Comments from the Devs

[Corrderio]

Dev made a response about dungeons and bosses:

A similar discussion popped up recently on the Japanese forum, and so Mocchi brought it up with Matsui to get his feedback on the situation and see what changes are being considered.

• Front line damage dealers
  We will be making adjustments to some of the actions for pugilists, marauders, and lancers which will add a bit more damage. We're currently in the process of performing post-adjustment balance checks.
• Monster AoE attacks
  Many of the most damaging AoE attacks have a specific area that is affected, so by standing to the side or behind an enemy you can avoid the attack. I believe there is still some room for adding a bit more strategy to this, so let us monitor the situation for a bit before we decide how to address it.

With that said, we will be making adjustments to both classes and monsters in regards to these things.

Not too bad, but I still feel like they're missing the point of why melees are at a disadvantage.

[Jamison]

Not too bad, but I still feel like they're missing the point of why melees are at a disadvantage.

I feel like in a lot of games I used to play, ranged users actually did less damage for the fact that they attacked from relative safety. Am I crazy?

[Corrderio]

I never really compared Archer's damage to a melee's damage yet. Since when I fight I'm usually too focused on my chat bar to try and counter Inferno Drop when it happens. All I do know is if you fail to cancel it out, you're f*cked and pretty much an MP sponge.

Or maybe there's something I'm not aware of. I haven't done these since I quit my shell and haven't found anything good to join due to the small overall population.

[Lucavi]

I feel like in a lot of games I used to play, ranged users actually did less damage for the fact that they attacked from relative safety. Am I crazy?

Depends on the game, I think, but yes, there was always the aspect of "give and take". Mages did nasty damage because if they got hit, they died. Ranged did fair damage, but it was accurate and they rarely had to worry about getting their faces chewed off. Front-range melee did nasty damage, but getting beaten up was always a concern.

I think XI kind of blew that out of the water with the shitty ranged calculations and subjobs. Rangers could do obscene damage due to the different damage calculations, could mitigate nearly all damage done to them through shadows, and had accuracy to spare thanks to wonky acc calculations and an abundance of acc gear. Many games now cap accuracy until end-game (a nice idea to keep people progressing through the leveling experience), and Archers in XIV aren't nearly as bad as Rangers back in the day, but yeah, the old-school "throw more ranged at it!" seems to still apply.

[Lordender]

Balance based around the tp system is why this ever came about in both games. If i can bring a setup that takes tp moves out of the equation which is bringing a party full of ranged DD why wouldn't I do it? Under this circumstance only the tank is eating tp moves while the ranged DD pew pew away ignoring a major part of the battle. The easiest solution is always going to be the best one until they get away from this line of thinking.

When the endgame challenge is based on "under 50% its going to tp spam" just means you just alienated half the classes that aren't ranged regardless of how well someone might play a frontline DD and is good at avoiding the tp moves, the masses are just going to do w/e is the easiest route and everyone will adopt it until nerfs occur.

[Grey Jorildyn]

I'm not gonna bother commenting on the imbalance of encounter design and what's easier or harder based on AoEs because that argument has been talked into the ground and there are great points on both sides.

However I agree with what you are saying about the combat system designed around a TP system. I've argued this point on these boards before iirc. The TP system has always been a drag on combat in the FF titles. It's boring, unimaginative, and pigeon-holes encounter difficulty into taking a route where mobs "spam TP moves" to increase "challenge". It's unchanging as long as SE goes with this, and they aren't gonna scrap it. It controls the pace of combat now and forever to us as players, but not for mobs down the road which will inevitably get the "trigger a different TP mode at X% HP" (which I don't mind), or "don't stand here cuz you'll trigger X lethal weapon skill" (which I also don't mind). We are limited by the TP system and it determines what we can do in combat. It's another restriction, albeit not nearly as bad as the Stamina Bar was, on our combat. When players in XI figured out how to do the most damage without TP (Hi2U kraken club), it was an abomination and quickly nerfed by the powers that be on the mobs-that-should-be-godlike. The TP system removes true damage "rotations" from the game and most MMO players probably find the idea of "charging my laser" with white damage to do some spike damage every so couple of seconds an absurd idea. WTFwhitedamage would probably best sum up this feeling anyway.

[Gokulo]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...820#post276820

Lol, pose.

[solracht]

[dev1127] Textural changes have been made to the portion of the sea visible while riding on ferries.

Way too happy about this, lol.

EDIT: Good to see that the a/b/c patches are doing something besides minor fixes. Wasn't really expecting to see the balance adjustments for the melee classes yet. The Homepoint was a nice and surprising addition too.

[Toth]

So wait...did this patch happen yet? I didn't see any maintanence posts on the main page.

[Corrderio]

Nah, pretty sure this was because of the complaints SE was getting about them not showing the patch notes until servers were down.

[Hyan]

Way too happy about this, lol.

EDIT: Good to see that the a/b/c patches are doing something besides minor fixes. Wasn't really expecting to see the balance adjustments for the melee classes yet. The Homepoint was a nice and surprising addition too.

Looks like the a/b/c of a major patch is larger than usual.

If we'll get to 1.18c this time I'd expect a mid-September (or beyond) 1.19 release date.

[Alderaan]

I'm not gonna bother commenting on the imbalance of encounter design and what's easier or harder based on AoEs because that argument has been talked into the ground and there are great points on both sides.

However I agree with what you are saying about the combat system designed around a TP system. I've argued this point on these boards before iirc. The TP system has always been a drag on combat in the FF titles. It's boring, unimaginative, and pigeon-holes encounter difficulty into taking a route where mobs "spam TP moves" to increase "challenge". It's unchanging as long as SE goes with this, and they aren't gonna scrap it. It controls the pace of combat now and forever to us as players, but not for mobs down the road which will inevitably get the "trigger a different TP mode at X% HP" (which I don't mind), or "don't stand here cuz you'll trigger X lethal weapon skill" (which I also don't mind). We are limited by the TP system and it determines what we can do in combat. It's another restriction, albeit not nearly as bad as the Stamina Bar was, on our combat. When players in XI figured out how to do the most damage without TP (Hi2U kraken club), it was an abomination and quickly nerfed by the powers that be on the mobs-that-should-be-godlike. The TP system removes true damage "rotations" from the game and most MMO players probably find the idea of "charging my laser" with white damage to do some spike damage every so couple of seconds an absurd idea. WTFwhitedamage would probably best sum up this feeling anyway.

Amen. The TP system is such a huge crutch and i'm still surprised they didn't get rid of it.

[Hyan]

Uh-huh.

[Zubis]

I haven't really followed the forums lately so I'm a bit curious, have SE said anything about future content? Will there be more stuff in 1.19 already or will that focus mainly on other changes? Perhaps nothing has been said.

[miokomioko]

Off the top of my head, there's eventual plans for...


• Male Miqo'te and Female Roegadyn

• Iconic "jobs" that each class can choose to specialize in and switch between (Black Mage, Monk, etc.)

• Redesigned maps/world/terrain/towns/etc.

• "Artifact" style armor sets for each class.

• Removal of Physical Level

• A pet class and another mage class (Arcanist)

• Chocobo mounts/pets with related breeding/selling

• Hamlet defense events

• Player housing

[Zubis]

Ah, sorry, I wasn't really clear enough. I meant changes for 1.19 mainly. Like if SE has promised even more instances or other things that you can actually kill.

[Alkar]

I haven't really followed the forums lately so I'm a bit curious, have SE said anything about future content? Will there be more stuff in 1.19 already or will that focus mainly on other changes? Perhaps nothing has been said.

From what I remember 1.19 will include more raids (I believe 2 more?), chocobos and airships (transportation only), materia system, animation fixes, class and combat balance, removal of physical levels and adjustments to stats, more quests as usual, beastmen strongholds and related content, Ifrit battle.
Jobs are scheduled for 1.20 I believe which should be dropping sometime during September.

[Gulkeeva]

Every time I hear male miqo'te I think of tanaka... I'm scared ;/

[Greedouw]

From what I remember 1.19 will include more raids (I believe 2 more?), chocobos and airships (transportation only), materia system, animation fixes, class and combat balance, removal of physical levels and adjustments to stats, more quests as usual, beastmen strongholds and related content, Ifrit battle.
Jobs are scheduled for 1.20 I believe which should be dropping sometime during September.

Hmm, all this in an update that is supposedly due in less than a month? Weary, I am

[Woozer]

Hmm, all this in an update that is supposedly due in less than a month? Weary, I am

Well, supposedly this is all stuff that they've been working on since the regime change (and somewhat before that, I hope). It's just that now it's all staggering out.