Fostering Skillful Play

[Mirage]

That's much of the things I was having in mind as well, yes.

Oh yeah, did you mention enmity?

[Babekeke]

The way i see it, skill isn't so much based on actual skill in ffxi, it's purely 'how much time do you have available to play?'.

If you are at school, or unemployed, you'll have much more time to play than someone working a 50 hour week.

If you have a family, they'll want you to spend time with them (though maybe some people don't realise this lol) so you'll have less time to play than someone living on their own, or in their mum's basement.

So how does this contribute skill? More time to play = more time to make money; more time to spend doing events; more time to improve your gear, weapons etc. It doesn't actually contribute to skill, but you can put out more damage because of your gear, so it appears that you are more skillful.

Unfortunately, there are still idiots out there who have a well geared ragnarok99 war or drk (for example), who will still get outparsed by a skillful player who is less-well geared.

I think that no longer being able to lock buffs on NPCs is the first step towards this. Now people have to think when is the best time to use their buffing JAs, rather than just having them up full-time anyway.

[Lienn]

"With that said, I would like to write a bit about my ideas on game play.
(This isn’t very different from the post I made during the FFXIV battle reform. However, I believe this is important information to share with FFXI fans, so I would like to reiterate these points.)
　
I personally believe that game play is nearly synonymous with fostering skillful play."

Good lord...this really creeps me out. After the horrid changes FFXIV received the past 2 years, saying this here just can't mean something good... >< Just missing Wada showing here too to say "everything will be alright".

+1 against "skillful play" concepts of Matsui. After the changes in FFXIV the last thing a player needed was skill...i don't want to see FFXI becoming something like that too. :/

[Areayea]

hm... I have a bad feeling about this, the interface that FFXI uses kinda is very Skill based, I hope he's just gonna come out with new content, not change the way jobs actually work >.>. That being said, Perhaps he's talking about creating new content that works like how Wyrms work (I STILL GET VERY ANGRY AT ANYONE... ANYONE!!!!!!!!!!!! who fights ANY wyrm at it's tail, should be no excuse not to know that rule.)

[Mirage]

The interface is skill based... what?

[Sarick]

The way i see it, skill isn't so much based on actual skill in ffxi, it's purely 'how much time do you have available to play?'.

If you are at school, or unemployed, you'll have much more time to play than someone working a 50 hour week.

If you have a family, they'll want you to spend time with them (though maybe some people don't realise this lol) so you'll have less time to play than someone living on their own, or in their mum's basement.

So how does this contribute skill? More time to play = more time to make money; more time to spend doing events; more time to improve your gear, weapons etc. It doesn't actually contribute to skill, but you can put out more damage because of your gear, so it appears that you are more skillful.

This doesn't help if it's not fun for everyone. The term fun is different for everyone. The refresh cycles wasn't FUN but, because game design we where forced to do them. Abbasya was fun not because it was easy but because the rewards where high. Throwing in a bunch of repetitive luck based BS and calling it SKILL isn't the answer.

I have plenty of time to play this game but each update sense the start of the year has made me less interested in staying. It's gotten that bad. I'd rather just stay stand around. There is no fun in basing everything on outright luck or large investments for upgrades that require selling your soul to get. Then again once you do get them after blood sweet and tears you get a NERFED.

[Umichi]

He's saying people aren't game smart anymore... at least that's how i see it. ask any new person who came in after abyssea started up and was on it's third expansion where are the 3-4 popular leveling spots people used to go to for leveling around 20-40 and within those zones where the camps are, or what skillchain is produced from using a weapon skill combo like lightning thrust and burning blade, then ask em what spells could be cast to produce a magic burst. or things like where are the places to farm items for money, or heres where you can buy x item from an npc, also things like how everyone is just sent to gusgen, garilige citadel and then abyssea they level so fast they have barely any interaction with their community or people who play their job in the community.

Things like helping newbies is also something i think he means when he says fostering skill i used to remember seeing 10-20 mentors on at any given time now there is barely 5-6.


Also remember he says social alot in his speech so don't just assume it's job fixes and adjusments >_>

[saevel]

He's talking about creating battles that actually involved strategy and mechanics. Anyone who's played other MMO's knows that battles should have a variety of things happening requiring team work and precision application of strategy's. Not super buffing a handful of DD's and throwing them at a monster while keeping them alive (somehow).

The reason we've been using the "throw more DD's at it" is that is the only current strategy that works. Battles have a time limit, but don't be fooled the fight we be over LONG before that time limit expires. The NM's can devastate an entire alliance so fast that your only option is to hit it with max DPS in the hope of overpowering it's AI (I'll go into this in a minute). The longer the NM is alive and engaged the longer it's AI has to run through it's various methods of killing you and the higher your chance of a failure are. Many of these fights are non-recoverable due to the NM regaining it's HP (that seriously needs to stop for BC or other restricted entry fights), once people start dieing it quickly turns into a cluster f*ck and a wipe. With alliance wide hate and super powerful moves of death, recovery is a very slim option.

Now onto the monsters AI, monsters decisions to use TP moves depends on two things. First being it's current TP, over 25% HP (30~50% on some NMs) it will only use it when it's @300, under 25% HP it'll use it @100TP. Second is an actual script timer, the AI won't use a move within a certain time of already using one. Zering gives an NM so much TP that it hits 300 within seconds but due to it's timer it won't use TP moves as fast as it accumulates TP. This has the effect of reducing total TP spam vs damage dealt (get one move per 400~600TP fed to the NM rather then one per 300).

To get out of all this BS SE needs several changes.

Foremost is fixing enmity such that a tank can actually tank during a max DPS rush. Don't kid yourself if it's not possible for a tank to hold hate when a DD is going nuts, then we'll be falling back to the zerg strategy. The longer a monster is alive the higher your chance of death, thus it's in your best interests to kill it ASAP. This is why fixing enmity such that damage output doesn't create insane amounts is important, tanks by definition can not create as much damage as a melee and restricting your "hate" to the max damage of a PLD is a fail strategy.

Second is fixing the super AoE wipe everyone moves, AoE's need to be severely restricted. SE has gotten entirely too comfortable with making everything aoe. Circular AoE ensures that no matter if your tanking or not, everyone gets hit with the sh!tty move. Why even bring a *tank* if everyone's going to be hit with the move anyway, just bring another DPS, your healing the same amount (Curaga spam). Monster attacks should be devastating but only devastating to the target (assuming fixed enmity) with a small cone effect to anyone standing next to them. Or they could use a small 5 ~ 7 foot circular range on the *target* not the NM. These things force people to consider positioning. Finally, no more AoE super dispelling moves or sudden hate reset moves. AoE dispelling spam just moves fights towards PD / Embrava zergs as buffs are critical to keeping people alive and functioning. Single target multi-dispel is fine, or even a small conal / target-circle one, but massive 20 foot super dispells just screw with people without adding any strategy at all. Sudden Hate reset moves just make tanking impossible and your back to DD spammage (can't reset hate on all the DDs).

[Mirage]

He's saying people aren't game smart anymore... at least that's how i see it. ask any new person who came in after abyssea started up and was on it's third expansion where are the 3-4 popular leveling spots people used to go to for leveling around 20-40 and within those zones where the camps are, or what skillchain is produced from using a weapon skill combo like lightning thrust and burning blade, then ask em what spells could be cast to produce a magic burst. or things like where are the places to farm items for money, or heres where you can buy x item from an npc, also things like how everyone is just sent to gusgen, garilige citadel and then abyssea they level so fast they have barely any interaction with their community or people who play their job in the community.

Things like helping newbies is also something i think he means when he says fostering skill i used to remember seeing 10-20 mentors on at any given time now there is barely 5-6.


Also remember he says social alot in his speech so don't just assume it's job fixes and adjusments >_>

The reason people aren't using all the gameplay mechanics is because the events are designed in such a way that these gameplay mechanics are not important, not because "players are dumb".

Players adjust. If the content doesn't require smarts to complete, they don't bother learning everything there is to learn. If the content does require the players to be smart, the players will learn how to use the other game mechanics as well, regardless of if they got their job to 99 in an abyssea leech alliance or not.

I don't think Akihiko is saying "players are dumb" at all. I think he's recognizing that the current battle mechanics and NM designs just do not create an environment where skillful play can be fostered.

[Freebytes]

Some of the best targets in terms of skill that I have seen were primarily from level 75 and they did not involve very many gimmicks in terms of 'triggering'. These were also some of the most fun fights. They were Sky Gods, high tier Zeni NMs, Kirin, Proto-Omega, Proto-Ultima, Jailer of Love, Salvage Chariots, all three KSNM99 monsters, and Jormungand. While these creatures did not require vast amounts of skill, it still adequately separated players with no skill from some with better skill, and this was fun. In addition, the rewards were adequate from all of these even if the drop rates were limited.

If we could have fights similar to these without the ability to zerg every one of them, that would be great. I do not care for stagger gimmicks that work on every mob in the zone but having a different strategy for each mob would be nice. I prefer longer fights with greater chance of good rewards over short fights with a low chance of a reward.

I would also like to see creatures that highlight some benefits of each job without 'staggering'. For example, if you have a creature that is immune to everything except stun, bind and shadowbind, and it has a move where it will use hundred fists and hit for 500 per swing, you would be recommended to bring a RDM or RNG, but you would not be required to have both or either necessarily. A BLM could stun it immediately when it starts Hundred Fists, everyone could get out of the way, and another player could bind it in place.

If you had a creature that used a chainspell move with a specific element but could not be enfeebled with anything except slow and paralyze, it would be beneficial to bring a tank that had a resist build. Creatures that require players to maintain hate and know where to stand are also great. KSNM99 creatures were fantastic. Behemoth was best done with kiting or well timed weaponskills, Wyrm required people to run away at specific points and for a good tank, and the turtle required well timed skill chains and magic bursting. These were excellent. I would like to see more creatures similar to this rather than simply having it blast people with massive AoEs without warning.