Dev Tracker: Discussion

[Prothescar]

How much longer will those jobs be able to ignore the fact that JPs exist?
I wonder...

likely that they already can't. but it doesn't matter. for as long as people defend SE's stupid decisions and see no wrong in these systems, it'll just stay this way. hell, it'll stay this way anyway because SE doesn't listen to us even if we did all tell them this was a bad choice.

[Sechs]

I wonder who we have to blame here.
People giving silly suggestions on OF and saying JPs are fine like they are now?
People capping JPs through bots/afk leech from friends?
SE just being stubborn and blind to their players' requests?

I seriously don't know where to point my finger. Not like things would change even if I did, but at least I'd have a scapegoat to focus my anger against!

[Prothescar]

there's no one party to blame, players who inflate the statistics with bots and stuff are in the wrong for sure, but SE is the primary shareholder in "we done fucked up". the JP system has gone so far astray from its original intentions that it may as well be called something else at this point.

[Priran]

it'd be super sweet if just once the dev team could come up with something that didn't disproportionately reward bottable activity

[Lyramion]

there aren't enough camps to support a lot of CP pts (this might have changed a bit with the new subzones added in the november patch)

Ya the new gate zones can be roamed pretty well.


On Bahamut I have no problem making a Party to do CP whenever I want and get many CP. Killing loads of mobs in a party clearly is the way to go, easy and pretty fast. However all the random CP rewards for WKR, Unity NM, WoE etc are still not worth noting when killing 1 mob during a Campaign gives more CP than doing whole NM or Clear of something.

[Kincard]

it'd be super sweet if just once the dev team could come up with something that didn't disproportionately reward bottable activity

I don't think that's actually possible. Fighting Monsters and getting stronger is just basic RPG stuff. The real thing that you should say is that they should actually give a rat's ass about all the blatant botting/cheating going on, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

[Prothescar]

couldnt give a shit less about people actually USING the bots, if they want to have the game play itself that's their decision. SE not realizing that rampant botting is occurring and still probably using the metrics associated with those bots, however, is where I personally draw the line.

[Sechs]

On Bahamut I have no problem making a Party to do CP whenever I want

With tells, mules and friends, or are you actually shouting?

In my experience every time I tried to organize pts through LS, friends and shouts this is what happened:
1) majority of friends/lsmates aren't interested, they simply ignore the request or say "no". (this is just my personal situation, not the standard for every player on every server, but it's interesting because it shows how even among "non casual" players, the amount of interest towards JPs is very low. Either that or people prefer to bot afk and spend the time they're physically in front of their PCs doing other stuff)
2) I hardly get tells from people. When I do it's from people with silly jobs and/or who don't even know how much acc they have. We both know how the requirements for camps like WoH gates are pretty steep and you can't afford to go there with someone who doesn't even reach 800 accuracy before buffs. (this is a pretty different situation compared to the merit pt scenario we had at level 75).

I think point 2 is interesting to say how JP pts atm have steep entry-requirements and hence aren't particularly accessible or casual-player friendly.


Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of the super elite players who refuses to play with people who don't have multiple RMEs. But even friendly players like me have to draw a line somewhere. Can't go with people who can't hit stuff, or with a pt of 6 PUPs (just a silly example, I love PUP). You need at least a healer, at least a buffer, a COR or at least /COR is very welcome for Corsair Roll, etc.

The real thing that you should say is that they should actually give a rat's ass about all the blatant botting/cheating going on, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

I kinda share Prothescar's position on this.
I don't really care if people want to bot or not (I actually have to thank some friends who allowed me to afk leech JPs when they were botting).
I don't want to start a morals police or start being a fascist who demands to impose to other players how they should or shouldn't be playing.
The point is that playing legit for JPs is very disproportionate atm, especially for some jobs.
They have it super hard if they try to solo, and atm there isn't enough widespread interest to be able to rely on group play to farm JPs. Even if there were, JP pts have too high requirements to appeal to casual players (which is a big part of the reason why a lot of people aren't bothering with it) and even without this aspect, JP gain rates would still be too slow for my tastes even with 100k/hr rate (which is a perfectly within reach amount for a random PUG pt composed of casual players and not top knotch ones)

[Kincard]

I don't really have some kind of "moral" problem with botting (I doubt anyone here does anymore), my point is that a normal game would actually police cheating like this instead of deliberately creating only content that cannot be exploited through bots (XIV 1.0 comes to mind, a lot of the early design in the game felt like it was deliberately frustrating just to discourage RMT and bots). Of course, this is all assuming they actually use statistics from bots for how they design content. The alternative is just that they're just being really stupid with how much they want to artificially extend grinding in the game, which isn't all that unbelievable either.

[Martel]

Dragoon Critical Damage Bonus Increases critical damage dealt by 2%. 80

I would be delighted by this.... If SE hadn't already murdered drakesbane by ignoring it and buffing stardiver in the ws update. Just a bit freaking late on the crit dmg there SE!

[Byrthnoth]

Enables the player to equip items marked as Superior 1 (Su1).

iLevel 129 incoming... and it's tied to how many job points you've spent on the job? Terrible. I can't put into words how bad an idea this is.

Beyond that, other standout gifts are:
* Capacity Points +20%
* TH upgrade rate one for THF.
* Most jobs getting ~MAcc+10 to their main skills
* Geomancy/Handbell skill +12 total


Dragoon's Critical Attack Bonus +2% deserves an honorable mention because the job doesn't even natively get that trait and it might be their most useful reward from job points.

[Ophannus]

2%? Stop the presses! It's welcomed but also the 9acc bonus is pretty cool as most DD are getting only 5acc. At least it wasn't something predictably dumb like Wyvern Evasion +5.

[Sechs]

I can't put into words how bad an idea this is.

Why?
It sounds much better to me than trying to even out a dispropotionate CP/hr gain rate through an item with a random augment that you need to keep equipped to receive the bonus (Yes, I'm talking about Mecistophinis mantle).
The idea is good in concept.
It's like they're trying to make you level up again, without actually having levels to give to players they tried to reproduce something similar.

It's not a bad idea per se.
What makes it bad is:
1) Times have changed, players aren't used to the lv75 levels of grind anymore. Game design as a whole has taken a different direction wether we like it or not, FFXI devs cannot expect to ignore the world surrounding FFXI.
2) CP farming sucks. It's a disproportionate effort, it's unaccessible (as in not user friendly), it doesn't promote group playing, it's too restricted by too many negative conditions (rates, klunky chains, so many content that do not give CP etc)


tl;dr
It's the context, the scenario in which JPs are placed at the moment that makes this bad, not the idea in itself which, in theory, sounds like a cool concept to me.
(nothing to do with what JPs were supposed to be, but that's another story...)

[Vathris]

On other news :

Sweeping Gouge (Lv.99 Recast time: 120 sec.)
Delivers a twofold attack. Additional Effect: Decreases defense. Additional effect duration varies with TP. (Corrected on Nov 27, 2014)

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/45216

[fantasticdan]

On other news :

Sweeping Gouge (Lv.99 Recast time: 120 sec.)
Delivers a twofold attack. Additional Effect: Decreases defense. Additional effect duration varies with TP. (Corrected on Nov 27, 2014)

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/45216

inb4 it doesn't work.

[Byrthnoth]

It is a terrible idea because a lot of people play this game casually now. Like, they will log in and spend the three days after each update that it takes to cap out on the most recent event, but after that they just log in to do events.

Telling those people to go farm 50 job points on every job that they intend to play and then cap out on new content seems like a stretch. It is not just 50 job points, which might take 10 hours in a party. For someone with 6 jobs it is 300 job points, or 60 hours of boring grinding in a game they hardly play anymore. I do not foresee a good outcome.

[Damane]

Enables the player to equip items marked as Superior 1 (Su1).

iLevel 129 incoming... and it's tied to how many job points you've spent on the job? Terrible. I can't put into words how bad an idea this is.

Beyond that, other standout gifts are:
* Capacity Points +20%
* TH upgrade rate one for THF.
* Most jobs getting ~MAcc+10 to their main skills
* Geomancy/Handbell skill +12 total


Dragoon's Critical Attack Bonus +2% deserves an honorable mention because the job doesn't even natively get that trait and it might be their most useful reward from job points.

10 bucks superior is needed to equip reforged empy. the gifts are ok but the superior idea to be able to equip stuff tied to CP/JP is fucking dumb.

[Damane]

It is a terrible idea because a lot of people play this game casually now. Like, they will log in and spend the three days after each update that it takes to cap out on the most recent event, but after that they just log in to do events.

Telling those people to go farm 50 job points on every job that they intend to play and then cap out on new content seems like a stretch. It is not just 50 job points, which might take 10 hours in a party. For someone with 6 jobs it is 300 job points, or 60 hours of boring grinding in a game they hardly play anymore. I do not foresee a good outcome.

its not a good outcome, they are trying to bend gear behind grind. the cries for empy being superior will be delicious. this is dumb as fuck

[Prothescar]

On other news :

Sweeping Gouge (Lv.99 Recast time: 120 sec.)
Delivers a twofold attack. Additional Effect: Decreases defense. Additional effect duration varies with TP. (Corrected on Nov 27, 2014)

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/45216

good, I was wondering what the fuck. no version of sweeping gouge ever did anything besides def down, so the fact that they changed it just for blu annoyed me. here's to hoping it's as potent as the pet version (25%)!

also, molting plumage still doesn't say it dispels. how annoying.

[Sechs]

Telling those people to go farm 50 job points on every job that they intend to play and then cap out on new content seems like a stretch. It is not just 50 job points, which might take 10 hours in a party. For someone with 6 jobs it is 300 job points, or 60 hours of boring grinding in a game they hardly play anymore. I do not foresee a good outcome.

Tell me about it. Even if my friends do not allow me to play anything other than BRD, I have several other jobs that I care about and, surprise surprise, some of those are even nicely equipped.
But imho you're not saying a different thing than I am, you're criticizing the real situation we have to deal with atm, not the idea behind.
I completely agree with this but it has little to do with the "concept" of requiring "something" to be able to equip new, better gear.

Try to see it from another perspective. If they raised the level cap and made it go up to level 120, then rightfully release gear which require level 120 to be equipped, wouldn't you have to level up all your jobs?
What is levelling up? A more or less intense grind of experience points (in other games you get em through quests, in FFXI it's usually been a kill-stuff thing).
By levelling up you gain better stats, new abilities/spells, and access to the new, stronger gear.

To a certain extent isn't this exactely what's happening with this? Let's imagine XP doesn't exist and you get only CP from monsters. Getting 50 JPs would be like getting some levels. You do gain something new (slightly better stats, in the future we might get new spells/abilities or means to empower old ones) and you gain access to new gear.
Aside from the fact that the stuff you gain is a pretty marginal increase (for now at least), concept-wise it's the same exact thing as levelling.
So this is why I'm saying that the concept itself doesn't sound like a bad idea to me.

What makes it a problem is the current implementation, that is:
1) Effort/Ratio is completely off
2) Too many things that do not reward CP
3) No incentives for party play, absolutely nothing done for people who circumvein these things through bots or afkleeching.
4) JPs/CPs being user unfiendly, unaccessible because the requirements for it are too steep (killing stuff in DoH gates or WoH gates requires specific setups with very good gear, and it makes some jobs highly undesirable)
5) It's highly uneven. Some jobs in some specific configurations have it somewhat easy even solo, but every other job is having quite a hard time.

Now if farming CP/JPs was faster, more efficient, more accessible, possible through a wider and REALISTIC (no, RoEs and WKRs aren't realistic SE, sorry) set of means... would it be so bad? I don't think so.
That's why I'm saying the idea is cool, it's the current implementation that sucks, and brings me to the point of agreeing with you.