"A system that rewards effort and innovation" can't be buzzwords for imbalance-get

@Abrak

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It's stupid to slam a system before it's even in place

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EXACTLY!

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Originally Posted by Issachar;150442A LSmate of mine on FFXI once said this: "Why do things the hard way, when the [i

guaranteed[/i] way is easier?"...hell, I might put that in my sig. It's a sage piece of advice to reflect on.

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Bragging about your high golf handicap is what you and your bros are doing. Sage? Lol no. Weak.

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Originally Posted by RedAffinity

Puppetmaster was my first 75 Job in XI about 4 years ago. I know a thing about

A. People not responding when you ask to join a party
B. "Got any other jobs?"
C. < No Thanks >

Over time I developed great friends, discovered its horribly broken weaknesses (15+ minutes w/o Automaton anyone?), and over time mastered a fully equipped and merited PUP. I had some fantastic memories, joined many events and built a reputation as a good player and even got some "wow" 's along the way.

Did I try harder than most jobs? Yeah. Was it fair? Not at all.

I don't want this to happen in XIV
I have a similar story to share about the underused, underappreciated, and incredibly powerful Dancer. But i'm sure you all don't care, and get the idea.

I would like feeding TP to not be the enemy, rather the monster be the enemy. This will invite front-line classes back up to the front. I'm staying optimistic, there's really nothing I can do at this point other than to wait and see, or leave. June can't come fast enough

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You can fight the systems that are designed to keep weak players accepted based on what imbalanced jobs they ride on.
You can demand equality as a PUP. Will the blms, rdms, brds, rngs, and their ilk scoff and snicker again? Of course. You're a threat to how special they're treated. Without you down there, they can't be up where they think they are.

As they pathetically kite, hide, and cower at the game's difficulty, then brag about how good they are lol...

Stand up, PUP. Take what belongs to you.

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Originally Posted by Amineri

Battle Regimens had the promise of encouraging balanced parties, because of the requirement to use weaponskills from different classes in order to get damage boost (weaponskills from same classes simply removed cross-class affinity penalties).

However, the clunkiness of the battle regimens, together with the still-high affinity of cross-class skills has rendered Battle Regimens less useful then they could have been.

However a system like this, that rewards diversity, without REQUIRING particular classes is the best of both worlds. You don't need any particular class to increase overall damage, but you can't bring 8 of the same class, or your BR will be weak.

Another example, already mentioned, is to give enemies skills that can be used reactively. For example, an enemy could have slashing, piercing, projectile, magic, and elemental defense buffs, but only ONE can be active at a time. The enemy uses the buff corresponding to the biggest damage source. Another way to encourage party diversity.

One thing I DON'T want to see is a simply reversal of the situation, where melee is king, lolARC becomes a byword, with CON and THM relegated to basic healbots. I've seen this situation in other MMOs as well, and it's just as ugly as OPed ARC / THM / CON.

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Regimens and skillchains are proof that the population will quit any semblance of tactics and teamwork if mindless zerging is easier and competitive. The whole problem with class whoring is the fact that the players who do it over and over in MMOs are weaker than the devs are giving them credit for. They can't handle complexity when simplicity is competitive. They can't even win the fights as-designed for the general demographic.

They take archerx6 to fights because they're not good players, not because they ARE good players. The game difficulty is set to medium. They reset it to easy because they can't play on medium because it's frustrating to them. They have a high golf handicap. And instead of being made fun of because of it, they're encouraged to brag about how weak they are and how imbalanced their setups have to be for them to succeed in the game.

Don't even let that kind of player think they're a success. Kill their imbalance-getting and make them be good players for once in their MMO careers.

Like I said, you can already tell who has spent their entire MMO careers abusing imbalance in this thread. They're the people who balk at someone who laughs at their ranger ranger ranger ranger ranger ranger "innovation." They think they're great, when honestly they're not. That's why they need these lame tactics.

Take them from them. Maybe they'll get better and step up their game.

My guess is, though, that if you take certain players' access to imbalance as a means to progress and achieve in MMOs...they'll fall off the curve because they were never good to begin with without that developer subsidy.

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Originally Posted by Abraxai

It's stupid to slam a system before it's even in place.. The system isn't innovative.. but it rewards players that are.. Hmm...

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Does the idea of prevention escape that many of you? When seeing a stalled car in the middle of your lane 40 meters ahead, is it stupid to slam the brakes before you're even at it?

Come on, now. A vote to not prevent this problem is a vote to keep the problem. Maybe you like thmx8 party potentials. Maybe you think that's smart and innovative. There's a stalled car 40 meters ahead of you, and you're arguing not to do anything. Maybe it'll disappear!

I think that's silly.

If you want a system that jobs are treated equally in and balance is rewarded instead of punished, you'd best be looking around you and change your vote. The only useful jobs in a difficult endgame setting in XIV are gladiator, thaumaturge, and archer and without exquisite attention to balance, stacking them will be this "smart" "saavy" "innovative" player base's solution to the challenge.

You scream, "Well how can we knowww it's not here!"
Take the logical conclusions to their only conceivable end. Archerburns and thaumafests are coming. Just as 300 million gil pieces of rare sellables are coming if they're introduced, imbalance will INSTANTLY run the game the SECOND difficult content pops up.

Marauders, lancers, pugs...you all can just stay home like you did in XI's early years. If one of your trash gear pieces drop, they'll invite you to the party, but jobs that helped kill Ifrit get priority. Naturally.

Tank and spank, every fight, forever. Woo.

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Originally Posted by Demacia

Tank and spank, every fight, forever. Woo.

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I dont believe in tank and spank as a way of life, but kite and fight is way worse, because at least tank and spank allows every type of job to contribute, wheres kite and fight means you are totally useless in the fight if you cant attack, or debuff from range. And in all honesty, kite and fight/ tank and range was way more popular in ffxi than tank and spank.

One major problem is that in ffxi, while melee excelled at regular fights, they were less than stellar in hard fights/boss fights for most of thier careers. And most of the game allowed you to avoid regular fights, and just fight the bosses.

They need to not make most bosses weak to ranged attacks, Its fine for some bosses, not every fight should be the same, but it should not always be the answer. They also need to have more group fights, with varied enemy types, or bosses that have multiple targetable pieces that are acting as a group fight.

They probably need to turn archer into a different type of class, being the best DD by far, with little to no real risk is not a good idea. They have highest spike, and highest dot, and have various CC options. I mean at least thaum is not hax on regular monsters. Theoretically if most bosses are in a dungeon, the thaum is only owning on the Boss, only if that boss has a high Drank/defense, and emulate only usefull if it is primarily magical. Archer on the other hand does even better damage in fights with a few seconds between monsters, is even less likely to get hit, it does excellent spike, and more dmg over time than other DD. It even has blood letter which is likely to become job exclusive (high level class defining skill?) Thaum is a slow powerful class, but in a party versus varied mobs, its advantages arent the world. Archer on the otherhand, needs a pretty big gameplay focus change, or monsters that are designed to hate rangers and have single target ranged/close ability that hurts.




While yeah they have changes planned, they never once mentioned altering ranged / melee balance on high level content.

While I can see the point and sort of agree with it, your attitude need some work. Also, what you're doing in this thread is simply

"HEY SE, I DON'T EXACTLY KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING BUT I SOMEHOW ALREADY KNOW YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG AND I'M ASKING THAT YOU DO IT RIGHT, HOWEVER I WON'T EXACTLY GIVE PROPER IDEAS ABOUT HOW. ALSO: EVERYONE DISAGREEING WITH ME IS AN INEXPERIENCED CHEESER, TEE~HEE"

which is far from being constructive criticism.

I always hated most of the most difficult bosses in RPGs, because by "difficult" developers almost always resort to "find the imbalance and whore it." They can't come up with good fights, so they just throw whatever cliche difficulties they can at it, then test it to make sure it's actually beatable no matter how lame the tactic is.

The devs have continued that tradition of lazy design into the MMO world, where "find the imbalance and whore it" has much more negative repercussions to the game balance than in an offline MMO.

The imbalance-get strategies are what makes people feel SMRT about winning a MMO for the first 6 months of its life, then for the next 6 years it's actually a liability to the game's overall lasting quality. That's why people don't use KOTR as a crutch in FF7 any more if they play it. What's the use? Where's the fun?

Archering archer on your archer is just not a good investment strategy for FF14 to be messing around with. Sure it might make a few power-drunk archers enjoy the game, but it's really just a sad copout.

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Originally Posted by AdvancedWind

While I can see the point and sort of agree with it, your attitude need some work. Also, what you're doing in this thread is simply

"HEY SE, I DON'T EXACTLY KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING BUT I SOMEHOW ALREADY KNOW YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG AND I'M ASKING THAT YOU DO IT RIGHT, HOWEVER I WON'T EXACTLY GIVE PROPER IDEAS ABOUT HOW. ALSO: EVERYONE DISAGREEING WITH ME IS AN INEXPERIENCED CHEESER, TEE~HEE"

which is far from being constructive criticism.

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My attitude is in response to almost a decade of over-privileged, spoiled imbalance-getting players who WANT that entitlement and job imbalance so they can hide that they're not very good players.

Constructive criticism has little role when you have infestation of moles in your yard who have no interest in discussing this rationally. They want their archer. They want their power. They don't care what it does to summoners, unless summoners become powerful and imbalanced then they'll level that.

They don't want lancers to be competitive with mages and archers. So out comes the attitude that their mentality is a threat to the game and needs exterminated. Not persuaded.

Whoever designed archer and thaumaturge has no business here. They completely failed, and the only reason imbalance isn't running amok in this game is because nothing matters and the game's difficulty mode is defaultly set at "very easy."

Bump it up to medium difficulty...just medium...and it is an archerburn and thaumafest. Nothing more required.

As one of your peers put it for your side, why even make it hard on yourself? There's archer and thaumaturge. And he's proud of that statement.

This is where the attitude comes from. Constantly addressing people who are a threat to a quality game because they can't feel powerful and special unless they play broken and imbalanced shovelware.

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Originally Posted by Peregrine

You can fight the systems that are designed to keep weak players accepted based on what imbalanced jobs they ride on.
You can demand equality as a PUP. Will the blms, rdms, brds, rngs, and their ilk scoff and snicker again? Of course. You're a threat to how special they're treated. Without you down there, they can't be up where they think they are.

As they pathetically kite, hide, and cower at the game's difficulty, then brag about how good they are lol...

Stand up, PUP. Take what belongs to you.

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I took what belonged to me, the right to enjoy what I invested countless hours in. After a while the effort wore me thin however and I leveled other jobs. What essentially drove me away from XI was the jobs I enjoyed ( DNC PUP SCH COR BLU) all had rivals that were much more accepted. Partially due to community/player creativity, and greatly due to lack of job balance - - looking at it from a technical perspective.

Considering how many things went wrong with XIV and its premature release, I assume job balance was simply another to add to the list. We don't really have much of an endgame right now, and the fact that abilities are being reworked, some from ground up, shows much promise.

While I admire your efforts Peregrine, I don't believe you're going to start a revolution, nor much great change. You may either post ideas on how to improve the system, or take what they give you. If you feel it's not your position as a consumer (as you are not a developer of SE) to do so, than there are other options as far as MMO's go out there.

[EDIT]: Screw it, no sense trying to talk to a wall.

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Originally Posted by Issachar

[EDIT]: Screw it, no sense trying to talk to a wall.

"Why do things the hard way, when the guaranteed way is easier?"

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Issachar, I'm going to include your signature tagline here, and contrast that with Matsui-san's goals for the battle system revamp:

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Originally Posted by Akihiko_Matsui

Fostering Skillful Play
Creating a battle system that fosters skillful play.
The above is, in a sentence, the rationale behind the coming battle changes. Not exactly the punchiest catchphrase around, but perhaps there’s kindly a soul out there who could word it better. */poke Yoshi-P*

To elaborate, we are aiming to address issues such as the following:
Victories coming with little reliance on skillful play.
Lack of information needed for skillful play.
No sense of accomplishment even with skillful play.
In light of the above, our objective is to implement a battle system that rewards player effort and innovation in such areas as equipment, hunting grounds, and party structure.

Lastly, in conceiving these changes, we have kept one fact close to heart: simply making enemies stronger does not equate to an environment that fosters and rewards skillful play.

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Easy =/= Fun
also,
Hard =/= Fun (see the part where he says "simply making enemies stronger does not equate to an environment that fosters and rewards skillful play" ?)

If you want the easy way, let me point you at this game : http://www.kongregate.com/games/back...uilder-classic

However, for my part, I agree with Matsui-san's vision of encouraging skillful play.

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Originally Posted by Peregrine

Regimens and skillchains are proof that the population will quit any semblance of tactics and teamwork if mindless zerging is easier and competitive. The whole problem with class whoring is the fact that the players who do it over and over in MMOs are weaker than the devs are giving them credit for. They can't handle complexity when simplicity is competitive. They can't even win the fights as-designed for the general demographic.

They take archerx6 to fights because they're not good players, not because they ARE good players. The game difficulty is set to medium. They reset it to easy because they can't play on medium because it's frustrating to them. They have a high golf handicap. And instead of being made fun of because of it, they're encouraged to brag about how weak they are and how imbalanced their setups have to be for them to succeed in the game.

Don't even let that kind of player think they're a success. Kill their imbalance-getting and make them be good players for once in their MMO careers.

Like I said, you can already tell who has spent their entire MMO careers abusing imbalance in this thread. They're the people who balk at someone who laughs at their ranger ranger ranger ranger ranger ranger "innovation." They think they're great, when honestly they're not. That's why they need these lame tactics.

Take them from them. Maybe they'll get better and step up their game.

My guess is, though, that if you take certain players' access to imbalance as a means to progress and achieve in MMOs...they'll fall off the curve because they were never good to begin with without that developer subsidy.

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Peregrine, I'm mostly on-board with you. Really I am. Not all the world is your enemy :).

However, I want to sound a few issues:

1. Don't go overboard. If OPed Archers are bad and will ruin the game, then OPed meleers are bad and will ALSO ruin the game. I don't want either situation. Just because Rangers and Black Mages wrecked FFXI for a few years does NOT justify punishing players in FFXIV that choose to play CON, THM or ARC.
2. We need to give the battle team more positive, constructive ideas. You have beat the drum well and truly, and I think everyone can agree that you have ... persistence. I can't possibly imagine the Matsui-san is not aware of this, at this point. However, what are the mechanics that encourage party diversity, and prevent the cheeseball tactics that lead to the exclusion of certain classes?

Perhaps another thread could be started, where such constructive thoughts can be gathered together into a nice digestible chunk for Bayohne to pass along to the battle team.

In the meantime, continue beating your drum, and sounding the impending doom that approaches ! :D

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Originally Posted by Amineri

Issachar, I'm going to include your signature tagline here, and contrast that with Matsui-san's goals for the battle system revamp:



Easy =/= Fun
also,
Hard =/= Fun (see the part where he says "simply making enemies stronger does not equate to an environment that fosters and rewards skillful play" ?)

If you want the easy way, let me point you at this game : http://www.kongregate.com/games/back...uilder-classic

However, for my part, I agree with Matsui-san's vision of encouraging skillful play.

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Don't let my sig mislead you. I love a good challenge. But in most cases, I'd rather go about proven, tried-and-true route than take the road less travelled (though being a BLU main kind of makes me a hypocrite?). That doesn't always mean the guaranteed way lacks skill or substance, but rather avoids uneccesary difficulty where due. Kind of like Ark Angels strategies in FFXI...I'd rather go with the BLM nuke approach than try to fight them head on with multiple tanks.

In summary: The quote is to suggest that doing things the known, proven way will save you stress in the end. That doesn't mean that if you try to do things the hard way, you're stupid...just a piece of advice to provoke thought as to "Is doing this the hard way worth it?". To each their own :) And I hope this new battle system Matsui is detailing provides breathing room so certain things aren't so restricting like FFXI's challenges were.

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Originally Posted by Issachar

Don't let my sig mislead you. I love a good challenge. But in most cases, I'd rather go about proven, tried-and-true route than take the road less travelled (though being a BLU main kind of makes me a hypocrite?). That doesn't always mean the guaranteed way lacks skill or substance, but rather avoids uneccesary difficulty where due. Kind of like Ark Angels strategies in FFXI...I'd rather go with the BLM nuke approach than try to fight them head on with multiple tanks.

In summary: The quote is to suggest that doing things the known, proven way will save you stress in the end. That doesn't mean that if you try to do things the hard way, you're stupid...just a piece of advice to provoke thought as to "Is doing this the hard way worth it?". To each their own :) And I hope this new battle system Matsui is detailing provides breathing room so certain things aren't so restricting like FFXI's challenges were.

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Your way is a mediocre player's playpen. They should never give mediocre players the means to succeed if they want a successful and truly rewarding game.

Flocking to chickenwuss tactics is the lowest common denominator. This game deserves better than gimps riding bards and rangers to glory. The only players who want that kind of game are the gimps who need such imbalance to succeed.

Us Drgs, Pups, Thfs and drks will do just fine without their high golf handicaps.

I wasn't talking to you, girlscout. And I'll have you know that DRG was my main from Zilart until ToAU, as well as my first 75. Long before you ever touched the game, I'm thoroughly convinced by now. Just because you bought the game the first day it was out on X360 doesn't make you a vet.

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Originally Posted by Amineri

such constructive thoughts can be gathered together into a nice digestible chunk for Bayohne to pass along to the battle team.

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How it should be done should be left up to the developers, who know what they have planned. What needs done can absolutely be said. How it should be done is speculative.

Reward diversity.
Block same-job stacking synergy.
Eliminate cliche challenge mechanisms that result in predictable advantages of the same jobs.
Prevent ranged jobs dominating endgame.
Eliminate job stigmas before they occur.
Do not allow imbalance to snowball.

How? Depends on what you have planned. Regardless, those things need exquisite attention to detail otherwise you have that guy up there, telling everyone to go level archer if they want to be "useful" and "guaranteed."

Same argument that guy makes is the same argument that kept thief off the roster for years. Why invite thief when the archer and warrior are guaranteed sp per hour. He's an apologist for the broken system, and a patron of it.

And as for that patron of the "guaranteed"...Meleer since the beginning of XI, son. You may have given up and sold out. I didn't.

You be the first to level bard though. I'm sure it'll help my meleer out, but I'm not going to treat you any differently than the summoner.

"Selling out" in an MMO is akin to selling out by switching from Coke to Pepsi. I switched to BLU because I enjoyed it more, even if it didn't contribute as much as a generic SAM or whatnot.

And I was one of the people that kept THF off the map. And kept THF out of endgame roles other than having them proc TH, because RNG just plain did it better. Nothing against THF, but it's biggest role has mostly been increasing droprate. Sorry bud.

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Originally Posted by Issachar

Don't let my sig mislead you. I love a good challenge. But in most cases, I'd rather go about proven, tried-and-true route than take the road less travelled (though being a BLU main kind of makes me a hypocrite?). That doesn't always mean the guaranteed way lacks skill or substance, but rather avoids uneccesary difficulty where due. Kind of like Ark Angels strategies in FFXI...I'd rather go with the BLM nuke approach than try to fight them head on with multiple tanks.

In summary: The quote is to suggest that doing things the known, proven way will save you stress in the end. That doesn't mean that if you try to do things the hard way, you're stupid...just a piece of advice to provoke thought as to "Is doing this the hard way worth it?". To each their own :) And I hope this new battle system Matsui is detailing provides breathing room so certain things aren't so restricting like FFXI's challenges were.

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Thank you for not taking offense at my weak attempt at hyperbole.

I guess I am one of the silly people that does things the hard way "just because" :D. That said, if the Matsui-san and the rest of the development team DON'T create a balanced system, no one can really blame people for using and abusing the system.

It's like people blaming consumers for buying a cheaper item over a more expensive one.

In the end, they question to ask is : Is such a system that promotes exclusionary behavior a fun game?

All this garbage about whether it makes you a "good" player or a "bad" player is just a waste. I vote for a system where all the classes / jobs bring something to the table. We could call it ... the "No Class Left Behind" initiative. :D

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Originally Posted by Issachar

"Selling out" in an MMO is akin to selling out by switching from Coke to Pepsi. I switched to BLU because I enjoyed it more, even if it didn't contribute as much as a generic SAM or whatnot.

And I was one of the people that kept THF off the map. And kept THF out of endgame roles other than having them proc TH, because RNG just plain did it better. Nothing against THF, but it's biggest role has mostly been increasing droprate. Sorry bud.

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so what peregrine is really saying is they shouldnt make the guaranteed way of winning be biased towards 1 or 2 classes. Theif should never have been created as being only useful for increasing drop rate. Making a bunch of black mages having an easier time with a fight than a balanced party, is poor planning, at best they should have had just as likely a chance at failure, that they were guaranteed was a failure in battle design

Far as the guaranteed routes, or the tested ways of doing something, the problem with that is you re always a follower, and those types never find the new ways, or other ways of dealing with things. There was a time when people said you needed 32 people to beat dynamis, until some other people came in there and did it with 10. There were times when everyone said getting 5k an hour was as good as it gets, till people figured out how to get 10. The tested and guaranteed methods arent always the best, but the fact that people think like this has most people just playing formula in thier jobs, following someone elses faq on how to play. I have done things nobody thought i could or should do, and made it hot, by taking the data available and figuring out how to make things work in different ways.

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Originally Posted by Peregrine

How it should be done should be left up to the developers, who know what they have planned. What needs done can absolutely be said. How it should be done is speculative.

Reward diversity.
Block same-job stacking synergy.
Eliminate cliche challenge mechanisms that result in predictable advantages of the same jobs.
Prevent ranged jobs dominating endgame.
Eliminate job stigmas before they occur.
Do not allow imbalance to snowball.

How? Depends on what you have planned. /snip

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Just so. However, I don't expect that Matsui-san et al are miracle workers. And tossing out possible ideas that they can pick through to incorporate or reject is probably more productive than .... other things >_>''

• Reward diversity.
  Battle regimens did this beautifully. Each successive weaponskill from a different class added roughly +50% damage. If BRs can be polished up a bit, then a mixed team can outdamage a homogeneous team.
• Block same-job stacking synergy.
  Give bosses self defense buffs against one damage type, say -50% damage to a particular type. The boss uses the buff to counter whatever the majority damage is. If a team is doing 80% projectile damage, suddenly their damage drops overall by 40%.
• Eliminate cliche challenge mechanisms that result in predictable advantages of the same jobs.
  This is the biggest area where we could contribute. Creativity under pressure is HARD. Matsui-san and Yoshi-P have to be under a ton of pressure. I don't have any suggestions here, though ...
• Prevent ranged jobs dominating endgame.
• Eliminate job stigmas before they occur.
• Do not allow imbalance to snowball.

I'm not sure about the rest, but have to head to dinner. I'll either edit later or respond if anyone cares to toss in some ideas.

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Originally Posted by Amineri

Thank you for not taking offense at my weak attempt at hyperbole.

I guess I am one of the silly people that does things the hard way "just because" :D. That said, if the Matsui-san and the rest of the development team DON'T create a balanced system, no one can really blame people for using and abusing the system.

It's like people blaming consumers for buying a cheaper item over a more expensive one.

In the end, they question to ask is : Is such a system that promotes exclusionary behavior a fun game?

All this garbage about whether it makes you a "good" player or a "bad" player is just a waste. I vote for a system where all the classes / jobs bring something to the table. We could call it ... the "No Class Left Behind" initiative. :D

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I like your ideas...and I think they can work providing they don't oversaturate FFXIV with too many classes/jobs. The more options you have, the bigger the window for imbalance.

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Originally Posted by Amineri

Just so. However, I don't expect that Matsui-san et al are miracle workers. And tossing out possible ideas that they can pick through to incorporate or reject is probably more productive than .... other things >_>''

• Reward diversity.
  Battle regimens did this beautifully. Each successive weaponskill from a different class added roughly +50% damage. If BRs can be polished up a bit, then a mixed team can outdamage a homogeneous team.
• Block same-job stacking synergy.
  Give bosses self defense buffs against one damage type, say -50% damage to a particular type. The boss uses the buff to counter whatever the majority damage is. If a team is doing 80% projectile damage, suddenly their damage drops overall by 40%.
• Eliminate cliche challenge mechanisms that result in predictable advantages of the same jobs.
  This is the biggest area where we could contribute. Creativity under pressure is HARD. Matsui-san and Yoshi-P have to be under a ton of pressure. I don't have any suggestions here, though ...
• Prevent ranged jobs dominating endgame.
• Eliminate job stigmas before they occur.
• Do not allow imbalance to snowball.

I'm not sure about the rest, but have to head to dinner. I'll either edit later or respond if anyone cares to toss in some ideas.

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Agree with this post 100% Great points and suggestions brought forward. Really puts Peregrine's points into perspective too, and hopefully they'll be viewing this.

The Devs need to react to job imbalances faster than it has in the past and stand by what the original jobs roles are and not encourage deviating over sticking to their roles. In xi the first job i chose to lv was RDM and while the first 30 levels? maybe allowed me to stick to the melee mage ethos beyound that it became pretty much impossible. Rdm bassically became pink mage in party play beyound that point cycling through refresh haste and cures. Dragoon was my first 75 so i never level'd jobs over their popularity and waiting hours for a party invite was apart of the job description because the unpopularity of the job had gone unchanged for so long at the time.

I did eventually lv rdm to 75 but nothing ever came along that made me particularly enjoy playing the job. I was hopeful when there was talk about bringing RDM to the frontlines but enspell II's was never out weigh the adding of Refresh II and a new set of elemental staves. Im not disputing RDM's usefullness as a job in xi because it was capable of a great many things largely because of utsusemi and fast cast but it just never was rdm to me unless i was out soloing with my sword. I havent played xi in the past few months so i dont know if things have changed drastically or not but from what i can see through the web it doesnt really seem like any real change has been made to rdm though i suppose considering its popularity as healer its not really a priority.

Corrections need to come in a timely manner or else the community will decide what the roles of each job will be as xi has proven on many occasions.

I have a thought: Why do Mobs always gain TP from the melees during a fight?

Why not have a monster gain TP automatically but melees disrupt and decrease the Mob's TP?

The Mob tries to sleep/stun/incapacitate the melees so it can gain it's TP move.

Mages need to pay attention to Status Effects as well as Heals.

Tanks do what they always do.

Archers would be no better or worse than any DD except somewhat less desirable with mob control.
(just don't stand next to the mages)

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Originally Posted by Issachar

"Selling out" in an MMO is akin to selling out by switching from Coke to Pepsi. I switched to BLU because I enjoyed it more, even if it didn't contribute as much as a generic SAM or whatnot.

And I was one of the people that kept THF off the map. And kept THF out of endgame roles other than having them proc TH, because RNG just plain did it better. Nothing against THF, but it's biggest role has mostly been increasing droprate. Sorry bud.

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I think that's the entire point here. Someone who wants to enjoy THF for everything it has to offer is often not given the opportunity since the formula is 1 THF only and one purpose only TH

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Originally Posted by Issachar

"Selling out" in an MMO is akin to selling out by switching from Coke to Pepsi. I switched to BLU because I enjoyed it more, even if it didn't contribute as much as a generic SAM or whatnot.

And I was one of the people that kept THF off the map. And kept THF out of endgame roles other than having them proc TH, because RNG just plain did it better. Nothing against THF, but it's biggest role has mostly been increasing droprate. Sorry bud.

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No, selling out is a blue mage who represses the thief job after blue mage was designed with thief's input in mind so thief never happens again. You can just say thank you.

You're playing the role of Benny in The Mummy, sucking up to the villain and agreeing to foil the heroes for a little pocket change and status for yourself. If they don't invite the thief, they're more likely to invite a player like you and so naturally you take that deal. People who think and behave like you snowball the problem. You flock to imbalance, and discard diversity at the drop of a hat, and you like how it rewards you. You don't care how many dragoons and thieves and dark knights have to sit out, because you're not them.

Keep in mind that in early FFXI, every meleer. Warriors. Sams. Monks. All of them were gimps. All of them sat in town if teams had their choice. You're hypocritical. And again, you sold out a long time ago. Of course you went straight to archer this time. That's the kind of player you choose to be and the kind of imbalance power you choose to follow around.

Your "guaranteed" ways are mediocre gameplay for mediocre players who consider themselves great. They should never even let you all enter raids or Ifrit fights with your five archers or 8 thaumaturges.

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Originally Posted by Davorok

I have a thought: Why do Mobs always gain TP from the melees during a fight?

Why not have a monster gain TP automatically but melees disrupt and decrease the Mob's TP?

The Mob tries to sleep/stun/incapacitate the melees so it can gain it's TP move.

Mages need to pay attention to Status Effects as well as Heals.

Tanks do what they always do.

Archers would be no better or worse than any DD except somewhat less desirable with mob control.
(just don't stand next to the mages)

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Ironically...well as stupidly balanced as the classes are I guess it's to be expected...there is a job that makes the mob's TP go down every time they do a normal attack.


It's archer. Five archers together is effectively a TP lock, and they don't even have to change the way they play. It automatically happens when they use a simple heavy shot 1-mash. Again, balance in this game is a joke right now.

As your peer so lazily puts it, when archers are a guaranteed TP lock, what use is lancer and their twisting vice? TP down battle regimen? Marauder's Siphon TP?

None.

I wish the best for FFXIV and its players. I can't imagine anything to bring back life to the game. All there is left is hope in the FF series ^^

Reward Diversity
-Party bonus: Strength in Diversity. Share the burden of the fight efficiently, decreasing stamina costs. Effectively haste.

Prevent job-stacking synergy
-Eliminate buff preservation on hit 2 and 3 of multishot
-Change archer's heavy shot to a status effect that can be multipliedx3, reduces regain instead of depletes TP.
-Enemy rage mode or enhanced weaponskill activation for damage dominated by DoT or certain types of damage. Enemy protection from 1-shot TKO methods (chi blasting, manaburning, multishot*5).

Eliminate cliché challenge
-Enhance unique gameplay features involved in 20% boss overdrive modes
-Reduce reliance on heavier AoE, more frequent AoE, and 1-shot weaponskills in 20% boss overdrive modes.
-Add status effect doughnut abilities to penalize ranged attack on bosses to compensate for any meleeing AoE's implemented: 1:1 ratio overall.
-Enhance access to key abilities like stun if stunning is implemented as a required tactic.
-Enhance access to true crowd control, or reduce occasions where difficulty primarily lies in the N of the enemy group. Eg: marauder: AoE petrify (pseudosleep). Pugilist: Knockout (single-target pseudosleep). Lancer: Pacify (lock an enemy in a hold, sacrificing your actions to prevent theirs)

Prevent ranged jobs from dominating endgame
-Enhance meleer output. Balance output required for fights to ensure ranged damage is usually insufficient to succeed alone.
-Eliminate TP-feeding argument on bosses that prevent light DPS meleeing
-Provide meleers party strengths that they are actually invited for (Marauder's aren't invited to AoE, or CC, pugs aren't invited to tank)

Eliminate job stigmas quickly
-Respond to warning signs of job impotency (lolmrd comments, anti-lnc arguments, pug is a waste of a party slot, why invite X when there's Y to do it better) quickly, first with verbal acknowledgement that the job is insufficient and that a patch will be produced within 3 months= of the start of warning signs.

Do not allow imbalance to snowball
-monitor Youtube for bragging tactic videos using repetitive styles.
-Edit new: Record setups brought to and results of key battles to monitor for imbalanced shifts in player choices.
-Quickly incorporate player-designed tactics into the game by modifying and approving the tactic officially, or patch an unacceptable tactic. Time frame: within 1 month of discovering the tactics' use.
-Fix all imbalances within a period of level cycling to prevent an entire generation of players levelling a job just for the imbalance and effectively rendering balance correction unpopular by biased participation.

:C Nothing was more annoying in FFXI than that.

Person>> Need 1 more for Nyzul.
Me>> Can I come as a 75 Pld?
Person>> No.

Couldn't go to Salvage, couldn't do Einherjar, not liked in Merit parties, Not allowed in some fights like proto-ultima where Nin/drks were wanted. (Hate Nins, and their utusemi hope they don't ever show up in FFXIV)

A Paladin should be good for every fight.

If it happens in this game where I can't join something cause of my class, be grateful if you are the one saying that to me, that I can't kick you in the face.

Though I am 50 Con/Thm I am not a healer. I hate healing, I'll fall asleep I am not kidding.

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Originally Posted by Davorok

I have a thought: Why do Mobs always gain TP from the melees during a fight?

Why not have a monster gain TP automatically but melees disrupt and decrease the Mob's TP?

The Mob tries to sleep/stun/incapacitate the melees so it can gain it's TP move.

Mages need to pay attention to Status Effects as well as Heals.

Tanks do what they always do.

Archers would be no better or worse than any DD except somewhat less desirable with mob control.
(just don't stand next to the mages)

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I think that conceptually this is the role that Lancers are to play. Moonrise (slows Mob TP generation and makes Mob TP powers cost more) and Twisting Vice (completely eliminates Mobs current TB) lets a lancer nearly completely shut down a Mob's special abilities, subject to misses and evasions, naturally, this comes at the cost of reducing Lancer damage output, though.

In the current system, though, both Moonrise and Twisting Vice can be used cross-class. Archers get a basic attack Heavy Shot (hence usable only by archers) that damage Mob TP. So, in the current system, an Archer equips Pikemanship (increase LNC affinity), equips Moonrise and Twisting Vice, and uses Heavy Shot, so now damages does the job better then a Lancer.

I fully anticipate Twisting Vice being made into a Lancer-only ability during the reworking going on, if only because it is one of the only abilities that costs five points to equip (hence in my fevered imagination the dev team 'almost' made it a class ability).

However, I also don't want to see a situation where a Lancer is REQUIRED in a party, nor do I want to see parties of 7 Lancers + THM that win by never allowing the enemy to use a special attack. To me that's just another cheesy, boring tactic akin to 7 Archers and a THM.

Awesome ideas, Peregrine.
I'll add some of my own thoughts in red. Feel free to keep or toss.

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Originally Posted by Peregrine

Reward Diversity
-Party bonus: Strength in Diversity. Share the burden of the fight efficiently, decreasing stamina costs. Effectively haste.
-Change Light Party / Full Party bonuses to only count number of distinct job/class combos.

Prevent job-stacking synergy
-Eliminate buff preservation on hit 2 and 3 of multishot
-Change archer's heavy shot to a status effect that can be multipliedx3, reduces regain instead of depletes TP.
-Enemy rage mode or enhanced weaponskill activation for damage dominated by DoT or certain types of damage. Enemy protection from 1-shot TKO methods (chi blasting, manaburning, multishot*5).
-Introduce mob buffs that generate diminishing returns for the same damage type. E.g. after taking (slash/pierce/etc) damage type, further (slash/pierce/etc) damage type is reduced by 10% for 4 seconds.

Eliminate cliché challenge
-Enhance unique gameplay features involved in 20% boss overdrive modes
-Reduce reliance on heavier AoE, more frequent AoE, and 1-shot weaponskills in 20% boss overdrive modes.
-Add status effect doughnut abilities to penalize ranged attack on bosses to compensate for any meleeing AoE's implemented: 1:1 ratio overall.
-'Doughnut' abilities could include very long range AoEs that do greater damage / lower stun at close range, and lower damage / longer stun at long range.
-Grant melee classes reactive defensive abilities to mitigate AoE damage (e.g. reduce damage of next AoE attack by 50%)
-Enhance access to key abilities like stun if stunning is implemented as a required tactic.
-Enhance access to true crowd control, or reduce occasions where difficulty primarily lies in the N of the enemy group. Eg: marauder: AoE petrify (pseudosleep). Pugilist: Knockout (single-target pseudosleep). Lancer: Pacify (lock an enemy in a hold, sacrificing your actions to prevent theirs) Gladiator: Reactive Strike (Gladiator stun-interrupts targets next action, but any gladiator action interrupts ability)

Prevent ranged jobs from dominating endgame
-Enhance meleer output. Balance output required for fights to ensure ranged damage is usually insufficient to succeed alone.
-Eliminate TP-feeding argument on bosses that prevent light DPS meleeing
-Provide meleers party strengths that they are actually invited for (Marauder's aren't invited to AoE, or CC, pugs aren't invited to tank)
-Introduce mechanics that prevent all enemies from targeting the same target (i.e. "harasser" minion that cannot target same player as boss)
-Introduce enemies that are primarily ranged, and inflict greater damage at long range / lesser damage at short range
- Introduce "thickened air" shields, where the amount of damage is reduced proportionally to the distance between player and enemy
- Introduce bubble shields (ala Limsa opening cut scene) that prevent players from outside the shield from inflicting damage until the body part generating the shield is incapacitated.

Eliminate job stigmas quickly
-Respond to warning signs of job impotency (lolmrd comments, anti-lnc arguments, pug is a waste of a party slot, why invite X when there's Y to do it better) quickly, first with verbal acknowledgement that the job is insufficient and that a patch will be produced within 3 months= of the start of warning signs.

Do not allow imbalance to snowball
-monitor Youtube for bragging tactic videos using repetitive styles.
-Quickly incorporate player-designed tactics into the game by modifying and approving the tactic officially, or patch an unacceptable tactic. Time frame: within 1 month of discovering the tactics' use.
-Fix all imbalances within a period of level cycling to prevent an entire generation of players levelling a job just for the imbalance and effectively rendering balance correction unpopular by biased participation.
-Build tool that logs party composition of parties that engage bosses. Trend the results.
-Have GMs spot-check and observe boss fights, looking for imbalance. Introduce new abilities and/or tactics to bosses to counter imbalanced tactics.

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Recording data on party setups and results on important fights is a great idea. It quantifies to what degree the players are flocking to imbalance to win or even try.

If they see that 3/4 teams that win ouryu fights are just stacks of black mages, then clearly there's a problem.

The biggest problem with systems that work that way is even if you are a mage/tank/range, the party will then FORCE you to play the EXACT way they want, and there is no room for 'playstyle' at all.

I stopped partying altogether after I hit lvl 60 RDM in XI, because I wasn't ALLOWED to smack the mob with my staff, I wasn't ALLOWED to nuke it, and I HAD to main heal, I HAD to refresh/regen/haste/protect/shell EVERYONE, and I HAD to debuff the mob, and I wasn't ALLOWED to have any downtime whatsoever. Even the best of the best RDMs can't keep up with all that shit. Personally I was able to do ALL the buffs/debuffs they wanted and have zero downtime...but then they also insisted I MAIN heal, and I couldn't get a party if I wouldn't do it. And when I'd try I'd get downtime (mind you I was a taru with MP+ gear) and then they'd bitch at me and kick me from the pt.

So my biggest fear is that all this 'innovation' will pidgeonhole me into a playstyle and make players make unreasonable demands of other players.

Being told how to play your class is bad, but being told you have to play a particular class is worse.

It's the difference between "Play your RDM exactly this way or get kicked" versus "lolRDM. Go rank up a Ranger if you want to join."

I'd rather see each class have multiple possible roles, and some freedom, but some people (most, even?) tend to flock to certain tactics. The only way to avoid that is in the company you keep. :(

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Originally Posted by Peregrine

I would implement regimens and strategies that gain exponential momentum based on the different classes in it, and I would make them so beneficial that teams that whore out jobs for imbalance have a difficult time keeping up. Thus, a party with only two or three kinds of classes or jobs in it is always inferior to a party with 6 classes or jobs in it. People flock to imbalance too easily. The solution is to OP balance.

Or have a status effect, where if your party is balanced, you get enhancements like comrade in arms. "Strength in Diversity"--TP regain? Attack and potency boost? Regimen output+30%?

The solution is to overpower balance. Reward diversity. Don't just sit there and develop challenge that benefits the same stunners, sleepers, spike damagers, and ranged attackers as always.

But I'm not in the business of saying how it should be done. I only care about what needs done. I don't care how it's done honestly. You cannot put hackneyed challenge checks into this game, or it'll instantly become and archer and thaumafest.

Honestly my solution to archer is to give meleers multishot. Archers have no business avoiding AoE while being the kings of spike and DPS.

Thaumaturge...yeah it's just a matter of fiddling with their abilities. I like the idea of a magical tank, but if they're the magical tank...they'd best be paying for that with a big fat damage reduction like gladiator does.

They've already proven they can kick the player base's habit of inviting as few people as you can, to the point where parties actively want more people as opposed to wanting as few as possible. They've already designed content where strangers who NM hunt are better off pairing up and helping each other out rather than countercamping.

They can create a system where job diversity is celebrated, not intentionally avoided because it just dilutes good jobs with bad ones.

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At first I didn't know what to think about you, but now I think I might like you even though I slightly disagree in the following....

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Originally Posted by Peregrine

Then it is the SITUATIONS that need changed.

Stop making every boss go berserk at 20% life and start spamming AoEs and power attacks. That only plays to stacking archers that can spike it down at the end and mages who don't get hit. It plays against meleers who are at that point simply sitting ducks.

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I think instead of that, maybe SE should make rage give said NM a boost to range attack AND AoE-range to the point that ranged classes would be hit by an AoE if they want to stick in range that would also prevent them from simply getting out of 'range' to avoid an AoE (like let's say a ranged attack is 20m, well the AoE range normally would be 15m, but then upon Rage, it'd be boosted to 40m).

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Stop relying on "stun" innovations to avoid death unless all the jobs have stun.

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Definitely!

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Stop making fights more challenging by simply adding more numbers of enemies. That plays to mages and spike damagers who can immediately take enemies out of the picture. Divine might, what did you do? You Chi blasted or manabursted something to win that, by the demographic none of you probably fought that fight toe to toe with them. You did SOMETHING to avoid the challenge, and I guarantee the dragoon had nothing to do with it.

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OR make those adds AoE-resistant as well?

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If you're going to design fights that cater to certain jobs, you can't keep designing the same stupid mechanics that keep playing to the same jobs. If you can't design a fight where you can make a dragoon as wanted as a black mage, your game needs balancing work. Your dragoon needs help.

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Amen.

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Originally Posted by Tsuga

Things like that would be great, but then you have the issue of being forced to have a certain job type. What if nobody from your LS has levelled that job, or there's nobody free online from one of those jobs? It's the same issue that we had in XI where we couldn't even level unless we had a fairly specific setup for a party.

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Then your linkshell has a problem. Even the most social linkshells have at least a job or two from each major archetype.

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Originally Posted by Peregrine

Recording data on party setups and results on important fights is a great idea. It quantifies to what degree the players are flocking to imbalance to win or even try.

If they see that 3/4 teams that win ouryu fights are just stacks of black mages, then clearly there's a problem.

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Let's get married. :3

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Originally Posted by Dragon

I slightly disagree with eliminating boss overdrive modes.

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While the idea is admirable, for a lot of party team setups that don't insist on bringing imbalance to the fights, these epic battles are difficult enough. In FFXI the balance in fights was so skewed to pleasing the players who took imbalance to fight after fight that many balanced teams never even get to the overdrive mode, or if they do they're already hurting and don't stand a chance.

The natural response to that statement by those people who use imbalance is to "get better" but they're not good players themselves so that response is hypocritical. They're just bringing overpowered imbalance and letting it win that fight for them. Their jobs win fights. They don't win fights. They'd do just as poorly with setups many of us used, and those setups look more respectable and honest than the ones typically used to move up the CoP ranks.

I can't think of a good overdrive balance that won't discard all meleers and people who can't AoE, stun, ranged attack, or spike damage, so to me it's got to be fundamentally changed or dropped if a solution can't be reached.

You have people who flock to imbalance, making the game brokenly easy on themselves, arguing that the game should be harder to please them and their playstyles. Their entire playstyle is the problem. They only choose the setups that by default kill every other setup. They only need two or three kinds of these setups.

They don't understand how monochromatic that makes the game, when you make the game as difficult as the player-rigged imbalance-gets are overpowered. Then the game just becomes a playground for archers and thaumaturges, and no other team stands a chance.

Unfortunately you have archers and thaumaturges going I'm okay with that. Sucks to be you all.
So a good third of players are all for sticking to the status quo where they'll be doted on and respected because of their job, not because of who they are.