Dev Tracker: Discussion

[Sechs]

So they're raising the caps of Merits.
I assume this will be the category cap and not single entry cap.
Which means we'll be able to merit every single magic skill, every single physical skill, and every single attribute?
...or something like that.

Wonder what the "final gift" will be about.
All in all I'm pretty perplexed by how JPs turned out to be. I like the fact that it's de facto the new counterpart of what levelling was in the age of 75 cap game. Reaching JP 2100 is philosophically not that far away from what reaching level 75 was back then (with all due differences of course).
Still... it's strange that the more you have, the easier it is to get JPs. Shouldn't it be the opposite? Fast at start and slowing down the more JPs you have? It's like that in every MMO or RPG for levelling. The higher your level, the higher the XP required to reach the next one, tipically.

The thing is that they fucked up with making the CP ratio too steep at start, and instead of admitting "ok, we fucked it up sorry, we gonna change things" they pretended to ignore it, and instead gave us lots of additional boons. An annoying cape that you have to keep equipped (binding your back slot out) to receive the bonus and that has a random augment on it (I still couldn't get one better than 47%...), cheers for a small additional bonus, then permanent bonuses from RoE completition and of course what probably is the biggest source, a stacking CP bonus coming from gifts.
It's all good, the final result is that CP isn't as bad as it was at start and we can all be happy about it, but... couldn't things have been a bit more... streamlined? Seamless? Linear? Instead of this convoluted way to reach this situation?
I dunno, sometimes I feel SE really end up making things more complicated than they could be for no reason at all, or just to avoid admitting they misjudged something.

[Gokulo]

Isn't that something we all knew 10 years ago?

[DirtyWattz]

So time to go all-in on HP merits?

[Sechs]

Isn't that something we all knew 10 years ago?

What is?
The part about SE sometimes making things unnecessarily complicated for no purpose at all?
I dunno, is this the case? I was just sharing my impression but maybe I'm just looking at things from the wrong perspective, if anything I was looking for more input from different people.

[Gokulo]

The part about SE sometimes making things unnecessarily complicated for no purpose at all?
.

Yes, that's what I meant. The game was always full of things like that

[Tidis]

So time to go all-in on HP merits?

We don't really get a choice, its either put them in HP or don't, I suppose you'd have to be crazy to pass up an additional 300hp though!

[errantfish]

Looking over at the jp version of the post, the English version is worded awkwardly. They are raising the hp/mp category cap by 30 points because they are raising the max merit point increase by 30 points. There's no additional hp/mp merits.

[Suteru]

Why raise the category cap if there's no new merits? Can't you already cap everything out?

[DirtyWattz]

It's so we can spend merits to hold more merits. Can do 2-3 more BCNM fights at one go I guess...

But God damn dat English translation is incredibly misleading.

[Sechs]

@errantfish
Yeah, it's what I said. They're raising some categories caps, but not the single entries within each category.

[Tidis]

Ok so it's not HP, it's 30 more merits?

What about the other categories though, are we still going to be able to cap out combat, magic and attributes?

[Sechs]

According to the numbers they gave us, it should allow us to cap every single entry. Meaning we won't have to choose what to get merits for and what to leave out, you'll be able to cap everything, but the cap will still be the same. 8 for skills, 15 for attributes (or whatever it is) etc.

Wish they did the same for Group#1 and especially Group#2 job merits, sigh. Or weaponskills!
If it's not happening in this patch, I'm afraid it's never going to happen.

[Tidis]

According to the numbers they gave us, it should allow us to cap every single entry. Meaning we won't have to choose what to get merits for and what to leave out, you'll be able to cap everything, but the cap will still be the same. 8 for skills, 15 for attributes (or whatever it is) etc.

Wish they did the same for Group#1 and especially Group#2 job merits, sigh. Or weaponskills!
If it's not happening in this patch, I'm afraid it's never going to happen.

It could happen I think, they are still doing QoL updates, bug fixing and job balancing I believe.

[Sechs]

It could happen I think, they are still doing QoL updates, bug fixing and job balancing I believe.

We'll find out soon what that means.
I mean, I think people are reading too much into that line they dropped.
I think it was just an excuse to keep people calm and soothe their spirits "hey hey do not worry! QoL changes are still happening!!11!one!"
What if it's not happening and the only thing they'll fix is bugs and stuff like that?

Meh, hope I'm wrong. We'll find out soon anyway, no use discussing it now.

[Hirronimus]

According to the numbers they gave us, it should allow us to cap every single entry. Meaning we won't have to choose what to get merits for and what to leave out, you'll be able to cap everything, but the cap will still be the same. 8 for skills, 15 for attributes (or whatever it is) etc.

Wish they did the same for Group#1 and especially Group#2 job merits, sigh. Or weaponskills!
If it's not happening in this patch, I'm afraid it's never going to happen.

What they are doing is counter intuitive to what they've previously tried to do with merits. I distinctly remember SE saying people should specialize on specific job rather than spreading merits around.

Edit: Before people jump down my throat, I'm all for generalization at this point in game.

[Suteru]

They certainly are already skimping on translation and the main updates aren't even over yet.

[Isiolia]

Still... it's strange that the more you have, the easier it is to get JPs. Shouldn't it be the opposite? Fast at start and slowing down the more JPs you have? It's like that in every MMO or RPG for levelling. The higher your level, the higher the XP required to reach the next one, tipically.

It's not really that strange. Job Points and Gifts parallel the way XP works.

Initially, each Job Point takes more to get, sure. There's also a massive difference in the amount of XP/hr you can readily get at level 1, and at ilevel. Despite that, you still wind up making progress at a decent clip, because XP per level is also significantly lower. Same with Job Points - at the start, you only need a handful of them to upgrade categories, and Gifts are rewarded at fairly frequent intervals.

In both cases, your ability to pull in greater XP/merits or CP per hour is accompanied by a corresponding increase in the amount you need per milestone.

Either way, I think that's where the "specialization" has moved. The grind for Job Points is enough that seeing players cap out more than a few jobs will likely be pretty rare, unless they change something significantly. Feels less like XP to 75 and more like capped merits to me though.

[Kincard]

Reconfirming that yeah, the Japanese version of the news update says they're raising the Merit Point Cap Increase category by 30, which is why the HP/MP category is going from 40 to 75, which probably means no increase in HP/MP. This isn't the first time they've translated something more or less "literally". This is really only the sort of mistake you could make if you didn't play the game.

Also slightly disappointed that that's all they're showing for Job Adjustments. Kinda figured they would have more planned for their last big patch, but I guess we'll have to see what those new Gifts are.

[Sechs]

What they are doing is counter intuitive to what they've previously tried to do with merits. I distinctly remember SE saying people should specialize on specific job rather than spreading merits around.

Edit: Before people jump down my throat, I'm all for generalization at this point in game.

With the premise that a lot of time has passed since when they said that, I don't see it as a lack of coherence.
The job specific merits are still capped.
The generic ones aren't anymore, but then again you have an additional system (job points) that allows you to specialize jobs, so... it's not that different.
Players still have to specialize jobs and decide which ones they want to dedicate more time into. In a way, it sorta is the same concept, no?

@Isiolia

It's not really that strange. Job Points and Gifts parallel the way XP works.

Yes, which is exactely what I said. In a way Job Points/Gifts took the role of what was once the role of XP, or of what is the role of XP in other games.
We're not saying different things here, are we? Personally I'm happy about this.

Initially, each Job Point takes more to get, sure.

Exactely, and this is the opposite of what happens normally in MMOs.
You level fast at start, the more you go up, the more XP is required to reach the next level.
I.e. it becomes "slower" to level up.

With Job Points is the other way around. You're particularly slow at first, but over time (thanks to gifts mainly, and other boons) you become faster, to the point that the last job points are much faster than the first ones.
To compare to XP, it would be like if to get level 1>2 would take you more time than getting 74>75, and we both know this wasn't the case, right?

If their goal was "Make JP grinding less of a hassle, shortening the times it takes you to get to the final goal/cap" they still reached it, and it's fine.
I was just saying it looks like a complicated and unusual way to do it, whereas most people would rightfully expect JPs to be fast at start and slow down as you get more.

Whe strange part comes when you notice that this is exactely how they originally planned JPs.
Normally it takes you 1 JP for the first upgrade, 2 for the second, 3 for the third and so on. i.e. it scales up, the more you go further down, the more JPs are required, the more time etc. It's exactely the same as what a player would expect.
Except things change when you start adding the Gifts, which reverse things up and make so past a certain point (despite needing more JPs for additional upgrades) you still get them faster than before thanks to the incresed % bonus.
This is a bit... strange?
They could've just bumped up the basic JP/kill rate, instead of creating all these incredibly convoluted bonuses that you have to get left and right.
But doing this would've been like admitting "ok, we did a mistake, please let us fix it". They never admitted this through words (quite the other way around) but they kinda admitted it with actions.

[The Assman]

What's the point of raising the JP storage cap to 500 if there won't be any more job points added after this? Doesn't that really only benefit bots? An actual player who is getting over 350 in a single session is better off going back to their MH periodically in order to get capacity gifts (and buff their job) + get new capacity rings.