POL News: Battle System Adjustments (14/08/2007)

[Vandoura]

WOOT! DRG will come back ungimp again!


I hope they have something good for drg this time, can't wait!

 

[jamal]

I doubt this update will make it possible, but I've always wanted to be able to use more than one weapon on my monk. Would it kill SE to let me do good damage with a staff once in a while?

There should be some pld/mnk staves available that have good damage and possibly some defensive stats; I'd use them for soloing.

Of course, I've long thought they should have a soloing set of belts for monk, too . . . say, yellow, green, and red, with defensive stats and +hhp.

I like the job fine as is, but I'd LOVE to have some flexibility.

Grab some Pamamas, and use a Kinkobo to solo. MNK can use it too, but I doubt it would have the effectiveness of their hand to hand combat. I use mine (well not recently) to solo on PLD. Its not fast, but I can go on forever *no sexual innuendo meant*

 

[Soujiro]

Using a staff, mnk would lose out on MartialArts and KickAttacks (correct me if I'm wrong). Even if they got an A+ skill boost and a WS that was anywhere comparable to H2H's it still wouldn't be in the same league for DOT.

 

[jamal]

Using a staff, mnk would lose out on MartialArts and KickAttacks (correct me if I'm wrong). Even if they got an A+ skill boost and a WS that was anywhere comparable to H2H's it still wouldn't be in the same league for DOT.

Spirit Taker is why I use staff while soloing on PLD despite having Shield Mastery. Not sure if this would be beneficial to a MNK/WHM, which would 'eventually' have to rest to rest mp. Staff is way too weak to try to do damage, but it is very effective for steady constant damage and self-healing...kind of like a turtle that can cure themself.

 

[Rappa]

Well I soloed my staff of trials or whatever it's called on mnk/whm. It was really handy never having to stop to rest because I could just get my mp back. Though tbh I rarely was using mp anyway considering that Chakra covered most of my damage taken. And losing out on Martial Arts and Kick Attacks is sad.

 

[Jakey]

I like the sound of this update.

 

[K. Ishitar]

nice update=0

hope these are visual like covers for our swords and stuff

when they say stuff like straps I'm thinking of ichigo's sword and how it's covered in bandages...

should be nice too bad is 2handed onry ; ; at least i could use it for bst

 

[Nyosan~]

Genji Grip
all races
Two-handed weapons only delay -6
TP bonus to Weaponskills
Lv. 70 All jobs

edit: and cmd fly your avatar is friggin scary

444 delay Great Katanas?

But anyway, this update excites me quite a bit. The "Delay Reduction" from the showcased grip sounds to me like it will cause a reduction in TP-per-hit. I sure hope I'm mistaken on that, though. If 3% is level 55, maybe we'll see 5%+ at 75?

 

[Gregedor]

444 delay Great Katanas?

But anyway, this update excites me quite a bit. The "Delay Reduction" from the showcased grip sounds to me like it will cause a reduction in TP-per-hit. I sure hope I'm mistaken on that, though. If 3% is level 55, maybe we'll see 5%+ at 75?

Nyosan it's probably going to be the same as Hasso saying it increases attack speed, or how haste gear acts and neither of those effect TP. Only Dual Wield traits so far play with your TP rate. Even if it did, SAM can pop on a few more StoreTP pretty easily.

 

[Temptations]

This update sounds lurvely<33

 

[Gregedor]

Thinking on Uzor mentioning not toting out his Light Staff again for WHM, for mages I think the new items would have to not be straight stats like some have proposed. If they are, they're not worth switching to.

For WHM the Templar Mace still has your 10% Cures and 5 MND in one slot, so even if the new items ends up being 4 MND, why trade out for the Light Staff? Keep the shield. I would think SE would put some of the more off-color abilities like -Cure Cast time or even a Fast Cast trait in that slot. If they're giving you something you already have there was no reason to implement it, although that's not unusual for them...

I love the sound of this update and hope it's enough to tweak the system. I think the only issue now though is we're all stuck with the same weapons. We keep getting new armors and even a whole new armor type this time, but the weapon choices have been largely stagnant. The Perdu weapons were essentially an extention of the CoP weapons they put in for some classes a long time ago, they just extended it to the remaining weapon types. They probably could have fixed 2H damage a long time ago if Relic wasn't stuck as the best weapon. With the armors they keep going and going, but the weapon...I've used the same weapon for 21 months now.

 

[Mistra]

Stun maybe.
Shock Spikes are a buff

It was a burn to DRG relic.

 

[Raesvelg]

The problem with gear upgrades has always been the perils of making "better" gear. SE has, thankfully in my opinion, resisted the urge to release a new set of "must-have" armor every time they do an expansion. The new sets are frequently nice, sometimes do things better in some areas, but as a general rule, they're not completely superior to anything that came before.

The same rule applies to weapons, typically they'll either try for incremental improvements or an alternate concept of similar effectiveness. And then again, sometimes they make the Hauteclaire.... the fuckers.

 

[Lavi]

The problem with gear upgrades has always been the perils of making "better" gear. SE has, thankfully in my opinion, resisted the urge to release a new set of "must-have" armor every time they do an expansion. The new sets are frequently nice, sometimes do things better in some areas, but as a general rule, they're not completely superior to anything that came before.

The same rule applies to weapons, typically they'll either try for incremental improvements or an alternate concept of similar effectiveness. And then again, sometimes they make the Hauteclaire.... the fuckers.

That's just stupid from a gaming standpoint. Gear should become increasingly better with each additional update. Each update shouldn't make doing the previous events worthless, but at the same time, they need to be worthwhile to do. The idea is to keep players around and why stick around if you obtained the best gear and nothing improves? That's why DA is so messed up, it has a lot of the best gear with a bottleneck of 4 years. The way it should work to maximize player retention is make it so that the first end game activities are almost required to accomplish the next.

There are some exceptions like dynamis weapons. Those take an exceedingly long time to make for a reason, they are the best of weapons or at the very least, should be.

 

[Zaltana]

I've done a tp cannon on drk a few times. Granted I'm a bit better geared than most drks (not all), but I found myself easily keeping up with the pace and my guillotines doing just fine vs their rampages, plus I have fun things like souleater and absorb-tp and the like. Hopefully this update will just open minds up a bit more towards who people invite to pt with them.

A-fuckin-men to that. i've been hoping for something like this for a long time. i just hope lvl 55 isnt the first lvl you can start using these things.

 

[Raesvelg]

Increasingly better gear has issues, obvious ones really. If you increase gear performance by even a relatively minor percentage per update, let's say, oh, 5-6%, by now you'd have gear that was almost twice as good as what existed a couple years ago. So, the Adaberk equivalent would be the norm, and the New Adaberk would be +20/+30. Any content designed around the original set would be invalidated by the following sets after a while. By definition making better gear in each update would make the previous updates worthless, there's nothing else it can do. You may keep some of your players longer, but only by putting them on an endless gear treadmill, locked in a cycle whereupon they can never stop trying to get the next piece of "best" gear.

Weapons obviously have an established "best", namely relic weapons, which is a good indicator of what SE considers the maximum allowable. Thing is, the edge isn't that enormous between a Relic and a really good weapon that's already out. Even minor improvements in weapons would quickly eclipse the relics.

So SE has chosen to define what they consider their maximum, and instead of continually increasing it, rather offer a variety of options as to how to achieve it, and a variety of approaches to acquire it. Rather than try for an E.Body, you can now try for a Shadow Breastplate, or an Ares Cuirass, and so on. They're not any easier to acquire (and in both cases are stupidly expensive to make), but it's an option that can be scheduled at the very least.

 

[Bajaratt]

Yeah, SE is a big fan of side grades, rather than upgrades for the most part. Although they have made some clear-cut improvements in gear; they just made some of the original gear so insanely good that it's difficult to beat it without breaking the game.

 

[Lavi]

Increasingly better gear has issues, obvious ones really. If you increase gear performance by even a relatively minor percentage per update, let's say, oh, 5-6%, by now you'd have gear that was almost twice as good as what existed a couple years ago. So, the Adaberk equivalent would be the norm, and the New Adaberk would be +20/+30. Any content designed around the original set would be invalidated by the following sets after a while. By definition making better gear in each update would make the previous updates worthless, there's nothing else it can do. You may keep some of your players longer, but only by putting them on an endless gear treadmill, locked in a cycle whereupon they can never stop trying to get the next piece of "best" gear.

Weapons obviously have an established "best", namely relic weapons, which is a good indicator of what SE considers the maximum allowable. Thing is, the edge isn't that enormous between a Relic and a really good weapon that's already out. Even minor improvements in weapons would quickly eclipse the relics.

So SE has chosen to define what they consider their maximum, and instead of continually increasing it, rather offer a variety of options as to how to achieve it, and a variety of approaches to acquire it. Rather than try for an E.Body, you can now try for a Shadow Breastplate, or an Ares Cuirass, and so on. They're not any easier to acquire (and in both cases are stupidly expensive to make), but it's an option that can be scheduled at the very least.

But by your own definition, everyone shouldn't bother with the new and just stick with the old because the old is still the best. So what's the point in new content besides getting something slightly less better until the old content drops for you?

The problem is you need a good method in which to keep people from going to A to B and then to C instead of having everyone stuck at A. SE kind of side tracked it by adding the best body pieces in RoZ, various random pieces (neck, waste, ring and earring) in CoP, random filler in ToA, and a whole lot of macro pieces in each without any significant change to any. What probably should have been done was make it so that going from A to B to C has some meaning. You need A to defeat B and B to defeat C. While perhaps it might not be impossible to do B or C without A, it's not a good idea. The current problem as it stands is that no matter what you add, if it's any improvement over the previous, then the previous method is a waste.

 

[Raesvelg]

But by your own definition, everyone shouldn't bother with the new and just stick with the old because the old is still the best. So what's the point in new content besides getting something slightly less better until the old content drops for you?

For the Adaberk/Ridill WAR, there isn't a really good reason to be doing the new content, but the fact of the matter is that even after years and years of E.body being available, it's still far from common. That's the other annoying twist to SE's way of handling gear. Yes, some of the very best gear it the game was released early, but ha ha, it's extremely limited in supply.

For example, while I'm unsure as to the actual drop rate of E.Body from Nidhogg, assume we get 1 Nid per week (actually probably a bit higher, but not excessively so), and that he drops it 1/3rd of the time. (I assume it's probably less, but even this suffices for the example in question) In the past 3 years then, roughly 52 new E.bodies have entered play.

Oddly enough, that makes for an extremely limited pool of people who've actually gotten the damn thing, and constitutes that ridiculous bottleneck that SE has finally begun to offer decent alternatives to.

 

[Gregedor]

The problem with no progression is just that, there's no progress. FFXI is almost exclusively PVE and the only thing you can do is tackle endgame events or level more jobs. As other MMORPGs have shown though, there is no need to keep the gear constant. When Kings first came out it was along the lines of OMFG. Sky used to be like oooh you have sky! These things are now taken lightly and people can 3 man a lot of content that used to use alliances. The same will be or is true of ToAU already.

It's also not like you can just jump from AF body to Kirin's Osode in one step (well I guess if you're a gimp...). People without a certain level of gear and skill aren't going to tackle the next big thing. So you have to get some amount of current content to go to the next content. If you really want people to use more of the old gear, add more level capped content. Most people that spend millions getting nice things really don't want to go back to their crappy gear.

The trouble is becoming that you have an aging player base that has some members that have been around for five years and have two relic weapons. What do you tell those guys when you've made the decision that there will never be anymore improvements in gear? That, the stuff you had two years ago was good enough and for the next five years you can't get better? That's where SE has gone with the relic weapons. Yeah they made them hard and a challenge, but they prevented any change in the system because it would invalidate the need to upgrade a relic item.

You know what WoW's solution to that was? Fuck it. They had epic weapons for the old level cap of 60 and they took forever to complete. With the new cap of 70 though, you quickly replace even the best items possilble under the old cap. The player base loved it. Yeah, it stung that your hard work was gone, but for a time you were the best there was and now you could be even better than before. It also enabled them to put in more play balance since WoW features far more PVP than FFXI does. The old content still gets done, you still see much of it as you level a new character. It is true that the endgame raids have become useless though, but it's not even possible to just get to the new endgame stuff without getting some serious gear in between. The same can't be said in FFXI, if you're 75 you can branch to RoZ, CoP, ToAU all you want and the weaker gear doesn't make all that much difference.

For the Adaberk/Ridill WAR, there isn't a really good reason to be doing the new content, but the fact of the matter is that even after years and years of E.body being available, it's still far from common. That's the other annoying twist to SE's way of handling gear. Yes, some of the very best gear it the game was released early, but ha ha, it's extremely limited in supply.

This is semi-related to the idea of no progression. If the drops are too hard to achieve it's close to saying that they don't exist. Also if you don't add something in new content for all classes, then you won't see those classes. My Salvage LS doesn't have any WAR in it because there is nothing they want. The only one that has WAR is there because of another job. It's similar to how sky is with mages, there isn't much there for them so they either skip it or get it quick and leave. When you add something new there has got to be something to entice people. If you have said that this is the maximum and no more, then there's no reason to go do new things more than once for the sake of completion.

It's like a single player game, if you have beaten the boss, gotten max level, gotten the best loot, do you continue to run around the game world for hours doing the same stuff over again?