Random Complaint Thread. No white knighting allowed.

[plue]

I'm bored having nothing to play, is this game still a lifeless piece of shit or is it worth coming back?

[Kaylia]

I don't know, I remember several extremely challenging encounters in FFXI that weren't completely dependent on fast reaction times. CoP 6-4, the Ultima/Omega mission, immediately comes to mind. Divine Might, like Lucavi has also mentioned in the past. Those are a couple examples of BCNMs, and then you have stuff like Kirin and the Jailers, that while some pearls mastered them and they became routine and easily done, there were always new upcoming linkshells for many years there were still challenged before they too reached that point.

Now, I'm not going to argue which is the better content (since it's subjective and largely depends on a lot of other factors, like what kind of combat system there is, how items work, what the UI is like, etc.), but I just figured I'd point out that knee-jerk reaction times definitely aren't required.

I'm tempted to argue that none of this was remotely hard. The average players in FFXI was simply awful, and this is partly because they were never challenged before. How can you expect someone to know about "tp given" or "proper positioning" when all they fought from 1-75 was crabs? Even worse, the few times something actually posed a threat, people would just find a way to cheese the fight instead of working around simple mechanics like threat/tp given.

I was in one of the first group to kill omega/ultima (possibly the first NA), and we only wiped an handful of time with our mistmatched setup. I've repeated the fight countless time since that day to help people get to sea, and never wiped more than once. What was difficult about it? You barely needed any preparation, especially if you have a proper setup.


It's the same deal for pretty much everything else. Bad players who don't know basic mechanics, lack of communication (no one ever used vent for anything), and lack of practice is what made the fight look much harder than they were. Other thing like "one attempt a day", "need 36 bodies" or 2hours recast time added retarded handicap without making the actual content more challenging.


Secondly, the difficulty in these fights did come from the fast reaction times required to adapt to the current situation (when it didnt come from a random number generator fucking you up). Tank died fast, stun had to be quick (especailly for NA)..etc.


[edit]
Personally, the only content I found remotely challenging was salvage. Nothing in it was particularly hard, but since you were racing against time, you had to do everything perfectly in order to squeeze the most out of your run. It was a good challenge in overall.

I don't go around saying my vision is the only vision and everything else is shit (objectively speaking). More often than not all I do is defend my vision from people like you who consider it shit in comparison to your own vision. That's the difference.

Except this is exactly what you did

[Hyan]

Not really. There's more than 1 way to build an MMO, and the way you want it done is just fine, as is the way I want it done. I've never claimed otherwise, although I've expressed why I don't personally like your way multiple times. That doesn't mean I can't see why it works.

And like you said, the fact that the setups were rarely optimal for anything made fights more difficult. Not the same gambits work for every player and situation out there. You can of course go your way and build a perfect party if you have the possibility, and that's fine.

Also a far as difficulty, it's quite shitty difficulty if there's only two possible scenarios, win or lose. Much better is a scenario where the line is drawn on the water. You have 100 mins in Salvage, how much you can accomplish during that time is up to you. Still, it's hard to actually lose and not get to attempt at least some NM's and the boss, so it's not a black and white situation. If your team is good and you are skilled, you can achieve more (or everything). If things get too easy, hell, split your group in half and double the chances. You can always make things more difficult and get rewarded accordingly. I guess same goes for nyzul, a bit less so though. A bad group may be able to clear 5 floors, a good group can get up to 15 at once. As far as Einherjar or anything except Dynamis maybe, "need 36 bodies" is bullshit and you could probably split your group in half and do two runs at once if the group is good enough.

Yeah, sure, now we get technical and start arguing semantics about that kind of thing being "reaction based" (not completely true either) but who the fuck cares. High ping hardly affects that shit, and its better than either winning it all or losing it all, and the difficulty+challenge is determined by you and the game instead of just the game. I sure hope they'd make that more apparent with GL's, as the system can already bend for that sort of thing.

Well, lol at your edit. The way Salvage was done should be the standard really. Maybe with a bit of Nyzul in there for the feeling of progression within it. And hey, while we're at it let's make the "thrash" mobs matter. "shitty contents" and all that.

[Kaylia]

He won't do what is necessary, he'll instead try to bring the game close to other games and make it similar

I havent proposed anything. You're the one who seem to know what is necessary for the game to succeed.

[Kaylia]

And like you said, the fact that the setups were rarely optimal for anything made fights more difficult. Not the same gambits work for every player and situation out there. You can of course go your way and build a perfect party if you have the possibility, and that's fine.

Also a far as difficulty, it's quite shitty difficulty if there's only two possible scenarios, win or lose. Much better is a scenario where the line is drawn on the water. You have 100 mins in Salvage, how much you can accomplish during that time is up to you. Still, it's hard to actually lose and not get to attempt at least some NM's and the boss, so it's not a black and white situation. If your team is good and you are skilled, you can achieve more (or everything). If things get too easy, hell, split your group in half and double the chances. You can always make things more difficult and get rewarded accordingly. I guess same goes for nyzul, a bit less so though. A bad group may be able to clear 5 floors, a good group can get up to 15 at once. As far as Einherjar or anything except Dynamis maybe, "need 36 bodies" is bullshit and you could probably split your group in half and do two runs at once if the group is good enough.

36 bodies = Absolute virtue and PW. It was impossible to get a decent shot otherwise, and since most ls were far under that, these 2 monsters were completely retarded.


And how is win/lose shitty difficulty? Performance rating are fine, but losing still need to be an option, otherwise, its just face rolling

Yeah, sure, now we get technical and start arguing semantics about that kind of thing being "reaction based" (not completely true either) but who the fuck cares. High ping hardly affects that shit, and its better than either winning it all or losing it all, and the difficulty+challenge is determined by you and the game instead of just the game. I sure hope they'd make that more apparent with GL's, as the system can already bend for that sort of thing.

Ping hardly affect shit if your only gaming experience is FFXI and XIV, and 2 levels in other mmo, but the difference is still heaven and hell.

[Sephiroth]

I don't know why SE didn't do better with the one content they've had from launch, leves. They're timed for 30 minutes yet the only ones you need more than 5-10 minutes on are the necros that make you spend 90% of the time running. Why not give your group an incentive to increase the stars by providing more mobs on higher difficulty? Right now people do them on as low stars as they can get away with because you reach the point where either the SP doesn't increase when the stars go up or the time taken increases too much to make it worthwhile.

I'm bored having nothing to play, is this game still a lifeless piece of shit or is it worth coming back?

Play it. You don't want to be rank 1 when the content hits and not be able to do it, do you?

[Kaylia]

I don't know why SE didn't do better with the one content they've had from launch, leves. They're timed for 30 minutes yet the only ones you need more than 5-10 minutes on are the necros that make you spend 90% of the time running. Why not give your group an incentive to increase the stars by providing more mobs on higher difficulty? Right now people do them on as low stars as they can get away with because you reach the point where either the SP doesn't increase when the stars go up or the time taken increases too much to make it worthwhile.

Play it. You don't want to be rank 1 when the content hits and not be able to do it, do you?

My favorite leves are the one with a monster that run away from a meaningless location to another equally meaningless location halfway accross the map, only to spawn 2 more mobs that will most likely rape you if the fight until now were close call.


FFXIV difficulty so far is completely retarded. There is no clever usage of your ability, it's always too easy or too hard, and when something is just right, random number generator is what decide the winner.

I'm bored having nothing to play, is this game still a lifeless piece of shit or is it worth coming back?

Log on every hour for behests, join a group, say "hi ^^", go rape 18 mobs and enjoy the xp, say "thank ^^", and logout. This is the best way to play FFXIV (or at least, for a good portion of the game).


While you're online, try to appreciate the so called "group contents" that let you bond with fellow players. Players communication is truly the best part of ffxiv.

[Hyan]

I havent proposed anything.

It goes far beyond this conversation. Here I propose that there is a wrong approach and a right approach, but when you start from scratch there are multiple ways to build your MMO 'right'.

36 bodies = Absolute virtue and PW. It was impossible to get a decent shot otherwise, and since most ls were far under that, these 2 monsters were completely retarded.

I agree. XI's events were all over the spectrum.

Only the black and white situation is shitty, imo, where you either win it all or lose it all.

[Elrina]

I'm tempted to argue that none of this was remotely hard. The average players in FFXI was simply awful, and this is partly because they were never challenged before. How can you expect someone to know about "tp given" or "proper positioning" when all they fought from 1-75 was crabs? Even worse, the few times something actually posed a threat, people would just find a way to cheese the fight instead of working around simple mechanics like threat/tp given.

I was in one of the first group to kill omega/ultima (possibly the first NA), and we only wiped an handful of time with our mistmatched setup. I've repeated the fight countless time since that day to help people get to sea, and never wiped more than once. What was difficult about it? You barely needed any preparation, especially if you have a proper setup.

This is how I know you're just trolling. I could see you targetting Kirin when I mentioned that, or some of the Jailers, since once you have the strategy down and the manpower they can be pretty much steamrolled. I could even possibly see you attacking Divine Might, courtesy of the popular BLM alliance (despite the fun really being in doing it properly). But you target what I probably found as the single most difficult encounter in FFXI (except for maybe Proto-Ultima, maybe), I know you're full of shit.

Okay, I wrote out more of a post explaining why you were full of shit, and why the encounter was difficult. But I've thought of a simpler way.

Go buy a chess board. Learn how to play it, since apparently all you know how to do is chew no-doz to keep up the twitch reflex you need for the "only challenging content available". Then try to explain to me why that chess board provides more challenge than any single twitch reflex, knee-jerk reaction MMO in existence, and always will.

Once you're done considering that, contemplate how the careful strategy required in chess could be expanded on to apply to MMO combat mechanics in a fun and interesting way. Because it can be done, I could probably sit and think of a way off the top of my head if I wanted to. Speed does not equate to challenge, nor should it. I told you I didn't want to argue whether or not one was better than the other, and you decided to explain to me why I was full of shit. Don't fall back on "chess mechanics couldn't be applied without being boring" either, because they easily could, just use a little imagination. I'm waiting.

Not really. There's more than 1 way to build an MMO

Your entire post was good, but this is a single point of truth that I felt more important to quote than the rest, since I've more to respond to.

36 bodies = Absolute virtue and PW. It was impossible to get a decent shot otherwise, and since most ls were far under that, these 2 monsters were completely retarded.

And how is win/lose shitty difficulty? Performance rating are fine, but losing still need to be an option, otherwise, its just face rolling

Ping hardly affect shit if your only gaming experience is FFXI and XIV, and 2 levels in other mmo, but the difference is still heaven and hell.

Games should absolutely have something like Absolute Virtue and Pandemonium Warden in them. They should be beatable, rather than broken and changed for years to remain unbeatable, but I see nothing wrong with a couple exceedingly difficult to spawn and then destroy monsters in a game, that require knowledge and tricks to do so, as long as they can reliably be beaten. That is the only problem with those two monsters, that they required too much work to spawn to be unbeatable for too long. If SE had given the information required to destroy them, there's nothing wrong with a couple monsters that required that many people to beat. Many Final Fantasy games had extremely difficult monsters in comparison to the rest of the game, and something special above and beyond for an MMO is something that deserves a presence.

There should be a degree of win/lose in several forms of content. But Hyan is right, and I really need to say he was very right, in saying that the best forms of content are those that you can participate in for over an hour and even if you "lose", you still gained something. Even in WoW, from what I understand, you can kill several bosses on the way towards the final dungeon/raid boss, so even if you lost on that you would have gained from the previous bosses. Salvage was a really good example of something from FFXI, considering that there were many potential objectives. That's the key, having multiple objectives in a sequence so that even if you "lose", you haven't wasted your time gaining access and then your time in the event for nothing.

And Ping matters, but it isn't all that matters. The difference shouldn't always be "heaven and hell" in every piece of content. I agree that there should be content that it does matter in, and makes a difference. But there should also be content that it matters much less, that requires more thought and maybe even a little patience to truly achieve victory, even if there is some kind of timer counting down.

I'm bored having nothing to play, is this game still a lifeless piece of shit or is it worth coming back?

Play it. You don't want to be rank 1 when the content hits and not be able to do it, do you?

And I'm going to respond to this, despite the fact that I'm not playing the game, because that wasn't an answer that actually contained a single bit of information required from playing to give. It's an opinion, pure and simple, so I'm going to give mine.

Don't. For the sake of your own desire to play the game sometime in the future, wait. You should want to be able to start at rank 1 when you start again. If you can't start at rank 1 and still enjoy the game several months from now, then what the fuck are you doing coming back to FFXIV at all instead of one of the other MMOs that will surely either be out or coming out soon at that point? If we're extremely lucky, all of the current players will get lopped together, leaving them to deal with their own damaged economies resulting from their desire to play through the time the game has been horrible, and everyone starting fresh at the PS3 release/subscription fee time will have fresh, clean servers to start on with all the changes in effect and content available.

The combat system hasn't been changed yet (Yoshida's next Letter, which will include a Poll regarding it either immediately before or at the same time as, will actually be regarding this very feature), I know this. Actually, almost nothing has been changed except the rate of SP gain, and the price list on the search results of the market ward. Wait until at least some of those things have been implemented, there should be patches every two weeks now. Give it another month, maybe two, and there will have been 2-5 patches in that time, and even after that I'm sure the game will be far superior to what it is now. Personally, I'm giving it till sometime over the Summer, probably July or so.

FFXIV difficulty so far is completely retarded. There is no clever usage of your ability, it's always too easy or too hard, and when something is just right, random number generator is what decide the winner.

This, at least, I will agree with you whole heartedly.

[Kaylia]

I agree. XI's events were all over the spectrum.

Only the black and white situation is shitty, imo, where you either win it all or lose it all.

Black and white situations are only bad if the penalty for faillure is harsh (wasting your pop item, being limited to a single attempt every week, not being able to try again because the cooldown are 2hours long...etc). This was a retarded philosophy that plagued FFXI development for years and seem to be present again for FFXIV.

Tonight was raid night in WoW and we spent 2 hours wiping on the same boss. We improved every attempts, and we eventually downed it for the first time when we were about to call it in the most epic fashion. This kind of situation is not bad by any mean, and can be very exhilarating if the group worked hard to succeed. .


Win/lose or performance rating are both fine, it just depend how the contents is implemented. I don't think it's what make the contents challenging or fun.

[Kaylia]

This is how I know you're just trolling. I could see you targetting Kirin when I mentioned that, or some of the Jailers, since once you have the strategy down and the manpower they can be pretty much steamrolled. I could even possibly see you attacking Divine Might, courtesy of the popular BLM alliance (despite the fun really being in doing it properly). But you target what I probably found as the single most difficult encounter in FFXI (except for maybe Proto-Ultima, maybe), I know you're full of shit.

Okay, I wrote out more of a post explaining why you were full of shit, and why the encounter was difficult. But I've thought of a simpler way.

Go buy a chess board. Learn how to play it, since apparently all you know how to do is chew no-doz to keep up the twitch reflex you need for the "only challenging content available". Then try to explain to me why that chess board provides more challenge than any single twitch reflex, knee-jerk reaction MMO in existence, and always will.

Once you're done considering that, contemplate how the careful strategy required in chess could be expanded on to apply to MMO combat mechanics in a fun and interesting way. Because it can be done, I could probably sit and think of a way off the top of my head if I wanted to. Speed does not equate to challenge, nor should it. I told you I didn't want to argue whether or not one was better than the other, and you decided to explain to me why I was full of shit. Don't fall back on "chess mechanics couldn't be applied without being boring" either, because they easily could, just use a little imagination. I'm waiting.

Again, I beat Ultima and Omega before everyone with a mismatched party (I wasnt even 75 when I did it). I repeated the fight more than 25 times over the years helping everyone in my first and second linkshell, and did it many times with pugs who were shouting for help. I completed the fight with rng bouncing the robots, I beat it with melee/nin trading aggro, with pld/war, with nin/war, with a samurai/war tanking (and I cant really take the credit for this one since i didnt think it would work). Pretty much everyone on ifrit who played back in the day could tell you how often I did this missions (and every CoP mission for the matter).

Believe what you want, I don't care, but CoP missions were my favorite part of the games, and what I said is true. Yes, I heard story of people wiping 10 billions times, but no, it never happened to me. Proper organization and explanations made that fight a joke. I don't think it's an easy fight if you go unprepared, but if you know what to expect, its extremely easy. If you had any issue, it was probably because you had a shitty healer , or you were doing it with too many melees (needed 3 dps, and 3 mage class)..this is what people were doing wrong most of the time in my experience.


Secondly, you're not the first person to compare chess to a videogame, and no, the mechanics couldn't be applied very well to a mmo. Chess is a great games because there is no unpredictable elements, and everyone can look far into the future to choose the best course of actions. In a mmo like FFXI, every decisions can be taken on the spot simply by looking at the current situation (people hp, your tp, your mana) and knowing the monster few mechanics. The order you use your skills rarely matter, and even worse, they are rarely competing against each other (you will use the ability whenever its up usually rather than wait for the best moment to use it).

You also need to consider that when r you play chess, you're playing against a smart opponent that can also read the future. This isn't something that is possible in a mmo where the behavior need to be scripted for multiples reasons. If you implement mechanics like threat and the like, you limit the fight even more.


Another issue with this analogy is that you're not using all 16 pieces. You have a bunch of single pieces behaving independantly. Even worse, you're not playing versus 16 pieces in a fair fight, it's 1 player versus 1 [scripted] enemy (if there is multiple opponent, you will disable them or split the group beforehand). The beauty of chess is the increasing amount of possibilities the farther away you look from now. In a mmo, you never have to look this far because as soon your recast is back, it's a brand new game.

I will send you back your question. How would you design chess-like strategy in a real time mmo where everyone control a single character, because truly, I don't see it. I'm not saying there is absolutely no decision to make, but the only impact is that you won't be able to use the same skills at a later time if you use it, and generally, the answer is quite obvious (and is not the reason why you would wipe).

[Kaylia]

Games should absolutely have something like Absolute Virtue and Pandemonium Warden in them. They should be beatable, rather than broken and changed for years to remain unbeatable, but I see nothing wrong with a couple exceedingly difficult to spawn and then destroy monsters in a game, that require knowledge and tricks to do so, as long as they can reliably be beaten. That is the only problem with those two monsters, that they required too much work to spawn to be unbeatable for too long. If SE had given the information required to destroy them, there's nothing wrong with a couple monsters that required that many people to beat. Many Final Fantasy games had extremely difficult monsters in comparison to the rest of the game, and something special above and beyond for an MMO is something that deserves a presence.

There should be a degree of win/lose in several forms of content. But Hyan is right, and I really need to say he was very right, in saying that the best forms of content are those that you can participate in for over an hour and even if you "lose", you still gained something. Even in WoW, from what I understand, you can kill several bosses on the way towards the final dungeon/raid boss, so even if you lost on that you would have gained from the previous bosses. Salvage was a really good example of something from FFXI, considering that there were many potential objectives. That's the key, having multiple objectives in a sequence so that even if you "lose", you haven't wasted your time gaining access and then your time in the event for nothing.

And Ping matters, but it isn't all that matters. The difference shouldn't always be "heaven and hell" in every piece of content. I agree that there should be content that it does matter in, and makes a difference. But there should also be content that it matters much less, that requires more thought and maybe even a little patience to truly achieve victory, even if there is some kind of timer counting down.

Ehh? Of course challenge is fine, that's what I asked in the first place. My points was that AV/PW were challenging for all the wrong reasons. If you removes all the design issues, you are left with a simple fights that wouldnt be much harder than anything else you see in other games.


What you described is pretty much what WoW is doing with its endgame. It only takes people a few weeks or months to clear the contents because there is 40 times more players (and they are more dedicated), but the hardest one still offer a real challenge that 99.9% of the population can't do. Making them any harder would just mean more random number bullshit, or plain unkillable with the current gears.


The reason why I'm not considering raid on the same level as FFXI events is because you can enter at any time and do as many attempts as you want. Difficulty and reward is determined on a boss basis instead of the event as a whole (you can often jump directly to the boss you were struggling against and skip the rest). Of course, I'm not disagreeing that any games should reward the players for his work, but faillure doesnt need to be rewarded systematically. It's okay to not reward the players who wiped, as long they didn't lose anything. If they lost 1 hour worth of xp, lot of money, many hours gathering, go for it, but if they lost 30 minutes and can retry immediatly after, then let them work harder, it's fair games.




Also, I brought Salvage when I talked about difficulty, not loot. Salvage difficulty didnt come from the battle sytem, but the way the instance is designed (cell management, communication, knowing your group limits...). The fights itself were never challenging in FFXI, which is why I found salvage interesting since it was challenging you in a different way that the usual gameplay would not.



[edit]
About ping, it obviously doesn't matter for slower/trivial contents, but try playing WoW endgame for a few months with bad latency. It's only a few milliseconds, but you will find yourself unable to execute many mechanics properly.

If you want an example from FFXI, just look at AV's ja lock. The delay made it impossible for NA players to do it reliably simply because it was too short (that's why everyone was botting it). How do you balance something like this around your playerbase? It will never be fair, unless it's so easy it doesnt matter. It was the same deal for avoidables WS and spell, japanese's claim rate for the first 2 years....etc.

The overall experience is always going to be much smoother in a mmo without that latency. The moment reaction time matter, it will makes a difference.

[Hyan]

Black and white situations are only bad if the penalty for faillure is harsh

This is what I thought of once I had posted that comment, good thing you brought it up.

Not that I've seen any MMO that is not "too easy" for it's beginning barring very specific exceptions. When there can be no true difficulty setting, you go for the lowest common dominator for the basic content. I think they can apply the performance rating here though.

[Elrina]

Man, Kaylia, I've been having a shitty day and didn't expect a real answer, just some flames headed in my general direction that would make me feel like I was on the Hindenburg or something. I appreciate that.

First, I've done the fight many times myself, and other than the first time I always wiped at least once. Sometimes we had several of the CB Pumps, sometimes only one or two, and they seriously made an enormous difference. If you had a full 6 pumps and were prepared to use all of them (like on my first attempt for my own clear) it really wasn't that difficult with a prepared and properly set up group that knew what they were doing. But the odds of having 6 fully prepared people that know what they're doing, every time, especially when you're trying to clear a bunch of lazy people who never had the initiative to put themselves through CoP (or more than one linkshell worth of these types of people, along with the odd people helped over time), it can be pretty difficult. Because one person can screw it up, and even people who know what they're doing can make mistakes, and it was an encounter that could be very hard on you when you made mistakes.


Ok, as to the much more interesting part of your response. I deliberately kept myself busy while waiting for your response, so that I would have less time to actually consider this. (Believe that if you want, or not.)

Now, chess and an MMO, the emphasis on how speed, or the lack thereof, can make for challenging combat mechanics.

First thing I am thinking is that you can't apply it literally. It has to be done abstractly, drawing parallels rather than direct mechanics or function. The big key here is strategy, so that's what we're going to focus on.

First thing I would do is make terrain a big part of combat. The land would actually have to support this, with varying land type almost everywhere, and the ability to climb and jump or swim. But make terrain function almost like in D&D, where higher terrain gave advantage over lower terrain, water slowed you down immensely and silenced you naturally under water, without a ranged attack you couldn't attack someone in a certain location and mobs couldn't simply reach you just because you were attacking them regardless of the terrain. This would take attention when coding the environment, but if it was designed with this in mind, it would be worth it, I think.

Then you make sure the monsters have solid artificial intelligence. You give them varied skill sets, just like our jobs/classes, and know when to use them. You can group them in parties (like XIV was originally supposedly doing), and have them work in concert together to some degree. Protect their healers, focus on ours, make it harder to just "tank" mobs. Make hate mechanics less about enmity or threat, and more about forcibly making it so that the enemy can't attack anyone else and that's why they're attacking the "tank", because otherwise they would go over the vulnerable healer or squishy targets. And even then, they use their varied skills to their advantage, really trying to kill you, not just throw them out in random order with some that suck and some that are worthless and as if they didn't know the difference.

Then make sure that the jobs and classes actually have skills that work well against specific types of mobs, and especially well in concert with other job/class skills to form like combo abilities by using them together. Give them cooldowns that matter, although not so long they can't be used relatively often, maybe a few minutes or something. Make it so that the mobs will kill you if you do not fight them properly every time. At some point level correction will make you more powerful, but until then mobs should always be dangerous if you aren't strong against them solo, or are in a group that is. Make sure the rewards are solid, that you don't have to spend a lot of time fighting a mob for little experience or SP or whatever, and that you can get drops that matter like gear (and not always shitty unusable gear, but something appropriate to the level of the mob, just not teh uber leet). That way incentive is there because you get a lot of of experience, as well as potentially items/gear.

You don't want combat moving too fast, because you want making use of the terrain and varied abilities to matter, you want the positional effects to mean something. Yes, that means each fight might take a couple minutes, but you just ramp up the experience per mob to compensate. If you could kill a mob in 30 seconds now for 500 SP in a group of 1/6/10, on average (on average 30 seconds nets 500 SP), then make a two minute fight average 2,000 SP, and the gear on top of it. That's the key, if the fight is going to be slower, you have to compensate by ramping the reward to match the time spent. Just because it's one mob means nothing, even if it's "harder".

And yes, a lot of time, once you know the mobs, it's not so much difficulty as making sure you're paying attention to what the monster does, you respond with proper abilities and with general abilities of your own. And yes, there are plenty of other factors and things that could be done, like adding extra damage to certain abilities when using in the air (use of jumping), or some abilities that change what they do when used on land/air/water. But make use of direction, height, terrain blockage, make enemies actually target players that matter, and give abilities to everyone that will actually require you to pay attention to what you are fighting and how. Hell, you could use other enemies as well, and just entice them near each other to let them help distract and reduce each other's hp.

Would that be fun? I think so. Would it still need to be reasonably paced? Of course it would. But it certainly wouldn't have to be extremely fast, it could be at a nice careful speed, with some monsters and abilities designed to operate faster and some not. The point is to insert real strategy into every fight, make every fight actually require you to pay attention to every bit of it, or you could die, your whole group could die, starting from your most vulnerable party member. And not because the tank was unable to keep hate, but because your tank is only capable of keeping the target locked for so long, so you need several people able to force it's attention or the healer needs ways to remove himself from where the monster is able to attack him. As long as the reward can keep pace with the battles, them taking longer doesn't matter as long as the entire fight is actually strategically satisfying, in my opinion.

Then you do have to look ahead to think of what abilities that specific monster has, and maybe they have many that can do specific things like break certain pieces of your gear, or inable certain abilities of your tank or healer, or prevent his attention from being forced, or just deal extremely massive damage so you have to use abilities or find ways to use terrain to your advantage to avoid it, or maybe just can barely be damaged by magic or physical and has tons of HP but it's every attack is AoE. I don't know what the specific abilities should/could all be, there are thousands of ideas and possibilities, that's up to the developers to actually figure out and put together, but you get the idea.

I basically wrote that as I thought of it. Do I know if it would work? Not really, would probably take a lot of editing and refining of the whole concept, and some complex programming (especially the terrain use) and in some ways it's just the average take on what all MMOs do anyway. I think it would be more the slowing down so that it wasn't really fast, making the abilities each monster and each class had more specific and able to work in conjunction (maybe abilities that effected how a mob ability works, or vica versa, the same way one ability could work differently in land/air/water?), and making terrain play a large part also in how abilities might work and in what kind of modifiers are applied to the accuracy/damage/etc. of them, rather than just each having a range or even just positional modifier.

There are probably other entirely different ways it could be done, I could consider other ways over a few days and PM you if you'd like, kinda like an academic pondering of the matter. Regardless, it would still be scripted, but with the greater variance in things that can potentially affect other things, by being more specific about what and how they're effective, and what kind of effect you have without them, it would allow a greater degree of strategy to be utilized. Hence the chess comparison, and needing to read ahead at what that specific enemy can/will/may do, and the balance of having to use the area around you (rather than all the pieces in concert) to be part of the fight.

[Kaylia]

This is what I thought of once I had posted that comment, good thing you brought it up.

Not that I've seen any MMO that is not "too easy" for it's beginning barring very specific exceptions. When there can be no true difficulty setting, you go for the lowest common dominator for the basic content. I think they can apply the performance rating here though.

Don't quit other mmo at level 2 maybe. >_>

But seriously, level something to 85 in WoW, find a guild and start raiding. I can assure you it will be an overwhelming experience at first that will make you feel like a shitty players. It's doesnt require god tier skills of course, but it puts any FFXI encounter to shame. Doesnt mean you will enjoy the game, but if your guild is relatively decent, you're bound to reach fights that challenge you.

[Hyan]

I wasn't challenged once during my road to lvl50 in WoW. Basic content is easy because it needs to be easy, but can still apply the performance rating there imo for players to challenge themselves. XIV has no content that could be made difficult because it's all basic so it's kind of pointless to compare. Basic(what you need to do to progress) content is easy in XIV (to 50), and is easy in WoW (to 50). That's my point.

I know that I will be challenged in WoW if I leveled further or did the nonbasic/extra content. I may be challenged in XIV if I leveled further or did the nonbasic content (when/if it becomes available). I know you have a strong opinion about it but it's useless to argue any further. SE has shown that they are capable of making good challenge or awful challenge (usually the former through experimenting the concepts of the latter and expanding on them, Dynamis >>> Salvage). Your or my bias won't affect the outcome here.

[Kaylia]

[edit]
Kinda sleepy, so hopefully, it will at least be readable.

@Elrina
Yeah, CB pumps were great. Six is a bit overkills, but 2 is usually plenty (one for both robot under 40%). If the group wasn't retarded, you could wipe up to 3 times, so it made the fight pretty manageable with almost any setup even if you're unlucky. Looking back at it, I think the zombie strats was part of the reason why I had a decents success with this fight. We put these 45minutes to a good use!





The reason why I have some doubt about a chess-like mmo is because me and a friend tried to design an indie tactical mmo a few years ago (he was playing dofus, and I hated how mindless the gameplay was in every mmo). Needless to say, we abandonned the project after 3 months, but I'm not stranger to the ideas you're bringing.

The idea you proposed started pretty much like what we attempted to do. We had various terrain, we had skills used in tandem with other members based on a complex elemental system, we had unforgiving monsters.... To win the fight, you had to "checkmate" the monsters using elemental properties. Basically, every abilities you used would leave an elemental mark on the ground, and positioning these marks properly would allow you trigger more powerful combo spells that would give you the edge. It's kinda hard to describe with a few words and no pictures, but it was basically like trapping the monsters in some sort of elemental othello. Obviously, your opponent would fight back the same way (that's how we were able to introduce some depth).

It sounded great in practice, and would probably have been fun if both sides were playing with the same rules, but it is nearly impossible to balance such thing around typical "rpg" elements. Simply dealing with 1v2, 3v1, 2v4, or low level vs high level situation is ridiculously hard. After running a few simulations, we also found out that a fight could last forever (well, long enough to annoy any players) if both were defensive. At first, we tried to hotfix everything adding more rules and changing things, but it simply forced the players into a single approach that would works all the time and limited the actual possibilities to simple decision (pattern).

There is others issues that came up as well. Having gimmick mechanics like this will make every fights looks the same. No matter what you do, you always have to solve the puzzle, and it kinda kills the epic feeling. You're not fighting the Demon God or whatever, you're running around solving puzzles. The "AI" would also rape our server if we werent scripting it to something really simple (or limiting the search to something ridiculously low). I'm sure it could have been improved by eliminating a few branches from the tree, it was kinda hard to have a truly smart AI

I could play cat&mouse with your ideas for a while (it's kinda fun if both care about the project), but I'm not sure it's a good idea. From the little experience I had, a system doesn't fall apart until you actually get "play" with it (even if it is on paper). This is when you notice the patterns, when you see how useless 95% of the skills you implemented are, and when you realised how many unavoidable loophole there is.

What I'm saying is that designing a cool scenario isn't too difficult, but actually designing a smart gameplay is different. The gameplay as a whole is very difficult to test, and require more than a few paragraph.


One more things to considers is that more abilities doesn't mean it's more difficult to take a decision. FFXI and XIV are the best example I can give you for this. You might have 10 WS avaibles and 8 bar spells, but which one are you using? The same goes for pretty much every ability you will introduce. These ability is what I call fake choices. Yeah, they are there, but it doesn't add any diversity because the correct answers is usually obvious (when it matter). If you want strategy, you really need to ask yourself how hard it is going to be to find the "best" alternative in your skill lists.


[edit]
The system you described sound a lot like D&D 4th editions, which wasnt too bad. However, unless you went heavy on the roleplaying, it didnt really make the battle system deeper. You still focus on the most dangerous target first, uses your big spell..etc.

[Kaylia]

I wasn't challenged once during my road to lvl50 in WoW. Basic content is easy because it needs to be easy, but can still apply the performance rating there imo for players to challenge themselves. XIV has no content that could be made difficult because it's all basic so it's kind of pointless to compare. Basic(what you need to do to progress) content is easy in XIV (to 50), and is easy in WoW (to 50). That's my point.

I know that I will be challenged in WoW if I leveled further or did the nonbasic/extra content. I may be challenged in XIV if I leveled further or did the nonbasic content (when/if it becomes available). I know you have a strong opinion about it but it's useless to argue any further. SE has shown that they are capable of making good challenge or awful challenge (usually the former through experimenting the concepts of the latter and expanding on them, Dynamis >>> Salvage). Your or my bias won't affect the outcome here.

The main difference between WoW lv 1-84 and FFXIV 1-49 is that in WoW, you spend 2 weeks doing a bunch of random minigames, quests, and exploring awesome area while in FFXIV, you will save the outpost once every hours from dangerous passive monsters (and you will be 30 instead, not 49). Yes, both are easy, but one will at least attempt to entertain you.

You can reach max level in less time than you would reach max level in many single players rpg.

[Hyan]

Then why bring up the lack of difficulty in the first place? Essentially, because the basic contents difficulty in XIV is 'retarded', it is also so in WoW and every other mmo, even if it consists of random minigames and creative quests (which were not around when the game released). Not something I ever expected to hear from you tbh.

Single player rpgs usually have less 'retarded' difficulty too, so that comparison is also surprising.

[Elrina]

Yeah I don't know, it was the first thing that came to mind.

What I do know, is that I'm going to have a lot of fun discussing and arguing over options on the poll Yoshida gives us regarding the battle system changes/adjustments/overhauls and their possible implications. Last round there was only really one question that seemed like people though it was controversial, and that was whether or not people chose AH, Quests or Content. There is a lot more potential in this next poll for a lot more variance in opinion, and it's going to be fun seeing what the options are, what their implications are, and what people are saying about them and wanting to win out on the poll.

I'm going to have a lot of fun discussing all of it, and defending/arguing for the options I choose. :3 I hope everyone else is looking forward to this poll too, it could mean major changes or only minor ones, potentially, with the end result being an enormous portion of how the game is played!