"A system that rewards effort and innovation" can't be buzzwords for imbalance-get

[Peregrine]

Nope they're pretty much the same thing, this game's mistakes and that one's. It's just that in this game, you can't be a problem because there's no point in being one. Too bad, so sad. Your hot fudge sunday didn't get finished it seems, so that archer will just have to wait until you can subvert its imbalance back into the game by whining in topics about balance.

Enjoy your lancer while it lasts, because if it's left up to players like you who don't pay attention to what you should have learned a long time ago, you'll be back on archer by christmas.

50/50 shot you want to be, because you like how that makes you feel.

Pay attention to history. You're in a lesson right now.

[Demacia]

So do you guys write your own material or what?

[Peregrine]

This is all actually 7 year old content. Nothing new can be said. You can just either learn from the past mistakes and who was wrong in this discussion before, and who was right. This has all happened before.

[Mortikhan]

I am just going to throw some ideas out there that might make some sense since I don't really want to make a major argument over this. I will start with Archer and Lancer issues:

Idea #1: Lancer vs Archer damage types

Lancers do better damage with their polearm weapons vs larger heavily armored opponents while archers do better damage toward medium and smaller targets.

Idea #2: Archer Range from target and size of target.

Induce penalties for range and accuracy for archers based on ranges from targets. Also have accuracy changes for archer firing on smaller targets from range. Firing at a peiste at long...no problem. Firing on a beetle or ladybug at long...problem unless they get close to do so.

Idea #3: Base damage system for DD's on "risk/reward" curve.

Lancers would do best spike damage of the DD classes while archers would do less spike damage as a DD due to the risk involved to each class. You want to see big numbers then you have to play a front line battle class.

Idea #4: Class restriction/distinction workings

Since archer has so many things that require a bow and cannot be used with other classes like Multi-shot, make it so archer can not use a majority of damage boosting and accuracy buffs from other classes. This would dumb down their spike damage from WSs and multi-shot. At the very least they should make the buffs only affect the first shot from multi-shot which would make multi-shot more of a TP building ability than anything else.

Idea #5: Archer HP reduction

If you build the hate...they will come. Take down Archer HP to be equal or only slightly better than other back line classes (in effect having same HP as mages but able to to take a hit better due to better armors). Increase the hate values of attacks they make (ie. make multi-shot net the hate of three separate attacks rather than one) and make hate relief slower for high spikes of damage. These methods teach an Archer (or any high spike damage class) that there is a time and place for all things. Solo it would still allow them to go nuts but in a party they would have to pace themselves.

In regards to Thaumaturge:

Idea #1: Emulate restrictions

Emulate should be an emergency move only. Make the timer 5 or 10 mins. Restrict it to Thaumaturge only. If a Thaumaturge really wants to tank then let him pull skills from classes that can actually tank or SE should just flat out make them a tank class by changing their ability set and be done with it.

Idea #2: Ranges and AoE for Thaumaturge and Conjurer

Conjurer = longer range but smaller AoE.
Thaumaturge = shorter range but larger AoE.

Idea #3: Initiation

Passing absorbed abilities from the Thaumaturge to another player lets the Thaumaturge also keep the abilities currently. This should be changed to one of the following:

a) Passing abilities causes both the target and the Thaumaturge to both have them but the time is halved for both.
b) Passing abilities causes the effect to fade form the Thaumaturge and only be on the target of the power.

Idea #4: Healing

AoE healing should have a greater hate value.

Those are some things that might help resolve some of what the tension is all about. What SE will implement is anyones guess but I will not smash them just yet. I will however remain cautiously optimistic about this patch until I see what they actually do.

[Lerris]

I am just going to throw some ideas out there that might make some sense since I don't really want to make a major argument over this. I will start with Archer and Lancer issues:

Idea #1: Lancer vs Archer damage types

Lancers do better damage with their polearm weapons vs larger heavily armored opponents while archers do better damage toward medium and smaller targets.

Backwards. The English longbow could puncture steel plate. A spear is better for hitting a moving/more agile target. Spears are a more primitive weapon; the development of armor required the development of weapons ( such as greatswords and axes ) that could be swung with enough momentum to penetrate the armor- a spear's thrusting motion is not as effective for that as is an overhand swing- also a reason other polearms such as longaxes were developed.

Idea #5: Archer HP reduction

If you build the hate...they will come. Take down Archer HP to be equal or only slightly better than other back line classes (in effect having same HP as mages but able to to take a hit better due to better armors). Increase the hate values of attacks they make (ie. make multi-shot net the hate of three separate attacks rather than one) and make hate relief slower for high spikes of damage. These methods teach an Archer (or any high spike damage class) that there is a time and place for all things. Solo it would still allow them to go nuts but in a party they would have to pace themselves.

The hate formulae are being reworked to be proportional to actual damage delivered. As far as HP reduction goes, archers need rather to have their effectiveness diminished significantly by wearing heavier armor.

[Peregrine]

Bows and arrows are actually incredibly nonlethal, any bow hunter will tell you that they don't work like in the movies where things just fall down. The most realistic depiction of what happens when you get hit by arrows is actually in LotR, where the hero gets hit by one and keeps fighting. Gets hit by two and still fights. Gets hit by three and alright fine. The tension pneumothorax FINALLY got him. Arrows are a statistical game. They remove the fighter from the battle...eventually. Hours. Days. Weeks. The timing wasn't important.

Arrows tamponade the damage they do to blood vessels and honestly don't transfer that much energy to tissues. Functionally, death by arrow injury occurs by either tension pneumothorax which takes minutes at best, cardiac tamponade which takes minutes at best, or bleeding which takes hours because the arrow stops most of the bleeding it causes.

It's backwards. Archer not only wouldn't do as much damage as any of these other jobs realistically, but they would not even remotely be good at spike damage. You can inflict guaranteed lethality with a knife in under 10 seconds by systematically aiming at two major blood vessels. Even a direct hit to the heart or head with an arrow won't drop a large animal, and if you miss a vital organ the thing could literally fight or run for days before it eventually died from starvation or infection.

Archer is realistically the job you choose to go get marmot pelts. You could functionally shoot arrows at uraeus all day long and just piss it off. Its lungs are under it.

[Mortikhan]

Backwards. The English longbow could puncture steel plate. A spear is better for hitting a moving/more agile target. Spears are a more primitive weapon; the development of armor required the development of weapons ( such as greatswords and axes ) that could be swung with enough momentum to penetrate the armor- a spear's thrusting motion is not as effective for that as is an overhand swing- also a reason other polearms such as longaxes were developed.

Yes and no. English Longbows and more advanced polearms were in use at the same time period. However my point was not so much the peicing power of the weapons but the damage they did to a body. An arrow could pierce heavy armors but those armors hindered their progress so much so that the force of impact and the depth of the wound would not be as severe. The probability of an arrow flying through a target in steel plate armor was not a high one.

The sheer size of a polearms business end would cause a massive wound resulting in terrible amounts of blood loss. This brings me to my second point...follow through. An arrow would strike an opponent. The opponent would not yank the arrow out. They would break the shaft off at the wound and continue to fight or be taken away for medical attention. The wound (if it did not strike vital organs) was survivable. When a polearm was successful in its attack it inflicted the damage and the person with the polearm had the option of twisting, impaling or gouging the wound to make it more extensive. Additionally, removing the polearm from the wound could cause the target to bleed out and collapse.

But enough about real world battles. If we apply real world battle results to this game then Archers would get annihilated in most fights once something closed on them. Drawing a bow and firing in hand to hand combat was suicide for real world archers and reload times alone would end them if they tried to fight like that. In this game that is not the case.

[kukurumei]

It's funny how it got to realistic historical figures that shouldn't make any impact on fantasy rpg numbers.

Historically bows (and later crossbows) were primarily used (outside of hunting) by infantry (in the west) and horse back (in the east) to their greatest effect. That and sieges it was when they shined.

Talking about lethality is kinda hard even stupid by real world standards because you have to talk about skill, situation, type of bow and era, etc. Infantry rarely had decent armor, and if you had a horse back bowmen, you were pretty much dead or dead. More so if you were a simple villager caught in a raid.

If FF14 was a war game type MMO, then archery would have been systemically better, and if we had a chocobo rider class.

[jwang]

One thing that you got to give credit to Blizzard for is that despite the multitudes of class readjustments that come with every major patch, they manage to make every class desirable no matter the situation (at least, back in WotLK... healers saw some imbalance in Cata). Every type of healer brings their own unique form of group enhancement and status ailment dispels. Tanks all have their own unique gimmicks which enhances the group, but functionally the same in performance (provided the person knows what they're doing). Damage dealers were the only imbalance you can find, and even then the low man on the totem pole can outperform the "OP class" if he knows how to play better and abuse his abilities to the best of their capabilities.

In addition, encounters were made so that trying to cheese the boss simply doesn't work. There are no stunlocking, and all kiting were done with a purpose. Throwing six rogues or six hunters at a boss will end up with some fight mechanic ruining your day, so you have to bring a balanced group. Trying to zerg doesn't work either, the health pool is simply too large to burn down within the span of Bloodlust, and there's a 10 minute cooldown after each use.

I'm not saying make WoW mk2. Instead, look at what Blizzard did to make their game successful, and see how it can apply to XIV. So far, they've only brought over the solo-capable aspect of the game. Start looking at how group mechanics worked in other MMOs, and see how you can bring over some aspects. BR with skillchain ease of use is a good starting point.

[Peregrine]

Right, they have to control the cheese tactics much better than they did in FFXI. This isn't Square's strength. Unlike blizzard, their games did not inherently mature Square's sense of balance. Bliz, on the other hand, constantly had to keep that in mind otherwise their offline product was permanent crap as people just found a quick imbalance and used it to win the game and degrade the quality of it in the process.

But Square spent 8 years trying to keep blms and rngs from running away with FFXI, you would have thought they'd learn their lesson. Unfortunately archer is just as busted as ranger was, and thaumaturge just as busted as black mage.

They have got to pay more attention to balance in this game than they did in FFXI, from the start. The start is the most important. Get it wrong at the start, and you fight the player base who has grown accustomed to bad gaming power and imbalance tooth and nail. They will hate you for trying to improve your product and their experience, because they like the power and accomplishment that imbalance brings and can't see healthy rewarding gameplay's potential if it means losing their cheese first.