The Battle Reform Blueprint

[Siatdiat]

I like how people come here, complain about how dumb people are on the official forums, then make a post of lower than official forums quality. FYI for those who don't know it, WoW doesn't have a hate meter as part of the in game UI, not made by Blizzard at least.

I'll reserve judgements on how things like that effect the game when there is a game to be effected.

[Lucavi]

Not a big fan of the hate meter myself. Just seems like all the mystery will be gone. You'll have tanks with macros that give off their hate % so you just stay under that and there's really no danger. As an example fighting urry today I somehow pulled hate off the tank on my second round of dots and got killed. It was totally unexpected as I've never pulled hate off a tank without using some sorta ability before casting a spell(profundity, bloodrite, spiritbind, etc.). With the hate meter I could never see that happening. Seems like easy mode to me.

What fight is challenging in-game now without the meter? A meter won't make hard fights easy, especially when there are no hard fights. Easy fights make fights easy. Thought-less fights make fights easy. Non-innovative fights make fights easy.

You talk about not being in danger if you simply stay under the hate meter. That means that you're sitting around, never in danger of anything else during the fight. That equals a shitty fight. Do the Heigan fight in Naxx in WoW and talk about only needing to stay under a hate meter to survive, much less kill a boss. Its no wonder that ex-XI players talk about having a meter = easy fights, when all they've ever had to deal with was easy fights.

Yes, one or two fights in XI were challenging, not simply because of the tank getting one-shot, but even those were broken down to nothingness without hate even being a concern. Take the Dynamis Lord. He was all but impossible until he became a joke with chainspell stun; it had nothing to do with hate; just stun him again and again and burn him before chainspells wear off. A "hard" fight turned "easy" without any meter.

Half of the problem with XIV is that it cannot come out of the dark ages as long as so many pureblooded XI fans cling to the game while clinging to XI's outdated mechanics. The most "innovation" they've ever heard of in an environment in XI was the floor collapsing during the Diablos fight. No fucking wonder.

Edit: I'd kill to see the original Naxxramas converted fully into FFXI's graphics, yet complete with WoW's gameplay for encounters. I'd literally cry with laughter seeing the herp-derping going on with players that have no idea what to do other than blink-tank, kite, or stay away from a tail.

[Kaeko]

Say meter shows you're at 10% of tank's hate.

You do a move that gives you 1000 units of hate.

You don't know what the tank's actual hate is in absolute units. They could have 10 and you have 1, or they could have 10,000 and you have 1,000. Big difference on what happens after you pull that move off.

There is still strategy involved, but I can see it being lessened by the hate meter depending on how the new hate system is implemented. The hate system in XI was such that beyond 2007 with Rukenshin's post about NIN/DRK, we were all capping CE/VE as tanks. This made any sort of 'meter' or knowledge of the system (for instance my own testing) less influential on endgame tanking because our tanks were maxing out already anyways. In addition, the mechanics of capping hate in XI are such that a tank can retake hate automatically by simply 'recapping'. Such a simplistic system makes the influence of a meter less useful unless you are unable to cap hate (rare).

Basically, how influential will this 'hate meter' be towards lessening strategy? - it depends how the hate system is done (isn't this obvious? oh well). So no reason to go crazy like on official forums - I've seen like 4 threads on it just in 12 hours. Plus someone is going to figure out the system assuming it's simplified to a reasonable extent. Then there will be no mystery to those well-read on the game anyways. There are bigger things to worry about in the game like engaging instanced content, the job system, and character balance.

[Lordender]

Yep, its stupid people that don't want to see change in this game. Guess what? people whining about this becoming "WoW easy" shut the fuck up, I want to see your 13/13 heroic progress with all drake achievements done. Very few people who even post on BG have even attained that in WoW, so shut it.

The masochist's can lick my balls, seven ways to Sunday.

Yep WoW is easy mode! 481 guilds out of 55,000 that are tracked are 13/13 heroic progress, what an easy game, right?

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

What fight is challenging in-game now without the meter? A meter won't make hard fights easy, especially when there are no hard fights. Easy fights make fights easy. Thought-less fights make fights easy. Non-innovative fights make fights easy.

You talk about not being in danger if you simply stay under the hate meter. That means that you're sitting around, never in danger of anything else during the fight. That equals a shitty fight. Do the Heigan fight in Naxx in WoW and talk about only needing to stay under a hate meter to survive, much less kill a boss. Its no wonder that ex-XI players talk about having a meter = easy fights, when all they've ever had to deal with was easy fights.

Yes, one or two fights in XI were challenging, not simply because of the tank getting one-shot, but even those were broken down to nothingness without hate even being a concern. Take the Dynamis Lord. He was all but impossible until he became a joke with chainspell stun; it had nothing to do with hate; just stun him again and again and burn him before chainspells wear off. A "hard" fight turned "easy" without any meter.

Half of the problem with XIV is that it cannot come out of the dark ages as long as so many pureblooded XI fans cling to the game while clinging to XI's outdated mechanics. The most "innovation" they've ever heard of in an environment in XI was the floor collapsing during the Diablos fight. No fucking wonder.

Edit: I'd kill to see the original Naxxramas converted fully into FFXI's graphics, yet complete with WoW's gameplay for encounters. I'd literally cry with laughter seeing the herp-derping going on with players that have no idea what to do other than blink-tank, kite, or stay away from a tail.

All true. I'm just being narrow minded with what we have now and comparing how much of a joke it will be with a meter. Right now all we do is stand in place, out of aoe range, and heal. In XI there were very few fights in an alliance that you moved around at all. Kirin was pretty much the only one that comes to mind unless you were tp burning him. I've done plenty of low man stuff being a mage where if you get hit 2-3 times you're dead(with buffs up of course). Thinking about those and having a hate meter it would have made tanking those NMs much easier as I'd know roughly when I could nuke to pull hate and allow the other person to rebuff. You've got a point though. Last I played XI there was really no NM that was 'hard' aside from AV/PW(pre cap raise).

[Corrderio]

Anyway, once this job system is in place wonder how long we need to wait for Yoshida to add Arcanist/Musketeer as playable classes. For Musketeer I could see it turn into Corsair/Cannoneer, not sure what the heck they could do with Arcanist.

[Kurokikaze]

What fight is challenging in-game now without the meter? A meter won't make hard fights easy, especially when there are no hard fights. Easy fights make fights easy. Thought-less fights make fights easy. Non-innovative fights make fights easy.

You talk about not being in danger if you simply stay under the hate meter. That means that you're sitting around, never in danger of anything else during the fight. That equals a shitty fight. Do the Heigan fight in Naxx in WoW and talk about only needing to stay under a hate meter to survive, much less kill a boss. Its no wonder that ex-XI players talk about having a meter = easy fights, when all they've ever had to deal with was easy fights.
.

lmao is that the fight with the dance? That shit was so awesome when 4/5s of the raid would die and we would have to 5 man the rest of the fight from the first acid phase.

There were some good fights in Naxx. If we get anything like that in 14 I'd be so hyped.

I agree with Lordender. People that say that WoW endgame is easy clearly have not played WoW's endgame. There are guilds out there just now finishing up Normal Raids - not even Heroic Mode and Catas been out since December. FFXIV's HNMs were beat the very same day they were implemented.

[Lucavi]

All true. I'm just being narrow minded with what we have now and comparing how much of a joke it will be with a meter. Right now all we do is stand in place, out of aoe range, and heal. In XI there were very few fights in an alliance that you moved around at all. Kirin was pretty much the only one that comes to mind unless you were tp burning him. I've done plenty of low man stuff being a mage where if you get hit 2-3 times you're dead(with buffs up of course). Thinking about those and having a hate meter it would have made tanking those NMs much easier as I'd know roughly when I could nuke to pull hate and allow the other person to rebuff. You've got a point though. Last I played XI there was really no NM that was 'hard' aside from AV/PW(pre cap raise).

Correct, but them "fixing" this issue allows for more legimate pressure to be placed onto the Devs to create challenging content. If things are too easy after this, players certainly have the power to speak up and say "look guys, we're the laughingstock of MMOs with this easy-ass fighting; throw us a curveball, eh?"

And yes, Kuro, that was fight with Heigan's "Safety Dance", something that pure-blooded XI players would have been crying about for God knows how long back when it came out in what, 2006? 2007? Something like that.

WoW players were struggling with challenging encounters. XI players were struggling with JP-elitism, shitty droprates and self-perpetuated HNM drama, where the HNMs were a joke to kill and the only challenge was being in the first page on the inevitable "lolumad!" forum threads.

Its not even worth comparing, but its the XI purists that are the first to bash another game to compensate for their own's shortcomings, not the other way around. This new system will allow people to hold a closer flame to SE's proverbial necks in terms of designing more thought-provoking and skillful encounters, because it removes yet another overcomplicated and ultimately-unnecessary component of a game that tries too hard to be complicated in the most unnecessary of areas, while being woefully uncomplicated in many others.

[Kaylia]

Yep WoW is easy mode! 481 guilds out of 55,000 that are tracked are 13/13 heroic progress, what an easy game, right?

It's 55 000 guilds that have and won at least 1 "normal" raid encounter. Around 10 000 guild are beginning hard mode right now, and 1000 are near the end.

This mean roughly 1 or 2% of the endgame population are good enough to clear the content (or dedicated enough) to get this far.

Anyone who complains about WoW being "easy" compared to other mmo clearly hasnt played WoW. These fights require perfect execution on par with some challenging video games.

There is still strategy involved, but I can see it being lessened by the hate meter depending on how the new hate system is implemented. The hate system in XI was such that beyond 2007 with Rukenshin's post about NIN/DRK, we were all capping CE/VE as tanks. This made any sort of 'meter' or knowledge of the system (for instance my own testing) less influential on endgame tanking because our tanks were maxing out already anyways. In addition, the mechanics of capping hate in XI are such that a tank can retake hate automatically by simply 'recapping'. Such a simplistic system makes the influence of a meter less useful unless you are unable to cap hate (rare).

To someone who want to maximize his class, it's one more variable to keep track of that is added on top of everything else, and that alone add some difficulty in my opinion. Playing safely like we did in FFXI didnt require that much thoughts in the first place, and the same thing was hapenning in FFXIV.

Of couse, depending of the system, threat meter might very well be useless (if its impossible to pull aggro, or has no consequence), but even in this case, a threat meter doesn't hurt the "strategy" component.

[Kurokikaze]

Yeah thats right. Theres still new guilds that cant even beat Magmaw/ODS or Halfus/Valiona & Theralion.

Gonna post a video of one of my WoW and FFXIV encounters later. Encoding naaaoooooo.

Hopefully there will be a LFTP when I wake up but I doubt thats gonna happen considering the information overload that occurred today.

[Charismatic]

FFXIV encounter... spam shit, enemy dies.
Why even bother uploading that?

[Kaylia]

FFXIV encounter... spam shit, enemy dies.
Why even bother uploading that?

To show the contrast better.


I don't think a video will get your point across very well though. It's something you have to experience to understand.

[Cureslime]

For people looking for awesome mechanics like the Safety Dance...it could never be done in XIV. The coding is too poor and the servers are too shitty. This won't ever be fixed. Hopefully we'll get something cool out of the revamp. If not I'm left without an MMO.

[Charismatic]

Never played WoW but to be honest this does NOT look like something they couldn't pull off if they got their shit together... even with the game's current mechanics.
I would certainly like to see this type of creative content in boss arenas and such though.

[XalienLevi]

makes me sad, doubt we'll ever see anything that requires that much movement in FFXIV.

[Lordender]

we can dance if we want to, we can leave your friends behind, cause your friends don't dance and if they don't dance they're no friends of mine.

[Hyan]

I'll still be pissed if Yoshida decides XIV's endgame to consist of RAIDRAIDRAIDRAID for the next 5 years. Trash mobs here, cool boss there, rinse and repeat. Expansion: "More of the same, but BIGGER"

[Lucavi]

Remember Kurokagi, that shit was what WoW as pushing out half a decade ago. SE isn't even close to catching up in the movement area, and pure movement isn't even the only way to innovate your fights. There a quite a few other Naxx fights that also had interesting ideas. I remember a certain electrical flesh construct that was a LOT of fun when people started standing on the wrong sides of him during polarity shift.

Nostolgia bomb... fucking construct quarter had the best music.

[Charismatic]

That's fine and good, and I don't really care about them playing catch up... I'd really just like to see them not make everything tank and spank.
...not that there's much actual tanking at the moment anyway but with enmity changes I'm assuming there will be.

[Lucavi]

Eh, there are non-tank-and-spanks. They're called kite-fights, and XI had plenty of them. I'd like to see them branch far, far out from those two, but we'll see.