Dev Input Requested: Macc/Meva Changes

[Aysha]

Sounds like they need to just nerf things across the board to get rid of the GEO requirement altogether, then.

I know this game always had its "popular jobs", but this is getting ridiculous. One job should not be the cornerstone behind ALL endgame content. No job, not Ninja, not Paladin, not even SAM or WAR back in the day cornered ALL the content like this in the past. Some jobs were king in some areas of content, but there was no Be-All, End-All job that everybody felt was required for EVERYTHING.

This proves just how broken GEO is, and how badly it needs nerfed further.

But then, near-permanent AoE Buffs/Debuffs... I only got one question: what were they thinking!?

Did they not foresee the game balance issues this would bring? Yet they won't let RDM have >3min single-target buffs, lol.

[Nyarlko]

Sounds like they need to just nerf things across the board to get rid of the GEO requirement altogether, then.

I know this game always had its "popular jobs", but this is getting ridiculous. One job should not be the cornerstone behind ALL endgame content. No job, not Ninja, not Paladin, not even SAM or WAR back in the day cornered ALL the content like this in the past. Some jobs were king in some areas of content, but there was no Be-All, End-All job that everybody felt was required for EVERYTHING.

This proves just how broken GEO is, and how badly it needs nerfed further.

But then, near-permanent AoE Buffs/Debuffs... I only got one question: what were they thinking!?

Did they not foresee the game balance issues this would bring? Yet they won't let RDM have >3min single-target buffs, lol.

... You never played BRD back in the day, did you? XD We literally were "required" for EVERYTHING. Entire Sky God runs of 1-3x full alliances would be cancelled/postponed if a BRD couldn't be found. I remember being extremely proud that my presence alone resulted in a 10min reduction in our Kirin kills compared to no bard. ^^ (I was one of those crazy party hopper bards that would keep songs up on 30+ others though.)
The problem BRD had until this update was that it was solidly stuck at 75cap power levels. This update appears to have brought a lot of our stuff up to modern standards, so I'm hoping we can finally come back out of the basement. XD

GEO was not likely "broken" until they got updated for the first time. I've seen some old threads that were complaining about how WEAK GEO effects were at launch, so I'm personally convinced that the formula bug was introduced at that time.. It's going to take a bit for the playerbase to adjust to the new environment for sure, but I'm expecting to start seeing more BRD and RDM out and about pretty soon.

Any MMO that has support classes will use the basic/standard group setup: tank, healer, support, enough DDs to fill... The problem we had is that one (glitched) support was overwhelmingly better when compared to the other supports in 99% of available content. (In large part due to said glitch.)

[Aysha]

Yeah, but the difference is, BRD was really nice, but yet it wasn't absolutely required either. Things COULD be done without a bard, just... not as easily.

The cries in this thread, though, make it sound like without GEO you really can't much of anything done.

And that's where the difference is. "Very nice" is one thing... "Absolutely required" is another ballgame.

And again... BRD had zero DD potential and some very weak heals and status cures with /whm.

GEO gets ridiculously awesome buffs, magic DD, and access to decent clubs for solo stuff.

[Nyarlko]

Yeah, but the difference is, BRD was really nice, but yet it wasn't absolutely required either. Things COULD be done without a bard, just... not as easily.

The cries in this thread, though, make it sound like without GEO you really can't much of anything done.

And that's where the difference is. "Very nice" is one thing... "Absolutely required" is another ballgame.

And again... BRD had zero DD potential and some very weak heals and status cures with /whm.

GEO gets ridiculously awesome buffs, magic DD, and access to decent clubs for solo stuff.

Events with 30+ ppl getting postponed til another day because a bard was missing really did happen, so I'd say we were "required" for most stuff. XD Depending on the group, it could mean a massive difference in time and difficulty depending on whether you had a bard or not. Most of the big stuff were also not really "short" fights like most of what we have now, and not everyone could stick around for the extra time stuff would take without a bard.

I tanked Fafnir (once) as BRD before the enmity nerf to songs, which was a blast to do. XD And back then, I'd help out with SC'ing as BRD sometimes (basically whenever I wasn't pulling or doing alliance+ song duty).. We DO have access to most dagger weapon skills and since most acc came from AllJobs accessories or food at the time, it wasn't that hard to do. We also have access to all REMA daggers and all related WS.

I personally call BS on GEO getting higher club skill (B+, cap@404) than we get dagger (B-, 388), but the diff is not actually that huge overall. If SE had not utterly failed on ROV gearing for BRD, or had at least given us more gearing options for meeting acc reqs, you'd probably have seen more BRDs running around stabbing things in recent years too. XD

[saevel]

... You never played BRD back in the day, did you? XD We literally were "required" for EVERYTHING. Entire Sky God runs of 1-3x full alliances would be cancelled/postponed if a BRD couldn't be found. I remember being extremely proud that my presence alone resulted in a 10min reduction in our Kirin kills compared to no bard. ^^ (I was one of those crazy party hopper bards that would keep songs up on 30+ others though.)
The problem BRD had until this update was that it was solidly stuck at 75cap power levels. This update appears to have brought a lot of our stuff up to modern standards, so I'm hoping we can finally come back out of the basement. XD

GEO was not likely "broken" until they got updated for the first time. I've seen some old threads that were complaining about how WEAK GEO effects were at launch, so I'm personally convinced that the formula bug was introduced at that time.. It's going to take a bit for the playerbase to adjust to the new environment for sure, but I'm expecting to start seeing more BRD and RDM out and about pretty soon.

Any MMO that has support classes will use the basic/standard group setup: tank, healer, support, enough DDs to fill... The problem we had is that one (glitched) support was overwhelmingly better when compared to the other supports in 99% of available content. (In large part due to said glitch.)

BRD was not required for sky gods .... all they did was ballad ... and more ballad. There wasn't a single "end game" event that BRD was required for, though they were used for melee zergs but melee zergs weren't the only strategy that existed.

The only set of jobs that was "required" was BLMs but that didn't last long as we soon learned how to use melee's.

The problem is that in FFXI "difficulty" is primary determined by monster stats vs player stats. The Monsters Attack, Defense, Evasion, Magic Attack, Magic Defense and so forth compared to the players Attack, Defense, Accuracy, Evasion, Magic Accuracy, and so forth. If players stats are under the monsters then it seems really hard, once the players stats can be put above the monsters it suddenly seems easy. To do this we used a combination of buffs and debuffs, but with the release of Voidwatch SE jacked NM stats to astronomical never before seen levels. Then SoA came out and they went even higher and suddenly content was impossible without someway to lower them by huge amounts. And enter GEO, GEO allows the players to lower the enemy stats or raise their own by incredibly large amounts and unlike RDM and BRD those stat reductions aren't subject to passing a ludicrous resist check. And thus GEO became necessary for every event because it essentially lowers the enemy's level while also raising the players level.

So the first thing SE needs to do is low enemy boss stats across the board by 10~20%. Things need to be brought back into the realm of realistic difficulty instead of this OMFGWTFBBQ that we then must exploit a glitch to overcome. Now SE needs to introduce some ways for all the central support jobs to raise player / lower enemy stats by decent amounts instead of the smidgen that we've been traditionally allowed to. The recent buff to Frazzle and Distract were a decent start but it's not nearly enough to balance out content. The buffs to BRD were nice for melees but they aren't nearly enough considering how OMFGWTFBBQ powerful their offensive stats are.

[Nyarlko]

BRD was not required for sky gods .... all they did was ballad ... and more ballad. There wasn't a single "end game" event that BRD was required for, though they were used for melee zergs but melee zergs weren't the only strategy that existed.

I did Minne/Ballad on pld(s), Minuets/Etudes on melees depending on jobs, Ballads/Etudes on BLMs, Minuet/Prelude on RNGs, etc. It was far, far more than "only ballads". The bards you knew musta been lazy ones. :x I was well known for my headless chicken impression, what with all my party hopping and song spamming and running around to "target" aoe songs. XD

So the first thing SE needs to do is low enemy boss stats across the board by 10~20%. Things need to be brought back into the realm of realistic difficulty instead of this OMFGWTFBBQ that we then must exploit a glitch to overcome. Now SE needs to introduce some ways for all the central support jobs to raise player / lower enemy stats by decent amounts instead of the smidgen that we've been traditionally allowed to. The recent buff to Frazzle and Distract were a decent start but it's not nearly enough to balance out content. The buffs to BRD were nice for melees but they aren't nearly enough considering how OMFGWTFBBQ powerful their offensive stats are.

The lowering across the board thing apparently already happened this month, and from the goofing around that I've done so far on lower-end endgame stuff, it really does have a pretty large impact. The problem that I'm hearing about is that the highest end (clvl140+) stuff is a lot harder now. I'm pretty sure that the cause of this is the linear mob lvl+1 stat formula. Physical accuracy/evasion is relatively easy to test for so it's verifiable that mobs gain effective eva+34 per level over ours (aka: we need acc+34 in order to maintain the same hit rate per level.) So you would need acc+374 to hit a lv130 mob, acc+714 for a lv140, or acc+1054 for a lv150, in comparison to a lv119 of the same family... We were looking at a baseline of ~1820-1890 acc to cap vs a lv150 pre-update (variance due to the "Evasion Bonus" trait,) which is insane. Though I'm sure the baseline has dropped a bit, that doesn't affect the lvl+1 scaling out of reach for the majority of players.

I know that this thread is about magic acc/eva, but it's a serious PITA to test for magic acc/eva and there's no way to actually verify any values, so I'm using the verifiable physical values to illustrate. I am nearly certain that the magic values (and all other stats/attributes) follow the same linear pathing as the physical ones, so it shouldn't be too hard to imagine how easily it can get out of control at the highest end.

The level scaling needs to either be converted to a sliding scale so that lvl+1 gains are lower the larger the gap between player/mob, (which could allow for even higher level targets being possible,) or if that is an impossibility, then lower all defensive derived stats gained per level significantly.

[Smokenttp]

The lowering across the board thing apparently already happened this month, and from the goofing around that I've done so far on lower-end endgame stuff, it really does have a pretty large impact. The problem that I'm hearing about is that the highest end (clvl140+) stuff is a lot harder now. I'm pretty sure that the cause of this is the linear mob lvl+1 stat formula. Physical accuracy/evasion is relatively easy to test for so it's verifiable that mobs gain effective eva+34 per level over ours (aka: we need acc+34 in order to maintain the same hit rate per level.) So you would need acc+374 to hit a lv130 mob, acc+714 for a lv140, or acc+1054 for a lv150, in comparison to a lv119 of the same family... We were looking at a baseline of ~1820-1890 acc to cap vs a lv150 pre-update (variance due to the "Evasion Bonus" trait,) which is insane. Though I'm sure the baseline has dropped a bit, that doesn't affect the lvl+1 scaling out of reach for the majority of players.

I know that this thread is about magic acc/eva, but it's a serious PITA to test for magic acc/eva and there's no way to actually verify any values, so I'm using the verifiable physical values to illustrate. I am nearly certain that the magic values (and all other stats/attributes) follow the same linear pathing as the physical ones, so it shouldn't be too hard to imagine how easily it can get out of control at the highest end.

The level scaling needs to either be converted to a sliding scale so that lvl+1 gains are lower the larger the gap between player/mob, (which could allow for even higher level targets being possible,) or if that is an impossibility, then lower all defensive derived stats gained per level significantly.

pretty much this.At lvl 135+ (some apex parties even aparently took a hit as well) things start to get off hand but at 140+ things become pretty much completely unrealiable, altough they probably tought that frazzle + focus + langour could achive the same effect of the past they forgot one little important detail that is if frazzle gets resisted things become straight impossible anyway, and since we cant verify macc values its pretty hard to gauge whats wrong. they either screwed up geo spells (unlikely but possible) or the macc vs mevasion function has insuficient values on high level mobs. we had an idris geo on kirin and an mugrgleis rdm fully loaded on macc and the said rdm was not able to even land frazle on kirin , even tough it could do it just fine pre update even with geo bubbles down so they probably screwed somewhere.

[Nyarlko]

pretty much this.At lvl 135+ (some apex parties even aparently took a hit as well) things start to get off hand but at 140+ things become pretty much completely unrealiable, altough they probably tought that frazzle + focus + langour could achive the same effect of the past they forgot one little important detail that is if frazzle gets resisted things become straight impossible anyway, and since we cant verify macc values its pretty hard to gauge whats wrong. they either screwed up geo spells (unlikely but possible) or the macc vs mevasion function has insuficient values on high level mobs. we had an idris geo on kirin and an mugrgleis rdm fully loaded on macc and the said rdm was not able to even land frazle on kirin , even tough it could do it just fine pre update even with geo bubbles down so they probably screwed somewhere.

The update this month lowered all (non-HTB) clvl mobs' baseline combat stats, which lowers the baseline derived stats, but if they didn't touch the lvl+1 formula, then (using an imaginary baseline phys_acc number since I haven't found out the new numbers yet) this is basically moving our acc reqs for 119+ content from "874+34*(mob_lvl-119)" to "800+34*(mob_lvl-119)".. The vast bulk of the requirement is not in the baseline, but in the level adjustment portion.. A whopping acc+1054 for a lv150 mob in fact, and that portion does not appear to have been touched at all. :/ Values are most likely different for macc (mob meva), but same system means that it's not hard at all for mob defenses to quickly get out of reach for most of us.

If the devs are not willing to adjust the lvl+1 value at this time, then perhaps a good stopgap would be to change the "Accuracy ++" vorseal to cover all forms of accuracy (melee/ranged/magic) instead of only melee. I know I gain at least 150acc just by zoning in and most of the complaints so far have been focused on Escha/Reisenjima 140+ NMs, so it might be enough to bridge the gap.