Overall Battle System Adjustments for the Future

[Trumpy]

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.

[Motenten]

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.

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.

[FrankReynolds]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Merton9999]

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.

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.

[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.

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.

[Tassidaru]

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.

[Demon6324236]

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.

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.

[Edyth]

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.

[Yarly]

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

[Mefuki]

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

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.