Dev Tracker: Discussion

[Priran]

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.

[Capuchin]

I actually kind of LIKE that solo gives comparatively more CP, to let me get CP more easily on my jobs that are harder to get people to let you use in "optimal" parties (or bring to events that give CP). If party was the way more efficient way of getting CP, I'd feel a bit disheartened on my jobs like RUN and PUP that aren't as easy to use in parties. Yeah, you can say that in groups of your own friends they should let everyone come whatever they want, but you know people who actually give a damn about farming CP specifically for that reason are interested in efficiency...

And I know I've mentioned this before, but I think a Neo-Abyssea would be a really great place to have unique mechanics allowing you to rack up lots of CP really easily. Would be the place to "exp/merit" that's designed specifically for CP, and whatever kind of lights mechanic or similar could allow really big multipliers. So if they really do stick to CP as the way of the future for enhancing jobs, the accompanying areas in the coming months might be just the place to address difficulty of farming CP...

If they don't make some big change like that, I would really like Job Points to be unimportant. NOT interested in farming this crap on all my jobs, mindless exp grind is not the kind of compelling content that makes me stick around.

[Prothescar]

party IS the more efficient way to get CP. Woh/Cirdas/Sih/etc in a group get you more CP/hr than solo unless you're on a specific job fighting specific mobs with little to no competition. The problem is that it's still quite slow since it takes 30,000 points for 1 JP and 55 points to cap a single category, outside of CP event thats like 20 hours per category for an average gain in a good party. Solo it's slower, get more like 1 - 1.5 points an hour that way. But that's okay, you only need to repeat it 6 times for every job you play!

[nivlakian]

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?

The math you did does not account for 30k CP per job point. 140k CP/hr is only 4.6 job points/hr not 14.

[Capuchin]

party IS the more efficient way to get CP. Woh/Cirdas/Sih/etc in a group get you more CP/hr than solo unless you're on a specific job fighting specific mobs with little to no competition.

Yes, but at the very least I like that CP/mob is higher when solo (even if you kill less mobs and get lower total CP/hour) - I don't want that aspect to change.

At least makes it less of a huge discrepancy for jobs where it's harder to get into an "optimized" party. Plus, it gives something kinda worthwhile to do if you're solo and just want to spend 30 minutes on something.

[Byrthnoth]

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.

Yeah, I'd have jack shit for JPs if windower v4 didn't come out (and all the API additions that make automation easy).

aka bots. Lots of JP bots.

[Priran]

Are we yet again at the point where we can thank people who bot and cheat for making everything worse for everybody?

[NynJa]

The math you did does not account for 30k CP per job point. 140k CP/hr is only 4.6 job points/hr not 14.

Dont know why I was thinking 10k conversion, probably cause of merits.

[Sechs]

Like what though? You have people saying they can solo 80k/hr. This may be with heavily favourable conditions

Favoured jobs, yes. Byrth with his "special" setup can easily reach 100k/hr solo.
But that's nowhere close what other job/players can get. We're talking about, what, 4 or 5 jobs out of 22, or something like that.
It's not all black or white of course, but I'm just saying.
Honestly from my view not eveh 100k/hr is enough when you consider more than 6 categories and multiple jobs.

Back to your questions, what better compromise?
I don't know, people have different standards of course.

I already said what I'd personally consider an acceptable compromise:

1. 2x campaign ratio as the base gain
2. Leave it as it is for solo, give bonuses/incentives to people who want to partyplay (I personally find it more fun than solo, and either way it's a way to break a boring solo cycle; it takes more effort, there should be more incentives)
3. Create more good camps. There's a lack of good camps imho, especially for groups but to a certain extent for soloers too.

Butterflies in Ra'kaznar is a good example of what I mean for "perfect" camp. (if only there were more mobs... repops are a bit slow sadly, but that problem aside it's a perfect camp imho)

but is it out of reach to assume a party can do 140k/hr?

I've never found a good enough camp in Woh Gates to allow that (the potentially good ones were all in dangerous aggro/magic aggro/links/elementals positions, either that or they were overcrowded), but with a camp good enough I suppose it's possible.
I managed to reach >100k/hr in a party in Doh Gates (including the CP coming from RoEs of course). It was just a peak, it didn't last for the full time sadly. (CP capes didn't exist back then though)

l 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.[/quote]
You mean 14? one JP is 30k CP, not 10k like merits.
42 JPs for 3 hours would be quite awesome, it would be 420k CP/HR, I wouldn't say no to such rates but it's unrealistic to expect it to ever happen lol
Honestly 420k/hr might be a bit too much.

[Sechs]

Are we yet again at the point where we can thank people who bot and cheat for making everything worse for everybody?

I don't know if that's the reason why SE hasn't performed any major tweak to the system yet ("Hey look! Players are getting lots of JPs! Must mean rates are fine!") or if it's just a paranoia.
Whatever it is, I don't really feel like pointing my finger at those players, not completely at least.
Can you?

Yes, a complete and coherent group action from players where we all completely ignore the JP system would have been more effective to that end, but also very unrealistic.



@Capcuchin
There already is a lot of discrepancy even with solo jobs, when some jobs can reach 100k/hr and others have to struggle to reach 30k/hr. I don't think there's a way to fix that other than releasing an abyssea zone where every job basically becomes the same for CP purposes.
The base point of what other people have been saying is that creating groups is harder, it takes more effort, you should get more incentives to do that because if you don't know what happens? Exactely what's happening now: hardly anybody bothers with parties.
I'm not saying parties should be the only viable option, but it should look more attractive than it currently does.
Also more camps with more easily pullable mobs who are even harder/more/hp/whatever, as long as they don't go beyond WoH Gates ones in terms of evasion, those are already too much and create lots of issues when going with certain non optimal jobs or people who don't have good acc sets. It's not a problem for most of the people posting here, but tryi setting up a PUG party for WoH gates and getting just a couple of tells from people who don't even reach 800 acc in their "acc set" (probably their only set lol)
I don't remember there being such steep requirements for ToAU Merit Pts.

[Prothescar]

at 100k/hr is takes 99 hours to cap 1 job

they did add a lot of new camps with the new crystal teleport areas, but that's only for parties rather than soloers.

[Spira]

hmm so according to this


in the dec version update the main features are:

battle content featuring the Xol Triumvirate.
new growth system that uses job points.. or something

and other things.

[Kincard]

I mean, I think it's cool they want to give us new abilities and spells, and they want us to "earn" them, what you'd expect in an RPG.

I'm picturing the sort of progression I'd have playing any typical single-player RPG and generally speaking, it's cool when you get a new spell or something because you get it while you're actually playing the game, and it changes how you continue progressing through the game. Just to pick a random one, in Dragon Age you're interested in seeing what happens next, but you just happen to get levels as you go so you don't actually pay too much attention to how long it takes to grind until the next level. If Dragon Age required me to wander around the world map killing random Darkspawn until I was strong enough to beat the next boss I probably wouldn't like it as much (I think someone made a game like that and called it Phantasy Star 2)

With an MMO it's more like we're so focused on the end goal so much we see the entire process as a chore. The concept of JP was supposed to be that we'd typically get JP just from playing the game (so BCs and endgame give larger chunks of it), and once in a while we'd sit down and get into a grind party when we felt like it. The grind party would be more efficient, but most sane people wouldn't do just that until they capped, because it isn't even feasible unless you play 16 hours every day. MMO players tend to cap things much faster than your typical person so they figured they're inflate how CAP works to a ridiculous degree so we'd get that feeling of slow progression in RPGs.

The only way I can think of to allow for the long-term goal thing while allowing themselves to actually add something halfway useful without alienating anybody but the most hardcore/botters is to do what they did with merit WS: Make the first level give you a huge chunk of the new ability's power, and then the subsequent points would just be marginal upgrades.

[Malithar]

New spells has my interest piqued, but how useful could they be unless JPs become rather easy to get, or at the least like merits were in the old days. We'd have waves of alienated players that are suddenly missing that new spell that adds another layer to jobs. Furthermore, if mages are getting new spells, what's everyone else getting? Just more JTs? Boring, typically. JAs? WSs?

Maybe it's all just part of their grander vision of what JPs will become. It's grindy non-required content for now because the boosts are minimal for most jobs, but it gives completionists/perfectionists/hardcores/wtfever word you want to use something to do to better their character, but once we get to the point that there are those "gotta have it!" boosts, JPs will have evolved to the point of being capable with little issue, and I don't mean by botting, but by just doing content. idk, maybe I'm giving them too much credit and/or hope, but for as much flack as they've gotten about the JP system, they sure don't seem to be in any rush to improve it. Surely there's a reason for that, other than lolenjoythegrind~

[Sechs]

Massacre Elegy! (lolelegy)

Not sure if I'd want new spells/jas/etc. The idea gets me hyped, but I can see two different scenarios:

1. The new thing becomes something mandatory, very important at the core of that job
2. The new thing will just be novelty, marginal stuff

2 is not much different from the current situation, I don't see how that could change anything. I'm not really hoping for this to happen.
1 is something very cool but at the same time it kinda makes me torn about it.

It's all about the game model of binding basic stuff for a certain job behind very grindy activities (be it a RME, or JPs, or whatever else).
I don't like this model.
A job should have all the necessary instruments to perform its role by itself, without additional stuff. The additional stuff should only serve to make it perform even better.
We already have more than enough of such examples in FFXI, I don't want to see a plethora of new ones to rise.


In the end though I reckon it's hard to make so something new is at the same time:

• useful and cool
• sought after but
• it's not useless/marginal
• it's not too important (i.e. not mandatory)
• it's not too hard to obtain (no RME or current JP rates type of grind)

Balancing things like this sounds like an impossible paradox.
I'm a bit torn and concerned, but also excited, dunno what to hope for...

[Malithar]

I'd be fine with Indi-Regain. Needz moar AM3 at the start of BCs. Not OP (unless they make it OP I guess and give it +500 Regain), and doesn't really alter what's already optimal. Still useful and cool, too.

Other jobs, fuck if I know. Ultima for Blm? Quicken for Rdm (+x% quick cast)? Massacre Elegy and/or the third March for Brd?

[FaeQueenCory]

Honestly.... I've said it before and I'll say it again:
Make the WKR RoEs give out 1/3~1JP per completion instead of the insulting 1250 they give now.

Why this would solve all the problems... Of JPs... Is because it helps more than just the people wanting JPs.
(And yes I am using JPs just for the confusion with the JPs... And because it will be funnier to read as JPs instead of JPs.)
• Helps new and returning players get up to snuff (WKR gear still really good and some with augments make Best in Slot for various things.)
• Helps new players get Delve access
• Gives a "cheap" and easy farm for JPs that doesn't promote selfishness (eg, better to TEAMWORK a WKR rather than hog a place to camp solo and doesn't promote botting said camps)
• Helps with the supply of HP Bayld for RUN and GEO's ghetto fake!mythics

AND WKRs already have anti-afk-forever protection, in that you can't participate without expending the KI. (During the first 3m repop campaign I went to the WC and came back and it was up again and no campaign status for me.)

It makes the content sustainable. (Which is something SoA can't seem to do, Incursion is the closest it's come to sustainability.)
The only thing it doesn't help is with leveling a job, but we already have exp/merit pts in abyssea for that.

[Julian]

Shouldn't limit to just wkr. All kinds of content, not just soa, should give a respectable amount of cp.

Grind parties shouldn't be the only method of getting a reasonable amount of job points.

[Sechs]

Yes, Yes, Yes!!!

[Lyramion]

I bet JPs will be easier to get once they increase cap and all the ppl that had many JP before be like "waa waa i worked for mine so hard now everyone get them EZ"