Equipment swaps and blinking

[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.

[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]

Because, and this is the rare case that Fantards are right, Abyssean mobs are weak for being high level. It could skew the results.



Lower than suggested by the math in some cases, higher in others. This could be accounted for by one or more hits from the weapon skill in question missing, or a particular mob being higher level or lower than others in their group, double or triple attacks proc, phases of the moon, or any of a number of reasons not made apparent when the numbers are generated.

Such is the nature of dice rolling.



Ah, my apologies. I made a mistake on that.



At the time, Ninja was the only job in which I could reliably make the test on. That's because I lacked mind gear for Blue Mage, and still do. So I used Blade: Shun naked, single handed, dual wielding, TP gear, AF3, dexterity gear, and agility gear against a wide range of normal monsters all over the game. Hundreds of monsters taken each day, under different circumstances.

The results were disappointing, as I expected them to be.

All that work and that was it? It's square, trolling their paying customers. As usual.

your doing it wrong parsing isnt about seeing how much damage you do it's seeing where the problem is so you can adjust your gear accordingly for the maximum amount of damage increase with minimal gear adjustments. i do not support people who use parsing for anything other than that and min/max elitests with them ^^;

[Mirage]

You don't support people who parse for other things than that?

I mean, sure, go ahead, but that is kind of a strange thing to tell others. What is the point?

[Rustic]

>dev team can't program out blinking
>several third party tools exist that can do it

This. It's astonishing to see that third-party programs like Windower can come up with ways to remove blinking entirely via Blinkmenot, yet the actual program cannot.

FFXI, by it's nature of having so many sidegrades has made gearswapping mid-combat virtually required for optimum play- because they allowed it in the first place, it's no longer an "option" to do otherwise at higher levels.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Byrth]

I would say that <stal> and <stpc> are both failures in the sense that they take you out of the battlefield and bring you back to the foreground, a list of names and stats on the right side of your screen. Though admittedly it's hardly the worst offender, this clunkiness takes away from the general feeling of actually fighting and playing the game. A much simpler and cleaner solution would be to let people simply turn off blinking.