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#77 Feb 23 2013 at 8:42 PM Rating: Decent
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WOW the PS3 version looks horrible. I'm surprised they were willing to post that video in public. so much lag


This confirms to me that you're one of those absurdly nitpicky people with graphics. Let's say a videophile to be nice... what in my day we called a "graphics *****." OMG a bit of framerate lag! Looks HORRIBLE! Embarrassing!You can see the seams, and they're coming apart! The world is crumbling before my eyes!

I barely notice a difference.

Archmage Callinon wrote:
In one sense, creating a system as diverse as FFXIV's (or FFXI's for that matter) means that people will think they need to cherry pick the best of the best combinations and reject all others as hopelessly inferior.

Usually this is a ridiculous thing to do.

Now there are obviously combinations that are just silly... like, oh say, BLM/WAR... or maybe MNK/SMN. But most sensible combinations are perfectly fine, deviating only 1 or 2 percentage points off the "optimal" build.

As long as what you're picking makes sense, you should be able to compete, and that's the design challenge with a system like this.


Archmage Callinon wrote:
In one sense, creating a system as diverse as FFXIV's (or FFXI's for that matter) means that people will think they need to cherry pick the best of the best combinations and reject all others as hopelessly inferior.

Usually this is a ridiculous thing to do.

Now there are obviously combinations that are just silly... like, oh say, BLM/WAR... or maybe MNK/SMN. But most sensible combinations are perfectly fine, deviating only 1 or 2 percentage points off the "optimal" build.

As long as what you're picking makes sense, you should be able to compete, and that's the design challenge with a system like this.


Funny that you mention that. This is an artifact from the Dungeons and Dragons era, which still relies on basic statistics like power and intelligence to modify skills. Systems which rely less on these modifiers and design absolute values (or value modified by something other than character statistics) don't have this problem. When those skills are modified by interchangeable attributes, like weapon rating, it's much easier to balance. With assigning absolute values that scale up by level (e.g., the level 20 ice spell does 50 damage, at level 40 does 100 damage), you take away a lot of the mathematics of determining ideal configurations, but make it incredibly easy to balance. If you wanted, you can also use that approach to totally do away with any balance differences whatsoever... e.g., axe skills and fire magic do the exact same DPS at every level.
#78 Feb 24 2013 at 9:56 AM Rating: Good
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Yoshida did say that stats will have a lesser impact on the game than teamwork and performance in ARR than it did in 1.0, which is kind of impressive considering that gear wasn't as gigantic of a performance differential in that game as it was in other MMOs. I believe only Ifrit Extreme and Raven, Nevermore were hard enough to consider having a gear-check.
#79 Feb 24 2013 at 10:55 AM Rating: Excellent
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Kachi wrote:

Archmage Callinon wrote:
In one sense, creating a system as diverse as FFXIV's (or FFXI's for that matter) means that people will think they need to cherry pick the best of the best combinations and reject all others as hopelessly inferior.

Usually this is a ridiculous thing to do.

Now there are obviously combinations that are just silly... like, oh say, BLM/WAR... or maybe MNK/SMN. But most sensible combinations are perfectly fine, deviating only 1 or 2 percentage points off the "optimal" build.

As long as what you're picking makes sense, you should be able to compete, and that's the design challenge with a system like this.


Funny that you mention that. This is an artifact from the Dungeons and Dragons era, which still relies on basic statistics like power and intelligence to modify skills. Systems which rely less on these modifiers and design absolute values (or value modified by something other than character statistics) don't have this problem. When those skills are modified by interchangeable attributes, like weapon rating, it's much easier to balance. With assigning absolute values that scale up by level (e.g., the level 20 ice spell does 50 damage, at level 40 does 100 damage), you take away a lot of the mathematics of determining ideal configurations, but make it incredibly easy to balance. If you wanted, you can also use that approach to totally do away with any balance differences whatsoever... e.g., axe skills and fire magic do the exact same DPS at every level.


I'm am fairly certain I am in the minority but I'm a 'customization junkie'. What you are describing sounds boring to me. Not right or wrong, etc... but boring. I loved the original idea of the Armory System for 1.0. They execution of the idea needed work but I loved the concept. You leveled every job and based on the circumstances you could build any type of character you wanted. If you had leveled Thaumaturge all the way you could have a Gladiator equipped with Sacrifice III beginning at rank 1. Not that you would want to but you could.

Edited, Feb 24th 2013 11:56am by kainsilv
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#80 Feb 24 2013 at 11:22 AM Rating: Decent
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kainsilv wrote:
Kachi wrote:

Archmage Callinon wrote:
In one sense, creating a system as diverse as FFXIV's (or FFXI's for that matter) means that people will think they need to cherry pick the best of the best combinations and reject all others as hopelessly inferior.

Usually this is a ridiculous thing to do.

Now there are obviously combinations that are just silly... like, oh say, BLM/WAR... or maybe MNK/SMN. But most sensible combinations are perfectly fine, deviating only 1 or 2 percentage points off the "optimal" build.

As long as what you're picking makes sense, you should be able to compete, and that's the design challenge with a system like this.


Funny that you mention that. This is an artifact from the Dungeons and Dragons era, which still relies on basic statistics like power and intelligence to modify skills. Systems which rely less on these modifiers and design absolute values (or value modified by something other than character statistics) don't have this problem. When those skills are modified by interchangeable attributes, like weapon rating, it's much easier to balance. With assigning absolute values that scale up by level (e.g., the level 20 ice spell does 50 damage, at level 40 does 100 damage), you take away a lot of the mathematics of determining ideal configurations, but make it incredibly easy to balance. If you wanted, you can also use that approach to totally do away with any balance differences whatsoever... e.g., axe skills and fire magic do the exact same DPS at every level.


I'm am fairly certain I am in the minority but I'm a 'customization junkie'. What you are describing sounds boring to me. Not right or wrong, etc... but boring. I loved the original idea of the Armory System for 1.0. They execution of the idea needed work but I loved the concept. You leveled every job and based on the circumstances you could build any type of character you wanted. If you had leveled Thaumaturge all the way you could have a Gladiator equipped with Sacrifice III beginning at rank 1. Not that you would want to but you could.

Edited, Feb 24th 2013 11:56am by kainsilv


In the game I'm working on, you build a custom character from about 2000 abilities, so you could say that I'm a customization junkie as well. However, there are still no base player statistics to work with. They're not mutually inclusive; you can have one without the other.

I think your opinion represents a classic paradox in game design-- balance vs. competitive building. Some players like to build competitively, like in trading card games--half the challenge is in choosing an ideal configuration. However, the more important the build is, the less balance there is between players. Superior configurations emerge, players feel forced to use them, other players who had a different type of build in mind become resentful of the imbalance, etc...

It's a problem which highlights just how important finding the fine balance is in games. You can balance everything perfectly and then you leave nothing for the build-junkies. You can create a great game for build-junkies and ruin the balance for the average player. Then you'll invariably have to nerf things when you attempt to balance them. There is an inbetween that can be achieved, but it has to be achieved in the numbers, not the "features", not the concepts, or mechanics, or ideas, etc... it's all in the numbers.

Many games just attempt to appeal to a single niche audience that can appreciate that genrefication, and that's how they find success. If you're trying to appeal to a wider audience, or that large audience that appreciates both elements in moderation, you try to strike a balance between combat skill and build skill, so that players can choose how they want to excel.
#81 Feb 24 2013 at 11:39 AM Rating: Decent
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Kachi wrote:
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1) You can perform extra powerful chains. Say you open with one skill, then the icon for another 2 in your hotbar light up, depending on which you choose one of two others light up for the finishing blow so to speak. Not only are there combos, but combo paths you can take with different effects from the skills you use on the monster you're fighting.
2) You still need to watch hate. When we lost to the boss mob of that dungeon, one thing I did was steal hate from the tank accidentally on Archer. Our second time through I used some abilities you can trigger that do things like reduce your hate to allow me to spam for a bit before the effect wore. It feels a little more challenging to manage than say, FFXI, but once you get the hang of it it is a lot of fun.
3) We haven't seen all the abilities yet. My character was only level 35, and they're capping at 50 at launch so there are another 15 levels to see what is coming. Add to that the ability to use some of the skills from other jobs and we have a lot of choices and combinations to choose from, hopefully they will make the "sub job skills" useful in multiple situations so there isn't that perfect build out there that everyone will demand (que Kachi to come rant about this Smiley: tongue

Another thing I was responsible for (other than popping the pods I talked about earlier) was keeping up enfeebs like blind and poison. Between keeping those applied and running through my combos, and watching the environment and the monster behavior, there is enough there to keep a skilled player hopping.


The chaining sounds promising to me, actually. They're clearly going for strategic combat over reflex-based combat. Where many MMOs go wrong is that they don't really offer the player many decisions... hotbar combat isn't necessarily suited to that. If your players aren't having to make tough decisions, e.g., the same rotation of skills is optimal in most situations, then you've failed to create strategic combat. So the chaining holds the promise to add to the decision-making process the question of which combinations/permutations of abilities should be used.

But yes, I'm going to temper that by saying that this conceptual possibility is the easy part. Balancing those possibilities so that the decision is actually tough and meaningful is the hard part. I doubt that most combinations are viable, and would suspect that clearly superior ones will emerge. It all comes down to the balancing act, which I don't believe will be done well.

Which seems, by the way, to reflect one of the central misconceptions a lot of today's designers have about how to make a fun MMO... busy=fun. Of course, that's ridiculous. Busy does not equal fun. It's certainly better than boring, but the question remains, will the combat require you to regularly make meaningful and challenging decisions... or just a lot of easy ones?


It's a lose - lose situation. Make the decisions tough, and the modern brain dead gamer won't be able to deal with actual application of critical thinking. Make the decisions easy, and the base (aka "hard core") MMO players won't be satisfied.
#82 Feb 24 2013 at 11:56 AM Rating: Good
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2000 abilities sounds like a whole lot of redundancy... unless, of course, you call things like "speed +.5%" as abilities.
Btw, there is a (theoretical) solution to a lot of balancing problems in MMOs, and if you are in the business, it wouldn't
hurt if you consider it: auto-balancing. The more a certain ability is used the weaker it becomes. The less people use
that ability, the stronger it becomes. In the end, all builds will be "equal", simply because the combinations balance out
themselves. The same goes for the "let's only kill crabs or pink birds" problem in FFXI. Instead of manually balancing
those cases, a (surprisingly simple) algorythm like
(current exp yield) = ((base XP yield*t*base regeneration rate X)/(number of kills during the preceding interval t) would
make sure that it actually pays off to explore new regions in a MMO.

It's so ridiculous to see MMO programmers (which are, after all, a special subspecies of programmers) try to MANUALLY
do a computer's work...
#83 Feb 24 2013 at 12:42 PM Rating: Decent
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All traits, talents, and skills are abilities... probably about a quarter of which are statistical bonuses. So yeah, 2000 may sound like a lot, but there are probably roughly half that many in, say, GW2. GW2 just doesn't allow you much customization comparatively speaking. Some of them also create the same status affliction, just in different ways. e.g., a player can become "Stuck" because of quicksand, tangling vines, or their feet being trapped in ice. Same effect, different flavor, and we cover an entire line of abilities for pretty much any class you could imagine. But there are about 40 effects, and between those and an infinite list of possible triggers, there are quite a lot of possibilities.

But I don't like auto-balancing at all. It ignores the reasons for an ability's popularity, e.g., fire magic will most likely be more popular than bardic songs. I think it's good to look at user stats and identify abilities which might be overpowered and adjust those manually. A program that flags popular abilities/monster targets could be useful, but honestly I'll be hearing about imbalances from the community before that's probably necessary. A computer program also doesn't know which values to adjust without you telling it how to do so, meaning its solution will probably be a universal one that begins to create homogeneity in the abilities/monsters. I'd rather that decision be left up to me.

#84 Feb 24 2013 at 2:53 PM Rating: Good
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I'm not sure if this has has been mentioned/noticed, but at the 3:00 mark of the Exploration video (benchmark one), in the far background behind the trees there seems to be a massive turtle-like creature. I am super excited that we may get to fight stuff like this in ARR. FFXI never really had any grand scale fights, and it was always something I felt it lacked.

As for everything else, I think things are looking interesting. I can't wait to start out in the new world! I still have jobs to level and a lot of AF to get from v1.0, so curious how they have changed some of that quest line
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#85 Feb 24 2013 at 6:39 PM Rating: Decent
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Oh wow, I didn't notice that. Even if that's just an environmental fixture, that's pretty cool.
#86 Feb 24 2013 at 8:22 PM Rating: Excellent
Grandlethal wrote:
I'm not sure if this has has been mentioned/noticed, but at the 3:00 mark of the Exploration video (benchmark one), in the far background behind the trees there seems to be a massive turtle-like creature. I am super excited that we may get to fight stuff like this in ARR. FFXI never really had any grand scale fights, and it was always something I felt it lacked.

As for everything else, I think things are looking interesting. I can't wait to start out in the new world! I still have jobs to level and a lot of AF to get from v1.0, so curious how they have changed some of that quest line


Amazing catch on that, I have no idea how you noticed Smiley: thumbsup
#87 Feb 24 2013 at 8:25 PM Rating: Decent
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Though I will say, I thought Besieged was a great example of a large-scale fight, as well as some of the Campaign battles. The problem with having one giant monster against 100+ players is that you end up feeling like you're just wailing against a wall. It's pretty much impossible to discern what kind of contribution you're making, because your contribution is less than 1%. Not a very epic or heroic feeling.
#88 Feb 25 2013 at 9:43 PM Rating: Decent
Kachi wrote:
Though I will say, I thought Besieged was a great example of a large-scale fight, as well as some of the Campaign battles. The problem with having one giant monster against 100+ players is that you end up feeling like you're just wailing against a wall. It's pretty much impossible to discern what kind of contribution you're making, because your contribution is less than 1%. Not a very epic or heroic feeling.


I partially agree on this. As much as I love grand scale fights, there does have to be a balance to it. In open world fights like the way FATE battles are designed, I believe there's very little you can do to curb people from gangbanging the mobs into submission with 50+ people. However in instanced content you can scale it to whatever parameters you'd like. 8, 10, 15, 20, 25, 40, etc.

(Slightly off topic:) I pray to the gawds that they can balance the classes appropriately more than anything else honestly. That will also play a role in how they make the fights scale. I think they can do it, it just requires "fine-tuning" and not the overbuffing/heavy-handed nerfing we've seen in the past from SE (as well from Blizzard -_-)
#89 Feb 26 2013 at 9:02 AM Rating: Decent
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Grandlethal wrote:
I'm not sure if this has has been mentioned/noticed, but at the 3:00 mark of the Exploration video (benchmark one), in the far background behind the trees there seems to be a massive turtle-like creature. I am super excited that we may get to fight stuff like this in ARR. FFXI never really had any grand scale fights, and it was always something I felt it lacked.

As for everything else, I think things are looking interesting. I can't wait to start out in the new world! I still have jobs to level and a lot of AF to get from v1.0, so curious how they have changed some of that quest line


Yes I saw that right away..I paused and rewound the video and it did look like a giant turtle.


GuardianZerato wrote:
[quote=Kachi]

(Slightly off topic:) I pray to the gawds that they can balance the classes appropriately more than anything else honestly. That will also play a role in how they make the fights scale. I think they can do it, it just requires "fine-tuning" and not the overbuffing/heavy-handed nerfing we've seen in the past from SE (as well from Blizzard -_-)



Yea in FFXI it was tough. You spend all this time building up a job, getting the best armor, getting your skills capped and the next day they tank that job and its worthless.



I just want a game where if you miss a few days you do not feel like you got left behind. with FFXI I always felt like I was playing catchup since I didn't start the game from day one.. The thing about ffxi is no body ever wanted to go back and do something over. . You know they go and add new content now that required you to finish the old stuff.

I think with FFXI the problem now is there is no new blood coming into the game and they are just happy keeping it going with the current user base.




Edited, Feb 26th 2013 10:18am by Nashred
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#90 Feb 26 2013 at 4:22 PM Rating: Decent
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GuardianZerato wrote:
Kachi wrote:
Though I will say, I thought Besieged was a great example of a large-scale fight, as well as some of the Campaign battles. The problem with having one giant monster against 100+ players is that you end up feeling like you're just wailing against a wall. It's pretty much impossible to discern what kind of contribution you're making, because your contribution is less than 1%. Not a very epic or heroic feeling.


I partially agree on this. As much as I love grand scale fights, there does have to be a balance to it. In open world fights like the way FATE battles are designed, I believe there's very little you can do to curb people from gangbanging the mobs into submission with 50+ people. However in instanced content you can scale it to whatever parameters you'd like. 8, 10, 15, 20, 25, 40, etc.

(Slightly off topic:) I pray to the gawds that they can balance the classes appropriately more than anything else honestly. That will also play a role in how they make the fights scale. I think they can do it, it just requires "fine-tuning" and not the overbuffing/heavy-handed nerfing we've seen in the past from SE (as well from Blizzard -_-)


That, too, is an aspect of the incentive structure within the gameplay, what some game designers refer to as feedback loops. A huge part of what makes a game fun is observing your progress towards your goal. When you're not really getting any meaningful feedback about your performance, it's difficult to enjoy the game. That feedback doesn't necessarily have to be immediate, or even good, but it has to come from somewhere. And when you do a good job, you should get a reward as further feedback. But when the reward isn't tied to your level of performance, the game doesn't feel fair or fun.

That's actually one of the reasons so many players prefer to solo... the feedback is 100% based on their performance. This makes them more engaged, and makes the outcomes more meaningful to them. And that's one of the reasons why I rail so hard against trinity-style party systems. They make a large chunk of the feedback codependent, when individualized performance and feedback really needs to be present as well. It's fine to have both, but I don't think we can count on systems that are entirely cooperative to be successful anymore. When they were the only kind of MMO on the market, it was easy to draw out that niche audience that it appealed to. A big chunk of WoW's success was due to the viability of soloing, drawing in an entirely different crowd of players--a much larger audience. But just because the soloer's market has been tapped doesn't mean that cooperative MMOs are going to appeal to those players. If anything, they're going to slam that MMO and give it a bad rap, and those players who might have enjoyed a more old school system are going to be put off by it.

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