3% HP nerf, what a giant slap in the dev's face

[Kabooa]

This is always such a disingenuous take. Poor job balance impacts the casual to midcore range significantly more than the 1%. PF is the wild west, dealing with general inconsistencies of players and varying skill levels. Only allowing specific jobs who are dwarfing their counterparts helps to mitigate this. Think about it, if a subpar Black Mage can rival a top tier Red Mage. Why wouldn't you want to lock the Caster spot to Black Mage? After all, you have a far higher chance of getting a subpar player while potentially lucking into someone better. It's only ever a benefit when the damage discrepancy is this bad. Hence why PF was locking Warrior and Paladin out of P8. They simply offer nothing Dark Knight and Gunbreaker don't do better even if the latter two are only average players.

I'll always take the better player no matter what job they pick.

That subpar Black Mage is going to cause me a lot more issues than the good red mage will.

[FireMage]

4 posters have proven you incorrect. Dismiss yourself instead.

Assertion is not proof. Counter the link or dismiss yourself

I think perhaps, if you're going to post Japanese language links and then act like a prat with people then it might pay to understand the content yourself.

My Japanese is conversational at best, but I was questioning whether it was saying what he claims, but went with the reading that was more favourable to you.

In which case:

50% of the total playerbase are casual and dont touch high end content at all.

50% have some kind of engagement with high end content but this includes very casual engagement, so those having a brief dabble or their FC helping them get a mount drop.

If only 30% are clearing high end content - which the article specifies, this puts the playerbase who are actively engaged with high end content quite low because they are not all high end raiders.

Except that it's not low. As it's HALF that engage in high end content

[Tiramu]

Assertion is not proof. Counter the link or dismiss yourself



Except that it's not low. As it's HALF that engage in high end content

Okay...

You said this affects a huge proportion of the playerbase. Issues such as balancing don't matter outside of the highest level of content. As long as you understand the basics of your job and can get some mechanics down, you're good to go with most high-end content. It certainly doesn't affect most casual players because the content they engage with is clearable with only a very basic understanding of your job, and you can easily be carried through most of the content.

In your link, he says that 50% of players have some kind of engagement with high-end content, but clarifies that a lot of this is casual engagement such as just giving it a go, being invited (probably referring to FC's asking if they want to run some duty or trial), or having their FC help them with a drop. He also clarifies that of this it's around 30% who are clearing high-end content, a number which gives you a better idea of broader participation. If only 30% of players are clearing high end content, then the number of players at the highest level, and who could argue are affected by minor balancing differences, isn't going to be that high.

Also, when you consider our FC and pretty much every FC in the game, routinely helps players clear a high end trials or dutys for a drop, and thats the only high end content they ever touch, even the the clear number is skewed somewhat (potentially by a heck of a lot of he is including the Primal Trials in that number).


TLDR; You cannot include casual or one time content engagement in your "2% balancing difference" affects a huge amount of the playerbase argument; and a 50% casual content participation doesn't make a majority of players hardcore raiders.

[Kabooa]

TLDR; You cannot include casual or one time content engagement in your "2% balancing difference" affects a huge amount of the playerbase argument; and a 50% casual content participation doesn't make a majority of players hardcore raiders.

For the record, if either of you are interested in doing homework, there are achievement aggregate sites that you can look at that, while not 100% accurate due to it simply being a scan of publically available character lodestones not set to private, provides far more concrete numbers than an offhand interview question answered by YoshiP.

For example, only .2% of the playerbase currently have cleared Abyssos, while clearing raids in general tends to cap out around 20-25%.

It's also important to note that this actual number may even be smaller as that's character achievements. I would estimate the actual number of final clears is probably closer to 20%, as a fair few high end raiders create alts on different servers/datacenters and clear with them as well.

[Saimeren]

This is an interesting question.
I'll argue that tuning the boss HP is the least efficient choice.
Jobs remains unbalanced and will have to be balanced in the future. Or jobs like MCH will remain this way until 7.0.
Also, they bothered with buffing PLD and WAR. Why, knowing they could just reduce the boss HP by an extra 1%?

The problem lies with content that is still ongoing such as DSR, where it will be easier because of buffs.
We're week 3 now, any unbalancing can be counter balanced with gear.

The point is, SQEX answered two different problems. The unbalancing of job and the tight DPS check. But we still end up with one problem they will eventually have to adress.
Tuning boss HP was the short term solution but balancing was a long term solution.
In fact they could've thrown a first set of buff to close a big the gaps and then take the next weeks to balance correctly.

You're right, nerfing the boss is a bandaid fix to what some view as a larger problem. However, it's the quickest and easiest solution to getting results while people are still doing progression runs.

They felt the need to make adjustments quickly and the best way to get that done was to nerf one thing rather than buff seven. (Again; taking all the testing time into consideration.) This change is a quick fix to make sure the raid is tuned properly. This then gives them a month and a bit to work on job balance issues for the 6.3 release rather than trying to rush out so many job changes in such a short window.

And you know that had they done that you'd be here complaining that they rushed job changes and didn't test them properly. (Look at how black mage pvp turned out.)

I'm betting the reason the tanks got dps buffs and the dps didn't is because the tanks don't really deal THAT much damage. Not in the grand scheme of things. Not compared to dps jobs.

Changing a tanks dps potencies is isn't going to break the game. Changing the potencies for five dps jobs will.

[Kachou_]

Raid tuning is not job balance my dude. Job balance is literally balancing the jobs between themselves to make sure there aren't vast discrepancies between the high and low ends.

Raid tuning is adjusting numbers in a particular raid to make it easier or harder.

It seems that you did not understand what I am saying. This tier is particularly hard to clear for certain jobs so they have to nerf it to a position where you can clear it with your eyes closed. There were zero problems clearing it with NORMAL JOBS before the nerf. But for some shit job comps, the fight has to be nerfed 1800 rdps so the shit comp teams can clear.

Also, apparently, they tested the fight with meta comp so the DPScheck is so off. Because when the devs claim they can easily clear the fight. There are some comps that are statistically impossible to clear. Apparently, they did not test these jobs.

Fight tuning is so bad because the dev team did not properly test their game and failed to identify the obvious balance problem. And they tune the fight based on a meta comp's performance. Period.

If you want proof, you can find a video of the dev team apologizing for only using samurai to test Eden 5-8.
Also, the devs claim that the DPScheck is not changed. So they likely tested in a first-week setting. You can try to run any comp other than GNB DRK WHM SCH SAM (ANY MELEE) BLM DNC. I can guarantee you there is zero chance you can clear consistently(as the devs claim they can) with that comp using first-week gear. That's why I am damn sure they only tested with what later turns out to be meta comp.

[Kachou_]

Raid tuning is not job balance my dude. Job balance is literally balancing the jobs between themselves to make sure there aren't vast discrepancies between the high and low ends.

Raid tuning is adjusting numbers in a particular raid to make it easier or harder.

I made a previous post before the 6.21 patch claiming they must have overlooked the job balance problem by only testing the game with too few comps. And ultimately result in the abnormally high DPS check. Combine this with the fact that devs already have a bad reputation for skipping some jobs when playtesting raids(Eden 5-8). In my opinion, the giant 3% 1800 DPS nerf is perfect evidence that the devs did a really bad job.

[Kachou_]

You're right, nerfing the boss is a bandaid fix to what some view as a larger problem. However, it's the quickest and easiest solution to getting results while people are still doing progression runs.

They felt the need to make adjustments quickly and the best way to get that done was to nerf one thing rather than buff seven. (Again; taking all the testing time into consideration.) This change is a quick fix to make sure the raid is tuned properly. This then gives them a month and a bit to work on job balance issues for the 6.3 release rather than trying to rush out so many job changes in such a short window.

And you know that had they done that you'd be here complaining that they rushed job changes and didn't test them properly. (Look at how black mage pvp turned out.)

I'm betting the reason the tanks got dps buffs and the dps didn't is because the tanks don't really deal THAT much damage. Not in the grand scheme of things. Not compared to dps jobs.

Changing a tanks dps potencies is isn't going to break the game. Changing the potencies for five dps jobs will.

How is nerfing 3% HP of a boss not game breaking tho. Based on fflogs, if you still run a meta comp, you can now clear the fight with 5 deaths and 4 damage downs. There are teams that can do up to 63000 dps in first week and now dps check is 60000?? In PLL they said this savage tier is going to be normal difficulty-wise. Now it is a joke.

If you think from the perspective of shit dps players, not buffing simply means the devs believe that it is proper for you to do SHIT DPS. You can argue that they just want more time to test. Just see if all the players buy that shit. If they really "run the tests" then how tf did 6.2 got released in the first place? They don't have time to "test"???

At least give people some copium by saying we are still investigating to see anything else need to change. Instead of saying "YOU ARE JUST BAD"

[Naizakane]

Well, if you're bringing fflogs into it, mind explaining why you have none while talking all that big game? Not even a clear log for DSR?

[Tiramu]

For the record, if either of you are interested in doing homework, there are achievement aggregate sites that you can look at that, while not 100% accurate due to it simply being a scan of publically available character lodestones not set to private, provides far more concrete numbers than an offhand interview question answered by YoshiP.

For example, only .2% of the playerbase currently have cleared Abyssos, while clearing raids in general tends to cap out around 20-25%.

It's also important to note that this actual number may even be smaller as that's character achievements. I would estimate the actual number of final clears is probably closer to 20%, as a fair few high end raiders create alts on different servers/datacenters and clear with them as well.

I think your probably about right, what you're saying is roughly in-line with what the industry assumes about player engagement.

I think achievement aggregates are problematic, but its interesting none the less.