Interview with xenosys-vex

[Mycow8me]

I enjoy making weapons in the game so I just set it to blacksmith...

It's not really absurdly simple to do when it requires reworks of classes but too each his own. You are again only thinking about the DPS issue when there is another elephant in the room. I'm going to drop out of this discussion for now, sorry for offending you.

[DaulBan]

Yeah im really tryin to hold down tha Dark Man. Its better than what we have now and has no downsides. But by all means, talk about how I find war enjoyable mr blacksmith.

Didn't you know that by merely leveling PLD or WAR you became a terrible person?

I'm going to drop out of this discussion for now, sorry for offending you.

[Mycow8me]

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...acter/1104459/

Here's everything, feel free to laud away and antagonize if it makes you feel any better.

I seriously am sorry though, I couldn't help think of the other thread but at the same time I ain't gonna bother trying to find it either.

[Aana]

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...acter/1104459/

Here's everything, feel free to laud away and antagonize if it makes you feel any better.

I seriously am sorry though, I couldn't help think of the other thread but at the same time I ain't gonna bother trying to find it either.

I was being sarcastic by pointing out your 'Blacksmith' main as you pointing out my 'not drk main'-ness. You don't need to defend your choice to play whatever you want to play.

Ive just come to the conclusion that its far simpler to just adjust potencies and get 98% of the problem fixed instead of pretending SE cares enough to balance miniscule details like its a competitive Esport. I'm coming to terms that we have unrealistic expectations. They aren't going to great lengths to balance a PVE MMO game. 'Close enough' is good enough and from their position, that makes a LOT of sense. SE's recent interview response just confirms that thought, as does many similar responses in the past.

I think its just more realistic to settle for rough parity in the factor that matters most. Changing potencies is far more likely since its changing numbers in existing code instead of reworking jobs, creating animations, making a buncha changes across the board, only to still have the forums whine about whos up and whos down anyway. Whatever job is on bottom will fill the forums as all games ever have have proven. If youre a PVE MMO dev team, what makes more sense? At least they will all be functional at competitive in a general sense. It also makes a simple blueprint for new jobs that play differently. You choose the style of job you like most, the impact will be roughly the same.

We aren't going to get fine tune balancing with SE's 'give no Fs' in a PVE game. I realize that can come off as 'giving up' or "screw darks! Don't buff em! Muahahahaha!" but I just accept the reality that SE doesn't and will never care about really fine level balancing, and on a rational level, I have to admit that stance makes real, practical sense. Tanks are within roughly 5% of each other right now and are able to clear all content without 'excessive' burden? Jobs done for a team working on PVE content. That's not going to be a popular opinon to the guys currently stuck on the bottom, but someone will always be bottom. It may not be me right now, but I have been playing online PVE games for quite a long time now and sometimes youre preferred class/play style is just stuck on the bottom. It sucks. I know, but PVE games will always just get the 'good enough' balance approach. I have never played one that didn't. Its just not worth the Dev's time unless things are REALLY broken.

[TouchandFeel]

Yet they quickly addressed and made changes to WAR, changes that were not just potency tweaks and could be easily defined as "fine tuning" if what DRKs are asking for is being labeled as such.

Why was it so imperative for a large portion of the tank community to have those things fixed while DRKs should be accepting of nothing to minimal fixes for their problems.
Why is it acceptable for SE to so quickly and vocally acquiesce to WAR and give them what they ask for and more while giving DRK naught but a shrug.

Just imagine the response if SE had taken the same stance with WAR.

People taking an attitude of "well fixing stuff is not SE's style so just deal" is absurd when less than a patch cycle ago we were shown the contrary.

Also DRK's problems are not just issues that can be fixed with slight potency buffs. While players like to focus a lot on dps and DRK's damage is part of the problem, it is just part of a much bigger mess that goes much deeper than anything potency tweaks will fix.

[MagiusNecros]

DRK doesn't matter since DRK users are a minority therefore SE does not have to cater to the smallest portion of their Tank userbase. Which is unfortunate considering the only Tank I would want to play is DRK. And since DPS queue times are too long for me I won't play those either. And I'm not cut out to be a healer. Oh well.

Maybe I should just become a crafter. Except that sucks too since crafting weapons and armor that matter is a complete joke and a super grind to even do.

[Aana]

Yet they quickly addressed and made changes to WAR, changes that were not just potency tweaks and could be easily defined as "fine tuning" if what DRKs are asking for are being labeled as such.

Why was it so imperative for a large portion of the tank community to have those things fixed while DRKs should be accepting of nothing to minimal fixes for their problems.
Why is it acceptable for SE to so quickly and vocally acquiesce to WAR and give them what they ask for and more while giving DRK naught but a shrug.

Just imagine the response if SE had taken the same stance with WAR.

People taking an attitude of "well fixing stuff is not SE's style so just deal" is absurd when less than a patch cycle ago we were shown the contrary.

Also DRK's problems are not just issues that can be fixed with slight potency buffs. While players like to focus a lot on dps and DRK's damage is part of the problem, it is just part of a much bigger mess that goes much deeper than anything potency tweaks will fix.

The war thing honestly came out of left field. People kinda shut up about war (its never silent. Hell theres a fix pld thread up right now) after the gauge changes (which were just numbers btw. Nothing 'hard' on the dev side all thigns considered). Just a quiet post here and there about giving a reason to have SIO on a hotbar, kinda like the occasional mention of survivor these days. 'Itd be nice if' posts. But even the SIO thing was a single skill overhaul. So for all the comparisons done, Devs changed the numbers in some skills and recreated SIO. Why should we expect something much more dramatic for drk? Buncha number tweaks (potencies here an MP reduction there etc) and maybe something like a survivor rework if we're really lucky.

There are 2 separate issues with the way drk works now.

1. Power. Its underpowered by a smallish margin in DPS, threat maintenance, etc (though with shirk/nin etc enmity can easily fall into the 'good enough' category for SE). These are all easily addressed by number changes. EZPZ. What I advocate.
2. Playstyle. Clunkyness. dis-Synergy. Goes by many names but people don't like how it 'feels' to play drk.

1 is easy to manage and I advocate tweaking the numbers to bring about rough parity with tanks. Its considerably lower investment by devs and brings everything in line at a practical level.

2 has a myriad of problems. Starting with lack of consensus. Some people actually like drk as it feels now (shocking I know!). Some want it like HW. Some want to transform it into their own view of what drk should be, etc. Secondly, its significantly more dev work. These are playstyle changes, redesigns, etc. They take more work to do and no matter how SE does it, everyone wont be happy anyway. You make it the high skill cap fast job in HW? theres gonna be angry drks that wanted 123 (which used to be pld and got moved to SB Drk and doesn't exist anywhere else now).

The last overhaul of a job in this game was 2.0-2.1 war. And that was because it couldn't actually tank the content in the game. Even though it actually FIXED war, people were STILL mad they destroyed the 'blood tank' style. You still see the remnants of that in the constant bloodbath whining. War could not actually tank the content in the game and that is the one and only time any job got a non-expac rework. Period. And when you really look at it, war didnt get any new actions, animations, or other work. It was just a MASSIVE number overhaul. No other job got a new skill or animation outside of an expac ever with the single exception of SIO (which is why it was so out of left field imo). The closest they've done is give sustain back which was already developed. Drk isn't getting a fundamental rework. I'm sorry, but its just unrealistic and setting yourself up to flip more tables.

So instead of asking for the moon when we don't even have a plane let alone a shuttle, why not ask for a nice road trip? Tweak some numbers. Bring drk from 'slightly behind' to being in the pack again. You aren't getting HW drk back anymore than War is getting bloodbath or path back. So tone down war, bring up drk #s to match pld, (or bring everyone to war, or down to drk. whatever. you get the idea.) Its not that bad being on the bottom if the difference is 1 inch, and since someone will always be the bottom, best design is just to reduce the gap between jobs so whoever gets the shit RNG that patch isn't head and shoulders up or down. Just an inch.

[Hierro]

I'm sure that Xeno is a talented player and an asset to the PF community. His logic skills however, need some work.

Where exactly did he say he would not be happy with WAR being 2nd in damage if DRK were to have the best personal dps? Come on now, you look crazy jumping to these conclusions. You look like the one in need of logic skills making this unwarranted wild claim.

[Xenosan]

He also said he hasn't made any youtube videos because he waits until he's 100% certain of his thoughts before making them

inferring that he isn't quite there yet,

so by his own admission: take what he said with a grain of salt

Though truth to Lillies and BS gauges

[Levan86]

Xeno conveniently left WAR out of the balance equation when talking about DRK, and went on a long tirade about DRK having inferior utility to BOTH tanks, and that low utility should be balanced by higher personal DPS, and then in his closing paragraph on that segment, stated specifically that DRK should deal higher damage than only PLD (omitting WAR from the statement altogether).
Here however, he conveniently says that DRK should have more DPS than PLD ONLY. He mysteriously neglects to mention WAR. So, essentially he is saying DRK and PLD should be balanced with eachother, but WAR should bring more DPS than both, while also having more utility than DRK.

well.. cant have war which is xeno's trademark to be 2nd in tank dps rank no? basically he wants for more buff to war, and fuck paladin back to where it belongs in 3.xx and make drk no 2 again.

war logic