[dev1026] Changes to Claiming and Engaging Enemies

*UCK THIS SYSTEM.

YoshiP's response to PL with this new claiming system: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...l=1#post316605

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Originally Posted by Reinheart

YoshiP's response to PL with this new claiming system: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...l=1#post316605

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yeah it essentially boils down to, I am for PLing. Honesty I dont care that much about it, but it will probably make it so leveling normally from like 1-30 will be very rare. Then again, maybe it is now, so ehh. My major problem is it seems like there is no point if it is still first to touch it only gets the rewards. May as well just allow multiple claims per party, and not open claims for the world. at the very least you should be able to get quest credit from helping. I simply see no point to giving people the ability to help, if they get no reward at all, except for making pleveling easier.

Maybe its just about making pleveling easier.

So basically PLing is OK according to Yoshi-P. Personally I believe "helping" someone and "doing everything" for someone are two different concepts, but it's clear that Yoshi-P views them as one and the same, to an extent.

Overall, I'm disappointed. But if this leads to most players opting to get PLed instead of forming parties I will be extremely disappointed. I play MMOs to play with others, to work together to accomplish goals. I don't play to have someone do all the work for me. If this destroys the party aspect of FFXIV and turns the game into a solo PL grindfest I think I may throw in the towel.

It's a shame, so much good is coming to the game soon, yet Yoshi-P decided to make this decision and risk destroying what made its predecessor so great. I would have preferred a level-sync system over this, and even that I wouldn't think we'd even need it until the game is 5~ years old and the amount of new players joining is steadily decreasing.

+12130123812 for all the other updates

-12387219381273128301293 for viewing PLing as a reasonable way to "help" players.

Alrighty, Yoshida made a large post regarding the new claim system this morning and we've been working on getting you guys the translation - sorry about the delay.

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

Hello, this is Yoshida, the Producer/Director.

I appreciate all the comments from your heated discussion.
I will post my objectives regarding power leveling and the removal of the claim system.

I want to make it clear now that I believe there is no way to settle this argument in a way that everybody will be 100% satisfied with.
Also, this is going to be a very long post, so it may be a difficult read.
(I decided that I would divide up the post, rather than rush through each topic. I hope you read my entire post.)

This is an extreme example, but even for non-online, stand alone games, there are players who enjoy completing the game even if they use cheats to obtain all items or max out their levels. However, other players feel that this is a waste of time and that it defeats the purpose of buying the game. As such, this is a difficult issue to address.

In MMOs, there are players who would like help with leveling, because they want to play with other players as soon as possible. There are also players who would like to help new players level up, so that they can play with them. These players don’t want strong restrictions on power leveling, nor to be confined to parties with major level differences.

In contrast, there are players who believe that, “Players grow together with their characters,” “If other players are power leveling, leveling up becomes meaningless,” “Power leveling will become a necessary part of the game,” and “Power leveling will disrupt areas for proper party play.”

Even without considering RMT and people who level up other players’ characters for profit, this issue is the cause of a lot of friction. For online games, RMT and people who level up other players’ characters for profit will both certainly exist, so they must be considered. This is a good point of discussion, but opinions will vary based on perspective, so it is difficult to reach a definite conclusion.

Thus, I will post the development of how we reached the new specs.

Why the claiming system will be removed
We decided to remove the claiming system from FFXIV because we decided that claiming would become a troublesome spec in the future development of the game. When considering large scale PvE content involving multiple parties and PvP between large numbers of players, the spec that claiming occurs on a 1:1 basis becomes a nuisance. Also, instances will become more prevalent in future content. The concept of having to claim opponents to prevent being disturbed by other players becomes less and less relevant, so we decided that claiming is unnecessary.

Securing reward rights
Up next is the decision on the right to obtain rewards.
This regards who has the right to obtain experience points, dropped items, and quest completion flags when multiple parties (including solo players) attack the same monster.

In first generation MMOs the party that dealt the most damage to the monster was given the rights to the rewards. In the worst case, fighting over rewards was possible. The claiming system in FFXI was implemented to avoid this issue. I decided that it would be best for the player or party that attacked the monster first to obtain rights to the rewards. This makes it so that “the early bird gets the worm,” which I think is the simplest solution. Future content will be heavily instanced, so we think that NMs in public fields will be the most affected by these changes. Rather than allowing players to fight over rewards, I think it is better to feature some kind of gameplay system to make third party involvement in a NM battle impossible. As such, I decided to implement a “first attack” system for rewards rights.

Revision of distribution of rewards
Up next is experience points, the center of our debate.
If we simplify the specs, power leveling will certainly become easier.

I will provide an example involving soloing that is easy to understand. (Power leveling a party involving multiple levels is complicated) Suppose you attack a level 50 monster with your level 1 character. If a level 50 character nearby kills the level 50 monster, the skill points will be given to the level 1 character.

However, the gap between your level 1 character and the level 50 monster is too large, so the “defeating a higher rank monster bonus” will be significantly reduced. The experience points earned by the level 1 character will be adjusted quite drastically.

Suppose you attack a level 3 monster with your level 1 character and a level 50 character nearby kills the level 3 monster. The level 3 monster is appropriate for a level 1 character, so there will be no major drastic loss in experience points.

These are the basics. I will move on to determining whether or not a player is power leveling.

Determining power leveling
The standard for battle length from here on out will be 30-40 seconds to defeat a monster of the same level while soloing. It would take about 4-5 seconds for a level 50 character to defeat a level 3 monster next to a level 1 character. The level 1 character can obtain the full amount of experience points just by standing there. However, the level 50 player involved is spending their time leveling up the other player instead of playing other content.

At this point, it depends how the level 1 character feels about being "helped" by the level 50 character.

Forcing out power leveling
It is not easy to distinguish whether the above actions are an act of good will or serve the purpose of RMT or leveling up other characters for money.

By investigating logs, it is possible to identify for-profit violators and mete out punishment, but it would be very difficult to completely put an end to these actions. Doing so would require implementing very complicated specs, which will place a strain on ordinary users.

• Distribute experience points based on the amount of damage done to the monster
• Distribute experience points based on hate

The above methods were used by first generation MMOs to reduce power leveling, but these methods have their own problems. Players can aggressively fight each other over experience points, classes that do not do much damage are at a disadvantage, and for-profit violators can create bots that randomly attack monsters and steal EXP. (As I said earlier, we will punish for-profit violators. However, we do not want to ban ordinary players, so it will take us time to properly identify for-profit violators.)

One thing we would like to avoid all costs is EXP stealing by bots.

Conclusion
Taking everything into consideration, we understand that there will be pros and cons no matter what, but ultimately, we have decided that as a current generation MMORPG we would like to do something about,

"new players who would like some help, because they want to play with their friends as soon as possible, as well as players who are willing to sacrifice their own time to help out new players get involved in the game quicker."

We plan on implementing end-game content that is extremely difficult, so if assistance is necessary to reach this point I believe that it should be OK for players to help each other out, as long as there are players who are willing to help out.

Differences in gained experience points based on the difference between the player’s level and the defeated monster’s level will still exist, and will be adjusted. Our goal is to prevent any kind of extreme behavior. If any loopholes are found, we would like to fix these issues as they are discovered.

I believe that whether a player is playing seriously or not is a separate issue from whether the player is receiving assistance or not.

Personally, I am the type who believes that it is more fun to work hard and experience as much as you can first hand up until at least level 40, but if somebody comes asking for help saying, "I tried my best up until level 30, but I don’t have any more time!" I will help out.

Of course you would want your friends to enjoy an MMO that you enjoy playing, and if somebody is stuck in a situation where their enjoyment is hitting a wall, you would want to help out. Ultimately, it would be best for everybody to get along and play together.

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

Sorry for spamming, but in terms of “Parties with level disparity and level syncing,” I think a lot of problems can be solved by implementing

• A system in which level syncing is performed when entering content
• A system in which it is easy to form a party with players with similar levels

We plan on implementing a very large scale system at least for the latter, so these systems may take a long time to implement. As such, for now we would like to adjust the party seeking function as much as possible. I will announce these details in a later post.

Regarding level syncing, we will keep in mind that we must set up "gear slots for level syncing."

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

I would like to say that’s all, but I have come across a post that caught my attention, so I will keep spamming.

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Yoshi-P...
I think that leveling content is doomed.
14 was set up horribly.

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As an existing player, I understand how you feel. I would probably feel the same way if I was only playing FFXIV as a single player. I also understand the feeling of, "I would like to help out a new player, but I don’t feel like I can do enough to make a difference…"

However, because I understand these feelings, I have been thinking of making drastic changes, and when the time comes I will share these ideas with all of you.

What encourages me more than anything is reading your Lodestone entries every day and seeing a lot of comments such as "A new player joined our new LS!" and "I am looking for a LS!" The thought that players are helping out new and returning players to liven up Eorzea has been a huge source of support for us developers.
(It also makes me very happy that player events are taking place.)

So don’t worry. I will do something, and everything will be alright. I will not give up, as long as I am alive. lol

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Reading the official translation (Thanks, Bayohne, and thank you, Reinheart as well for the previous translation) a few more things stuck out.

First is this quote:

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Future content will be heavily instanced

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This is why I originally started this thread:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...world-content?

It seems to confirm my disagreement with the new system. Instanced content is great, but it seems that there will be a very limited amount of open world content for us to enjoy. Yes, I noticed the part about large scale PvE content that requires multiple parties, but how much of that content will we see compared to instanced content?

The other thing that I'm taking from this translation is that it seems the game will be more focused on the destination, and not the journey itself. This is just my interpretation of course, and is yet another thing I disagree with.

Another note about PLing.. FFXI had a great PL system. High level players could not kill mobs for you, but they could still help if you needed it. With them curing from outside your party, you still had to kill the mobs yourself, but could focus more on pure DPS than survivability. This is how PLing should work if you ask me. I know PLing will never be something that can be completely excluded, but this new type of PLing is by far the worst type in my humble opinion.

I hope that Yoshi P and the Dev team are a bit flexible on this decision and would be willing to adjust it if it begins to destroy the party system (reading the post, this seems to be the case). If we start to see people reaching level cap in less than a week because of it, I hope they fix it, and quickly.

I'm... hesitant about all this but one things for sure is that this wont be equal across the board unless Yoshi is planning to implement a simmilar system across dol and doh?. Wheres my PL 1-50 for miner/alchemist etc etc? SE wont do that because that would destroy the economy even more so surely? I can relate to the wanting to help newbies catch up but i also know that whenever i did anything for others as a high lv job in xi that took away that players chance to enjoy that content.

So pretty much you allowing us to PL -.- so pretty much everyone would reach max level. So at the end it be a solo fest with everyone just getting PL. So at the end there no point in making party and making a camp and fighting mobs when you can get 1-max with a PL? is this what i'm hearing or i'm reading this wrong?

What about some of us who think level up is the main point of the game? and getting max level is not fun? but then again if there a way for everyone else to get max level you have to do it too or you miss out on endgame events with friend you like doing that? i guess you can't make everyone happy so at the end it you helping out Casual you could have take little more time to come up with a better idea but then again even tho you play a hardcore game and such this world now is casual.

I guess i can deal with the PL and get my gf to pl me to her level then we party together but then it would feel to slow so it better of just pl ourself to max level then really playing together in a party this is how i see the pl issue what the point in playing together in a party when you can just pl each other to max level then play together. I find level up with your friend the best way for a player to learn how to play the game.

Why not just make level sync? so i can play with all my friend in the same party? without making everyone PL each other? Seeing how this is not FFXI where you have to level up each skill like healing, your hand to hand skill and what not this wont make anyone gimp and still allow us to play together and fight together and learn together then just pl? The point is by doing this everyone going to do the quickest way because everyone else is doing it. But if you add level sync then a level 50 can help out a level 1 level up and in a way it's like pl but in a party together i can enjoy that more with friend then they just outside the party killing everything for me :(

If i read this wrong then please someone tell me what he mean.

If Power leveling stops or makes grind parties not happen.. I'd be very pissed. Finally we are actually having parties do stuff together as a team.. This PL bullcrap will hurt the game, I can see it now >.> I just hope I'm proved wrong

Wow am I the only one who thinks helping other players in trouble will be a lot more fun with this system than XI's help command that basically meant throwing away the XP reward altogether.