Why does this game hide essential character info?

[wdeschain]

Simplified reasoning for needing OP's requested knowledge:

Supposing members of Xparty understand the mechanics of an instance:

XparrtyDPS>(BossHP/EnrageTimersecs)

The above statement must be true for Xparty to celebrate victory.

Stat knowledge would be super helpful given minimum ilevel is a thing, also.

[Siete]

So, when you open the character page in FFXIV, you will see ton of primary and secondary stats. Strength, tenacity, direct hit, etc.
You can see their numerical value, yet these numbers are meaningless without context, without feedback for my character.
What is my chance to crit? Exactly how much extra damage/healing/dmg reduction do my tanks get from their tenacity? How much damage reduction I gain from my defense values?

I have never seen this in any other MMORPG. I've been playing them for over a decade, I have high level characters in 5 MMOs and I dabbled in many others, and I can't remember not being able to see such basic, essential info like what is my crit chance.

I guess there are some fan-made online calculators where I put my stats and see the desired info, but that's kinda my point, I shouldn't have to rely on fan-made third party resources to see such basic stuff.

Why does it matter?
- its impossible to make any character/gear optimization, theorycrafting, without being completely reliant on player-made guides.
What is my best secondary stat? Is this piece of gear with slightly higher ilvl, but lesser amount of materia slots better? Who knows?
- it can lead to outright wrong choices when gearing up. For example, going by ingame description, Tenacity seems like such a wonderful, all-in-one stat for tanks, and new player might be tempted to stack it as much as possible. Yet when you read any tanking guide, every advanced player will tell you that tenacity is bad and you should stack CRIT and DH as tank.
- character and gear progression feels much less satisfying in this game compared to other MMOs. Yet "the loot hunt" is one of the main reasons to keep playing MMOs once you've completed the story and hit max level.
Sure, my lvl80 SAM with rankVIII materias has much more CRIT, DH, DET, than my lvl 68 DNC in Shire gear with V materias, but ultimately this tells me nothing.

The only stat whose progression you can easily see is Vitality, where you can see your HP increase with each item you equip. Everything else is hidden for some reason. Why? And why aren't more players concerned with this?

This game?
Tell me which MMO game currently on going does not.

[Shurrikhan]

This game?
Tell me which MMO game currently on going does not.

WoW, Rift, GW2, SWTOR, ESO, LA, SW, CoH, NN... heck, even BDO, B&S, Aion, Archage...

They all have either individually linear stat curves or linear damage growth per stat curves and clearly show their effect per stat.

Admittedly, some, like WoW, have conditionally trimmed away any of the stats useless to a given class so they don't need longwinded tooltips like those of our primary output stats (especially -- ugh -- Strength), but clarity and transparency are the norm.

[Barraind]

. Is SE algorithm correct? Have we merely been duped by a covert organization that has purposely distorted stat weights so as to retain ownership of the ranking on the site that shall not be named? Seriously, who is correct: a) SE Devs OR b) FFXIV content creator X?

2. Why would the above mentioned BiS in-game tool NOT fit us with BiS?

Recommended just shoves gear by some combination of Ilvl and Vit. It will absolutely NOT give you optimized gear on most classes if you have accessories with 0 vit on them but carry glam pieces with you. This was mostly seen with earrings and rings pre stormblood, but Aetheryte earrings solve the problem for the ear slot.

Being able to actually know the stat thresholds in games like WoW was really helpful

I miss having to deal with WoW's systems. The transparency there, and knowing exactly how stuff worked down to the hundredth of a percent was really handy.

[Angelitus]

dae system failedd bc im too dumb to look it up amarite

[testname]

I totally agree with OP.

I don't see any reason, to not know My Critical Strike Chance for example.


And to people who try to deny it in posts before, I can say, that if we don't see our Crit, then we should not see, how fast we attack too(Skill speed or spell speed - hower cursor over it and it say 2.4 sec or other value) = if we can see Speed of Skill then why not other values? It is just hypocrisy

[Kuroka]

I personally hate SS, like, it feels useless. I dont have a single point of SS on my Rdm cause whenever i got a Crit/Dh piece vs SS/det loosing that 300 ss literally costs me like 0,01 cast time.. that just doesnt feel worth it...

[MistakeNot]

So, when you open the character page in FFXIV, you will see ton of primary and secondary stats. Strength, tenacity, direct hit, etc.
You can see their numerical value, yet these numbers are meaningless without context, without feedback for my character.
What is my chance to crit? Exactly how much extra damage/healing/dmg reduction do my tanks get from their tenacity? How much damage reduction I gain from my defense values?

I have never seen this in any other MMORPG. I've been playing them for over a decade, I have high level characters in 5 MMOs and I dabbled in many others, and I can't remember not being able to see such basic, essential info like what is my crit chance.

None of that info is essential.
Would it be nice to have? Yes, it would.
Do we need that info? No, we don't.

Bigger numbers are better. That is what we need to know. Exactly what the stats mean is needed only if you are going to do hardcore optimization - and that is not needed.

[JohnnyDevo]

From what I understand, the way secondary stats work (and, of course, the things derived from them) is entirely dependent on your level.

You could have 2500 crit, and that would mean (just spitballing here) like 30% crit if you're level 70, but only 20% crit if you're level 80.

I imagine they occlude those numbers because "yay, I levelled up! Why did my crit chance fall through the floor?" feels really bad. By the same token, a player at level 30 won't have something like 5% crit chance.

It's a good system from a backend perspective. You get to continually give the players a sense of "more is better", while also not eventually capping out on critical chance, direct hit chance, etc. Practically essential in a vertical progression system, in my opinion.

As to whether the final numbers should be somehow public, even if through an official wiki, I don't really have an opinion. The playerbase figures it out quick enough, and that's good enough for me.

I never really think about it all that much, personally. As a red mage, I avoid spell speed and rush crit. 'tis a simple life.

[Nemmar]

Upsets me as well.

Here have a rating of some stat...

Yes, people can deduce from it with parsers and whatnot, but it's still pretty unintuitive. If you don't want people to know what these ratings do, just get rid of them altogether.