SE and fixing things that arent broke

[Olor]

So how about we nerf pld so that we can lower the damage done by NMs?

[bazookatooth]

So how about we nerf pld so that we can lower the damage done by NMs?

I think it would be a lot easier to add HP and DEF/MDB to 10 jobs than to change the stats of a thousand NMs, but who knows with SE. They have been known to be lazy in the past and just say "Uh... okay, going forward we won't do that anymore, but you're still screwed on current content.".

[Malthar]

No, it's not that they're lazy. They're actually a small, dedicated team that's under waaaay too much stress because the bulk of XI's developers were sent off to work on XIV.

[bazookatooth]

No, it's not that they're lazy. They're actually a small, dedicated team that's under waaaay too much stress because the bulk of XI's developers were sent off to work on XIV.

Potato... pOOOtAAAAtOOO

[Malthar]

You should get that looked at. :-P

[Ataraxia]

We’ve been receiving a lot of feedback about this.

Since there are monsters with varying sizes, if we make adjustments so that the somewhat larger monsters are the benchmark, then the distance in which commands can be used will be no different than before. While we can’t make any promises at the time, we will be looking into changing the target of pet commands, shifting them from the master to the pet. We believe that the way it feels to play will become very different, so we would like to hear everyone’s feedback once it is implemented.
*There is a possibility that commands cannot be accepted when pets are out of your field of vision.

hello Mr. Camate can you confirm with everyone on what you're trying to do with BST range? when you said "we will be looking into changing the target of pet commands, shifting them from the master to the pet. So this mean that big enemies will not be an issue anymore and everything will remain the same as in a BST must be closer to their pet to execute a command?

If this is the case than you're are not fixing anything. Unless what you meant to say is that as long as we can see our pet from any distance we can issue a command? Please be honest to all the player if you are gonna leave things as is. No BST like to cry out to a whm for heal and trust aren't healing if they are dead most of the thing in high level content.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

I think it would be a lot easier to add HP and DEF/MDB to 10 jobs than to change the stats of a thousand NMs, but who knows with SE. They have been known to be lazy in the past and just say "Uh... okay, going forward we won't do that anymore, but you're still screwed on current content.".

It should always have been the case AoE moves deal less damage to other party members due to the smaller HP pool, defense etc.. With the tank taking the most due to increased defense, HP etc... You shouldn't build a game around one job with HUGE defense reduction.

The idea of: "Well this tank job has 85% reduction so lets make the AoE do 5000 DMG, the tank has ~2000 HP so that's 750 DMG before any other reduction" being chosen is just wrong, especially in a game where Weakness and especially double-weakness exists.

[Jile]

hello Mr. Camate can you confirm with everyone on what you're trying to do with BST range? when you said "we will be looking into changing the target of pet commands, shifting them from the master to the pet. So this mean that big enemies will not be an issue anymore and everything will remain the same as in a BST must be closer to their pet to execute a command?

If this is the case than you're are not fixing anything. Unless what you meant to say is that as long as we can see our pet from any distance we can issue a command? Please be honest to all the player if you are gonna leave things as is. No BST like to cry out to a whm for heal and trust aren't healing if they are dead most of the thing in high level content.

The way I read the 2nd-nerf update is as follows:

Since some monsters are fat and get between you and your pet, we are going to make your job abilities tied to your pet but ONLY when your pet can SEE you, if your pet cant see you standing behind the fat monster your pet will be afraid and do nothing, if your pet runs after another monster and also can't see you, its going to become afraid and do nothing.

The area that concerns me most from Camate's post:

*There is a possibility that commands cannot be accepted when pets are out of your field of vision.

I replied:

My concern with using it as distance from our pets or requiring that we can "see" our pets would make things worse on some instances and better on others. We must fight some mobs from behind the mob itself to avoid conial charm for example, and if the distance is tied to our pet it will need to take that into consideration as well. Being required to "see" our pets is a disaster waiting to happen, too many line of sight issues exist in the game as it is (sending a pet and the terrain between you and your target is flat, you get a message that says you can't see your target cause a stick is on the ground between you and your target)

If SE "fixes" this first nerf by tethering us to our pets instead of the mobs face, that fixed almost nothing. If SE "fixes" the nerf and forces us to be where we are in line of sight of our pets - this second nerf is going to be far far worse than the 1st nerf.

I'm really just hoping they pull back the nerf, give a reasonable decrease to pet-aoe-dmg-only and move on to more important things that don't break the entire functionality of BST.

[machini]

I think it would be a lot easier to add HP and DEF/MDB to 10 jobs than to change the stats of a thousand NMs, but who knows with SE. They have been known to be lazy in the past and just say "Uh... okay, going forward we won't do that anymore, but you're still screwed on current content.".

When they've done stuff like this in recent memory, they've done it across the board. Instead of lowering Galka HP and raising Taru HP, and lowering Taru MP and raising Galka MP, they just raised every races' HP and MP.

Anyway, the entire reason this is a 'problem' is because of player HP relative to BST Pet HP, right? So lower BST pet HP is the same thing as a increase to player HP in terms of relative utility. But raising player HP would most certainly be across the board, in which case, now the PLD has too much HP relative to the damage output, so the damage output has to go up, in which case now the everyone is in the same boat as they were before, except the BSTs, who now have pets which are just as killable as players, while they themselves, due to lack of DT gear for themselves, are ever worse off than previously.

Without drastic changes, there's only so many ways they can make an NM lethal or threatening. And with how mature the game is, they have to design encounters around the idea that the a group is going to consist of people with certain gear, like A/O PLDs, and Yagrush WHMs. And they don't want current-end game content to be easy to clear, so they make it difficult. And then because it's difficult, they make the rewards better than previous content, to make an incentive to do that. And then new content comes out, which has to be harder, but which needs better gear (incentives), and it just goes on and on and on. Part of the whole reason for Spark gear was fresh players getting to 99 and disliking that they had to go through the gear progression of bayld/delve/skirmish/delve gear to get up to 119 and be useful for current content. It's part of the reason RME holders are so frequently annoyed is as the power creep goes on, the RME get comparatively worse.

There are plenty of ways to address this problem that are good and don't particularly screw anyone over. However, part of the problem is inherent to the game and its mechanics, and part of the problem is the community itself. Only one of those can be addressed to any degree. I just spent an hour or so explaining to someone the relative merits of WHM/SCH to WHM/RDM. I've had to explain over and over why certain multihit WSes are better than "better" WSes. I've seen mythic monks get declines for content because they don't have Oatixur and that's "the best". You can only do so much with design changes. An ignorant playerbase, or a lazy one, cannot be rectified thus. You can lead a child to knowledge but you cannot make him think. And you can create meaningful choices in a game which promote diversity, but you cannot make a player base adapt. People will do the same old same old they always did, and the nail that sticks up gets hammered down, even if it's only sticking up in people's minds.

Restore BST to pre nerf range and make the damage vary with distance to pet.
Restore BST to pre nerf range and reduce pet HP.
Increase certain jobs' HP to compensate (and then hear the howls of people who disagree with which jobs get what).
Fundamentally change the way pet/master gear works so that it's possible for both to be functional at the same time.
Change make damage for AoE TP moves and spells fall off as distance from the target increases
Give other jobs like NIN, RUN, and DNC, more and/or more effective tanking tools
Give healer and support jobs more and/or more effective damage mitigation tools.
Design content specifically so that certain jobs make the content easier, via weakness which can be triggered by certain spells or abilities only accessible to that job as main job.

Those are all things that the devs can do. They could implement them if they wanted. Some are easier than others from a mechanical stand point. As to coding, I can't say, I'm not privy to the internal mechanics of a 13 year old MMO, but from other projects I have seen of similar age, it is likely a complete nightmare in there.

The problem is that often times these changes aren't even necessary because of an inherent limitation, they're not needed at all because the things already exist. Scherzo and Earthen Armor exist: people rarely use them. Some people don't even know they exist. An awful lot of people are completely ignorant of a lot of the game mechanics, which they cannot be blamed for in some way, since they are, by and large, completely hidden, but, at the same time, there are plenty of resources, freely available, where people can go read about Cure Power, what spells are and what they do and how they do it, MP efficiency, etc. And often there are plenty of jobs and combinations that are more than capable of completing content, but just as current follows the path of least resistance, so too does the player base. What works, works, even if something else works better, and people dislike change, and dislike having to adapt. I just spend the last couple of days working on WHM because I've given up on being able to do any relevant content on DNC.

You cannot fix problems with the player base via mechanics changes. People are going to complain about something no matter what. I'm honestly waiting for the hammer to fall on BLU, since I'm now seeing people requiring BLU for content I've not seen people want BLU for before. Several people I know have suddenly started leveling BLU and gearing and hunting spells VERY suddenly after the BST changes, and these were people who didn't even play or have interest in BST; It's just that they have seen the writing on the wall.

[bazookatooth]

It should always have been the case AoE moves deal less damage to other party members due to the smaller HP pool, defense etc.. With the tank taking the most due to increased defense, HP etc... You shouldn't build a game around one job with HUGE defense reduction.

The idea of: "Well this tank job has 85% reduction so lets make the AoE do 5000 DMG, the tank has ~2000 HP so that's 750 DMG before any other reduction" being chosen is just wrong, especially in a game where Weakness and especially double-weakness exists.

I agree whole heatedly. They should fix the damage mechanics of AOE moves etc. instead of adjusting DDs to be more like a PLD. I'm just being realistic about the possibility of them adjusting a bunch of AOE mechanics on a thousand currently existing NMs. With one or two updates remaining, odds are it's not gonna happen. Changing the way the players react to those AOE moves is probably more realistic (albeit not as desirable). In reality though, they probably won't do either. They will probably release a bunch of new marginally better DT- gear that drops from more NMs with crazy AOE mechanics and laugh at us because we will have to beat the very things that we need that gear for 1,000 times in order to get the gear.

If SE "fixes" this first nerf by tethering us to our pets instead of the mobs face, that fixed almost nothing. If SE "fixes" the nerf and forces us to be where we are in line of sight of our pets - this second nerf is going to be far far worse than the 1st nerf.

I'm really just hoping they pull back the nerf, give a reasonable decrease to pet-aoe-dmg-only and move on to more important things that don't break the entire functionality of BST.

I'm reading it as: we will have to be in front of the pet to issue commands. In other words, we will have to be standing on the opposite side of the monster. Which means when we sick our pet on something, we will then have to run past it or at least up next to it to issue commands. This will allow them to increase the command range far enough to allow us to be on the opposite side because the monster will always be between us and the pet. It will also suck so bad that it's unfathomable that someone even suggested it, let alone decided to implement it. Even if that isn't what they are doing, I can't imagine any implementation based on that description that isn't absolutely horrible in every way.

To SE, For the love of all that is good... Put the range back the way it was before this insanity started and go fix something that is actually broken. You are dividing your player base and alienating your customers. No good can come of this.