[dev1072]Gear-based systems are bad

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Originally Posted by Kiote

Unfortunately, Having potency based primarily of skills would require a system that implies effort in gaining skills. This particular game and most other MMOs require you merely to level up to get new skills. If you had to complete various tasks to earn new abilities after reaching a given level it would be more feasible but would require far to much of an overhaul to be implemented any time soon.

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This would be pretty good actually, but yeah i doubt they would implement it.

However what they are really talking about, is putting player skill ahead of gear, which is fairly common in other games, and even i would say in this game before. BEfore as in right now, but in the future i think that will change.
right now, and especially with the old battle system, skill and skill selection was the biggest factor, gear does in fact matter, but it isnt too hard to get good gear, and the best gear is only so much better than good gear.

Right now, and in the old battle system as well, choosing when to strike, dodging abilities, and picking the right skill sets/stats were the greatest determining factor of your victories.

But this is not the direction they want to go anymore, Somewhere matsui said the focus would shift to how you equip and where you hunt, and the changes they are talking about speak to that.

1. The battle system currently seems to be going in a direction with less player control

2. The armory system has been declared that it will go in a direction with less player control, more job exclusive abilities, retooling other abilities to only work well on main jobs (like mp consumption increases makes curing outside of con/thm pretty impossible, although you can eq the abilities)

3. The stat system for now will have no customization, with more to be added later, but it seems like it will be less than now.


these things mean, the ways in which you could have used skill, or strategy choice are going to be diminished in effectiveness, that means just by default gear will become much more dominant. Add to that materia being used to customize, and you realize, they have decided to make this a gear centric game. Many people have asked for it, and while i prefer skill, intellegience and planning to be most dominant in success, This may not be the plan for this game.

On the plus side, they may make obtaining gear not extremely foolish like it was in FFXI or many other games. However this is another situation where some people are actually requesting that it be that way.

While i found it to be bad planning that 18+ people would be required to get one item, and could only attempt it once every 3 days, and it might require 15-100 runs to get the first tier of items to upgrade that item, some people loved it, and advocated for it.

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Originally Posted by Lienn

When we told about skill it was meant "playing skill"...not game actions or skill points ^^:

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He understood you perfectly. The problem you're not seeing, however, is that progress is a major component of the MMORPG gameplay experience and currently the only way we have to measure progress is through gear. If you can't get improvements through gear, how will your character improve? Stagnation and a lack of goals will easily lead to boredom.

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Originally Posted by Physic

Right now, and in the old battle system as well, choosing when to strike, dodging abilities, and picking the right skill sets/stats were the greatest determining factor of your victories.

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Nonsense. Currently, as well as before, 90% of the outcome is decided by your rank and the opponent's rank. The impact rank has on all formulas is so heavy there is no way to reasonably overcome it. If your rank is high enough, you can almost auto-attack an enemy to death. If it's too low, you'll take massive damage and will barely be able to dent it regardless of what you do.

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1. The battle system currently seems to be going in a direction with less player contro

2. The armory system has been declared that it will go in a direction with less player control, more job exclusive abilities, retooling other abilities to only work well on main jobs (like mp consumption increases makes curing outside of con/thm pretty impossible, although you can eq the abilities)l

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On the contrary, I expect to get abilities with more impact. This was not possible before because they'd be accessible to everyone and everyone would be able to do everything very well.

An example: Imagine if every class had a non-TP 3-second stun. We'd just equip the stun from each class and chain stun stuff to death without letting it retaliate. This is why isolating abilities to certain classes gives them a lot more freedom to design meaningful abilities (not do-nothings like Keen Flurry or Enduring March).

Actually, I think we may already have such a problematic ability in the game: Twisting Vice. Unless bosses can force TP moves through without TP, it should be possible to reduce them to auto-attack tank & spank encounters by simply spamming TV. The only reason this isn't a staple strategy is that 1) bosses cheat on TP too much or 2) people have yet to adopt it.

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3. The stat system for now will have no customization, with more to be added later, but it seems like it will be less than now.

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There is barely any customization now either, unless you think doing it wrong is a viable way of customizing your character. This will not change as we will still get to distribute our points for each individual class and 85% of the time that will mean choosing between doing it right or doing it wrong.

There has to be some method of growth for characters. Normally, it is experience; yet, once the cap is reached, there has to be another method.

Gear or some way to learn new skills or gain more attributes would be the next logical step.

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Originally Posted by Frein

He understood you perfectly. The problem you're not seeing, however, is that progress is a major component of the MMORPG gameplay experience and currently the only way we have to measure progress is through gear. If you can't get improvements through gear, how will your character improve? Stagnation and a lack of goals will easily lead to boredom.


Nonsense. Currently, as well as before, 90% of the outcome is decided by your rank and the opponent's rank. The impact rank has on all formulas is so heavy there is no way to reasonably overcome it. If your rank is high enough, you can almost auto-attack an enemy to death. If it's too low, you'll take massive damage and will barely be able to dent it regardless of what you do.


On the contrary, I expect to get abilities with more impact. This was not possible before because they'd be accessible to everyone and everyone would be able to do everything very well.

An example: Imagine if every class had a non-TP 3-second stun. We'd just equip the stun from each class and chain stun stuff to death without letting it retaliate. This is why isolating abilities to certain classes gives them a lot more freedom to design meaningful abilities (not do-nothings like Keen Flurry or Enduring March).

Actually, I think we may already have such a problematic ability in the game: Twisting Vice. Unless bosses can force TP moves through without TP, it should be possible to reduce them to auto-attack tank & spank encounters by simply spamming TV. The only reason this isn't a staple strategy is that 1) bosses cheat on TP too much or 2) people have yet to adopt it.


There is barely any customization now either, unless you think doing it wrong is a viable way of customizing your character. This will not change as we will still get to distribute our points for each individual class and 85% of the time that will mean choosing between doing it right or doing it wrong.

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rank had a large effect on your performance, however in targeting things of a fixed rank, IE how well you were able to fight different things 10 levels above you, or how far above that you could kill things, was most directly based on your skill selection, understanding your jobs strengths, and weaknesses, and capitilizing. There were a number of people with the same gear, and the performance level was vastly different, in terms of what they could survive, what they could kill, etc.

You believe they will make gameplay more skill centric, but i see nothing that hints toward this, i understand from your post you dont like the idea of people having the option to use similar skills, but making only 1 class have access to a skill doesnt make the game more centered on skill, it just requires you to have certain jobs. Making certain jobs invaluable doesnt equall a skill centric game, in fact in a skill centric game, you generally want every class to have a variety of abilities that allow them to perform equally, the key to uniquness is making it so that the way they go about handling the tasks is unique and synergistic within the class.

regardless i think its clear that the focus is going away from a free selection of skills, stats and roles, and into a more rigid system where your effectiveness will be most completely decided by gear and jobs, a lot of people asked for that, they need rails.

It's always skill > gear

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Originally Posted by Physic

You believe they will make gameplay more skill centric, but i see nothing that hints toward this, i understand from your post you dont like the idea of people having the option to use similar skills, but making only 1 class have access to a skill doesnt make the game more centered on skill, it just requires you to have certain jobs. Making certain jobs invaluable doesnt equall a skill centric game, in fact in a skill centric game, you generally want every class to have a variety of abilities that allow them to perform equally, the key to uniquness is making it so that the way they go about handling the tasks is unique and synergistic within the class.

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You don't understand. If every class has skills of each kind, yes, you'll get rid of rigid party structures and everyone will be self-sufficient within the context of the game. However, it also means all abilities have to be watered down, which reduces the impact of skill. You simply cannot have a wide range of high impact skills available to everyone. The game becomes way too easy to break. This is why we have a lot of abilities that do nothing or barely do anything and no matter how good you are, you just don't have much to work with, so it's hard to produce exceptional results with exceptional skill.

Well. Games where the armors dont matters. Let me think... Fps?

I dont know. I consider my self a good player. Not the top one for sure. But a skilled one. And i like to see my effort of focus, dedication while i play is reward it whit a better piece than normal. Becouse in this kind of games once you skilled enough you only way to improve your character is rise level, learn a new good skill or find a better armor piece.

So your point will not fit on an MMO if this generation at least.

Btw. They will improve the stats on armors. But not only the stats of rare armors. But all ones!!!!

Skill > gear - {Yes please.}

Gear should enhance someone's "awesomeness", but not hide someones "failness"; skill should shine through regardless of one's gear.

Gear: aesthetics, stat boosts
Skill: situational awareness, proper timing, ability use, rotations, etc.

As far as I'm concerned, the problem is not that the game will be gear-centric. It won't be. It'll be nice to obtain pieces, but with the crafting system being brought along hand-in-hand, this simply won't be the case. As I stated above, that is how I've seen gear in any MMO I've played. When you provide challenging content skill can be introduced. This game... FFXIV... it has no challenging content. There's no... difficult mechanics available to us yet, and understandably so. The system isn't finished.

Anyway, after reading this thread it became clear to me that the focal point is wrong. Content, objectives, etc. will dictate skill involvement. Doesn't matter if gear makes you uber, or skills make you uber, if the content is easy as hell, it's not going to be fun or challenging on either side of the coin. Just my two cents on the subject.

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Originally Posted by Physic

rank had a large effect on your performance, however in targeting things of a fixed rank, IE how well you were able to fight different things 10 levels above you, or how far above that you could kill things, was most directly based on your skill selection, understanding your jobs strengths, and weaknesses, and capitilizing. There were a number of people with the same gear, and the performance level was vastly different, in terms of what they could survive, what they could kill, etc.

You believe they will make gameplay more skill centric, but i see nothing that hints toward this, i understand from your post you dont like the idea of people having the option to use similar skills, but making only 1 class have access to a skill doesnt make the game more centered on skill, it just requires you to have certain jobs. Making certain jobs invaluable doesnt equall a skill centric game, in fact in a skill centric game, you generally want every class to have a variety of abilities that allow them to perform equally, the key to uniquness is making it so that the way they go about handling the tasks is unique and synergistic within the class.

regardless i think its clear that the focus is going away from a free selection of skills, stats and roles, and into a more rigid system where your effectiveness will be most completely decided by gear and jobs, a lot of people asked for that, they need rails.

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QFT QFE! Hehe