Stats And You!

[Kaeko]

Maybe your experience of XI has been different than mine, but what I got out of it was to never trust anything SE says about their own mechanics at face value. Player testing is ultimately more accurate than anything SE is usually willing to give out. Anything the devs hand the players of XIV is a gift that still ultimately has to be verified anyways.

Also, regarding the idea that people in XI didn't have a good understanding of the damage formula, I would disagree. While it was never completely flushed out down to decimals and rounding error, it was pretty close. I remember participating in a number of theoretical arguments regarding builds that could be conducted completely with math based on community derived formulas. The melee damage formula for XI is clearly spelled out on the BG wiki as well.

The game is still in its infancy and rapidly changing. To expect a full understanding 3 weeks after a major patch is unreasonable in my opinion. This comes down to community driven research. When the game's population ideally rises to a more acceptable level, maybe enough players interested in exploring the formulas will come together and collectively put in the work necessary to figure it out sufficiently. For now, while you may not like the limited information being provided by both devs and players, that may be all the community will have access to for awhile. Considering the game's mechanics are likely to change at least once more in the near future, I think it's reasonable to accept this.

[Carpe]

I do think that to some extent it's somewhat pointless for people to be trying to figure out formulas for algorithms that are likely still being tweaked and adjusted and may possibly undergo further revisions.

However, I think that with the addition of the materia system, where a significant amount of stat customization gets placed into the player's hands, SE is somewhat obligated to give us more information in the future as to what each stat does and why we would prefer one stat over another in a given situation.

High level materia is a large investment for a player, if the game is going to provide separate materia for say STR and ATK, then it's forcing the player to decide which will be better. If the player's goal is to increase their damage then they should at least have a small sense of how these variables will affect their damage differently so that they can make a correct choice.

SE can let the hardcores figure out the exact formulas and algorithms for themselves, but I think they owe it the general population to give them a general sense of how these stats differ from one another so that they have a guideline for making sound decisions and not have to waste time and resources making blind assumptions that may not be optimal for them.

[BruceyBruceyBangBang]

While I GREATLY respect you for going out there and testing yourself (you are right that laziness is a factor), you need to understand that eyeballing effects and proving your conclusions to the community differ by a huge amount of effort, time, and complexity. You can make theories all day long but without data to back it up, it will always be useless. It will take hours and need to conform to thorough and rigorous precision and empirical process, or it will not be accepted. I have defined a lot of these guidelines here:
Section III: Empirical Testing Guidelines

We never got official answers on the damage formula for FFXI. Even 10 years later we STILL do not have a good understanding. Players of this game even now with this hardcore base are unable to understand FFXIV's stats system. With new players, especially this generation of competitive MMOs, they are not going to accept FFXIV's obscure stat system or attempt Forbidden materia craft. If Square Enix wants players to go the extra 10 miles exploring forbidden materia craft and contributing to the game's economy, they need to define the incentive to do so. Otherwise it will just be endless forum bickering over who is right and who is wrong with regards to weights in the damage formula, and people will continue to waste their time and money investing in their gear. Everybody loses. So devs, please work on getting a formula out there so we can get a better understanding how to compare all these parameters.

This is not my intention to say anyone in the community is wrong in this. I'm a little more testy when someone who more than likely will sit on their ass the whole time and not contribute to testing chimes in when they don't even have a place to do so.

Testing gets difficult for me in some ways because I get incredibly overwhelmed when I just deal with numbers. Which is kind of silly for a person who is dealing with something such as damage formulas. However, in my disability I've learned to take them [the numbers] and make visual objects of what I'm looking at in either scale or order and try to make sense of them in really odd ways. If that makes any sense to you, I don't know, but that's why I take so long. So, I actually get a lot of help mathematically through a friend of mine. In the past, I have been wrong here and there in my theories, but I have a strong feeling this is how it works.

I think maybe putting my theory out there for another to read and be curious about and test is a good thing. I certainly am not here to first anything. I'd just like people who are interested in how these stats work to be on track and know the proper times to use STR and the proper times to use ATK. If someone can beat me to it, that would be magnificent. Case closed and everyone is happy.

[tachikoma]

brucey, make an account on guildwork and PM me "tachi" or search my character tachikomas. I have a working parser for helping track your data. Would make your life a million times easier when collecting data. does breakdowns for floor/ceiling of normal/crit's and seperates out ws's. same for healing/enfeeble etc.

Also for myself I find in all cases that STR > ATK power even vs lower lvl mobs anything even match or higher and STR is more effective it is something like 3AP => +1dmg and +2STR => +1dmg

[Carpe]

it is something like 3AP => +1dmg and +2STR => +1dmg

That corresponds with how Attack Power materia maxes out at +30 and Strength materia maxes out at +20

[Deus]

brucey, make an account on guildwork and PM me "tachi" or search my character tachikomas. I have a working parser for helping track your data. Would make your life a million times easier when collecting data. does breakdowns for floor/ceiling of normal/crit's and seperates out ws's. same for healing/enfeeble etc.

If there's a reliable script that will convert the log files on disk into a legible format I'd love to see it. I've noticed those files are unreliable and do not always capture the logs, with giant time gaps, and the data appears to be dumped to disk at large intervals rather than real time. I refuse to use the mouse and copy paste every 5 minutes. Crabby was great while it lasted.

[Deus]

The game is still in its infancy and rapidly changing. To expect a full understanding 3 weeks after a major patch is unreasonable in my opinion. This comes down to community driven research. When the game's population ideally rises to a more acceptable level, maybe enough players interested in exploring the formulas will come together and collectively put in the work necessary to figure it out sufficiently. For now, while you may not like the limited information being provided by both devs and players, that may be all the community will have access to for awhile. Considering the game's mechanics are likely to change at least once more in the near future, I think it's reasonable to accept this.

A valid standpoint, however, SE's philosophy has changed to survive this new generation, as has the entire MMO landscape and fanbase since FFXI.

Of course we will be patient for the Devs to come forward at the most responsible time. It's true the game is not yet finished, but the purpose of this forum is for the community to give their opinion on what we need from the Devs. We play the game every day and know best the impact these changes are making. I feel now is the best time to present this argument to the Dev team so they do not make the mistake of keeping us in the dark and failing to keep up with this generation as they have in the past.

It's true that parsing and community validation will always be necessary regardless of what Square tells us. But for this game to be accessible to everyone we need a better understanding of the game's parameters; an official one.

I feel that Yoshi identifies with this philosophy and this statement he made last March strikes at the heart of the matter.

FFXIVCore Exclusive Naoki Yoshida Interview - FFXIVCore.com - Final Fantasy XIV Fansite

On the topic of monster attribute changes and possibly player attribute changes, can you go more into detail on this? A lot of players feel everything is still a bit out of whack when it comes to the current attributes like dex barely affecting Accuracy or Shell barely reducing an Imps Blizzard damage.

One of the reasons that you have some of the things not affecting something at all--like Shell not working on a lot of spells--is because right now a lot of the calculations for that stuff is too complex. Because it's so complex, it's difficult to balance. They want to make it simpler, not just so the players know what's going on--having to have some super program going on in the background to understand the calculations--but also so when the devs do balancing, it's easier for them to balance.

Now I would love to see a delivery on this philosophy.

[Deus]

This is not my intention to say anyone in the community is wrong in this. I'm a little more testy when someone who more than likely will sit on their ass the whole time and not contribute to testing chimes in when they don't even have a place to do so.

Testing gets difficult for me in some ways because I get incredibly overwhelmed when I just deal with numbers. Which is kind of silly for a person who is dealing with something such as damage formulas. However, in my disability I've learned to take them [the numbers] and make visual objects of what I'm looking at in either scale or order and try to make sense of them in really odd ways. If that makes any sense to you, I don't know, but that's why I take so long. So, I actually get a lot of help mathematically through a friend of mine. In the past, I have been wrong here and there in my theories, but I have a strong feeling this is how it works.

I think maybe putting my theory out there for another to read and be curious about and test is a good thing. I certainly am not here to first anything. I'd just like people who are interested in how these stats work to be on track and know the proper times to use STR and the proper times to use ATK. If someone can beat me to it, that would be magnificent. Case closed and everyone is happy.

It seems like you do realize what you got yourself into (I know I didn't at first lol). In no way did I mean to discourage you from testing, rather I hope to save people from wasting effort by being up front with what the community would look for to accept test data in general. Of course we will look at what you have and make the most of it constructively. It really is a high bar to meet. The intensity of my message was directed more towards the Dev team, that they spare us from having to spend months of our personal time breaking down the algorithms. Say Matsui, got the funds to hire a W2 contractor?

[BruceyBruceyBangBang]

brucey, make an account on guildwork and PM me "tachi" or search my character tachikomas. I have a working parser for helping track your data. Would make your life a million times easier when collecting data. does breakdowns for floor/ceiling of normal/crit's and seperates out ws's. same for healing/enfeeble etc.

Also for myself I find in all cases that STR > ATK power even vs lower lvl mobs anything even match or higher and STR is more effective it is something like 3AP => +1dmg and +2STR => +1dmg

I use a working parser actually that was sent to me from a friend. After like 70+ kills on ifrit my LS is taking a break before going in again. So I have to wait another day to get a good 10 runs of Attack Power centered gear data.

[BruceyBruceyBangBang]

It seems like you do realize what you got yourself into (I know I didn't at first lol). In no way did I mean to discourage you from testing, rather I hope to save people from wasting effort by being up front with what the community would look for to accept test data in general. Of course we will look at what you have and make the most of it constructively. It really is a high bar to meet. The intensity of my message was directed more towards the Dev team, that they spare us from having to spend months of our personal time breaking down the algorithms. Say Matsui, got the funds to hire a W2 contractor?

I understood what you were saying and I didn't take it in a disrespectful way. When I catch something, I get excited and share it before finishing it completely. However, like I said, I see this as also a group effort. So, if I can share it and get others involved that means it can be confirmed faster or debunked faster.