The health problem of hiding numbers while catering to high-end raiders

[Fendred]

Final Fantasy XIV is currently fighting with a contradiction of its own design. Extremely fine tuned high-end content requiring perfect execution of rotations and min-maxing of stats exist while those same numbers are hidden from the players. The issue is that the highest end raiders are effectively e-sports players. These are the kind of people who will do things that take a tole on their health to complete content within a single lockout, if not aiming to be world first.

Due to the nature of enrages and damage tuning, the threat of an improperly balanced encounter always exists and goes up with the more jobs introduced to the game. Without some objective measurements to know when something is realistically achievable, these players can (and in fact have, in the case of FFXI's absolute virtue) hurt themselves chasing an impossible goal.

The issue is it must be possible for parties external to SE to check the metrics of a fight for the sake of safety of that particular player segment regardless of how excellent the devs are at balancing the fight. A good first step would be to fill in basic details on the player UI, like what is a player's critical hit chance vs a target of his level under the critical hit tooltip. It's absolutely acceptable to want to display necessary numbers under their own terms, but to not do so at all makes forces the player segment they are catering to use external tools which the dev team does not approve of.

Had the very tools they condemn not exist, many parties trying to complete the 6.2 raid tier prior to the hotfix to tank damage could have found themselves chasing an impossible goal, hurting themselves in much the same way as the players that tried to take down Absolute Virtue in FFXI.

[Absimiliard]

Had the very tools they condemn not exist, many parties trying to complete the 6.2 raid tier prior to the hotfix to tank damage could have found themselves chasing an impossible goal, hurting themselves in much the same way as the players that tried to take down Absolute Virtue in FFXI.

Okay, no. I'm far from the biggest fan of XIV's current development decisions, but this is not a fair comparison at all. I fought that thing, and I can assure you it wasn't just a simple matter of wiping repeatedly to an "overtuned" encounter. Absolute Virtue was a matter of having to stay awake for days on end just to have any shot at killing it only to probably wipe at the last second anyway (or give up after it full healed using some BS you couldn't prevent). FFXI's devs kept nerfing different ways people found to kill the bloody thing before they finally had to cave in and make it not completely insane.

FFXIV's devs by comparison may overtune things from time to time (intentionally so in the case of Alexander's first tier), but that is as far as it goes. None of their fights are at a level where you will harm yourself by attempting to complete them, overtuned or not.

[Midareyukki]

Okay, no. I'm far from the biggest fan of XIV's current development decisions, but this is not a fair comparison at all. I fought that thing, and I can assure you it wasn't just a simple matter of wiping repeatedly to an "overtuned" encounter. Absolute Virtue was a matter of having to stay awake for days on end just to have any shot at killing it only to probably wipe at the last second anyway (or give up after it full healed using some BS you couldn't prevent). FFXI's devs kept nerfing different ways people found to kill the bloody thing before they finally had to cave in and make it not completely insane.

Didn't the devs also release a video on how to kill it, only for it to not only be too vague, their method would get patched out anyway too?

[Absimiliard]

That is correct. They put out a useless video and patched the method it showed out anyway. Players to this day are convinced they used their developer BS to make it killable for recording purposes anyway, and I really wouldn't be surprised if this was the case.

[ForteNightshade]

Something else to keep in mind is the development team of FFXI repeatedly vetoed clears they deemed weren't the "intended way of clearing." Contrast that to FFXIV where every single Ultimate has been cleared in ways the devs never expected yet they were still congratulatory. I have a lot of criticism towards how they've handled balancing this expansion and their stance on parsing but comparing their balancing mistakes to the disastrous implementation of Absolute Virtue is pushing it.

On the thread subject itself. Tight enrages are only a factor for the week 1/2 raiders. The dev team doesn't anticipate the average raider will clear the whole tier where playing at that high a level is ever required. Which is likely how they rationalize not needing to reveal numbers. If I had to guess their perspective, it's to simply say, "It may be challenging now but once you have more gear, you'll be able to achieve it!"

[NekoMataMata]

Honestly, I think in some ways it's also harmful to hide the stats. Without these tools it'd be very easy to turn situations where the party wipes into a "he said, she said" moment, with almost anyone being able to blame anyone else for just about any reason.

[GTK0HLK]

Whilst I do not have the hands on experience.
And as others said, your points have to many blatant variables as to how they'd be way to different scenarios for them to ever be one to one. Ever.
[so much that many are thinking you are overexaggerating, without saying it]

We get the main point you're asking for is a QoL that would improve the game for many, without having to resort with Bannable Equipment.

Can Only Hope it reaches them in some form. But as many will tell me, and others. it's a long shot to nothing. <though I'll always hold it.>

[Dzian]

The issue is it must be possible for parties external to SE to check the metrics of a fight for the sake of safety of that particular player segment regardless of how excellent the devs are at balancing the fight. A good first step would be to fill in basic details on the player UI, like what is a player's critical hit chance vs a target of his level under the critical hit tooltip.

Things like this are hidden because if they were visible, players would see they don't change anything. It doesn't matter how much crit you have your crit rate is nearly always the same because every time new gear comes out they tweak the value for stats. It's why a level 90 BLM has the same cast time on Flare with several thousand spell speed as a level 50 BLM with just a few hundred spell speed.

All those extra stats do nothing even crit. All the thousands of points you can pile into it but your crit rate is still always much the same, even if you go unsync a level 70 raid with level 90 gear and stats you'll still have the same crit rates you had doing it at 70 in 70 gear.

It's also why you can go do Midare on a level 90 boss and find it does exactly the same damage as it does against a level 1 bug. Because the 90 boss has the exact same defence and resistances as a level 1 bug, just a massively inflated amount of HP.

They don't make the information visible because the stats are effectively worthless. For example: If you log in during patch 6.2 and see you have 4567 crit, and a tooltip popped up telling you that’s a 38.90% crit chance. Then. on patch 6.4 with the same gear and 4567 crit, that same tooltip would be like only 37.65% crit chance. WTF???

Then when you’ve busted your behind off to get the shiny new raid gear and now have an impressive 5678 crit but the tooltip goes right back to saying 38.90%!!! WTF?!? You’ve gained NOTHING!!

Reasons why players are bored of the gear treadmill #42
The ONLY stat that matters is I-Level (BORING)

The game has always been fighting a contradiction of itself though... on multiple fronts..

its a Final Fantasy that's trying to be World of Warcraft,
it's an MMO that's trying to be a single-player rpg.
It's trying to build on all the things Final Fantasy fans love, while at the same time destroying them all to keep it dumb and simple..

It's a mess

[Payadopa]

Had the very tools they condemn not exist, many parties trying to complete the 6.2 raid tier prior to the hotfix to tank damage could have found themselves chasing an impossible goal, hurting themselves in much the same way as the players that tried to take down Absolute Virtue in FFXI.

That is not ever remotely comparable. And I was playing XI during that time.

[Absimiliard]

That is not ever remotely comparable. And I was playing XI during that time.

Every FFXI player when Absolute Virtue gets brought up.