Mogtalk interview with yoshi p

I didn't see this posted anywhere, so I thought I'd share it.

https://mogtalk.org/2018/03/31/mogta...ews-yoshida-3/

Interestin’, thank ya for sharin’. I find the answer about good 4 man content dissapointin’, but not surprisin’. It’s admittin’ the (main) way ta challenge groups be through instant death traps (since healin’s so powerful). Not sure why he feels that would be unreasonable in small group content with only one healer, when current fights can have single deaths be wipes too. Especially when rezzes exist, though I suppose they’re worried that requirin’ one dips with a rez outta 2 spots is a bit tighter than doin’ it outta four.

He's spot on with Blitzball, and I'm glad he recognises its a lot of development for something that would last a week if that.
But that's exactly the sort of thing that should be put to the community, getting ideas to make it something that is fun and more importantly, last more than a couple of times.

"Whenever we create a high-difficulty boss battle, we tend to include instant-death mechanics"

Maybe they should stop being lazy with their high-end content and not use these as a crutch for challenge. That's always been one of the most frustrating things about FFXIV. There are tons of MMOs they could take inspiration from that have challenging fights that *don't* lean on instant-death mechanics.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

"Whenever we create a high-difficulty boss battle, we tend to include instant-death mechanics"

Maybe they should stop being lazy with their high-end content and not use these as a crutch for challenge. That's always been one of the most frustrating things about FFXIV. There are tons of MMOs they could take inspiration from that have challenging fights that *don't* lean on instant-death mechanics.

---

The reason they depend so heavily on instant-death mechanics is due to how insanely strong healing potencies are. Simple raid wide AoEs are rarely threatening because all three healers can bring players back to max HP in seconds or simply rely on Regen ticks since not enough happens to warrant a full heal.

Oh hey, there's some talk about PvP:

Quote:

---

-Also, I am thinking of eventually holding a tournament...

---

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/...20120801003756

Quote:

---

...there needs to be a very clear set of regulations... and we need to establish rules that will not allow for any foul play.

---

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...00/975/110/7c2


Caution, anyone unlucky enough to actually get caught breaking the rules in this tournament might get disciplinary action taken against them probably maybe possibly 3 whole seasons later. And that's if they're brazen enough to talk about it in the chat logs. :rolleyes:

The blitzball answer amuses me because I feel like that sort of idea would've been fantastic for Lord of Verminion instead of what we got. Kind of do with them what we do with squads only without the frigging 18 hours long requirements >_>

Blitzball, ideally, needs to be interactive. In it's raw, original form with maybe a few tweaks.

Triple Triad carried over fairly well, after all. I'm worried about them killing Blitzball at launch by making it into a 'menu' game. Squadron missions aren't exactly the epitome of engaging play.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cidel

Oh hey, there's some talk about PvP:

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/...20120801003756

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...00/975/110/7c2


Caution, anyone unlucky enough to actually get caught breaking the rules in this tournament might get disciplinary action taken against them probably maybe possibly 3 whole seasons later. And that's if they're brazen enough to talk about it in the chat logs. :rolleyes:

---

By "foul play" he means "potty mouth". Say something mean, and you'll be banned instantly. Cheat your pants off and they'll maybe look into it at some point.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JCharms

He's spot on with Blitzball, and I'm glad he recognises its a lot of development for something that would last a week if that.
But that's exactly the sort of thing that should be put to the community, getting ideas to make it something that is fun and more importantly, last more than a couple of times.

---

I'm glad he realizes the glaring issue that this type of content might have, using LoV as an example. It's not wrong to ask for advice or ideas. In the end, it's the players the ones that need to enjoy the content. I really don't know if there's a similar game (Blitzball) in another MMO he can refer to.

If I have to be honest, I like the concept of having it as a mini game like he proposed (Since they are looking for ideas):

Quote:

---

1) Build up your team with different NPCs you find across the world. You can also buy their contracts with MGP.
2) Every NPC will have a "star" rating from 1 to 5.
3) Set strategies ala football manager.
4) Compete against different AI teams (Ul'dah's Burners, BrassBlades, Illumanity team, The Un-Tempered, Costa's Warriors, etc)
5) Have a different competition modes: Tournament (once every two weeks like Triple Triad), League (monthly), Exhibition (Regular match with no impact whatsoever), PvP (Duh)
6) Winning or losing match would give you Blitzball experience enabling you to level up: Access to better tactics, getting better NPCs, better MPG rewards.
7) In addition to your experience, the NPCs would also level up separetely depending on their participation in the match, increasing their base stats up to their cap based on their rating.

---

The matches would have 2 modes: Manual and Automatic. Manual mode will let you slightly control the NPC's moves, whereas Automatic would make it depend solely on their stats.

I'm personally not a huge fan of Blitzball, I hated it in FFX. However, I'd like XIV to make it more approachable and enjoyable with shorter matches and more dynamic. System-wise, I have NO CLUE how they can code this due of the issues they already have when it comes to introduce new content. But we shall see, I hope SE could surprise me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Theodric

Blitzball, ideally, needs to be interactive. In it's raw, original form with maybe a few tweaks.

Triple Triad carried over fairly well, after all. I'm worried about them killing Blitzball at launch by making it into a 'menu' game. Squadron missions aren't exactly the epitome of engaging play.

---

With the slow speeds of XIV, would Blitzball in its original form even work? I don't think so.

A manager style of game akin to Football Manager could work given the framework that's in place already, even if it's not the game people are looking for.

A tournament won't work because the PvPers in this game don't like to actually play in teams. They begged for light party feast to have the same rewards in 3.3 or so, and when SE did it, no one bothered to do light party feast. This is despite LP actually solving a lot of the mode's problems, like poor matchmaking or people yelling at each other in chat.

As for hard dungeons, yeah, I really wish they'd do them just to shut up the people who want difficulty when they wipe dozens of times in them because there is zero margin for error with a 4 man party.

Calling it now. Blitzball will just be a pallet swap of squadrons.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tridus

With the slow speeds of XIV, would Blitzball in its original form even work?

---

It probably would - IIRC, all but movement was done in menus where you could take all the time you need. And I vaguely remember that even movement had an automatic option.

Personally, I find neither the thought of a carbon copy nor the thought of a menu game very appealing. When I think of Blitzball in FFXIV, I'd imagine something like an underwater swimming area where you swim around and the ball gets passed along via vector based skills that shoot a certain distance in the direction you're facing. Trick shots might fly in a curve, power shots might bypass players, missed shots might be picked up by getting near the ball, tackles maybe as active time event? Something like that.

But that's just me, there's probably a bunch of other good and better ideas on how it could work.

I mean, they could limit in combat rezes and make healing more demanding.... just a thought.

I'm aware this will never happen, but one can dream

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ayer2015

I mean, they could limit in combat rezes and make healing more demanding.... just a thought.

I'm aware this will never happen, but one can dream

---

You could accomplish both through nerfing healing potency across the board. If MP was more of an issue, healers simply wouldn't have the mana to continuously raise.

If they do just one mode then blitzball will inevitably be short term content.

Do it all!

Have a system similar to squads where you recruit a team and can have them do matches to learn skills and boost their stats or you can personally go in with them to actually play a match and earn skills yourself. Have NPC teams representing the cities to play against in a league or tournaments as a kind of single player mode where you can earn rewards like glamours or special techniques. While also having a free play mode where you can play against other player’s saved NPC teams or even pvp against another player and their team.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TheDraco4011

Calling it now. Blitzball will just be a pallet swap of squadrons.

---

What if it IS your squad? e.e Selling your second in command some rubbish about how this'll be good to raise squad morale, build camaraderie and to diversify the physical activities of the squad.

The answer about blitzball is worrying.
Blitzball itself isn't important ; the problem is Yoshida's mindset. Why does he want to add blitzball? Because some players asked it, and because he wants to make a fan-service FF. Not because he actually has a good idea. He looks unmotivated to actually make it, and hopes to get away with a cheap shortcut, but a squadron-bis is unneeded, since we precisely already have squadrons (and you can actually play with your squadron)
And what the **** is "MMORPG-like" in managing a team of NPC through a menu?! It's impossible to take him seriously when he spews such bs.

The game needs a fun mini-game that can be done casually with friends and guild members, like chocobo races, except current races are trash and the unneeded leveling of the chocobo makes it hard to play with friends since everyone has a different chocobo level. Update races first to show you can actually make a decent mini-game, and think about blitzball later.
And the fetishism on rewards needs to disappear. Bigger rewards doesn't make the content better, so if you think you need to put tomestones on blitzball, something is wrong.

Instant-death mechanics are not needed. There are already debuffs that decrease the healing potency (Infirmity or something like that). There is nothing stopping them from adding debuffs that prevent healing over time completely. Then there's also HP debuff. Something that this game already have, but for whatever reason doesn't seem to use. The more health the characters have in comparison to damage, the greater the ease with powerful healing. On the contrary, the less HP the less relevant the healing potency, since it will need to be used frequently anyway.

There is so much that can be done with relative ease to increase difficulty, that instant death mechanics are absolutely unnecessary, especially since no one ever said that "difficulty" means "ability to finish it". What is a problem with a boss that you can do without wipes without flawless precision, so long as you just pay that basic bit of attention, but have it take significantly longer instead? Saving considerable amount of time is perfectly fine in promoting and rewarding skill in comparison to doing it half-assed, especially if there would be rewards tied to duration of the battle that would give access to a larger pool of rewards (like minions or crafting materials) only if the fight took less than X time, giving just the basics otherwise.

Instant-death should be used mostly for high-stake battles. Stuff like Ultimate, some extreme trials, a boss here or there in a raid. Not just about everything outside of standard dungeons, and even some of the standard dungeon bosses.


As for blitzball, I do not understand the worry that Yoshida have. Players will play it once and be done with it?! Then what he plans? We have Fifa and similar sport games that are released EVERY SINGLE YEAR for YEARS now. And those games sell FAST when they are released. The same people buy them time and again and spend hundreds of hours on them. And they are exactly what a blitzball would be. A team-based ball game. Only the rules are different.
Just make sure the play is smooth, the rules are clear, the characters are reasonably balanced and that there is a ranking of sorts, and there may be people playing nothing but blitzball whenever they log into the game. Heck, if they put actual effort into it, there could be people that would buy Final Fantasy XIV ONLY for blitzball. Seriously, sport games are the very first kind of multiplayer games in human history. It is the exact thing that is PERFECT for an MMO. And he worries that it's not suitable?!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ayer2015

I mean, they could limit in combat rezes and make healing more demanding.... just a thought.

I'm aware this will never happen, but one can dream

---

This argument comes up a lot already.

There's really only three solutions:
1) Make healing hard by making gear irrelevant
2) Make healing hard by making instant-death mechanics every 5 seconds in all content.
3) Make healing hard by changing the healer's kit to cast the "Right" kind of healing (eg specific debuff remover, shield, raw heal), that you can't spam/rotate through, and you can't raw heal through actions requiring a shield or debuff removal.

As it is right now, the healing is only balanced when the content is new, and players have the tomes gear from the previous content patch cycle. Once whatever gear/tomes from the current cycle replaces it, it's again a push over, and on all older content, your healing is so pointless that you can play many of the pre-50 dungeons without any healing because the auto-heal exists. Damage in 2.0 to a tank would take a tank down 40% in 2.0 content, now it goes down like 5%, right within the realm of auto-heal.

Nerfing healers simply is going to make it impossible to fix mistakes. If healing is more involved and less potent, if the DPS stands in the fire the healer won't be able to save them; they have to save GCDs for the tank and their rotation is too strict to modify it except at certain times. It also means when the healer wipes, its a wipe period, because the other healer also can't adapt and the content needs two of you doing your rotation to succeed now.

A lot of the potency and quick healing is because you really need to have that to fix a mistake. You need huge potency instant heals because sometimes the dps eats an attack that takes off 75% of their HP and a followup aoe is coming. You need instant raises because you don't have time to hardcast them usually. Overhealing in general enables good healers to spend gcds into dps and soften the dps burden some. And healers really are the only class that can fix mistakes to any real extent; everyone else is too limited, especially when its direct damage or status effects.

I really wish people would just STFU about making things harder, because it would ruin healing in this game. There's no way healers are going to like having a gimped healset with encounter designs that routinely bring people down to 25% health on mistake, and have constant movement and damage. Old MMO healing generally was much less mobile, much more slower paced, and with much less of a tight player limit.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kikix12

As for blitzball, I do not understand the worry that Yoshida have. Players will play it once and be done with it?! Then what he plans? We have Fifa and similar sport games that are released EVERY SINGLE YEAR for YEARS now. And those games sell FAST when they are released. The same people buy them time and again and spend hundreds of hours on them. And they are exactly what a blitzball would be. A team-based ball game. Only the rules are different.
Just make sure the play is smooth, the rules are clear, the characters are reasonably balanced and that there is a ranking of sorts, and there may be people playing nothing but blitzball whenever they log into the game. Heck, if they put actual effort into it, there could be people that would buy Final Fantasy XIV ONLY for blitzball. Seriously, sport games are the very first kind of multiplayer games in human history. It is the exact thing that is PERFECT for an MMO. And he worries that it's not suitable?!

---

You are vastly over-estimating the amount of people that actually care about Blitzball. The FIFA comparison matters little when they're modeled after actual sports and teams, with the main appeal being creating fantasy teams/scenarios. There's virtually no overlap with the FF community there.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SaitoHikari

You are vastly over-estimating the amount of people that actually care about Blitzball. The FIFA comparison matters little when they're modeled after actual sports and teams, with the main appeal being creating fantasy teams/scenarios. There's virtually no overlap with the FF community there.

---

I'm not over-estimating people that care about blitzball. I make no estimation after all.

You may or may not believe it, but people WILL be attracted to fantasy sports IF they are well made. And this is what I am saying. If they make a GOOD blitzball, it will have massive replay value like every single other sport game out there, from racing games, through fighting games all the way to...yeah...team sports like soccer or basketball. If they'll give it the mini-game treatment that is to be made and forgotten, aka. make it with linear advancement and little to no strategy, then it'll be dead on arrival. It's not blitzball itself that matters here. It's the idea of a ball game played in three dimensions with special moves attached. Heck, original blitzball was two-dimensional. BUT the special moves are what makes it.

You may not know it, but there are multiple LARGE franchises that just that. A small variation on sport games known to man with added super moves. Look at Technos games (Ike Ike! Nekketsu Hockey Bu: Subette Koronde Dairantō, Kunio-kun no Nekketsu Soccer League, Nekketsu Street Basket: Ganbare Dunk Heroes and some other), Inazuma Eleven franchise, Blood Bowl 1 and 2. Blitzball is the very same concept. Taking something that is well known (a team-based game where the goal is to put the ball inside a specific area, goalpost), with specific rules for handling it (only with legs, only with hands, only by dribbling etc., with or without contact allowed etc.) and adding a non-realistic element (violent or outright impossible attacks that would cause long-term damage or death in real life). The concept is both simple and fun. It's all in the design. It can be crap or "the new best thing". I'm a realist so I don't expect it to be more than a fun little time-waster here or there for most players in the best case scenario. But that doesn't mean that blitzball itself is an inherently flawed concept that cannot be popular. It can. It's just that it will not be nearly fleshed out enough to have the chance for that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RiyahArp

Nerfing healers simply is going to make it impossible to fix mistakes.

---

That's partially the point.

When a healer can easily fix a mistake and a piece of content is not supposed to allow for many mistakes, then you need to prevent healers from being able to fix them. And instant-wipe is the hard form of that, instant death the soft form, because they bypass heals and only allow raises, which are more costly. Those are the two most common, but any measure you take will have to be aimed at healers here.

That has no bearing on how many mistakes a content may allow or how hard a content is. Even if you have no healers at all, a content may allow a lot of mistakes when mistakes simply deal very little damage.
Imagine you have 1000 HP, no means to restore it and the boss only deals damage if you make a mistake. At 1000 damage, you cannot make a mistake, at 500 damage you can make one, at 100 damage you can make nine and at 1 damage you can make a thousand mistakes (minus one).
Now imagine you have 1000 HP and your healer can restore a total of 5000 HP, then he goes OOM and cannot fix anymore mistakes. How many mistakes can you make now? With 1000 damage, you still can't make any. At 500 damage, you can make 11. At 100 damage, you can make 59. At 1 damage, you can make 5999.
Tuning with healers is actually a lot more iffy than without, especially with mana regeneration and all that jazz in the mix.

Another thing is that the weaker healers are, the less damage you can give your encounters, which in turn makes the party rely on them less. Example:
You have a health pool of 30k. The encounter assumes that your healer will heal you for 10k every GCD and thus deals 10k damage every GCD. How long do you survive without a healer? 2 GCDs.
Now assume the encounter assumes your healer will only heal 2k every GCD and appropriately lower the damage to 2k a GCD. How long do you survive now? 14 GCDs.
And if the damage is only 2k and healers can still heal for 10k? Then the healer is just going to be inactive for 4 GCDs. That's expert roulette.
This is actually why VIT accessories are so completely worthless - Like 99% of your health as tank comes from the healer, not your base health pool. There's no point increasing it, it doesn't make you survive any longer, you'll have long hit enrage before the healers run dry and your VIT gets its 1 autoattack of fame.

The stronger healers are, the faster health is going to move in either direction. You can see that in the first example: If you want to allow roughly 10 mistakes, the scenario without healers is going to take chunks of about 10% of your health bar for each. The scenario with healers instead takes about half of your health bar with every mistake for the same effect.

This game is pretty extreme on healer power and damage thus very spiky and burst heavy. It's similar in PvP, where healers make damage that doesn't come in bursts trivial and shift the meta to focused CC and burst.

That said, though... I must admit I also can't imagine the game working if healing (and thus encounter design) got re-designed. Not because of anything healer related, but because there'd be less group DPS to compensate for Yoshida's completely outlandish expectations towards DPS players.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SaitoHikari

You are vastly over-estimating the amount of people that actually care about Blitzball. The FIFA comparison matters little when they're modeled after actual sports and teams, with the main appeal being creating fantasy teams/scenarios. There's virtually no overlap with the FF community there.

---

Eh, it's more of a take-it-or-leave-it. If it's a really really good implementation, it would require doing things in a way that just doesn't work with a MMO setting.

Like the most obvious way to make it "fun" without it being just another "venture" like squadrons and retainers were, would be to take a page from the Chocobo racing mechanics and have a "separate" game space from which it's played and "broadcast" if you will. You don't get to play the actual players, you're more like the coach, calling specific plays from a playbook. Implementations more like that of FIFA/NHL/NBA games can not be done primarily because those are real-time games, and a real sports game takes a minimum of an hour to play. That is just too long for the 20-minutes tops we get with other content. Also MMO players are not that audience, and we don't want that kind of audience in a MMO game, because that creates the type of feature creep where the game client has code for something awesome and complex, but also is neglected by all but 100 people in the game after everyone tried it and got the trophy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RiyahArp

Nerfing healers simply is going to make it impossible to fix mistakes.

---

Some people believe that they are healers-only, thus without there being stakes to "doing nothing", healers end up becoming an extra DPS, and that is broken gameplay. That wiggle room should not exist, but it only exists because the gear stats-creep tends to mean 4 or 8 players need less healing, rather than the healer does more healing. Hence, the only solutions to making healing as intensive as tanking would require lowering the window for mistakes to be rectified, or be more reactive to circumstances, or nerfing gear to be pointless.

As pointed out in the -many- "to dps or not to dps" threads involving healers, healers do not have enough to do -always-. Even when content is new, that wiggle room exists, as it ages, players pick the most lazy and ineffective strategy (cast regen, do nothing else) because there is nothing else for that role to do, because the game makes no requirement to be reactive in anything but extreme/savage. It would be one thing if more content had "heal the idiot NPC" type of mechanics, it's another where "the DPS are taken out of the arena, and only the tank and healer can release them, simultaneously", and we just don't see mechanics that make the healer do anything but run away when targeted.

Like in a traditional RPG (eg pen and paper) your GM would adapt to idiotic and lazy gameplay. One way of making the Healer do more work is by attaching consequences to not paying attention. We see that with half dozen versions of Doom/Death. Some of the 24-player content is so busy that you can miss things, and I'd argue that the 24-player content is actually the best content in the game for healers, because it does not let you "do nothing", there is always going to be something that you can do because the mechanics often require paying attention to the field and other players. On the opposite side of this, most of the 8-player content has no balance once players have out-geared it, and it's a choreographed dance once you remember the how it goes. The 4-player content is a mixed bag, and as Yoshi-P stated, has no instant-death mechanics, so there is never any reason for a wipe other than people not paying attention.

He no wrong regarless how Blitzball get released we gonna hate on it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

(...)it would require doing things in a way that just doesn't work with a MMO setting.

---

Go on. I'd like to know why it wouldn't work well with MMO setting. You seem to have the same idea as Yoshida in this respect, while I'm completely puzzled as to why, so go ahead and explain what part of a multiplayer game is not fit for an MMO game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

You don't get to play the actual players, you're more like the coach, calling specific plays from a playbook.

---

Strategy games are actually a really horrible implementation.
1) There is close to no interaction between players. This is as far from an MMO as a game can be. Even when playing against another player, you won't be able to tell the difference between them and an AI.
2) Strategy games have no "middle zone". Either players love them or hate them. And there are more players that do not like playing them than otherwise. Doubly so for all those "Tycoon" style of games. Games where players directly control the characters have a lot of middle zone. I really dislike sport games, including racing games, but I actually quite like a certain racing game, there is also a football game of which I played a demo a long time ago that I wish I'd have gotten it to play. I won't be touching a simulator. Ever.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

Implementations more like that of FIFA/NHL/NBA games can not be done primarily because those are real-time games, and a real sports game takes a minimum of an hour to play. That is just too long for the 20-minutes tops we get with other content.

---

You know that this does have no sense, right?! Football/soccer takes 90 minutes of game time + breaks + extension...professionally. It takes what, 30 minutes at Physical Education in school?! And we're talking about a real life game playing in real life here. And blitzball is...well...it's yet to be even made. Isn't it painfully obvious that it could take even five minutes only if the developers decided that?! There is absolutely zero of anything that would make a "real-time game" take at least an hour or more.

By the way, you do realize that this very game is exactly that...A real-time game...right?! Basically, you say that this game is impossible to make as an MMO, even though...it is already here...Like many other in fact.


Also...there are instant-death mechanics in 4-man dungeons. Temple of Qarn on first boss (but one could argue the bees and wasps as well) and The Wanderers Palace last boss are examples off the top of my head. They are rarer and rather easy to deal with normally...though there were times I partied with people that CONSTANTLY died to the first boss of Qarn even after being told exactly what to do and when.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kikix12

I'm not over-estimating people that care about blitzball. I make no estimation after all.

You may or may not believe it, but people WILL be attracted to fantasy sports IF they are well made.

---

"Ultimate Static Manager" would be hilariously meta as an in game fantasy sport. :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zojha

That has no bearing on how many mistakes a content may allow or how hard a content is. Even if you have no healers at all, a content may allow a lot of mistakes when mistakes simply deal very little damage.

---

That's generally not a good model to have, because now you need to expand the encounter time dramatically to compensate for it, and you'd end up with original steps of faith, where the fight can be lost with no way to compensate for it until the clock winds down. You'd also end up with the problem of overwatch, in where you need a healer, but the healer actually can't do anything much to compensate for the group and requires the group to act in unison and perfectly, while still getting blamed and hated a lot for failing.

There's also no real skillful healer play in saving people allowed, and no requirement for them at all if the burden is low enough; just have tanks put down a regen over time aura or or something, and remove the class.

Quote:

---

That said, though... I must admit I also can't imagine the game working if healing (and thus encounter design) got re-designed. Not because of anything healer related, but because there'd be less group DPS to compensate for Yoshida's completely outlandish expectations towards DPS players.

---

DPS could be adjusted easily, its just target numbers over time. Reduce health of mobs. Issue to me is that most people would bow out of being healers, because you at least with most things being dps, you can just skip the gps gcd if you struggle and heal. The less potency and more gcds to heal, the harder it gets because each one counts much more.

Quote:

---

As pointed out in the -many- "to dps or not to dps" threads involving healers, healers do not have enough to do -always-. Even when content is new, that wiggle room exists, as it ages, players pick the most lazy and ineffective strategy (cast regen, do nothing else) because there is nothing else for that role to do, because the game makes no requirement to be reactive in anything but extreme/savage. It would be one thing if more content had "heal the idiot NPC" type of mechanics, it's another where "the DPS are taken out of the arena, and only the tank and healer can release them, simultaneously", and we just don't see mechanics that make the healer do anything but run away when targeted.

Like in a traditional RPG (eg pen and paper) your GM would adapt to idiotic and lazy gameplay. One way of making the Healer do more work is by attaching consequences to not paying attention. We see that with half dozen versions of Doom/Death. Some of the 24-player content is so busy that you can miss things, and I'd argue that the 24-player content is actually the best content in the game for healers, because it does not let you "do nothing", there is always going to be something that you can do because the mechanics often require paying attention to the field and other players. On the opposite side of this, most of the 8-player content has no balance once players have out-geared it, and it's a choreographed dance once you remember the how it goes. The 4-player content is a mixed bag, and as Yoshi-P stated, has no instant-death mechanics, so there is never any reason for a wipe other than people not paying attention.

---

I don't think people really would like this. Make healers busy enough and they get overloaded and stop; healing stress is something that generally is comparable to tanking stress, but in this game is much less. You'd have to improve this without singling out healers, which I feel is what 4 man hard content does.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Genz

And the fetishism on rewards needs to disappear. Bigger rewards doesn't make the content better, so if you think you need to put tomestones on blitzball, something is wrong.

---

Watch, blitzball will be squadrons with swimming and the reward will be kelpie.

They can make raids hard without nerfing healers like someone said make these aoes place healing debuffs or cause dots, with how healing is now those are he main things I see healers fall at which is dot dmg, and the occasional healing debuff...

You can also have some raids have a boss that removes shields from the raid or disables certain actions by tanks like a CD maybe but the point is there are other way to go about this then nerfing healers

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kikix12

Go on. I'd like to know why it wouldn't work well with MMO setting. You seem to have the same idea as Yoshida in this respect, while I'm completely puzzled as to why, so go ahead and explain what part of a multiplayer game is not fit for an MMO game.

---

*deep breath*

This is a MMO, the underlying mechanics are that of a turn-based MMORPG in "server ticks" of about 3 seconds. Because of latency in North America, you can have players anywhere from 6ms in California to 500ms in Australia and Russia. Only the underlying turned-based mechanics allow such players to play together and not have the person with the fastest connection wipe the floor with everyone else. This is why action MMORPG's just do not work in North America and Europe, they only work in Japan and Korea.

Now, for Blitzball, or any other sport game, requires a real-time mechanic that can't be cheesed by the person with the fastest connection. So you would literately have players pointing to places on the field and pick "move,dribble, pass (to player), shoot (goal)" etc, and you would need whatever number of people are required to play the game. In FFX there were also stat boost/debuffs. Realistically FFX's Blitzball was also just turn-based. It was not in any way like the other sports games.

So the closest you will get to anything would be slower than the PvP games, and not as a fun as a result unless it was "solo", a la the squadrons. So between actions, you'd be allowed to move, but as soon as someone has the ball, or tries to intercept it, there would have to be some QTE for the success/fail action.

Like I don't realistically see any way of pulling this off and it being fun, regardless of what you think the value of Blitzball is itself. Look at the Triple Triad, Lord of Verminion and the Chocobo Racing. They are completely abandoned except when the tournaments happen, and even then people just throw them to get the rewards.

The "call a play" coach mechanic is easier to pull off, and not requiring assembling enough players to play, it could be done as 1-on-1, so whoever has the ball, you get a QTE of "pass/shoot/dribble" and that pretty much makes it work like it did in FFX. But that's not really much fun either. Ideally you get to pick other players who signed up (eg the duty queue), they get their team bathing suit, the players pick a number, and then those actual players initially get dropped into random teams until those with the highest skill get moved to an actual tournament ladder. If the players withdraw from the duty finder, they just get replaced by someone else in the same bracket.

But this is going to be something that takes a long time, you're not going to play a match and then logoff. If your "team" never logs on again, then what? Start over? What if your new team sucks? What if you get d/c'd?

Like "Venture" systems just result in you having nothing to actually do with the underlying game, and it's the easiest thing the developers can put in (like the squadron missions) and just RNG the result. But that's an entirely RNG based gameplay, it's not skill.

Hence, my point of I don't see any kind of "realtime" sport being viable here. It would have to be all single-rounds, not tournaments, and if you just PUG it, you stand no chance of actually getting anywhere since people could form "static" teams.

Anyway. I digress, I don't think Yoshi-P wants to spend development time on a full sports game within a MMORPG that people already barely play the PvP part of, and doesn't operate on game mechanics already in the game. So any implementation of it would likely end up more like the Squadron missions than anything else.

Quote:

---

we’re currently working on the next installation of “Rival Wings,” which was received well previously

---

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...31/987/3b2.gif

Why do people hate instant death mechs? I mean I think that's the best way to make people wake up and get better. I mean old arcade games did this? Why is it now such a bad thing? I ask this cause healing is OP in XIV, and unless you never out gear content like ultimate Ba. Then you'll always have an OP healer so wouldn't instant death mechs balance this out? I'm generally asking I'm not being mean or trying to be disrespectful :C

More bosses need to inflict supernation (sp?) stacks... so the more you get hit the harder the fight gets until you wipe...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ko_

Why do people hate instant death mechs? I mean I think that's the best way to make people wake up and get better. I mean old arcade games did this? Why is it now such a bad thing? I ask this cause healing is OP in XIV, and unless you never out gear content like ultimate Ba. Then you'll always have an OP healer so wouldn't instant death mechs balance this out? I'm generally asking I'm not being mean or trying to be disrespectful :C

---

Never really thought they were a bad thing either. They're a good reason to "git gud" so to speak because there's no choice in the matter.

Can't wait for a new RW map where everyone plays for a mount, then they never play it again. Well received... /s

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jxnibbles

Can't wait for a new RW map where everyone plays for a mount, then they never play it again. Well received... /s

---

Yeah, I think they often mistake the immediate flurry of activity whenever new content opens as "they must like it" when it's more like "we need to get our things before it dies next week". There needs to be a serious rework of how PvP works reward wise, as well as addressing the bot problem.

Holy hell in a handbasket, all of of Yoshi's comments about PVP are downright embarrassing to read.

I respect the rest of his answers, but I don't see how he can feel PVP is anything but a hot mess right now.

I don't see how tournaments would ever work when there is plenty of 'foul play' occurring as is.