Dev Tracker: Discussion

[NynJa]

If you make the grind worth it, people will do it.

[Sechs]

Don't think that's possible to fix. Either they make them so bad overall that no one, even botters, care, or they make them so good that everyone cares, parties are made that make progress, and botters do what they do, or the middle ground, sorta where it's at now. Any system that relies on killing near infinite non-challenging mobs to grind items and/or points is easily able to be abused. The only fix would be to crack down on the act to add a layer of fear, but I don't think they care enough to bother anymore.

I agree, but still I think there's space for much better compromises than the current ones.
The 2x CP campaign should be made default rate.

Then they should change how PT works. Atm it's almost less efficient to go with a full pt than it is to solo, unless you have a good PT.
(CP/kill gets cut for each additional pt member)
They could leave it as it is, but then add a nice bonus if you're in a party and you're in the monster's enmity list.
Wouldn't solve botting (since bots can easily get in enmity lists) but it would at least make Partying more interesting.

If they succeed in making PTs more interesting/efficient and create more camps (the new zones just added are a good example, but we need even more) then CP pts might become more popular.
In such a scenario I'm not saying that botters would stop to bot, but some people would at least see no reason to keep botting and would just enjoy PTs with other people.
I don't care for botters, they can keep botting all they like I'm fine with that, I'm not trying to start a moral/bot police here.
Botters are not the problem imho.
The real problem is the effort/reward ratio which is so wicked that in return it makes so many people resort to botting because it's the only efficient/reliable way to get JPs at a decent rate and still mantain your sanity.

1) Better ratio
2) More camps
3) More incentives to spend JPs (the new JP>JT system?)
4) More incentives to party play
5) More REALISTIC sources of CPs (no SE, RoEs are not a realistic main source)


They could also add a Daily/Weekly quest that allows you to convert Merit Points into Job Points, at whatever ratio they see fit.
With a daily/weekly limit people wouldn't be able to abuse it, but at the same time it would be a nice additional source of JPs, would be godsent for those jobs where it's currently harder to gain JPs and it would also make you feel like you're wasting less stuff when you're doing those PTs and getting a plethora of XP while being 45/45 Merits.

[Sechs]

If you make the grind worth it, people will do it.

To a certain extent I agree.
But that's not what they want to do in theory. We can argue that it's a dangerous threshold that's going to be tresspassed sooner or later no matter what, but atm their intent is to keep JPs marginal stuff so it doesn't feel "mandatory".
Given this utopistic and unrealistic premise, I don't think they want to make JPs more "worth".

At which point the only thing they can do is make the grind less excessive, that is changing the effort/reward ratio to more acceptable levels.
I feel like a lot of people do not bother not only because the rewards aren't worth it, but more because they aren't worth GIVEN the amount of effort required.
With less effort, a lot more people would bother imho.

[NynJa]

So you're going to tell me that the same people who make multiple gearsets to account for every combination of buff being up or down, that account for buffs from certain support jobs, that account for needing just the right amount of accuracy, just to squeeze every last percentage out of their parse will all of a sudden balk at farming JP?

[Sechs]

What does "to balk" mean?
Nvm googled it.

I'm not sure I get what you're trying to say NynJa D:
Maybe it's a matter of the asurans or the people I know, but I noticed that most people, even really good player, do not feel like being bothered with JPs.
Most just got a few here and there (Hasso for SAM) and then stopped bothering.
Those who have means to bot just do that instead of going offline, the others just simply ignore JPs and get what they can from various events.
Whenever I shouted for JPs, even during 2x Campaigns, even promising rates of 200k cp/hr, I could hardly get tells from people, not even in my LS wanted to join and trust me we have quite some good players there.
I swear I was hardly getting tells even from random casuals, whereas I was expecting a storm of those.

Likewise, you hardly see people shouting, it's mostly botters and people leeching afk thanks to their generous friends (/raises hand, I'm one of those)


I think there are several reasons why this is happening and I listed what I think would make the situation much better for everybody.
You said "make stuff worthier and people will bother", which I agree with, but it will hardly happen because atm SE doesn't feel like making so JPs feel "mandatory".
I then replied that imho the same result could be reached leaving the worthiness as it is now, but reducing the effort.
I feel that way a lot of people who are not currently bothering with it (discouraged by the insane effort/reward ratio?) would maybe feel like dedicating a bit more time to JP farming.

[Scizor]

I just cant be arsed to grind out JP's, merits are bad enough.

[Ophannus]

I kinda hope they don't raise the cap past 10 per category. Because then these "small boosts" become extremely necessary. Benediction/Tabula Rasa restoring 30-60% MP, Eagle Eye Shot Damage +90%, Hasso STR+30, Meditate TP+150 per tick, Blue Spell points +30. All of the ones i mentioned are rather extremely impactful.

[dasva]

If you make the grind worth it, people will do it.

Even if it isn't some people will. Fully 30/30 every category on the job for free glow effect!

[dasva]

I kinda hope they don't raise the cap past 10 per category. Because then these "small boosts" become extremely necessary. Benediction/Tabula Rasa restoring 30-60% MP, Eagle Eye Shot Damage +90%, Hasso STR+30, Meditate TP+150 per tick, Blue Spell points +30. All of the ones i mentioned are rather extremely impactful.

I would argue EES wouldn't be. Yeah that's a decent boost to EES... but it's a 1hr ability that does about as much dmg as a ws so I can't see people caring that much. Bene would depend on how much you use it generally not that often. Tabula would depend on how often you are using it in the middle of a fight vice pre buffing and such.

Other mentionables:

Afflatus Solace Effect would be a must have. Whm already effectively AoE cures for free or close to it this would help make it definitely free and make single targets much closer to free as well.

Mana Wall Effect- with af3+2 feet and 30/30 would become -90% reduction to mp lost. Kinda ridiculous especially if they every upgrade af3

Familiar Effect- honestly not sure what it means attributes... base stats or acc/att etc? Either way +90 for basically as long as you can keep your pet alive is not bad especially on top of the hp and haste you are already using familiar for... speaking of haste

Pet Attack Speed- assuming it's ja haste that would allows bsts who have generally been lucky to get 25% pet haste until recently to get 65%. It's kinda like going from unbuffed to buffed melee.

Reward Effect- Not really game changing per se as Theta's in a good set will heal a good 70-80% of most jugs health or in some weird low hp guys like ladybug basically all but would allow you to use Zeta's instead which cost half as much.

Minuet Effect- Another free 30 attack per min

Shadowbind Duration- 75 sec unresistable binds aren't too shabby especially with the rng pts you see now. 4 rngs can keep a mob bound forever for like say pld death recovery

Astral Conduit Effect - already a sick ability adding 30% dmg is just kinda insane. Also combines well with Astral flow... even more dmg with that jp or just to increase the duration of PD if anyone actually ever does PD zergs again

Pretty much all of cor is fairly good.

Automaton Max HP Bonus- autos have poor hp so another 300 would help a lot. But yeah lolpup would mostly just be to keep them alive long when doing cor cannibal blade tricks

Light/dark arts- 90 seconds or whatever it ended up actually being on regen/helix is pretty strong. Forget how it stacked with other duration stuff though

Vallation Duration- can almost full time Valiance barring dispels so might let RUN play the part of dmg reduction support while DDing. So maybe instead of EA/Scherzo everything use a RUN instead of the smn or something

[Viar]

I'd like to know in which camp and on which job and with which subjob and with which trust you get 80k/hr though.

COR/DNC, WHM+BRD trust, Doh gates eft/pugil, corsair's roll+ samurai roll, everything dies with 2 leaden salute. I'm pretty sure there are better camps, but I'm too lazy to find them.

[Damane]

So you're going to tell me that the same people who make multiple gearsets to account for every combination of buff being up or down, that account for buffs from certain support jobs, that account for needing just the right amount of accuracy, just to squeeze every last percentage out of their parse will all of a sudden balk at farming JP?

those are 2 different concepts you compare, getting gear/progression via BCs/events etc etc. is fun compared to wailing for endless hours at fucking trash mobs...

[dasva]

those are 2 different concepts you compare, getting gear/progression via BCs/events etc etc. is fun compared to wailing for endless hours at fucking trash mobs...

While I completely agree with it that is a matter of personal taste. I've known people to hate gear progression and people to love menial tasks.. I had a friend who had his kids fish for him because they actually enjoyed fishing in ffxi for hours at a time as weird as that sounds

I think there should be a balance between the 2 because both can get boring if it feels like that's all you do and you have to. Like doing salvage can be fun farming a mythic is mindnumbing.

[NynJa]

those are 2 different concepts you compare, getting gear/progression via BCs/events etc etc. is fun compared to wailing for endless hours at fucking trash mobs...

if you focus on capping everything, sure, it may seem endless. Tell me how much you needed to cap out Defender bonus again. Tell me how much you really need the HP/MP restore on sch 1hr's. etc etc

A lot of people have also quit because "well I spammed delve for 4 days, got all my shit, and now I have nothing to do, fuck this". So that immediate reward has just pushed people away. Its pretty obvious SE wants people to NOT cap out JP in one sitting.

[Sechs]

Brb making a couple of kids so they can farm
me
JPs while I'm at work or spending my time playing other games I actually enjoy.

(Sorry dasva I couldn't resist )

[Sechs]

Its pretty obvious SE wants people to NOT cap out JP in one sitting.

I totally support that!
But surely we can reach a better compromise between the current JPs situation and the "4 days delve quit" one you were describing?

[dasva]

Brb making a couple of kids so they can farm
me
JPs while I'm at work or spending my time playing other games I actually enjoy.

(Sorry dasva I couldn't resist )

I thought about that but the game might be dead before then... you'd be better off adopting I think. Then give them back when you don

[NynJa]

I totally support that!
But surely we can reach a better compromise between the current JPs situation and the "4 days delve quit" one you were describing?

Like what though? You have people saying they can solo 80k/hr. This may be with heavily favourable conditions, but is it out of reach to assume a party can do 140k/hr? I've never gone out for the sake of grinding JP, so I have no baseline. 1 3hr food worth of grinding at that rate will net you 42 JP. Lets presume you do that twice a week (sat / sun), and in two weeks you've got 168 JP. You can cap out three categories now, in 4 3 hour grind sessions.

Considering people could literally farm delve for multiple hours back to back, is a 3 hour xp session so unbearable all of a sudden?


edit: my numbers here are off, for some reason I was thinking 10k/point.

[Damane]

Like what though? You have people saying they can solo 80k/hr. This may be with heavily favourable conditions, but is it out of reach to assume a party can do 140k/hr? I've never gone out for the sake of grinding JP, so I have no baseline. 1 3hr food worth of grinding at that rate will net you 42 JP. Lets presume you do that twice a week (sat / sun), and in two weeks you've got 168 JP. You can cap out three categories now, in 4 3 hour grind sessions.

Considering people could literally farm delve for multiple hours back to back, is a 3 hour xp session so unbearable all of a sudden?

for starters, instead of implying a penalty on party play, SE should just multiple the CP numbers x amount of real party members (trusts excluded).

[dasva]

Also eliminate the ilvl difference penalty... also making +CP gear work more like th. Just apply it with an action and done no need to wear as it dies and the highest one applied counts for the whole pt

[Prothescar]

Character growth elements using job points
We’re currently developing character growth elements that will allow you to enhance your job depending on the number of capacity points you spend. To start off, we’ll be adding a system for capacity point bonuses and additional job traits; however, in the future this will be used to learn new spells as well.

Congrats on making JP probably completely required SE. They were mostly avoidable previously, but now they have the potential to be 100% required since they'll be giving new traits and spells. Hopefully they buff up CP gain to some considerable degree. Apologists gonna apologize and kiss SE's ass all day erry day, but the CP gain rate is ridiculous for a majority of people who can't play the game for 8+ hours a day.