<DEV> request to remove dLVL

[Roaran]

What people want is for the work and effort the put into acquiring gear and materia for their character to have purpose or meaning. There is a negative psychological impact when you spend tens of millions of gil gearing out your tank character for battles, and you see that a character who has not spent such effort in their character capable of accomplishing the same feat with seemingly no difference in difficulty.

It is especially disheartening to see another class not designed for tanking, but instead to be a physically vulnerable class perform similarly.

For Ifrit specifically, I imagine the battle team was trying to make ifrit more powerful simply by increasing his Attack power. In doing so they were operating under the goal of making the battle more difficult. Most likely they did not spend much time considering the effect of the increased attack power, and how the equation that determines damage output would effect other classes.

In reality, the problem we're dealing with is much harder to fix than simply removing dlvl. It requires a much more sophisticated approach from the battle and battle-related teams.

If perhaps HP was reduced, it may not be necessary for a monster like Ifrit to have so much Attack, and thus the effect of Defense on Incoming Damage could be allowed to increase for that specific battle. But reduced HP also has effects on other parts of the game as well. I think Yoshi needs to be told to get a handle on this situation soon, to know that we want Stats to matter (not just some - we want choices to be based on strategy, not simply knowing that X stat is better than Y stat, so stack X stat). Having this addressed by 2.0 should be a priority otherwise we will continue to have issues with each battle that is added.

[Jinko]

I agree it needs to be fixed by 2.0, these games generally revolve around getting the latest best in slot item, but when stats have very diminishing returns it makes getting those items pointless.

Hopefully 2.0 is using a completely difference way in calculations stats.

[GinTama]

hoping so too

[Rogue]

To clarify, that graph is specific to Ifrit only. It does not represent all R58 mobs, and definitely not any normal R58 mob.

The balance of that curve is fundamentally based on the mob's ATTACK POWER, and NOT their dLVL. Ifrit is an NM that has an extremely high attack over most R58 mobs, hence it takes more DEF to reach the supposed damage floor. This is why the curve looks so harsh. Increasing dLVL actually makes the curve LESS HARSH because the per-point decrease in damage taken for each point of defense increases with dLVL. With this in mind, dLVL actually helps you reach the damage floor. Again, it is the ATK of the mob that causes that curve to look so daunting.

There are a number of arguments you can make for or against dLVL, but that defensive efficiency curve would probably not be the best example to cite. I think you would make better cases for critical potency maybe. I'm usually very hesitant to post my opinion of mechanics like this because the answers are very complex, but I thought I'd come in here to clarify the actual mechanic for you guys since it's fairly confusing. But for the record, I'm a huge fan of dLVL.

whether it is down to dlvl or atk or whatever mechanic i would like to see a larger range that stats make...

even if it is giving gear much higher stats.. allthough im inclined to believe the problem is much more fundamental (see dlvl).

i can solo a R55 sphene doblin easily but get my ass kicked by a R59 and i miss every attack.. i doubt it would be any different with no gear on or the best gear in the game... this leads me to believe there HAS to be a problem with dlvl.

[Enfarious]

To break from the Ifrit idea, and even NMs which are also "tuned" to be more difficult than equally leveled mobs.

Find yourself on a level 40 job, now w/o changing gear between steps:
Let a lvl 52 mob hit ya
Switch to a 45 job same mob hitting you
then to a 50 job w/ the same mob
Always in the same gear, you change in stats should be minimal.
See how much impact dLvl still has even now.

I missed a step in this during this process but when a friend and I were doing leves we set 52 as our target lvl
went out I was 42PLD, I got nailed for upwards of 1k/hit.
Switched to MNK50 avg. hit was ~80
My def didn't change all that much what w/ MNK being in not uber def gear and PLD having +vit & hi def gear. I'd check it but I'm at work and can't.
Either way, 8 levels was the difference between being nearly 2shotted on PLD and almost completely ignoring the dmg I was taking on MNK, I only took into acct AAs since my PLD couldn't survive to experience a WS but I had PLD buffs up during it.
I hope this shield mechanics change helps more than a little.