Why does this game hide essential character info?

[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.

[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.

[NessaWyvern]

It's been like this since FFXI. That's about 17 years. Don't expect any change.

The reasoning they gave back then was that they wanted the players to figure it out as a community. They still do that with a lot of things in the game today ("communicate with your fellow players to learn how to progress"), so it's likely still the same reasoning.

FFXIV Devs: "Figure it out as a community" "Don't use parsers/talk about using parsers"

Community: "BAN ALL PARSERS" "RAIDERS ARE TOXIC" "STOP LOOKING AT MY GEAR AND MELDS"

... They really need to put additional info on secondary stats.

[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.

[SaberMaxwell]

I'm of the opinion the game should be more communicative about what stats mean. Critical Hit isn't just crit chance, it's crit multiplier for instance, and based on the one number we get it's hard to tell how it affects either of those statistics. Statistics like Determination and Tenacity are especially bad: "This is a stat that just increases everything!"

To a layman, this sounds like the best stat ever. "Why wouldn't I stack Tenacity, it says it increases everything and I take less damage and get healed more!" It can be a bit of a noob trap, and noob traps aren't what XIV needs really. I don't agree that knowing what these statistics mean could break the game, but that's also because I can't envision how knowing stat breakpoints (which can even now be datamined as I've been told) could break the game.

[Driavna]

IMO SE has two reasons to not disclose them:

- Easier to sneak changes here and there when needed.

- Once an expansion hit and our character go to the level cap will "becomes weaker" and that's something certain players hate. You know, ignorance is bliss.

There is no other reason to hide that info from the players, at all.

[Waliel]

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.

It also doesn't search your normal inventory. Noticed that the hard way when i was running around with lvl 25-30 accessories at 50+.

[Aylis]

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?

I feel its done to keep players guessing intentionally. I mean, Yoshida has a stance of avoiding all forms of meta. Any class can do any content no better then another class and what not. I feel its a giant mask to hide behind that they don't know the first thing about class balance. Not to mention Yoshida's negative stance on parses and how oh so toxic they are. I play MMO's that have parsing built directly into the game and never have I seen anyone use numbers to attack or belittle anyone in a random PUG situation. Also these games are active in both NA/EU regions as well as Japan. I feel he's content to keep the game a guessing gleeful button mashing combat style to make up for and hide their lack of knowledge in creating and balancing classes. I used to care and did try at one point to min-max, but without any clear way of telling if its even having an impact without looking over a million spreadsheets, it became more of a chore then anything fun. Just get that next item level is the name of the game.

[MistakeNot]

On our character UI window we have an operational button with the ability to equip a personal inventory BiS.
1. 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? Is it that content creators engines churn out gear sets that focus solely on maximum damage output? --while SE's calc does some function that adds job specific variable to its equation (e.g. piety, tennacity)?

The Recommended Gear function in-game uses a fairly simple algorithm, and does make mistakes. Especially for pre-level 50 tanks it will often give bad recommendations, but even for higher-level gear it will occasionally recommend a sub-optimal choice.

The people at SE who make the game clearly do not share the players' obsession with focusing on DPS over everything else (despite encounter design indirectly encouraging this), so their opinion on what stats are best do not necessarily match what players think is best - since the two groups do not use the same criteria for deciding what is best.

[Canadane]

I think if they told us our crit chance and strength and such directly, there'd be a lot more people upset after finding out how often SE adjusts these numbers.
I'd have over a 100% crit chance by now if these things never got nerfed.