Forge Ahead in the Next Version Update! (04/18/2014)

[Kainstryder]

The reason for "stat vomit" and the hate for it is as of late is they've been mass producing waves of weapons and armor to close the gaps in ilevel gear. The problem is most of this armor is the same except for a few increases or decreases, and some gimmicky stat, such as triple attack or subtle blow. On top of reforged AF, Relic, and soon to come Empyrean, you have Delve gear, AA gear, high tier BF gear, Skirmish, WKR, and more and more each update to the point you can't keep up, or get lost looking at armor and going "oh is this immediately better than what I have?" Why? Because of the stat vomit. The days of sidegrades or aiming for some item that marginally made you better for a macro piece is gone; now you have virtually tp, ws, enfeeble, haste etc all in 1 piece. Don't get me wrong, it's nice, but when you have 3-4 pieces of armor that are all VERY good, and you go and dump airlixir or use synthesis mats on them, but the next update they're garbage now compared to some very easily obtainable BF drop, it's really hindering to you, because gear use to last you a while, not 1-2 months before it became worthless.

Not to mention the inventory woes that, they mention they're aware we have problems, but they go ahead and spam us with all of this augmentable stuff that can't be stored, and their bullshit reasoning for JSE capes unstorable... it's enough to make you just say fuck it, really. However, the Mog Wardrobe will fix all this hopefully, then we're just left with more and more gear sets to wade through. Besides this problem, they don't seem to be able to mass produce capes, belts, neck, rings etc with stat vomit or over the top stats. Recently they just released another acc/racc necklace that's only marginally better than Peacock Charm is. Fucking seriously? We can have a body armor that years ago would take all 16 slots to get the stats it has, but oh no, don't you dare make something that a lv 33 necklace could be made useless. Again I'm fine with the new gear or older gear being replaced, but have some variety or make stuff appealing. If you're going to ruin old armor, you may as ruin all of it.

Bottom line, gear isn't what it use to be and every update you have to reupdate your character, where as years ago, nearly all endgame gear was useful for something or other and it created a more skillful challenge to figure it out and use. Now, it's just equip one set and be done for the majority of players and it's creating laziness like never before.

[Ihina]

The difference between +27dex and +32dex is exactly the same as +0dex and +5dex. Your sets should still be optimized if you want to do well.

There's a bit of irony between some people who advocate 1 or 2 sets fulltime and other people who complain this game is too hard. It's quite a thinker.

[Draylo]

It's people who don't know what the hell they want. The system is hardly different than the past, it is just coming quicker because the updates are being pushed so much faster (which is never a bad thing.) I still use some delve 1.0 gear, I still use some old school gear for swap in, I still use all the new shit they added. It isn't being obsoleted as fast as people are saying. It's like they bitch just to bitch. You got more sidegrade gear now, which was initially what people on this forum were bitching about.

[Sechs]

Not to mention the inventory woes that

Please, let's mention it.
The iLevel system is also not very clear.
Sometimes the statsvomit doesn't follow the typical path (granted, it's just a couple of exceptions) and sometimes you get pieces which have a much bigger amount of additional stats, compared to other of the same ilevel that only have a couple (in addition to the statsvomit).

And also, in spite of all this gear we've seen of late, there are still some pieces we can't let go.
Think about Manibozho for instance, still one of the best (for some jobs in some slots, still the best) for accuracy, or take the legs, one of the few legs which have DEX.

Take the amount of Airlixir necessary to upgrade one of the new Delve pieces, that's over 6mils gil.
Take the cost of Reforged Relic. For 5 pieces you'd be spending what, 20mils gil?
AF is a bit cheaper, dunno how much, 7mils?
Multiply this for more than one job.


I *can see* the reasons why they went this way. They wanted to revitalize the market, the AH and everything's behind that.
People being able to buy stuff with money, people being able to make money by selling stuff.
It's all good, they succeeded in that, but this created a huge stress on players, well on some of them at least if not all.

All of this at the risk of being forced to "trash" one of those items in a few months.
For a couple of Reforged AF pieces it already happened, for instance.

However, the Mog Wardrobe will fix all this hopefully

I'm waiting for that with anticipation.
Hope we're all not expecting too much out of it and end up being sorely disappointed.

I've came to the conclusion that personally the situational issue goes beyond just inventory space.
It's not just a matter of being limited to the (current) 80 slots.
It's just something that is on a scale beyond reason, imho.
I like customizability and situational gear, it's one of the few peculiar things of FFXI making it different from anything else on the market and I *love it*.
But there has to be a limit, a boundary somewhere.
If you're a "pro" player, the situation is ALREADY out of control.
Giving us Wardrobe as an excuse to release EVEN MORE situational stuff with minimal differences and making so my <job name> uses over 170 different items and swaps 48 slots on every action I perform is... annoying, and seriously beyond reason imho.

Situational gear is fantastic but this is going way too far. I really wish for them to plan things better and make SERIOUS changes from now on.
I don't want Wardrobe to become an excuse to ignore this issue...

they don't seem to be able to mass produce capes, belts, neck, rings etc with stat vomit or over the top stats

They explained that.
Like it or not, the "stats vomit" (ilevel) is only on the gear which is viewable.
The other slots, in theory, should remain within the same "power level" more or less of what we've seen at level 99.
Like it or not, but at least there is an explanation for that, it's not completely random.

[dasva]

The difference between +27dex and +32dex is exactly the same as +0dex and +5dex. Your sets should still be optimized if you want to do well.

Not necessarily. Sure it will have the same effect on hit rate and crit rate but not necessarily percent increase dmg the same amount on things that use dex as a mod. Str on the other hand sure it will add about the same fstr but percentage change in dmg same with it for ws mods and the effects of att from it. etc

[Toth]

I like the 'stat vomit' term alot because that's what I see when I check the items. Sometimes it is hard to see important aspects of gear (accuracy, attack, ability enhancements) because it is too cluttered.

[Fwahm]

How is it cluttered? The attribute increases are always above the stat bonuses and enhancements and such.

I don't see how "stat vomit" is such a big problem. It takes a couple seconds to scan over a piece of equipment and look at the attribute that is relevant for your needs (STR/DEX for meleeing, STR/AGI for ranged attacking, INT/MND for casting, STR/DEX/stat mod for weaponskilling). Everything else is exactly the same.

It's not hard.

[Ihina]

Not necessarily. Sure it will have the same effect on hit rate and crit rate but not necessarily percent increase dmg the same amount on things that use dex as a mod. Str on the other hand sure it will add about the same fstr but percentage change in dmg same with it for ws mods and the effects of att from it. etc

Yeah, try not to disagree with someone for the sake of disagreeing. You know what I mean, I don't want to put out a disclaimer every time I make a post.

[dasva]

Yeah, try not to disagree with someone for the sake of disagreeing. You know what I mean, I don't want to put out a disclaimer every time I make a post.

Well then don't make encompassing statements like exactly the same as. Especially when the argument against the whole it makes it harder to evaluate argument kinda hinges on that

My chief complaint in that regard isn't ao much as how big the stats are as how many relevant stats there are to compare. Comparing an extra whatever str to acc is somewhat easy. But when you compare 6 relevant stats it's a little tougher. Also easier/faster to see where something goes when the base assumed values for things are 0. But when you habe stats on everything gotta remember what is good now more. This is further compounded by the speed of the updates

[Karbuncle]

How is it cluttered? The attribute increases are always above the stat bonuses and enhancements and such.

I don't see how "stat vomit" is such a big problem. It takes a couple seconds to scan over a piece of equipment and look at the attribute that is relevant for your needs (STR/DEX for meleeing, STR/AGI for ranged attacking, INT/MND for casting, STR/DEX/stat mod for weaponskilling). Everything else is exactly the same.

It's not hard.

Its harder, maybe not hard though. Looking at a piece of armor and seeing "STR+5 DEX+5 Accuracy+3 Attack+3" and comparing it to a piece of armor with "STR+7 DEX+7 Acc+5 Atk+5" is far simpler than looking at a piece of armor with "STR+13 DEX+18 VIT+4 INT+8 MND+13 CHR+28 Accuracy +3 Attack+3 Evasion +54 Magic Evasion+35 "Magic Defense Bonus"+3 Haste+3" and .. well... you get my point.

Stat vomit, cause its a funny term to me, makes comparing gear more difficult, compounded by the fact some gear has multiple end points (Airilixir). Its not hard, but it is harder. I'm not saying thats a justifiable means to hate it, simply that it could be a possible rational.

But to that end, if every DD is still looking for the basic STR/DEX, or mages for that INT/MND/CHR, then what purpose does STR/DEX serve on mage gear? and what purpose does INT/MND/CHR serve on melee gear? The only thing I've gained from the STR/DEX on my mage gear is for a melee SMN build... so i mean, if half the stats are mostly useless, why bother cluttering the item with them?

Regardless, I get some DD jobs use INT mods or so forth, but its never been a problem in the past to have STR/INT gear, without DEXVITCHRMND being thrown on top. So its cluttered, just not unreadably cluttered.

[Fwahm]

The point of having those offstats is to give the player attributes close to what a player at the level that their item level gear is. There might not be too much actual effect on things like DEX on mage gear, but you still need it to thematically act like a higher level character, like SE is aiming for. You can use mage pieces when meleeing, which then you'd ignore the casting stats instead.

[dasva]

int/mnd/chr can help the melees macc/meva when pertinent as well as lower some magic dmg. But yeah other than fringe melee mages they wont get much if anything out of str/dex.

I still maintain that it probably would've been easier to just raise the cap than try to fit as much of the things that are effected by level into gear... and then constantly forgetting some and having to go back and fix that

[Foldypaws]

int/mnd/chr can help the melees macc/meva when pertinent as well as lower some magic dmg. But yeah other than fringe melee mages they wont get much if anything out of str/dex.

I still maintain that it probably would've been easier to just raise the cap than try to fit as much of the things that are effected by level into gear... and then constantly forgetting some and having to go back and fix that

That would have involved coming up with more JAs/spells. Because people would sure as hell have bitched about 20 levels with nothing new.

[Fwahm]

I believe that Matsui said that raising the cap is literally impossible without restructuring how FFXI is programmed from the bottom up. The item level thing is the alternative he could come up with to simulate it.

[NynJa]

There are a lot of things that were "impossible" and yet adjusted.

[Byrthnoth]

I believe that Matsui said that raising the cap is literally impossible without restructuring how FFXI is programmed from the bottom up. The item level thing is the alternative he could come up with to simulate it.

He gave a grand total of zero logical reasons for this, though.

[Karbuncle]

int/mnd/chr can help the melees macc/meva when pertinent as well as lower some magic dmg. But yeah other than fringe melee mages they wont get much if anything out of str/dex.

INT/MND/CHR effect M.eva and Mdef I thought i covered in my post but I guess i edited it out. Regardless, they have glorious amounts of Magic Evasion and good amounts of Magic DEF bonus on pieces already which is what i assumed made up for it, It could be a bit of both (like how STR/Attack work together, DEX/Acc, that having higher MND or INT could mean a higher cap on your potential m.eva*)... Still seems rather fluff, and the (not to you) argument that it makes us have the same stats we would at that level, I see that logic but at the same time, every job has stat climbs differently, these stats are blanket, meaning its more of a blanket statsplosion than a "what if..." scenario of us being 119. (Plus I'd like to think with how slow our stats climbed from 75-99, we wouldn't have like 150 STR on SMN at level 117.

I mean, each piece has reason to it though, Bodies/heads give bonuses to all 7, Hands i think is DEX heavy, Legs are STR, feet are AGI (for melee anyway), so I'm not going to completely discount that some thought went into it, but in the end it is mostly fluff... its nice fluff for us Melee Mages and the DRKs of the world cursed with INT/MND modifier weaponskills... but mostly clutterfluff.

Regarding the STR/attack stuff:

Spoiler: show

The way I remember it being explained, the easiest I've heard it was, STR is like a Potato sack, and Attack is like potatoes, Without the higher STR (Bigger sack), having more Potatoes becomes less useful/null, where as without the Attack, a big STR (bigger sack) Is equally useless... so in that thought, having a high Magic evasion with low MND could be less effect than high of both, which could explain the MND/INT on Melee gear.

Which is actually a rational I'm willing to accept.

I still maintain that it probably would've been easier to just raise the cap than try to fit as much of the things that are effected by level into gear... and then constantly forgetting some and having to go back and fix that

That'd been nice... but that would probably mean new JA, new Spells and so forth as others have pointed out... and I think they exhausted that supply.

[Ophannus]

No it's not because Tanaka made us all vote whether we'd like to have a 99 level cap or 100 level cap and everyone chose 99 apparently.

[Karbuncle]

Yah that was annoying. I still hate to this day apparently NO ONE WANTED COMPOSURE or shit. mfeirjorei

[Tarage]

He gave a grand total of zero logical reasons for this, though.

Incorrect. He said anything beyond level 99 would require three digits to display, and many of the slots that display level are so jammed in there that adjusting them would be more than they could hope to handle with their lowered staffing.