Survey: What are your thoughts on the state of XIV?

[Underdog2204]

Psst, I'm referring to the post I link to from back in the first thread, the really long one on page 7 that you've quoted a part of here already. Thank you though!

Oh yeah I see, I did say I'm a total dope sometimes.

Hey... It's late ok :'(

[MomomiMomi]

If you don't know what you want how do you expect them to know what you want? People here can't even define what they mean by "more interesting stats", I'm not asking you to do their job, I'm asking you to be less vague in saying what you want.

Considering that they could completely remove stats from our gear and it would make very little difference... pretty much anything that isn't what we have now.

[RiceisNice]

A lot of things in this game are so monotonous, there's no singular cause. Gear upgrades aren't interesting because it's entirely numerical, patch cycles have gotten extremely predictable with what to expect (2 Ex dungeons, msq, alternating between 24man and raid), and even the new content lacks any lasting power and ultimately falls to the former (diadem for example, essentially being a zerg-fest with very little strategy and coordination beyond killing). When you release an expansion, it's a good place to go big to set up some good groundwork to add onto, concepts like new jobs (where MCH was scrapped to what it is now compared to BRD), "FC crafting", and red scrips in general.

The raids are a mess of their own atm with regards to server population, especially since there's a lack of raid content suited for the midcore players.

[SaitoHikari]

We need more content in general before we attempt to diversify gear. Gear diversification is best done as the content expands. Haphazardly 'diversifying' gear without expanding content, if done poorly, would most likely only really introduce a hugely annoying RNG aspect to gearing.

Let's say the devs suddenly released variations of an aiming set in which each piece boosted a certain ability in some way. Let's say one ability effect is far and away the best compared to the others. But the others exist, they don't simply go away because the min-maxers want them to. And let's also say such items are only obtainable as random drops from a dungeon. Congratulations, 90% of gear that now drops for your class is suddenly seen as worthless in the eyes of the community. And the best part is the devs start designing fight encounters that assume you are using such important pieces, leaving everyone else behind.

It is always important to consider how such things are implemented before you start asking for them. I watched some of the above happen to a game that I played prior to this, and I'll be damned if it happens here again.

[Jynx]

My thoughts?

The game is clearly developed for the lowest common denominator with sprinkles of oldschool design here and there that clash with the mindset.

[dayumitsfoxxy]

Completed. A bit sad that you gave "Casuals" (hate that word) the option to say "remove hard content" but Raiders not the option to say "Leave Raidgear for the Raiders as a Reward" - which is one of the things that really bother me atm.

Overall Opinion: Raid Scene needs to become stronger with making it somewhat easier for people to get into Raidgroups even if they dont have much time.

More content isnt needed since FFXIV is easily one of the best MMOs out there when it comes to releasing new content. Id just like somewhat more diversity when it comes to gearing. Get rid of free Raid/Tome Updates you usually get in Raids - since they are a reward for Raiders - and let us upgrade 24 Man Raid once a Week for more Gear Diversity. That Way Non-Raiders would get the "good Gear" they cry for all the time even tho they don't want to put effort in it, and we overall get more diversity.

[Shurrikhan]

@HeavenlyArmed

One more point of reference, since it's best to present ideas for how you would like to see change rather than just screaming "We want change now!" will be my main post on the first thread discussing this, where I offer ideas on the fronts of gear progression, stats and even to some extent content release.

I've been reading through several of your posts now, especially across the Alienation of Dedicated and Skilled Players thread, and your writing has struck me as logical and thorough. But, and this is mostly just due to not being entirely sure how closely aligned you are with other posters on that thread or where your particular interests in the matter lie apart from the Mastery stat examples you have) I'd like to know more about what unique advantages you believe a new stat would bring as compared to, say, any other back-end addition or revision.

[In the interest of efficiency, I'll go ahead and leave a summary of my thoughts on the matter. Read only at your convenience / if convenient.

I'm personally in the frame of mind that FFXIV does not especially need new stats, but simply minor stat rebalancing, in order to give more even secondary stat weights for any job that does not give mechanical (e.g. trait based) emphasis to a particular secondary stat. I think of this primarily as fixing systemic oversights. Examples below.

My primary concern so far has been Skill Speed, which I would change as such:

• Skill Speed and Spell Speed have been merged into a single stat, Haste.
• Haste affects Attack Speed. (Resultantly, it now affects auto-attacks.)
• The global TP refresh now ticks at 50 TP per base GCD. All bonus TP-refreshing buffs tick simultaneously.
• Attack Speed now affects animation speeds.
• Haste now increases the mana returns from personal mana-regenerating abilities such as Shroud of Saints, Luminiferous Aether, and Aetherflow.
• The cooldowns of certain skills now scale with the GCD, such as: Cleric Stance, Defiance, Deliverance, Grit, Darkside, Geirskogul, Gauss Barrel, and Wanderer's Minuet.
• Haste now scales nearly as a percentage of the remaining GCD per point, rather than at a hard stat amount per .01 second GCD reduction. (This gives it a more linear weight, rather than performing comparatively poorly at low levels and very well at very high amounts, now that its indirect limiters have been removed. It's weight still faintly increases with time, but more so than each point of Crit and Det would be increased by having that increased rate of attack.

Apart from that: rescale Critical Strike and Determination faintly to have the same effects both on Auto-attack damage and generally. Again, the aim is to level secondary stat weights for the most part, and make Skill Speed, a mostly dead stat outside of plateaus, more viable to allow for more rotational choices through fixed oversights.

// Other / rough ideas:

However, my ideas concerning stats have gone as far as giving each secondary stat three different outputs that the player can adjust allocation between at any time (I leave balancing constrictions up to your imagination for now), e.g.:
Critical can improve: proc rate, critical strike chance, and critical strike damage bonus
Determination can improve: buff duration, damage dealt, and accuracy
Haste can improve: cooldown reduction, attack speed increase, *global tick speed* (*scrapped the last because it breaks the global, but you get the idea).

However, sadly these are instead far from easily balanceable or weight-intuitive, and would likely fall to third-party or community assessment and deduction.

...Unless of course the game itself were to beat them to it, allowing stat weights to be dynamically mapped out for an inserted sample rotation, etc., making that a much less distracting, and much more personally situation- or choice-specific aspect of the game. But that's a pipedream for another time.

The main thing I want to point out is that all of these have gameplay effects, much like if you were to go the route of making the majority of primary stats viable again for every job (while setting setting constraints to where a given skill may be deprioritized, but never excluded outright from rotational possibilities).

At the same time though, I do not think this many options are wholly necessary. The most strongly I've ever felt my stats was in Wrath of the Lich King WoW, maining Hunter prior to ArmorPen Marks domination, but honestly it felt like that may have even had one or two more stats than it needed to, and I wasn't wholly sold on the massive rotational reemphasis. I think that the less whack-a-mole cooldown attack dependence of XIV would better translate certain stat effects, but it still leaves much to be considered.

However, I realize that changes as the Skill Speed balancing stuff suggested above would do little to increase gearing interest—in fact, it would probably diminish it. That is probably because that's just not my chief area of concern. I'd personally be happy as long as we have multiple, individually enjoyable, means of obtaining useful gear. That tends to align me with content designs aligned with horizontal gearing, even though horizontal gearing itself isn't as central a desire now as it once was. At present, each job has a consistently best or worst secondary stat, which at least adds a certain urgency to seeking the best sources of gear. (This would flatten that, unless a player has a specific preference, due to his gameplay or desired combat aethetics.) However, as this tends to fall back on outside research, ariyala.com weights, or outright asking one's linkshells and the forums anyways, that doesn't seem an immense lost to me. What I seek, even if at that cost, is increased breadth of viable rotations. If it draws a little away from picking out your next progressive BiS path, by making the "wrong" choices not quite so inferior, so be it. I can't honestly say I intend to reduce the gap between slots or even really raise the optimization floor for pieces within the same ilvl, etc.; it's all just tertiary to me.

My thoughts on what stats should intend to do follow that desire for more rotational opportunities. If I can't (rotationally) feel the effect of the stat—if it simply comes out in numbers and never in gameplay—it seems wasted to me. Your Mastery examples would at least accomplish that. Critical Strike on Bard, though less so than when pure critical strike chance, does that. Skill Speed, especially when playing around with less viable, TP-plummeting builds, does that. Spell Speed will situationally accomplish that. Some of these I think could do a lot more with just a few additional tweaks to class traits, making them slightly more dependent on or changed by their secondary stats. However, there is of course a flip-side to that, in that "peak" gameplay might not be accomplishable until after a tier or so into a given expansion. As such, I'm still considering the long-term implications before suggesting any such changes to the jobs themselves.

...for the sake of comprehensiveness, I believe in creating the most possible options and synergy per button as possible. I believe that specs maximize their potential only when a necessary means of reaching that goal. Anything other use tends to streamline and remove breadth of choice in the name of aesthetic distinction (the gameplay distinction usually being already available if well developed, albeit with more shades between) which can be a worthwhile trade, but need not always come with that cost. I also think that specs come with a cost in terms of knowing your allies. There is a certain ideal band of complexity that comes with consideration of one's allies and the mechanics of a fight. I as a healer like knowing my tank's every CD and when I, most, and the given tank of that type will pop which. As a tank I like to know the same from my healer. As either, I like to know how dps will be pushed across each fight, boss or trash, so that I know my windows for mitigational needs or mana maximums, etc. When a given spec can go so far as to behave well outside of expected range, that decreases synergy. When it provides a new expected range, it adds complexity, which may yet be synergized. I realize that contradicts, to some extent, my dislike for cutting up classes or jobs into wholly distinct sub-specs as, for example, WoW has. But, it is not a hard rule for me. It's simply a point of balance. On one side you have the player-customization-first RPG elements, and if those components still can be directed, then any number thereof still works. On the other side you have your burden-of-knowledge mobas and the like, Overwatch, LoL, DotA2, HotS, that keep to a particular range and niche, although options within may still be vast.

Sorry for the massive text-wall. I wasn't expecting that all this be read. It's just there if wanted.]

[TheGrimace]

I love story, but I dislike hard raids that take hours to learn and master. Binding Coil's story was brilliant, but I experienced it at 3.0 with raiding friends' help. Alexander's current system interests me far more and I definitely want two raid difficulties to continue as the norm. I'm fine with hardcore raiders getting the best gear as long as other players like me can still experience the story.

[Jetstream_Fox]

Considering that they could completely remove stats from our gear and it would make very little difference... pretty much anything that isn't what we have now.

Some things would make a difference, speaking for myself as one who mains BRD it has always struck me as odd that piety isn't included on our gear, but you go to do the current relic quest and parry is? It's head scratching things such as that make me wonder if the dev team even has a clue what they want. If I had that extra mp I could play the songs of my people longer, thus providing a much better debuff or regeneration.

Now you could even go as far to say that adding new stats to the game could help tremendously, such as tp/mp restoration on hit, faster hp regeneration in combat, or a cleave/pierce stat.

I mean we already have mp/tp/hp regen. So it wouldn't hurt for them to expand on it. And it's not like it would bring imbalances to the game given SE wouldn't make the stats give you unlimited resources. And if they added a cleave or piercing stat it would add another aspect to dps. Making DRG/BRD/BLM/SMN/MCH/AST/WHM/SCH have a pierce through effect would make the combat feel more alive as would adding cleave on NIN/MNK/PLD/WAR/DRK. All they would have to do is give it a rate like Crit and make sure the bleed through damage isn't completely as potent as the initial hit and make them pop on non aoe skills.

[Iromi]

I really hate when people as for "more interesting stats", that tells the devs absolutely nothing, tell exactly what you want so they know what you want.

Sure. I always say "our 1.0 stats back"

Aka this.



How much more direct can one get? lol

My thoughts?

The game is clearly developed for the lowest common denominator with sprinkles of oldschool design here and there that clash with the mindset.

I agree 100%, it is sad...what the game was and could have been and what it has become