Dev Tracker: Discussion

[Sechs]

The only way to increase the availability of hp-bayld is to add other uses.

This alone wouldn't change much.
Sure there would be more people farming them, but the amount of HP-Bayld requested on the market for "other uses" would be superior to the additional ones being farmed, imho, which would actually make the situation worse for people aiming at Ergon weapons.

If they add other uses AND increase the amount of HP-Bayld dropping, adding additional sources for pouches and so on, THEN it might make things better.

Problem with the current situation is the availability (even if HP bayld are easy to farm/bot, it's usually not worth it compared to other farming activities) and the "desireability" of the item. Only 2 jobs out of 22 (and not even the most played/liked jobs at that)
Compared that to Mythic Weapons (wanted by 20 jobs out of 22, more efficient farming, more people doing it and bringing alex on the market, last but not least the salvo poshack alex multiplying glitch etc)

[NynJa]

When wkr die down, thats gonna cut deep.

Oh you mean when Salvage I gear became obsolete and Salvage died and Alex became non existant? when Salvage II gear became obsolete and salvage died again (until SE removed player limit)
Oh you mean when Voidwatch became obsolete and HMP/Rifts became non existant?

[dasva]

I'd rather farm regular reives. When there is a decent amount of people in wkr assuming normal entry prices you end up basically slightly better than breaking even unless you get a pouch.

I just wish they'd come out and say no other use for hps and tank the market lol.

[Sechs]

Oh you mean when Salvage I gear became obsolete and Salvage died and Alex became non existant? when Salvage II gear became obsolete and salvage died again (until SE removed player limit)
Oh you mean when Voidwatch became obsolete and HMP/Rifts became non existant?

Ophannus just got pwned it seems!

I'm not sure I support your last part concerning HMPs/Rifts though. VW went up and down throughout SoA (first nobody was bothering, then people started doing it a bit more once again after they introduced merit fights, now it's very low again) but you'll have to agree it's still kinda hard to find that stuff on the market.

If you want to 99 an Empy weapon on the Cinder path it's probably going to be more expensive than a Mythic (which isn't exactely cheap, despite people in here having 20000 per player) and what really hurts, more than just the sheer price, is the availability of mats. Good luck buying 1500 hmps or 60 cinders. Good luck shouting for VW and getting tells from people.
I doubt it's just a bias I'm getting from my server since in theory Asura is one of the most populated, most active servers around. I'm sure on most other servers the situation is even worse.

(pretty confident HMPs and Cinders might drop from Unity Concord though, someone already mentioned a few pages ago and it makes sense since SE said a few weeks ago that they weren't going to increase droprate but that they would be adding more sources for them)

[KetSC]

Also did they stop doing roadmaps once SoA came out? And i wonder if we'll get a new expansion, hopefully they stop adding new jobs though, just further dilutes and undermines other job roles

Adding new jobs is fine IMO. The game has always been severely imbalanced in several aspects.

Most people don't really care too much about balance as long as a job can do cool stuff in some PUG content like Reives or whatever. I always see everyone play almost every job despite the severe imbalances. Plus the game could always use new stuff to keep interest in current players and to maybe add a few new players to the game.

The main advantage FFXI has over FFXIV is that it has like 100x more content than FFXIV, and FFXI isn't severely simplified like FFXIV is (despite huge imbalances in FFXI, almost every job has some sort of niche use; yes I complained about BST not being as good as other jobs before but still, I had some good times as BST and I enjoy the other many jobs in the game too + I can always idle as BST in town). Take that away and you have not much else going for FFXI over other MMOs.

Plus a lot of things are more fixable than they appear. It is just the FFXI team has always had problems with balancing. It is getting better overall (I mean most underpowered jobs have been buffed several times to be usable). PLD went from useless, to useful, to the only tank that worked, to not the only tank that worked (but still viable) along side RUN (for example). Same with several other jobs too.

Spoiler: show

I mean, if you are playing FFXI for the next years and there's no new jobs added and likely no level cap raise (unlike other games), then there's not as much to look forward to. I am not saying that a new expansion needs to have new jobs but if they have good ideas for new jobs, then there is no reason not to add them. Plus, the majority of people are always interested in new jobs and it does add some interest to the game. (Finally I like how FFXI always does something unique for the classic jobs in the FF series in terms of design. I dislike how in FFXIV, the designs of the job armor are almost copy and paste of existing designs from the previous FF games.)

Also even if they added a new job and that job was the worse job, people would still be excited and probably play it. And if that new job was imbalanced and screws things up, well it's not like it isn't already happening now with the current jobs (SAM now for example).

Spoiler: show

FFXI's advantage lately against FFXIV (and even WoW) is that there is a ton of content and lots of things to grind for, and for several jobs at once (and several jobs can do multiple things at once, maybe not in the hardest content but in a lot of the content at least).

WoW has a lot of classes (34 specializations across all the classes and each spec is like its own different class with vastly different abilities and traits; Monk in WoW for example, can be a healer, tank, or DPS and each spec changes and adds a ton of different abilities), which is in a way more than FFXI has (22) and Blizzard is doing a decent job at balancing the classes and specializations despite the fact there are 34 different specializations. (Yes FFXI isn't WoW but I'm just saying that balancing and keeping the majority of all classes/jobs and making them useful in the majority of content isn't impossible as WoW is doing a good job with 34 different specs which are almost essentially 34 different classes.)

Matsui and team are doing an decent job at balancing. At least it's not back in the day when some jobs were totally ignored. Most jobs have been tweaked and looked at since SoA and I am happy with most of the changes. There are tons of changes still needed though but it seems everything is being looked at and potentially tweaked in the future.

So I definitely welcome new jobs.

I really hope they add ergon weapons for either every job, or each weapon type, or possibly require reforged af3 to use hp bayld, just to get people who are sitting on 800k bayld to turn it over.

Yeah, I agree that it'd be neat if SoA introduced a 4th set of ultimate weapons. Not sure if making them like Ergon (since they are like Mythics basically) is the way to go though but they could probably think of something.

Also they should add Empyreans WS (at the least) and/or weapons to RUN and GEO. It's not really needed but for RUN, it'd be neat to have Torcleaver and/or CDC for more skill chain opportunities, and for GEO both Dagan and/or Myrkr would be neat to have too.

Playing both FFXI and FFXIV, FFXI's greatest strength is the fact that there is a ton of variety in terms of the grind. FFXIV, I can finish most of the content in literally just a few days (especially if you are in a static, clearing all the content is really easy as they release only like a few fights every 3 months and that is it). Most gear you can just get within one day of playing (except the weekly cap stuff of course). After that, there's nothing to do.

FFXI, while there's ton of grindy stuff (Mythics for example), at least they are there and they are doing a good job at recycling the content and keeping old stuff relevant to this day.

Overall, that's why I welcome more long term grindy stuff (if possible) for FFXI.

FFXIV is mostly balanced and it is easy to get in but that comes at a huge cost. When you can literally just get most of everything (all items except things limited by weekly locks) and finish all content in a few days, there is something wrong. I mean, I want more to do and more variety of content to do for a P2P MMO. And FFXI wins in that regard. So I definitely agree that it'd be neat if they add a set of ultimate weapon (and ones that use HP too would be a good way to make Bayld be useful).

I do hope they go back and rebalance some of the relics and empyreans to be able to be more able to compete with even Skirmish weapons. Mythics can be the strongest since they take the longest time to complete but the fact that the majority of relics and empyreans are actually worse than items you can get within a day or two (some skirmish weapons for example) is silly.

[Shenrien]

I always cringe when someone mentions the amount of content in one mmo and compare it to another. I don't care about time frames or length of time the game has been released. You're ignorant for comparing one to the next because different mmos are set up to be experienced vastly different. I know huge fucking culture shock right there. But I feel people compare both XI and XIV to one another because Square made both and think that they should follow the same kind of concept of experience when both are set up very differently.

Laying into the brick wall of text above me, and trimming the fat I've picked out a few things that caught my eye.

Blah blah blah, Blizzard can balance 34 different classes and XI has 22 classes. Matsui and team are doing an decent job at balancing.

Very laughable as there is a clear issue with the games balance as of current. Maybe that will change but as of right now, no they haven't done a decent job of balancing the game, they've made GEO and RDM more appealing but that isn't balancing anything. Removing alpha was unnecessary for weapon skills and only added to the experience of everything ending up the way it has, pair that with their take on an item level system that hasn't really worked in my opinion. There still has yet to be content that warrants the changes that were made.

do hope they go back and rebalance some of the relics and empyreans to be able to be more able to compete with even Skirmish weapons

I honestly wish they could stop welfareing those that made R/E/M and trying to shoe horn them into being useful. Blah blah blah they were once powerful and offered x/y/z and people spent ###M on a/b/c weapon. That's nice and all and I'm honestly in the same boat myself but hell it would be nice if a weapon that was introduced 6-9 years ago would finally be put down for something new to take it's place.

It seems redundant to keep it around and honestly kills the chances of something new to ever take its place, add some sorta special emote or something for those that made them and move on. But that's just me, and I know this game is set up to cling onto items for a very long time, but at what point do you draw the line? Where is my iLvl Homam that got replaced not once but twice, and rather quickly at that, if they're gonna shoe horn and welfare weapons from 6-9 years ago they might as well do it for everything else, right?

I also demand my iLvl Wax Sword +1 because fuck, gotta be fair right? Worked hard to make that fucker, I better be able to cling onto it and use it forever because Stockholm syndrome is a bitch.

[Malithar]

I honestly wish they could stop welfareing those that made R/E/M and trying to shoe horn them into being useful. Blah blah blah they were once powerful and offered x/y/z and people spent ###M on a/b/c weapon. That's nice and all and I'm honestly in the same boat myself but hell it would be nice if a weapon that was introduced 6-9 years ago would finally be put down for something new to take it's place.

It seems redundant to keep it around and honestly kills the chances of something new to ever take its place, add some sorta special emote or something for those that made them and move on. But that's just me, and I know this game is set up to cling onto items for a very long time, but at what point do you draw the line? Where is my iLvl Homam that got replaced not once but twice, and rather quickly at that, if they're gonna shoe horn and welfare weapons from 6-9 years ago they might as well do it for everything else, right?

That was essentially their plan at SoA launch. Skirmish weapons came close to RMEs, people sweated a bit, then a month later Delve hit and completely destroyed RMEs. After that, they addressed the player base that RMEs would no longer be supported. Queue massive shit storm. Some still blame that exact instance for the game being in the shape it is population wise. I was mixed on it personally. Can see where people come from as far as all the work/money they put into the weapons, but from a balance perspective, it's a nightmare. Going forward, they still have to have events and drops that give comparable weapons for non-RME users to keep up. But in doing so, they end up creating content that a large portion of the player base has no need or desire to do. Alluvion Skirmish is a recent good example.

FWIW for the WoW bit above, that's fairly misleading calling all the specs different classes. Many classes still only have one roll, and it's simply balancing the numbers around to be similar. Rogue has 3 DPS specs, Hunter 3 DPS specs, Death Knight 2 (I think? I don't pay much attention anymore) DPS specs, etc. Sure, some are vastly different like melee DPS Shaman or spell DPS Shaman, and they do all play a lil bit differently, but if you're just going off of the experience, why not count subs for FFXI? Some jobs play vastly different depending on subs, and just like WoW, others have very little difference.

[Hitou]

I donno why people are whining about RME, only mythics give any advantage over some random 119 weapon you got after 10 mins of effort. I see nothing wrong with people wanting to keep weapons they spent months building usable. I don't think they should be made any stronger than they are, mind you, but it's stupid to bitch that they're still around.

[Siatdiat]

I honestly wish they could stop welfareing those that made R/E/M and trying to shoe horn them into being useful. Blah blah blah they were once powerful and offered x/y/z and people spent ###M on a/b/c weapon. That's nice and all and I'm honestly in the same boat myself but hell it would be nice if a weapon that was introduced 6-9 years ago would finally be put down for something new to take it's place.

It seems redundant to keep it around and honestly kills the chances of something new to ever take its place, add some sorta special emote or something for those that made them and move on. But that's just me, and I know this game is set up to cling onto items for a very long time, but at what point do you draw the line? Where is my iLvl Homam that got replaced not once but twice, and rather quickly at that, if they're gonna shoe horn and welfare weapons from 6-9 years ago they might as well do it for everything else, right?

EQ epic weapons got upgrades similar to relic weapons in the past, but ultimately ended up as augments, or an item to attach to a weapon to improve it, ala gems in WoW or something along those lines. SE could do something similar to that.

[Sechs]

I was mixed on it personally.

Me too. In hindsight, I think the game would have gained higher benefit from RME finally being put to rest and the dev team focusing on new useful weapons, instead of having all the hard time they're having now in trying to balance RMEs, trying to make so new weapons are still somewhat attractive and whatnot.
That's a lot of resources/time wasted on pleasing what in the end is still a minority of the player base. Here on BG we're all part of it but still, if I put my personal feelings/emorage aside, I think the game would likely be better now if the 119 RME patch never happened.

FWIW for the WoW bit above, that's fairly misleading calling all the specs different classes.

Exactely.
And even more than that there's another key point that people are forgetting about when comparing stuff like WoW/FFXIV to FFXI.
WoW/FFXIV use a strict implementation of the trinity system. There's a high level of homogeneization and this allow to have the boundaries and roles of every class/job being clearly defined. In return this allows developers to plan the environment much better. They can know to a much better extent what sort of setup people will use, they can keep the range between different setups much closer together, and this brings up a much better balance of fights difficulty.

In FFXI you do not have these standards. You hardly even have "roles". Majority of jobs are all hybrids to a certain extent, there is no working enmity control, hardly a "rotation" of actions, each job has a incredible amount of possible and different spells/abilities/weaponskills.
You can use a plethora of different setups and the range between them is insane, which is exactely why they're having issues in tuning the difficulty of fights.
How can you make so a fight is not too hard for people using PUPs and DNCs and not too easy for other groups overstacking 2000 BRDs and Idris GEOs?
Also you have equipment.
In WoW and FFXIV equipment is fixed and gives mostly generic enhancement, hardly anything specific (WoW has something in the form of set bonuses).
FFXI is full of job specific enhancement, some are huge, some are necessary to play your job (think of a PLD without Aegis/Ochain).
You also need a plethora of different sets: precast, midcast, aftercast, pdt, mdt, high acc, low acc, ws sets, enhaskill set, curepot set, lowtier nukes sets, hightier nukes sets, blahblahblah. It's all incredibly complicated.

All of this contributes to create a H U G E gap in the possible setups, and in return it makes it virtually impossible for developers to reach the level of "balance" that they reached in games like FFXIV and WoW.
This also has pros, it makes the game feel more "free", you can do whatever the fuck you want, even big mistakes, it's all deeper and more "interesting" for players.
At least from my point of view of course.

My point is that there is only so much we can blame the devs for (stuff like broken enmity and other things are clearly their fault), but for many others is not really their fault, but rather an obvious and unavoidable consequence of a different game design implementation compared to the homogeneized and strict implementation of the trinity system that you can find in WoW and FFXIV.

[Byrthnoth]

Today seems to be "reply to the community" day on the JP boards, but the questions/responses all look boring.

[Malithar]

stuff like broken enmity and other things are clearly their fault

Ask the crusader on the oboards about how terrible everyone else is since he Pld + DDs all the things and thinks its the most amazing system evar. It's even better cause when "DDs are bad and take hate" they die due to being bad, never mind that Whm. Oboards seriously remind me of Alla's forum=10 circa 2005. Know there's going to be rampant QQ, but people that straight ignore game mechanics and/or tips on how best to do things still gives me a case of smh.

[Sechs]

I love constructive criticism, but ignorant people whiteknighting SE without even a clue about how this game works seriously annoy me.
Even more when they act all arrogant and allmighty as if they're the avatar of knowledge about this game.
So sad.

I hate arrogance in general, but it's even worse when it comes from people who really have no clue what they're talking about.

[Byrthnoth]

Your favorite deep cover troll has another gem for you, Malithar:

If I try to equip a new set too soon after a previous one I'll get an error and the macro misfires. Which really comes as no great surprise because the whole gear swap thing has always felt clunky and unwieldy to me as if it where more of an aberration than an intended part of the gameplay. I also know quite a few players who quit this game because they got tired of dealing with it.

They should really just re-design the whole system and how it works generally in my opinion. Because this idea of having to constantly change my clothes during combat to maximize my character's effectiveness has never been one I'm particularly fond of. And its never felt like a cohesive part of the game.

Down with the gear changing system! Boo! Why have depth when you could have simplicity?!

[Sechs]

Comments like that make me laugh at first, players like us and him are clearly on different worlds.
But trying to see it with the eyes of a dev... you get a different perspective.
And I think it's one of the reasons why hardly any recent game makes gearswapping relevant (or even possible).

It's so obvious for us who've been playing this game for so long, having to deal with its limits and UI issues everytime.
But trying to get in the shoes of a more average/casual player, coming from other MMOs maybe, I can understand how it could look "strange" to them.


Personally I'm in love with the gear changing part of FFXI, it's one of the many reasons why I still love it above other titles.
But I won't deny that I wouldn't mind the system keeping this level of depth while being a bit simpler than it is today (i.e. a bit less options, more "condensed" items that with a single piece can perform the role of 3 others).
That's clearly not possible of course, and I'd rather have it this way than like WoW or FFXIV.

[Malithar]

Your favorite deep cover troll

He seriously has to be right? He's got some agreeable points sometimes, for it being the oforums and all, then he hops up on a soap box and advocates shield War as a perfectly ok alternative, DD Pld, enmity system is fine, Bst pet off tanking makes them useful for 6 mans, etc, all while telling you how evil and bad you are for thinking you know what's what about the game. Oh, and we should be ashamed for telling others that they're ineffective doing those things. I think my favorite quote is:

A personal attack is when I insult you - not describe you as having the kind of mentality I am talking about that leads to people exclude others from groups based on math and how much damage they can do.

That dreaded math mucking up meh game. ; ;

[Sechs]

I remember those posts when he started going emo on you, was kinda surreal.

[Viar]

I always cringe when someone mentions the amount of content in one mmo and compare it to another. I don't care about time frames or length of time the game has been released. You're ignorant for comparing one to the next because different mmos are set up to be experienced vastly different. I know huge fucking culture shock right there. But I feel people compare both XI and XIV to one another because Square made both and think that they should follow the same kind of concept of experience when both are set up very differently.

Laying into the brick wall of text above me, and trimming the fat I've picked out a few things that caught my eye.



Very laughable as there is a clear issue with the games balance as of current. Maybe that will change but as of right now, no they haven't done a decent job of balancing the game, they've made GEO and RDM more appealing but that isn't balancing anything. Removing alpha was unnecessary for weapon skills and only added to the experience of everything ending up the way it has, pair that with their take on an item level system that hasn't really worked in my opinion. There still has yet to be content that warrants the changes that were made.



I honestly wish they could stop welfareing those that made R/E/M and trying to shoe horn them into being useful. Blah blah blah they were once powerful and offered x/y/z and people spent ###M on a/b/c weapon. That's nice and all and I'm honestly in the same boat myself but hell it would be nice if a weapon that was introduced 6-9 years ago would finally be put down for something new to take it's place.

It seems redundant to keep it around and honestly kills the chances of something new to ever take its place, add some sorta special emote or something for those that made them and move on. But that's just me, and I know this game is set up to cling onto items for a very long time, but at what point do you draw the line? Where is my iLvl Homam that got replaced not once but twice, and rather quickly at that, if they're gonna shoe horn and welfare weapons from 6-9 years ago they might as well do it for everything else, right?

I also demand my iLvl Wax Sword +1 because fuck, gotta be fair right? Worked hard to make that fucker, I better be able to cling onto it and use it forever because Stockholm syndrome is a bitch.

FFXI bleed sub for months when RME became obsolete, after SE buffed RME population per server remained mostly sable, just minor decrease after very long period of time. I see around 1.4k players on weekdays(JP time), 1 year ago it was around 1.5k right after RME buff.

Every since delve weapons introduced population dropped from 2.2k----> 1.3k until RME adjustment came.

Let's face it, this game can't live without RME. Everyday I see my friends and lsmates working on one RME after another, they probably won't bother to play this game at all if there are no RME to build in this game.

[Viar]

I remember those posts when he started going emo on you, was kinda surreal.

Malithar wasn't even the biggest victim, duh!

[Bukadan]

so dale IS trolling right?