Equipment swaps and blinking

[Byrth]

Ffxi lives and dies on its gear swapping. That is how SE was able to introduce minor upgrades for years. Another 1% cure potency, another 1% Fast cast. This is what gets us to do new content and keeps us doing the old content that has not been outdated yet. If there was only one armor set and SE released straight upgrades of it, only monks would care about Nidhogg at this point. I would not care about Skadi legs +1, etc.

This reduces costs for SE because it decreases power creep and generally keeps old events at a constant difficulty level. Ignoring changed to game mechanics and nerfs to the event, I do not expect Legion will get easier due to increases in player strength. This is because a samurai in a year will not be much better geared than one now.

Also, that mysterious thing you guys are talking about does just eliminate blinking. It does not "delay it." This is entirely within SE's capabilities and they choose not to do it for reasons that are wholey unclear to me.

[Alhanelem]

<stal> and <stpt> don't do it for me. They're horrible workarounds for something that should have never been an issue in the first place.

Horrible workarounds? they are intelligently designed and a good way to cast spells., and one of the best things to have happened to the game at the time. Unfortunately, loading is an issue. It's not something you can so simply make "not an issue," at the time the game was originally built- And while it might be more technically possible now, who knows how much deep-rooted engine code would have to change to make that happen? The only thing <stal> doesn't help you with is helping a party as an outsider, and other than power leveling which is in decline due to how fast leveling is I can't think of many places where you'd truly need to do this.

[Arcon]

Horrible workarounds?

They force you to play a certain way. They force you to go by the party list instead of looking at the battlefield. That way you can't judge distances and you can't tab from one person to the next, and alliance targeting is awful. That's a horrible workaround.

The only thing <stal> doesn't help you with is helping a party as an outsider [..]

That, and the other two things I mentioned in the same post you quoted: following and losing lock on a target when blinking in combat.

[Toadie-Odie]

The only thing <stal> doesn't help you with is helping a party as an outsider, and other than power leveling which is in decline due to how fast leveling is I can't think of many places where you'd truly need to do this.

Doesn't <stpc> still work? I seem to remember using that when I was an outside of the party healer.

Edit: but you're right about the need to power level, it is just about gone - and since Abyssea came out I can't think of a time I HAD to be a healer outside of the party.

[Merton9999]

Doesn't <stpc> still work? I seem to remember using that when I was an outside of the party healer.

<stpc> works to target people outside the alliance, yes. But the point is that people are using <stal> instead of <stpc> because <stal> doesn't cause you to lose the target when the target blinks. <stpc> will lose a blinking target. So currently there is no way within a single macro to be able to target anyone on the screen and prevent target loss from blinking.

This was the minor annoyance I mentioned with <stal>, but I also don't like that you can't judge distance with it. Ultimately I agree with Arcon. <stal> is bittersweet. It's better than the current behavior of <stpc> but it doesn't go far enough to solve a problem that seems like it shouldn't exist in the first place.

I'd rather SE just removed blinking altogether by creating a gearlock option that let me fix my appearance. Wouldn't they have to allow me to lock other players' appearance too or would we need to rely on that person locking themselves? This would not only solve my blinking problems but also prevent my character from being drawn with some ugly ass armor. Anyone that uses those horrible viking helms should be forced to gearlock when out of them.

Also, I agree <stpt> is not inferior to <stal>, in fact for me it is superior for party-only target spells. I use it in every macro for spells that are party only. It causes the party cursor to wrap instead of flow to the next party, so I'm always at most 3 clicks away from my final target.

[Sarick]

The garbage about them being unable to stop blinking is just that. GARBAGE. Why? You see the recent change where they allowed you to /showheadgear on/off? It's the same thing they could write a simple code to lock the appearance of your character with the set you have equipped until job is changed.

Don't go making silly statements it's possible to lock your appearance the same why we can lock the headgear off. Notice that when you change headgear with /showheadgear off does it blink?

Simple command.

/lockgear on

Bam after that every time you swap gear the game always sends updates that no changes have been made or the same gear remains constant until you change jobs. This would affect both you and others who see you. When you first appear to someone they'll always see you in that set you had equipped when you locked your gear. Technically this would benefit PS2/PS3 because the character display memory wouldn't updated as much.

All this would do is treat you your character as always having the same appearance gear when you turned it on. How hard is that to understand? Blinking isn't needed so why make excuses about bandaids when a fix can be made?

[Umichi]

I just meant min/max elitests idk why i said it but then again i myself am weird.

[Jerbob]

In my opinion, far too much stock is placed in the capabilities of <stal>. If asked I would be the first to say that it is undeliably useful, but it has its flaws and it certainly isn't a fix, replacement or upgrade to standard targetting. It's slow, and in particular horribly succeptible to graphical slowdowns which can make it borderline unusable in bad situations. You also have no indication of how far away your target is (and can't target lock using it easily), and can't cast outside of alliances with it (minor but relevant issue). If you need to use <stal> then your role is likely one that requires excellent timing and fast reflexes, and here <stal> can cause problems.

I don't think SE quite understands that we want to maintain target lock on blinking targets, not stop them blinking altogether. That should be possible on ANY system - as people have already pointed out, we can already target people with no model loaded (zoning, invisible people) so there is no excuse. For the PC platform it should be possible to stop blinking altogether, but that would be less of a functional issue so I'm not so bothered about that I suppose.

In short - Fix the lagginess of <stal> and it'll be wonderful for alliance targetting, if nothing else - I love it for that alone. Fix the target loss of <t> targetting and the whole community will thank you - and perhaps we'll get rid of those insufferable people who've never played a job that necessitates the use of <stal> who have the nerve to rudely assume and broadcast that it is the solution to all woes - no-one here, thankfully, but we've all met them.

[Alhanelem]

They force you to play a certain way. They force you to go by the party list instead of looking at the battlefield. That way you can't judge distances and you can't tab from one person to the next, and alliance targeting is awful. That's a horrible workaround.

So what? If anything looking at the party list is easier. It's not like you can't see the rest of the screen during the 2 seconds you're looking at it, either. Good workaround, not horrible. You have to look at it anyway when deciding who to cast spells like cure or refresh on.

If you need to use <stal> then your role is likely one that requires excellent timing and fast reflexes, and here <stal> can cause problems.

FFXI is really not a game that requires "fast reflexes." You make it sound like this is a lot slower than other methods, but it's not- The only thing that's significantly faster is targeting a named person with a macro- and you don't need to be able to see them to do that either.

Now, don't get me wrong, blinking sucks balls- but the solution we were given was very workable. Calling it "terrible" when it's very functional and easy to use is just ridiculous. Changing the way data is loaded and displayed is a change to a core game engine function. You can't just spam your fingers and change it. I think people are trying to exaggerate the problem to compel SE to change it and well, good luck with that i guess- it's probably not going to work but you can waste your time if you want. I'd be happy if it actually does happen, but I'd still be using <stal> even if it did, because it's useful beyond working around blinking.

[Arcon]

So what?

Forcing you to play a way you're not comfortable with to make up for a problem that shouldn't exist is as close to the definition of "bad design" as any example can get.

Now, don't get me wrong, blinking sucks balls- but the solution we were given was very workable. Calling it "terrible" when it's very functional and easy to use is just ridiculous.

It's not great for healing. But it's absolutely useless for the other two situations I mentioned, which you still haven't addressed. Blinking causes more than just one problem. How does <stal> help with following? How does it help with unlocking your target while engaged to it? It doesn't. That's why it's a bad solution for the problem, because parts of the problem are still completely unsolved.

Changing the way data is loaded and displayed is a change to a core game engine function.

I'm not asking for the way data is loaded and displayed to be changed. I'm asking for the target not to be dropped during that time. Blinking would be perfectly fine if the target wouldn't drop. We know blank targets can still be targeted. At any point during the blinking process, you can target a player, so the target isn't gone. That means there's no reason for the target to disappear when a person blinks, and I can't think of any internal mechanics for why it would. I'm almost certain they purposefully coded it this way. Maybe as one of their ridiculous safeguard mechanics which they needlessly implemented at every corner in the game, who knows. They've shown to be just like that, repeatedly.

Hell, even immediately retargeting your previous target would be a massive improvement and almost unnoticeable if implemented correctly and that would be a seriously minor change, completely unaffected by any data flow. The game knows when a character blinks (otherwise you wouldn't lose the target in the first place), so just retarget it when that happens, done.

Also, there's a significant difference in glancing at the HUD for information and focusing on it to navigate through it for actual gameplay mechanics. And you still have to look at the battlefield in the latter case anyway, to get a feel for positioning and distances, unless you're one of those mages who blame melee for not getting cured when they're out of range.