Am I dense?

[Onisake]

Unless the physical stat on the gear you melded was changed using diminishing returns wouldn't it be incredibly difficult to either track the individual melds affect on your overall damage or would this affect all stats including gear stats and your base stats?

I would guess all stats. and it would not be terribly difficult to track. we know our +str values at all times. this is a pretty easy test to figure out with a parser

[Fadigre]

a good answer without any arrogance.

That's my favourite bit!

[Fadigre]

Translation:

character stats (IE point allocation) does not have as big of an effect as stats on gear. they are adjusting this so that stats from leveling points are equal to stats from gear.

Diminishing returns are being added to materia melds. optimal melds will likely be either double or tripple.

IE: they are essentially flipping the effect. right now you must have great gains in stats to notice a difference. +10 STR vs +100 str is HUGE.

instead, they want you to notice +10 STR (say 10% increase in damage). but not notice a difference so much between +80str and +100STR (say 5% increase in damage).



i'm not sure what the point of this statement is. it implies to me that they are not planing on changing the formula. because dLVL is the most important factor, when dLVL is large (IE: when fighting stuff that matters) you dont' notice a large difference in adding stats due to the overwhelming force of dLVL.

IE: dLVL determines the range of damage you can do based on your DPS score.

if dLVL is +5 you can only do a maximum of 3k damage. if it is -5 you can do up to 6k damage or something like that.

that means maximum accuracy at dLVL+5 is capped to 75% and evasion capped to 15%, or something like that. but at dLVL-5 it is capped at 100% and 30% or something like that. Therefore they cannot show an accuracy rating on our attribute page due to the overwhelming force of dLVL on the equation.

TL;DR: dLVL determines caps on accuracy, evasion, and damage. accuracy/evasion rates will vary greatly depending on the level of the enemy you are fighting. therefore it is not feasible to display rating.

So we're kinda saying that after a certain point your stats will begin to benefit you less and less if you pump them too high giving you the option to pump other fun stats.

But isn't that exactly what we have now with caps or am I looking at it from the wrong angle?


I really wish either DLvl was taken out or the coding for criticals to be changed. Right now they're hardly worth boosting unless you sacrifice all of your stats to bolster these two stats!

[NefGP]

Not sure why they feel the need to hide evasion rates - I for one would love to know what my chance of actually being hit by any given enemy is. It's worked fine in plenty of other games, most notably Diablo 2.

Glad to see they are reforming stats though - maybe now all the DEX I pumped into my PLD will actually do what I intended it to do, and we can start seeing some true build diversity. As far as Haste goes though, keep that shit out of the game. Much as I love haste, it ruined FFXI (especially when coupled with Utsusemi) just as it's ruined the balance of several other RPGs. Maybe there's a smart way they can do it without being too over powered (capping it at a much lower rate than in XI?) but I don't know.

Last thing I want to say is I feel like Materia needs a major overhaul as part of the balancing.

- Adjust the # of materia that can be melded based on the item's size (gloves can't hold as much as body armor etc) or just reduce the overall amount down from 5 to 2~4

- Adjust the success rates as well. Currently, we're allowed a max of 5 materia, but the success rate drops from 100% all the way down to 28% on the 2nd meld. This is messed up, IMO. It shouldn't drop any lower than 50% for the 2nd, then gradually scale down as you add more - 30, 20 and finally 10% (as a hypothetical example). There should be risk yes, but it's currently too high for just 2 materia. It would help deflate prices a bit too.

- HQ items should have higher chances of successful melds and gain a bonus stat boost (e.g. attack +40 becomes attack +44)

-HQ items should also ensure better materia when converted. If the range of an item is normally say +4~10, an HQ should change that to 8~10 instead, if not outright a perfect roll (that might be a bit much though) as it took considerably more effort to craft the item.

Finally, enough with the destruction of Materia upon removal and no selective removal. This is just absolutely ridiculous in this day and age. Is there really a need for such draconian balancing measures? It's hard enough getting a top-tier level 4 materia, why punish a player if they decide they'd rather meld it to something more useful? Especially given how random materia creation is in the first place (and low odds of success).

Or what if say, I don't want enmity on my belt anymore, I want HP?

[Lux_Rayna]

Thank you.

im not sure why a quad melded item shouldnt have equal gains considering the difficulty in aquiring such gear but whatever...

Its more a concept of diminishing returns. I imagine they want it to be more progressive, instead of a vertical line. It's a bit silly that you can't notice tangible differences until you're multi-melded. As it stands single-melding is practically pointless. And thats bad no matter how you look at it. Besides, quad melds are mostly useless anyhow due to dLvl capping your dmg against anything you'd want a quad meld for. The obvious exceptions are HP, MP, store TP, enmity, etc etc. So really the only thing the change affects is how you'll quad meld your gear. Instead of stat stacking, you might have a quad meld INT, M.attk, -enmity, MP (not that this is possible, just an example). In other words, you wont have to quad meld int to one piece to notice a large difference. You might only have to double meld..or single meld int, leaving room for the other minor stats. Its good imo. A lot more variety in melds that way.

also, whether certain gear/melds is required or not should depend on the actual content surely.. if double melds are required set the mobs damage,etc to be consistant with that... imo this has nothing to do with potential gear.

Well it does, because multi-melding is affected by probability, luck, and the depth of your pockets. In other words, you don't want that filtering out ppl from content. Its much better to flatten the curve a bit and allow for, say, a full-set of single melded gear to be a viable option. In that instance, probability and luck are thrown out. They don't WANT to balance content around double melds, because that could alienate too many players (especially casuals). But they can't balance content around single melds successfully right now because of the way their stats work. So basically dLvL kicks our ass unless we go double or higher. And thats basically the problem. There's no feasible way to balance a game around single melds because it does not make up for the overriding effect of dLvl.

[Rogue]

In other words, you don't want that filtering out ppl from content.

i think the concept of diminishing returns is so abstract the average player wouldnt even consider this and as such i dont see how it would filter people from content.. it wouldnt even occur to people is what im saying.

im not sure the difference between single and triple.. hell even quad melded gear is so noticeble.. i have been trying to gear my DRG and WAR to do more damage, i have some respectable gear- darklight, GC trident, double melded STR hands, when i compare it to what people would consider lesser gear, (non melded/non darklight) is see minimal returns, and on boss mobs those returns are reduced even further!..

when i equip that dark light cuirass i spent 2 months doing the same dungeon 20 times a day to get... i expect to see something.

however, i know blm's rave about melded gear and INT so i dunno- maybe if i was blm i would be singing a different song. but this isnt the case with what i have experienced as a melee dps.

edit-

fundamentally, you CANNOT ballance content for players with "crappy" gear and players with good gear if you want the good gear to mean anything if they have better gear the content is going to be easier for them and it is pointless to try and get around that with "diminishing returns" and such

the only way to make the gear meaningfull is by making it filter people from content.. this should even serve as their motivation to get the gear in the first place.

[Skies]

Fact is, as it stands the differences are hard to notice because they are... Subtle, but there and usually worth it.
10%~20% might be hard to notice with the numbers we got, but it's there and makes the difference.

[Griss]

All in all it just sounds like there going to lower the bar for the physical stat soft caps and boost the effect of att and Xmp.

Ie if you have a pair of +40~ str gloves that's all you would need to cap out or something along those lines.

[Onisake]

So we're kinda saying that after a certain point your stats will begin to benefit you less and less if you pump them too high giving you the option to pump other fun stats.

yes

But isn't that exactly what we have now with caps or am I looking at it from the wrong angle?

Yes, but it's the inbetween where the problem lies

right now, if you're way below stat cap, you don't do a lot of damage. IE: if you're 80 STR below stat cap, there is not a lot of difference between +20 STR and +40STR.

but once you get to +60 STR, you will begin to notice a difference between +60 and +70. more on this a little later

I really wish either DLvl was taken out or the coding for criticals to be changed. Right now they're hardly worth boosting unless you sacrifice all of your stats to bolster these two stats!

I agree

Thank you.

im not sure why a quad melded item shouldnt have equal gains considering the difficulty in aquiring such gear but whatever... also, whether certain gear/melds is required or not should depend on the actual content surely.. if double melds are required set the mobs damage,etc to be consistant with that... imo this has nothing to do with potential gear.

anyway! a good answer without any arrogance.

my best guess is that damage is a function of several things

Base Damage (bd): determined by your STR and DPS score of your weapon. up to a cap.

f(atk): your atk vs the def of the target. no apparent cap. can act as a multiplier (your atk is higher than targets defense) or dampener (your attack is lower than targets def). this appears to be linear.

dLVL: diffrence in level between you and your target. most likely a log function. as large gaps show drastic differences than smaller gaps. mainly determines the cap to your damage. can act as a positive multiplier (you are higher level than your target) or a dampener (you are lower level than your target).

f(str): Your primary attack modifier vs primary defensive modifier of target. up to a cap. most likely a log function, as the closer you are to the threshold the bigger the difference. I believe this only acts as a multiplier. this does not seem to influence the function by a large amount.

so over simplifying: damage = [(base+f(atk))*f(str)]/dLVL

this is all based on looking at the testing of others. I personally have not tested any of this. especially since it is difficult to get a lot of +att with no +str etc.

some testing is also limited, so i'm filling the gaps with theory crafting and knowledge of how these formulas generally work.

-------------

this means a couple of things

STR is used in two places on the formula. once to check your potential base damage. and again as a multipler of base damage.

IE: +10 str increases your base damage. but the modifier is low if your STR score is drastically below against the primary defense modifier of the target.

so you won't notice +10 str. you won't notice +20 str. and you may not notice all the way up to +50 str really.

10*0.01 is about equal to 50*0.015 when you're rounding to whole numbers. even with a difference of 40 STR. a difference of .1 damage vs .75 damage

but once you hit the magic threshold where STR checked against VIT starts to matter, you will begin to notice a bigger difference in return.

60*.1 is no longer about equal to 70*.15. even though the difference in STR is smaller, because the multiplier increases so much the damage is more noticible. a difference of 6 damage vs 10.5 damage. not super, super noticeable, but the affect is greater.

IE: the soft caps we see mean we have hit the base damage cap of our weapon, and are above the threshold of the target. so the only additional damage is gained from the +att. which is why it is more beneficial to just add +att after a certain point.

[Fadigre]

yes

Yes, but it's the inbetwe...

-Quote cut-

...fter a certain point.

Fantastic job. I totally understood all of that ~
Thank you!