What changes that are being made will actually help Matsui's design concept?

[Physic]

Fostering Skillful Play
Creating a battle system that fosters skillful play.
The above is, in a sentence, the rationale behind the coming battle changes. Not exactly the punchiest catchphrase around, but perhaps there’s kindly a soul out there who could word it better. */poke Yoshi-P*

To elaborate, we are aiming to address issues such as the following:
Victories coming with little reliance on skillful play.
Lack of information needed for skillful play.
No sense of accomplishment even with skillful play.
In light of the above, our objective is to implement a battle system that rewards player effort and innovation in such areas as equipment, hunting grounds, and party structure.

Ok, looking at a lot of the current planned changes that have been revealed, it really makes me wonder, what changes in the battle system are going to make this happen?

Many people may talk about AA, and job specialities, and uniqueness, but how will any of those actually foster skillfull play, and innovation?

AA may make things more convient, and the lack of stamina may change our playstyles, but the fact is we could kill monsters within 10 levels so easily before it wouldnt matter if they limited us to 3 skills each.

Job specializations for high tier play, sound good but if high tier play is just in some dungeons, that is 1 hour a day, this means at best that they are fostering skillfull play and party selection, etc for 1 hour a day


they have recently said they have no intention of upping the level difference cap for SP anytime soon, thats fine, but then "No sense of accomplishment even with skillful play." we can play skillfully if we want and take on monsters that actually challenge us, but we get no rewards for it. that seems to reinforce something he said was a problem he wanted to address

So what is coming that will help do anything like what he claims in battle.

If guild leves are optimized to be for items, gill and marks, and solo exp gains, where does party play come? When it comes to getting SP which is the majority of the time people spend in battles, what changes they are making that foster skill full play?

they are talking about adding rested sp, and quest sp, ok thats fine and dandy but neither of those foster skillfull play. Im fine with more ways of getting sp, but lets be honest that will do nothing to help battles become less boring.

Id just like to hear or see any released stuff that is going to add anything to the fostering skill full play and innovation idealogy.

So what changes, are specifically targeted towards fostering skillful play, and when are they supposed to come to pass?

[Rydin]

Reading brief descriptions of them makes it hard to really critique any of these...
Why don't we hold off on rating these new mechanics until we see them for ourselves...
Ideally you'd wait until the entire system is in place after 1.20 but at the very least we can see what's in 1.18 AND THEN judge what we think of 1.18
It's like we are calling a kid in the womb an idiot....

So what changes, are specifically targeted towards fostering skillful play, and when are they supposed to come to pass?

Skillful play SHOULD exist in how they build the bosses and NMs... Build a tough MOB.... thats the key...
None of the stuff you named works for or against that goal... Its just stuff yoshi felt the game needed to achieve his vision

[Physic]

Reading brief descriptions of them makes it hard to really critique any of these...
Why don't we hold off on rating these new mechanics until we see them for ourselves...
Ideally you'd wait until the entire system is in place after 1.20 but at the very least we can see what's in 1.18 AND THEN judge what we think of 1.18
It's like we are calling a kid in the womb an idiot....



Skillful play SHOULD exist in how they build the bosses and NMs... Build a tough MOB.... thats the key...
None of the stuff you named works for or against that goal... Its just stuff yoshi felt the game needed to achieve his vision

Oh im not saying it works against it, other than the not increasing of the level cap, though they can solve that in other ways. But none of it actually works toward the goal. I can see them adding all of that stuff. It even being executed well and being cool. But battle still being, by and large, a total snoozefest, with only the highest of hard dungeons requiring any skill full play or roles. Nothing outside of 1 level 45 dungeon in the next 3 month plan seems to be addressing fostering skillfull play.

For your analogy of a baby in the womb, to me its like breeding a dog, and some one is like i want a viscious attack dog, then they tell you how they are selecting traits to breed like luster of the coat, hair color, eye color, longevity. all of these things can be good, but none of them seem connected to making a viscious attack dog, its perfectly possible that it could end up viscious, but nothing they are telling us correlates to fostering skillfull play.

Basically, Im wondering what changes specifically are being made to foster skillfull play, and the feeling of rewarding skill full play.

[Rydin]

Basically, Im wondering what changes specifically are being made to foster skillfull play, and the feeling of rewarding skill full play.

I think they should not worry about it in the current zones and spend their time focusing on new zones that can be diverse, challenging and engaging

[Physic]

I think they should not worry about it in the current zones and spend their time focusing on new zones that can be diverse, challenging and engaging

the simple act of increasing the SP cap would have done so much for the current zones, with so little effort... oh well, they claim that thier battle system will be in full force by the end of summer, so they gonna have to deal with monsters being too weak for large parties very soon.