Dev Tracker: Discussion

[Prothescar]

The only weapons that have been associated with August are the ones we already have access to (Skirmish). Highest chance of a new set of legendary arms would be adding Ergons for the rest of the jobs, doubt we'll see an entire new line built from scratch outside of a "combine them and make a megazord" deal. Honestly feel like locking the WSs behind JPs would be a better, more thematic turn anyway. You completely master your job and gain the ability to use a special weaponskill at the end. Makes sense to me.

With luck they make these weaponskills unique, wanted additions to the jobs rather than generic higher/lower damage variants of existing ones. For example:

BLU - Notmakinganamebecauselol: Increases the target's vulnerability to blue magic and blue magic additional effects. Vulnerability reduction is enhanced by TP.

1000TP: 10% Damage and debuff bonus
2000TP: 20% Damage and debuff bonus
3000TP: 30% Damage and debuff bonus + 10% debuff duration bonus


BST: Temporarily raises pet stats. Duration and multitude of effects vary with TP.

1000TP: Attack, Accuracy, Defense, and Evasion +10% for 30 seconds.
2000TP: Attack, Accuracy, Defense, Evasion, Magic Attack, and Magic Evasion +10% for 45 seconds.
3000TP: Attack, Accuracy, Defense, Evasion, Magic Attack, Magic Evasion, Store TP, and Status Ailment Resistance +10% for 60 seconds.

Stuff like that.

[Tarage]

Not all jobs would benefit from a WS though.

[Ramzii]

as long as the WS gives some sort of meaningful buff towards the core mechanics of the job then that's not necessarily true

[Gokulo]

as long as the WS gives some sort of meaningful buff towards the core mechanics of the job then that's not necessarily true

Isn't his point that not all jobs use WSs on standard basis?

[BerenTebogo]

Occult Acumen sorta changed that for every job besides like...WHM / BRD. Can easily be solved by some occult acumen type shit for curing or whatever

[Ramzii]

Even bard can very easily build TP considering they get access to some pretty decent armor and rudra puts out decent numbers. DD BRD has been a thing for a while, so yes, really all jobs except whm (which, as mentioned could be fixed by occult acumen style tp gain via cures)

[Tarage]

How about give WSs to the jobs that would enjoy WSs, and abilities to other jobs? Why does it have to be WSs for all?

[Damane]

Occult Acumen sorta changed that for every job besides like...WHM / BRD. Can easily be solved by some occult acumen type shit for curing or whatever

and geo... geo has no natural occult acumen trait, same with RDMs that stand on the backline. and then there is SMN

[Tarage]

and then there is SMN

I was really trying to avoid opening that debate up by being ambiguous about jobs.

[dasva]

Not all jobs would benefit from a WS though.

I thought we were talking about job specific ones though. Pretty easy to make all jobs do so other than idk whm and brd I guess. Though both can melee a bit. Other mages can nuke decently /sch which has occult acumen (not to mention putting it on all your helios). Arguably whm could nuke too but not really sure what you'd give up locking a weapon for nukes.... guess not to much if you don't care about the nukes dmg. Now all the jobs that want to change weapons somewhat (basically most mages and pet jobs) will lose a lot to keep tp and it might not be worth it. Like bst literally cuts their pets dmg by almost half. But could maybe balance it making it more powerful? Or maybe something really weird and count your pets moves for pet jobs and maybe large nukes for ws for mages?

[Tarage]

Or, like I said, make it so not all jobs get a WS. Some jobs really don't need to have a WS where a JA would function better.

[arus2001]

Interestingly enough I'm seeing a backlash in a decent amount of players to even the slightest idea of long term goals. Lots of talk about how this isn't the old days and who is going to grind anything these days so why play... but they also have no answer when I ask them why play an MMO that they can basically beat and do so relatively quickly

Realistically, the point of playing (and paying) for an MMO is for it to continually evolve and add new content for the player to tackle. How fast players actually tackle said content, barring time gating, is going to vary. So, if you put in something that'd make even the hardcore take a year+, it becomes virtually impossible for anyone else to even consider. I'm the type that goes on to consider that a waste of dev resources since it means paying for content I'd never see and I'm not alone in that philosophy. In XI's case, this also extends to things that require more than 6 people without good matchmaking systems in place.

Since "The End" is on the horizon, it seems somewhat foolish to promote a significant grind point as it means any reasonable adjustment to such is unlikely to occur. Seguing back to the importance of the update cycle, however, is that even if you're the type who does "win" things on the quicker side, the new stuff should ideally be just around the corner. And to be honest, this is where I feel a lot of MMOs tend to flop a bit in adhering to 3+ month major update schedules instead of implementing things as they're ready and holding onto them to pad such updates. XI got kinda better about this with the shift to monthly updates, but it's still not quite "when it's ready" status. Not that it matters come November.

What I'd further like to add is that we, as gamers, really shouldn't be advocating one game to rule them all when it comes to our time spent. This happened more in the olden days of MMOs due to lack of competition, but now we've got a number of higher quality titles and certainly a glut of lesser quality ones to distract, but also educate us on what does and doesn't work within the medium, rooting comments like "This isn't 2005 anymore!" and the like. And that's kind of the big thing in not enforcing long commitments. The rate of evolution improves when more conditions can be factored over time. The catch, of course, is if players do take a break, is to not have them doing so on a sour note. "I can't get anything done..." isn't a positive experience. On the other side, you will have people annoyed that a good majority of players could do everything, leaving little room for the prestige element. You've been around long enough to have probably seen me assert that this latter type really shouldn't be catered to as it facilitates destroying populations just to satisfy their own greed. As more voracious players, they also swallow up more dev resources for arguably diminishing returns.

Pragmatically, I'm not against longer term goals. What they need, however, is accurate staging so even if it is going to take a long time, you feel like you're getting somewhere in each step of the process. Olden Relics failed hard here, being marginally useful when they could use their WS in Dynamis and such, but only really shined when finished. Mythics sort of have the reputation of being inaccessible by default, even if we can now run Salvage more regularly. Empyreans were good until the HMP and later stages, but yay Tanaka. So, I guess this is a roundabout way of saying Magian-esque trials are good for setting a bunch of smaller goals for the sake of the bigger picture. Certainly, they should be more engaging and fun than "Kill 500 lizards" but I think we can agree that XI's engine is too limiting at this point even if the team has managed to do some pretty good shit of late.

Wildstar bombed pretty hard with trying to pander to the olden hardcore demographic. Of course, you'll also get people who say games like Dark/Demon Souls are good because they're so brutal, but at the same time they somewhat ignore the differences between the genres. Then you'll get some who run private servers here, particularly under the pre-ToAU mindset, thinking that just because they have a couple hundred unique accounts that their way is how the majority must want it to be, ignoring the possibility of some just wanting to play/try XI for free. Yeah, it's a big world out there full of differing tastes and ambitions. And while devs may be more apt to follow the money nowadays more than yesteryear due to the aforementioned competition, it doesn't automatically mean the result is a bad game should higher accessibility be present. Instead of XI closing itself off at the end, it should really be doing the opposite. Rhapsodies KIs have been an example of this, but I think the ultimate step would be going F2P next March or so.

[Fwahm]

I thought we were talking about job specific ones though. Pretty easy to make all jobs do so other than idk whm and brd I guess. Though both can melee a bit. Other mages can nuke decently /sch which has occult acumen (not to mention putting it on all your helios). Arguably whm could nuke too but not really sure what you'd give up locking a weapon for nukes.... guess not to much if you don't care about the nukes dmg. Now all the jobs that want to change weapons somewhat (basically most mages and pet jobs) will lose a lot to keep tp and it might not be worth it. Like bst literally cuts their pets dmg by almost half. But could maybe balance it making it more powerful? Or maybe something really weird and count your pets moves for pet jobs and maybe large nukes for ws for mages?

/sch doesn't give Occult Acumen.

[BerenTebogo]

I think, and opinions gonna opinion, most of us still playing XI are doing so not only because we enjoy it, but also because we do not enjoy the alternatives. So one game to rule them all mentality still sorta works for a lot of people left in XI, in anecdotal experiences re: people I play with / talk to.

If there was a newer game that didn't make me roll my eyes so far back in my fucking head that I risk needing surgery, I'd be playing it. There isn't one.

I'd rather kill 50,000 lizards for a trial than do a single daily roulette dungeon with 3 randoms in XIV. I may be in the minority here, but as long as what they do isn't EXCLUSIVELY grindy content, I'd be fine with a long, shitty, "one last time" sorta thing that eats up all my free time.

[Tarage]

I still play because of what I have invested in my character. Because of the nostalgia, the memories, and the desire to complete what I always wanted to do. I think a lot of people are like that.

I imagine I would probably have fun with a different MMO. I had fun with GW2 until everyone I knew quit. I would probably have fun in 14. But I don't have that anchor in those games. I can't say that I spent years of my life, my childhood, in them. It's the investment.

[arus2001]

I hear ya (Sath) as someone who's not a fan of a lot of the forced grouping you get in these games, be it PUG dungeons or raid statics. Unfortunately, different paths to the same destination is something you still see people fighting pretty hard against, some using RMT potential as the scapegoat while others cling to who deserves what or doesn't regardless of what they do and how a stronger PUG community as a result can at least compensate for some derp.

The hyper-critical me feels there's no MMO worth paying for right now and that's a direct result of stagnation relative to lack of character growth options and things just being tucked away in instances. XI's a bit more flexible in the former via the SJ system, but we still tend to gravitate toward fixed builds. As for instancing, it isn't bad per se, but I'd rather the stuff be open world instanced than completely isolated dungeon spamming. Scalar content is something I don't think enough devs are taking advantage of to handle participation variation.

[Draylo]

People gravitate towards fixed builds because they are efficient, that doesn't mean you HAVE to use them (in this game at least.) I've cleared a lot of content with irregular setups in this game for a very long time. Most times they are only a couple minutes off from the optimal builds everyone uses. MMO's are cheap... 9~13 dollars a month is nothing so I think they are still worth it in my eyes.

[dasva]

/sch doesn't give Occult Acumen.

oh yeah only main... oh well there's still gear. Impact + occult/store tp gear ftw lol. God that would be hilarious

[Trumpy]

What is this Japanese Stuff

From a glance it looks like a soundtrack but it says blu ray disc.

[Spira]

Its a soundtrack alright. SE has been putting out bluray OSTs lately (see XIV, Before the Fall, etc). This one will also include nostalgia music videos. You get music as well as videos (looks like pan shots?) of the zones they play in.

they've also included just music for the Rhapsodies of Vana'diel content (the song everyone sings together) and from the tracklist, all the songs from Forever Today.