Baldesion Arsenal Feedback

[HyperiusUltima]

oh yea, no doubt about that. It still needs to be punishing, I just would like a little more flexibility. Like even putting a consumable item in the bunny chests that lets you revive people. Just more options to get people back up if things go terribly wrong. I just hate having to leave people behind in runs.

I’m not sure if the devs would alleviate the difficulty like that, since that’s 54 Rezzes you can throw at people. If anything, the current Sacrifice Chaining strat isn’t bad; the only offset is that you only get 12 Healers, each with at least 2 Sacs. That’d be 24, provided Healers don’t die, so I think the content is balanced.

[DrWho2010]

if they have something to remove a challenge, then where's the challenge?

[Lacan]

if they have something to remove a challenge, then where's the challenge?

well, if the item was really rare and precious I don't think it'd entirely remove the challenge. Put it in gold bunny chests or something. Then you'd just have it in your pocket as a trump card to save a really awful run if need be.

[Epidendrum]

I had a private discussion with some colleagues yesterday, who have played in the NA/EU servers about it. One of the spoke about the difficulty of getting people to perform meteors and acceleration bombs correctly and likened it to his weekly party finder runs for savage. He asks for "blue and above" and gets all kinds of people in his party. I said that while I don't use any tools; in Gaia's duty finder runs for savage, "grey and green" are perfectly fine and have been for months. He dropped his jaw in shock.

First I reminded him that Gaia/Mana duty finder does not imply better skill. I replied that "grey" while queuing for savage duty finder in Gaia means that they can be counted to execute all mechanics flawlessly. The issue would be probably be dps uptime and rotation optimisation. However, with the completion of the Eureka weapon relic step, most players are in full i400. Hence, as long as the mechanical execution is flawless, "grey" is more than sufficient for a clear, and has been for a couple of months. JP macro strategies emphasize safety, margin of error, ease of understanding. Speed, or squeezing out the last GCD of damage are discarded. My colleague kept quiet for a seconds, sipped his coffee and quipped that in NA/EU, "grey" generally implies some problems with mechanical execution.

I think some players on reddit and other discussion platforms have pointed out what I've been reiterating, JP players are not more skilled. NA/EU have probably much better ways of maximising DPS. However, a poor optimiser ("grey") in Gaia who regularly pugs savage will have practiced enough to flawlessly execute the mechanics of O9S - O12S. All the while I thought it was the same for NA/EU, it was a culture shock to hear it is not the case.

Moving the topic back to the arsenal, I mentioned that it was similar for this content. These same players, especially during the Ozma fight can be seen contributing in a different way - acceleration bomb is coming, the sound goes off and the clustered group on the front left of the platform and the tank on the right, all shift slightly behind (to avoid using their own auto attacks) and freeze. Even if you are 100% sure acceleration bomb is not on you, you will freeze for the sake of the group. For that short few seconds, the entire raid dps drops to zero. This is a key example of playing it safe.

Meteors is another example. Markers come down, the cluster group on the left will stop all dps entirely and start to spread apart ever so slightly. Suddenly the meteor marked players jump and start sprinting. It becomes apparent the players with the meteors didn't even know the marker was on them, but this small step, a willingness to take the dps loss prevents a wipe. Similarly, Ozmashades, Ozma's mourning star or flare star and handled by taking a dps loss and performing slightly preemptive movement. My colleague drank more of his coffee and said, the loss of uptime like that will lead to more enrages. He shook his head and said uptime is the most important thing.

I nodded and said yes I have seen a lot of enrages for Ozma. Last week I had mostly 12-15% Ozma enrages. So far for this week, it's 6-9% enrages. More and more players have fully geared elemental bonuses. Playing it safe lets everyone practice mechanics. I concluded that NA/EU data centres seems to prioritise uptime, maximising every GCD. JP data centres prioritise safety, flawless mechanical execution, dropping dps to zero to execute mechanics is acceptable. Of course when both sides execute things correctly, NA/EU will be faster.

My colleague nodded and agreed with that point and said he never realised that "grey" in savage meant something so different across an ocean, and also understood more about why pugging in JP data centres results in clears eventually, but NA/EU wants their clear now, not later, so dps uptime is paramount. I just shrugged.

[Deceptus]

My colleague drank more of his coffee and said, the loss of uptime like that will lead to more enrages. He shook his head and said uptime is the most important thing.

My colleague nodded and agreed with that point and said he never realised that "grey" in savage meant something so different across an ocean, and also understood more about why pugging in JP data centres results in clears eventually, but NA/EU wants their clear now, not later, so dps uptime is paramount. I just shrugged.

See the 2nd part of my sig.

[Rockette]

I'm not sure what continuously pointing out cultural differences between the data centres is doing to help any situation.

We are not "the West" or NA/EU like Japan is Japanese.

We are Aus/NZ/Oceania, USA/Canada/Brazil/South America, France/Germany/England etc etc etc. There are widely different styles of language and culture at force here.

Our servers are a hodgepodge pot of many people and differences in game play. As what happens in real life, people in the same countries find each other to play within similar time zones. People who speak French are (generally) going to group with others who speak French. English players are going to get annoyed when non-English speakers join their groups and can't understand the strategy. Just like on Tonberry, the Japanese want to play with the Japanese and just like the rest of us, that data centre is at war for portals.

Just saying something is a simple as Your Servers vs Japanese is short sighted.

The thing Square forgot when implementing this content is that, the servers that aren't Japanese are of vastly different people's and time zones. People want to do content with their friends, the same way like we progress every single other content. Japan has a pug culture where everyone speaks the same language, is on at the same time, and have the same mind set, obeys Japanese macros.

We do not.

Even the culture and conduct between Aether and Primal parties are different beasts.

[ltsquigs]

If you don't mind me asking, where do the JP players share/find the macros used for content? I would love to see more examples than the BA one to model things on.

[Tsumdere]

I'm not sure what continuously pointing out cultural differences between the data centres is doing to help any situation.

We are not "the West" or NA/EU like Japan is Japanese.

We are Aus/NZ/Oceania, USA/Canada/Brazil/South America, France/Germany/England etc etc etc. There are widely different styles of language and culture at force here.

Our servers are a hodgepodge pot of many people and differences in game play. As what happens in real life, people in the same countries find each other to play within similar time zones. People who speak French are (generally) going to group with others who speak French. English players are going to get annoyed when non-English speakers join their groups and can't understand the strategy. Just like on Tonberry, the Japanese want to play with the Japanese and just like the rest of us, that data centre is at war for portals.

Just saying something is a simple as Your Servers vs Japanese is short sighted.

The thing Square forgot when implementing this content is that, the servers that aren't Japanese are of vastly different people's and time zones. People want to do content with their friends, the same way like we progress every single other content. Japan has a pug culture where everyone speaks the same language, is on at the same time, and have the same mind set, obeys Japanese macros.

We do not.

Even the culture and conduct between Aether and Primal parties are different beasts.

Because people are trying to push the "Japanese can do it why can't you?" shtick without considering that we have 6 time zones in America alone, extremely different cultures from coast to coast, multiple languages spoken, and less than half of the active Eureka player base they do. They think that magically with a drop of a hat that we will completely swap from years of rejecting harder pugged content (casual reminder that our EX and raid queues are 10 hours+ while the JP servers use them frequently) to embracing the PUG in lieu of premades and PF.

It was shortsighted design. BA should have been a separate instance from the very beginning.

(And I am saying this from the perspective of someone who PUGs almost everything and is very patient. I don't have a static and probably will never have one.)

[hijifa]

I just wanted to chime in, I think BA is amazing content for the game and hope that many of the dungeons' mechanics carry over to future dungeons or trials. You really feel a sense of danger in BA, making you play the dungeon not like the other dungeons we have where you just run through everything.

The main factors are the limited availability/entry, hard to rez, and the prep needed to enter that makes everyone cautious about walking around. I personally didn't encounter the "elitism" problem faced by many western players since i play in JP server and they're happy to do it pug style.

It does take alot of research on the players part to not completely ruins everyone's run, but it all adds to the satisfaction you feel when you clear it similar to savage.

I can totally see dungeons like this, maybe made a bit easier and abit more accessible to become a mainstay in the game. This even opens up the possibility of similar "hard" or savage 4-8 man dungeons with similar mechanics like traps, splitting up your party, needed to prep before hand.

The final underrated thing is how good it feels to progress your equipment in BA, if you go in fresh you basically get 1 shot by anything, after getting some eureka gear, your power level increases dramatically.

My BIGGEST complaint is about the hydatos map itself. All the prev eureka maps had amazing elevation, different "zones", choke points, map secrets, and overall good map shape. Hydatos map is a basic shape without any of the things mentioned.

[ElazulHP]

I've given up on BA even though it's really fun content. Should have been disconnected from Eureka and tied to the DF and PF systems.