New Weaponskills - Not what was expected

[FrankReynolds]

Pretty much this- Why even have the combat skill merits if you can get them all? May as well just raise the skill caps. Why even have merit WS if you can get them all? May as well make them auto-learnable.

Hey everyone can attain all the same gear if they try hard enough. Might as well just give all the gear away too huh? Why even have gear if everyone can just get it?

People don't seem to understand why these things were placed in the merit system in the first place. If they wanted us to be able to get them all, they would have just made them generally available instead of having a merit point system.

They were put there so that players could continue to grow in strength, and have reasons to continue grinding, without the dev team having to do a full on level increase, and all the work that goes with it. Everyone had the same stuff, and there was none of this diversity you think your preserving.

Your opinions are not facts. Clearly, all of those example games have plenty of fans. All of those example games have some mechanics similar to FFXI, and the best defense you can come up with is "those games suck so I don't play them?" That doesn't negate the point.

So basically, you hate any game where you can't be and get everything all at once. You hate making decisions and you want everything served to you on a silver platter. Where is the fun in that?

Yes, I hate any game where I can't play different jobs effectively. That's why I am playing this game. Those other games have their own forums. I don't really care what the pros and cons of them are. I play this one because it offers me diversity in what role I can play. As far as a silver platter, We're talking about being able to spend points that I earned. Not getting points for free. I have points I can't spend, and jobs that could really use them. Where's the fun in that?

FFXI was designed to let you switch between jobs, yes. But it was NOT designed with the assumption that everyone would play every single job and level them all up to maximum-

Cool. People don't and won't. On a side note. They recently changed the Exp system so that people can in fact level and play every job fairly easily now. They still don't do it, but they can. You should check it out.

the developers themselves said they did not expect people to do this and were suprised at the number of people who did (this came up in discussions about storage space).

Did you think they were going to say "yeah, we knew you would run out of space, but we didn't really care."?

Even for the people that do, most of them like playing certain jobs more than others, and will gear and merit for those jobs. They are still 100% capable of playing all 20 of them, they just tweak out their favorites a little more. This is not a bad thing, it's a good thing and should be encouraged.

So basically, people already diversify on their own, but you think it should be forced upon them instead?

You CAN be good at every one of them. Merits are not so gamebreaking that a job is unplayable without its associated combat skill or magic skill merited to maximum or its weapon skill merited to maximum or attribute merited to maximum. Mathy elite types, feel free to chime in here and tell me the approximate impact on your performance with a weapon that doesn't have 8/8 merits in its combat skill vs the same one that does, but I don't think it's that significant. Unless you're a MNK, it's mostly about accuracy not damage, and what A+ skill DD can't easily max its accuracy anyway?

OK, go look on the AH and see how much you will have to spend to add 16 skill, 8 attack/accuracy, and 15 strength to both your TP and WS sets for your favorite job. Get back to me when you have that kind of gil laying around. that is from just 3 categories of merits. Then try getting your ls to let your Mage merited sam spam gekko on VW mobs in that because your sam doesn't have shoha either.

Each category in itself is somewhat of a small difference, but the more jobs you level, the more gimp they become. The more effort you put into your character in this regard, the less reward you get.

You can be good at all 20 jobs, and slightly better at a few of them. Just because you didn't 8/8 greataxe doesn't mean you can't bust one out on WAR if your group really needs it.

Merit points ARE talent trees, just without the tree structure.

A less punishing way to respec your merits is all the game really needs. Refund at least some of the merit points spent and have no time restrictions, or refund all merit points spent on something but place a cooldown on it. If you change your mind about something, it should be reasonably easy to do so. That way you can change something without going "crap, now I have to grind for a few more hours to change the merits I've already gotten". I think that's fair and reasonable.

Talent trees are cool, But they have to lead to equally powerful jobs. IE: if one tree makes you an awesome support blu, while another guy is a great DD blu, ok. While that still doesn't let you do everything, it does allow you to get the same performance as the next guy, if you put in the same amount of time and effort.

If one tree makes You great at one job, but a Gimp at 15 others, then very few people will bother with anything but the three most popular jobs. FFXI already has enough job favoritism.

[Unleashhell]

The point is that If you merit the skills then you are better than the people who didn't bother.

One of FFXI's biggest selling points is the ability to play multiple jobs / classes on one character. Merits in jobs specific categories are somewhat understandable because they don't limit you to just being good at one job, and rarely even force you to decide how to play the specific job that they are for, due to the fact that many of the categories are not something people would want to boost. Being limited to the number of merits that you can put into non job specific merits limits your ability to use the job change feature at all.

Unlocking them doesn't mean that people will just automatically have all the same crap.

So again why even have a combat skill merit category? Why not just cap the skill for all weapons at a certain point? Maybe I'm not wording things correctly, but for instance if you cap at sword at 424 then add your 8/8 merits you will have 440 skill. Why not just raise the skill level to cap out at 440 to begin with and eliminate the combat skill merit category all together? Being everyone wants to fully merit every single combat skill to its fullest it totally makes the combat merit system pointless. Once you fully merit every skill to its cap there is no diversity between people in the combat skill category if they all have capped combat skill merits.

[Karbuncle]

Oh yeah, Exenterator: What needs to be said is it only does well outside Abyssea, and only if you're not stacking a force-crit JA with it. Both dagger users have force-crit JAs. It's a situational sidegrade WS that's inherently tied down by the fact that you don't often see situations where Dagger users are actually in groups large enough to give them the support spells required (and to fight the large monster types required) to do a meaningful number of WS without a force-crit. WS frequency is inhibited when spamming weak mobs, which is where you most often see Dncs and Thfs.

Really the first time I've seen you say something pretty bad.

Exenterator perform exceptionally well Stacked, as much as unstacked. Being the best Unstacked WS we have give it its Bad-ass Status as is. I'm not sure If you've done a lot of VW on THF (Probably not, Useless etc), but you rarely, RARELY, have SA or TA up when you have TP. more than 80% of my WS I pop off Without SA or TA Timers being up, and Exenterator can do upward 1800~1900 Unstacked on Some of the mobs(Usually around 900~1400) (Hit it a few times on Akvan, Nothing special, Can provide proof if needed :X, But again, Nothing special)

Point being, for a THF WS, It stacks right up there, and its only outclassed "Stacked" If you have Rudra's or Mercy, Its also the best Stacked WS if you don't have Rudra's/Mercy.

Its really nowhere near a Sidegrade, It so far outclasses Evisceration(anywhere outside OF Brokebyssea) and DE its definitely an Upgrade WS, one of the better ones.

Sure, you won't use THF a lot in these situations, Most LS's don't, But for a Thief WS, Ignoring pointless arguments like "lol why bring a THF", its definitely an upgrade to a Thief's arsenal.

Maybe I'm reading what you said wrong :X

[FrankReynolds]

So again why even have a combat skill merit category? Why not just cap the skill for all weapons at a certain point? Maybe I'm not wording things correctly, but for instance if you cap at sword at 424 then add your 8/8 merits you will have 440 skill. Why not just raise the skill level to cap out at 440 to begin with and eliminate the combat skill merit category all together? Being everyone wants to fully merit every single combat skill to its fullest it totally makes the combat merit system pointless. Once you fully merit every skill to its cap there is no diversity between people in the combat skill category if they all have capped combat skill merits.

Most people won't bother to merit everything. Especially if the caps on these require high numbers of merits, like 30 - 50 per level. Capping WS and non job specific stuff doesn't make everyone a special snowflake. It just annoys the people who want to do more.

Think hard. Do you want your <insert job here> to be the best one around because you spent time getting all your gear sets, and macros, and play style straight? or do you want it to be because there was a lack of competition due to people being capped on merits, and not liking that job as much? Personally, I want my dancer to be bad ass because I made it bad ass. Not because everyone else merited GA, GK, and H2h.

[Greatguardian]

Really the first time I've seen you say something pretty bad.

Abyssea is irrelevant, Completely. Anyone with half a brain knows Abyssea is broken so far in favor of Crits theres nothing that can hope to surpass it. Really absolutely no logical reason to mention it.

Exenterator perform exceptionally well Stacked, as much as unstacked. Being the best Unstacked WS we have give it its Bad-ass Status as is. I'm not sure If you've done a lot of VW on THF (Probably not, Useless etc), but you rarely, RARELY, have SA or TA up when you have TP. more than 80% of my WS I pop off Without SA or TA Timers being up, and Exenterator can do upward 1800~1900 Unstacked on Some of the mobs(Usually around 900~1400) (Hit it a few times on Akvan, Nothing special, Can provide proof if needed :X, But again, Nothing special)

Point being, for a THF WS, It stacks right up there, and its only outclassed "Stacked" If you have Rudra's or Mercy, Its also the best Stacked WS if you don't have Rudra's/Mercy.

Its really nowhere near a Sidegrade, It so far outclasses Evisceration(anywhere outside OF Brokebyssea) and DE its definitely an Upgrade WS, one of the better ones.

Sure, you won't use THF a lot in these situations, Most LS's don't, But for a Thief WS, Ignoring pointless arguments like "lol why bring a THF", its definitely an upgrade to a Thief's arsenal.

Maybe I'm reading what you said wrong :X

It's an upgrade over non-Emp/Relic WS for sure, but I'm taking all of the WS in the context of the real "best" counterparts. I don't use Thf myself, but I find that my Mandau buddy very rarely uses Extent because it's so badly outclassed when stacked. Both Rudra's and Mercy should destroy it stacked.

Personally I just don't really see Thf used often outside of Abyssea or Dynamis, which is why I brought those two events up. In Dynamis, you lose out on theoretical WS frequency because you're fighting a lot of weak monsters and waiting for procs a lot, which means you're basically able to SA every WS. In Abyssea, Evisceration will beat it unstacked so there's no contest there either.

If a THF is actually around in Voidwatch, it's probably their best unstacked WS (though still handily beaten by Rudra/Mercy stacked), that's just not a very common application for the WS since Thf and Dnc aren't the most popular additions to VW (especially since TH can't bypass the light cap - changing this would be an incredible buff to the job and would hopefully help a bit in making Voidwatch drops less head-smashingly terrible). It's like how Shattersoul and Ruinator are pretty nice WS on paper, but SmnMelee and Bst being SmnMelee and Bst make the WS significantly less useful in practice. Extenterator is nice outside Abyssea on strong monsters where you have the WS frequency to use multiple unstacked WS. People just don't actually do that.

[darkhorror]

Ruinator is quite nice. with normal 5 hits landing(which included DW) you have an ftp of 6.0 at 100% up to 9.6 if you manage 8 hits, an attack bonus higher than 22%, STR mod.

Also BST is underestimated, with something like it's slug pet you can use corrosive ooze which drops the mobs def and attack by a lot, I think 33% though I haven't tested that. This will raise the entire alliance damage by a lot.

[Prothscar]

Slug pet's Corrosive Ooze is analogous of the monster and blue magic version of 5% for both attack and defense down. Sure as shit is not 33%.

[darkhorror]

Slug pet's Corrosive Ooze is analogous of the monster and blue magic version of 5% for both attack and defense down. Sure as shit is not 33%.

Have you tested it out on BST? as I know it's sure as hell isn't 5%

[Alhanelem]

Hey everyone can attain all the same gear if they try hard enough.

Not everybody wants the same gear though.

OK, go look on the AH and see how much you will have to spend to add 16 skill, 8 attack/accuracy, and 15 strength to both your TP and WS sets for your favorite job. Get back to me when you have that kind of gil laying around.

Those things alone do not totally make or break your combat capability unless you're an elitist perfectionist. 8 attack/accuracyt aren't hard to come by. If by strength you mean attribute merits, most people seem to get STR regardless of the jobs they play because it has some kind of benefit for almost everybody depending on the situation. 16 skill is what provides the attack and accuracy you mentioned. I realize it's not that simple, but we're not talking a dramatic difference in damage here. If you're not in an elitist linkshell, and you really NEED a SAM and your SAM without GK and STR merits is the only one around, you can still play that needed role. Not as well, but I can't think of any fight in the game where 16 combat skill and 15 STR on a single person (assuming they at least have proper gear) will determine if you win or not.

So basically, people already diversify on their own, but you think it should be forced upon them instead?

People already diversify on their own because of the merit system. Without the merit system, there would be no difference between one SAM and the next except for their gear (Don't talk to me about skill, it doesn't take a genius to play SAM effectively). So I guess, yes- it should be forced on us. Why should one person get to be the best at everything? Shouldn't people who focus on a few jobs get to be stronger with them?

Did you think they were going to say "yeah, we knew you would run out of space, but we didn't really care."?

You missed the point of the statement. The point is that the developers were caught off guard because they designed the game around an assumption that a few people would end up breaking. You can play a few jobs and still run out of space. The mention of storage space was only to vaguely source the statement (since I can't find the exact original statement right this moment) and is not part of why the merit system is good the way it is.

They were put there so that players could continue to grow in strength

Yes, that's part of it, but not to grow in strength universally, to grow in strength in specific ways chosen by the player. There is no reprecussion for decision making if you can get it all eventually anyway. It makes your choices have more meaning. There is more than one reason for the merit system, but specialization is one of them and that cannot be denied.

Cool. People don't and won't. On a side note. They recently changed the Exp system so that people can in fact level and play every job fairly easily now. They still don't do it, but they can. You should check it out.

They didn't change the EXP gain to say "hey, you can play all 20 jobs now, and you have to!" They did it because the game is old and growth speed is always increased as MMOs get older, so that newer players who join can catch up to the existing players. There is no obligation of people to level every job, and the reason some people specifically refuse to is so that they can actually play the jobs they like instead of being limited to the 5 most popular jobs that are the only ones "accepted" for endgame at any given time. There's 20 jobs, not 5, if you level them all up and get to merit them all 100%, the pigeonholing will be even worse than it is with the restricted merit system. All you will ever see (at least, with the way things have been for the last while) are WARs MNKs, SAMs, WHMs and BRDs with rare exceptions.

If one tree makes You great at one job, but a Gimp at 15 others, then very few people will bother with anything but the three most popular jobs. FFXI already has enough job favoritism.

Job favoritism will be worse, not better, this way. Everyone has every job and has equal base capability with every job, so we can always have the 5 core jobs we always need! How convenient! People being stronger with some jobs than others, as well as not having every job,helps promote the development of alternative strategies, instead of everyone always using the same strategy for everything.

People are talking about the merit system like it's broken or something, when it's not. Customization is bad! Same is good!

[Karbuncle]

It's an upgrade over non-Emp/Relic WS for sure, but I'm taking all of the WS in the context of the real "best" counterparts. I don't use Thf myself, but I find that my Mandau buddy very rarely uses Extent because it's so badly outclassed when stacked. Both Rudra's and Mercy should destroy it stacked.

I wouldn't say "Destroy", The WS itself is rather powerful, In Voidwatch I've peaked 3k+ Stacked or higher. I don't really pay much attention, I Can dig up some parses. But its pretty good.

But yah, Mercy Stroke/Rudra's is what puts it to shame, But your THF Friend should use it -alot- If you're fighting a mob you zerg/Beat to piss almost non-stop. (Like say, Akvan, or anytime you have a Fanatics up)

Personally I just don't really see Thf used often outside of Abyssea or Dynamis, which is why I brought those two events up. In Dynamis, you lose out on theoretical WS frequency because you're fighting a lot of weak monsters and waiting for procs a lot, which means you're basically able to SA every WS. In Abyssea, Evisceration will beat it unstacked so there's no contest there either.

Well, It really does perform quite well in dynamis, Unstacked and Stacked - Again, Unless you have Rudra's Mercy.

Either way, I think despite how baddly i word somethings, We essentially agree. its great uNstacked/Stacked if you don't have a Relic. Still, as far as THF Weaponskills Go? its #1 Unstacked, #3 Stacked.

I use it enormously, But this will probably slow down when i get my Mandau :X