% tping dmg and 55% weaponskill to more realistically like 60% to and 40% weaponskill so not horrible but the problem comes in when you not only make it a mnd based weapon-skill (not to much str and mnd gear that has other useful dd stats) but then you put a hefty attack penalty on it (20 ish %) putting it greatly behind the other 3 options for everyone but blu and maybe war. In closing twilight is fine as it is, its not leading the pack heck its not even in second place its near the bottom, all of your proposed nurf will simply make people take mnks or that rare sam with the gk, and worse yet, push even more drk to great sword only status, which.... something isnt right about a job not using its iconic weapon.

Twilight scythe has 2 maybe 3 uses anymore. BR II cerberus and killing elementals faster. You could argue Flans/Slimes as well but there's few times were you're not just better off powering through with a better weapon. The only thing that needs changed is to add more weapons like this for more jobs. If they want people to bring BLM to deal damage, they're going to have to increase MP efficiency and damage a lot more than what was proposed already.

Seriously? Seriously? Things like Thief's Knife are still in regular use by almost every single thief in the game and you wonder why people don't feel like changes need to be mad to the twilight scythe?

Perhaps an explanation as to what exactly is being done with the twilight scythe to spark the interest is in order. Is there some piece of content that is being repeatedly beaten exclusively through abuse of the twilight scythe? What exactly is the thing doing that has everyone up in arms? I don't think I've ever even seen one equipped in a battle.

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Originally Posted by Babekeke

When this NERF is carried out, could the name of it be changed to "Drop Me", since it's situational usefulness will no longer exist. This will let us know that it's time to get rid. Thanks.

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Item Description: This scythe used to have a couple of minor uses, but we nerfed it. You can just toss this if it lands in your loot pool.

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While we are still fleshing out the specific adjustment plan, we are thinking about the below:

Add a risk to the weapon, such as when equipping Twilight Scythe, every time an attack is made, you lose HP (overlaps with the effect of Soul Eater)
Add the effect as an enchantment which would decrease the frequency of it activating
Have the effect activate at a constant rate only when remaining HP is below a certain value.
Additionally, make it so the rate is increased depending on the amount of HP left.

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Yeah it's a crock of BS.

We gave very specific reasons why it shouldn't be touched. It's a weak weapon that is useful it only a very limited situation.

Not that your going to tell the devs this anyway. The CR's are in passive mode only now, just translating what the devs are posting on the JP forums. You can tell cause it'll be posted in Japanese then a day or so later it's translated for here. The Dev's never respond to any posts made by the NA or EU players.

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Originally Posted by Malthar

How about this for an adjustment:

Every time you equip the twilight scythe and attack, including weaponskills, the additional effect "death" might backfire and proc on the player instead.

This would dissuade the overuse and correct the imbalance of using the twilight scythe.

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Malthar, please stop trolling and take your whiny, petty, childish "I lost pet th so you deserve what you get" mentality and keep it to yourself.

I was on the "no adjustment to Twilight Scythe" side. I rarely use it, It's very situational.

With the adjustment, I'm gonna probably drop it on the ground. :(

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Originally Posted by Calamity

Malthar, please stop trolling and take your whiny, petty, childish "I lost pet th so you deserve what you get" mentality and keep it to yourself.

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Ex-squeeze me?! I have every right to comment, just as you do. And how dare you call me a troll?!
If that wasn't a personal attack, I don't know what is.

Camate, be a good fellow and look into this, will ya?

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Originally Posted by Malthar

Ex-squeeze me?! I have every right to comment, just as you do. And how dare you call me a troll?!
If that wasn't a personal attack, I don't know what is.

Camate, be a good fellow and look into this, will ya?

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It's trolling because you're not here to offer any sort of helpful insight or feedback. Every single post you've made on the subject has had the express goal of fanning the flames and, as I already said, just pettily laughing at drks, and supporting the nerf, all because YOU lost your pet th, and for no other reason. How is this not trolling?