Famitsu Interview with FF developers

[Kyreth]

Bombs were such fun in FFIV. Since there was no Water, you had to cast Blizzard for the best damage. I still to this day do not understand why Bombs have a weakness to fire. They're made of it!

Bombs are actually made out of highly explosive volcanic gases and the like. To the point that bomb ash is used to clean chimneys...explosively.

[Quicklet]

The biggest thing they could do to make "balanced" PTs more popular again is to add IT mobs with shitloads of HP but give BLMs (and maybe to a lesser extent other mage jobs) some kind of ability/effect that would increase renkei damage / decrease renkei resists.

http://ffxi.somepage.com/mobdb/3815

Thing is, the mob level is the same as pretty much everything else, they just found a way to make it slightly different from all the other mobs at that level. Practically nothing besides NMs even hit 84/85, and the ones that do either have a wide level range or don't have enough mobs to xp off of. I meant having xpable mobs that would range up to the 300 xp cap for a PT of 75s, and making it so that instead of just spamming WSes and killing a mob every 30 seconds, having more interaction between melees and mages would be able to produce at least comparable xping results with fewer and longer kills.

[Septimus]

- will find ways to encourage WAR not to subjob NIN. (Sucks to be WAR with full axe merit.)

Here is what I do not understand. Let's imagine that the SAM update is actually all that and a bag of chips, what exactly would be the difference between all of the WARs subbing NIN and all of the WARs subbing SAM? It is just like the core principle of Natural Selection- "the optimal becomes the mean". People use WAR/NIN because it pumps out the most damage, if WAR/SAM pumps out even more damage people will switch to that because it is the most efficient. But even then /SAM will not be the most efficient because /NIN allows you to not get your face caved in after you do a 1000+ rampage. (And someone really must explain to me why my Rampages consistently do so much more damage than my Raging Rushes...)

[Khamsin]

- will find ways to encourage WAR not to subjob NIN. (Sucks to be WAR with full axe merit.)

Here is what I do not understand. Let's imagine that the SAM update is actually all that and a bag of chips, what exactly would be the difference between all of the WARs subbing NIN and all of the WARs subbing SAM? It is just like the core principle of Natural Selection- "the optimal becomes the mean". People use WAR/NIN because it pumps out the most damage, if WAR/SAM pumps out even more damage people will switch to that because it is the most efficient. But even then /SAM will not be the most efficient because /NIN allows you to not get your face caved in after you do a 1000+ rampage. (And someone really must explain to me why my Rampages consistently do so much more damage than my Raging Rushes...)

5 > 3

Now, if they had a 5-hit g.axe WS with TP-based crits...

[Amara]

Because raging rush suffers from the same problem as all 2handed weaponskills.. they assumed crits from 2 handed weapons would be too strong or something, and only let the single and double hit weaponskills be crit based.

Assuming rampage doesn't crit the damage is rather similiar between the two, raging rush could be alot more useful if it was changed to crit-based. (they should do this with guillotine and penta too)

[Epical]

Someone needs to quote that sig of the guy who casts Thunder IV no matter what the mob is [weak to].

[BRP]

What is the problem with just casting Thunder and Blizzard on nearly everything? How is it different than using Rampage, Slug Shot, Asuran Fists, etc, nearly exclusively?

This is a problem in my book, but not to be addressed in the same way.

[FFXIFlux]

Scale the damage? That was hard

How about we not scale the damage and instead scale the MP using the system which is in place which works perfectly fine.

Uh, are you serious? How can you get easier than "hmm I think I'll cast ThunderIV..." for every mob except thunder elementals?

You're "Scale the damage, that was hard" solution DOES NOT CHANGE THAT. All it does is make every spell Thunder IV but with a different animation.

You want to make BLM more interesting to play by giving them more spell options so your solution is making every spell identical? How much sense can that possibly make to someone?

Give mobs elemental resists, better, give them elemental based m.def like WHM bar spell merits, but leave the spells alone.

[Palin]

- will find ways to encourage WAR not to subjob NIN. (Sucks to be WAR with full axe merit.)

Here is what I do not understand. Let's imagine that the SAM update is actually all that and a bag of chips, what exactly would be the difference between all of the WARs subbing NIN and all of the WARs subbing SAM? It is just like the core principle of Natural Selection- "the optimal becomes the mean". People use WAR/NIN because it pumps out the most damage, if WAR/SAM pumps out even more damage people will switch to that because it is the most efficient. But even then /SAM will not be the most efficient because /NIN allows you to not get your face caved in after you do a 1000+ rampage. (And someone really must explain to me why my Rampages consistently do so much more damage than my Raging Rushes...)

A long time ago Nny came up with the theory that the only WSs that can crit on multiple hits are the ones with "TP affects Critical Strike" descriptions. It makes sense as to why such WSs as Guillotine, Raging Rush, Asuran Fist, are fairly consisent as opposed to Rampage, Blade: Jin, and Vorpal Blade. Not sure if its true but it does make a bit of sense.

[Amara]

They definitely can crit more than once, the reason they are consistant is just that the weapons themselves have higher base damage, or in the case of asuran, more hits.

[Lithiani]

- will find ways to encourage WAR not to subjob NIN. (Sucks to be WAR with full axe merit.)

Here is what I do not understand. Let's imagine that the SAM update is actually all that and a bag of chips, what exactly would be the difference between all of the WARs subbing NIN and all of the WARs subbing SAM? It is just like the core principle of Natural Selection- "the optimal becomes the mean". People use WAR/NIN because it pumps out the most damage, if WAR/SAM pumps out even more damage people will switch to that because it is the most efficient. But even then /SAM will not be the most efficient because /NIN allows you to not get your face caved in after you do a 1000+ rampage. (And someone really must explain to me why my Rampages consistently do so much more damage than my Raging Rushes...)

The Core driving principle behind WAR/NIN dominance isn't the (over)poweful nature of Rampage. It's the inherent brokeness of utsusemi for reducing MP costs and forming high XP chains. For XP PTs, MP conservation is king - because MP regain is the bottom line of continual combat. With the short durations of combat, it isn't possible for tanks to build unbreakable hate, so other PT members need damage mitigation - and for damage mitigation purposes, Utsusemi beats blood tanking, every time.

It honestly wouldn't change a thing if S-E knocked a flat 10% off the top of Rampage and Blade: Jin damage. People would still use NIN because of its mitigation power.

The important part of the Samurai update will be Seigan, not Hasso. Because it honestly doesn't matter how much damage any given member of a merit PT is doing, as long as the mob is gone in 60 seconds.

It's not how much damage you do that is important. It's how much damage you don't take that is.

[aurik]

Scale the damage? That was hard

How about we not scale the damage and instead scale the MP using the system which is in place which works perfectly fine.

It's not perfectly fine as is. How many black mages have seriously cast an earth-based nuke in the past week? And how many thunder/blizzard based nukes have they cast in that same period of time? If that's not indicative of some sort of flaw in the system, I don't know what is.

Uh, are you serious? How can you get easier than "hmm I think I'll cast ThunderIV..." for every mob except thunder elementals?

You're "Scale the damage, that was hard" solution DOES NOT CHANGE THAT. All it does is make every spell Thunder IV but with a different animation.

Currently every spell is ThunderIV, period. What's so bad about making WaterIV "thunderIV but water element based"?

What's wrong with that? Every spell becomes ThunderIV, monsters gain real resistance / real weaknesses to a variety of spells. All of a sudden, it's important to make a skillchain that is relevant to the monster's weakness. All of a sudden, black mages @75 are different because they have specialization merits in different spells depending on what they enjoy doing.

Now all you have to do is encourage merit parties that use SC+MB instead of manaburn. Simple: make SC damage resisted only rarely if it is of the proper element for the monster's weakness. Now make MBs have an extra party-buffing effect, as suggested by someone before.

Done.

[FFXIFlux]

It's not how much damage you do that is important. It's how much damage you don't take that is.

Only to a point. And with Carnage Elegy... you only really "need" 1 person with shadows anyway.

It's not perfectly fine as is. How many black mages have seriously cast an earth-based nuke in the past week? And how many thunder/blizzard based nukes have they cast in that same period of time? If that's not indicative of some sort of flaw in the system, I don't know what is.

And the flaw is that the spells are already too much the same because the targets are all the same. Making the spells even more identical isn't the solution.

[Talint]

Rather than nerf BLM or adding Thunder-resistant mobs...

...why don't they give BLMs more job abilities and traits? And why stop there? Why not give all jobs new traits and abilities?

I've often said that the lack of unique job abilities and traits hurts the game; and that only a third of them are ever useful. The rest are gimmicky (merited job abilities/traits, anyone?), and are only useful in very specific instances. All of which is further diluted because of the duration they last compared to their cooldown periods.

The lack of creativity from the dev team for such things is kind of surprising. Do they really think that the spell library for black mage compenstates for only having one job ability besides the two hour?

[NynJa]

The biggest thing they could do to make "balanced" PTs more popular again is to add IT mobs with shitloads of HP but give BLMs (and maybe to a lesser extent other mage jobs) some kind of ability/effect that would increase renkei damage / decrease renkei resists.

http://ffxi.somepage.com/mobdb/3815

too bad 79-81 isnt IT....

[Lithiani]

It's not how much damage you do that is important. It's how much damage you don't take that is.

Only to a point. And with Carnage Elegy... you only really "need" 1 person with shadows anyway.

Any melee DD who isn't pulling hate isn't pulling their weight either. At that point, everyone needs damage mitigation. Unless you have a non-retarded PT who have the sense to take a THF.

[aurik]

It's not how much damage you do that is important. It's how much damage you don't take that is.

Only to a point. And with Carnage Elegy... you only really "need" 1 person with shadows anyway.

It's not perfectly fine as is. How many black mages have seriously cast an earth-based nuke in the past week? And how many thunder/blizzard based nukes have they cast in that same period of time? If that's not indicative of some sort of flaw in the system, I don't know what is.

And the flaw is that the spells are already too much the same because the targets are all the same. Making the spells even more identical isn't the solution.

No, the flaw is that you get much better MP efficiency out of a fully-potent thunder than a fully-potent earth. You get even better MP efficiency out of a fully-potent thunder versus an unmeritted earth. Furthermore, very little in this game actually resists thunder, and those that do are generally suceptible to a fully-potent blizzard just fine. If the spells were all even you'd see people using the proper spells on the proper mobs, and even moreso if you got a damage bonus for doing so.

I'm still flabbergasted that you think we're going to see less variety than thunderIV, thunderIV, thunderIV. How the fuck can you get more monotonous than the same spell over and over?

[Kerberoz]

It's not how much damage you do that is important. It's how much damage you don't take that is.

Only to a point. And with Carnage Elegy... you only really "need" 1 person with shadows anyway.

It's not perfectly fine as is. How many black mages have seriously cast an earth-based nuke in the past week? And how many thunder/blizzard based nukes have they cast in that same period of time? If that's not indicative of some sort of flaw in the system, I don't know what is.

And the flaw is that the spells are already too much the same because the targets are all the same. Making the spells even more identical isn't the solution.

No, the flaw is that you get much better MP efficiency out of a fully-potent thunder than a fully-potent earth. You get even better MP efficiency out of a fully-potent thunder versus an unmeritted earth. Furthermore, very little in this game actually resists thunder, and those that do are generally suceptible to a fully-potent blizzard just fine. If the spells were all even you'd see people using the proper spells on the proper mobs, and even moreso if you got a damage bonus for doing so.

I'm still flabbergasted that you think we're going to see less variety than thunderIV, thunderIV, thunderIV. How the fuck can you get more monotonous than the same spell over and over?

But why is this bad?

If you want to force BLMs to use all their spells, force melees to use all their weapon skills. BLM is one of the few jobs that has nothing wrong with it at the moment.

[BRP]

Rather than nerf BLM or adding Thunder-resistant mobs...

...why don't they give BLMs more job abilities and traits? And why stop there? Why not give all jobs new traits and abilities?

I've often said that the lack of unique job abilities and traits hurts the game; and that only a third of them are ever useful. The rest are gimmicky (merited job abilities/traits, anyone?), and are only useful in very specific instances. All of which is further diluted because of the duration they last compared to their cooldown periods.

The lack of creativity from the dev team for such things is kind of surprising. Do they really think that the spell library for black mage compenstates for only having one job ability besides the two hour?

I mean thats nice. New traits and abilities are cool... but that solves nothing at all? At least in this case.

I like how people call nerfs "lack of creativity". Gee, it must be fun designing for a group of players that can kill anything with brute strength but get upset when they can kill anything with brute strength.

Speaking of ways of fixing BLM! Look at the wise Vyuru of FFXIonline said when I brought up an idea previous said here(I forget who thought of it first, Kuno was it?):

Now, what could help BLM and encourage them to join parties, just like SE wants? Well, simple. Give them MP so he doesn't run out of steam. Giving BLM an MP return on MBs is flawless in this nature.

A BLM MBs Burst II, the spell costs 287. Because he MBed, he will recieve 15% of it back, effected by Conserve MP, lets say .1 per 1 Conserve MP. I'm not sure how much Conserve MP BLM gets from the trait... lets say 30 on Trait I and 20 on Trait II... so a level 68+ has an additional 5% bonus on MBing, compared to a, WHM/SMN who MBs Holy.

This BLM has +10 Conserve MP(1%) worth of gear, adding this up, he will get back 21% on Burst II. That is around 60 MP. Quite a nice bonus and would help BLMs a lot. The fact Burst II also increases in damage when MB'd is enough to encourage it being used.

Erm, I dunno, an actual conserve mp bonus to magic bursts is kinda meh to me, conserve mp from what I have seen kicks off enough times already and conserves a random amount of mp. Seeing the blm in my old static cast that Ice AM for about 12mp was more than a little disgusting to not only see that once, but 3 times.

followed by...!

MP so he doesn't run out of steam.

Juices, refresh, Vermy cloak, black coat, songs, smn sub, all provide refresh effects, and since very few of the blm that I party with ever use any of their white mage spells, the sub is rather pointless then, and smn for more mp, or rdm for fast cast and dispel would probably be better.

Toss into there the fact that the blm relic basically does what you want, more MB damage, -enmity, refresh, elemental skill +, mp+, conserve mp+, and magic damage affected by day, so it's already in there, and since most dynamis shells will let in mages at level 65, and since this trend is starting in the late 60's, there is really no reason not to get the relic armor.

Ladies and gentlemen... the people SE are listening to.

[aurik]

It's not how much damage you do that is important. It's how much damage you don't take that is.

Only to a point. And with Carnage Elegy... you only really "need" 1 person with shadows anyway.

It's not perfectly fine as is. How many black mages have seriously cast an earth-based nuke in the past week? And how many thunder/blizzard based nukes have they cast in that same period of time? If that's not indicative of some sort of flaw in the system, I don't know what is.

And the flaw is that the spells are already too much the same because the targets are all the same. Making the spells even more identical isn't the solution.

No, the flaw is that you get much better MP efficiency out of a fully-potent thunder than a fully-potent earth. You get even better MP efficiency out of a fully-potent thunder versus an unmeritted earth. Furthermore, very little in this game actually resists thunder, and those that do are generally suceptible to a fully-potent blizzard just fine. If the spells were all even you'd see people using the proper spells on the proper mobs, and even moreso if you got a damage bonus for doing so.

I'm still flabbergasted that you think we're going to see less variety than thunderIV, thunderIV, thunderIV. How the fuck can you get more monotonous than the same spell over and over?

But why is this bad?

If you want to force BLMs to use all their spells, force melees to use all their weapon skills. BLM is one of the few jobs that has nothing wrong with it at the moment.

Melees would be forced to be more creative with their weaponskills if they had to make relevant skillchains. Right now, they just use their most powerful ones because SC damage is worthless and there are no black mages bursting.

Put a BLM in the party and make SC+MB worth more than dick-all, and you'll see people using non-optimal physical WS for the bonus damage it grants.