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

[Sparthos]

It's mainly a problem I hinted on earlier. How close to a second player should a pet get before it's too much? As is, there's very little penalty to the player for letting a pet die (Usually just waiting a short bit on a timer, BST having a small gil expense if using jugs). PUP, BST, and DRG can be a strong physical presence without their pet around, so it's not like they're completely useless without.

Things like the pet invulnerabilities were dumb even if they were useful or gave "a time to shine" as it were. Ultimately, it's a juggling act between what the player and pet can do, to which if people want the pet to do more, the player needs to do less. However, seeing how the early days of PUP reflected that and certainly hurt its popularity through poor gear and perhaps an incomplete implementation, perhaps too much focus has been given to both aspects that, while many might not realize the potential now, still doesn't mean it's not there. The moment a pet can completely replace a party member, however, is when things go too far. That's probably the biggest issue plaguing AI tweaks. At what point do things shift from partially inspired choices to outright delayed, conditional commands?

You obviously haven't played BST or PUP. There is no "strong offensive output", unless we're talking about punking some terribly geared gimps.

BST is supposed to be a generic DD but since half the class is stashed away on an NPC not receiving buffs, you wind up losing to classes like SAM, WAR, DRK easily.

Even against comparable 1handers like BLU, THF or NIN, the lack of DW and the reliance on 1hand axes - a slow weapon by nature -leaves BST in an uphill climb to keep up. The class has no offensive JAs so unlike WAR your Rampages are going to suck and subbing WAR means losing out on an offhand.

Now, I say to myself "well, BST isn't supposed to be a good DD duh, that's what the pets for." and then you come to the realization that even if the BST gears completely to buff the pet that current gear leaves much to be desired. Pet haste, attack and acc are in short supply, magian axes are pretty much the largest bonuses you can get and such a build will cripple the offensive output of the master.

Backline BST would give the job a niche if anything (like SMN but more focused on DPS rather than hateless damage) but the current environment leaves the class in limbo.

-The pets are too weak to fight on their own.
-The ability to cure status effects is still tied to the Reward timer.
-Offensive pet gear is a nightmare to acquire.
-Pets get smoked even in low haste scenarios where they have the advantage.

If BST had some JAs to reduce it's offensive output in exchange for increasing the pets then perhaps the class would begin the long march out of irrelevance.

Puppetmaster on the other hand is sold to us as an all-purpose vehicle but again you have limitations holding the class back from being useful, nevermind replacing other classes.

Again because you have a scenario where pets cannot be buffed, they get blown away in any situation where DD are receiving haste. The master gets the buffs but since they are supposed to be a team and your potential is stuck on an NPC, you lose every time.

The mage AI is just laughable, bordering on useless for any practical application. Every time I see a
PUP say that they can backup heal, the ignorance of the classes limitations becomes more apparent.

It's something like me coming into a party on a DD with an NPC fellow and declaring I can backup heal.

It's possible to make the pets too powerful but as it stands right now, the huge penalties make PUP far too unreliable to use in any scenario.

Need a DD? Any purist can do better.
Need a healer/nuker? SCH and RDM are always options when the purists are away.
Need Ranged damage? Sharpshot shoots so slow, you're gonna be tickling the parses.
Need a tank? Valoredge will gladly appear to be turned into a crushed soda can for you.

BST and PUP need some serious retweaking.

[Camate]

Camate translation at your service! Hopefully this is the post you are referring to and hope that there is some good information for you PUPs.

As written in the job concepts the other day, puppetmasters “feel comfortable in almost any type of role thanks to their automatons, but countless hours of research is needed to create the perfect puppet to deal with various and sundry situations.”

“Attachments” are the most crucial thing when it comes to automatons, but there are some that you all might have difficulty confirming the exact effects.

We’d like to introduce the specific effects of those attachments!
(The numbers in brackets are the change in values based on the number of maneuvers.)


Fire attachments
• Strobe: Enmity (+5/+10/+15/+20)
• Tension Spring: Attack (+3%/+6%/+9%/+12%)
• Inhibitor: Store TP (+5/+10/+15/+20)
• Tension Spring II: (+6%/+9%/+12%/+15%)

Ice Attachments
• Mana Booster: Magic recast time (-2/-4/-6/-8)
• Loud Speaker: Magic attack bonus (+5/+10/+15/+20)
• Loud Speaker II: Magic attack bonus (+10/+15/+20/+25)
• Tranquilizer: Magic accuracy (+10/+30/+40/+50)
• Power Cooler：MP cost reduction (-10%/-20%/-35%/-50%)

Wind Attachments
• Accelerator: Evasion (+5/+10/+15/+20)
• Scope：Ranged accuracy (+10/+20/+30/+40)
• Accelerator II：Evasion (+10/+15/+20/+25)
• Turbo Charger：Haste (+5/+15/+20/+25)
• Barrage Turbine：Barrage (0/+2/+3/+4)

Earth Attachments
• Armor Plate： Defense (+10%/+15%/+20%/+25%)
• Armor Plate II： Defense (+20%/+25%/+30%/+35%)

Thunder Attachments
• Stabilizer：Accuracy (+5/+10/+15/+20)
• Stabilizer II：Accuracy (+10/+15/+20/+25)
• Dynamo：Critical hit（+3%/+5%/+7%/+9%）
• Coiler：Double attack (+3%/+10%/+20%/+30%)
• Galvanizer： Counter (+10/+20/+35/+50)

Water Attachments
• Mana Jammer： Magic defense (+10/+20/+30/+40)
• Stealth Screen：Enmity(-10/-20/-30/-40)
• Mana Jammer II: Magic defense (+20/+30/+40/+50)

[Sparthos]

What does the Tactical Processor do :3

[Seriha]

Please understand that we are not ignoring you, gallivanting off in some other thread. We make sure that most if not all of your feedback is passed on to the appropriate person and if it is not something that we can answer directly, we wait until we receive the proper information so that we can comment.

With that said, making attacks on me or any of the community reps, or even the entire team as a whole will not aid your cause nor will it speed up the rate in which we receive answers that we can provide to you.

As to the topic at hand, it has been reported and we do not yet have a comment that we can make.

Speaking as one of those crazy RDM melee advocates, it's not hard finding frustration when we can't even quite settle on what we want, have people storming in calling us retards (Perhaps in far more words), and still feel a bit lost on SE's direction despite years and years of fishing for some kind of acknowledgement. As is, even in those moments of lapsed judgment, I don't think any one of us sane folks hold you guys directly responsible for all the preceding has come to inspire over the years. If anything, we're grateful things have evolved beyond blind POL mails, unanswered other-forum feedback, the odd question at a Community Event or Japanese magazine article, eventually to Twitter, and now here. In acting for the betterment of the game, and at times, no doubt "enduring" us, we thank you.

That said, and with other jobs having Manifesto threads here while RDMs have perhaps refrained, all I can humbly request is some prodding on the job's melee future. Is the intent to leave things as is and full-on embrace the vision mentioned in the manifesto, or might there have been an oversight in conveying the message, as some of us feel that enhancing our party members and enfeebling monsters is not something that can be completely separated from swinging a sword if such mechanics were worthwhile and encouraged by dev attention and future growth.

[Seha]

What does the Tactical Processor do :3

They can't answer cause they don't know either!

[Byrth]

That post is awesome, Camate. I wish there were more like it! Specific information from SE has always been very hard to come by. While I enjoy testing, I don't enjoy spending hours and hours to discover something that I could have been told in 30 seconds by someone in the know.

[Darkwizardzin]

You make it sound like being a community rep is easy.... you have no idea what that job entails. I'm sure there are many... many things he can't just say to the community freely... and (based on what i've seen so far) getting the information to answer some of your questions is easyer said then done. Even if he gets said information it must be a nightmare getting appoval to release it...if he's given it. This person has to take that small amount of information that he is allowed to give and make the community happy with it... as you can clearly see by your (and many others) "demand" for more information that sure as hell isn't easy. Plus he has to pass along ideas from the community back to the devs... and seeing some of the "ideas" that the comminty has given it can't be easy to weed out the bad ideas and pass along the good ones... also im sure there are many other things that needs to be done with this kind of job that we know nothing about.

I know how annoying it must be to wait so long for this information... but making rude comments isn't helping your cause at all... it's hurting it.

Please understand that we are not ignoring you, gallivanting off in some other thread. We make sure that most if not all of your feedback is passed on to the appropriate person and if it is not something that we can answer directly, we wait until we receive the proper information so that we can comment.

With that said, making attacks on me or any of the community reps, or even the entire team as a whole will not aid your cause nor will it speed up the rate in which we receive answers that we can provide to you.

As to the topic at hand, it has been reported and we do not yet have a comment that we can make.

...it's good to see that SE is showing you guys that they are doing there job the best they can. Now maybe some of the conplants can stop... or at least the rudeness if nothing else.

[Dfoley]

That is one of the two posts, one that I already translated, but my jp is terrible so i was only able to figure it out due to knowing what the english ones should be and not the second post involving the barrier module.

There was a second post below it involing the barrier module and what causes it to fire off and somethinig about parry.


Speaking of fire, when is the flame cost of heat capacitor getting removed as the devs said it would be back when the attachment was added?

[Unctgtg]

People need to stop freaking out, no matter how good of an idea you think it is, usually it is game breaking and will upset the balance of the game. Usually most ideas are one sided and only are looking to benefit yourself, not the game as a whole.

[xbobx]

Ok I tried to find the answer from a developer saying the AI for doing blindna over cure is not the way it is intended, but couldn't find it, but I did find proof that the AI was supposed to be fixed in once instance, and that they said if you equip the damage gauge and put up a light maneuver it would prioritize cure, thus proving it has been bugged/broken since day one and it has been overlooked all this time. This also proves it has been brought to their attention before.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?page...=1&cId=3168323
1UP: Are there plans to improve Automaton and Adventuring Fellow A.I. because watching them cast Silence at enemies like crabs that don't need silencing is annoying.
MG: The guy in charge of that is not here today, so I'm going to answer for him. I'm not 100 percent positive on this, but the Automaton is supposed to only cast Silence on monsters that would cast magic, and uh, but....
1UP: They don't.
MG: Yeah. I'm not 100 percent positive that it's that way with every single monster. That's the way it's supposed to be designed, but I can see how there might be some who have slipped through the cracks.
1UP: So you'll be looking into it?
MG: Yeah. I will report this to the man in charge, Mr. Matsui.

Ok fellows was fixed, automations not, and this was brought up, and given to the person in charge. This is not how it was intended, and still has not been fixed.

http://forums.ffxiclopedia.org/viewt...hp?f=0&t=14253
Q:Are their any plans to boost the overall effectiveness of an Automaton's AI?
A:No plans for any changes. The AI depends on the master (maneuvers) and the attachments. If the master wants cure prioritized, it can equip a damage gauge and use a light maneuver.

http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/story.html?story=14529
The AI of puppetmaster's Automaton seems to improperly prioritize some of its actions. Some of them can be canceled by using maneuvers while others cannot. Status ailment healing spells are among some of the actions, as well as drain and aspir. If a puppetmaster is blind and low on hp, the Automaton will choose to relieve the PUP of its blindness rather than cure. Are there any plans to boost the overall effectiveness of the automaton whether it be fixes to current attachments to AI adjustments? (FFXIClopedia)
Kenji Nakamura: The automaton action is depending on the attachment and management by the master. The casting spell mentioned in the question also like a change of pace in these factors so we are not planning to make changes for you. For example, by equipping a damage gauge attachment there are a number of light maneuvers, cures are prioritized. So please try various things, see what can be accomplished. Also, about the automaton, we of course have plans

Proof that they expect having damage gauge equipped and putting up a light maneuver would prioritize cures. it does not, it never has.