Interim Report – Sorry to keep you all waiting!

[FrankReynolds]

Excuses and pleas to wait longer while continuing to pay a very expensive subscription cost when the money is not being used on what I'm paying for are not enough for me (when FF14 was in as bad a state as FFXI is now they stopped subscriptions as a sign of respect, where is that here?), especially when it's coming from a company the size of Square Enix that is literally throwing money at FF14.

I actually refuse to play any other square enix titles now. I have a lot of time / effort / money invested in my FFXI characters, but I will never invest in another game from a company that treats paying customers this way. It's crazy that they keep making these BS excuses.

I work for a nation wide insurance company. Can you imagine the fallout that would occur if the director of my company released a press release to paying customers saying "Oh hey guys thanks for being paying customers all this time. Sorry about all your hurricane losses, but we only have like 4 people working on your claims (and there are thousands of claims) because we rerouted all the money you've been paying us into building out a new program to provide insurance to astronaut donkeys, so just hang in there (or tread water) a few more years and be patient while we have a few casual meetings and think about stuff."?

[Direct]

I actually refuse to play any other square enix titles now. I have a lot of time / effort / money invested in my FFXI characters, but I will never invest in another game from a company that treats paying customers this way. It's crazy that they keep making these BS excuses.

I work for a nation wide insurance company. Can you imagine the fallout that would occur if the director of my company released a press release to paying customers saying "Oh hey guys thanks for being paying customers all this time. Sorry about all your hurricane losses, but we only have like 4 people working on your claims (and there are thousands of claims) because we rerouted all the money you've been paying us into building out a new program to provide insurance to astronaut donkeys, so just hang in there (or tread water) a few more years and be patient while we have a few casual meetings and think about stuff."?

Lol really.

[Camiie]

You lost me right here, and really can't take the rest of your post seriously.

Content Drought? What Neo-Nyzul, Voidwatch, Legion and Meeble burrows to name a few not to your liking?

All of those events are seriously flawed in one way or another. Neo Nyzul is overly-random and even the best players feel the need to cheat at it. Voidwatch has a horrendous loot distribution system. Legion difficulty is over-tuned. Meeble Burrows access is too restricted by the nature of entry items. Bad or heavily flawed content is as bad as no content. The end result is the same.

[Camiie]

Yes, we all play on the same servers as all of you with regular accounts. (Of course the staff conceals their identities and plays as a regular player.)

I believe I mentioned this before, but there are a lot of times when I actually play in static parties with my family. I try my best to do things like returning lost chocobos, but, while this is embarrassing, I'm only at the level where I can challenge the Maat fight.

Well it's a start, but if that's as far as you've gotten you definitely don't have the perspective of a long time player who's lived and struggled through the various eras of the game. Be sure you keep that in mind when reviewing what you see here and on other sites. Don't let your team be so quick to dismiss us. Many of us have been around the block more than a few times.

However, there are a good amount of hardcore players amongst the staff (there are also instances where hardcore players have joined the staff), and they are hardcore into the recent end-game content.

I’m always hearing things at the office like "Man, the Odin’s Chamber II I created is tough to beat!" and "We just barely lost a win on that low-man Arch Dynamis Lord run."

This is actually more disconcerting than reassuring. It's like many of us have been saying for ages. Your guys really don't know what they're putting out until it's on the live server. Shouldn't they know what the NM they created is capable of? No one's perfect and mistakes are made, but should one really be that surprised about how powerful a NM they created is?

[Mirage]

I'd say yes, it's perfectly fine to be surprised of what their NMs are capable of. However, shouldn't such surprises be happening on the test server, rather than on the live server?

[Byrth]

If they all have accounts, why not just test server themselves, form an alliance, and fight the fights?

[Mirage]

Eggsackly.

One thing though, is that developers often keep in mind that the other players of their games sometimes are much better than the actual developers, so sometimes, they need to make things that are too hard for the devs themselves in order to let it be a real challenge for some of the other players.

[ManaKing]

I'm glad that the Enmity system and TP gain from monsters is on the top of the problems that developers are looking into. From a top down perspective, that's probably the most vital point to start at because it applies to all of the other problems that are more specific.

The Enmity system is one of the things you need to address because so much of the game's imbalances rest on it. PLD isn't a functional job because of shortsightedness of the system. Neither is NIN or THF. Now the 'Tank' is just whichever DPS does the most damage. Generally the WAR or DRK. That really does take a lot of complexity out of the game.

Most people are very weary of having a job system that includes 20 jobs, and the only 2 you need anymore are WAR and WHM. All hybrids are penalized because they don't fall into the same potency categories as those 2 jobs, and the only real exception is BRD, which has always had a place since it is the only full potency support job. The enmity system in this game makes it so that the only thing important to the success of an outing is the DPS and the ability to keep those DPS up by healing them.

Actual Tanking is non-existent. Managing hate is non-existent. Debuffing is non-existent. Magical Damage is non-existent, unless the mob is physically resistant. Skill Chains are unneeded and so are magic bursts. The game lacks the complexity and finesse of previous years. Most of that has to do with Enmity system not being appropriate for the increase in gear or increase in levels that the game went through.

Eliminating actual tanking from this game allowed all tactics to go out the window as well. If DPS is all that matters, then that is all anyone will ever care about.

I am very bored of this current Enmity system being decrepit. It covers up how poorly ALL of the jobs are currently balanced. It lacks complexity and offers the player the lowest form of AI imaginable for spend their time fighting against.


The 2nd point that was brought up was TP gain from monsters. I agree that this is a problem, but I don't agree that TP gain from mobs is the top of the problem. TP feed is a problem because Tanking doesn't work, that is the most obvious issue. If tanks were taking those hits instead of anyone/everyone, we could actually manage this content and enjoy fighting bosses. The actual problem is that you make boring bosses that don't mesh well with the current state of the game and they are less interesting than previous bosses even in this game. The biggest problem with the TP gain against bosses, after the lack of people being able to tank them with actual tanks, are the bosses being implemented are very basic/boring AI, that the game speed has increased, and the general inequality between 2H vs 1H jobs.

If you haven't played Chrono Trigger or FF:Crystal Chronicles, I would highly suggest you look at how they presented boss battles. They are much more engaging and entertaining boss battles than FFXI. Neither are MMOs, but CT is a turn based RPG and FF:CC allowed for movement around the battle field and more position based combat, and thus are parts of what make up MMOs like FFXI. Both kinds of bosses had punishment as a part of their design. If you went all out and just attacked the bosses mindlessly, they would retort with super moves. Your job was to avoid damage that was going to be fatal to you, as you fought something larger and stronger than you. The difference between what FFXI has and what those games had, was that they warned you and made you very aware of where you messed up. We don't act as though we are fighting something more powerful than us, we don't have the same kind of reservation of thought or action. The currently enmity system only supports an all out zerg and because of that, we just keep attacking regardless of what the mob is doing. There is no actual advantage or tactic to doing otherwise, because all of those tactics stopped being viable years ago.

There are 3 main examples of good boss fights from CT and 2 good example from FF:CC that I would like you to consider. (TL;DR the italics and skip to the Bold Summary)

The first one from CT is the Masamune boss. He gives you a warning that he is building up power and will devastate your team very shortly after that warning. The way to dispel his aggression is to have Chrono use Slash on him. Other moves do significantly more damage, but using Slash dispels a huge AOE attack. Slash also uses resources, so Chrono can't go all out and afford to be incapable of performing Slash. If you decide to ignore this punishment mechanism, you can survive it once, so you can learn from your mistake. If the boss goes right back into it, you probably can't recover your team in time to take another. It is not viable to ignore the mechanism, even though it lowers your total DPS to do so.

You could easily require specific SCs to nullify NMs super attacks much like CT requires the use of Slash. SCs require at least some kind of coordination and tactics. They make the game more interesting for me, personally, but they aren't used currently because SCs can't get through a bosses unnaturally high magic defense and evasion to be able to contribute to damage VS 100% TP Resolution Spams. You could add some diversity to the game play by putting SCs back in the game. You could even require MBs to dispel effects.

The second example from CT is the Robot Guardian with its 2 Bits. You have 3 targets, a main one and 2 auxiliary. The main target's HP is the only one that matters for the completion of the battle. If you choose to attack the main target while the aux targets are alive the Guardian will unleash large AOE damage against your party. If everyone attack the main target for your first attack round, you probably wipe. You can destroy the aux targets so that you can attack the main target without retort. The main target isn't particularly difficult, but it will destroy you if you attack mindlessly. It also has the ability to regenerate it's Bits, so you have to start the cycles over a couple of times.

Compare this to any boss in VW with adds. You make a PLD tank all the adds and then zerg the mob down. Not only do you make the PLD do essentially nothing interesting, but you completely disregard the aux targets. If the mob didn't have adds, you wouldn't have brought a PLD. A better tactic would be for the PLD to be able to hold the main target as the DPS eliminates the adds. If PLDs could actually hold hate at all, then we could have more strategies.

The third example from CT is the Tyrannosaur. It tells you it's going to blow you up in a couple of turns. Get ready. It's going to hurt. You can't avoid this damage. For FFXI, it's the same as the Limbus Weapon fights. Because we can move out of the way, this kind of tactic is viable. The only complaint I have is that the mobs usually become stationary. I would prefer if they could continue to chase whoever was on their hate list so that a NIN or PLD could draw them off and once again have a use as a Tank.

The first example I have for FF:CC is the zombie dragon/undead in general for that game. They are immaterial by default and take significantly less damage from physical attacks. You have to hit them with Holy to make them capable of being physically beaten. There are mobs that change resistance and our undead also take additional damage from being hit by Banish, but the biggest thing to take away from this is that the undead physically change in appearance when their resistances change. Obviously that creates challenges for the Dev team, but they are the kinds of changes that would actually benefit the overall play of the game and make it so that players could realistically be warned of changes in the battle or increased threat from bosses.

The second example from FF:CC is something almost every Boss in the game has. They have slow moving, high threat moves that are meant to be avoided. Some of them are player seeking, other have patterns, others just move in a straight line. Obviously, this would also require development and would require better computers to play higher end content, but I think that 10 years later, people are willing to drop PS2 and actually put something current into this game. We know you can do the work required for these kinds of changes if we give you the time to do them, because those are both games made by your company. These aren't even new ideas, they are just better idea your company already developed but didn't think to apply to the most financially successful game they've ever made.

Overall, boss battle and tactics in FFXI lack anticipation. The mob just goes off on you. You don't think about what you are doing for the most part because it's not required. There aren't any good tactics to either respond with or preemptively execute because they aren't more effective than a Zerg or a modified Zerg. I would much rather mobs have longer anticipations to devastating moves that can't be stunned. Boss Mobs currently spam a large amount of pointless moves that have no tactics surrounding them and that needs to stop. The high end content of this game is not smarter content, just mindlessly harder. They need to have actual tactics and patterns associated with them that make them unique and stand out from each other. That way, different jobs could be more or less useful depending on the mobs, instead of just in a scale of pure DPS.

Another part of the reason mobs became mindless spam machines, outside of their AI and planning, is that equipment Haste became more prevalent. Everyone that is engaged on a mob probably has capped Equipment Haste. No player is going to be ok with you nerfing this because it makes it so that battle progress faster. FFXI is a slow game compared to almost any other MMO. Most of us have no problem with this because we like the speed it currently runs, aka with capped equipment haste. Because of how Haste works, we feed TP to a mob that is being engaged by 8+ people very quickly. While Haste is a part of the 'problem', I don't think it is something that you should consider nerfing because you will slow the game down and make people want to quit. Equipment Haste is also a system that you can use to balance jobs because it allows you to limit the gear that a job can effectively TP in.

Most people would like more job abilities to use so we did more than just auto attack, but for the most part, I feel like most people playing FFXI don't mind the overall pace of battle. What they do mind is super powered bosses that can instantly kill them without warning and have very few strategies to counter it. The game feels brainless and boring because 1 out of the 100+ super mobs that have been released since 75 cap will decide that you(or someone near you) should die, and thus you will. The lack of strategy is a big problem. It's why I'm all for your new SPs. PD and Embrava are boring and mindless. I believe everyone will be happier to be more engaged with more abilities that lead to a larger diversity of tactics in addition to fixing the Enmity system and tanking in general.

The last thing to put into perspective on Boss Fights is 2H VS 1H. 2H DPS is blatantly better in every sense of the word when it comes to boss fights. 2H weapons have better scaling off of stats. They WS harder, in general. They feed less TP to the mobs. Low delay jobs are almost completely phased out of the game now that they increased the max level to 99. THF only really exists to TH things. DNC has no practical use any longer. NIN can do decent output, but even with maxed Subtle Blow, you are still giving more TP than a 2H job that is probably doing more damage. I'm not against 2H jobs doing more damage, I'm against Dual Wield and 1H damage just being inferior. It would be greatly appreciated if you increased the cap on Subtle Blow for 1H jobs so that they wouldn't be so detrimental to the health of an alliance. Or do something to rectify it.

You didn't want specific jobs to work on so I'm trying to give you the broad strokes that are painfully unbalanced to all jobs in this game. Access to good 2H weapons is an inherent buff and thus an inequality that hasn't been adjusted to factor in non-2H weapon jobs. THF, RDM, DNC, NIN, PLD, BLU, and BST are all hurt by this to one extent or another. It's not surprising the the only job out of that list that is still in good overall standing is BST. BST has a pet in addition to it's own personal DPS so it has a big exception.

The inclusion of Fencer did very little to rectify 2H vs 1H since it doesn't apply to Dual Wield. There are a lot of dual wield jobs and jobs that use dual wield to increase their damage output and letting Fencer be some kind of exception and then not put it on PLD, which would have made at least some sense, is still mind boggling. I am very serious in my request for you to look at the difference between 1H and 2H DPS when looking at the problem of enmity gain on bosses. Making jobs intentionally inferior so that can't contribute the same DPS, is one of your biggest problems with overall job balance. If you wish to keep these inequalities, I would suggest you look very hard at what non-2H DPS jobs contribute to a meaningful boss fight. Currently, they contribute very little, since very little is important besides DPS.

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Please look into increasing the diversity of bosses that exist at higher end content. It is one of the games biggest failing points. Players are bored of not having to do anything to do besides sitting in PJ because even when they leave, they just fight cheap bosses over and over again. That is where a lot of your discontent comes from, at least from a top down view. I'd like to continue to encourage you to try new things to add diversity and tactics, much like you are doing with new SP abilities, because I honestly think this game needs some rather large changes to make it interesting again. Please try to make this game more engaging for it's players because that way we will be happier and more likely to continue playing.

I am completely serious when I say that re-establishing PLD as main tanks and making actual tanking viable again should be at the top of your list of things to do. If you attempt to change too much without giving players something to rely on, then you hand them a rocky, uncertain, and potentially very unsatisfying play experience. I don't want long time players leaving any more than you do. The easiest and most effective way to keep them is to give them something they can rely on.


(Please Like if you agree with the majority of what I posted)

[Mirage]

A very long and comprehensive post that I actually read all of, and then plusoned.

[Nebo]

Mr Matsui. Please read the NA boards and respond to an actual NA post.

I'm happy you read the JP forums, but I'd feel a lot better if I knew you ere responing to our concerns as well.