Dev Tracker: Discussion

[Sechs]

@Toth
You didn't get my humour (probably I'm the only one who laughed at that anyway lol)
The funny part was supposed to be answering your question as if I only read the literal meaning and not the rest xD


@Seha
Yoshida who? Yoshi-P? He wasn't working on FFXI before getting assigned to FFXIV after the Tanaka mess. The only MMO he worked on (officially, at least) was DQX. He had a role there altough I don't really remember what.
He was chose to lead FFXIV not because of his experience as MMO programmer, but because of his experience as MMO player (or at least that's what we've been told)

Yes, Matsui was only battle designer lead at the time, and indeed Abyssea was presented as a series of "battle focused miniexp", opposed to the "story focused miniexp" failures we had already seen.
So it makes sense that Matsui created that.
I kinda remember an early Abyssea interview during the early days, the first one had just come out or was about to come out, and Matsui was talking about how he came up with some ideas (was a JP interview, I read an unofficial translation).
Not betting my money on it, but I think Matsui was in charge of the Abyssea thing, at least in the beginning.
Aren't there some credits somewhere for the first Abyssea expansion pack?
Altough sometimes credits are so generic for stuff like this, don't even know if we could 101% trust them.


@Byrth
2 weeks for you, how long for a normal human being?
Jokes aside, it's pretty much what I was expecting. I had this small glimpse of hope they would have done it for Job Specific merits too, but that was unlikely to happen heh.
Imagine being able to spend 5 more ugprades in group1 and especially group2 merits.
Nomnomnomnom, endless nomnom.

[Malithar]

Too bad they didn't increase the Tier 1/2 merit category caps to 20. This is pretty much what I expected. I bet it takes me 2 weeks to cap them all out.

Recapping quick (on a per job basis at least) is a given. Question is, how many are going to take advantage of actually needing lots of merits, and ensure they get a fair few JPs in the process, or just lolaby through it all. Hoping I can stir some interest up in LS to get a decent Woh Gates party going.

[Kincard]

Their answer is "but we made so 1/5 WS can be decent now!" is not particularly satisfying.

I fail to see how that's no longer a satisfying answer when they improved 1/5 WSs so much (as well a side effect of us getting huge ass Base damage boosts so the modifier is worth a lot less now) that they still manage to be good WSs. The limitation was annoying when 1/5 WSs were totally worthless but unless I remember the formulas or headmathed wrong we're talking like a 200 damage difference or something between a 1/5 and a 5/5 WS now, and that's being generous.

[Shenrien]

Matsui designed Abyssea and like it or hate it, it did some good and bad things to the game. Then he left to XIV and we got Tanaka back (I think..?) and we got Logwatch, then Tanaka got executed and then we got Matsui back who gave us Adoulin, and for someone who was a battle director for this game for so long you would think he would understand how to better balance the combat of the game, and that all this skill+ and shit really is terrible.

[Byrthnoth]

627 more merits at 30 merits/hr (solo with trusts) is 20.9 more hours of content. I'm assuming it will take me 2 weeks because I will be doing other things, can't play 24/7, etc.

[Sechs]

I fail to see how that's no longer a satisfying answer when they improved 1/5 WSs so much

Maybe I'm just being OCD or whatever, but I cannot accept or feel good getting a WS and knowing it's not at its full potential. Wether the difference is 5 points of damage or 500 (which is what should matter).
In different games where you are already "forced" to pick one class over another, "limitations" have a positive effect, because they work to differentiate and specialize people, making each player feel unique and different, forcing you to make tough choices (at least in theory).
In a game that's based on the concept that you only have one character and you can do everything with that, limitations take on a different form.
But, again, I didn't want to start the old limits vs nolimits discussion, I don't like them but I'm fine with them.
It's just that 3 maxed up WS is not enough if you have multiple jobs.
Resolution? A must if you play RUN. Exenterator? Can hardly do without it on some dagger-based jobs. Shoha? Can't do without it if you play SAM.
Other merit WS became less necessary now that you can unlock Empyreal ones (for instance Shijin Spiral, or Blade: Shun) but others are still very unique for one reason or another, and being "punished" just because you have more than 3 jobs is not a good game design choice for a game like FFXI. I M H O.
I wouldn't go as far to say that they need to completely unlock the category, but 15 total upgrades is definitely not enough. I'm sure they'll get it with time


@Shenrien
"officially" Tanaka was still lead project of FFXI when Matsui created Abyssea, but in "reality" you could say that he was the de facto leader because of Tanaka being just a name for FFXI (too busy with FFXIV at that moment)
I think it's not a coincidence they picked Matsui again to lead FFXI once Tanaka emo-quit. Because behind the curtains Matsui had already "led" the FFXI project, for a while.

[fantasticdan]

I never understood why so many people are against them limiting the number of things we can max out given that it's a common thing to have in just about every RPG. It's kinda boring if you could just grind your heart out until everything is maxed, IMO.

If you only had to make decisions with your merits to customize a job (like job merits), that would make sense and be in line with other rpgs, but that's not what we're talking about. In the case of stat, combat/magic skill and weapon skill merits, you're increasing the performance of certain jobs by hindering the performance of others, when they can't be played at the same time. There is really no point to it.

[JSHidaka]

Fun part...
1. Will the cap of the be increased?... If not probably you will end needing 30 merits just for 1 upgrade

2. Will combat skills cap per skill increase ? If not I don't really need to cap others skills, for magic ya I got something I could merit...

3. Bryth you assuming that the points you will spent per upgrade will stay the same? (On the skills yea 3 probably.. But attributes and hp/mp don't think so)

[Byrthnoth]

I assumed stats would go up to 18 per level. It is going to take me 15 trips to the field to cap out and I will waste about 9 merits. My 2 week estimation was generous.

[Kincard]

So since everyone will have MP now, does that mean Oneiros Ring will go up in price?

[Shenrien]

I can't see many jobs getting a use for it on current content, perhaps fodder if you really wanna waste the space in an area where it barely matters.

[Toth]

I imagine they are holding off maximum merit changes for the meritted weapon skill until after they see the effects of the boost WSes are getting this update.

[Shenrien]

I can't wait to grind 30>31>32.....43>44 merits to a cap upgrade to 45 tho, because we all know that is how they will handle it.

I hope we get some sort of explanation why our cap magically rose without any pre-req or anything from 20-30 about a year ago but now we have to suddenly grind for it. I almost feel like this is approaching FB level of retardedness, You must have 500 friends, 300m gil and dress in a full Relic +2 Augmented with an afterglow weapon to upgrade your farmville plot to a size 4.

[Draylo]

Jesus christ, do you ever stop complaining?

[PSOfanatic]

It's so funny when Draylo complains about people complaining. That aside, I welcome the increase of merit usage. It'd be nice if they would compliment it with being able to hold 50, or even 100 merits at one time! Guessing they will never do that due to it eliminating the time sink of having to rebuild lights in Abyssea after dumping merits.

[Ophannus]

A new entry, Maximum Merit Points, will be added to the “HP/MP” merit point category.

So by spending merit points in this category, we can increase how many merits we can carry from 30 to 45? So we spend say 25 merits to increase our merit capacity by +1? Then the latter upgrades will be like 25>28>30>32>34>36>etc.

I guess that's kinda neat as it can let us buy/hold more KIs at a time(and also gives them a perfect excuse to introduce Phantom Gem fights that cost 40 points. Oh shit. They're gonna introduce Phantom Gem fights that cost 40-45 points to enter but since we can only hold 30 right now, it's gonna FORCE people to spend merits to increase their merit capacity up to 40-45(and if it takes 25-35 merits per upgrade(HUGE GRIND) then to reach 40-45 merit capacity will be hundreds of merit points just to be able to buy the new KIs. Sigh....

Yo dawg I heard you like merits so I put merits in your merits so you can merit while you merit.

[Hitou]

I had to read the first line about max merit points like 5 times before I realized it was talking about going from 30 to 45 merit points held. I donno why but SE always finds the most complicated way to word their explanations of things. I'm excited about the Skill/magic cap increase. Will be nice to be able to recap dark magic skill again. I wonder if you can put 45 merits into HP or if there will be a cap of 30 or so.

[Ophannus]

Higher tier upgrades will definitely cost more than 30 merits points, requiring us to merit the category to increase merit point carrying capacity past 30.

[Viar]

If you only had to make decisions with your merits to customize a job (like job merits), that would make sense and be in line with other rpgs, but that's not what we're talking about. In the case of stat, combat/magic skill and weapon skill merits, you're increasing the performance of certain jobs by hindering the performance of others, when they can't be played at the same time. There is really no point to it.

You're making decisions when you're increasing the performance of certain job by hindering the performance of others.

The original concept of merit point, is to specialize your character as a whole, not specialize your character's job. So you can either be a mage main but a weaker melee and vice versa.

You can't play your mage and melee at the same time, but you may need to choose what job to focus on and make it better. And that makes your character different.

Or else how can you create a different character from another player if both have same job lv 99 and same gears? The optimal playing style is the same, your gear is the same(and gears are easy to obtain in 2014 that there's no way you can make your character different by gears), you can only rely on merit to create a different character and even that is going away.

[Ophannus]

Actually the primary concept of merit points was to be a new form of growth past 75 without actually breaking the level cap. With +16 combat skill, +5 or so Attributes and maybe a JA or Trait or two, you could more or less be as powerful as say a level 78 or 80 character(but still be subject to Level Correction/cRatio of a level 75). In a way it allowed for character customization to a small degree but you figure in a 5 level range most jobs learn an ability or a trait or spell or two, so it allowed you to 'pick' which spell or trait for you to gain.

The illusion of increased power is such that they're allowing us to increase our attributes(most will pick STR/DEX) and HP/MP caps as well but therin lies the illusion. Increasing player stats allows for NMs with a few hundred thousand more HP, evasion, defense etc. Just like when they added 242 skill to 119 weapons last year everyone was immediately all like lolaccuracyisforeveruseless and then reality hit when Ark Angels and Delve II were added. Whenever they increase player attributes or stats through gear or merits, new content will neutralize any benefits obtained.