We care about Elements and Moon Phases!

One thing that the recent outburst of criticism about the planned changes to class skills and spells should have made very clear to the Development Team is this very simple fact: The Final Fantasy XIV community cares very much about the scaffolding of forces which are supposed to be the underpinning of the game's actions and events. We like our world deep and full of interrelated forces that sometimes play against, and sometimes reinforce each other both against us and in our favor. We want it well structured, and consistent as well.

Please don't oversimplify our game in an effort to streamline it. If you are, indeed, keeping this depth and complexity, but it's not evident at this stage, please write about it with clarity and let us share your vision.

R

The recent outburst of criticism on this forum has taught me one thing above all else: We need Barbara Bush in here, badly. Yea... Barbara Bush and a few hundred psychiatrists. Barbara can help all of the illiterates learn to read, and the psychiatrists can help the remaining whiners deal with their identity crises and move on. Perhaps it would help if we also had somebody come in and explain that complexity and depth are not the same thing. They could explain that the more simple something is, the deeper it can become before there are problems, and that an overly complex system is necessarily shallow.

Fishing out of the barrage of insults you proffer, TinnySnips, and the infortunate racist and classist half-quotes from the repertory of one of the less enlightened creatures ever to inhabit the White House (Twelve bless her!) I gather you are under an erroneous impression. I won't blame it on your literacy level, though, because that would be just plain coarse.

Your misapprehension has to do with the assumption that I state that complexity equals depth, or that I perceive that SE is purposefully eschewing either. Ah, yes... and that I am whining about it.

The problem I'm trying to highlight is the simple observable fact that the way they communicated their streamlining prospects for the class skill/spell system was woefully incompetent, and at a terrible time to be so. Nobody is more responsible for the fact that a message ends up depending on assumptions and conjectures for conveying its point than the person issuing said message. Corporate communications organisms know well that you cannot afford to blame the audience for their misunderstandings. Instead you must anticipate them.

And with all due deference to your enthusiasm and evident intellectual superiority to the minimum common denominator of these forums, the announcement in point was far too full of gaps and conjecturables to actually produce a firm positve effect. It needs to include more information, or it has to compensate for the lack of that information. But no message should ever produce a hole, like this one did. That's why I mentioned in another post that it left me feeling mutilated.

I am totally on the side of the Development Team, but this is not the time (again one month before switching to charging mode) to send out infirm communication bulletins. The trolls want nothing else.

R

Unless the features of moon phase, elemental days etc, are all explained, everything is nothing more than a guess or just ignored.
Leading to something just as simplified as if it never existed.
Unless you can see the parts of a puzzle, in which to play around with, and see their actions directly, rather than leaning towards "well it happened each time I do it, so it must be a chance to happen! each time you did it, u are just unlucky!" it will not have any meritable depth.

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Originally Posted by TinnySnips

The recent outburst of criticism on this forum has taught me one thing above all else: We need Barbara Bush in here, badly. Yea... Barbara Bush and a few hundred psychiatrists. Barbara can help all of the illiterates learn to read, and the psychiatrists can help the remaining whiners deal with their identity crises and move on. Perhaps it would help if we also had somebody come in and explain that complexity and depth are not the same thing. They could explain that the more simple something is, the deeper it can become before there are problems, and that an overly complex system is necessarily shallow.

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You're really full of yourself. You try to lecture me on the definition of the word before, but you fail to see how stubbornly confusing that one post has made us. On one hand, the mod states it will not be implemented before, on the other hand, he states that as time goes on, they might consider adding them if necessary. If literacy is the issue here, then it might have something to do with the moderators asinine statement.

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

Unless the features of moon phase, elemental days etc, are all explained, everything is nothing more than a guess or just ignored.
Leading to something just as simplified as if it never existed.
Unless you can see the parts of a puzzle, in which to play around with, and see their actions directly, rather than leaning towards "well it happened each time I do it, so it must be a chance to happen! each time you did it, u are just unlucky!" it will not have any meritable depth.

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I actually agree with this point. But more importantly, if you are changing something that was in the process of being figured out by the community, you must include a clear perspective of the changes and their effects, and try to put in the heads of your audience a vision of the goal you want to attain with these changes. Otherwise it's just plain confusing. That's what I mean by letting us share the vision.

R

Moon Phases and facing direction already affect crafting. :D

If this stuff has any impact, I hope they eliminate it. That's just play stupid.

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Originally Posted by Alerith

Moon Phases and facing direction already affect crafting. :D

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

...or do they?

http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m...eri_189032.png

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lulzandsuch

wrong topic!

Rutelor, my criticism is not aimed at your post, but rather the flood of criticism regarding the new ability system. It started with part 1 of the announcement, and has continued on since then. There have been ridiculous criticisms which would not be necessary if the person posting had simply taken the time to read and comprehend the 2 primary posts regarding the new abilities. You have my apologies for derailing. I am simply frustrated with the general quality of the conversations in this forum, and I saw your mention of the flood of criticism and let loose.

I'm most likely viewing the dev team's efforts at communication through the lens of my expectations. Could they have done a better job? Certainly, but I don't think they did a particularly terrible job. I guess I'm just pleasantly surprised at the level of communication we actually have with the dev team.

As for the mechanics you mentioned, I'd rather they didn't include so many variables in the outcomes of our actions. Keep the formulas simple and the outcomes within the realm of predictability. I think a good litmus test for any feature or mechanic is asking the question, "How does this improve the player experience?" In the case of the effect of moon phase and similar variables, I feel that they add complexity without adding any real depth. I don't really want to wait 5 hours to do a synth because it will more likely result in an HQ if I do. I want to take action X, because it will improve my outcomes, not have my outcomes improved by environmental variables.

All of this being said, if they want these variables to continue to play a role, then it would be nice to know what the effect is so that we don't have to test and parse and test and parse to find out, because we will as a community.

And Luci, I wasn't addressing posts like yours with the literacy comment. Your post seems to come down to the identity crisis issue. I'm sorry they're eliminating the abilities you like to use. I hope you can find a class that has a skill set you find acceptable after the patch. I don't really care for the way in which the rug was pulled out from under the mages, but I see the necessity for it, and I don't assume this dev team is misguided for choosing the lesser of 2 evils regarding the next patch. Also, the dev post to which you refer seems clear to me on the issue of debuffs, but I can see where you're coming from to an extent. The ending could have been better, or included a word like "sooner" to clear things up.

Face whichever way your heart tells you, and believe.

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Originally Posted by Hachi-Roku

Face whichever way your heart tells you, and believe.

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But only during a full moon.

personally i don't like some of the elemental stuff that ffxi had, one i hated when shops were closed for the one hour i had to craft.. i didn't like fighting things on a specific element for it to be easier. personally i don't mind this stuff not being in game. it's not hard, it's not challenging to use, it's just inconvenient and never really did anything else but that.

as for removing alot of the spells, unless they give us free space for all of them it don't really matter we still only used the few, yes the ones that fit the situation but the difference in having them or not is just removing one for the other then ...why not just make one. is a few seconds i don't need to waist.

personally i don't like the moons either, they sound cool on paper but when you keep missing the right moon for crafting something or in ffxi afk at a fountain for a specific moon to pop it's just anoying, not challenging again. people complain about hnm's and pop times but not for this? if anything it's just the knowning of where when and how after that it's just annoying. at most give the npc's that give us support give us options to turn the power of element and moon a certain way so no waiting. either way i can do without all this.

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Originally Posted by TinnySnips

Rutelor, my criticism is not aimed at your post, but rather the flood of criticism regarding the new ability system. It started with part 1 of the announcement, and has continued on since then. There have been ridiculous criticisms which would not be necessary if the person posting had simply taken the time to read and comprehend the 2 primary posts regarding the new abilities. You have my apologies for derailing. I am simply frustrated with the general quality of the conversations in this forum, and I saw your mention of the flood of criticism and let loose.

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Understood, TinnySnips, and appreciated. I take back my rant then, and all is well.

Face the way your heart tells you, and believe.

Edit: Twelve trample it, that Hachi Roku person beat me to it.

I actually enjoyed FFXI's system of crafting, using spells at particular time, during particular hours, on particular mobs or not and on particular days in order for it to have it's full potential. It made it interesting (hard to keep up with yes but interesting none the less). I personally do not care if they implement a system eventually that makes me think like this one had or not although I would not be disappointed in seeing it. I love the game and the possibility of what it could be and I just hope it keeps it's individualism and doesn't copy tactics from other well known games. I guess what I am saying is; I love the complexity and the fact that a 6 year old would have a hard time playing this game, unlike other unmentionables. There is nothing worse than getting your back side completely 'raped' by another character to only find out they are in pre-k! (This has happened to me and yes, I am ashamed. I tell my story to save others!) LOL

Moon phase is the biggest bunch of s*** i have seen in any game.

The fact its still not been confirmed to be true is even more sad.

Direction facing is ok, since we can control it, but moon phases and such could put quite a hamper on things when it's outside of your control.

aka: I had limited time to play, and was forced to do my RDM Maat fight on darksday, which in turn made it harder (or at least that's what people said, granted I did lose in seconds, compared to the long drawn out fights every other day.)

The downside with element-based days and moon phases affecting the game is that you have to play on the game's time instead of your own time. In FFXI, you could literally have to wait a whole week for the "perfect" conditions to show up for the right moment to H.Q. a craft. If it turned out the next window opened at 3 a.m. while you'd be sleeping, you'd either have to wait even longer or risk ruining your day by staying up in the middle of the night for the sake of a game.

Game play mechanics like this that tempt you to disrupt your real life just aren't healthy, for one thing, and are completely unnecessary and avoidable.

In my OP, I was mainly referring to combat, when I alluded to the effects mentioned in the thread title. And when I envision a universe subject to these forces, I immediately assume an arsenal (or armory=D) readily available to compensate, exploit, and otherwise deal with these influxes. No force should happen in the natural world affecting our efforts, that the devs haven't given us an antidote for, or a way to exploit, channel, or compensate for.

Handicapping should be allowed to be overcome by means available to all. Half of the handicapping in FXI crafting, I'm convinced, was an urban legend... but there still were effects that we had no way to compensate for. This is not what I'm referring to when I say that "we care about elements and moon phases."

The apperance of the undead at the "witching hour" and that of elementals during spasms of weather... being given a bonus in the strength of your earth actions during earth day, or having to wait a few minutes for a battle to happen on its ideal week day, when the specific NM or herd of mobs would be at their weakest. These things added elements to consider when planning and traits you had to learn about the mobs and the world, not impossible delays. When used correctly these factors build lore, topics of discusion, learnable facts, and most definitely should not become mechanisms to torture the player base.

I believe the official statement on moon phases was "If you believe in it, who knows? It might help. If you don't, well don't worry because it's not hurting you." Talking about how people need something to believe in.

Personally, I'd rather they just say one way or the other. I don't care if it has any effect on anything at all really, as long as we can get the stupid superstitious bullshit out of the way.

Arcell I took it more to mean something along the lines of a plecebo effect.
ie if you think its working then you can convince yourself that it is.