Greetings everyone, Matsui here.
I’d like to explain the background as well as the future plans involving the adjustments to Perfect Defense and Embrava.
There may be some areas that are lacking in detail, but I’d appreciate it if you could read through the entire post.
Pros and Cons of Adjustment and Timing
In the midst of my efforts to catch up on the two years that I’d missed, this was the first thing I took notice of. I was apprehensive that this would become a situation following in the footsteps of Utsusemi, so I spoke to the development and operations team and made a quick decision to make these adjustments knowing that there was little time.
While the development and operation team members understood this and agreed with me, we were unable to properly convey our thoughts on the forum, and since this work was taking place in the middle of our already limited time, I would like to apologize to all of you for causing concern.
This is linked to the canceling out of any other battle strategy decisions, and also looking ahead to the development work for the jobs and content that are to be implemented in Seekers of Adoulin, I believe that these adjustments are necessary. (Especially for Embrava.)
Can’t you just strengthen the other special abilities without weakening Perfect Defense and Embrava?
When comparing these to other special abilities, they have such extensive effects that I do not think it would be realistic to adjust all of the special abilities to match them.
Also, in the case that we were to create content and monsters with the current Perfect Defense and Embrava in existence, it would result in brute-force behavior that nullifies or erases these abilities, so scholar and summoner’s position in the battlefield would not remain the same as it is.
There is a difference between only having content and enemies that can be enjoyed by dealing huge amounts of damage with continuous weapon skills, versus having this type of content and enemies as well as other content and enemies.
Are you getting rid of all battle strategies that are advantageous for players?
Regardless of whether it is advantageous or disadvantageous, as long as we feel there is a balance-related problem we will make adjustments. The big issue I see is that we are weakening these abilities despite the fact that it has been around for such a long time untouched.
I really understand everyone’s feelings, and that you hate this since you all did your best and endured hardships leveling up and gathering equipment. Not everything we do is perfect, so when we make a mistake we would like to rectify it and we promise to make the adjustments and fixes right away.
What about the content adjustments? Are you not going to do anything?
In addition to the reasons above, I understand that many feel that if the current adjustment plans are implemented, then they will no longer be able to clear content, so they do not want it implemented.
This is related to the intrinsic problem that the necessary content is not reaching the necessary people. However, since a complete short-term solution is difficult, whether it is the addition of new content or the adjusting of existing content, we will implement them in phases.
Why the delay?
There are three reasons.
- Lack of communication
- By implementing these adjustments, the content that can be enjoyed by players coming in after the fact will be lost
- The impact from other adjustments would be large
In regards to the first reason, I feel we need to continue to improve this and time to do so is necessary.
In regards to the second reason, while I feel that providing new content and in-depth adjustments is the ideal route to go, this would be at minimum the next version update (the one after the December version update), so we decided to implement only the content adjustments ahead of time.
However, for the new salvage only, we will be addressing it slightly irregularly by making it so that the effect of Embrava becomes what was planned for adjustment. While the new salvage was not balanced on the basis of Embrava, if it can be used as-is, then battle strategies will be formulated based on its use. There were quite a few posts that were concerned about how the adjustments would affect the new salvage, and many were commenting that the implementation should be pushed back. However, since pushing back implementation would reduce the amount of content that could be played we decided to adopt this method of adjustment.
In regards to the third reason, this is the first time mentioning this, but we will be fixing the bug where ability effect duration timers can be stopped when talking to NPCs since QA testing has concluded as of yesterday and implementation is now possible.
This was originally a counter-measure to prevent being killed while in a cutscene, but it was utilized in a different way and by allowing this it would completely eliminate the meaning behind abilities with strong effects in exchange for short effect durations. Additionally, similar to the adjustments to Perfect Defense and Embrava, with development work continuing on Seekers of Adoulin, we decided it was necessary at this point in time to fix this.
In closing
I’m sorry that we’ve been so wary about posting on the forum until now.
Also, since yesterday’s post, I started seeing comments to hurry up and make the adjustments, and I once again feel that adjustments that everyone agrees on are difficult.
In addition to the development and operations team and I increasing our efforts to understand both individual players and everyone as a whole, we will be making adjustments as necessary and appearing on the forums more. Thank you all very much.
Originally Posted by Byrth
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