Famitsu Interview with FF developers

[Hyjynx]

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.

No on is saying it's inherently bad but you cant deny that it renders the whole elemental system useless because players can act as if it doesnt even exist in the game except in very specific situations. This is the point people are making.

Futhermore how could it not be obvious to you that: requiring players to do element specific damage to mobs would not only force blms to use different spells but also force melee to use different weaponskills to create different skilll chain effects?

Arguing without thinking about what was said ftl

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.

qft

[shotgn]

it renders the whole elemental system useless

There are 10 billion things in this game that are useless. Items, job abilities, certain types of weapons... if SE went around and tried to "rebalance" and "fix" everything so that every single part of the game became relevant and equally used, they wouldn't have time to do anything else. And they wouldn't succeed anyway.

[Septimus]

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.

Maybe Square's master plan to get WARs to not sub NIN is to make them use the sucky non-Rampage weapon skills (I had to check to see if they really existed) to make skill chains so that they won't take hate and get their faces caved in. Then the BLMs will magic burst Earth and Water and they won't do very much damage so they won't take hate either. They can even rest after chain 4 or 5!

Hmmm... 3k an hour parties so that WARs won't sub NIN. Sounds like a fair trade-off.

So anyway, who wants to do a 10k an hour spampage party sometime this week?

P.S. My Raging Rush question earlier was completely rhetorical in case no one figured that out.

[LD]

hm..

[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...)

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.

So that's why people invite PUP/NINs to merit PTs. Oh wai--

[Kyreth]

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.

If you want to force melees to use all their weapon skills, you need to give them a reason to create skillchains that a BLM will burst those other spells with and benefit a PT. As to why Thunder/Blizzard are worth the MP even if they cost more MP for damage...

Aurik, the elemental weakness chart does show that non-typical xp mobs have other weaknesses, however overall statistical facts which I prepared using the chart... are not suprising.

This is all mob types on the chart, not just xp or non-xp mobs

28% weak to Lightning
26.3% weak to Ice
26.3% weak to Light (Banish FTW)
24.5% weak to Fire
14% weak to Wind
14% weak to Dark
12.3% weak to Water
5.2% weak to Earth

and, uh 14% of mob types are weak to both Ice and Lightning...

What was SE thinking? This isnt balanced at all >.>

Note the % of mobs weak and the order it goes in. Thunder, Ice, Fire, Wind, Water, Earth....look familiar? Oh yeah, it's the same order we learn spells in! (Forget Light and Dark, although Drain actually fits in about right too)

There's a reason for them to be higher level + more MP, even if they end up dealing the same damage. Greater utility. I wonder if the reverse also applies (mob resist/absorb %'s). Thunder is better because it can exploit the weakness of more mobs in the game. Greater damage than the other spells in the same tier is not required for it to be better- and improving the other spells in the tier isn't nerfing Thunder (or Blizzard) at the same tier level. Heck, do we even have a "resistance" chart for monsters by type somewhere? It'd be useful here.

Giving BLM's a damage boost to equalize Stone -> -> Thunder damage as their Elemental skill rises is a buff to the job. Putting in improved resist/absorb stats for monsters makes BLM's think more about spells than lolThunderthat.

[Hyjynx]

it renders the whole elemental system useless

There are 10 billion things in this game that are useless. Items, job abilities, certain types of weapons... if SE went around and tried to "rebalance" and "fix" everything so that every single part of the game became relevant and equally used, they wouldn't have time to do anything else. And they wouldn't succeed anyway.

Yea because we're talking about everything in the game right?

One of THE biggest problems in FFXI is the fact that S-E keeps adding more and more shit and never looking back at what they added previously and applying what they learned to it...

[Isiolia]

They couldn't balance *everything*, but they could make things more appealing to diversify with.

Like, give BLM elemental enfeebs II. Make them increase WS damage for things in certain SC blocks. Make melee damage lower Magic Defense Bonus on the mob.

So without a BLM debuffing for your WS, it's weak, without melee lowering MDB, nukes are weak.

Damage taken needs additional properties really. Like, what if instead of a flat 25% bonus, Berserk gave more ATT according to damage taken? So it would be to your benefit to take few hits. Likewise for Defender.
Or maybe make DRK JSE have more of a use by giving them a reflect damage type JA. Like, mob hits DRK for 200DMG, mob takes 200DMG.
Or just give PCs the same TP gain as mobs.

Give people a reason to take damage and they will.

Downtime could be handled differently as well. XP chains could restore HP/MP/TP/etc, or grant progressive bonuses based on who is in the party similar to a Corsair. Or SCs could grant the party a buff like the Relic weapons do from their WSes.

Lotta possibilities really.

Or they could just say, nerf Utsu by making it 25% TP loss when shadows get taken >_> Wouldn't kill it for tanking, but it'd make it a lot less attractive fo sho.

[Septimus]

Or they could just say, nerf Utsu by making it 25% TP loss when shadows get taken >_> Wouldn't kill it for tanking, but it'd make it a lot less attractive fo sho.

Actually it would since Ninjas main hate tool is damage. Less weaponskills would cripple the job.

[Isiolia]

It'd hit NIN hard in some tanking, sure. But it'd allow for a tradeoff of taking no damage or doing damage. Could still have the guaranteed 0 damage hits for HNMs or whatever, but give blood tanks more of a place in XP.

Not like NINs can't gear for enmity or get SATA or whatever, I see it a lot more preventing the notion of no main tank. Just a random idea anyway, but one I do think would make for a viable Utsu nerf.

[LD]

Aurik basically hit the mark as far as my opinion goes, so there's not much for me to add other than enhancing the crappier WSs would also nice to go along with spell tier and resist adjustments, as it's all for the sake of making use of every element.


P.S. Be explicit, you tend to speak in hypotheticals more often than you should...or continue dodging, I don't mind.

[Amara]

A nerf that drastic would badly mess up nins in exp, and make dd tanking hnms impossible for nin and war(who'd suffer much worse, since tanking with /whm is the only other option).

We don't need to return to the days of paladin being the only viable tank, really.

[Matricide]

detonator and empyrial arrow rock, i dunno what you guys are talking about.

[Sho]

it renders the whole elemental system useless

There are 10 billion things in this game that are useless. Items, job abilities, certain types of weapons... if SE went around and tried to "rebalance" and "fix" everything so that every single part of the game became relevant and equally used, they wouldn't have time to do anything else. And they wouldn't succeed anyway.

Yea because we're talking about everything in the game right?

One of THE biggest problems in FFXI is the fact that S-E keeps adding more and more shit and never looking back at what they added previously and applying what they learned to it...

Hence why the Three King's Camps still suck ass since day one, lol.

[Kazen]

So anyway, who wants to do a 10k an hour spampage party sometime this week?

I would, i'm tired of getting war pts with war's that cant break 600 damage rampages at Mamool Ja staging point.

[Eaglestrike]

It'd hit NIN hard in some tanking, sure. But it'd allow for a tradeoff of taking no damage or doing damage. Could still have the guaranteed 0 damage hits for HNMs or whatever, but give blood tanks more of a place in XP.

Not like NINs can't gear for enmity or get SATA or whatever, I see it a lot more preventing the notion of no main tank. Just a random idea anyway, but one I do think would make for a viable Utsu nerf.

Paladins need to take notes from Ninjas and do some damage as well. With the VIT/DEF caps a pld will still take less damage, shield is amazing for damage mitigation and pld can wear some heavy armor for DDing and has an A+ weapon. PLD can work in exp as a semi-DD and main tank, that's what I did exping my pld up. The old school 'wall'-like bloodtank is a fail strategy for exp, but so many are still stuck on it.

[Kazen]

I have a WS macro on my pld that brings me up to +36 str at lvl 65, its kinda nice actually. I think my best was a 788 Vorpal blade to a VT colibri w/o food. Its not much compared to other melees, but its a bit nicer than the normal 60-100ish ws's lol.

[Ryko]

It'd hit NIN hard in some tanking, sure. But it'd allow for a tradeoff of taking no damage or doing damage. Could still have the guaranteed 0 damage hits for HNMs or whatever, but give blood tanks more of a place in XP.

Not like NINs can't gear for enmity or get SATA or whatever, I see it a lot more preventing the notion of no main tank. Just a random idea anyway, but one I do think would make for a viable Utsu nerf.

Please dont express your thoughts in written form for it is painful to the rest of the group.

[Not Kuno]

Did anyone actually translate this interview yet? And not in the ghetto online translation way.

[LD]

Did anyone actually translate this interview yet? And not in the ghetto online translation way.

Thank you for bringing that up, I was starting to wonder wtf happened with that. ;x
Every topic gets diverted into a debate on game mechanics without the source of the discussion being...discussed. :|