/r/ffxivdiscussion: Interview /w Yoshi-P on the first Arcadion savage tier difficulty

[gllt]

This is a player problem, not a dev problem, the FF14 community has a mental illness issue over nerfs that seems to be particularly bad compared to other MMOs.

While I don't like calling it a mental illness, I would say it's a real thing not only in 14 but in online games as a whole. Doesn't even matter if a change is a buff or a nerf, or even a lie, if it upsets a certain group of players they will riot and establish a narrative about the change.

I remember some FPS game kept getting complaints about the ping to the server from players and so they just changed it so the ping displayed a lower number and everyone was very happy with the change even though it did nothing.

And honestly that just convinced me devs should lie more as long as it works. Lmao.

[CNitsah]

I don't know about savage, but people should stop wanting for normal content to become more and more difficult. Honestly that normal tier is really fun to play, while not being super difficult, and that's what normal should be. Honestly one of my favourite raid ever is O5. It's not difficult, but it's damn fun.
The slight increase was welcome, but I feel like continuing too much that way will only push the vast majority of players to just not bother. At least not before they find a way to teach the player the basics mechanics (best example is the red dorito marker that ask you to stack by at least 2, but people continue to treat it like the standard stack marker). A rework of the Novice all and making it mandatory to progress would be a good way. Game is very bad at teaching you, and I feel that if the difficulty is pushed higher without dealing with how bad the that, it might be counter-productive. Honestly one of my favourite raid ever is O5. It's not difficult, but it's damn fun.

[Lyth]

A 'no-nerf' approach doesn't work. Upward balance tends to focus on potency numbers, and often misses the point around why certain jobs are powerful.

PCT's power comes from its burst - it has the biggest burst window in the game, with most of your potency coming from relatively few buttons. Jobs with resource systems often have to ramp up on their opener, which leads to some burst asymmetry. PCT doesn't, since you can load up motifs outside of combat. It's a bit like letting jobs start up with 100 gauge. The motifs can also be loaded up during downtime, which means that the job becomes significantly more powerful during intermission phases without a target. If you think PCT is powerful in the recently released tier, it would become exponentially more so in fights with actual downtime, since you spend more of that time in burst.

Without significant revisions to the way that motifs work and PCT potency is distributed, the job will be completely uncontested in FRU.

Utility often gets ignored in these 'upward' balance revisions. We've seen jobs imbalances on utility tools go on for expansions on end. PCT has the most powerful movement tool ever released. It's a 20 second recast fixed distance dash with 5 seconds of sprint on every use. For reference, that brings you up to about 40% sprint uptime. The equivalent WHM action released this expansion is a fixed distance dash on a 60 second recast, without sprint.

It's difficult to understand exactly what role PCT is supposed to fill. It's supposedly a damage caster designed to compete with BLM. But it has better raidwide mitigation than RDM, some raid healing, and excellent burst mobility. The majority of the casts are either instant or relatively short, and the longest casts can happen during downtime. The majority of your damage is weighted on a few button presses during burst. Is it surprising that the EW SMN player numbers have just been replaced by DT PCT player numbers? This job is just a direct upgrade, for the low cost of a raise. You could even prog on SMN and swap out to PCT when you're on enrage, if you like. That's why double caster was popular on prog this time around.

The job has about 65% usage on clears in the most recent tier and about 75-80% usage in the fastest clears. I don't think he needs to worry about nerfs hurting players feelings. I think he needs to worry about losing players who have an interest in playing the role but prefer one of the other available playstyles.

[Supersnow845]

They made the wrong decision with PCT but not because PCT needed a flat nerf but because they didn’t address its actually problems which they could have done and for 90% of PCT players it actually would have been a buff

If you look at PCT’s numbers both before and after the 7.05 changes PCT doesn’t do too much damage at all percentiles, PCT has a too crit fishing heavy burst window. PCT has a ridiculously high gold percentile ceiling but your average PCT in PF is doing about as much as your average non braindead (read VPR) melee which is about where they wanted to balance it. What they should have done rather than flat nerfing PCT or flat buffing all the other melee is to reduce the crit potential in PCT’s burst. They could do this by making star prism and rainbow drip auto crit. This would actually be a massive nerf to the gold parse who just lost around 14 1000+ potency casts that could crit but to your average green/blue parser in PF this would instead be a decent buff because it better standardises their damage

The whole PCT debacle is people looking at the gold parse and considering that the be all end all of balance. Something like SCH+AST who are ahead in combined DPS by like 15% at every percentile is an actual balance problem

[Valence]

no, eden's gate dps check was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay harder than m4s dps check (week1)
asphodelos was a bit easier, but still harder than m4s (also week1)

but that doesn't mean either of them are bad, i loved both of them

Agree to disagree then. I was already skipping half if not more of Titan's phase 3 in week 3-4, which isn't dissimilar to skipping half of Sunlight + enrage today. There is possibly a tiny bit more margin with this tier due to their pre release buffs but the difficulty? Took me the exact same amount of time.

[CaedemSanguis]

Agree to disagree then. I was already skipping half if not more of Titan's phase 3 in week 3-4, which isn't dissimilar to skipping half of Sunlight + enrage today. There is possibly a tiny bit more margin with this tier due to their pre release buffs but the difficulty? Took me the exact same amount of time.

I killed m4s and e4s week1

in m4s you can have multiple deaths and a lb heal, and still skip the enrage cast
e4s week 1, if you had a single damage down on p1 all the party jumped cause not able anymore to meet the dps check

[Zakuyia]

Man where was this hate at when they nerfed darkest night and dancer during shadow bringer. Honestly this is funny af

[Lyth]

...

You're partially right here. Flat nerfs and buffs won't work because it's not an issue with average potency. For example, let's look at two casters on the same percentile and fight that functionally compete for the same niche (except that PCT has significantly more utility, but let's set that aside for the moment):



The area under the curve is the same, but PCT's damage is a lot more concentrated than BLM. You can grab a coffee between PCT burst windows with that weighting, whereas BLM has to be constantly performing. That in itself makes it difficult to balance. Let's say that you titrate their relative DPS such that PCT and BLM do equal damage on a fight with 100% caster uptime. That's great. DPS is balanced. But what happens when you release a fight with targetless intermissions? PCT instantly pulls ahead. The reason for this is simple. BLM has to catch up to PCT between burst windows. When you have targetless downtime, BLM doesn't have the opportunity to do this. You are decreasing the effective time interval between burst windows.

The reverse is true as well. If you balance DPS based off of a fight that has lots of targetless intermissions, then if you get a higher uptime fight the balance will skew in favor of BLM. The way that jobs typically resolve this balance problem through resource-gated burst rather than timer-gated burst. You need a target to build up resources for your burst. But PCT ignores this. Motifs can be instant cast out of combat. Motifs can be cast without a target. It's like letting a RPR sit and charge up to 100 Shroud without a target just by channeling a 20% shorter Soul Sow cast.

The dev team needs to think critically about issues like these and anticipate problems rather than reacting with flat potency changes to all jobs. Because this is what happens. PCT is overpowered because of its burst. The developers only use upward balance using flat potency buffs, and titrate up other jobs based off of Arcadion Light Heavyweight DPS values. Then they release FRU, and PCT turns out to be massively overpowered because of intermission phases. Now players are angry and demanding changes. So they uptitrate again. Then they release Arcadion Cruiserweight, and PCT ends up being underpowered because of the shift back to full caster uptime fights. It's all reactionary and completely unnecessary, when it just makes sense to fix the job that's causing the balance problem in the first place.

The solution ultimately lies with revising PCT, and making it target-dependent on motifs like most resource-gated burst jobs. No instant motifs out of combat. Build them up through your rotation when you have an active target present.

I also think that you make a valid point about crit-variance on burst, and this is a recurring issue with most jobs with massive burst windows. I think the end result is going to unfortunately involve more guaranteed Crit/DH effects similar to what you already have on the hammer combo.

[Ramiee]

Besides the whole balance issues, the raids have not addressed visual clutter at all. M3S and M4S have like some insanely bad visual clutter, since EW I really feel like this aspect of raid design has been getting worse and worse. Like during Final Fusedown why is our fuse blending in with the arena and bombs? Why is this still a problem in MMOs Firelands came out 15 years ago and we still get fights like P3S with red on red mechanics.

[Supersnow845]

snip

this is something I think they need to consider all players who play PCT when it comes to a fundamental change like motif design because PCT is probably the most universally acclaimed part of DT up until this point

The current motif design does heavily bias PCT in downtime heavy fights but I don’t think it’s right to change an entire job’s core design for ultimate balance

Maybe they could something more novel like not allow you to use hammer during starry muse or make it so starry muse ends when all stacks of hyperphantasia are consumed or you can’t use wings/fangs and mog/madeen in one burst window so that it reduces how much impact PCT’s burst is capable of without actually fundamentally changing its design

Changing PCT’s core design because of ultimate balance i don’t really like, it’s like changing hagakure dump because banana loops don’t do well in downtime