Overall Battle System Adjustments for the Future

[Yinnyth]

Reading over these posts regarding Twilight Scythe from the players, I feel a bit confused. Pretty much everyone seems against the idea of it being nerfed. The most common argument why it should not be nerfed seems to be that it's either useless or only useful in rare situations. If it's so close to worthless though, I have a hard time believing so many people would rise to its defense. How many people would complain if they nerfed something like Dokumori: Ichi or Goblin Gavotte? I get the feeling that the scythe is more useful than everyone is letting it seem.

This is the natural human reaction, so it's understandable that this would be the most common argument made. I think Spank sums up the entire argument better than anyone else: (paraphrasing)"The Twilight Scythe is only useful in situations where the devs try to force us to use non-physical damage. If the magic system were not so cumbersome, the Twilight Scythe would not be half as popular as it currently is."

The devs point of view on this appears to be: (paraphrasing)"DRK's utility is disproportionately high currently. In addition to being one of the top-tier physical damage dealers, they have access to stun, buff stealing, self-healing, and thanks to twilight scythe, they are actually better at circumventing battle mechanics like PDT and physical shield than any other job. Future battles we wish to add would be rendered far-too-easy by a group of 4 drks with a brd and healer, so we have no choice but to nerf the scythe."

Both are legitimate points of view, I must admit. Ultimately though, I feel I must side with the devs on this topic. Even formless strikes is affected by MDT and magic shield, plus it can only be used 3 minutes out of 10. Twilight Scythe can be kept on 100% of the time and ignores all forms of all resist. I can see how this would disrupt their ability to add challenging fights in the future.

[Mirage]

But Twilight Scythe doesn't have an extremely high DMG rating, using it doesn't enable any particularly good WSes, and WSes are of course still of normal damage type. Monks can formless strikes with their vere/spharai and use vsmite and shit. With scythe, you're stuck using... idk cause i'm not a drk, but guillotine? Or is the merit WS marginally better?

[Ezekieal]

Probably just better off removing Twilight scythe from the game entirely. Then maybe the dev team can work on something that affects more than say 3 people >.>

[Alpheus]

The devs point of view on this appears to be: (paraphrasing)"DRK's utility is disproportionately high currently. In addition to being one of the top-tier physical damage dealers, they have access to stun, buff stealing, self-healing, and thanks to twilight scythe, they are actually better at circumventing battle mechanics like PDT and physical shield than any other job. Future battles we wish to add would be rendered far-too-easy by a group of 4 drks with a brd and healer, so we have no choice but to nerf the scythe."

Stat stealing and self healing via drain and the like don't work as a reason to say DRK is versatile because on anything worthwhile those NMs have a crap load of Dark resistances, also the buff stealing is atrocious as well I think it's actually worse than Aura Steal. The only other self heal DRK has is from Apoc which requires you to un-equip the Scythe in question. Also I don't recall a MNK's Formless Strikes being bound by any form of magical or resist checks that Twilight Scythe, Requiescat and Murasamamaru aren't bound to as well (essentially I'm saying it's my understanding that they all work the same). Also a MNK w/ the augmented Relic body can push their Formless Strikes damage up to only experiencing an 8% penalty in Damage and that's not even mentioning that a MNK can simply Vsmite a Phys Immune Mob only to have it's aftermath piggyback damage onto formless strikes, or how w/ the right relic equip and meditate up SAM can 2hour and do more than the 3 WS afforded to them w/ a Murasamemaru.

Yes something should be done to make nukes worth a damn but this change is just an awful lot of negative for no net positive at all. If SE is worried about future battles than maybe they should take the time to program fights where, oh I don't know, the SAMs are amnesia'd the DRKs are perma slowed and para'd and the MNKs are also Amnesia'd and then they nullified all the usual suspects when it comes to bypassing shields who's weakness is non elemental damage.

Although even if such a fight existed it would just point out the glaringly obvious; going out of your way to punish people for using a job in a game they pay for makes you look small especially when you're in a position to affect things on such a large scale.

EDIT: Also Camate & Friends you have on hell of a job props on being able to keep going.

[Economizer]

I'm going to quote the last post because I want to directly contrast it with what NA players are saying.

Greetings everyone,

Below is a message from Akihiko Matsui in regards to adjustments to Twilight Scythe.

Greetings,

I appreciate all of the posts discussing the Twilight Scythe. I'm especially thankful that there was feedback that was both for and against making adjustments.

I also saw posts that were extremely emotionally charged that didn't offer reasons why they didn't want it to be changed. Though I have taken note of your feelings, I cannot use posts with these types of statements and feedback as reference, regardless of whether or not they are for or against adjustments.

With that said, based on the feedback we have received, the development team has looked into this again and has decided to make adjustments to the stats of Twilight Scythe.

Looking at each job individually, there are variations in what they are good at and what they are not so good at. (This would be the aspect known as job characteristics.)
These variations are altered through the addition of equipment/items and through job adjustments, and linked to the compatibility of content. Furthermore this is linked to the variations within a job itself.

These variations are a matter of degrees and will become a topic of where we draw the line; however, there are various methods to perform adjustments.

For example:
Adjustments to jobs
Adjustments to equipment and items
Adjustments to content
So on and so forth…

With that said, we feel that currently dark knight’s level of variation is much higher than that of other jobs, and since it seems that you share the same understanding we have come to the decision to revamp the stats on Twilight Scythe.

While we are still fleshing out the specific adjustment plan, we are thinking about the below:

• Add a risk to the weapon, such as when equipping Twilight Scythe, every time an attack is made, you lose HP (overlaps with the effect of Soul Eater)
• Add the effect as an enchantment which would decrease the frequency of it activating
• Have the effect activate at a constant rate only when remaining HP is below a certain value.
  Additionally, make it so the rate is increased depending on the amount of HP left.

In regards to other weapons and weapon skills that deal non-elemental damage, we feel that at the current point in time they are within the allowable range and will not be adjusting them.

Also, in regards to the power of elemental magic, once we have performed the revamps we will make a decision for this. (Of course, we will be letting you know about new adjustment plans and ideas as we go.)

How can our feedback be useful at all when you're raising this issue based on the JP player's feedback without telling us exactly what the problem is?

You say that we have a situation where Dark Knight is too powerful at something. You don't say exactly what that situation is, leading us only to speculation.

The only part here that makes sense is players making statements without a list of fact, and that's mostly due to a small handful of Dark Knights with kneejerk reactions to any balance changes, and players who assume you know what we are talking about, and players who feel that you don't listen to us because you're coming to us based on another conversation without properly explaining what's going on.

With only speculation we cannot accurate gauge or even formulate what situation the weapon is in from your viewpoint, only the current one we have. Without your viewpoint we cannot agree to nerfs because we don't know the extent of any problem.

So I can only go on baseless speculation and the analysis of the Twilight Scythe that the English speaking community has, and that's that the Twilight Scythe does crappy damage, and only has a very niche and even then sub par usage at doing damage to mobs that are immune or resistant to physical damage but need magical damage.

Note that not only is this view gaining steam, it's the initial response I had previously, so nothing is really changing, because you are not adequately explaining the conversation or reasons that lead to this decision. Regardless, I will quote part of that post, since it had multiple topics, and was pages ago:

On the Twilight Scythe, I haven't really heard any issues. But if there is an issue to be found, I'd say it is that magic damage aren't preferred over Dark Knight's melee attacks with the Twilight Scythe. This isn't the fault of the Twilight Scythe I think, but instead from magic damage sources being too weak even compared to a substandard melee weapon.

I think the best solutions would either be to do the first or second of these, with the first being obviously preferable.

• Ensure that the buffs to magic damage ensure that a decently geared and buffed player can always outdamage a decently geared Dark Knight with a Twilight Scythe without nerfing the Twilight Scythe.
• Make mobs that are supposed to resist certain damage types actually take added damage from magic.

Please continue with the adjustments to magic damage before even considering changes to the Twilight Scythe further.

Another thing to do before changing the Twilight Scythe would be to better define why it is considered troublesome, with actual situations defined, so feedback can be given on these.

Expanding on this, the general idea is that there will be no need to nerf the Twilight Scythe if magic damage actually does what it is supposed to do, especially since Dark Knights will still be able to cast magic on mobs regardless of such a weapon. And if there is a need to nerf the Twilight Scythe, it wouldn't be truly apparent until the buffs to magic damage are implemented.

But you already seem to have come to a decision, even if the reasoning hasn't adequately been explained to English speaking players.

Again, I can't stress enough that we will only be making shots in the dark about this until it is adequately explained, and even if by some chance our guesses are good, we still feel stressed and annoyed that we're only hearing part of this conversation.

For my shot in the dark, if you must be nerfing the Twilight Scythe, based on my assumption that the issue is that Dark Knights can do damage to monsters that have physical shields or resistances but are supposed to be weak to magic, then tie it to the Dark Knight's magic pool, and make hits cost magic essentially.

Basically, make the special damage from the Twilight Scythe be a latent that requires MP, and each strike will either drain a small amount of MP or have a chance at draining a slightly larger amount of MP. If the issue is that the Twilight Scythe is doing what MP is supposed to be doing, then make it cost MP.

But please, if you actually care about our feedback, please give a better explanation for what you feel the problem with the Twilight Scythe is, with specific examples and situations where it performs better then it should. Otherwise we'll just be giving guesses about what the problem is and won't be giving the quality feedback we are capable of, and there won't be any understanding.

[Alpheus]

I can get behind each swing taking MP would provide nice synergy w/ Entropy.

[tyrantsyn]

You know this is nothing new. And we've seen this before, just in different form's. Feed back is ask for and their response is that no one made a clear argument towards the reason why not to do something.

Any one else remember the load they gave us when they ask us whether or not we'd like to see the level cap go to 99 or 100, or when the ask us to vote on which jug pet's we'd like to see next?

There's just no way to win with these guy's when they get it in there head that something's wrong and require's fixing. They knew before they ask us they were going to adjust the thing. And my guess is they just wanted to gauge reaction to it so they can see how much of the player base was against it.

I'd also look at it like this, WAR's new SP is base on 30 sec + of non elemental damage. Seems kind of bad to have a weapon out there that allow's you to do this full time with out the use of a 1 hour timer. I'm sure some one on the other side look at this and said "oh geez, maybe we should get a adjustment on that weapon."

Anyways, it's niche weapon that look's really nasty and before long it's one perk will be gone or cripple to a point it's just not enjoyable to use. +1 inventory and on to the next piece.

Thanx for reading
Ty

[Mefuki]

Reading over these posts regarding Twilight Scythe from the players, I feel a bit confused. Pretty much everyone seems against the idea of it being nerfed. The most common argument why it should not be nerfed seems to be that it's either useless or only useful in rare situations. If it's so close to worthless though, I have a hard time believing so many people would rise to its defense. How many people would complain if they nerfed something like Dokumori: Ichi or Goblin Gavotte? I get the feeling that the scythe is more useful than everyone is letting it seem.

This is the natural human reaction, so it's understandable that this would be the most common argument made. I think Spank sums up the entire argument better than anyone else: (paraphrasing)"The Twilight Scythe is only useful in situations where the devs try to force us to use non-physical damage. If the magic system were not so cumbersome, the Twilight Scythe would not be half as popular as it currently is."

The devs point of view on this appears to be: (paraphrasing)"DRK's utility is disproportionately high currently. In addition to being one of the top-tier physical damage dealers, they have access to stun, buff stealing, self-healing, and thanks to twilight scythe, they are actually better at circumventing battle mechanics like PDT and physical shield than any other job. Future battles we wish to add would be rendered far-too-easy by a group of 4 drks with a brd and healer, so we have no choice but to nerf the scythe."

Both are legitimate points of view, I must admit. Ultimately though, I feel I must side with the devs on this topic. Even formless strikes is affected by MDT and magic shield, plus it can only be used 3 minutes out of 10. Twilight Scythe can be kept on 100% of the time and ignores all forms of all resist. I can see how this would disrupt their ability to add challenging fights in the future.

Hmm, you know, I think I'm starting to see where SE is coming from. Requescat and Murasamemaru are WS only so if you're fighting a monster with a physical shield, you're not going to do much to it using melee because you can't get TP.

It would be one thing if it was, perhaps, a Sword that only RDM could wear or something but DRK is one of the FFXI melee powerhouses and even after figuring in the lowered DPS of Twilight Scythe, they're still doing a ton of damage compared to the 0 that every other melee is doing. Why use magic on physical shield or -PDT monsters when you can just cap out the Haste on some DRKs in your party and be done with it and with minimal penalty. Maybe this is one of SE's attempt to get away from "Melee Fantasy XI" that some have cheekily called it.

Thinking about it now, I'm torn. At first I thought this adjustment was just utterly pointless. Now, I'm not quite so certain.

[Jaberwocky]

Can we please crossdress in FFXI now?

[Nebo]

I appreciate all of the posts discussing the Twilight Scythe. I'm especially thankful that there was feedback that was both for and against making adjustments.

I also saw posts that were extremely emotionally charged that didn't offer reasons why they didn't want it to be changed. Though I have taken note of your feelings, I cannot use posts with these types of statements and feedback as reference, regardless of whether or not they are for or against adjustments.

Not that it matters, because it is very clear that this conversation is only happening with the developement team and he JP playerbase....

...But I suspect you are getting "emotionally charged" responses because this entire subject of conversation is obsurd.

The fact that even one hour of developement resource, funded by my subscription fees, is being wasted on something as stupid as adjustments to Twilight Scythe is enough piss me off.

Why?

It is NOT because Twilight Scythe is overpowered. This change will not ruin the world for DRKS.

It IS because of the overwhelming amount of things that ACTUALLY NEED attention in this game that are consistently ignored by the developement team and are completely devoid of developement team response on these discussion boards.

And this is what we get. Freaking Twilight Scythe adjustments? Are you kidding me with this Bullsh*t?