Increasing difficulty in casual content ≠ Savage

[Shurrikhan]

snip; from easiest to answer to hardest

I need practical examples of this 'split damage' idea you keep mentioning. I don't understand it. If tank is eaten, how does it deal split damage? Current design handles that with stack markers. How are you proposing it happen?

Do you simply mean that a boss's auto attacks are all passive cleaves in that anyone in front splits the damage (a la Rav EX Blinding Blade TB?). If so - then are you proposing this as a shared design element across all content forms, or strictly this '4 man savage' iteration? Speaking plainly - I think undermechanics like that are bad design UNLESS they're consistent. I am not opposed to the concept at all though.

Consistent across the fight. I don't think it needs to be across all content forms for now, but ultimately I would prefer such flexibility increases were added to anything and everything, in a sense. (You may recall my opinion on cleaves, and all things that look like they ought to be cleaves, in general.)

In short, I'm saying that any fight which may remove the tank without intending to make that an auto-wipe must have damage-splitting from the get-go. That said, it should simply be tailored in such as way as to make any more than just the tank being hit a last resort (see *).

Think Hydra back at ARR launch. An MT could only hold it solo with serious cooldowns and/or very dedicated healing, which tended not to be available with people lagging in fireball initial hits (each with vastly early snapshots), so it tended to be OTed for every Triumvircate. If the OT died, we'd normally swap in and rotate BLMs, since Mana Wall was originally on a 30s CD, same as Aetherial Manipulation, or the Monks and Dragoons, swapping out instantly upon any cleave damage taken as not to lose said DPS. If the MT bottomed out, then it was time to toss in 3 people and use Cure III and likely wipe eventually to the lack of Bards.

* Now, imagine if there was a damn good reason not to go in that cleave unless you absolutely have to. Maybe it's a longish overriding DoT. Maybe it's flat Defense or Maximum HP reduction. Maybe it's a knockback proportionate to -- flatly or probably quadratic -- from %HP damage taken. Whatever. But without it, you just end up with the remaining 3 people being one-shot in enmity order if the tank dies or is temporarily removed from the fight. The only way to deal with that is to offer a option that is sustainable long enough to return the tank, given good coordination, but still not viable in the long-term (or therefore allowing a group to forgo the tank).

As far as that "good coordination" goes, Hydra can provide yet another example. Triumvercate, the originally some 80%+ (through ShO) tankbuster split damage over the number of targets hit, but Hydra's unnamed cleave did not; it just cleaved, for enough to make sure whichever DPS subbed for the OT would be killed by Triumverate in the next duo-split if without Fists of Earth, Mana Wall, etc. Think of each as semi-periodic (occurring per a given range of seconds such as per 4 to 8 and per 10 to 20, at greater effect the longer the skill has been held, with a smaller internal cooldown shared between each); there'd be an element of both the gamble and tracking involved as to when the DPS can afford to stack.

For example - if healer gets grabbed - how much eHP does the tank take while the healer is trapped? 20%? 50%? 120%? How about the rest of the party?

Given the CDs forced prior or assuming that one would remain flexible for such an issue (at cost of a further shield and split later), let's say around 140%, requiring top-off, and any two of (1) at least a split stack or two, (2) all-the-self-heals, or (3) extra defensive CD. Something of that sort. You can get through it if you continue with a level head and draw from resources meant from later in the fight (which then forces further caution and adjustment down the line, increasingly).

DPS don't have defensives so you can't do more than 100% eHP.

Depends on what you mean by eHP. If you consider moving away from proximity-based explosion damage you'd normally stand in for the uptime, or seeking cover (from, idk, Acid Rain) at uptime cost as allowing for a greater amount of would-be damage, then they do, and you can allow for damage in excess of what would have normally been 100% eHP (insofar as self-heals, external mitigation buffs, and the relevant Defense/mDefense stats).

But generally, I'd agree. Raid damage shouldn't be prominent during a period where one may lose their healer, though it can certainly be prominent just before and just after.

You then mention that the party must decide which of the 4 it can do without. I.e. if big raidwide damage is incoming -> need healer, can lose someone else. If TB is upcoming, need tank, can lose DPS, if DPS check is incoming, can lose healer/tank.

That's extremely binary, more so than existing design. Which is my exact fear and why I don't think 4 man savage level is a good idea (without sweeping changes).

I gave two very distinct possibilities, member loss with decision (e.g. A4S) and member loss by punishment (e.g. O5S). Their only commonality is that a maximum of one player can be taken.

Technically such a mechanic can also be a blend of the two, such as someone jumping in the way of a grab mechanic when the player it is aimed at will almost certainly be caught (due to failure on their part or those responsible for saving the target), when that player is of greater incoming importance. Do you risk no one being grabbed, or risk not having a healer/tank/both DPS?

Were the mechanic to be a punishment (one which cannot be sacrificed for), the phase to follow should not favor any particular role to "go in". For that to be possible at all, however, I suspect that you will need a way to increase both tank and DPS eHP without adjusting the actual damage being dealt by the boss or raid AoEs. That is why I included as necessary both a way to sacrifice uptime for survivability and a way to split damage away from the tank.

If there is an element of decision available, and especially if the mechanic is unavoidable (is not a punishment), however, then the phase to follow can situationally favor a particular role to "go in". That becomes part of the memory of the fight, like any other. "Double Acid Rain next; DPS in." "Frigid Coals next; pop Divine Veil/SiO/TBN and then healer goes in." "We've overaccelerated the train; mile marker 13 coming up fast. Blow the stack to accelerate the TB, then tank jumps." I don't see how that's any more binary than current prepositioning, etc. (Though, that's not to say I think highly of the current mostly-scripted fights either...)

It's relevant because I'm trying to measure engagement (notably tank/healer since they're isolated in 4 man). If a mechanic removes 25% of the party. It directly impacts what they're during during this mechanic. It then also directly impacts what can happen during this forced downtime.

If something just removes you for x seconds, that's not fun for the player. Sitting there isn't enjoyable or challenging, even if it was punishment for a failed mechanic.

I understand that, but the only reason for what's being done over there to influence what's being done beforehand would be if CDs needed to be saved based on the encounter on the far side. I didn't picture that being necessary except perhaps to push up the time one returns, but I imagined that, too, as only necessary following a past failure or indecision.

Doubtless, something happens over there, but my concern was simply on what is necessary to leave the same flexibility and permit the same intensity of tuning to a party far more penalized by the loss of a given member than an 8-man party would be. I'm not suggesting such a mechanic, but the question was posed, down the line of, "what if" such a situation were to occur, given a size of 4, down from 8. Honestly, I'd prefer a bit of interdependence between what goes on over there vs. the main fight, but not so great that it needs to be planned around, as I like having that degree of flexibility and recoverability.

How about Alte Roite (O1S) and Guardian (O7S)?

Aight. Those seem simple enough; substitutions, increased space usage, slightly tighter debuff rotation, and probably a bit of additional applied randomness (though with indicators) to maintain the same positional intensity. Will probably be forced to require at least one non-melee DPS, is all, especially in 7S for Chakra and depending on how much I'm willing to adjust airplanes. Damn, there's a lot I'd like to make more interesting even in the 8-man version that I'm going to have to avoid for a pure translation...

Btw, found some old notes from trying to create a nonlinear Phantom Train boss-dungeon (the dungeon is the boss, and every second counts after passing the threshold) a while back. I may also toss that up at some point when I get a chance.

[Shurrikhan]

@Kaldea
Here is the Alte Roite fight adjusted for 4-man.

Summary:

Generally identical to the 8-man version, with the exception of Twin Bolt being modified to both allow and force rotary participation by non-tanks by reducing Twin Bolt's damage dealt (initial and total) to the secondary target enough to no longer quite one-shot DPS, but also afflicting the secondary target with a debuff which will detonate every 3 seconds for 9 seconds after being received and, separately, causing it to take increased damage (some 15 or 20%) from Twin Bolt, lasting for roughly 2.5 Twin Bolt rotations. With enough mitigation, this is not enough to necessarily one-shot an upper eHP DPS (such as a BLM with TBN, MW, and Benefic), but a second stack will. Note that stacks will not refresh duration, offering a bit of added flexibility if a composition is capable.

Elements with downward tuning (generally numeric):

• Tankbuster damage has been reduced and/or siphoned into a DoT (in the case of Twin Bolt secondary damage; see below) as not to depend upon healer-provided shielding for tank-busters, as this could be compositionally absent.
  
  
• Boss auto-attack and raid damage slightly decreased.
  
  
• Twin Bolt will now deal much-reduced damage to the second target, dealing the damage instead as a DoT that does not work off the global tick but instead comes at a consistent 3, 6, and 9 seconds of application. The initial damage will still nearly oneshot any topped-off ranged DPS at minimum ilvl. However, in place of the, admittedly mild, complexity of CD management by the OT, the party will now deal with a 15% vuln debuff applied to the secondary Twin Bolt target, forcing all three to cycle through unless one is appropriately shielded enough to take the added damage (such would require Reprisal, TBN, Benefic, etc.). This vulnerability will stack, but will not refresh.
  
  
• Ranged used as basis of comparison due to least eHP vs. spells.
  
  
• Damage of raid AoE following Charybdis has been decreased to what is managable with a single healer. At minimum ilvl, this will still require some form of prior mitigation or self-healing to survive, as spam AoE healing after Charybdis will no longer necessarily be sufficient. Charybdis will no longer reduce allies to 1 HP even through shields, but simply by <1+absorption> damage short of their maximum HP in true damage.

Elements with upward tuning (increased positional spread required):

• Blaze now requires even the tank to move in for a full 100% participation, as opposed to requiring only 6 or 7 of the 8 members to survive. With sufficient mitigation, players might barely, barely survive a 3 out of 4 stack.

Those are really the only things required. There's so much time after Roar that a single healer really can deal with it even if the numbers were left the same. Auto-attacks are similarly solo-healable. The only real cases by which the original fight wasn't already solo-healable by anyone but a WHM were the few mistakes that DPS might make that weren't immediately fatal near to other major damage taken events. While intensity could be increased even while allowing for greater mechanical mistakes, such is beyond the complexity of the original fight. (Which... probably shouldn't even be called Savage, honestly.)

I actually expected that I would have to enlarge AoE sizes or create a linking mechanic to force greater spread, but the central or outer ring of fireballs, especially in combination with fighting near he edge during certain mechanics, already does a sufficient job of limiting who can have melee uptime on the boss that little if any difficulty tightening is required. A double-melee composition could potentially, just barely and only with perfect positioning, keep up uptime on the boss along with the tank while the healer moves out, or the tank and a single melee could be spaced more loosely while a ranged and healer stand apart, with no significant loss to complexity.

For instance, an ideal return from the T-formation Fireball dodge into Levinbolt with double-melee would be something like the melee being slightly left or right, opposite each other, before Windburst, and then crossing to just slightly into the boss's hitbox and stay, while the tank and healer each separately follows one melee and then slide to the opposite side of the boss's hitbox to form a square without having to lose moving into the previous flame orb zone and then back into melee range.

So, what will be harder now:

If anyone slides away from Blaze without being Rescue-d back, you all die (unless you'd already popped all the things).

What will be easier now:

Levinbolt spread more intuitive, so you're less likely to be murdered by directionally-challenged party members.

Easy means for further tuning:

UPWARD. Have the out-flung (secondary) Fireballs following Windburst explode multiple times in quick succession, limiting the area in which players can move after returning from a safe zone lasting nearly into the Levinbolt explosions.

UPWARD. Have fireballs surround the entirity of the inner ring, to be flung out by Windburst. Rather than fireballs being absent from the safe zones, they will be of a visible different type, which will detonate later and only once, while all others will detonate the multiple times.

DOWNWARD. In turn, create a second window or "safe zone", at least 90 degrees away from the first, to allow room enough for a ranged or healer to hide without perfect to-the-yard square placement around the centered boss.

UPWARD. Anyone recently struck by Twin Bolt gets a proportionately (or at double the vulnerability proportion) increased Levinbolt AoE ring size.

UPWARD. Levinbolt AoE ring seems to grow and shrink, making you essentially think it will be bigger than it is until you're used to it.

FURTHER. It actually does get progressively bigger the more people you're nearby.

ALTERNATIVELY. It gets smaller the more people you're nearby, so that you may even want to stack up until nearly the last moment, and you really don't want to get anywhere near that healer or ranged after its had a chance to grow over the course of pre-positioning.

:: In truth, I wish I could have done far more to give more flexibility, urgency, and strategy to the fight, but it was Savage in category only from the start, so, there's not that much I can do with it without making it far harder (and far, far more interesting) than the 8-man version.

[Shurrikhan]

@Kaldea

Btw, I was just wondering if you've since furthered your thoughts on secondary stats and stat progression, i.e.

We have it with more than just tanks, but tanks are a felony level example. While I agree that a single case is problematic it's a pretty nuanced issue. I wish I had a good solution for it, but I don't.

I can tell you (as a PLD main), it FEELs so much worse in this game than it does WoW. I really don't like secondaries in either game. I really don't like secondaries at all. I think the goal of secondaries could probably be better used as functions/themes inside class abilities in both MMOs.

It seems like it'd have a subtle but significant part in eventual difficulty tuning and scalability design.

[KaldeaSahaline]

@Kaldea
Here is the Alte Roite fight adjusted for 4-man.

-snip-

Hey sorry for the delay. I got tied up with some work stuff all week. Mid year stuff.

So listen - while I appreciate you putting the effort in, what you described (again from a tank/healer perspective) sounds awful. It sounds boring and binary which is what my fear is for "savage" level 4 man content. I just don't see how to design tank mechanics/responsibility that is varied and engaging within the existing design constraints.

FURTHER. It actually does get progressively bigger the more people you're nearby.

I actually quite like this mechanic.

Btw, I was just wondering if you've since furthered your thoughts on secondary stats and stat progression

Not particularly. I'm kind of getting tired of gear in MMO's and one idea I've always had for my "dream MMO" was a design-a-skill concept. Rather than grow by way of gear vertically, you'd grow diagonally upwards via skill accrual/empowerment. As you get stronger you get access to more skills, but also access to improving existing skills by way of damage, resource cost, speed, utility, etc.

Let's say at level 1 you are forced to create a sampling of 5 skills. These skills could be defensive, utility, passives, and offensive. Any combination you desired.

For context - Let's say my Paladin archetype was my desired character.

• Divinity Barrier - Creates a holy bubble around you that blocks projectiles
• Angelfire - Launches a torrent of holy fire that detonates on impact
• Angelic Respite - for Xs channels angelic wings that enable a double jump
• Holy Shield - Passive - blocked attacks reflect X% of damage back
• Clemency - Heals for X% of HP

The idea would be that as you level up you'd accrue skill points. These could then be converted into new skills, or channeled into existing skills to improve their efficacy or effects.

An example might be investing skill points into Divinity Barrier to give it:

• Extra utility such as following you while moving rather than be stationary
• Have it act as a physical barrier to not just projectiles, but enemies as well until broken or ends
• Increased shield strength (takes x% more damage before breaking, or increased duration, effect size, etc.)

Another example might be having Holy Shield empowered to:

• Blind attackers for 1s when you successfully block an attack
• Knockback enemies after a successful block

Angelfire might be empowered to do:

• Increased missile speed
• Increase explosion radius
• Stuns enemies hit by main projectile
• Increased damage when used from the air
• Shorter CD, lower costs, faster startup/recovery

Improving abilities comes with detriments too,such as increasing cooldown, resource costs, lengthening the animation, etc. so you'd also invest skill points into keeping those things in check. To supplement this system enemies would be tough. You might encounter a rogue enemy who is fast on his feet, equipped with poisons to reduce your healing/movement, and maybe some stealth.

You'd want to make sure if you were adventuring in an area with enemies like this that you'd have tools (skills) to handle many different situations. Enemies would have AI that reacts and changes based on triggers. Stuff like running away, CCing you, enraging, calling for help, desperation attacks, etc.

Obviously MMO design probably isn't anywhere near this robust yet or even in the future, but it's an idea I wish for nonetheless.

[Shurrikhan]

Hey sorry for the delay. I got tied up with some work stuff all week. Mid year stuff.

So listen - while I appreciate you putting the effort in, what you described (again from a tank/healer perspective) sounds awful. It sounds boring and binary which is what my fear is for "savage" level 4 man content. I just don't see how to design tank mechanics/responsibility that is varied and engaging within the existing design constraints.

I'm just curious then what's been "lost" from the 8-man version? As I said, I can't really improve it past the 8-man version (which I personally thought to be boring and binary itself). Heck, at least you have all of 2 options more across the 4-man version than the 8-man permits, at the cost only of exchanging assigned cardinal/semicardinal positions for more general ones (left/right, close/far).

I'll fully agree that wouldn't be satisfying content (or at least, no more than the 8-man serpentine pushover gatekeeper to SB savage tier 1 was), but I don't think it shows any evidence of an inherent design weakness in low party numbers.

I'm kind of getting tired of gear in MMO's and one idea I've always had for my "dream MMO" was a design-a-skill concept. Rather than grow by way of gear vertically, you'd grow diagonally upwards via skill accrual/empowerment. As you get stronger you get access to more skills, but also access to improving existing skills by way of damage, resource cost, speed, utility, etc. <snip>

Well, I'm sold. I can't agree more with the desire for such challenges, and for the means to deal with them.

Though it was just part of the larger picture for me, I wanted something very, very similar through a revised leveling system tentatively called the Ability Sphere. [INDENT][INDENT]That said, it was meant to ultimately replace classes, aside from being able to sort of "partition" yourself through them, and rotate your starting area therein, so that you could swap out Ability Spheres (though not the whole of your progression, exactly) just by swapping out your weapon. By rotating the sphere, you still kept certain nodes (let's just call them the Layer 1 nodes), and any experience cost decreases nodes discovered or in progress of discovery on another class, but rotated all experience usage over to the new starting point. If you were to level everything, you'd technically have access on any class to every class's traits, although you wouldn't also have AP enough to adapt all of them

The idea there was that you, similar to above, discover new skills and traits through what you do, which is to say (a) what you fight, (b) how you fight it, and (c) who you fight alongside or learn from. Thus you can gain skills and traits from general play, the use of prior skills or traits, or facing or complementing others' skills or traits (enemy or allied, respectively), any of which can be further "adapted" later. (These adaptations are basically identical to what you've described, except that the options are acquired through learned traits and other skills, such that you're technically blending them, rather than being given a full arsenal of available upgrades from the start; the general emphasis across the revision was cohesion and immersion.)

The over-technical bits:

The sphere has a few different layers. The first is retained when swapping classes/weapons, and these include general traits such as those relating to stealth, perception, tenacity, acumen, and so forth, the things you'd expect that a level 70 would in no way suddenly lose just by changing weapons, though they won't benefit from the synergies between these nodes and the second layer's if class-changed to something that doesn't, itself, possess those synergies in its own way.
The second layer is your core stuff: your weaponskills, spells, abilities, and traits that would seemingly be discovered in a way specific to the weapon/magic type or style of combat intuitive thereto.
The third is stranger, and not quite a "layer" exactly, but holds the nodes for basically every enemy ability or trait in the game. Its through this layer that you are able to sort of reverse-engineer enemy's skills, almost identically to coming to understand others players' actions or traits as nested in the second layer.

The sphere is technically filled from the start, though its nodes are shrouded until lit by possessed nodes nearby, gradually revealing its role, some of its mechanics, and more before revealing the whole deal--name and function, the package entire. Your experience, which snakes through your already possessed nodes, both extends further towards these unseen nodes and, technically, reduces the experience required to discover them from any path (e.g. from the PoV of another class). If you've multiple skills that are both relevant to a unknown skill, it will be drawn towards their junction at twice the normal speed, decreasing the experience necessary to grab it and increasing the light available by which to reveal it. (Note that such similar skills were in turn drawn near each other and therefore tend to be quite close; their combined effect will then always work towards increased efficiency, rather than having a tug of war with each other than provides no net benefit. You can, at times, choose a node to focus on, but as not to encourage constant referral to one's Ability Sphere to an extent that would get in the way of normal play, these times will probably have to be limited, though I've not yet decided on the means.

Expending AP (Ability Points) on Adaptations (upgrading skills by adjustment through the lens of anther skill) or Mimicry (copying some ally's or enemy's skill without nodal access), however, is entirely manual. if you want to deepen Sword and Board's connection with Savage Blade, such that you can siphon the force of any blow made to glance past you by your blocks or parries into your Savage Blade (within a short, continuously depleting AP-boost window), so be it. If you want to copy a mob's Reis' Wind, however, you may only get an approximation based on what your class, given your nodes, is capable of. You may want to settle for just stealing a particular trait from it which made up its core mechanic, or just its method of dispersion.

In Mimicry, the more similarity the collection of your possessed nodes, the easier it is to reverse-engineer parts of the skill, traits within it, or the whole. Unless you are a class that specializes in such, however, this tends mostly to be a matter reserved for dungeons and raids, which gradually integrate player skills further into its themes. If a raid tier were filled with humanoid attackers, you'd start seeing far more practical anti-infantry techniques and if a raid tier were filled with diamond-hearted, sandstorm-calling mobs, there'd likely be something to that effect to both fight fire with fire or avoid its burn that players will pick up in a semi-regulated manner over the course of the tier. In this sense, it actually works a fair bit like gear abilities might if taken from FFIX, but rather than simply accruing experience wherever and however, so long as the given piece of gear is equipped, it depends on whom, where, or with what tools are gaining that experience. In most cases, these have to do not with conjuring a new element of magic, or the like, such that you'd be carrying over the aesthetics of one raid tier into the next, but simply an affinity for, and thereby the ability to manipulate some of, what's being used in that raid tier's aesthetics. (Of course, all this assumes a raid tier experience a bit more like WoW's, with cohesive themes and a more fleshed-out setting, even if not necessarily a single trash-pack, rather that a brief series of loosely connected square- or circular arena trials.)

I've actually been playing around recently with a couple more systems, though, that are actually stat-based.
:: Hiding these because they're not directly thread-relevant.

That said, it seems to me that in most cases stats are one of the least worthwhile places by which to attempt to generate additional variance in gameplay (one could even say gameplay meta-content), rather than theorycrafting meta-content. Critical Hit, for instance, has been purposely tuned down, in being made both crit chance and multiplier, from its previous gameplay differential on Bards (and what Monks now would have seen if not for the change). Healer MP restoration tools are too significant to Piety to seem so as well, and even if it did carry far greater significance, it likely wouldn't feel good, as a lack of it feels more restrictive than having it feels freeing. Determination and Direct Hit are about as banal as you can get. That leaves Speed the only real, consistent gameplay modifier, but even then -- only at its specific breakpoints.

What I would like to see then is to go in either or both of two ways: (1) simplify the stats' outputs such as to draw as close as possible to equal rDPS increase, but in more distinct ways, and/or (2) allow for flexible stat allotment towards chosen breakpoints.

(1) rDPS gap squished. Gameplay gap widened.
The goal here is that you can wear pretty much whatever secondaries you like, pretty well regardless of job (e.g. exempting Speed up to certain breakpoints, and still stacking Critical on a Bard or Monk).

Or, you can go the step further, and make it truly work evenly regardless of job.

For instance, to make all stats equally contribute to Repertoire or Deep Meditation, one need:

• Make each generate from any Critical Hit or Direct Hit.
• Have a generation chance based on the passive (stat-determined) damage modifier.
• Use a player-determined tick rate for DoTs, which scales with Speed. (The duration remainder past the final tick possible will deal proportionate damage upon the debuff's conclusion or replacement.)
• Have Speed affect oGCD damage.
• Have Critical Hit solely grant critical hit chance, while Determination supplies the bonus damage on CH/DH, doubly, on both the general damage, and the critical/direct modifier, stacking.
• Voila, all stats now contribute roughly equally towards Deep Meditation. (Or, so they could be tuned.)

But let's say we also want to see a larger difference from the stats. While I'm not normally a fan of pruning, I actually think Direct Hit, so long as its remains just a watered down version of Critical Strike, may as well be cut. The apparent issue is cutting without replacing, and the real: the lack of viable replacements. Accuracy, even if made a "real" stat (flexible, granular -- rather than bimodal, and capable of post-cap benefits, would be probably still want to be swapped about on a fight-by-fight basis. Anything which would accelerate Ability cooldown rates would affect gameplay greatly, but not necessarily for the best, as an optimal party composition would have to decide on a speed to sync to, and then continuously gear towards that while remaining wary of any slight discrepancies which may force a Trick Attack to go off too soon or too late for an optimal window, etc. The closest major adjuster I can imagine is something which would increase the durations of certain buffs, etc., as to at least create as much gameplay variance for some classes as Speed does, but it would also end up a redundancy, two sides to the same coin; if Speed offers relatively more time (GCDs, in this case) per buff, then offering more actual time is essentially irrelevant. It would seek only to fix "issues" like DoTs being forcibly clipped by optimal rotations (which actually has the benefit of offering freed time within the optimal rotation, and therefore probably shouldn't be seen as an "issue" so much as designated leniency), which, where an actual issue, had best be fixed in a more universal manner (such as a pandemic system, to borrow WoW's term).

So, what can we do?

A basic spread would include something like Rate, Modifier, and Chance Rate (optional: +Modifier). And to an extent, that can actually be interesting, but only chance and modifiers can still deliver notable breakpoints.

If it would normally take 10 hits (or 6.67 --> 7 crits) to trigger some damage-created effect, then by reducing that relative requirement to 9 (or 6 crits), you'd see an actual difference from something like Determination. And yet, we have no mechanics like that, neither universally (likely nested in our enemies through some mechanical interaction), nor within class toolkits (additional effects, or traits). Alternatively, if we were trying to guarantee a critical hit within x GCDs, there would have to be more to that than just chance, such as (as per WoW's Fire Mage or some FFXIV 1.x designs) increasing chance bonuses until the chance effect has been guaranteed. Short of that, you don't have a necessarily changed effect -- and that can be okay, but only if there's a counterpart that does offer the guaranteed event. That's probably the core issue. We can utilize chance, but only in gimmicky mechanic-by-mechanic way limited only to a couple jobs out of the whole lot, and only Speed offers us actual consistent breakpoint change (in this case, internal / rotational). If each of the basic spread were to offer something visible, significant, we'd probably feel far more impact from our stat choices.

But that still leaves one major issue, our constant numerical finagling over our gear in order to keep our breakpoints as near as possible to no excess. For some that metacontent may be interesting, but I strongly suspect the majority would prefer something a bit less demanding of time spent pouring over loot tables and replacing materia.

(2) That's where flexible stats come in.

Let's say you had, rather than fixed stats (which we can for now call Red, Yellow, and Blue), three half-way colors, Citrine, Emerald, and Amethyst, or vice versa. Gear still permits what stats you can take, but you can set those breakpoints directly from which to determine in what direction each stat is spent.

• Priority 1: Speed to 1200.
• Priority 2: Critical to 1660.
• Priority 3: Speed to 1750, if possible. (Skipped if not possible)
• Priority 4: Determination.

And with that, you hit well-rounded values at all times, though one must still pursue gear fit to their purposes.

[Duskane]

I think there should be Harder alternative to Dungeons game need harder 4 man content
the dungeons loot could be equal to Savage
but no need to make the overall content harder

[KaivaC]

I think there should be Harder alternative to Dungeons game need harder 4 man content
the dungeons loot could be equal to Savage
but no need to make the overall content harder

Agreed about the harder dungeons - not so much with the suggestion about loot equaling Savage gear. That would essentially negate the need to even do Savage except for getting the initial clear and maybe speed runs. Not to mention, Hell's Lid and Fractal Continuum don't even reach Rabanastre's gear level, let alone Deltascape Savage.

[Duskane]

Agreed about the harder dungeons - not so much with the suggestion about loot equaling Savage gear. That would essentially negate the need to even do Savage except for getting the initial clear and maybe speed runs. Not to mention, Hell's Lid and Fractal Continuum don't even reach Rabanastre's gear level, let alone Deltascape Savage.

they would just space it out from savage patches later and if there ever was extreme dungeons it be loot system like Coils just full RNG drops no books or anything and no weapons so there will always be a point to savage

[KaivaC]

they would just space it out from savage patches later and if there ever was extreme dungeons it be loot system like Coils just full RNG drops no books or anything and no weapons so there will always be a point to savage

That would make Savage gear almost useless if a dungeon could catch up to it within a patch cycle. While I don't like how high the disparity is between the current 325 and 370 (since Deltascape is sitting at 340), I do agree that the Savage gear needs to stay above what the casual player base is able to attain for a while. I'm fine with the 1st tier of Savage gear staying ahead of casual players with 2-3 patch cycles, because it means that players have to earn that gear. Having a pure RNG system with no books feels like a step backwards. I feel it would cause more issues with the raiding community than anything, much similarly to how All Greed system of 24-mans are not exactly getting a positive response.

[akaneakki]

People don't want hard dungeons. Look what happened with Pharos Sirius or the Demon Wall in Amdapor Keep. It started as tough, lots of people complained, it got simpler.
.

Took me 2 tries for steps of faith I think, when it was all new. But I guess it's hard to use canons and kill adds etc.