Transparency: Potencies and Secondary Stats

[MiniPrinny]

So, I'm unsure of where to post this, so I'm gonna do it on the general forums.

Anyway, onto the title. Final Fantasy XIV has a problem. And that problem is needless obfuscation of the means of potencies and secondary stats. As it stands, we are forced to attempt to reverse engineer the usefulness of our secondary stats. Due to this, we as players are, by design, lost in making intelligent decisions.

While potencies aren't as troublesome, after all, Benefic is flat out weaker than Benefic II, but we struggle to quickly understand how much weaker it is on the fly. Like, I know from math that Benefic is only .625 of Benefic II, but why must I do math to understand that difference. Why can't it be something along the lines of "Potency is equal to X% of your Attack Power, Attack Magic Power, or Healing Magic Power." There's no explanation of something so simple.

However, what is troubling is the secondary stats. Accuracy, Critical Hit Rate, Determination, Parry, Skill Speed, Spell Speed, and for healers, Piety are completely obscured. We have explanations of what these stats do, accuracy increases the chance of you hitting a target with an offensive ability, critical hit rate increases the rate at which you land criticals as well as the power of those criticals, determination is effectively a secondary core stat (why does this exist?), parry increases the rate you parry physical attacks, skill and spell speed increase the rate at which you can use weapon skills and spells, and piety increases your MP pool and by proxy increases your MP regeneration. What we do not know, is what these stats actually do. We have reverse engineered the math to a degree, but we don't know how much power these stats hold. Do I really need that determination? What about more spell speed? How can I tell if my Piety is worthwhile, certainly I have figured it out using "The Keeper's Hymn" to be about 6.6 MP per point, but why did I have to even do this?

So, this is a plead to the developers, please, let us know what we are doing. Let us know how powerful our secondary stats are, let us know how powerful we are. We need more than just a "Beginner's Hall," we need information to work upon making ourselves not only better players, but more powerful characters.

[Saccharin]

I agree. Simpler is not also better.

[Priwia]

I can't give you a link, but I remember the developpers one time said that they like it this way.
They want the people to try it out, to give the community something to work on.

They can do as WoW (for example), but they like it the other way.

[Anubis_Nephthys]

https://dervyxiv.wordpress.com
Current stat weights.

[Khaoticsuccubus]

I can't give you a link, but I remember the developpers one time said that they like it this way.
They want the people to try it out, to give the community something to work on.

They can do as WoW (for example), but they like it the other way.

All I can think of is just....... WHY?!? Why in the flying hell would they prefer to keep it so pointlessly vague? It's utterly incomprehensible and flat out mind-boggling... sigh.

[Almalexia]

Like, I know from math that Benefic is only .625 of Benefic II, but why must I do math to understand that difference.

Is there a non-mathematical way to express "X is greater than Y" or "X is valued at Y% of Z?"

[RiceisNice]

This is a case of where I think "keeping it complex for the sake of complexity" is a bad thing, especially if it does not lend anything as far as gameplay is concerned. Same with them not showing if the boss attacks are physical or magic (especially when they keep making the thematic behind it inconsistent, landslide and earthshaker is physical despite it glowing and looking all magicky, but everything else that involves throwing rocks is magic).

It makes it hard for making stat comparisons, it doesn't show dimishing returns (if there is any), and in the case of accuracy, it does not show how much we actually gain versus what is actually needed (since bosses always have a flat value require that's ever increasing, rather than a static avoidance value)

Potency is probably "down-to-earth" as we can get as far as damage comparisons is concerned.

[Jamillion]

Yeah, I like how Diablo 3 handles stats, there's a breakdown for every value. The game has a calculator in it but for some reason we have to do the legwork...

[Mykaelus]

This is a holdover from FFXI's method of handling stats. It's meant to encourage player collaboration and data sharing. It took players YEARS and YEARS to finally figure out FFXI's algorithm for simple ACCURACY because SE refused to give hints. They've been quiet for a decade and a half on their games' math, so I doubt they will ever add any more transparency to FFXIV. This is the company that included a boss in FFXI that was unbeaten for 2 WHOLE YEARS by ANYONE due to its weird mechanics until SE finally released a video to give people a hint.

[RiceisNice]

This is a holdover from FFXI's method of handling stats. It's meant to encourage player collaboration and data sharing.

Sans the players opinions, this is discouraged from the game's ToS (use of parsers), ingame mentioning, and at best, discussion of it on the forums. I think someone here acutally got banned for discussing the numbers and is pretty much left to posting his findings on a blog.

The most we can really go about doing is saying "I'm not getting any reported misses with X accuracy" or "I need X amount of skill speed to reduce my GCD by .01 seconds", which then does not account for it's affect on DoTs and summoner pet damage.