ATTN: Community Reps/Dev Team: PUPs of Vanadiel DEMAND a response on Automaton A.I.!

[Camate]

Sorry for the delay, but here is some information from the development team in regards to your feedback!

Extend the maneuver duration.

The maneuver duration, recast time, and overload are all balanced very subtly; through maneuvers, the automaton’s operability, as well as the frame and attachments, are largely affected. Due to this, we plan to create balance by adding and adjusting attachments and abilities without changing the operations of the base maneuvers.

Make it possible to select the timing of ability, magic, and WS execution.

In regards to abilities, we are making adjustments based on the original execution timing, however, for weapon skills we are looking into making it possible to select the execution timing manually. For magic, we believe the top priority is the revamping of recast times, so once we finalize those adjustments we plan on looking into being able to select the timing for that, as well.

Extend the range of Deploy.

We understand that there are times this is inconvenient for ranged/mage frames. We will look into increasing the distance for using Deploy.

Make it so my automaton does not keep casting silence on monsters that are not affected by silence.

With the current system, Scanner will detect resist rates, so by using a Scanner it should make it so your automaton does not cast this.
However, if there is even a small chance that the monster uses magic, the automaton will start to cast silence. The chance of there being a bug related to this isn’t impossible, so we will be checking on this.

Also, if you have any feedback such as “I don’t want silence to be cast on enemies that are highly resistant to silence” (ex: Make it so it doesn’t cast silence when the resist rate is over 60%) please make sure to let us know.

Make curing a priority over curing status ailments when HP is low.

We are looking into changing the automaton behavior. Since this is something that we have received a lot of feedback about we will be looking into it, but since the workings of the automaton logic are so complex it will take some time.

Make a separate recast timer for each type of magic.

We understand how you feel and are looking into separating the recast timers.

Would like to save attachment sets.

While we would like to do something for this, we would first need to perform a lot of work to revamp the user interface, so this will be difficult to accomplish right away. Sorry

Get rid of the consumption aspect for attachments that consume maneuvers.

We plan on revamping attachment stats, so there is a possibility that we make it so that there is no consumption of maneuvers. This doesn’t mean that we will be adjusting every attachment for this, but we will be looking at each one separately. If you have any feedback please let us know!

Revamp the negative aspects of the tactical processor, drum magazine, and other attachments.

We will be performing adjustments on attachments that need adjusting as necessary.

Add Subtle Blow to automatons.

Planning to implement this in the form of an attachment.

Add a method to gain volatile hate with the Valoredge frame.

We are thinking about making adjustments in the form of attachments, not on the automaton or puppetmaster side. For example, how does implementing Strobe II sound?

Increase the physical damage resistance of the Valoredge frame.

Currently, we are thinking more in the direction of implementing superior lubricant, such as Lubricant +3, instead of directly increasing the physical resistance.

The sharpshot frame’s ranged attacks don’t crit…

It doesn’t crit because it is recognized as a special ability. We are looking into it.

Reduce the attack delay for the sharpshot frame.

First we will be revamping attachments that need adjustments. After that we will take a look at the balance and look into this.

Fix the issue where the sharpshot frame’s ranged attack damage is severely lowered depending on distance.

We definitely understand. Since automatons are different than player characters, and it is difficult to adjust the positioning of the automaton, we are looking into easing up or even eliminating the distance factor.

Add a MP recovery type WS to the stormwaker frame.

We would like to look into new automaton WS ideas, however, since you can recover MP through Deactivate/Activate and by using the Mana Converter, we think it would be better to look at different effects.

Can you make Magic Mortar a bit easier to use?

The damage is calculated as a special WS, however, we will be looking into making this easier to use while making use of its special properties since we hear a lot of people saying it keeps doing zero damage…

[Horadrim]

Wow... Camate... I suddenly want to finish leveling PUP.

As a side note: Activate/Deactivate is an accepted strategy? I never would have guessed the Devs were ok with this -- I thought it was just something they overlooked.

With regards to the Silence issue.

its not that they cast on monsters that resist it -- they will cast it on a monster that has no spells, but has MP; such as Crab.

No one has any complaints with abilities being resisted -- that happens, and while its unfortunate, its no worse than a missed weapon skill. The problem is when the automaton wastes its lengthy casting cycle on a spell that has no purpose or effect whether it hits or misses.

Separating out the magic types (Dark, Elemental, Enfeebling, Healing) and giving each its own timer will help this, but its still something that should be looked into.

Thats a lot of information. I'm sad that Maneuvers will continue to severely hinder the Damage of the Master, But if you can revamp attachments to make it worthwhile like you say, i don't see it being a problem!

Also, "Negative aspects of Tactical processor". Um, Camate, what does a Tactical Processor do D:? Can you please ask them that?

We'd all like to know . We know its negatives (Overload Rate) but not its positives.. :X

The problem isn't maneuvers, the problem is that maneuvers are pet abilities. There shouldn't be an animation attached to the Puppetmaster. The Automaton, when activating a maneuver, should get that little steam animation from the PUP special emote (as a kind of "kicking into gear" indication) so that it doesn't distract from the PUP's attack cycles.

The Auto deals most of the damage, but the PUP's ability to maintain decent DPS is pretty important too. In situations where the automaton is just nuking, losing DPS because you have to freshen up your maneuvers hurts the PUP overall. Maneuvers don't need to be fixed, the annoying animation just needs to change.

[Nala]

The problem isn't maneuvers, the problem is that maneuvers are pet abilities. There shouldn't be an animation attached to the Puppetmaster. The Automaton, when activating a maneuver, should get that little steam animation from the PUP special emote (as a kind of "kicking into gear" indication) so that it doesn't distract from the PUP's attack cycles.

Yes they are pet abilities but more precisely they are pet commands, all pet JA's have the master initiate some kind of animation, furthermore in the maneuvers case they actually give you a physical buff unlike alot of the other pet jobs. not to say it would be nice if using pet commands would forego the animation, however just wanted point out you're not entirely correct.

[Mercilessturtle]

The Auto deals most of the damage, but the PUP's ability to maintain decent DPS is pretty important too. In situations where the automaton is just nuking, losing DPS because you have to freshen up your maneuvers hurts the PUP overall. Maneuvers don't need to be fixed, the annoying animation just needs to change.

No, the automaton does like 1/20th the damage of the master, it is really pathetic. This is why using maneuvers so frequently is such a problem, the master is 95% of the damage, and you have to cut your damage by 10% just to get a boost to the 5% the automaton does. I doubt they can remove the delay, all JAs work the same way, having a delay built in like that allows gear swaps to function correctly without messing up your tp gear.

Camate: Thanks for the info, but I have to say the "no we won't fix maneuvers" thing basically means pup will always stay bottom of the barrel. I realize there has to be a balance so that you can't keep up 3 of the same maneuver all the time, but saying "pups have to lose 10% of their damage keeping up maneuvers, tough luck" is pretty brutal.

How about a JA that makes maneuvers last 5 times as long, but also give 5 times as much "burden" or whatever you want to call the "make you overload" thing? That way it stays just as hard to keep up triple wind maneuvers when DDing, we don't lose so much damage to ability delay, and it doesn't break the way things are now. Like if you were using the blm frame and wanted to spam ice maneuvers, you just don't use the new ability and your maneuver duration and burden stay the way they are now. Make the new JA be a 5 minute duration/recast type deal.

[Theytak]

No, the automaton does like 1/20th the damage of the master, it is really pathetic. This is why using maneuvers so frequently is such a problem, the master is 95% of the damage, and you have to cut your damage by 10% just to get a boost to the 5% the automaton does. I doubt they can remove the delay, all JAs work the same way, having a delay built in like that allows gear swaps to function correctly without messing up your tp gear.

Camate: Thanks for the info, but I have to say the "no we won't fix maneuvers" thing basically means pup will always stay bottom of the barrel. I realize there has to be a balance so that you can't keep up 3 of the same maneuver all the time, but saying "pups have to lose 10% of their damage keeping up maneuvers, tough luck" is pretty brutal.

How about a JA that makes maneuvers last 5 times as long, but also give 5 times as much "burden" or whatever you want to call the "make you overload" thing? That way it stays just as hard to keep up triple wind maneuvers when DDing, we don't lose so much damage to ability delay, and it doesn't break the way things are now. Like if you were using the blm frame and wanted to spam ice maneuvers, you just don't use the new ability and your maneuver duration and burden stay the way they are now. Make the new JA be a 5 minute duration/recast type deal.

Honestly, the 2sec delay caused by using JAs is only going to have a noticeable effect on a pup's DPS in min-max situations, among min-max players who care about minute differences in over all dps. I'd wager about 75-80% of the game's playerbase doesn't care about min-maxing, and another 14-19% only use min-max stats as a guideline for playing. That leaves a minuscule 1-5% of the populace who actually play the game entirely around min-maxing their gear to squeeze out that last tenth of a percent in their dps. The reason they're not planning on changing maneuvers is because it's only that 1-5% of the populace who actually cares about how they affect dps, and the rest are just griping for the sake of convenience, when in reality maneuvers as they are are actually rather balanced for the bulk of the playerbase.

[Mercilessturtle]

Honestly, the 2sec delay caused by using JAs is only going to have a noticeable effect on a pup's DPS in min-max situations, among min-max players who care about minute differences in over all dps.

6 seconds being deleted out of every 60 seconds is 10%. You lose 10% of your damage keeping maneuvers up. Period. It has nothing to do with min-maxing. Just because you don't know or care what is going on, doesn't mean it is ok for a job to lose 10% of their damage having to spam JAs that give less than 10% damage in return.

Having a clue is not a bad thing. Paying attention to what you are doing is not a bad thing. Being able to do basic grade school arithmetic is not a bad thing. Quit acting like anyone who bothers to understand the current state of pup is a terrible person for wanting to actually do decent damage instead of being stuck in "gimp monk with a funny looking wyvern" land.

[brayen]

No, the automaton does like 1/20th the damage of the master, it is really pathetic. This is why using maneuvers so frequently is such a problem, the master is 95% of the damage, and you have to cut your damage by 10% just to get a boost to the 5% the automaton does. I doubt they can remove the delay, all JAs work the same way, having a delay built in like that allows gear swaps to function correctly without messing up your tp gear.

Camate: Thanks for the info, but I have to say the "no we won't fix maneuvers" thing basically means pup will always stay bottom of the barrel. I realize there has to be a balance so that you can't keep up 3 of the same maneuver all the time, but saying "pups have to lose 10% of their damage keeping up maneuvers, tough luck" is pretty brutal.

How about a JA that makes maneuvers last 5 times as long, but also give 5 times as much "burden" or whatever you want to call the "make you overload" thing? That way it stays just as hard to keep up triple wind maneuvers when DDing, we don't lose so much damage to ability delay, and it doesn't break the way things are now. Like if you were using the blm frame and wanted to spam ice maneuvers, you just don't use the new ability and your maneuver duration and burden stay the way they are now. Make the new JA be a 5 minute duration/recast type deal.

the automation AI and what not aside..THIS.. THIS A MILLION TIMES OVER. I swear if they did something like this and gave you more control of your pet via maneuvers..i think i would be in love with this job.
The quoted suggestion seems like a great thing to implement, just make it a "stance" with a decent duration and shortish recast like most other jobs have already (hasso seigan rapid shot solace misery composure etc etc)
It is sad that the way to be the more productive DDer i have to neglect my pet currently.

I know i am still hoping for a fix to the puppet behavior (is it really that hard to have a trigger for when we want silence or blindna etc?) but is there any hopes to have an auto-assist function for pets? as in you engage > pet atks? i always felt the way the NPC or DRG's pet behaved friendlier towards their master..and before ppl throw the "its a puppet you have to control it" realize it is more like a robot then a puppet! it cast at his own rate, and clearly ignores us when we beg him for cures >.>

[Vagrua]

First we will be revamping attachments that need adjustments. After that we will take a look at the balance and look into this.

A major reduction to the drum magazine would be enough:

Wind x0 = 12 seconds

Wind x1 = 9 seconds

Wind x2 = 6 seconds

Wind x3 = 4 seconds

Wind x3 would rarely be up considering overloads.

Another fix would be to take out the melee attacks entirely to speed up ranged attacks as mentioned.

[Theytak]

Note: As a veteran pup who took a break from the game right as these forums started up, please forgive my apparent newbishness/lack of posting cred.

In response to Camate's post from the dev team: It's great that you guys are reading and responding. Some of the answers I was very happy to see, however others I feel need to be addressed as though the original question was misunderstood, or something else entirely. Anything not quoted from Camate's post I was happy to see and having nothing but thank you to say as a response.

The maneuver duration, recast time, and overload are all balanced very subtly; through maneuvers, the automaton’s operability, as well as the frame and attachments, are largely affected. Due to this, we plan to create balance by adding and adjusting attachments and abilities without changing the operations of the base maneuvers.

This is nice on paper, but adding more attachments really should not be the go-to solution, unless you also plan on increasing the elemental capacity of all of the frames and heads, and/or intend to increase the amount of slots we have to equip attachments. As it stands now, the bulk of the practical attachment fits have been essentially set in stone since the release of the Ashu Talif attachments. Adding more attachments as fixes for things that the pup community considers problems means that we'll lose something from our normal, comfortable play style in order to fix something that we consider "it's working as intended" to be the wrong answer for. With some things, it's fine, or even a great idea, but with others, it just won't help.

We understand that there are times this is inconvenient for ranged/mage frames. We will look into increasing the distance for using Deploy.

I'm also really happy to see this, but I'd ask that you also adjust the range at which the puppet decides to run in and melee. Being able to deploy my mage frame from a distance greater than we already get would be awesome, but totally useless since any distance beyond just the max range causes the very squishy, very low HP mage frame to run in gung ho and start trying to act like it's suddenly a warrior. The scene is rather cute, but the fact that it normally results in the puppet dying is annoying.

With the current system, Scanner will detect resist rates, so by using a Scanner it should make it so your automaton does not cast this.
However, if there is even a small chance that the monster uses magic, the automaton will start to cast silence. The chance of there being a bug related to this isn’t impossible, so we will be checking on this.

Also, if you have any feedback such as “I don’t want silence to be cast on enemies that are highly resistant to silence” (ex: Make it so it doesn’t cast silence when the resist rate is over 60%) please make sure to let us know.

[/QUOTE]

NPC fellows do not cast silence on crabs, beetles, DRK type skeletons, or any other mob that has mp but doesn't use it. The fact that the puppet does cast on said mobs is what we want fixed. Also, I would think that wanting the puppet to know not to cast silence on something that's highly resistant or immune to silence would go hand in hand with said desire :/

Actually, given that puppet -seems- to know when not to cast something that will be resisted in terms of elemental/dark magic, wouldn't it make sense for the puppet to already have the same behavior for enfeebles?

We are looking into changing the automaton behavior. Since this is something that we have received a lot of feedback about we will be looking into it, but since the workings of the automaton logic are so complex it will take some time.

I'm sure you're well aware, but this desire for cure focusing stems from the fact that for some silly reason, our puppets become homicidal towards us if we fight against something that likes to use enfeebling magic. By this, I mean that if I am at 5% HP, while still having the monster's attention, and being blind, if my puppet is about to cast a spell on me, it will not cast Cure VI. It won't cast Cure I. No matter what I'm fighting, no matter how badly injured I am, my puppet absolutely HAS to cast blindna on me first. There is no exception to this rule. None. This applies to all -na able status effects. THAT is the problem, and one that pup has been asking to have fixed since the release of the soulsoother head.

I can respect that it's a complex issue, but it's something we've been reporting as a bug since 2006, and we have never received a "that your puppet wants to make sure your not blind, even if it costs you your life is how we intended it to work" response. I'm sorry if I sound a little ungrateful, but 5 years to fix an obvious bug that has been complained and talked about throughout said 5 years is somewhat... absurd :/

Also, while I'm at it, it would be GREATLY appreciated if you guys could look in to lowering the HP%/MP% that trigger Soulreaver's aspir/drain priority. They are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to high, and now that we have Aspir II, letting the soulreaver puppet sit out (rather than using deactivate/activate, which isn't always a useable strategy) is pointless, because after the second nuke, it spends the next hour casting aspir II, then Aspir, then aspir II, then aspir, then aspir II, then aspir, and occasionally, if you're lucky, you'll get one nuke between 3-4 aspir volleys. All of this despite the fact that the puppet is sitting on 74% mp after 2 nukes... And PLEASE don't try to fix this with an attachment, there's not room for another attachment in the nuking set up.

We plan on revamping attachment stats, so there is a possibility that we make it so that there is no consumption of maneuvers. This doesn’t mean that we will be adjusting every attachment for this, but we will be looking at each one separately. If you have any feedback please let us know!

I'll wait and see how this turns out, I'm not sure whether it sounds promising or worrisome. However, if you make it so eraser only consumes light maneuvers I'd be a pretty happy galka.

We will be performing adjustments on attachments that need adjusting as necessary.

Same answer as the last one? I guess it's basically the same question, though. By the way, can you please tell us what in the world Tactical Processor is/was supposed to do aside from make our puppet overload? It's one of the original attachments, and despite that we still have absolutely no idea what it does, because any and every logical conclusion that can be drawn from it's description has been tested and found to be unaffected by the attachment. Was there some purpose to it that managed to escape our imaginations, or is it just bugged?

We are thinking about making adjustments in the form of attachments, not on the automaton or puppetmaster side. For example, how does implementing Strobe II sound?

Strobe II sounds pretty pointless since if a puppet is going to tank it's going to need to be able to do decent damage, and adding another fire attachment for a small hate spike is counter-productive to that (Tension Springs I and II and attuner are important to maximizing valoredge's damage output, and losing any of them for strobe isn't going to help VE keep hate)

Currently, we are thinking more in the direction of implementing superior lubricant, such as Lubricant +3, instead of directly increasing the physical resistance.

oh, please for the love of god, no more consumables. Repair is already horrible on inventory space, and annoyingly expensive (though it's a lot better than it used to be <3), and on top of that I normally carry 5-6 different sets of gear for my pup, all of which are frequently used, the last thing I need is MORE consumables to buff my pet.

First we will be revamping attachments that need adjustments. After that we will take a look at the balance and look into this.

ok, well, do make sure TO look into this, because sharpshot takes way to long between shots. It's pretty bad that the ranger based puppet has to melee if it is to do any respectable amount of damage.

We definitely understand. Since automatons are different than player characters, and it is difficult to adjust the positioning of the automaton, we are looking into easing up or even eliminating the distance factor.

Wait, I thought you guys fixed this already O.o

The damage is calculated as a special WS, however, we will be looking into making this easier to use while making use of its special properties since we hear a lot of people saying it keeps doing zero damage…

Please do something about it. The ws calculates damage based on the amount of HP the very squishy mage frame that can and will heal itself is missing. Everything about that is counterproductive and redundant. The last thing any pup wants is for their mp intensive mage frame to be losing HP since that means deactivating will cause a headache of the 20 minute activate timer (that is really way to long) or dealing with deus-repair-praythepuppetdoesn'tgethit-deactivate-activate-praythepuppetdoesntgethit. I mean, even if it was just based on the amount of MP missing instead of HP, it'd be useful.

Ok, I've said my peace. I'm definitely happy to see the devs responding to us, and I'm glad to see some of the things that need fixed will get fixed.

p.s. I do not like you, 10000 character limit. You suppress my innate wordiness!

[Mercilessturtle]

Wait, I thought you guys fixed this already O.o

They removed the acc penalty, but not the attack penalty. At least, the patch notes said they removed the acc penalty, I haven't tested to be sure that is true. I have tested the attack penalty however, and it is definitely still there.