Poor concepts of FFXI

[Karinya]

Re: Poor concepts of FFXI

I don't quite see what you're getting at with the players developing a different style thing, Armando. The reason players don't do that more has little to do with gear swapping; it's about optimizing performance.

Also, the main tool for differentiating people in the same job is the subjob; PLD/WAR and PLD/NIN really do play quite differently, for example. (RDM/DRK is an even stronger example.) But it's usually obvious which is more beneficial in a given encounter, so players are encouraged to change based on the circumstances. (The same goes for gear - you don't fight DL and merit in the same gear, or at least, some people don't.)

Take your point about a crit build, for example. I agree that it's impractical with current gear, but if there were more gear to support it, what then? In any given situation it would perform either better or worse than the current standard. If worse, it would be ignored as gimp, and if better, it would displace the current standard and become the new standard. In either case homogeneity is not broken, because of the tyranny of effectiveness.

In order for players exploring different stylistic choices to be even tolerated, let alone encouraged, the cost of changing between them needs to be so high that it's unrealistic to ask players to change from one *encounter* to another, not just from one second to another. (E.g., WoW talent specs - and even that example has probably been eliminated with the introduction of dual specs, but I don't follow the WoW high-level scene closely enough to be sure.) Even then some individual choices will be about as accepted by the playerbase as WAR/WHM, and for the same sorts of reasons.

Players expect other players to do what works. I don't think FFXIV can or even should change that. Gear swapping or no gear swapping, effectiveness-seeking behavior will find the points of optimum performance and drive players to congregate there.

[DakAttack]

Re: Poor concepts of FFXI

The subjobs are in the same position as equipment. Rather than spending months buying or finding all the equipment you need to optimize your performance in every situation, you're spending months leveling subjobs to optimize your performance in every situation. Differentiating people buy subjob is like differentiating them by what equipment they're currently wearing.

[Armando]

Re: Poor concepts of FFXI

The problem with the subjob<->playstyle comparison is that Subjobs don't change the job's original aspects, just add new aspects from another job; and that they provide tools that are so powerful and performance-altering, that you often can't use sub A to do what sub B will do at all. No matter how hard he tries, a PLD/WAR will never approach the same level of damage mitigation a PLD/NIN has.

Because of that, you might as well just label PLD/WAR and PLD/NIN as different jobs. The same principle applies: there's nothing differentiating one PLD/NIN from another gameplay-wise. The only difference is the equipment they have, but as discussed before, they'll both strive to accumulate the same equipment.

If you want an example of what I would consider to be different styles, I'll use PLD as an example:
1) A PLD build that emphasizes on shield blocks and reprisal/shield bash punishment
2) A PLD build that emphasizes on Cure potency and Banish/Holy potency
3) A PLD build that emphasizes two-handed sword usage
4) A PLD build that emphasizes on club usage
5 A PLD build that emphasizes pole usage

The merit system tried to do this, but doesn't provide neither enough options nor enough flexibility. Most options start out "meh" and require significant investments to make them work, and strict combo limits will make it only practical to really improve upon one or two Job-specific things. Weapon skill merits also do a poor job of providing options, because you'll always be better off investing on your job's best weapons than its weaker ones. Additionally, different weapon types really just do the same thing - provide a certain amount of autoattack DPS and provide a WS every so often.

Players expect other players to do what works. I don't think FFXIV can or even should change that. Gear swapping or no gear swapping, effectiveness-seeking behavior will find the points of optimum performance and drive players to congregate there.

I wholly agree. I have played fighting games competitively, and have some knowledge of competitive Pokemon play. You couldn't be any more right - everything boils down to "Play to Win." I just think that in a well-designed game, "play to win" doesn't involve "gear swap for everything you do." This could've been preventing by realizing that players WILL try to maximize their potential no matter what, and implementing restrictions on when, where, what, and how you can change gear, as well as creating equipment with better rounded stats so 80% of it doesn't get reduced to situational pieces.

Likewise I recognize what you said before that; that in order for this to work, changing your character's abilities around should have a steep enough cost to prevent it from being done regularly. I also recognize that some styles would inevitably be gimp, and be labeled as such. That doesn't diminish the merits of being able to truly customize how your character plays. Making another chess analogy, many openings are pretty weak, but there are so many ways to open a game of chess, with enough of them being efficient, that it's the reason the game has depth. Pokemon has reached a similar point: many Pokemon are gimp, but there's enough of the good ones to go around that you can truly be creative with your team.

As for gear homogeneity, part of the problem is that everything in this game is ruled by "dominant strategies." Amass as much Haste as possible as you'll do better in 99% of the scenarios. SE failed to provide a significant number of encounters where a crit build or an attack build will work better; and also failed to provide game mechanisms that allow for different styles. The TP system isn't bad, but making Haste/Slow not affect TP returns made Haste the ultimate stat and killed the potential for Hecatomb-like sets. The different mobs and jobs play by nearly-identical rules, so you seldom have to adapt your strategy beyond "need more Accuracy." (This has caused problems elsewhere - BRDs having to use the same songs over and over.)

This is pretty tangential but that brings us to another point. For many jobs, this game is automated. Even if we had enough equipment choices to create different builds (e.g. Attack/STR vs Crit vs Haste) what good is that when all I'm doing is modifying what my character is doing automatically? They made things even worse by making most melee's abilities simply be self-buffs. There's little active intervention on the player's part when it comes to damaging the enemy - the only exception were Weapon Skills, since these are meant to be powerful attacks, they don't happen with enough regularity. In the end, the game's combat boils down to autoattack and WS and that also robs it of depth.

I'm not saying the game needs to mimic WoW. But many of the creator's original ideas really need to be re-evaluated. It's too late to fix them now, all we can do is enjoy the game as-is, but hopefully they're brainstorming hard into how to reimplement them effectively into XIV.

EDIT: In retrospect, BLU is a pretty good example of how jobs should've been designed for combat. Flexible (not necessarily amorphous though - need to be restrictions, as discussed above), with plenty of abilities to actively use in combat.

[Karinya]

Re: Poor concepts of FFXI

I think the alternative to gear that is equipped for 5 seconds is going to be gear that is equipped for no seconds, or, at most, gear that is equipped for 5% of encounters and left in the mog safe (or equivalent) for the other 95%.

If you can't switch gear in combat, then you have to ask "Which of my pieces of gear is best in this slot for this whole encounter"? And only one piece (out of what you have) is going to win.

On the larger scale, players with a similar build to yours are going to ask "Which piece of gear in the game is best in this slot for encounters that are like X"? And that's the piece they're going to try to get. If you try to make the best gear harder and weaker gear easier to get you get gear stratification (and if gear has large enough effects on performance, needing to get the tier 1 gear to survive the fights that get you the tier 2 gear, etc.). I'd rather have situational gear than that.

Similarly, I think different builds of the same job (whatever that even means in FFXIV) will either be different enough to be like different jobs (so some may be favored based on a particular encounter, like MNK vs. bones), or they'll work out to more and less effective ways of doing the same thing.

The tyranny of effectiveness is hard to break - most attempts just replace the top dog with a new and even more overpowered dog. And you can't introduce too much rock-paper-scissors into a game where a player only has one character and there's a heavy investment involved in changing builds, or you'll replicate the same kind of problem as melees vs. kited HNMs or BLMs vs. colibri. (Players can probably be counted on to abuse the RPS relationships that favor them, too - like they do in FFXI.)

[DakAttack]

Re: Poor concepts of FFXI

If XIV enabled players to make more strategic actions with their characters, they could hide most, if not all, of the stats in the game. Things like HP and MP could be shown, while being ignored as additive bonuses on equipment, and the rest hidden so players simply choose what appeals to them. Declarative descriptions and statements could be exchanged for hard numbers so players aren't completely in the dark, but it would ensure players aren't collecting gear and swapping it in and out to maximize their output.

A plan like that might also have a lot of complications. In the case of FFXI, players wouldn't know the difference between good gear and the filler gear they should avoid, unless declarations were made in the description. You might craft a piece of equipment and never know really know its worth because nobody really knows what it does and there's simply no demand for it.

Perhaps, if gear were treated like talent trees, players could make semi-permanent decisions of how they want their equipment to evolve and advance. Materials could be required for advancement to facilitate a healthy market. Players would have to make lasting decisions based on how they prefer to play, rather than how they can maximize their effectiveness.

[Kailea]

Re: Poor concepts of FFXI

If XIV enabled players to make more strategic actions with their characters, they could hide most, if not all, of the stats in the game. Things like HP and MP could be shown, while being ignored as additive bonuses on equipment, and the rest hidden so players simply choose what appeals to them. Declarative descriptions and statements could be exchanged for hard numbers so players aren't completely in the dark, but it would ensure players aren't collecting gear and swapping it in and out to maximize their output.

A plan like that might also have a lot of complications. In the case of FFXI, players wouldn't know the difference between good gear and the filler gear they should avoid, unless declarations were made in the description. You might craft a piece of equipment and never know really know its worth because nobody really knows what it does and there's simply no demand for it.

Perhaps, if gear were treated like talent trees, players could make semi-permanent decisions of how they want their equipment to evolve and advance. Materials could be required for advancement to facilitate a healthy market. Players would have to make lasting decisions based on how they prefer to play, rather than how they can maximize their effectiveness.

I would punch the first Dev that ever suggests that idea...... I like seeing my stats -.-

and that talent tree idea, is kind of in Monster hunter, you make a weapon, and then you can upgrade it, and it follows diffrent upgrade paths.

[Armando]

Re: Poor concepts of FFXI

I think the alternative to gear that is equipped for 5 seconds is going to be gear that is equipped for no seconds, or, at most, gear that is equipped for 5% of encounters and left in the mog safe (or equivalent) for the other 95%.

If you can't switch gear in combat, then you have to ask "Which of my pieces of gear is best in this slot for this whole encounter"? And only one piece (out of what you have) is going to win.

You're right; but I feel this is the lesser of both evils. There will always be situational gear, but at the very least you won't be causing gameplay problems. Besides, there are ways to mitigate the problems; the flaws in the equip swap system aren't as easy to remedy.

For starters, making equipment less generic. Having more equipment that provide "special stats" (Double Attack, Crit Rate) rather than the basest of the base (Attack/Acc), as well as more equipment that directly affect a specific action (e.g. Shield Bash) rather than indirectly affecting it through mods allows players to create "builds" that complement the skill sets they've chosen to emphasize. Essentially, move the focus away from countering the enemy's attributes and towards customizing your character. When your equipment set is part of what makes your skill set work, there's less equipment to change around for each encounter. If they insist on keeping really situational stats like individual elemental resistances, these could be typically bundled with equipment that is generally useful even without it, as well as bundled in pairs and triplets so one set of gear protects you against 2-3 elements rather than 1 out of 8.

In addition to that, equipment could be "binary" - make it slotted, and have stat-enhancing items that can go into the slots. This is already implemented in some games like Ragnarok Online, and to a lesser extent FFVII (Materia did enhance your stats, but you usually wanted the actions they enabled far more.) Relegate situational stats into these trinkets, so that you don't need to tote around an entirely separate set of gear just to defend a specific threat. This actually adds a new sense of depth to equipment, since its worth is not only defined by what it offers on its own, but also on its potential to hold more bonuses - while at the same time keeping it flexible to use.

Better yet - if you really like the notion of action-specific bonuses that much, implement at a more abstract level and separate it from equipment entirely. How about a Sphere Grid-like table with a certain number of nodes for each action your character can currently take? You could insert power-ups into the slots to improve specific actions. With some creativity this could be worked into whatever character customization system you like - choosing to specialize in Cure and Banish might enable more nodes for those skills to put power-ups in, or allow you to insert more powerful power-ups than usual.

As for different builds within the same job...it really doesn't matter if they all achieve the same thing in different ways. That very fact is still a good thing - giving the player a different game experience, and having to think in different ways. It could add more strategy, as you try to work around your shortcomings and try to find different ways to apply your strengths. It adds more ways to include player skill and innovation into the equation. Having exactly the same resources as everyone else produces very little variation in playstyles. Think of it in fighting game terms - players like options. There are always tiers but ultimately players like to have an ample roster to choose from, and be able to pick the one that suits them best. There should still be options within the most efficient set of strategies.

As it is now, I don't have options on PLD. My best weapon will always be Sword, and there's little I can do about Banish doing poor damage or Holy being MP-inefficient. If I want to use a club, I need to be a WHM - but WHMs and PLDs are very different on a fundamental level.

[Karinya]

Re: Poor concepts of FFXI

You're right; but I feel this is the lesser of both evils. There will always be situational gear, but at the very least you won't be causing gameplay problems. Besides, there are ways to mitigate the problems; the flaws in the equip swap system aren't as easy to remedy.

I feel it's the greater evil. If FFXIV has a graphics engine that doesn't make players blink when they swap gear... exactly what else are the flaws in the equip swap system? That having more gear to choose from makes you more powerful than having less? That's a good thing. It gives players something to chase that isn't just straightforwardly more uber than last patch's gear (i.e. gear inflation).

Inventory? Without PS2 technical limitations FFXIV will be free to allow much more inventory if the devs so choose. (Not to mention all the inventory-expanding things we already have... I personally haven't had a problem with inventory since satchels came out, despite not doing GB 9 and 10.)

The specific sets of gear and stats that exist? FFXIV will be starting from scratch on that front anyway. Although I think some roles are somewhat defined by a single metric (especially DD) which makes it hard to escape different approaches falling into a linear ranking, no matter how much you try to differentiate different approaches to the job.

As for different builds within the same job...it really doesn't matter if they all achieve the same thing in different ways.

If they achieve the same thing, then the player base will judge them not on how they achieve that thing, but on how *well* they achieve that thing. In other words, we're right back at the tyranny of effectiveness and lol[insert job here].

FFXI, with 20 jobs plus subjob combinations, still hasn't really stepped outside the four basic roles common to most MMOs - tank, DD, healer, and buffer/debuffer (five if you count those separately), and various hybrids thereof. Crowd control as more of a role in its own right could happen in a game with more emphasis on multi-enemy encounters, although in practice it's almost always hybridized with other roles because playing a *pure* CC job (as opposed to BLM, or BRD, or EQ enchanter) would probably be really boring. Ditto pulling.

FFXI's split into physical and magical DD, and the different mechanics of each, doesn't really succeed in creating another basic role because almost all individual enemies can be killed just fine by one kind of DD or the other - while they *can* work together through SC+MB, they don't really need to. And there's really only one and a half magic DD jobs, anyway (RDM is too weak to count IMO - they have very minor magic DD capability as part of a hybrid job whose main strengths are definitely in other areas - and I've never seen a BLU even try to do major magical damage, guessing their spells just lack the effectiveness to do so).

That very fact is still a good thing - giving the player a different game experience, and having to think in different ways. It could add more strategy, as you try to work around your shortcomings and try to find different ways to apply your strengths.

It could, but it won't, because a group can just as easily work around your shortcomings by inviting a different build that doesn't have them, but instead has shortcomings that are irrelevant or minimal in the current situation. Consider how BLMs and groups react to the BLM shortcoming that colibri mimic their spells, for example.

It adds more ways to include player skill and innovation into the equation. Having exactly the same resources as everyone else produces very little variation in playstyles. Think of it in fighting game terms - players like options. There are always tiers but ultimately players like to have an ample roster to choose from, and be able to pick the one that suits them best. There should still be options within the most efficient set of strategies.

In fighting games you're not answerable to 5 other players for your performance, and furthermore, unusualness is its own small advantage because you're playing against a human opponent who is used to common characters. That doesn't work in a cooperative MMO and I doubt that a Zangief player would get invited to many parties in Street Fighter Online.

I like variety in fighting games too. But the tyranny of effectiveness largely crushes it in competitive play, even with the unfamiliar tactics advantage (which wouldn't apply against computer-controlled mobs).

I've said a couple times that I would like to see a Star Ocean MMO (technical limitations permitting) - I don't know if you're familiar with that series's action-intensive battle system, but I'm not under any particular illusions that it would avoid norms regarding the most effective ways to be a close combat DD or a ranged DD or whatever, I just think it would be fun (if I could afford a system that could play it without horribly bad framerate or lag). Flexibility of the system doesn't really solve this problem, IMO.

I accidentally deleted the part about PLD options, but you have 19 major options as PLD - PLD/WAR, PLD/MNK, PLD/THF, etc. Most are so low tier that they're not worth pursuing for most purposes. /WAR, /NIN, and /DNC see frequent use (although the last mainly in solo and Campaign) and /RDM and /BLU possibly occasionally. That's not counting how gear can affect each of them. Why are some of those options used more, some used less and many not used at all? The tyranny of effectiveness. PLD/RNG just doesn't usefully do any job that anyone wants done.

[Armando]

Re: Poor concepts of FFXI

I feel it's the greater evil. If FFXIV has a graphics engine that doesn't make players blink when they swap gear... exactly what else are the flaws in the equip swap system? That having more gear to choose from makes you more powerful than having less? That's a good thing. It gives players something to chase that isn't just straightforwardly more uber than last patch's gear (i.e. gear inflation).

I already listed them, quite eloquently if I do say so myself. The more significant being the fact that you can maximize the potential of every action which in turn homogenizes characters in both equipment and performance; and the fact that it ties the player down to macros to perform each individual action instead of making macros into a group of shortcuts for common tasks or a way of automating more complex tasks. It completely degrades the value of the other ways to input commands. Maybe I missed something but I don't think you've addressed these so far.

Gear swapping isn't necessary to avoid gear inflation either; nor has it done FFXI game much good at avoiding it.

It could, but it won't, because a group can just as easily work around your shortcomings by inviting a different build that doesn't have them, but instead has shortcomings that are irrelevant or minimal in the current situation. Consider how BLMs and groups react to the BLM shortcoming that colibri mimic their spells, for example.

That's not the playerbase at work, that's SE's own design flaws at work. This behavior certainly isn't the norm. People don't invite a PLD and then go tank Dhalmels without someone to Erase that 50% Defense Down debuff. People don't invite a NIN to solo tank spiders without Erase+Haste. Parties will take what's available because it's that or possibly not getting any EXP at all.

The fundamental difference is that in those cases you can still go pick a different mob. There's no real need to level off Dhalmels or Spiders. They don't provide the party with any inherent EXP bonus. The BLM/Colibri example is fundamentally flawed; people don't invite BLMs any more even if the target isn't Colibri. The problem runs much deeper than BLM having pros and cons; it's the fact that there are no long any effective ways to make use of its pros in EXP. That is bad game design.

In fighting games you're not answerable to 5 other players for your performance, and furthermore, unusualness is its own small advantage because you're playing against a human opponent who is used to common characters. That doesn't work in a cooperative MMO and I doubt that a Zangief player would get invited to many parties in Street Fighter Online.

It was just an analogy to show how players like options. Don't read too much into it; fighting games and MMOs are obviously different in many fundamental ways.

I like variety in fighting games too. But the tyranny of effectiveness largely crushes it in competitive play, even with the unfamiliar tactics advantage (which wouldn't apply against computer-controlled mobs).

I disagree; effectiveness doesn't always dominate/eliminate/ruin variety. A good fighter (or game in general) has enough variety within the subset of characters/options that are deemed effective. It's just a matter of accepting the fact that some options will inevitably be discarded.

FFXI lacks this variety. I've already said that subs are not customization. I addressed that already; they don't modify the tools PLD has, only adds new ones, which is why most subs ultimately fail. Either the tools are compatible with what PLD does or they don't; there's absolutely no enhancement of the PLD's original traits or JAs involved. No customization there. No ability to emphasize certain PLD abilities at the expense of others. You might as well consider them different jobs with one common ancestor job from which they inherit a base group of abilities.

As such, I do not have 19 major options. I have 3 molds I can cast myself into in a group setting - the exact 3 molds every other PLD has. Players prefer to choose their own style over having a mold premade for them. That's the other problem. This isn't like other FFs where you mix and match one action ability from one job and a counter ability from another or anything like that. You take the whole sub package and you'd better like it.

[Malacite]

Re: Poor concepts of FFXI

While I generally agree on maximizing for efficiency, I really hate just how cookie-cutter some games can be.


My hope with FFXIV is it will succeed with the job system (and maybe gear) where FFXI failed in creating more viable job and skill combinations. I don't care if it works in the most bizarre, ass-backwards manner variety = good.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Poor concepts of FFXI

I think Armando is too obsessed with gear swaps.

The bottom line is this: for any given monster--whichever one--that monster usually has a fairly predictable behavior, made up of possible actions from a very limited selection. That means there's pretty much just a small number of optimal ways to handle that critter. (Often, just one very optimal way with bunch of "Well, if you can't field the jobs or have these kinds of gears, you can do that instead" other ways.)

If gear swapping is eliminated, the optimal strategy would change, but the number of optimal strategies wouldn't increase. The gears would be designed differently, of course, but it also places greater constraint because more gears need to be full-time-able, so you'll either have a smaller selection of gears, or more gears which are functionally nearly indistinguishable.

Gear swapping really isn't the cause of the problem of "single optimal solution" in game play--it's actually a mitigating factor, if anything.

That's why gearing and play styles are so homogeneous; FFXI is closer to an ultra fancy Tic-Tac-Toe vs. a computer opponent than a chess game against a human player of equal caliber to oneself. To fix what's wrong, monsters in general would need a larger repertoire of possible actions, and much, much more sophisticated AI.

I'm talking about learning AI's capable of actively respond to player strategy and attempt to defeat player tactics employed, and have such AI's for the majority of monsters in the game:

"Blink tanking? While feeding me TP? AoE spam for you."
"Most damage not from the guy in front, but from that dude to the side? Switch target."
"Who the heck is curing the tank? One-shot that."
"Hate slow--can the RDM and BRD be neutralized first?"
"I can't win! They're too tough! Run away!!!!"

And more.

Moreover, two different monsters (even of the same species) shouldn't always behave the same way; no two players are exactly alike (IRL), so no two monsters should be exactly alike (in behavior). When every monsters each presents its own unique (and credible) challenge, the fights will become a lot less routine, and players will have to think on their feet instead of relying on a static tried-and-true claim/spawn-to-defeat procedure.

* * *

For all the talk about everyone using identical gear sets, do we really? I don't have all the best gears for any of my three jobs (RDM, PLD, BRD). Do you?

While we're working on better gears, don't we wear something still? Something which are different than the stuff we're trying to get? This is the intermediate game of gearing, and it's a long one (for most people).

[Kailea]

Re: Poor concepts of FFXI

"I can't win! They're too tough! Run away!!!!"

oh god this was the one thing I hated in WoW -.-

and a mob acting like that would be nice, but maybe, only Boss and NM type monster should do this, because that would be crazy for some classes to always have to deal with being targeted for what they do ;p (what I am trying to say is, the "hate system" to me is fine, just needs to be fine-tuned)