FFXIV Random Speculation/Question thread V: No one told me beta would have problems in it

[Hyan]

New patch is up, for the BOOT version I think.

I wonder what that did lol. Game wasn't updated.

[Kurokikaze]

I hope it does Hyan... God almighty I hope it does. At least a fix to exp bug.

Edit: Meh that update was too small to be anything significant.

[Hyan]

Also a fix to the INT stat would be nice at this point.

[qpoiuwer]

New patch is up, for the BOOT version I think.

I wonder what that did lol. Game wasn't updated.

Just a preliminary updater update for the presumably large patch before beta2.

[Mortilia]

I don't really see the problem. Your repaired weapon is at 50% durability. Your new weapon is 100% durability. NPC can only repair up to 50%.

The problem I see is that a weapon's damage might be highly based on the durability left on it. Which means that everytime time your weapon's durability goes down to 90%, it might be better to repair it now.

Looking at how fast durability goes down, that means that every 4 minutes, while fighting a big bad boss, you'll want to go passive, equip your blacksmithing tool, repair your weapon, equip back your weapon, re-set your skills (which are removed from your bar when switching class), go back in active, then get another 3-4 minutes of boss ass-whooping, before having to repair again.

Personally, I wouldn't like that much.

[Yoli]

Or you could not worry about min-maxing so obsessively, and just repair after the fight, assuming your damage isn't entirely crippled by going down to 90 or 80%.
(Even if you are min-maxing, I bet the damage lost by stopping, repairing, and reengaging would be greater than the damage lost by lowered durability while continuously fighting.)

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

Doubt that patch did anything good. Glad to see server 24/7 though. Means I might actually do some work while the game is live instead of skimp out on summer classes lol.

@INT stat; shit sucks. Boosted str/dex on lancer, noticed the difference right away. Had 50 int/pie on CON, hitting like 30~ more dmg on nuke(if it wasn't resisted) and thats with my CON at 15, and LAN at 8. Can I get a "WTFFFF???" I'm spending precious MP here!

[Vimes]

The problem I see is that a weapon's damage might be highly based on the durability left on it. Which means that everytime time your weapon's durability goes down to 90%, it might be better to repair it now.

Looking at how fast durability goes down, that means that every 4 minutes, while fighting a big bad boss, you'll want to go passive, equip your blacksmithing tool, repair your weapon, equip back your weapon, re-set your skills (which are removed from your bar when switching class), go back in active, then get another 3-4 minutes of boss ass-whooping, before having to repair again.

Personally, I wouldn't like that much.

Too soon to say or to speculate upon, but I understand your concern. We'll have to wait a bit to see how it's fully implemented I guess.

[Agito]

It makes perfect sense that the NPC won't bring your weapons' durability back to 100% because then nobody would actually use the services of a blacksmith to fix the weapons which is what is intended and will be encouraged. The weapons wearing down really fast needs an adjustment but there's quite alot of things that needs adjustments so it won't be fixed right away. What i think though, is that fixing weapons is meant to be tested so it's intentionally set for weapons to wear down faster.

[Jojimbo]

Is it possible to have another person repair your equip while you are fighting?

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

Is it possible to have another person repair your equip while you are fighting?

The fact that you can't change gear while in active mode makes me think this is a silly question.

[Lucavi]

I don't think Physical Level will really matter over time because it never changes, it's a one time deal kinda.

I have no idea how it will pan out, but eventually I think our EXPing (Parties?) will be based around class skillups, and not Physical.

Which is why they need to decide if they're going to balance mobs on the field for solo fighting or for group fighting.

Hear me out for a second.

Right now the mobs are balanced, and I use that term extremely loosely, on solo, at least in the realm of hit points to attack power. In FFXI, when properly geared, mobs typically were strong enough to drop the tank in roughly 8-12 hits, assuming no whiffs or shield blocks or whatever. Any fewer hits and that and you were typically fighting something too strong, hoping for a gimmicky kill, like with goblins and hoping they'd self-destruct for mass-chains. Any less and the shit was too weak, and you wound up not getting a lot of xp. What made the mobs "great" for XPing was that they had a balance of moderate damage and lots of life - perfectly suited to lots of people whacking them, yet not strong enough to drop a tank in seconds.

With this game, as I said before, mobs seem to be tuned for solo play. When you try to party, you're either finding mobs with low life when fought by anymore than 2 people (shit dies in seconds), or you're finding severly over-tuned mobs that may have the life of a mob that requires 3-4 people to kill, but is scaled as such that he's hitting you for 300 a shot.

I've never seen a MMO that was tuned on the field for both solo and party play, mob-wise. Forgive me mods, but WoW's field mobs were tuned for solo, with the instances being tuned for party play. If you remember, it took quite an over leveled (or broken spec for that level range) solo player to reliably kill instance mobs, yet a group of 5 could perfectly handle the mobs. If you rolled around in the field with a group of 5, you guys would be unstoppable juggernauts for anything even close to your level range that wasn't elite.

Okay, back to FFXIV:

I figured, going in, that the mobs would be tuned for groups, yet the leves would tune their mobs for solo play all the way up to a very skilled group. So far that hasn't been the case, which is why I think a lot of people are complaining about how boring the game feels during "the grind". Couple this with some jobs not being well balanced at the moment, like mages, and also with heavy-armor jobs not having any heavy armor to actually wear, and thus try the stronger mobs in a group setting, and yeah, you have this quagmire right now.

The sad part is that I don't think its an easy fix. If you over-tune the regular mobs for EXP, you end up with another FFXI, where solo content is all but restricted to roughly level 15 and in extremely specialized areas, such as drgs being able to solo bees in the crawler's nest, ect. The people that want to solo are forced to do it only against weak mobs for little progress, or to do leves, which may or may not be rapidly repeatable.

If you over-tune it to solo, then the party-based incentives come only from end-game mobs and high level/rank leves, and you wind up alienating much of the core of FFXI's player-base, which is very accustomed to party-based play. Plus, with all the graphs and stuff they've shown about where each class stands in combat, combined with the plethora of party-based abilities, like lancer's call to arms, the game already feels as if it's supposed to be a party-based one again, so over-tuning mobs for solo could have some pretty drastic results.

Honestly, I don't know what the middle-ground is. The only real places I've seen instances in are quest cutscene areas, so its not like they could just make bunches of instances for people to XP in, and as we've already heard, many FFXI players aren't fans of instancing their life away for XP.

Hopefully phase 2 beta has a lot of the refinements in the patch notes - I think it'll give everyone a much better opinion on where this combat is going, and where it should go - so long as they put heavy armor back in so I can get back to the front-lines in groups!

[Jojimbo]

I thought it was possible to have another person repair gear w/o trading? Or do you have to unequip gear first (I havn't tried, only basing it off how NPC works)

[Ratatapa]

I thought it was possible to have another person repair gear w/o trading? Or do you have to unequip gear first (I havn't tried, only basing it off how NPC works)

Just go to passive mode I guess

[qpoiuwer]

I thought it was possible to have another person repair gear w/o trading? Or do you have to unequip gear first (I havn't tried, only basing it off how NPC works)

I know you can't repair your own gear if you're wearing it (which is annoying since you can't unequip certain things unless you have a second item for that slot). Also, I'm not even sure which craft I need to repair my h2h weapon, which has a Bone base, because there is no bonecrafting class this time.

[Kurokikaze]

On Jul. 28, 2010 at around 06:30 (PDT), we performed a version update of the FINAL FANTASY XIV Beta Version. The update will be performed automatically when you next run the FINAL FANTASY XIV Beta Version.

Details on the update will be announced separately.

I'll quote again when they post what was fixed besides the updated updater. You may place your bets now.

[qpoiuwer]

I'll quote again when they post what was fixed besides the updated updater. You may place your bets now.

I would imagine all the stuff they listed on the beta site under "Planned Changes" or whatever it was.

[Lovian]

Is it me or does mage jobs level up very slowly compared to melee and crafting jobs?

[Vimes]

Hear me out for a second.

Yea, I feel the same way currently about the game. There's not much to conclude though at this point, we'll just have to see what the updates will bring.

[Purrrfect]

Which is why they need to decide if they're going to balance mobs on the field for solo fighting or for group fighting.

Hear me out for a second.

...

I think I can say I agree with all of this. Maybe, what they need is some kind of system behind the scenes that will dynamically adjust monsters based on your current party/level(s). So if you have a dodo that shows yellow to you at CR10 (making it something like a CR10), but if you go and add a CR8 to your party the dodo gets moved to maybe CR11.5 or something and still cons yellow to you, under the assumption that both party members will be fighting. You could also limit the members taken into consideration to be the ones nearby, so members at camp or in town don't throw the level adjustment off. Can also make it so that only the players that were taken into account for mob difficulty are allowed to fight/be rewarded to prevent players from staying out of range to get the mob to con lower and then rush in to kill fast. Maybe something along those lines, though a little more clarification on how physical/class levels affect performance would be nice, but I think we'll just have to experiment that info out.