We Really Need To Talk About The State And Path Of FFXIV

[Raskbuck]

What numbers you see don't really matter too much in the grand scheme of things since they tune things based on ilvl (expected damage/healing output/eHP, and they'll increase the boss HP and amount of damage they do and scale them appropriately). The high potency attacks have long cooldowns or have some sort of drawback to them.

(Made up numbers) Let's say you have 40k HP - A raidwide AoE does 20k. that's 50% of your health. Next expansion comes out, a raid wide does 100k, but your HP went up to 200k. Still 50%. Your healing output would have went up as well. A drawback is the rather large numbers it can end up as, and older content starts getting 1 shot and soloed but since you can unsync them anyways...

Sure, you might end up having +50% more DPS/HPS/eHP next expansion just eyeballing numbers.. but the amount of HP bosses have and the amount of damage they do will also go up appropriately if tuned properly. Same in reverse, they could squish the numbers so we're doing 1k hits, but they'll just squish the HP values, too. So we have raidwides doing 5k, but our health would be 10k, still 50% or whatever number they decide it should be based on how they balance healers. Not much difference except smaller numbers.

So it's not really a big deal, unless you have a problem dealing 100k damage per hit or something. It's all relative though, if 100k is 1% of the boss health and 1k is 1% of the bosses health with smaller numbers, it's mostly the same.

This reminds of ARR launch when they cut everyone's 1.0 gil and redid all the NPC prices to make the numbers smaller.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel it can reach a point where inflated numbers stop being meaningful. In games like WoW, the numbers kinda go over my head when you start hitting enemies by the millions. I realize it's a method to simulate how much your character has progressed, though.

[Vaer]

Maybe it's just me, but I feel it can reach a point where inflated numbers can stop being meaningful. In games like WoW, the numbers kinda go over my head when you start hitting enemies by the millions. I realize it's a method to simulate how much your character has progressed, but I can't help but to feel it will seem a bit pointless at some point with 8-digit numbers attacks.

The multiplier eventually causes it, since that is how they lower the difficulty of things and make you seem stronger. If you only went from like 1-2k 100% increase - 2k then 4k, 100% increase, etc it eventually gets ridiculous so games like WoW just squish the numbers and add the multiplier to older content so you still one shot them to preserve the progression of feeling "stronger."

Now, they could slow it down, but you might have a harder time clearing things.

[Raskbuck]

The multiplier eventually causes it, since that is how they lower the difficulty of things and make you seem stronger. If you only went from like 1-2k 100% increase - 2k then 4k, 100% increase, etc it eventually gets ridiculous so games like WoW just squish the numbers and add a multiplier to older content so you still one shot them to preserve the progression of feeling "stronger."

Right, and the problem with the squish is that it's generally received poorly by the community. Not only it breaks the game (for example, WotLK Loremaster is unattainable since the last squish), but it also antagonizes people by feeling they are "weaker." At the end of the day, though, it's all the same like you mentioned. We still deal X% of damage, and the bosses still have a proportional amount of HP. If anything, it feels like a cheap way to make you feel stronger, but it's just placebo.

[Neophyte]

I agree with most of the things written in the opening post.

The other day I was working on normal Alphascape, and found myself asking what was even the point of getting the tokens. They drop i380 gear that will be quickly replaced by the Genesis one, and frankly I personally don't see any point of doing them anymore. I'm guessing it's meant for gearing up alts or something, but as someone who only play 2 jobs, I find it a bit pointless as I'll replace all that gear soon enough anyway.

If you don't do savage, you have full genesis gear on 2 jobs after about 20 weeks (no weapons though, with that it's more like 25 weeks).
If you get 380 normal raid gear in the first month those pieces might last for 2-4 months and then you only replace one piece per week... that is not thaaaaat short.

[Raskbuck]

If you don't do savage, you have full genesis gear on 2 jobs after about 20 weeks (no weapons though, with that it's more like 25 weeks).
If you get 380 normal raid gear in the first month those pieces might last for 2-4 months and then you only replace one piece per week... that is not thaaaaat short.

Thanks for your input! You're not wrong, but considering I don't really do Savage content, I'm not in a hurry to gear up quickly either. Not that it matters anyway, since you only need i350 (355?) to do the MSQ, Trial and NM Alphascape.

For me personally, gearing up beyond that is just preparing to meet the requirements for the next patch. I guess I just find the threadmill very pointless if you are not a raider, since everything else in the game doesn't require it in the least. I realize that's the nature of themepark MMOs, though, so maybe I'm just growing tired of them in general.

[Ameela]

What numbers you see don't really matter too much in the grand scheme of things since they tune things based on ilvl (expected damage/healing output/eHP, and they'll increase the boss HP and amount of damage they do and scale them appropriately). The high potency attacks have long cooldowns or have some sort of drawback to them.

I will say though that psychologically it does start feeling meaningless when basic auto attacks from monsters are doing 10k damage or something, I like smaller numbers because it makes it easier to gauge the strength and effectiveness of each attack and buff and things like that.
Sometimes after I die to a tank buster for like 56k I have to go into my character screen to check if I got one shot or not, or if it was even mitigated, because I don't know my exact HP value since it's so high at this point.
What's the point of having numbers if you can't quickly gather the information you need from them? Most games nowadays feel like they use numbers as a way to inflate your own ego rather than actually be useful.

[Vaer]

I will say though that psychologically it does start feeling meaningless when basic auto attacks from monsters are doing 10k damage or something, I like smaller numbers because it makes it easier to gauge the strength and effectiveness of each attack and buff and things like that.
Sometimes after I die to a tank buster for like 56k I have to go into my character screen to check if I got one shot or not, or if it was even mitigated, because I don't know my exact HP value since it's so high at this point.
What's the point of having numbers if you can't quickly gather the information you need from them? Most games nowadays feel like they use numbers as a way to inflate your own ego rather than actually be useful.

Honestly, I wish they had a death recap after you die that shows you the last like 4 or 5 hits of damage/actions you used so you can see what killed you. I think in general it is definitely psychological, but it is on purpose so they can have higher tuned difficulties (due to having a higher rdps requirement which means you might need better gear to inflate your numbers to beat the enrage(s) and gear checks), and on the flip side, if they made gear that barely was an upgrade I think less people would bother even getting it. This eventually inflates numbers up to thousands, hundred of thousands, etc when you keep piling on 10% here and there on top of already large numbers.

[Magic-Mal]

Oh no. No no no. Don't revive this please lol

This is a discussion topic and my discussion topic. If you don't like it you don't have to post here <.<

[Magic-Mal]

Snip.

I get that it doesn't really matter all too much and that it's mostly psychological but it's just... it bothers me for some reason either way. It makes progression not feel as meaningful anymore. We're "getting stronger" but in a way we really aren't. Even that is almost an illusion.. At Lv1 we did 11 damage per hit and the squirrel had 20HP. At level 80 we will still be fighting the same squirrel doing 8,000 damage per hit and the squirrel has 76,000HP.

I don't really feel that much stronger when a bug in The Burn has higher HP and damage than Bahamut(I feel they are using up the strongest baddies way too early and fast). Like, I get it vertical progression and that's just how it is but I guess my problem is the rate of how much we get stronger. ARR -> HW was kinda tame. But HW -> SB was like "here's 30,000 added to your damage". It all just feels so pointless. Maybe it could be solved by horizontal progression...

Also what are you even on about regarding potency? Those are unchanging static bases. Samurai's and Black Mage's are high because high damage is supposed to be their shtick.

I'm referring to the fact that now it's the norm for all jobs to have attacks with 400 potency, 680 potency, 800 potency, SAM with 1,000 potency. I remember in HW, MCH's highest potency attack was 300. Now it's 800. Remember when only WAR had a 500 potency attack?

High potency attacks these days are basically like:
You: "Random Magitek Armor! Behold! My most powerful attack! It does 680 potency and it strikes twice!"
Magitek Armor: "Oh no! O.O’"
You: "Ya!" *28,000 Damage*, *29,700 Damage*
Magitek Armor: *Loses 1% HP*
You: "Huh.."
Magitek Armor: "Fire missile." *86,570 Damage*
You: *Dead*

[MoroMurasaki]

This kind of feels like complaints about nothing?

Numbers get bigger as games age, it's just how things work. If it bothers you from an in-character perspective of perceived growth do you honestly imagine numbers popping up by enemies heads when you hit them? That doesn't make any sense.