The real issue in Mmos is not balance

So Let me say this and this is the true cold truth... balance is almost never a problem on games that use "mmo tags"
First off, people will play whatever they enjoy you don't have to nerf or god mode the thing to get people to not play or to play the job.
Second: the reason Balance isn't the issue is because the abilities are not the problem with the game (yes, you might say this or that oh its not strong enough or its 2 strong) that isn't the problem.
Third: The real problem is how bosses and monsters are made... they are a 1-2 on normal monsters Ability set revolved around hp%

Now what should be done to solve the real meat of the problems with how things are.
First: stop crying that it's a balance issue it's not
Second: realization to not make things really so dumb a monkey could do them.
Finally: Invest in an AI that doesn't focus on the machicas like DPS Check or Healer check or tank buster, but an AI that focus on destroying the party.
Next:Bosses should be made to kill the party not to be a challenge, but the boss should have an AI program that is extremely Op that will flat out kill people.
What does this mean?
Simple: some fights should be made to target the heavy hitters over the tank
Put yourself the maker in the bosses shoes not the players (putting yourself in the players shoe on the fight causes so many failures and lameness and you should feel ashamed of doing it that way) What happens when you put yourself as a player you go well Cool music check, Cool images check, cool art check, cool boss look check, Intresting Mach looks check. While the boss themself is basicly that one idoit in class doing everything they been told without thinking for themself.
What needs to be done:
1st remove equipment durability (this is a must so people don't cry oh, I died, I gotta repair) (this leads to fights being dumbed down because of the players themselves) 2nd: Bosses with Target commands that will go outside of the tanks to attack the heavy healer or heavy DPs user and if they aren't protecting or handled in a quick taste, the guy/girl dies and will need a race (this right here solves 2 birds with one stone) 3rd: Add an ability to some of the fights called dispell or some incurable slow/stop.
4th: bosses with lock out abilities or Kill for AP 5mins of the
5th Bosses that uses abilities at random and throw in some secret coding of abilities, it has without being a magical like give Ultima the ability to cast Ultima randomly without a cast timer on the group and make it a 1%-5% to happen 6th: bosses need to have a 1-5 roll on them so every fight is different on the boss, maybe effort will have fired on one fight, but on the other has flare basically give the fights a random gen so its not about reading or watching someone else information and teach people to play with their own skill
7th: Fight counters: so basically give fights abilities such as zombie : So for healers if your team member has zombie on them and you heal them they die, mags if the thing has firewall don't use fire or it will heal.

The basics: it's not that things are not powerful or they are 2 powerful its the fact the game has no AI to counter anything you do and there's not a damn thing your nerds or removal can do about it, something will always be"powerful" and something always will be "weak" so use a damn AI that is worth something.

.. That sounds not fun for me and many people I know.

I don't want a boss pulling some "hidden" team wiping mechanic out of nowhere. AI's can nearly always "outplay" characters easily. Just Calculate exactly when something will do the most damage or cause the most havoc and do that. Random paralyzes that freeze you JUST when you don't want them to. The reason this isn't in the game is it would absolutely destroy the fun for likely thousands of players.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

.. That sounds not fun for me and many people I know.

I don't want a boss pulling some "hidden" team wiping mechanic out of nowhere. AI's can nearly always "outplay" characters easily. Just Calculate exactly when something will do the most damage or cause the most havoc and do that. Random paralyzes that freeze you JUST when you don't want them to. The reason this isn't in the game is it would absolutely destroy the fun for likely thousands of players.

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I never said it had to be team wiping but cause serious damage to the team it needs to be done on and that is false Any good player can out play a good Ai you just have use your brain for a change.

Which is more common sense than anything if you were the boss taking heavy flares or drills would you really keep punching the guy thats tickling you with its toothpick sword and shield? No you would go slap that dps into another realm just like you wouldn't sit there while the healer is like lalala dancing in the rain I'll heal you 2 full hp and the tank will never die unless the tank is retarded alalala (like really the fights should be all like a game of chess)

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Originally Posted by LolitaBansheeMeru

I never said it had to be team wiping but cause serious damage to the team it needs to be done on and that is false Any good player can out play a good Ai you just have use your brain for a change

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I am 100% sure that an AI programmed and able to use any skill at any time will wipe your party in seconds.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

I am 100% sure that an AI programmed and able to use any skill at any time will wipe your party in seconds.

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of course it wouldn't be any but it should be given like 25 single target moves it can cast at random times on any member of it at pure random times and moments like for example shiva casting blizzage on the healer or casting Stop on the highest dps an AI programmed to take out the the highest threat that the bosses Ai tells her is the highest threat during that 1 battle or simpley casting Death on the highest dps that cant be cured and just kills them forcing the healer to waste more mp to rez them with something like if not rezed after 3mins of kill by the ability it will target someone at random and move to them

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Originally Posted by LolitaBansheeMeru

of course it wouldn't be any but it should be given like 25 single target moves it can cast at random times on any member of it at pure random times and moments like for example shiva casting blizzage on the healer or casting Stop on the highest dps an AI programmed to take out the the highest threat that the bosses Ai tells her is the highest threat during that 1 battle

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There are games out there to challenge your twitch and reaction skills at their highest levels. I would be comfortable guessing that most of the audience for FFXIV is not here for that. Wildstar tried to have all "hardcore" content.. it failed.

Perfect balance is not a problem, but relative balance is.


People will play games for years if the class/archetype/playstyle they prefer isnt the best at one particular role, but is capable of doing a job they want it to be able to do and remain competitive enough to not be wholly replaced or obsoleted.

People will not continue to do that if the way they like playing and the way they want to play IS wholly replaceable or obsoleted.

Also, another factor to consider is how gamers have changed over time. These hardcore gamers of the past are now mostly working, have families, etc. So we don't have as much time. Do we really want to be bashing our head at a wall for like 10+ hours a day when we have kids and work etc, just to get the basics done. Yes, I think a bit of an increase in difficulty is a good idea, but not to this level for daily content. Save this for the Ultimates ONLY. Sure, Savage may want to be tuned up a bit too (I haven't done current Savage so I aren't sure how it holds up in difficulty, I could be completely off-base with it), but in general content, this level of difficulty is a major no-no. Most players are casual and don't want that level of difficulty in their day to day content. To use examples of other games (except Dark Souls), these crazy difficult levels were done at the END of the game, either as final or near final bosses, or heck potentially even as post-game bosses. Which is where Ultimate fits in. Ultimate is the ultimate final boss (of the patch cluster). Keep it there only if it's going to be put anywhere.

Go play the unnerfed best version of Devil may cry 3. It's better then Dark souls :c

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Originally Posted by LolitaBansheeMeru

and have you ever played Zelda or the older Nintendo 64 games or older those games were extremely godly succufull that they even hold up to todays games and honestly are still better deisgned on game play all creating a challange all great sells.

THe history of gaming disproves your statement on it wouldn't be Particularly successful products

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I was around for the "birth" of video games as you know them. Back then the only way to create replayability or longevity in a game was difficulty. It had to be hard or people would just beat it and be done. There were no patches or DLC. Game just went out the door and if people found out your game was faceroll they wouldn't buy it because who wanted to buy a game for 50 bucks (which was like a quarter of the system cost) and then be done with it the next day? You wanted a game that was either super long or super difficult so that you had a reason to try every day.

Now a developer can make a game and concentrate on quality and entertainment value and also the possibility of expanding the game later so content can be expanded to more "casual" players.

Your ideas might have worked 30 years ago, however right now you'd have quite the limited audience.

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Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

Also, another factor to consider is how gamers have changed over time. These hardcore gamers of the past are now mostly working, have families, etc. So we don't have as much time. Do we really want to be bashing our head at a wall for like 10+ hours a day when we have kids and work etc, just to get the basics done. Yes, I think a bit of an increase in difficulty is a good idea, but not to this level for daily content. Save this for the Ultimates ONLY. Sure, Savage may want to be tuned up a bit too (I haven't done current Savage so I aren't sure how it holds up in difficulty, I could be completely off-base with it), but in general content, this level of difficulty is a major no-no. Most players are casual and don't want that level of difficulty in their day to day content. To use examples of other games (except Dark Souls), these crazy difficult levels were done at the END of the game, either as final or near final bosses, or heck potentially even as post-game bosses. Which is where Ultimate fits in. Ultimate is the ultimate final boss (of the patch cluster). Keep it there only if it's going to be put anywhere.

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See, the problem with that is the "harder content" is locked behind social nonsense lol and this day where half the population gets offended so easily for a lot of people locking harder stuff behind socialism nonsense (aka social with people skills is slight you) we all know gamers are the most anti-social people in the world and locking things that are supposedly hard when they really aren't its just depending on how well you get along with others.. Basically Social skill is all that matters anymore.
Like I said during a few classes irl Groups are typically less skilled than individuals

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Originally Posted by LolitaBansheeMeru

See, the problem with that is the "harder content" is locked behind social nonsense

we all know gamers are the most anti-social people in the world and locking things that are supposedly hard when they really aren't its just depending on how well you get along with others..

Basically Social skill is all that matters anymore.

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So...you're annoyed that you have to be polite to other people?

Dig up.

Because you want extrem challenge, you suppose all people want or need this kind of challenges. But many people in a MMORPG are more here for the story than for the challenge. Deal with it.
Many players don't care about challenge or parse.

Talking for myself, if the game should become like that, I would just leave. I have no interest, I'm not seeking adrenaline but entertainment, it's only a leisure, I have no care for challenge. I'm not frightened or anything, I' don't care, that's not my dope.

Real challenges of real life are far more interesting and rewarding.

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Originally Posted by LolitaBansheeMeru

See, the problem with that is the "harder content" is locked behind social nonsense lol and this day where half the population gets offended so easily for a lot of people locking harder stuff behind socialism nonsense (aka social with people skills is slight you) we all know gamers are the most anti-social people in the world and locking things that are supposedly hard when they really aren't its just depending on how well you get along with others.. Basically Social skill is all that matters anymore.
Like I said during a few classes irl Groups are typically less skilled than individuals

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...I just want to point out that harder content is also locked behind appropriate equiment, so if someone would still be using an ilvl440 weapon for some reason, they might want to worry about that first...

And the needed social skills are low enough here - non at all are needed for EX-primals and you can get through Savage with PUGs (or join a static and never speak to them outside of agreeing to schedudles). I'm not sure about Ultimate, so my guess would be that you can beat it without having to make smalltalk.
I've played with enough people who werent super social - as long as they're not being jerks... and not being a jerk seems like a very, very low bar.
(Also I always thought that "socialism" was something completly different, but I guess its never to late to learn...)

I was thinking about IA. A real clever IA will understand she need to kill the heals, then the RDM and the INV and the job is done, all party will be dead.

You talk about balance, such IA would be far more a nightmare to balance.

Just make it like blade and soul there no healer class and no main tank class. They should add sub jobs like could have in FFXI then they don't need to worry about balance anymore. If want play some hard games go play some of the first Nintendo games like Ghost and goblins those had real challenge to them.

Since Gordias, encounter balance seems okay. Changing anything to how things work would have a direct impact on jobs themselves. I'm thinking about heal/tank cooldown planning for instance. Any random damage would negate the utility of abilities like earthly star, or make shields complicated to use efficiently. Random tank busters can't happen when tank cooldowns have such a rigid timer.

For me, what's holding FFXIV back mechanics-wise is the state of the servers. We can't have more precise-timing mechanics because of this small delay in pretty much everything. Savage is working around this problem to some degree, and for now it works.
I kind of like how for instance Voidwalker in Eden is more about a stricter DPS check (at least in the first weeks) rather than a heavy mechanic check. FFXIV's encounter design is still open to several ways of creating challenge.

You talk about how it's not a balance issue with MMO's while at the same time proposing absolutely absurd balance changes that would actually put the game in a unplayable, broken state. This isn't the first time this kind of thread has popped up either, people who don't understand the fundamentals of MMO game play always throw out these wild balance changes to how the game play functions trying to turn it into a action RPG. What your suggesting is nothing short of broken and imbalanced, FFXIV and most MMO's are not built to handle a constantly changing, unpredictable A.I. encounter. Once again, this a MMO not a action rpg.

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Originally Posted by hynaku

Just make it like blade and soul there no healer class and no main tank class. They should add sub jobs like could have in FFXI then they don't need to worry about balance anymore. If want play some hard games go play some of the first Nintendo games like Ghost and goblins those had real challenge to them.

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Why do people always suggest changing this game fundamentally to be like another game they can already play?

If you enjoy the gameplay of Blade and Soul, you can go and play Blade and Soul. If you want to play FFXI, I think you can still do that aswell, right?
I'm not saying that FFXIV is perfect and I'm sure there are many improvements that can be made in specific areas, but changing the whole system on a fundamental level seems absurd to me.
Besides: I dont think that every game should function the same way, that would only lead to less variety in the whole gaming market - personally I enjoy the general gameplay of FFXIV and dont want it changed to a different game after 7 years and 3 sucessful expansions.
And isnt it great that you can pick between playing Blade and Sopul, FFXI and FFXIV? Instead of just having one game with different skins? Isnt it great that people can pick the gameplay they like (most) and (still) find a game they enjoy playing instead of having people who might enjoy playing an online game of some kind but not enjoying what some of them offer?

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

.. That sounds not fun for me and many people I know.

I don't want a boss pulling some "hidden" team wiping mechanic out of nowhere. AI's can nearly always "outplay" characters easily. Just Calculate exactly when something will do the most damage or cause the most havoc and do that. Random paralyzes that freeze you JUST when you don't want them to. The reason this isn't in the game is it would absolutely destroy the fun for likely thousands of players.

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So you are saying its ok for players to try to optimize everything as much as possible, but when the AI does it, its bad?

Just look at Ozma in FFIX. It could be very hard to do in some encounters and very easy to do in other encounters because of the randomness. It works for a single player game where you control more than one characters, but maybe not so much for a multiplayer game where you control only one character.

OP is a bad take machine. Has made similarly bad takes on different topics. Can be rightfully ignored as either a troll or just a narc.

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

So you are saying its ok for players to try to optimize everything as much as possible, but when the AI does it, its bad?

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I'm saying if they did it to the AI many many players wouldn't enjoy this game anymore. Depending on your personal wants, it could be fun for you, but since there is a relatively large population in this game who doesn't live for "optimal" gameplay, it'd likely be received badly.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

I'm saying if they did it to the AI many many players wouldn't enjoy this game anymore. Depending on your personal wants, it could be fun for you, but since there is a relatively large population in this game who doesn't live for "optimal" gameplay, it'd likely be received badly.

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I've joked before that the bosses don't actually try to kill us players. If they were actually trying we'd probably never win a fight, since they would combine mechs in such a way that it would be impossible to survive.

Another thought: Imagine Lakshmi. At the start of the fight she has a shield up and there are 2 enemies. You kill the enemies and she drops the shield to attack, what if she didn't do that? She just keeps the shield up the entire time, being unable to take damage and just lets the instance timer run out while taunting your inability to do anything about it. All she has to do to win, is not lose.

If the bosses aren't stupid, we wouldn't even have a game. I agree with you.

The real issue in MMOs is that they're not what OP wants them to be.

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Originally Posted by KalinOrthos

OP is a bad take machine. Has made similarly bad takes on different topics. Can be rightfully ignored as either a troll or just a narc.

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Even a clock is right twice a day, once if it's one of those weirdo 24 HR clocks. That's why we need to smash like on every YouTube video...