[dev1072] Abolition of Physical Levels / Attribute Point Revisions Discussion

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Originally Posted by Physic

sorry bro, all indications is they are slowly killing all individuality in this game. jobs supposed to limit your skill choices, much less freedom in stat allocation etc, the direction is getting to be obvious.

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You are given an illusion of freedom. The DMG output of cross classing is pretty much of the same range between each of the other WS abilities when you sub them. Stats are a illusion towards your freedom as well.

While most people seem to think that they do little to nothing, that is only because they don't fully understand the system currently. In most instances this is true about them not giving much performance. This is due to your stat, let's say, STR pushing either against or exceeding the mob's VIT. When pushing against the mob's VIT you'll see an increase of the effectiveness and consistency of your character's attack, while exceeding the mob's VIT with your STR gives great diminishing results or just simple having the output stagnant.

This was mostly the case until the Darkhold. Since not very many mobs required a high degree of allotment in one stat, we just always assumed they were broken. Not the case, you noticed this especially when fighting Ogre miniboss and see your DMG cap rise significantly when raising your STR to 150-170 opposed to 100-115 due to it's very large amount of base VIT.

Now, if dungeon raiding is your bag, and knowing the effectiveness of STR in your performance there, where does that leave you? Across the board in melee, and also in THM's case, you are going to see a large amount of care alloted into mostly one stat not leaving very much anywhere else. That is actually even more cookie cutter than you believe it is (not).

The new system... might not bring much more uniqueness and freedom. We have yet to try it out to base definitive opinions on it, but to say that is taking away freedom. You don't have your freedom. It was never there to begin with. You have a system that looks like freedom, but does not amount to anything on paper. All you're getting is flashy visuals and titles.

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Originally Posted by Orca

*The impact of attributes will decrease as players gain in level; however, the benefits granted by gear will be increased.

^ A tad confused by that, seems rather like a slight overcomplexity where it isnt needed, stats getting worse the better you get but gear getting better as a trade off? =S Stats are usually the one thing i like to think i know where i stand in a game. I'm gonna try not to let my imagination run wild on that one though, everything else sounds just great so i'll wait and see how it turns out.

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So my take: Those should have been two different statements.

The first; stats have less impact as you level.. i.e. 5 str at lvl 1 is a lot more than 5 str at lvl 50..

The second; They will still be increasing the impact stats have as compared to before.

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Originally Posted by BruceyBruceyBangBang

You are given an illusion of freedom. The DMG output of cross classing is pretty much of the same range between each of the other WS abilities when you sub them. Stats are a illusion towards your freedom as well.

While most people seem to think that they do little to nothing, that is only because they don't fully understand the system currently. In most instances this is true about them not giving much performance. This is due to your stat, let's say, STR pushing either against or exceeding the mob's VIT. When pushing against the mob's VIT you'll see an increase of the effectiveness and consistency of your character's attack, while exceeding the mob's VIT with your STR gives great diminishing results or just simple having the output stagnant.

This was mostly the case until the Darkhold. Since not very many mobs required a high degree of allotment in one stat, we just always assumed they were broken. Not the case, you noticed this especially when fighting Ogre miniboss and see your DMG cap rise significantly when raising your STR to 150-170 opposed to 100-115 due to it's very large amount of base VIT.

Now, if dungeon raiding is your bag, and knowing the effectiveness of STR in your performance there, where does that leave you? Across the board in melee, and also in THM's case, you are going to see a large amount of care alloted into mostly one stat not leaving very much anywhere else. That is actually even more cookie cutter than you believe it is (not).

The new system... might not bring much more uniqueness and freedom. We have yet to try it out to base definitive opinions on it, but to say that is taking away freedom. You don't have your freedom. It was never there to begin with. You have a system that looks like freedom, but do not amount to anything on paper. All you're getting is flashy visuals and titles.

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I agree with a lot of this post, all the people claiming this game's original systems whether it be crafting, stats, the armory, the original combat system whatever were complex have very low standards I think for what complexity entails.

I have faith Square Enix will give us something better, and complexity truly worth delving into after the combat changes and all that are finished. Don't set your sights for the game so low, I don't want a WoW clone either, but let's not pretend the original game was something it wasn't which is complex/deep (unless you compare it to a WoW clone, but again set your sights higher).

I personally don't like being forced to be the same as everyone else, unless of course I have different gear, sounds a lot like other mmorpgs out there. Just becoming another gear grind.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the classes next patch, with the stats giving classes distinct strengths/weaknesses. Some classes might get mega nerfed, like if SE for example said "Oh, you're a nimble Archer who fights at range...low STR/HP and high DEX/ACC for you". For better or worse there's definitely gonna be some raging when it hits.

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Originally Posted by AlphaDragoon

It will be interesting to see what happens to the classes next patch, with the stats giving classes distinct strengths/weaknesses. Some classes might get mega nerfed, like if SE for example said "Oh, you're a nimble Archer who fights at range...low STR/HP and high DEX/ACC for you". For better or worse there's definitely gonna be some raging when it hits.

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If that's what they plan on doing they're just chasing away solo players. Especially since every mob that I've encountered has a ranged attack that defeats the purpose of binding it for ranged attacks.

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Originally Posted by BruceyBruceyBangBang

You are given an illusion of freedom. The DMG output of cross classing is pretty much of the same range between each of the other WS abilities when you sub them. Stats are a illusion towards your freedom as well.

While most people seem to think that they do little to nothing, that is only because they don't fully understand the system currently. In most instances this is true about them not giving much performance. This is due to your stat, let's say, STR pushing either against or exceeding the mob's VIT. When pushing against the mob's VIT you'll see an increase of the effectiveness and consistency of your character's attack, while exceeding the mob's VIT with your STR gives great diminishing results or just simple having the output stagnant.

This was mostly the case until the Darkhold. Since not very many mobs required a high degree of allotment in one stat, we just always assumed they were broken. Not the case, you noticed this especially when fighting Ogre miniboss and see your DMG cap rise significantly when raising your STR to 150-170 opposed to 100-115 due to it's very large amount of base VIT.

Now, if dungeon raiding is your bag, and knowing the effectiveness of STR in your performance there, where does that leave you? Across the board in melee, and also in THM's case, you are going to see a large amount of care alloted into mostly one stat not leaving very much anywhere else. That is actually even more cookie cutter than you believe it is (not).

The new system... might not bring much more uniqueness and freedom. We have yet to try it out to base definitive opinions on it, but to say that is taking away freedom. You don't have your freedom. It was never there to begin with. You have a system that looks like freedom, but does not amount to anything on paper. All you're getting is flashy visuals and titles.

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some of what you say is accurate, but the fact is you did have freedom, me and a friend have substantially different takes on building, there are real advantages to say adding mnd to certain builds, or how much vit you give yourself, and on pugilist DEX is a big stat, effecting criticals and evasion

I wont say that you could make anything you can imagine and it be effecient, but i will say there is definately more builds possible when you can allot your stats, versus when you have hard stats

Just for example on pug you could make a EV focused pug a VIT focus, a hybrid balanced pug, or a DD pug, by altering your stats and your skill load out, with some slight gear tweaks.

Now from what they describe you will have way less ability to change your focus,
Job restrictions on cross class skills
Much less range on stat allocation
More high end gear planned to be Specific to jobs and disciplines

the direction is clear, it seems like the techniques they seek to use to make each job feel more different, will make each player as a whole feel a lot less unique. After the planned changes i imagine, from what they say, that essentially any job will basically be the same as another guy with the same job, the main differences will be how far on the one road track you are, essentially, do you have specific gear.

I personally prefered skill allotment being the largest stat factor rather than gear choices, because it allowed for a more customized style, as well the fact that it made gear not the end all and be all of chr progression.

Not as entertaining to me, but i think there are a number of people who didnt like all the choices youd have to make, stat alotment, skill choices, gear choices. Many people enjoy a straightfoward experience, where if you say you are X you have the rest of your progression clearly outlined for you. I do not, but Im just one dude.

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Originally Posted by Murugan

I agree with a lot of this post, all the people claiming this game's original systems whether it be crafting, stats, the armory, the original combat system whatever were complex have very low standards I think for what complexity entails.

I have faith Square Enix will give us something better, and complexity truly worth delving into after the combat changes and all that are finished. Don't set your sights for the game so low, I don't want a WoW clone either, but let's not pretend the original game was something it wasn't which is complex/deep (unless you compare it to a WoW clone, but again set your sights higher).

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Im not talking about complexity, im talking about versatility. Though people didnt recognize a lot of it because many people didnt experiment, stats had very real tangible effects. Some people didnt like the DLevel factor, but for any specific level, you would see a large difference in how your skills worked with different stat builds.

As far as complexity, honestly stat allotment may have been too complex, there were a lot of factors people didnt know about, like level caps per level, what exactly, and how much a stat effected certain values, or how DLevel mitigated them. However, i wont say that whatever new system they use wont be as complex, it may be just as complex, but its obvious that it wont be as versatile, because they are limiting versatility/player choice in every step of the process.

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Originally Posted by Physic

some of what you say is accurate, but the fact is you did have freedom, me and a friend have substantially different takes on building, there are real advantages to say adding mnd to certain builds, or how much vit you give yourself, and on pugilist DEX is a big stat, effecting criticals and evasion

I wont say that you could make anything you can imagine and it be effecient, but i will say there is definately more builds possible when you can allot your stats, versus when you have hard stats

Just for example on pug you could make a EV focused pug a VIT focus, a hybrid balanced pug, or a DD pug, by altering your stats and your skill load out, with some slight gear tweaks.

Now from what they describe you will have way less ability to change your focus,
Job restrictions on cross class skills
Much less range on stat allocation
More high end gear planned to be Specific to jobs and disciplines

the direction is clear, it seems like the techniques they seek to use to make each job feel more different, will make each player as a whole feel a lot less unique. After the planned changes i imagine, from what they say, that essentially any job will basically be the same as another guy with the same job, the main differences will be how far on the one road track you are, essentially, do you have specific gear.

Not as entertaining to me, but i think there are a number of people who didnt like all the choices youd have to make, stat alotment, skill choices, gear choices. Many people enjoy a straightfoward experience, where if you say you are X you have the rest of your progression clearly outlined for you. I do not, but Im just one dude.

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That is fine if it sounds like it isn't for you, which it certainly does sound that way only a little more exaggerated by your part. In your head you are seeing it as everyone being locked into roles all the time when this is only going to take up half of the planned group content being implementing. Your cherished classes with cross class customization still will stand tall after jobs especially in a solo, duo, or trio sense. This is how it is explained, granted, I know noting more than you do only our glasses are half full; half empty.

So what you're saying is, you'd like the freedom to allot your character to a build with little effectiveness. That would be great if that were what is balanced. Most of the content doesn't call for build such as the one you described. Where would that fit in? If you look at the build on paper you're not getting much out of that allotment opposed to having the allotment rely on gear. If you desire an EVA tanking Pugilist, it's only a gear set away to define your choice with the newly calculated formulas. Opposed to the already implemented system in which most cases your DEX Eva check is exceeding mob's DEX accuracy check. This is where the illusion part comes into play. Put as much DEX in your build as you want. You are not benefiting from it. In fact, you're benefiting more from your gear's EVA with the current system than your DEX EVA check. Hmm... sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Which leads into why you are blowing up the new system in your head due to the lack of understanding you have for the current stat algorithms. You'd probably like it more than you'd think if you better understood how stats work currently and then hopefully, but not counting on it, the silver lining of the approaching new automated stat modifiers then eventual stat customization with this gear-centric and condensed attribute system. In some instances they are not that far apart in how it sounds when customization is involved, but it does sound like it will make more sense to players who dare to figure out how to best build their character. We don't need overly elaborate choices that amount to nothing in your output performance. No illusions either. We want to know when we put on this piece of gear, or post 1.20, when we put this amount into whatever stat, that there will be a noticeable improvement there.

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Originally Posted by BruceyBruceyBangBang

That is fine if it sounds like it isn't for you, which it certainly does sound that way only a little more exaggerated by your part. In your head you are seeing it as everyone being locked into roles all the time when this is only going to take up half of the planned group content being implementing. Your cherished classes with cross class customization still will stand tall after jobs especially in a solo, duo, or trio sense. This is how it is explained, granted, I know noting more than you do only our glasses are half full; half empty.

So what you're saying is, you'd like the freedom to allot your character to a build with little effectiveness. That would be great if that were what is balanced. Most of the content doesn't call for build such as the one you described. Where would that fit in? If you look at the build on paper you're not getting much out of that allotment opposed to having the allotment rely on gear. If you desire an EVA tanking Pugilist, it's only a gear set away to define your choice with the newly calculated formulas. Opposed to the already implemented system in which most cases your DEX Eva check is exceeding mob's DEX accuracy check. This is where the illusion part comes into play. Put as much DEX in your build as you want. You are not benefiting from it. In fact, you're benefiting more from your gear's EVA with the current system than your DEX EVA check. Hmm... sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Which leads into why you are blowing up the new system in your head due to the lack of understanding you have for the current stat algorithms. You'd probably like it more than you'd think if you better understood how stats work currently and then hopefully, but not counting on it, the silver lining of the approaching new automated stat modifiers then eventual stat customization with this gear-centric and condensed attribute system. In some instances they are not that far apart in how it sounds when customization is involved, but it does sound like it will make more sense to players who dare to figure out how to best build their character. We don't need overly elaborate choices that amount to nothing in your output performance. No illusions either. We want to know when we put on this piece of gear, or post 1.20, when we put this amount into whatever stat, that there will be a noticeable improvement there.

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i tested most of these stats myself versus low level midrange and high DLevel mobs. Im not saying your personal stat allotment is the only factor, but it is a large factor, you can see huge differences in dmg %, evasion critical hit rate, and ACC(probably different now that hit rate has increased) And for using outside skills it can be very obvious. I mean the length of most debuffs with low level piety is pretty obvious. Now while for me, as a pug and the way i build my chrs, its mostly irrelevant, for a MRD who wanted to simulate a drk, its a big factor. An archer who maybe wanted a usefull sleep spell? I know some stat effected how much you get back from siphon MP, which now is usefull for many jobs.

Mind Int Piety mage versus INT PIETY VIT mage. or a mind vit piety mage. There used to be tank like Conjurers, DD focused Cons Debuff/dot cons, Support and Heal cons, the future doesnt seem like these will be realistic options.

Less stat allocation (the implication is that you will be able to allot a certain amount of bonus points only when/if it returns)
less cross class gears (they said that they will have more class/job specific gears)
less cross class skills overall (they said that they would plan on making more skills class specific, and have already increased the effectiveness of certain skills when used on the main class)
Jobs will limit cross classing (while you will be able to not use jobs, the implication is that in party situations, jobs will be much more effective)

All of these changes, imply that we will have a lot less lateral direction per class/job some people asked for this. Im just being a realist looking at the data they put out there.

I will concede though it is theoretically possible Materia and the new crafting of different attributes can take the place of most of our stat allocation, but then that will take the focus from just leveling, to leveling and obtaining specialized gear sets.
So while that will allow more customiztion, it will build the customization around gear grinding, annnd i guess you will need to obtain various different Sets for different builds.

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Originally Posted by Physic

i tested most of these stats myself versus low level midrange and high DLevel mobs. Im not saying your personal stat allotment is the only factor, but it is a large factor, you can see huge differences in dmg %, evasion critical hit rate, and ACC(probably different now that hit rate has increased) And for using outside skills it can be very obvious. I mean the length of most debuffs with low level piety is pretty obvious. Now while for me, as a pug and the way i build my chrs, its mostly irrelevant, for a MRD who wanted to simulate a drk, its a big factor. An archer who maybe wanted a usefull sleep spell? I know some stat effected how much you get back from siphon MP, which now is usefull for many jobs.

Mind Int Piety mage versus INT PIETY VIT mage. or a mind vit piety mage. There used to be tank like Conjurers, DD focused Cons Debuff/dot cons, Support and Heal cons, the future doesnt seem like these will be realistic options.

Less stat allocation (the implication is that you will be able to allot a certain amount of bonus points only when/if it returns)
less cross class gears (they said that they will have more class/job specific gears)
less cross class skills overall (they said that they would plan on making more skills class specific, and have already increased the effectiveness of certain skills when used on the main class)
Jobs will limit cross classing (while you will be able to not use jobs, the implication is that in party situations, jobs will be much more effective)

All of these changes, imply that we will have a lot less lateral direction per class/job some people asked for this. Im just being a realist looking at the data they put out there.

I will concede though it is theoretically possible Materia and the new crafting of different attributes can take the place of most of our stat allocation, but then that will take the focus from just leveling, to leveling and obtaining specialized gear sets.
So while that will allow more customiztion, it will build the customization around gear grinding, annnd i guess you will need to obtain various different Sets for different builds.

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This is all depending on the Rank of the mob you're fighting and the base stats of the mob type are. While, I understand you are advocating for a "you can be anything you want to be" system, It doesn't change the fact that written out on paper it doesn't amount to much in cross classing.

I don't know what testing you are refering to in saying that stats have a huge output. The only increase in output I see is when testing on mobs 20 ranks or more than your rank. In that case, yes, stats have a huge role like I said two posts ago. This isn't the case within the majority of the game though. Again, you can think your stats matter all you want, but for the most part, they are giving you diminishing results.

Now, the point you give in increasing your DEX for your critical hit rate, I'll have to give you that. Using that build on mobs equal or 10 ranks above it will shine, going further from that though... not so much. So, these builds in some ways do call for different allotment. It's still locked into roles though. It's just that right now you have a choice, do I want to do the best DMG output as a melee or caster? Or do I want to allot to a non-effective build using half potent cross class abilities for the sake of giving myself the illusion that I have freedom?