Escha - Ru'Aun thread

[EjinCaitsith]

Amalric nails +1, Type D

http://cdn.guildwork.net/albums/imag...1e652c226b.jpg

[Sechs]

So we found out, without too much surprise, that if a T3 NM dies when everybody in the alliance is on the ground (someone was midway through the raise animation) then you don't get treasure pool nor kill credit nor chat message or anything.
Happened to us yesterday on our very first Morta T3 attempt lol

It's no surprise at all about the title/clear thing, but I gotta say I'm a bit surprised about the lack of chat message/treasure pool.

[GilgameshBoshi]

Carmine greaves +1
path D
hp80 mp80 pdt-4

[BerenTebogo]

So we found out, without too much surprise, that if a T3 NM dies when everybody in the alliance is on the ground (someone was midway through the raise animation) then you don't get treasure pool nor kill credit nor chat message or anything.
Happened to us yesterday on our very first Morta T3 attempt lol

It's no surprise at all about the title/clear thing, but I gotta say I'm a bit surprised about the lack of chat message/treasure pool.

This is how the game has always worked. One universal tick after the last person died the mob went white. Mob dies white = get fucked.

[Sechs]

No chat message on death either? I don't recall this, nobody did, we were all pretty surprised.
There was one alive, but not in the enmity list so I guess it's the same.

[Lyramion]

20 extra Naga Raga kills for refresh 4 seems to be the number. Looks like Spoils, Regen and Refresh have exponential requirments to fit SEs endless grind vision for hardcore players past November?

Refresh Upgrade Kills: 1 > 5 > 10 > 20 > (40?) > etc

[Hyriu]

Any trick/gimmick found for Naphula or does it just always suck, I'm thinking the latter but no harm asking I guess.

[BerenTebogo]

Any trick/gimmick found for Naphula or does it just always suck, I'm thinking the latter but no harm asking I guess.

Blahblah BST.

But really geovex + indifend makes him pretty easy, whatever method you choose to use. Physical readies tear him up, I'd assume you could SC MB him or just ride some physical DD with vex/attune + frail.

Basically I'm saying bring 2 GEO and ignore all mechanics, like every other fight.

[Sechs]

Basically I'm saying bring 2 GEO and ignore all mechanics, like every other fight.

This makes me so sad.
I mean, it's nothing new. As far as I can remember FFXI has always been like this, more or less.
There's always been a certain degree of "bring X combination of jobs and ignore the standard mechanics of that mob/event".
In other games when things like these happen, they get usually patched promptly so that people stop ignoring mechanics.

Granted that in FFXI mechanics have never been particularly complex and that it would be harder than in other games to do that (given how the game is very de-structured and not homogeneized with roles etc).
But still, thinking about this in hindsight, I wonder if the game would've been healtier if they used a stricter approach when trying to deal with such players' behaviour, instead of basically ignoring them like they've (almost) always done.
I'm as guilty as anybody else to deploy such tactics don't get me wrong, I'm just wondering if in the end if would've been better for the game if the devs worked hard to make so us (the players) were stopped from doing it.

[BerenTebogo]

GEO is hands down the most broken job in the game and one Idris is worth at least 5 actual people playing this game. Many groups have 2, 3, or more.

Like...the entire concept of the GEO job as a whole could never have been balanced against any other support class. The last time they tried to balance an "overpowered" support class they permanently ruined RDM and got tremendous backlash from it. They weren't about to do that again once they saw GEO in action, so they leaned into it.

Balance has never existed in FFXI, not for even the blink of an eye. Anyone who tries to say otherwise is fucktarded. It's just not in the design of the game. But a lack of balance means that you don't have to roll with the same trinity structure you see in WoW and XIV and other games. The amount of freedom we have is incredible. If you want to forgo the GEO faceroll you absolutely can, and win, just will be more difficult. Other games don't even give you that option.

The longevity XI experienced is probably due to how much freedom we had. Unbalanced jobs and all. Take that away and you end up with every other MMORPG.

[Sechs]

That's a very fair point of view.
The balance brought in by WoW with their post 3.0 stricter implementation of the trinity system (and all the games who copied that approach afterwards, like FFXIV) gained a lot in term of competitivity, "fairness", e-sportsness and whatever else you may put in this category. Not denying that, it's a good thing.
At the same time this homogeneization took away a lot. It's no surprise that despite me playing some of these games even at very competitive levels (WoW) in my heart I still like more the unbalanced, unpolished WoW of Vanilla and TBC, where there was a huge difference in the level of class balancing (not as big as FFXI maybe), but the game was also more a "shades of gray" type of thing, less obvious, more interesting and ultimately way more "fun", at least for me.

So yeah, without that probably FFXI wouldn't have survived this long, maybe.

[urat]

What is this "trinity" system you are all talking about by the way? Support/tank/Dps?

[Sechs]

It's the origin of MMO gameplay.
Three roles that constitute the trinity. The Tank, The Damage Dealer, The Healer.
It got more complex with more shades when you think about "offtanks", "supporter", "subhealer", "ranged dd", "magic DD", "support-DD" and blahblah.

In such a scenario developers had little control on raid setups. Some classes were unwanted, some were too sought after, some setups were too "cheap", others made things too hard (in WoW you don't even have the excuse of levelling up a new class, you can't swap classes).
So Blizzard started a "homogeneization" process, by implementing a stricter view of the trinity system. No more shades of gray, no more hybrid things, just one of those 3 roles (I can go in detail if you want, but I think most might not be interested in me writing an essay about it).

Basically they made the players environment more predictable. They shortened the gap, the possibilities, and by achieving that they regained control of Raid fights, allowing them to make them more balanced and fair for everybody. This fueled the world competition, the sense of e-sports, the reproducibility of fights etc.

In old wow and especially FFXI this is impossible. The range of possibilities is way too large. As a dev you cannot possibly create something that doesn't end up being too hard for some players and too easy for others and, most of all, fair for everybody. There's too many variables at play. How can you make it fair when some people deploy multiple Idris GEOs and 4song BRDs stacking the best DDs and avoiding tanks, when another group has worse DDs who take a lot of AoE damage, no GEOs, a 2 song bard etc?
Just a silly example but it should give you an idea of the new "model" of MMO that Blizzard slowly implemented and that basically every following MMO tried to follow. FFXIV follows that model as well.

[KetSC]

This makes me so sad.
I mean, it's nothing new. As far as I can remember FFXI has always been like this, more or less.
There's always been a certain degree of "bring X combination of jobs and ignore the standard mechanics of that mob/event".
In other games when things like these happen, they get usually patched promptly so that people stop ignoring mechanics.

Granted that in FFXI mechanics have never been particularly complex and that it would be harder than in other games to do that (given how the game is very de-structured and not homogeneized with roles etc).
But still, thinking about this in hindsight, I wonder if the game would've been healtier if they used a stricter approach when trying to deal with such players' behaviour, instead of basically ignoring them like they've (almost) always done.
I'm as guilty as anybody else to deploy such tactics don't get me wrong, I'm just wondering if in the end if would've been better for the game if the devs worked hard to make so us (the players) were stopped from doing it.

I think the bigger problem with the the game is that it is really clunky (being stuck in text boxes isn't good for modern gameplay (see the WKR KI NPC making you wait 10 seconds per KI)). Even FFXI doing the mechanics properly (Delve), all got down to just using a specific debuff or some gimmick. If the game had movement and abililty response like in WoW or FFXIV, then it would allow the devs more to work with in trying to create interesting battles. Currently though, FFXI never really had any interesting battles (all battles are more or less the same).

So Blizzard started a "homogeneization" process, by implementing a stricter view of the trinity system. No more shades of gray, no more hybrid things, just one of those 3 roles (I can go in detail if you want, but I think most might not be interested in me writing an essay about it).

While it's true you can't (in WoW) pick abiltiies from all talent trees and try to make a class out of it anymore, I say there's more variety in WoW than before.

There's still a lot of variety between the tanks, healers, DPS, etc. Old Talent Trees (for example), a PLD was only a healer (trying to build a hybrid PLD or a PLD tank, or DPS, wasn't too great). New talent trees (specializations), now give you PLDs who can heal decently and also deal decent DPS (more so than most healers).

WoW still has essential utilities for classes that make them distinct enough (Rogue for example able to tank AoE type attacks as well as regular tanks, or make most AoEs useless; Monk healer being the only healer that is counted as a melee but not as a DPS (most mechanics in WoW target either ranged, or melee DPS; a Monk healer is technically neither which mean it gets away with not being targeted for a ton of stuff) that means most mechanics actually ignore or don't target Monk and Blizz says it's fine).

Plus, even in WoD, there's still class stacking (on specific bosses) going on (not the "this class deals most damage type of stacking", rather bring as many Rogues as possible to trivialize this mechanic or use monk only healers, or bring 3 hunters so they can rotate "you can cast while moving" buff for this fight, or etc) so that is also an example to show that the classes aren't all that the same in WoW.

Spoiler: show

Finally, in both FFXIV and WoW, there are healer classes that can do almost as much DPS as pure DPS classes. In FFXIV, a SCH can basically do 80% of the DPS of a SMN and 50% of the heals (from the fairy and lustrates) at the same time.
In WoW, a Holy Paladin can do about 70% of the DPS of a pure DPS while still keeping everyone healed.

In WoW, the classes all have decent enough variety.

As for roles, I think DPS/Healer/Tank is fine.

FFXI kind of devolved into three roles most of its period too DPS/Buffer/Healer (ToAU era and beyond was when people mostly stopped using tanks and just had DDs tank).

Spoiler: show

WoW still has essential utilities for classes that make them distinct enough (Rogue can tank AoE type attacks as well as regular tanks, or make most AoEs useless; Monk healer being the only healer that is counted as a melee but not as a DPS (most mechanics in WoW target either ranged, or melee DPS; a Monk healer is technically neither which mean it gets away with not being targeted for a ton of stuff) that means most mechanics actually ignore or don't target Monk and Blizz says it's fine).

Despite the fact that WoW is locked into "three roles", WoW has more difference between all its classes than in FFXI IMO. In FFXI, all the damage dealing classes has been more or less the same (was there really any difference between WAR, DRK, DRG, SAM, MNK, besides who did more damage? Sometimes DRK stun and DRG heal but there was barely any differences between those classes).

While in WoW, there's enough differences between all of the DPS classes that it can make or break a setup or strategy you want to do.

Though, I think the reality is that FFXI was never varied but just that the content was never tuned for min-maxing. It's kind like the older FF games. There was variety but it wasn't really meaningful variety (you can beat FF7 just spamming ice and healing with only potions at level 1; you had a lot of choices but it's not like it mattered that much).

Spoiler: show

Pre SoA FFXI, FFXI wasn't that much special except for the FF theme. If FFXI was just another MMO (didn't use FF related theme), then it probably would have never lasted this long.

The illusion of variety is because FFXI was never tuned well (either it had unbeatable bosses like AV (except through "exploits" which SE patched out) or it had bosses which could be beat by 18 "mostly AFK" SMNs spamming nether blast and every single NM can be beat with 18 SMNs spamming nether blast, while going AFK in between BP cooldowns; before Nether Blast, use Spinning Dive).

In fight, the majority of content in FFXI that was designed for 18 players could be beaten by 6 players (most of sky, sea, etc). Even in Dynamis (which could have 64 players max), an alliance can clear it easily if they know what they are doing.

It's also important that most content did not have much of a time limit at all (in WoW, bosses have 10-15 mins time limits, in pre SoA FFXI it's 2 hours; and in FFXI, you can defeat most bosses by zerging it down in 30 seconds (like Kirin); so 2 hours is enough to trivialize any content), there was never any strict time limits for anything (except for Nyzul and a few Assaults I suppose). As long as you could survive indefinitely, you could defeat most bosses or content.

But even if it was tuned well, FFXI is really clunky. There isn't any "meaningful button presses". In WoW (Cata especially) you had 5 different healing spells and you had to take note of the situation right away to use the right healing spell (or else you run out of mana, and there's no refresh to keep your MP up indefinitely for healing). Cooldowns in WoW require more thought too (while in FFXI, use all cooldowns whenever).

FFXI is a really linear game in terms of the battle system (I say only SCH with the varied strategems is the only class with much meaningful choices, but in most cases, you don't need to min/max at all and just use whatever). Like if you had a finite (or just enough, if you min/max at least to 95% of potential) amount of MP without any MP recovery, and you had to min/max the combination of strategems to keep a party healed for 10 mins before you run out of MP, then that would be an example of meaningful choice in FFXI (but there isn't really much of that in FFXI).

I say only Delve was tuned well (it had a time limit, bosses with gimmicks, and even if you min/max, there was a variety of viable setups you can try to bring).

Overall though, there's more classes in WoW that can do multiple things at once than in FFXI. The difference though is that in WoW, you can't do multiple roles at the same time as well.

There's a lot more content where you have to play a certain play style (or min/max) to win. In FFXI, you can get away with a lot more stuff since a lot of the content is designed so that any combination of jobs can win.

Though more importantly, is that none of those classes do multiple things so well that they make the jobs that focus only on one thing obsolete.

Spoiler: show

In old FFXI, a RDM can actually be better than BLM at single target nukes (fast cast, convert, etc), and definitely better than WHM at at least single target cures (WHM had slower cast time cures than RDM back then and WHM has no other thing except Raise II+ and Cure V over RDM really). So what you had was a job that could do two things at once, except it did it better than the jobs that only focused on one thing.

That wasn't variety but SE screwing up the balance.

A GEO nowadays is similar (though a bit more balanced as a GEO is definitely not better than a BLM or WHM at nuking or healing, but GEO does enough for you to not even need a healer or a dedicated single target nuker in most cases).

Another thing is FFXI's difficulty is tuned so low (Pre SoA especially) that alliance content can be beaten by six players or even solo.

In those cases, you can pick any variety of setups and still win.

In WoW, if you go to LFR (the lowest difficulty of raids), a Monk can just as easily be a healer, damage dealer, tank (all at the same time), as in FFXI. That's because LFR is tuned low (you don't have to play a Monk's specialty to the max, you can focus on all three strengths of a monk and still win).

In FFXI, they made it so most content can be completed with as many different jobs as possible.

The reason is, there's no distinction between which class is supposed to be a full time damage dealer, which one is full time healer, etc. Instead, they let many classes do multiple things at once, and they never really figured out the numbers behind it (to figure out which is balanced). That's why for the longest time, RDM, a supposed hybrid job that shouldn't have excel at two+ things at once, did (hybrid jobs normally should not be as good as pure jobs).

So because of that, FFXI has always been kind of tuned low.

In WoW, it's more organized (they actually bother try to calculate how much a class can deal in damage, or heal, or provide with utilities; in FFXI, I doubt they ever figured out who was supposed to deal what amount of damage when balancing them; they only check it after the fact while WoW tries to make sure all the numbers on all the abilities are balanced before it gets released).

I think WoW/FFXIV's putting all classes into one of three roles (DPS, tank, or healer) is more of a guideline than an actual restriction. I mean, it's no different than FFXI in the sense you want a certain number of this class or that one. And again, WoW has enough variety that you do stack specific classes of a certain type for specific strategies.

A SMN that damage deals and provides decent buffs is no different than a Rogue in WoW that can mitigate AoE damage (fights where you stack Rogues), or a Shaman that can provide Bloodlust and heal and damage deal.

The reason why WoW (and FFXIV) puts classes into three distinct roles is because they tuned the battles for you to min/max.

Again, a SCH in FFXIV is as much as a hybrid job as any job in FFXI. Though in most cases, they want you to go with 2 full time healers, 4-5 DPS, 1-2 tank. You can get away with changing it a little (but those numbers are simply a guideline).

In FFXI, it's the same too. You want certain number damage dealers, tanks, buffer, and healer. However, with FFXI, if you can win (especially pre-SoA) alliance content with 1 player, then you can just use any combination and not care about the setup.

So that's the illusion of variety.

In FFXI, most content only takes 3-5 tries at most before someone gets it, reveals it to everyone, then everyon gets it (exception is probably Delve which did take a while before people managed to figure out the right setup). In WoW, most bosses literally take 400-500 attempts (and potential various change of setups and strategies) before it goes down. And even when people figure out one setup to do it in, sometimes someone eventually figures out a better setup to do it with (or an alternatively one if you don't have these specific classes).

In FFXI, there are cases where you can have a DRG heal (or damage dealer), same with PUP (in fact, I had a party at the level 60 range with only DRG and PUP healers and against Colibris, we made 10k exp exp hour). Though, that's no different than in WoW considering the majority of classes in WoW can switch between two or more roles. The difference is that DRG and PUP healers are only partially supported (they can work in some situations but not all), while in WoW, any class that has some healing capabilities have an official "full time healing" spec which lets them heal as good as any other healers.

Overall though, I say WoW is an upgraded FFXI IMO. Though FFXI has superior content (In terms of MMOs, I think FFXI beats every other MMO in terms of content). In FFXIV, it's 3 generic dungeons, 1 primal, 4 raid bosses, rinse and repeat.

In FFXI, the difference between regular Skirmish and Alluvion Skirmish is different enough that even if you did Skirmish a ton, doing the Alluvion version is different enough to keep it fresh (compared to FFXIV where all the dungeons are mostly the same). That and in FFXI, almost all old items from older content are still relevant.
Even just looking at only the content released this year, there's more stuff to do and more stuff to try to obtain than most MMOs.

In terms of actual gameplay though, WoW is far superior. I wanted FFXIV to be FFXI's content with WoW's gameplay (and customization) but FFXIV is just WoW-lite currently.

[geno3302]

Lol. I'm not sure I've ever seen a longer post. Congrats

[Sechs]

I say there's more variety in WoW than before.

I agree but I think you're unawaringly thinking about a different thing.
Yes, there probably is more "variety" in WoW.
But I wasn't talking about "gameplay variety".
I was talking about "role variety".
There is no role variety at all in WoW, not anymore. You only have 3 roles.
You'll never see an Enhancement Shaman or an Arms Warrior tank something.
Those were possible in the past (and they were actually very used strategies in Molten Core) when roles were more blurred.
These days only a tank can be a tank, period.

In FFXI roles are still a bit more blurred, to a certain degree of course.
But we all remembered how we used DDs in PDT sets to tank in place of real tanks, or RDMs and SCHs to heal in place of WHMs before they received Afflatus Solace and plenty other things, and so on and so on and so on.


Aside from this, Blizzard did an unbelievably good work at making classes logically equivalent, but at the same time making them feel "different" when you play them, or when you group with them.
Kudos to Blizzard for achieving that.

[Lyramion]

The longevity XI experienced is probably due to how much freedom we had. Unbalanced jobs and all. Take that away and you end up with every other MMORPG.

Like I said before, 11 basically is a sandbox MMO. It's fun - for me at least. Don't think I can start another MMO after. I played some EVE which was nice but most people just didn't like to have the fun type PvP just gay PvP so I quit.

[dasva]

Lol. I'm not sure I've ever seen a longer post. Congrats

Heck I think it's one of the longest I've seen even without the spoilers

[Hyriu]

Hammerfists dropped from Palila, don't think this was listed on bgwiki

Also, vijaya paths

A: DMG+15 AGI+15, R.atk+15
B: DMG+15, AGI+15, R.acc+15
C: DMG+15, R.ACC/ATK+15
D: DMG+15, R.atk+15, Crit rate 3%

[Draylo]

Heck I think it's one of the longest I've seen even without the spoilers

He always makes those huge posts about XI lol, I generally agree with most of it except the WoW being better part. That game just isn't for me.