Thread: What can the dev team do to satisfy the critics of 1.18?

I'm impressed that you wrote such a long response to me. I know it must have taken a long time to add all those tags. I will do the same in my response to you. I don't have time to read everything in this thread but I will respond eventually to it all.

We seem to have some fundamental misunderstandings. I'm not trying to be rude, but you may want to consult a dictionary.

Originally Posted by Reaujien

a trade-off is knowingly making a change that affects two things (one negative while the other positive) but both are still working and working as designed.

This definition is in no way representative of the concept "trade-off". What you have defined is a trade-off to you, which is only useful to yourself and probably shouldn't be mentioned in conversation to other people. Let's have the American Heritage Dictionary define trade off for us: "An exchange of one thing in return for another, especially relinquishment of one benefit or advantage for another regarded as more desirable"

http://www.answers.com/topic/trade-off

Originally Posted by Reaujien

Wait a tick - how can something be anecdotal but at the same time factual as well?

I'm not trying to make you feel bad but let's get out the dictionary once again:

anecdote: brief narrative of a particular incident. An anecdote differs from a short story in that it is unified in time and space, is uncomplicated, and deals with a single episode. The literal Greek meaning of the word is "not published," and it still retains some such sense of confidentiality.

http://www.answers.com/topic/anecdote

Hopefully the basic concept is clear now. An anecdote may or may note be factual, just as anything may or may not be factual - but in this context an anecdote is an account of what happened in-game.

Originally Posted by Reaujien

That's because players either a) aren't good, or b) simply have separation anxiety from pre-1.18 and don't want to rework and rethink their play strategies. Trust me, as a game developer, we play-test changes/new content for it's "playability" before releasing to the players; and if the SE dev play-testers were only able to play Darkhold with the party setup that you asserted above then we all may as well quit the game. However, I've seen some good changes from this new dev team and I'm confident they were able to play Darkhold with a much different setup.

This statement shows some puzzling logic. Do you think that party description of GLA/CON/ARC means those are good players or capable players? I wonder why you would think that. All of the players of classes are on average of equal skill level - this skew to these 3 classes is because of game environment changes. It's due to the changes in the patch. Specifically, the Gladiator is the tank, the several Conjurers are there because of the increase in MP costs, and the Archers are there because they don't get hit by close range area of effect attacks. Why are these last 2 things so significant? You'll notice the changes in the patch to MP cost. The increase of MP means now there are 2-3 less spots for other classes because a party needs that much more MP just to stay alive. The proliferation of Archers is also due to MP costs. Since the (three to four) mages (still) don't have enough MP to cure 3 melee range classes, they are absent, with Archers replacing them. The moral of this simple story is that because of one change (MP cost) you lose about 6 class spots in a serious party.

On another note, I'm puzzled by why you assumed that just because those classes (GLA/CON/ARC) were mentioned that SE might have playtested the dungeon with them. You must have linked the fact that they are the "best" setup with SE's top-notch testing. In fact, it's the opposite. The dev team tested the dungeon with all the classes, as one would expect, but the playerbase follows the path of least resistance. In other words, the playerbase responds to the game environment. The dev team changes the environment, and the water flows in the shape of the riverbed they designed whether they designed it on purpose or not. The testing process is too limited of scope - that's why it can't detect what the playerbase will do. The dev team wasn't smart enough to see the outcome of what they were changing - because they would not intend for a 3 class emphasis to appear in the player base. This is something they have to change. Think of the riverbed analogy. They have to re-carve that shape so the water will flow correctly.. not into 3 classes.

Originally Posted by Reaujien

Beginning description from official THM description : "In the hands of a skilled practitioner, thaumaturgy can be a force of terrifying destruction." ... WHOOPS! And you (or whomever you're referring to above) thought this would be the best class to level just for healing? Interesting choice - to each their own I suppose.

The website description doesn't show why many leveled Thaumaturge as a main healer. The website also says miners can help parties in combat.

Thaumaturge has a conal aoe. When it cast heals, they had a longer range than Conjurer and would travel out from the Thaumaturge to players at all distances between the monster and the healer. A Conjurer cure spell would only radiate a short distance around the target. It makes more sense to keep distance from the enemy and heal all the players in the party instead of just some. That is the reason.

Originally Posted by Reaujien

This can't mean everyone because I only run out of MP while soloing guildleves if I rush and forget to pause for a few seconds between each kill and let my MP auto-refresh itself a number of ticks (not to mention running while in combat-mode).

The point of relevance here is that previously, guildleves as representing solo content were set up so that you could complete the objective without waiting to heal. They have slowed down. People have a problem with it because soloing is already slower than party play - it's like going from bad to worse.

Originally Posted by Reaujien

Maybe - why not? In FFXI you needed /WHM to get any regularly available AoE healing abilities, let alone the -na spells. (And before anyone rages out and goes "THIS IS FFXIV NOT FFXI" you'd do well to remember that EVERY FF game in the series has been influenced by past FF titles). So, to be a "good" tank you may need to swap out a few abilities, or maybe it would be worth-while to make sure to include a certain class/role in your pt to help with whatever it may be. I mean, after all, didn't Yoshi (or some dev post on a forum) mention that holding threat isn't always going to be 100% on the tank's shoulders? I think so but I can't recall the specific letter/post/etc.

The problem I see with the R30 Lancer ability being a must-have for tanking is that nothing about that ability made it the dominant ability before this patch. It's just the random changes to the enmity system that made it stand out. The problem is that you can't go messing around with the game environment without checking to see the unintended effects en masse. Do you really think the dev team intended that ability to be more powerful than Provoke? No, they didn't. It's a coincidence. We need less coincidences when it comes to the enmity system.

Originally Posted by Reaujien

And this is the dev's fault that players/groups can't see the benefits of an offensive CNJ?

Yes it is, you're exactly right. You don't see the burden as being on the dev team because you see that the initial contact of a certain build of class is with other players. Consider the view from the top-down. It should be obvious because of how dramatic the change was with the patch. It may seem unrelated to you, but the values the dev team chose for the MP costs are the cause of player behavior. It motivates people to see Conjurers as main healers.

Originally Posted by Reaujien

Shouldn't you only have "hybrid" makeups when you're already solid on the roles that make up the "hybrid" in the first place?

This statement is irrelevant because there is no real hybrid build of Conjurer - its abilities are a combination of black magic and white magic. There is no precondition because existing as a Conjurer is a hybrid makeup.

Originally Posted by Reaujien

Do you watch Glen Beck? Or do you follow Michelle Bauchmann on Twitter?

I dislike Glenn Beck very much.

Originally Posted by Reaujien

I'm not sure where you're getting the information that would support your suggestion that the dev team got "carried away" while making Darkhold and so they "forgot" about the rest of the game because I'm seeing a lot of content in this patch that has nearly nothing to do with the battle system or either of the two dungeons.

Again we can see some logic that got off course. You are taking the thought "forgot about the rest of the game" and comparing it with all the new stuff you see that isn't an instanced raid. That might not be the most.. ..fruitful path to go down. My meaning was that they forgot about the rest of the battle gameplay outside the raid instance. This should be pretty obvious by now if you consider the whole picture of battle gameplay.

Originally Posted by Reaujien

Are you sure you want to go as far as to suggest that they temporarily "balanced recast timers and ability changes" just so they could "nervously" release some sort of end-game content such as Darkhold?

Of course I'm sure. I think the case is built pretty well, except that I never said "temporarily". These changes are permanent and of course, subject to small tweaks if the dev team is left unchecked.