"A system that rewards effort and innovation" can't be buzzwords for imbalance-get

[Issachar]

@Abrak

It's stupid to slam a system before it's even in place

EXACTLY!

[Peregrine]

guaranteed[/i] way is easier?"...hell, I might put that in my sig. It's a sage piece of advice to reflect on.

Bragging about your high golf handicap is what you and your bros are doing. Sage? Lol no. Weak.

[Peregrine]

Puppetmaster was my first 75 Job in XI about 4 years ago. I know a thing about

A. People not responding when you ask to join a party
B. "Got any other jobs?"
C. < No Thanks >

Over time I developed great friends, discovered its horribly broken weaknesses (15+ minutes w/o Automaton anyone?), and over time mastered a fully equipped and merited PUP. I had some fantastic memories, joined many events and built a reputation as a good player and even got some "wow" 's along the way.

Did I try harder than most jobs? Yeah. Was it fair? Not at all.

I don't want this to happen in XIV
I have a similar story to share about the underused, underappreciated, and incredibly powerful Dancer. But i'm sure you all don't care, and get the idea.

I would like feeding TP to not be the enemy, rather the monster be the enemy. This will invite front-line classes back up to the front. I'm staying optimistic, there's really nothing I can do at this point other than to wait and see, or leave. June can't come fast enough

You can fight the systems that are designed to keep weak players accepted based on what imbalanced jobs they ride on.
You can demand equality as a PUP. Will the blms, rdms, brds, rngs, and their ilk scoff and snicker again? Of course. You're a threat to how special they're treated. Without you down there, they can't be up where they think they are.

As they pathetically kite, hide, and cower at the game's difficulty, then brag about how good they are lol...

Stand up, PUP. Take what belongs to you.

[Peregrine]

Battle Regimens had the promise of encouraging balanced parties, because of the requirement to use weaponskills from different classes in order to get damage boost (weaponskills from same classes simply removed cross-class affinity penalties).

However, the clunkiness of the battle regimens, together with the still-high affinity of cross-class skills has rendered Battle Regimens less useful then they could have been.

However a system like this, that rewards diversity, without REQUIRING particular classes is the best of both worlds. You don't need any particular class to increase overall damage, but you can't bring 8 of the same class, or your BR will be weak.

Another example, already mentioned, is to give enemies skills that can be used reactively. For example, an enemy could have slashing, piercing, projectile, magic, and elemental defense buffs, but only ONE can be active at a time. The enemy uses the buff corresponding to the biggest damage source. Another way to encourage party diversity.

One thing I DON'T want to see is a simply reversal of the situation, where melee is king, lolARC becomes a byword, with CON and THM relegated to basic healbots. I've seen this situation in other MMOs as well, and it's just as ugly as OPed ARC / THM / CON.

Regimens and skillchains are proof that the population will quit any semblance of tactics and teamwork if mindless zerging is easier and competitive. The whole problem with class whoring is the fact that the players who do it over and over in MMOs are weaker than the devs are giving them credit for. They can't handle complexity when simplicity is competitive. They can't even win the fights as-designed for the general demographic.

They take archerx6 to fights because they're not good players, not because they ARE good players. The game difficulty is set to medium. They reset it to easy because they can't play on medium because it's frustrating to them. They have a high golf handicap. And instead of being made fun of because of it, they're encouraged to brag about how weak they are and how imbalanced their setups have to be for them to succeed in the game.

Don't even let that kind of player think they're a success. Kill their imbalance-getting and make them be good players for once in their MMO careers.

Like I said, you can already tell who has spent their entire MMO careers abusing imbalance in this thread. They're the people who balk at someone who laughs at their ranger ranger ranger ranger ranger ranger "innovation." They think they're great, when honestly they're not. That's why they need these lame tactics.

Take them from them. Maybe they'll get better and step up their game.

My guess is, though, that if you take certain players' access to imbalance as a means to progress and achieve in MMOs...they'll fall off the curve because they were never good to begin with without that developer subsidy.

[Peregrine]

It's stupid to slam a system before it's even in place.. The system isn't innovative.. but it rewards players that are.. Hmm...

Does the idea of prevention escape that many of you? When seeing a stalled car in the middle of your lane 40 meters ahead, is it stupid to slam the brakes before you're even at it?

Come on, now. A vote to not prevent this problem is a vote to keep the problem. Maybe you like thmx8 party potentials. Maybe you think that's smart and innovative. There's a stalled car 40 meters ahead of you, and you're arguing not to do anything. Maybe it'll disappear!

I think that's silly.

If you want a system that jobs are treated equally in and balance is rewarded instead of punished, you'd best be looking around you and change your vote. The only useful jobs in a difficult endgame setting in XIV are gladiator, thaumaturge, and archer and without exquisite attention to balance, stacking them will be this "smart" "saavy" "innovative" player base's solution to the challenge.

You scream, "Well how can we knowww it's not here!"
Take the logical conclusions to their only conceivable end. Archerburns and thaumafests are coming. Just as 300 million gil pieces of rare sellables are coming if they're introduced, imbalance will INSTANTLY run the game the SECOND difficult content pops up.

Marauders, lancers, pugs...you all can just stay home like you did in XI's early years. If one of your trash gear pieces drop, they'll invite you to the party, but jobs that helped kill Ifrit get priority. Naturally.

[Demacia]

Tank and spank, every fight, forever. Woo.

[Physic]

Tank and spank, every fight, forever. Woo.

I dont believe in tank and spank as a way of life, but kite and fight is way worse, because at least tank and spank allows every type of job to contribute, wheres kite and fight means you are totally useless in the fight if you cant attack, or debuff from range. And in all honesty, kite and fight/ tank and range was way more popular in ffxi than tank and spank.

One major problem is that in ffxi, while melee excelled at regular fights, they were less than stellar in hard fights/boss fights for most of thier careers. And most of the game allowed you to avoid regular fights, and just fight the bosses.

They need to not make most bosses weak to ranged attacks, Its fine for some bosses, not every fight should be the same, but it should not always be the answer. They also need to have more group fights, with varied enemy types, or bosses that have multiple targetable pieces that are acting as a group fight.

They probably need to turn archer into a different type of class, being the best DD by far, with little to no real risk is not a good idea. They have highest spike, and highest dot, and have various CC options. I mean at least thaum is not hax on regular monsters. Theoretically if most bosses are in a dungeon, the thaum is only owning on the Boss, only if that boss has a high Drank/defense, and emulate only usefull if it is primarily magical. Archer on the other hand does even better damage in fights with a few seconds between monsters, is even less likely to get hit, it does excellent spike, and more dmg over time than other DD. It even has blood letter which is likely to become job exclusive (high level class defining skill?) Thaum is a slow powerful class, but in a party versus varied mobs, its advantages arent the world. Archer on the otherhand, needs a pretty big gameplay focus change, or monsters that are designed to hate rangers and have single target ranged/close ability that hurts.




While yeah they have changes planned, they never once mentioned altering ranged / melee balance on high level content.

[AdvancedWind]

While I can see the point and sort of agree with it, your attitude need some work. Also, what you're doing in this thread is simply

"HEY SE, I DON'T EXACTLY KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING BUT I SOMEHOW ALREADY KNOW YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG AND I'M ASKING THAT YOU DO IT RIGHT, HOWEVER I WON'T EXACTLY GIVE PROPER IDEAS ABOUT HOW. ALSO: EVERYONE DISAGREEING WITH ME IS AN INEXPERIENCED CHEESER, TEE~HEE"

which is far from being constructive criticism.

[Peregrine]

I always hated most of the most difficult bosses in RPGs, because by "difficult" developers almost always resort to "find the imbalance and whore it." They can't come up with good fights, so they just throw whatever cliche difficulties they can at it, then test it to make sure it's actually beatable no matter how lame the tactic is.

The devs have continued that tradition of lazy design into the MMO world, where "find the imbalance and whore it" has much more negative repercussions to the game balance than in an offline MMO.

The imbalance-get strategies are what makes people feel SMRT about winning a MMO for the first 6 months of its life, then for the next 6 years it's actually a liability to the game's overall lasting quality. That's why people don't use KOTR as a crutch in FF7 any more if they play it. What's the use? Where's the fun?

Archering archer on your archer is just not a good investment strategy for FF14 to be messing around with. Sure it might make a few power-drunk archers enjoy the game, but it's really just a sad copout.

[Peregrine]

While I can see the point and sort of agree with it, your attitude need some work. Also, what you're doing in this thread is simply

"HEY SE, I DON'T EXACTLY KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING BUT I SOMEHOW ALREADY KNOW YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG AND I'M ASKING THAT YOU DO IT RIGHT, HOWEVER I WON'T EXACTLY GIVE PROPER IDEAS ABOUT HOW. ALSO: EVERYONE DISAGREEING WITH ME IS AN INEXPERIENCED CHEESER, TEE~HEE"

which is far from being constructive criticism.

My attitude is in response to almost a decade of over-privileged, spoiled imbalance-getting players who WANT that entitlement and job imbalance so they can hide that they're not very good players.

Constructive criticism has little role when you have infestation of moles in your yard who have no interest in discussing this rationally. They want their archer. They want their power. They don't care what it does to summoners, unless summoners become powerful and imbalanced then they'll level that.

They don't want lancers to be competitive with mages and archers. So out comes the attitude that their mentality is a threat to the game and needs exterminated. Not persuaded.

Whoever designed archer and thaumaturge has no business here. They completely failed, and the only reason imbalance isn't running amok in this game is because nothing matters and the game's difficulty mode is defaultly set at "very easy."

Bump it up to medium difficulty...just medium...and it is an archerburn and thaumafest. Nothing more required.

As one of your peers put it for your side, why even make it hard on yourself? There's archer and thaumaturge. And he's proud of that statement.

This is where the attitude comes from. Constantly addressing people who are a threat to a quality game because they can't feel powerful and special unless they play broken and imbalanced shovelware.