Required Class/Rank failed - Can we have Optimal Rank and Favoured Class back?

[Jennestia]

You sound like Blizzard making everything out to be way more overcomplicated than it is in reality.

Uh, Yoshida himself said a lot of calculations and algorithms in FFXIV were overly complex. So if anything, you should be saying SE is making out their game to be more complicated than it is, since you know their code better than they do apparently.

Btw:

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.

Our Lead Battle Director, Matsui-san, is currently undergoing--they're basically going to change the equations for how stuff is calculated, all of these attributes. As they balance each of the classes with the new balance system, they're going to go through and check each action. And then see how that needs to be adjusted, and reassign each attribute as they go along.

Since it's going to be such a huge undertaking, it's going to happen in steps--it's not all going to change in the next patch, but over the next few patches we hope to change it. But we want to reassess everything, so it's not like we're going to be looking at one broken thing, we're going to be changing pretty much everything.

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.

March 2011 Interview

So no, it's not making it out to be "overcomplicated", because in order to properly scale attributes in games it does require an algorithm, which is nothing more than math, versus just setting a set value which no one can argue isn't much easier to balance than having to make sure something is balanced in almost every instance at every level.

The entire system feels like we only have a small fraction of items that should be there.

Aside Materia, this is exactly it. Remember, this is a game going under an overhaul and still pretty much in development.

[Tiraelina]

Uh, Yoshida himself said a lot of calculations and algorithms in FFXIV were overly complex. So if anything, you should be saying SE is making out their game to be more complicated than it is, since you know their code better than they do apparently.

Btw:


March 2011 Interview

So no, it's not making it out to be "overcomplicated", because in order to properly scale attributes in games it does require an algorithm, which is nothing more than math, versus just setting a set value which no one can argue isn't much easier to balance than having to make sure something is balanced in almost every instance at every level.



Aside Materia, this is exactly it. Remember, this is a game going under an overhaul and still pretty much in development.

Optimal already did/does what you are stating would be hard to implement, how hard is that to understand? 1.19 made optimal gear worse than everything 5 levels below you if you are 1 level off.

[Jennestia]

Optimal already did/does what you are stating would be hard to implement, how hard is that to understand? 1.19 made optimal gear worse than everything 5 levels below you if you are 1 level off.

Hard to balance, not implement -- Even yoshida said it would pose a problem in terms of balancing. (Also it created confusion, but it's more regarding the game balance.)

[Reaujien]

You sound like Blizzard making everything out to be way more overcomplicated than it is in reality.

Blizzard makes complicated products?

[Tiraelina]

Hard to balance, not implement -- Even yoshida said it would pose a problem in terms of balancing. (Also it created confusion, but it's more regarding the game balance.)

As I've said, you make everything out to be more complicated than it is in reality to reinforce your own arguments. Do you think they just made every item willy nilly or something? They already have your hard to balance to algorithm. Where do you think the stats came from on the current gear?

Do tell where these balance problems are going to crop up from. In a system where below top tier gear actually has some give in it's required level. Mixing optimal and required would have been a better system than the one you can't seem to let go or accept there being better alternatives. What the dev team says isn't law nor are they perfect.

I have to wonder who the troll is in these threads sometimes when you decide to selectively quote a post and ignore everything else.

[Jennestia]

As I've said, you make everything out to be more complicated than it is

I'll show it again:

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.

It was already stated things were needlessly complex in terms of calculations, which means making things simpler, would make it easier to balance.

That's not at all hard to understand.

I have to wonder who the troll is in these threads sometimes when you decide to selectively quote a post and ignore everything else.

Kind of like you ignored what yoshida stated?

[ellohwell]

I'll show it again:



It was already stated things were needlessly complex in terms of calculations, which means making things simpler, would make it easier to balance.

That's not at all hard to understand.

Kind of like you ignored what yoshida stated?

The devs say a lot of things. And yes, they said everything was needlessly complicated.

However, why you think an Optimal Rank System needs to be "overly complicated" is beyond me. It's a huge stretch to go from the devs saying something to then assuming it must be true about everything in the game.

Just using your common sense, it should be pretty apparent that an optimal rank and favoured class system for gear can be simplified to the point of being easy to balance. A restrictive system is merely "the easiest" thing to balance, and you are therefore saying that the dev team are lazy if you think this is all they are competent enough to implement.

And do you honestly believe everything Yoshi states? The developers are often stating specious and dubious claims about certain things, and it pays to be a bit sceptical or cynnical about such statements, especially as it pertains to the Optimal and favoured class system.

I mean, haven't we already explained how simple it can be? It needn't take a Fourier Analysis or Complex Lapacian or whatever to scale down stats according to rank and class. It needn't be that complex.

So I don't know why you (and Yoshi apparently) are arguing that it need be.

It needn't be!

Also, materia just imbalances EVERYTHING anyway, so even if the Optimal rank and Favoured Class system was imbalanced (which it wouldn't be if SE put their skilled mathmeticians to work), then it wouldn't matter compared to the Materia System. Next to the imbalance caused by the materia system, the optimal rank system would look balanced by comparison.

[Jennestia]

And do you honestly believe everything Yoshi states?

As someone with actual experience in this industry, I'd have no reason to not believe him -- I've seen things get overcomplicated for absolutely no reasons at times, be it due to bad programming or bad design decisions, which people like to say SE is the king of. (You yourself said you played XI before, you should know very well how people thought this.)

Nothing to needs to be more complex than it needs to be, that's the problem and that's exactly why it's being simplified. If I had zero knowledge and experience in this industry, I would indeed be very skeptical about a lot what is said, however I know first hand how messy source code can be, which can make anything needlessly complex, when there's a lot of better (and easier ways to handle it) -- However, 9/10 you have to work with what you got, there's no escaping it; Yoshida was given a broken mess of a game and he has to work with it, he even said FFXIV 2.0 will be a 'new game', but it will still be the same game.

Like I said before, even look at the colored system:

Hey everyone! Sorry for the delay in getting this to you all, but I hope that the response from Yoshida on this very hot topic will help to alleviate your concerns going forward. Take a look -

This is Yoshida, the producer/director.

I’m sorry that this post is late and I apologize for writing another long post.

First of all, I would like to apologize for the inconvenience caused by an item’s color affecting its stats in the new recipes. I have read all of your feedback and I would like to speak about the future of colors and their effect on stats.

The fundamental idea behind colors in FFXIV was to create differences in stats for gear. We wanted to separate gear, which was limited in number, into higher and lower tiers. However, we would like to alter this foundation of gear to:

・Color is for individuality
・Shape represents strength

However, we were unable to bring our data up to speed with this new model, which is the reason for our problems now.

Although I informed the team about the new specs earlier, I am the one who gave the go ahead, so I am responsible for the error in planning.
I apologize for my mistake.
(Also, I have come across some posts that suggest that certain developers have been responsible for specific developments, but this is false, and the developers aren’t even correct. Please keep this in mind.)

We would like to adjust the specs based on everybody’s feedback, but please take a look at the following first.

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The reason that I have avoided speaking in detail about colors is because the spec for creating color variations has been performed simply through texture changes. I have mentioned this in a different thread, but I would like to have 24 or 32 colors available for use on any gear item. I would like to accommodate the demands of all players; players who would like to wear all red, players who would like to wear all black, and players who want to have a different color for each piece of gear equipped.

However, if we create all of these colors using texture only, whether on the PS3 version or on a low spec PC, we would face some serious technical problems. Thus, we would like to make adjustments to the item data files themselves.

This is a bit technical, but we will perform color changes by changing the material color and separating the dyed colors from memory. We were able to confirm this with QA recently. Once this has been finished, players will be able to dye their gear in any color. Using the recipe “finished product + dye,” players will be able to freely change color variations as many times as they want.
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The reasons that we have encountered our current problems are:

・The color variations currently set up for each gear item are not uniform
・The colors have been prepared using textures, so more colors cannot be prepared
・In terms of data, the same items with different colors are treated as different items, so it is difficult to add additional colors
・Eventually, gear stats and color will be re-implemented as unrelated entities (data will be eased through a Color ID system)
・We wanted to allow crafters to create items with different stats by altering similar recipes

Our biggest mistakes were implementing colored items although the colors were not uniform and mixing colors with the concept of allowing crafters to create similar items with different stats. We should have spent more time developing these specs, and I apologize for the mistakes.


There are 2 ways we can fix our mistakes.

1. Add recipes for “Finished product + Dye” and add items for each additional color
⇒This is a temporary solution, but color and stats will be clearly separated
⇒The only problem is that it will take a long time to add all of the items

2. Remove class restrictions for colored gear until the Color ID system is ready
⇒The number of items will not increase greatly, so this could be implemented more quickly
⇒Stats will have to be sacrificed for color choices (this can be balanced by Materia)


We are considering the costs of the above two solutions.

Personally, I prefer the 1st solution, but it would be implemented with patch 1.20 in this best case scenario, so at least until then, the current situation will continue.
(This will also negatively affect our ability to add other content and recipes)
The 2nd solution cannot be implemented in time for patch 1.19a, but it can be implemented soon after.
(We are looking into the cost of this solution as well)

We are sorry that we will continue to inconvenience you, but we will do our best to handle this issue as quickly as possible. Information will be posted as soon as decisions are made.

Please continue to submit your feedback!

Things fundamentally are just more complex than it needs to be and it's what he has to work with. This is why he's just simplifying everything, because it's much easier to balance overall.

[Tiraelina]

Do you realize how old and meaningless what you keep quoting is at this point going forward to 2.0?

[ellohwell]

So can we have Optimal Rank and Favoured system back already?

Restricted Rank is just a nonsenseical response to complainers who wanted to lord their almighty R50 status over everyone else, despite the fact that you can be R50 in every class and still not be able to wear what you want under this new system. It didnt make the game better, it just made it worse.

People quote economy, balance, and goal-oriented gameplay as reasons for restrictive rank gear but all these reasons are pitiful attempts to rationalise an unreasonable and illogical system. After all:

-Economy is none the better for restrictive gear, and most likely it's worse because Im sure I buy less stuff now that I cant even wear it.
-Materia was supposed to stimulate the economy enough on its own, so why stimulate it twice anyway? Especially at the cost of ruining the game in other ways.
-Materia overshadows any imbalance caused by wearing something outside of favoured class
-Favoured class and optimal sysstem are self-balancing anyway
-Being able to wear specific gearsets is not even a worthy goal, annd not being able to wear them is a frustration. Overcoming a frustration is hardly the best way to go about implementing goals.

So in conclusion, just give us the old system back and reserve restrictions for R50 AF gear.