The BLM Problem

[Icemage]

Re: The BLM Problem

Don't like it because the devlopers spent time creating this story and then people start getting mad because they make the game play match the story created. I like what they did with the boat being the only source in because it does draw you back into that world. It gives a feeling of vastness if you don't like the time it takes you can easily pass it by faster by being social.

Story is a flimsy excuse for wasting player's times. I don't buy that argument at all. If S-E had wanted players to be able to get to Whitegate easily, they'd have just implemented a cutscene teleport, just as happens right now with the trip from Sealion's Den to Al'taieu.

No. The reason S-E forced players to take the boat is because they wanted players to homepoint in Whitegate. Plain and simple. It is very easy to get to Jeuno from Whitegate - but impossible to do so in reverse without either resorting to the ship (which isn't even in the most convenient of places), or using the laughable Olduum Ring, which sends you to the back end of beyond in Wajaom Woodlands.

Do you think it was an accident that you can pay the Whitegate teleporter to send you back to your hometown?


Icemage

[Raydeus]

Re: The BLM Problem

No. The reason S-E forced players to take the boat is because they wanted players to homepoint in Whitegate. Plain and simple.

Agreed, however that makes me wonder what exactly are they planning to do.

Jeuno in all 4 zones had as many players as Whitegate has now, but now all those players are in just 1 area creating a huge congestion. What exactly was that supposed to acomplish?

I'm still waiting for the answer.

[Vyuru]

Re: The BLM Problem

Wow, this thread has really expanded since I last checked it...

Minor typo in my last post, I meant to say exp excluded.

As Macht and Aeni hashed out, there are exploits in the game, but we do see SE fixing some of them. For instance it used to be if you were poisoned and talked to a npc, you would not get hurt by poison and it would just wear off eventually, that got fixed. I've heard the AV glitch/cheat was fixed as well.

I think that SE is working on fixing things, but I am sure that it takes time to figure out what you think is the best way to fix something, write the code, test it, and then put it into the game. All while you continue working on your various other projects.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO FIGURE OUT IT WAS A REALLY BAD NERF?

I have to ask, but was it really that bad? Alot of rangers I partied with did maybe 3/4 of their pre nerf damage, which is still a heck of a lot of damage, it still seemed more than the average melee could put out. I mean I really had to ask a ranger in one of my parties "Hey, SE DID change how ranged damage/accuracy works right?" because I saw little difference.

Testing doesn't always give you the answer, it can help to solve the more obvious problems but when it gets more complex it's very unlikely to do much. Also to boot all developers have their own methods to trying and control situations.

Not only that, but let's say you have 200 testers who tested your idea, there are what, 20,000 people who play that job who are going to be trying things as well, I am very sure that the playerbase is going to find things that the testers never thought of.

If that's not enough then we can talk about nerfing subbed utsusemi, multihit weaponskills (they're still way better than 1-2 hit WS in almost all situations) or whatever else.

Nerfing subbed utsusemi I'm all for, I think it would be enough if it was made to be like Blink when subbed, maybe it'll absorb the hit, maybe not. Multihit WS though, i don't know, aren't they supposed to be more powerful than 1-2 hit WS?

And I really have to agree with Lmnop here:

S-E isn't Blizzard ('nuff said). And it's not like EQ where you take 2 months off and come back to find your job role changed (I never played the game, just hearsay from a friend). Things come slow, but at least they're well-thought out. I do believe that BLM will follow a similar pattern. Right now I feel:
-Blms need more "meshing" abilities (meshing with other jobs)
-Brds have too much utility
-Whms are so nice to have that no one complains about the fact that they are utterly 2nd rate
-Pld should be using sword/shield more often than sword/sword
-People need to stop being idiots.

It's not S-E's fault that people don't understand the intentions of the SAM update and it's not S-E's fault that after almost five years, people are just now getting the idea "hey, maybe we should try meleeing HNMs."

It took the HNM community how long to realise that SA+Wheeling Thrust was better than a dragoon who just used Spirits Within? And by HNM community I mean the people who wrote on boards and posted strategies. I was mostly on Gamefaqs/Allakhazam during this time so maybe they were posted elsewhere and I just got a false impression of the situation.


And here is a question for you all.

Blm are fine in parties as is, but TP burn kills mobs faster and as such blm are not preferred, even though you can still get damn good parties with them.

I've heard (no HNM experiance) that melee can do well on HNM/gods, it's just that blm do it better and so melee are not as preferred (with some exceptions)

So hypothetically speaking, how would you feel about making HNMs "easier" so that melees would have more chances to actually participate in these fights, and not to just sit on the sidelines and get swapped in for SA+WS? and I should specify that I mean all jobs, more or less.

If you think no, and you think that melee can already do fine as is on HNMs but you still want to change mobs so that blm can get easier invites, why? I don't really see a difference between the two, and it's just something I'm curious about.

[Macht]

Re: The BLM Problem

Story is a flimsy excuse for wasting player's times. I don't buy that argument at all. If S-E had wanted players to be able to get to Whitegate easily, they'd have just implemented a cutscene teleport, just as happens right now with the trip from Sealion's Den to Al'taieu.
No. The reason S-E forced players to take the boat is because they wanted players to homepoint in Whitegate. Plain and simple. It is very easy to get to Jeuno from Whitegate - but impossible to do so in reverse without either resorting to the ship (which isn't even in the most convenient of places), or using the laughable Olduum Ring, which sends you to the back end of beyond in Wajaom Woodlands.
Do you think it was an accident that you can pay the Whitegate teleporter to send you back to your hometown?
Icemage

True that may be their end result they wanted done, but still everything about transportation there and out is muddled into the story. That's also why when the astral cancadescence isn't there you could basically end up anywere's when either transporter attempts to transport you.

They clearly tied transportation to be part of the story and to be a theme of Aht Urhgan (Hard to get there but easy to get out, just watch your step because that first one can be a doosy).

[Mhurron]

Re: The BLM Problem

The reason S-E forced players to take the boat is because they wanted players to homepoint in Whitegate.

SE doesn't care where you set your HP at.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: The BLM Problem

How this veered of into transportation "issues" I really don't understand. If you you don't do your OPs, don't quest Olduum, didn't raise a chocobo or level /WHM to get to three crags, you get very little sympathy from me about getting around, The world is accessable from Aht'Urghan itself, so if you're still having problems getting around, I don't know what to tell you.

This was about the BLM problem, I believe, so let's get back to it.

On Titan, BLM is now rapidly becoming "last ditch WHM" to JP players. NAs and EUs aren't quite following this trend yet, we still prefer RDM or SMN after WHM for that function. Worse is the TP burn method is so trendy now people are attempting it in non-ToA zones and - here's a shocker - TP burn doesn't really work in CoP or RoZ zones pre-70. These PT slow to a crawling pace just like you'd expect them to and are miserable.

In the last week I've only had but a handful of worthwhile parties and two of those were ones I had to rebuild myself. People seem too dense to understand COR isn't a refresher like BRD and RDM are, that we get a bonus to Evoker's Roll from having a SMN in PT. But even if I do get a PT that understands that, we get like a MNK for a tank.

...

If SE would just skew the difficulty up a little to curb the TP burn trend, most of these 'tard PTs wouldn't even be forming. Another side effect of all this is WHM doesn't suffer one bit and WHM now zooms through levels with greater ease than ever before, leaving melees and tanks scrambling to find something that looks like one. This is like the G1 levels amplified and extended. Only the melees and mages with no real pride in their roles can stomach it.

I can't even say I want to go level DRG or some other melee with PTs like this out there now. Why should I be giving 100 percent to a PT when they're clearly not?

But its should be noted that in the last two weeks, both Phantasy Star Universe and FFXII were released, so a lot of NA and EU players have dropped of the face of all servers. So right now, its not terribly surprising PTs feel this desparate.

[Lmnop]

Re: The BLM Problem

Why should I be giving 100 percent to a PT when they're clearly not?

And that is why I'm still not 75 despite playing this game since NA release...

I enjoy the boat rides. I feel that it's one of the few things left in this game that continues to immerses me in this silly virtual world. I like trying to think of what zone I'm passing by at any given moment and watching the wake and the omgDolphins, every once in a while. But then, I don't like a 20 minute wait when I'm the 6th (and disposable DD slot at that) member of a party.

Really, Aht Urgan should have been more zones. I feel that whenever a Besieged happens, it should have occured as a simultaneous assault in 3 different zones (one for each face of the city, with the 4th face being the port). Thus, you would split the congestion between 3 zones, with system messages across all 3 telling players crucial messages in case they feel the need to zone to an area that needs them more. BUUUUUUUUUUUUT, that's not going to happen now, is it?

Really, Aht Urgan seemed like a dream-come-true when it first came out -- before repercussions followed. For instance -- a camp with lots of mobs on a 2 minute respawn: that's awesome. Hurray for over doubling Vana'diel's capacity for holding merit parties at one time. Then I discovered the exp bonus for Sanction and - well, I guess this changes what I was going to say 'cuz honestly, as soon as I heard that I thought "broken." At any rate, we love our dogs until they bite us (haha).

Make elemental damage spells that are not accompanied by a Magic Burst increase the Magic Resistance of a NM more than a Magic Bursted spell.
This is just a safety measure to encourage players to include melees into their strategies when fighting NMs, rather than just nuking them down to nothing (which is still happening).

I really want to focus on this as I think this is brilliant. Exp parties are broken atm, it's true. But as the last 3 pages have been talking about, that problem seems to lie elsewhere, not with jobs and BLM. Two things I want to see changed with end-game: I want to see the above idea implemented, and I want mob tp-gain to be adjusted (a greataxe swing feeds monsters ~17 tp, while a nuke for 10-20x as much gives a static 10 tp, and SMN BPs give a whomping zero tp. I hope this last one especially gets fixed). Though apparently, Monk's Roll gives a very nifty amount of Subtle Blow...

[Vyuru]

Re: The BLM Problem

I enjoy the boat rides. I feel that it's one of the few things left in this game that continues to immerses me in this silly virtual world. I like trying to think of what zone I'm passing by at any given moment and watching the wake and the omgDolphins, every once in a while.

Despite what others say, I do enjoy the boat rides, especially the Manaclipper ones that pass by that reef by Purogonogo Isle. Besides, have you seen the whales in the ToAU boat rides? That was kinda cool

On Titan, BLM is now rapidly becoming "last ditch WHM" to JP players. NAs and EUs aren't quite following this trend yet, we still prefer RDM or SMN after WHM for that function.

That's not really a new trend though is it? I've been arguing for years that blm might make a better healer than smn.

Worse is the TP burn method is so trendy now people are attempting it in non-ToA zones and - here's a shocker - TP burn doesn't really work in CoP or RoZ zones pre-70. These PT slow to a crawling pace just like you'd expect them to and are miserable.

Out of curiosity, do you know if these are people who went and made a TP burn party on purpose or was it just a case of no nukers (blm, rdm, or smn) available at the time? What level is this going on at? I'll give them the benefit of a doubt in say that when fighting mandies in the jungles, or bats in the citadel, you may not need a nuker with the right weapons, but it seems foolish to go out of your way to invite them at that level.

And it might just be there are some mobs/camps that are friendly to TP burns just because most people wanted a traditional party setup and alot of people use the same camps over and over again. I mean, just look at valkurm, everyone goes there and no one goes to the Maze, Korroloka, or Buburimu. Or look at the Nest/Citadel, used to be hardly anyone went to Altepa and just went to the Nest/Citadel.

Someone trying a tp burn on say, crabs in Kuftal tunnel is just plain foolish.

I don't really like the idea of increasing the mob's difficulty level, even if SE does it right, and even if exping in ToAU zones is still better than exping in the old zones, I think that people will talk about how "nerfed" ToAU zones are and won't want to exp there anymore.

I'm thinking that based on what I've read in forums after each tweak to a job, and also based on my own experiance with the update that gave drgs a new two hour and gave our wyvern subtle blow. After that I got a ton of invites since drg wasn't "nerfed" anymore, yet I got nothing useful to use in parties.

It may not happen, but I am worried about it since alot of the people in the parties I've made have complained about going to the previously godly exp spots because they were "gimped". I'm sorry, but I do not see anything gimped about fighting goblins and dhalmels in bibiki bay, it's very good exp especially when a goblin drops his bomb.

That happened with a standard party setup, whm and rdm wanted ToAU areas even though they were overcrowded, pld and blm wanted RoZ/CoP, and our thief didn't really care.

But that is why I am more in favor of tweaking magic bursts and skill chains, because if you tweak those you are also helping the other jobs who benefit from those, mainly summoner and red mages. You might also be giving dark knights more incentive to use their own spells instead of letting their mp go to waste.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: The BLM Problem

That's not really a new trend though is it? I've been arguing for years that blm might make a better healer than smn.

(1) Its a trend that usually ended in Quifm Island. (2) BLM may be a nice healer, but they're about massive elemental damage, if they wanted to play nurse, they'd be White Mages and WHM/SMN, SMN/WHM and RDM/anything beat BLM in the healing department hands down. Sure, a BLM with lots of WHM experience could do it, but do you think they enjoy it?

Out of curiosity, do you know if these are people who went and made a TP burn party on purpose or was it just a case of no nukers (blm, rdm, or smn) available at the time? What level is this going on at? I'll give them the benefit of a doubt in say that when fighting mandies in the jungles, or bats in the citadel, you may not need a nuker with the right weapons, but it seems foolish to go out of your way to invite them at that level.

This was in the 64-66 range of PTs most recently and they were going to drag me out to do Dhamels/Castopblas? in Bibiki Bay. Even if my COR could have subbed WHM for this PT, it wouldn't have been enough MP to back up any main healer on the damage the tank and melee would have taken, especially if Hobgoblins came into play. This place worked for arrowburn pre-nerf (post-update is an unknown right now) and it is manaburnable, but TP burn I just don't see here until you have VTs to play with. Even then, this zone would be a hard sell for that.

I don't really like the idea of increasing the mob's difficulty level, even if SE does it right, and even if exping in ToAU zones is still better than exping in the old zones, I think that people will talk about how "nerfed" ToAU zones are and won't want to exp there anymore.

I'm thinking that based on what I've read in forums after each tweak to a job, and also based on my own experiance with the update that gave drgs a new two hour and gave our wyvern subtle blow. After that I got a ton of invites since drg wasn't "nerfed" anymore, yet I got nothing useful to use in parties....

But that is why I am more in favor of tweaking magic bursts and skill chains, because if you tweak those you are also helping the other jobs who benefit from those, mainly summoner and red mages. You might also be giving dark knights more incentive to use their own spells instead of letting their mp go to waste.

We can tweak skillchains and magic bursts all we want, but if mob defense and difficulty remain unchecked, nothing changes for BLM no matter how you visualize it. People will continue to exploit what they can if they're allowed to.

What you're essentially saying is fix BLM, but keep the exploits. What does that change?

[Vyuru]

Re: The BLM Problem

but TP burn I just don't see here until you have VTs to play with. Even then, this zone would be a hard sell for that.

I would have to agree, yeah you can do alot of damage to the dhalmels there really fast when they use Berserk, but I just can't see that happening either.

What you're essentially saying is fix BLM, but keep the exploits. What does that change?

What I would hope it would change is that it would make TP burn parties more interested in skillchaining, and would increase a blm's invite rate to take advantage of that.

I think it would be better to add in higher level marids so that chigoe parties (which are mainly traditional party setups) could get exp similar to TP burn parties.

TP burn party people can be happy, normal parties would be happy, and we don't have to worry about how this would affect Besieged and Assaults.

[Legal Fish]

Re: The BLM Problem

Yes, instead of fixing things with creativity, they should just nerf stuff everyone likes so they are forced to do other things.

Sounds great.

[Vyuru]

Re: The BLM Problem

Omgwtfbbqkitten, one thing I'm wondering about is how many high level none ToAU zone TP burn party spots are there? I know of sky, I know of skeletons in King Ranperre's tomb, and I don't know of any others. Granted the Tomb is mostly for monks, but I'm sure that there are some jobs with blunt weapons could join Tomb TP burn parties.

The TP burn trend was out long before ToAU was released, so if SE did tweak ToAU mob's defense/hp, how much of a fix do you think it would be given the none ToAU tp burn party spots?

And what do you think about tweaking how utsusemi works subbed? Almost all TP burn parties depend on having utsusemi and avoiding damage, granted, that may change now with Seigan, but if utsusemi wasn't as effective when subbed, wouldn't that effectively stop TP burns in ToAU zones? IT mobs may have VT levels of def/hp, but they seem to hit as hard or harder than a normal IT mob. I'm especially thinking of Incinerate here, I've seen it one shot a level 68 hume paladin with full hp on windsday, and the crawler was at half health.

If Utsusemi alone was tweaked to be weaker when subbed, it may be enough. Seigan only lasts for a few hits, and given how much hate bounces in a TP burn, I'm guessing that if you draw hate after Seigan is used up and still in it's cooldown stage, you are going to be hit hard and fast, and make your healer spend too much mp trying to keep you alive. If someone provokes it off you, then the other party members will start having hate issues just because Seigan/third eye has a very strict limit to how often it can be used.

[Lmnop]

Re: The BLM Problem

DD/nin usually don't want to hold hate long either. At best, 6 shadows. Casting hurts their DoT. Luckily, every party has "that guy with the parser" and all the DDs know that the slightest hit to their DoT will show. Seigan, on the other hand, will keep them safe for only 4ish hits, but it also gives them a chance to increase their damage through counters. They usually pull hate through WS and hopefully they were smart enough to make it almost kill the mob. What I'm getting at is that /nin isn't super overpowered in most cases of the modern-day burn party.

When my sister took her Bard up to 75 (post CoP, pre ToAU), I think ~50% of her party invites 50+ were tp-spamming parties. So in one incarnation or another, tp-burn. Everyone wanted a slice of that pie. People rant about how great it was in Sky on weapons, and what happens at 75 everyone wants to try at level 21... ToAU just gave even more camps to support it and do it better.

---

Honestly, I enjoy a well-built burn party every once in a while (if the party members are smart -- they usually aren't). I think it should be viable. But I agree with Karinya. They shouldn't get double the exp of standard parties. We've had this joke in my LS for a while now that none of us have never even heard of Skillchains... I guess we have a lame sense of humor but we enjoy it.

[Karinya]

Re: The BLM Problem

It's a joke for you, but for people who are really new within the last six months they really *don't* know how to skillchain. This really hurts when I'm trying to level SAM... Over half the people in my parties that I want to have as SC partners are incompetent to hopeless at the *basics* of participating in a SC. Letting your partner know how much TP you have, lining up in the right places if SATA is involved, and correctly timing the WS. And if my partner manages to get it right, half the time some other idiot will throw in an extra WS, either disrupting the SC completely or preventing a MB. That is, if the mages in pt even know how to MB...

The team tactics that once distinguished FFXI from other MMOs are being neglected because they just aren't worth doing compared to spamming your best WS (defined as the one with the most hits, because multihit WS are *still* not even close to balanced).

[Vyuru]

Re: The BLM Problem

It's a joke for you, but for people who are really new within the last six months they really *don't* know how to skillchain.

I can see making allowences for the low level stuff, or right when thief gets SATA (everyone learning how to work with it) But really, people should know how to work with it in a party. How high can someone be in six months? I honest to goodness have a hard time believing that people in the lvl 30-60+ range would ignore skillchains. Especially given that you fight alot of crabs and beatles in those ranges, or I should say that those are the preferred exp targets, there might be some other mob more TP burn friendly that I don't know about.

The team tactics that once distinguished FFXI from other MMOs are being neglected because they just aren't worth doing compared to spamming your best WS (defined as the one with the most hits, because multihit WS are *still* not even close to balanced).

Most of my gaming experiance has been with Dragoon, so I'm not that familiar with how some of the other jobs work, so I have to ask is that really the case?

For instance with dragoon, Penta Thrust is great, but it seems to be rather inaccurate since it's not uncommon to miss at least 1 hit with it, I would rather use Skewer for it's higher damage per hit. If Penta thrust hits 5/5, it'll do more damage than Skewer, 4/5, roughly the same damage with Skewer slightly in the lead, 3/5, Skewer is way more powerful.

Then there is Wheeling Thrust, a highly accurate WS that is very SC friendly with the jobs I like to invite to my parties, and can open or close light SC. It does slightly less damage than Skewer on it's low hits, but it has the potential for doing far more damage. I've seen 700+ WT as a drg/war on those fire crawlers, no double attack and not sure if that is a critical hit, very uncommon true, but still more powerful than skewer or penta thrust on colibri which are weak to piercing.

So for me, rough order of WS preference would have to be Wheeling Thrust > Skewer > Penta Thrust, even though Penta thrust deals more hits.

Given the subject of the thread, I know it's a stupid expectation but I would expect people to take things like that into consideration.


EDIT:

Just thought of something, I have seen more powerful Skewers and Penta Thrusts but only with a bard in the party and 2x +attack songs + berserk