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PVP Worlds...Follow

#177 Jun 02 2013 at 3:38 PM Rating: Good
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Pawkeshup, Averter of the Apocalypse wrote:


Look around you. Just look. If you were a developer, these are your customers. They are telling you the product they want to see. And you are telling them that they are wrong. Marketing 101 hotshot. Here's a community clawing at your door, wanting a specific experience, and, if you had your way, you would not be giving it to them. Instead, you insist on making your ideal game. That you like. And sure, others will, but blinding yourself that there (gasp) is another way is nothing short of career suicide.

Listen to the player base. They are who pays your salary.

Edited, Jun 2nd 2013 5:33pm by Pawkeshup


+one million
#178 Jun 02 2013 at 3:51 PM Rating: Decent
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2,232 posts
Parathyroid wrote:
Pawkeshup, Averter of the Apocalypse wrote:


Look around you. Just look. If you were a developer, these are your customers. They are telling you the product they want to see. And you are telling them that they are wrong. Marketing 101 hotshot. Here's a community clawing at your door, wanting a specific experience, and, if you had your way, you would not be giving it to them. Instead, you insist on making your ideal game. That you like. And sure, others will, but blinding yourself that there (gasp) is another way is nothing short of career suicide.

Listen to the player base. They are who pays your salary.

Edited, Jun 2nd 2013 5:33pm by Pawkeshup


+one million

I wish there was a slow clap emote. +a million more from me.
#179 Jun 02 2013 at 3:56 PM Rating: Good
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Pawk, that's one of the best rants I've ever read.

Here. Smiley: cookie. You've earned it!
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#180 Jun 02 2013 at 4:02 PM Rating: Decent
Parathyroid wrote:
Ostia wrote:
Parathyroid wrote:
Ostia wrote:
Well what kachi says is not that hard to understand, the problem is people are confusing roles of the trinity with how a class should work, they also cannot let their vision of how a class traditionally operates go for some unknown reason, i have actually never understood why a caster has to be this weak paper wearing guy, and the excuse that "Well it's Final Fantasy" is a cop out at best, Sephiroth was expert spell caster, who was a sword master also, in FFVI characters could wield swords as good as they casted spells etc etc.

Should a white mage beat a warrior ? Not always, but he should be able to pose a threat. Anyways carry on Smiley: lol You guys are hilarious



How is an individuals personal -Opinion- a cop out?

You can't understand why a WHM should be weaker than a Dragoon? Let's review... A WHM wears a robe, possibly even a cool rope to tie their robe, at best they have a piece of jewelry around their neck... their main source of offense is curing themselves. Ohhh they may also get an awesome wooden weapon that resembles that of a kitchen appliance.

A DRG has a dragon with them... yes a mother funking dragon, if you've seen game of thrones you should probably know what this entails. They also have on full body armor from head to toe, which presumably would stand up to the white mage's kitchen appliance. To top it off, they jump 100 feet in the air, and stab you with a diamond tipped 12 foot lance...

If you still can't understand why people think it's crazzzzyyyyyyyyyyyy that a WHM should not be as useful in the same roll as a DRG, then we can just never possibly understand each other.

Also, the same argument... I now say that Beastmaster and Dark Knight should be able to heal just as well as a WHM. It's absolutely asinine that a DARK KNIGHT cannot heal as well as a white mage. I can't believe the gull of anyone who doesn't believe this! They must be complete buffoons, clinging to their Final Fantasy ways... the idiots.



Edited, Jun 2nd 2013 3:22pm by Parathyroid

Edited, Jun 2nd 2013 3:25pm by Parathyroid


Dragoons do not always have dragons, again you are basing your statement on what you "Believe" a dragoon to be, Kain in FFIV (THE DRAGOON OF DRAGOONS) had no dragon Smiley: lol Why should a white mage die the moment he see's anybody with a weapon ? Would it be crazy to say that a white mage would be able to put up a barrier/shield to block damage ? Not really, they after all have spells like Protect/Barrier/Haste/Slow/Stone/Blind/Holy. Would it be crazy if in a battle a white mage spots a Paladin/Dragoon/Archer and cast blind, making them useless then moves in for the kill ?

Most of the bosses in Final Fantasy, have been Magic wielding fiends.... How come they dint just say "Oh ok your main character has a sword... Sorry i give up, just kill me please" This notion that just because you can use magic, you have your hands tied, and should die 100% of the time as soon as a melee or a DD targets you, is silly and unrealistic. Should a White Mage out damage a Dragoon ? No! But he should pose a threat none the less.


Fine dragoon, warrior, dark knight, beast master, red mage, black mage, blue mage, ranger, archer, monk, puppet master, ninja, samurai, corsair, summoner, paladin, school child with real weapon... all jobs which should kick WHMs ***.

Edit: I forgot Fisherman and Botanist.

Edit 2: I do tend to agree with you Ostia towards your point regarding PVP... However, I guess I just come from the camp that when PvEing, the party should have a healer. WHM should not be some damage dealing brute amongst the group. However you're right... I have no issue with giving WHM the ability to win a 1v1 in PVP... I think distinct rolls should be played in PvE however.

Edited, Jun 2nd 2013 5:09pm by Parathyroid


See this is where all this discussion has gone offrails, we started talking about PVP and world PVP, then it turned into well but "Final Fantasy Series has been this way, therefore FF Online should be the same" then into well "PVE balance blablabla" The fact is that PVE and PVP are going to be totally balanced differently upon each other, the abilities that you will have in PVE, will not be the ones you will have in PVP, so there will be no "PVE Suffers because of PVP" threads and complaints, now should i white mage have a few offensive spells in PVE ? Sure! It would add flavor to the class, and probably get more people to play healer, but other than that, on PVE, a white mage should not even touch a DD in damage, but in PVP, he should be able to stand his ground. If not everybody is gonna end up playing the one class that is OP, and thus pvp will become boring and revolve around one single class or one single ability.
#181 Jun 02 2013 at 4:06 PM Rating: Good
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With the way yoshi has designed the game with pve and pvp having separate abilities, I completely agree with everything you said Ostia.
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#182 Jun 02 2013 at 4:13 PM Rating: Good
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Ostia wrote:
See this is where all this discussion has gone offrails, we started talking about PVP and world PVP, then it turned into well but "Final Fantasy Series has been this way, therefore FF Online should be the same" then into well "PVE balance blablabla" The fact is that PVE and PVP are going to be totally balanced differently upon each other, the abilities that you will have in PVE, will not be the ones you will have in PVP, so there will be no "PVE Suffers because of PVP" threads and complaints, now should i white mage have a few offensive spells in PVE ? Sure! It would add flavor to the class, and probably get more people to play healer, but other than that, on PVE, a white mage should not even touch a DD in damage, but in PVP, he should be able to stand his ground. If not everybody is gonna end up playing the one class that is OP, and thus pvp will become boring and revolve around one single class or one single ability.

OK, hold the phone. Let me get this straight.

You want them to design PvP-specific spells/abilities for each job, and balance those within the PvP arena, then build PvE specific spells/abilities, and balance them within the PvE arena?

So... you want to double development time, resource usage, and bug patching/feature upgrades... just so you can PvP?

Yea, you know what, that sounds TOTALLY reasonable, I don't see WHY no company has EVER done that before, I mean I literally see NO downside to it... Smiley: disappointed
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#183 Jun 02 2013 at 4:15 PM Rating: Good
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Pawkeshup, Averter of the Apocalypse wrote:
Ostia wrote:
See this is where all this discussion has gone offrails, we started talking about PVP and world PVP, then it turned into well but "Final Fantasy Series has been this way, therefore FF Online should be the same" then into well "PVE balance blablabla" The fact is that PVE and PVP are going to be totally balanced differently upon each other, the abilities that you will have in PVE, will not be the ones you will have in PVP, so there will be no "PVE Suffers because of PVP" threads and complaints, now should i white mage have a few offensive spells in PVE ? Sure! It would add flavor to the class, and probably get more people to play healer, but other than that, on PVE, a white mage should not even touch a DD in damage, but in PVP, he should be able to stand his ground. If not everybody is gonna end up playing the one class that is OP, and thus pvp will become boring and revolve around one single class or one single ability.

OK, hold the phone. Let me get this straight.

You want them to design PvP-specific spells/abilities for each job, and balance those within the PvP arena, then build PvE specific spells/abilities, and balance them within the PvE arena?

So... you want to double development time, resource usage, and bug patching/feature upgrades... just so you can PvP?

Yea, you know what, that sounds TOTALLY reasonable, I don't see WHY no company has EVER done that before, I mean I literally see NO downside to it... Smiley: disappointed


Pretty sure it's already been announced that the pve and pvp abilities will be separate. I actually like the idea.
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#184 Jun 02 2013 at 4:19 PM Rating: Good
Pawkeshup, Averter of the Apocalypse wrote:
You know, I've been very good. I've read this thread, had my little say with Gaxey, and tossed in a one off comment because, honestly, I did not want to wade into this argument with someone that, quite honestly, has an opinion far too high of themselves, their knowledge, and their opinions on game design.

You said you weren't arrogant. But then you post this:
Kachi wrote:
2: I can concede that my last comment sounded condescending, but come on guys. I've been saying some of these things very explicitly for a while now, and there's been very little effort to understand my point of view and a lot of effort to argue it. And I'm very familiar with that feeling--from talking to people who don't understand evolution. So I sincerely apologize if it came across as condescending, but I was just saying that that's how you're making me feel.

Are you some major industry player? Have you made a Triple-A, multi-million-dollar MMO that we've heard of? I mean, please, enlighten me. From what I gathered, you've studied programming, maybe even work within the industry.

And yet you're exemplifying what is entirely wrong with it at the same time.

Look around you. Just look. If you were a developer, these are your customers. They are telling you the product they want to see. And you are telling them that they are wrong. Marketing 101 hotshot. Here's a community clawing at your door, wanting a specific experience, and, if you had your way, you would not be giving it to them. Instead, you insist on making your ideal game. That you like. And sure, others will, but blinding yourself that there (gasp) is another way is nothing short of career suicide.

In addition, you keep calling down all these other games saying that they are unbalanced, even agreeing that "most MMOs ARE poorly designed". Gee, really? So, hotshot, where's your MMO? Where's your practical expertise that has shown that your methodology, your design theory, is so sound that your game will be a perfect, unerring gem?

You see, you've been bothering me this whole time, preaching from your soapbox that you know better, that you're having to come down among us and educate us because we're all just @#%^tard gamers who can't understand how simple it would be to balance a game. You're basically saying that almost every single major development house, all those programmers, everyone who has laid hands on a game, just doesn't get how to make them?And you do? Again, please show me a link to your game, I'd loooooove to see what your design is.

You see, you're making a cardinal sin that this industry is making over and over: Misjudging their audience. Square-Enix stated that Tomb Raider was a failure. Let me repeat that for you. Square-Enix stated that Tomb Raider was a failure. It sold 3.4 million units, and was deemed to not meet expectations. And why? The developer thought the players wanted some new fancy engine, Hollywood caliber actors and a bunch of other very expensive yet ultimately useless window dressing.

You know what was a successful game? Minecraft. @#%^ing Minecraft, made by a tiny team, with graphics and gameplay that no Triple-A developer would have touched with a 10-foot pole. That game would have needed a ton of improvements before anyone even looked at it. And yet, the money rolled in. Why? Because the developer listened to their audience. The Final Fantasy audience does not want a balanced PvP experience, no matter how "easy" you think it may be. No matter how explicitly you feel you've explained it to us simpletons of the forum who just aren't getting it.

See, we get it. We get that you'd prefer a game made that way. We get that you think that mathematically, that would be a great game. Here's the thing: WoW isn't @#%^ing balanced, and it has 12 million players at one point, and still boasts 8 million. And Rogues will still totally rape an unsuspecting player with little hope of a 50/50 win. You see, theory is a wonderful thing, but it can often conflict with reality. If you learn one thing from this thread, learn this:

Listen to the player base. They are who pays your salary.

Edited, Jun 2nd 2013 5:33pm by Pawkeshup


Wrong! FFXI would not be the game it was if Tanaka listened to his fanbase. Hate him or love him, the game was as good as it was, because he had a vision, and actually carried it Out. The moment a company starts taking orders from their fanbase is the moment their game will spiral down into the abyss. I will give you 2 examples in WOW :) When wow was riding BC into WOTLK, people wanted and demanded a more hardcore approach, they wanted the next expansion to follow BC progress, which was very old school, content was gated, and you had to follow a path, Blizzard ignored the player base and delivered Wrath, and it was a success like they have not seen since or before, they reached 14 million players subs during Wrath. But what happened ? They went to work into Cata, and still everybody felt, they needed to make the expansion more hardcore, and blizzard this time, followed suit and made cata 20X more hardcore than what Wrath was.... And what was the result ? A huge failure, they went from 14 million to 10 Million, droves of people left, end game was horrible, heroics where horrible etc etc. Is the game still successful ? Yes! Is it as successful as it once was ? Not at all.

I have seen this problem creep up in XIV too, and i have predicted that it will be a major if the game does become a success, because yoshi has already been more than willing to do was the player base says, and once you start doing that, at what point do you say No ? Remember when he said "I am perfectly fine with how power level works, and is intended to be that way" yet a month later of being hounded by the crazy fans who felt "But but if somebody gets 50, it negates me being 50, so i am not a snowflake no more :( ) what did he do ? He nerfed it, and the fanbase loved him, but what happens when the fanbase that have been dictating how the game progresses, becomes the minority ? You all do realize that hardcore XI players are not the main demographic that SE is aiming for... So what happens when the casuals come pouring in, and start making demands ? Are you all gonna say "Hey do not listen to them!?" Why not ? They are paying the bill afterall right ?

A developer should have a vision of what his game should be, and sure he should listen to his fanbase in some aspects, but he should not divert from the vision of the game he has, because then the game will suffer for it, because he might listen to you in one or two things, but he will still continue to move foward into that vision he has.
#185 Jun 02 2013 at 4:23 PM Rating: Decent
Pawkeshup, Averter of the Apocalypse wrote:
Ostia wrote:
See this is where all this discussion has gone offrails, we started talking about PVP and world PVP, then it turned into well but "Final Fantasy Series has been this way, therefore FF Online should be the same" then into well "PVE balance blablabla" The fact is that PVE and PVP are going to be totally balanced differently upon each other, the abilities that you will have in PVE, will not be the ones you will have in PVP, so there will be no "PVE Suffers because of PVP" threads and complaints, now should i white mage have a few offensive spells in PVE ? Sure! It would add flavor to the class, and probably get more people to play healer, but other than that, on PVE, a white mage should not even touch a DD in damage, but in PVP, he should be able to stand his ground. If not everybody is gonna end up playing the one class that is OP, and thus pvp will become boring and revolve around one single class or one single ability.

OK, hold the phone. Let me get this straight.

You want them to design PvP-specific spells/abilities for each job, and balance those within the PvP arena, then build PvE specific spells/abilities, and balance them within the PvE arena?

So... you want to double development time, resource usage, and bug patching/feature upgrades... just so you can PvP?

Yea, you know what, that sounds TOTALLY reasonable, I don't see WHY no company has EVER done that before, I mean I literally see NO downside to it... Smiley: disappointed


Well that is what Yoshi-P has stated and even tho i think he is an overrated developer at this point, he has the right idea, if you are gonna have PVP in your game, that is the way it should be designed, so that if you make a nerf or a buff on the PVE side, it does not affect PVP and vice versa, both camps will be happy, it also reduces alot of the problems developing abilities for a class into the future, because now you dont have to worry about "Well if we give X class this abilitie, how will it be exploited in PVP" etc etc.
#186 Jun 02 2013 at 4:29 PM Rating: Decent
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ill never understand the need for an open world PvP server. The only reason you would want this is because you have the intention of just walking up to someone and ruining their day. If you don't have this intention, then why is an accept/decline option not good enough?

Imagine the drama doing kings in XI would be, on top of the drama their already was without open world PvP.
#187 Jun 02 2013 at 4:29 PM Rating: Good
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Just can't make a post without getting a dig in there can ya Ostia lol

Edited, Jun 2nd 2013 3:30pm by LebargeX
#188 Jun 02 2013 at 4:40 PM Rating: Excellent
I agree with just about everything Ostia recently said, except for where he disagrees with Pwk.

FFXI was released at a time in which there was very little competition, and the genre was still young. It could be argued that players didn't really know what they wanted yet, because the genre hadn't really been thoroughly fleshed out. Now, we're all familiar with what makes a successful MMO, and we're familiar with the different styles of MMOs out there. Players know what they want. If a developer sets off to just do his own thing rather than listen to his audience, then there's a big chance that people will be very unhappy with the finished product.

Otherwise, agreed that separate PvP and PvE abilities are the way to go, in order to preserve the style of gameplay that is unique to the Final Fantasy franchise.
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#189 Jun 02 2013 at 4:41 PM Rating: Decent
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Ostia wrote:
Wrong! FFXI would not be the game it was if Tanaka listened to his fanbase. Hate him or love him, the game was as good as it was, because he had a vision, and actually carried it Out.
OK, you want to play that card?

Here's what FFXI wasn't: WoW.

You see, FFXI hit the ground first. But it's difficulty curve, its lack of a tutorial, instead relying on a rather thick old-school manual, and challenging mechanics led it to not leading the pack, but rather play second fiddle to WoW's easy-to-access gameplay. Had FFXI been the game it is today, with the ability to solo, some degree of tutorial, and what not, it could have been at least a rival to WoW, if not nearly as big as WoW. Final Fantasy has millions of console fans. It had a built in audience. If they had blown them away, or even adjusted to player feedback sooner, there would not have been server merges. There would not have been a loss of players.

You're right, we got Tanaka's game. Those of us masochistic enough to stick with it got it in the *** from Tanaka over and over again too. Honestly, that is why I initially said no to FFXIV. I did not want that experience again because I HATED it. I did it once, I was not going to do it again.

Ostia wrote:
The moment a company starts taking orders from their fanbase is the moment their game will spiral down into the abyss. I will give you 2 examples in WOW :) When wow was riding BC into WOTLK, people wanted and demanded a more hardcore approach, they wanted the next expansion to follow BC progress, which was very old school, content was gated, and you had to follow a path, Blizzard ignored the player base and delivered Wrath, and it was a success like they have not seen since or before, they reached 14 million players subs during Wrath.

A wonderful example... not.

The vocal players were asking for hardcore, but Blizzard knew their market better. They knew not gating the content would result in players loving the game more, making it feel more massive and expansive. They didn't want just the player base they had, they wanted the player base who wasn't playing. You have missed one other major statement. WotLK also had a massive ad campaign. William Shatner, Mr. T, Verne Troyer, Ozzy Ozborne... they rammed that expansion down the throats of not just the players, but the non-players, the TV watching crowd who had heard about their game but thought it sounded TOO hardcore.

This is an example of why FFXI was not nearly the success it could have been. The team at Blizzard knew if they ramped up the difficulty, and gated content, people would not come.

Ostia wrote:
But what happened ? They went to work into Cata, and still everybody felt, they needed to make the expansion more hardcore, and blizzard this time, followed suit and made cata 20X more hardcore than what Wrath was.... And what was the result ? A huge failure, they went from 14 million to 10 Million, droves of people left, end game was horrible, heroics where horrible etc etc. Is the game still successful ? Yes! Is it as successful as it once was ? Not at all.

Another wonderful example.

Not.

The game has been out for a very, very long time. The level caps are huge now. Gear fatigue and grind fatigue are a thing now. There are a ton of new MMOs in the space, and a lot of them are free-to-play. People are leaving for many, many reasons. Could the expansion be one of them? Certainly. Destroying the entire original world could have something to do with it, too. I'm sure if someone came along and took a sledgehammer to Bastok, San D'Oria and Windurst, you'd see people contemplating leaving, wondering where the hell their game was going.

And now, look at what I said before: They used WotLK as a way to get the non-MMO player into the game. They did. And when they went back to the design the community wanted, those who weren't onboard likely left. More or less, proving that had they listened to their players, the numbers might have stayed the same or maybe even increased slowly, but instead they catered to people NOT in their demographic and the gamble payed off, mainly because they knew people would be convinced to play.

Ostia wrote:
I have seen this problem creep up in XIV too, and i have predicted that it will be a major if the game does become a success, because yoshi has already been more than willing to do was the player base says, and once you start doing that, at what point do you say No ? Remember when he said "I am perfectly fine with how power level works, and is intended to be that way" yet a month later of being hounded by the crazy fans who felt "But but if somebody gets 50, it negates me being 50, so i am not a snowflake no more :( ) what did he do ? He nerfed it, and the fanbase loved him, but what happens when the fanbase that have been dictating how the game progresses, becomes the minority ? You all do realize that hardcore XI players are not the main demographic that SE is aiming for... So what happens when the casuals come pouring in, and start making demands ? Are you all gonna say "Hey do not listen to them!?" Why not ? They are paying the bill afterall right ?

A developer should have a vision of what his game should be, and sure he should listen to his fanbase in some aspects, but he should not divert from the vision of the game he has, because then the game will suffer for it, because he might listen to you in one or two things, but he will still continue to move foward into that vision he has.

Yes, a developer should have a goal, a plan, but at the end of the day, that plan may need to change. You cannot exist in a vacuum. You want to see what happens with that? Look at FFXI's lifecycle. It started off big, then withered and died as they refused to respond to players. It finally had a resurgence when they became more receptive to player feedback, and now is starting to find an audience again. Listening to your audience =/= doing what they say. It means to understand the game they are asking for, and not outright denying it. If you want to, sure, do so, but it is at your own risk. Many., MANY MMO developers have learned that lesson the hard way.
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Olorinus the Ludicrous wrote:
The idea of old school is way more interesting than the reality
#190 Jun 02 2013 at 5:02 PM Rating: Decent
The only reason why Blizzard beat FFXI, was because of vision, XI and WOW where designed with EQ as their blueprint, yet we got 2 different results, because Blizzard was way ahead of the pack as far as what the Genre needed, XI was out from the start into being a FF version of EQ.

I am not saying they should not listen to their audience, but they should not make a habit of following whatever the audience wants all the time, a developer should have a vision of what their game should be, because if you start taking orders from the audience, you will spend an awful lot of time, going back and forth fixing the game to what demographic happens to be the more vocal one at the time.

#191 Jun 02 2013 at 5:02 PM Rating: Decent
LebargeX wrote:
Just can't make a post without getting a dig in there can ya Ostia lol

Edited, Jun 2nd 2013 3:30pm by LebargeX


Hahaha! Smiley: lol If i could i would rate you up Smiley: lol
#192 Jun 02 2013 at 5:23 PM Rating: Excellent
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Thayos wrote:
Now, we're all familiar with what makes a successful MMO, and we're familiar with the different styles of MMOs out there. Players know what they want. If a developer sets off to just do his own thing rather than listen to his audience, then there's a big chance that people will be very unhappy with the finished product.


I think the jury is still out on what makes a successful MMO, to be honest.

Just look at all the grand, spectacular belly flops of recent death row MMOs (SWTOR, Tera, Rift) and you'll see what I mean. People may have liked WoW, but anyone (and I mean anyone) who has tried to duplicate that success has fallen way below expectations for both the consumers and the investors. Modern MMOs have mostly been ending up in the old F2P bin in a final desperate move to recoup investment losses, or in some cases, just folding altogether in utter bankruptcy.

Something like Minecraft was organic and simple, not a big-budget affair where it was either the "next WoW" or a colossal waste of time and money for all involved.

Something like FFXI which modestly made SE rich a few hundred thousand subscribers at a time, should have been a good foundation for the ill-fated successor, FFXIV, but we all know how that turned out.

Which just goes to show we still don't know what makes a successful MMO. All I see is a zombie apocalypse of undead MMOs surrounding the few living subscriber-based MMOs left and they're starting to run out of places to hide before they have their brains eaten by this undying field of F2P games.
#193 Jun 02 2013 at 5:36 PM Rating: Decent
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Pawkeshup, Averter of the Apocalypse wrote:

Here's what FFXI wasn't: WoW.

You see, FFXI hit the ground first. But it's difficulty curve, its lack of a tutorial, instead relying on a rather thick old-school manual, and challenging mechanics led it to not leading the pack, but rather play second fiddle to WoW's easy-to-access gameplay. Had FFXI been the game it is today, with the ability to solo, some degree of tutorial, and what not, it could have been at least a rival to WoW, if not nearly as big as WoW. Final Fantasy has millions of console fans. It had a built in audience. If they had blown them away, or even adjusted to player feedback sooner, there would not have been server merges. There would not have been a loss of players.

You're right, we got Tanaka's game. Those of us masochistic enough to stick with it got it in the *** from Tanaka over and over again too. Honestly, that is why I initially said no to FFXIV. I did not want that experience again because I HATED it. I did it once, I was not going to do it again.

No FFXI definitely was not WoW. Agree with lack of tutorial, no easy to access gameplay, & no xp efficient way to solo. But your leaving out the subscription model and the disparity with the transition from single player rpg to mmorpg. Gone were the mountains of story leading you through every step of the journey and it got replaced by the mmo gating, overly long progression, and time sinks. All of that led to FFXI as it is today. Which is still their most profitable FF to date.

I did not hate Tanaka's vision. But yes he did go a tad overboard with the masochism.

Pawkeshup wrote:
The vocal players were asking for hardcore, but Blizzard knew their market better. They knew not gating the content would result in players loving the game more, making it feel more massive and expansive. They didn't want just the player base they had, they wanted the player base who wasn't playing. You have missed one other major statement. WotLK also had a massive ad campaign. William Shatner, Mr. T, Verne Troyer, Ozzy Ozborne... they rammed that expansion down the throats of not just the players, but the non-players, the TV watching crowd who had heard about their game but thought it sounded TOO hardcore.

This is an example of why FFXI was not nearly the success it could have been. The team at Blizzard knew if they ramped up the difficulty, and gated content, people would not come.

WoW is not easy. It's easy to level but their endgame is not what I would call a joke. It was just more accessible than every mmo around during that time. ARR is taking the right steps towards accessibility. But it still needs to be different enough even borrowing standards from other mmos to glisten in the shimmering sunrise.

Pawkeshup wrote:

Yes, a developer should have a goal, a plan, but at the end of the day, that plan may need to change. You cannot exist in a vacuum. You want to see what happens with that? Look at FFXI's lifecycle. It started off big, then withered and died as they refused to respond to players. It finally had a resurgence when they became more receptive to player feedback, and now is starting to find an audience again. Listening to your audience =/= doing what they say. It means to understand the game they are asking for, and not outright denying it. If you want to, sure, do so, but it is at your own risk. Many., MANY MMO developers have learned that lesson the hard way.

Couldn't agree more with this. But with the exception that sometimes even though the devs look at a project and think. "Omg... How are we going to do that?" Then just dropping the more riskier endeavors. They need to step out of the comfort zone every once in awhile.
#194 Jun 02 2013 at 6:24 PM Rating: Decent
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9,997 posts
I hope you'll understand if I don't respond to most of this.

BartelX wrote:
Kachi wrote:
As a matter of fact, I have been. I even said that you probably wouldn't even notice a difference in the gameplay. It's stuff that's invisible to the players. It's numbers on the backend.


I'm not trying to open a whole new can of worms, and I'm assuming you'll just ignore my post anyways, but what we're all arguing is that you WILL notice a difference in gameplay. What I've been arguing from the start is that you aren't just going to tweak a couple numbers and POOF! All jobs are balanced and nothing else changes! That's just not going to work, due to the variables of an ever changing game, and also due to the fact that players can and will always find a way to exploit things to ruin the balance you are trying to create. It would be a constant struggle of trying to keep everything in check to the point where, I and a lot of others think that the gameplay would have to be dumbed down in order to keep everything perfectly balanced.

I personally think this because every time you are adding in new variables, be it to classes or to PvE encounters, you are messing up your balance and forced to attempt to rebalance it. The overwhelming amount of development time that would be required to constantly balance this doesn't make sense, so I think most companies would just start simplifying things, removing or just not adding new variables, and turning the gameplay into a generic, boring slugfest where everyone is as good as everyone else and no one really excels at anything. Perhaps I'm wrong, but unless we see it in action, we won't know.

I know you hate using GW2 as an example, but it's actually a very good example of this, because there still ARE tank roles, DD roles, and healing roles in group play. The problem is, they've been so watered down and monotinized in order to balance the classes, that they feel very generic and boring. This is I think the problem you'd run into in the model you're trying to explain.


Re: variables, the purpose of doing it this way is so that you don't have to readjust character variables. The only weakness to the method in that regard is that if you DO want to update a class that is already balanced, you might have to update all the classes unilaterally, but arguably you'd do that anyway rather than play favorites with a class.
Re: GW2, No, because we're not watering down the roles--I said that before. I said that exact thing.

I'm going to make this simple: you don't know what I'm arguing. That's very clear. So there's no point in providing a counterpoint until you do.

Quote:
Parathyroid wrote:


As a matter of fact, I have been. I even said that you probably wouldn't even notice a difference in the gameplay. It's stuff that's invisible to the players. It's numbers on the backend. The only gameplay difference is that you can use more types of party configurations viably. If that automatically sounds like a kind of game you wouldn't want to play, then, fine, fair enough, you got me.

Final thought: most Final Fantasy titles do not require a dedicated healer for the party to succeed.


In that case if that is LITERALLY what you are arguing then you are exactly right... it IS like you're trying to teach evolution to those who don't understand biology.

How can you make an argument regarding some technical "backend" issue which we have no intimate knowledge of, which might I add, I think I've read you're a programmer... therefore you do have the technical knowledge, to people who don't share the same technical knowledge as you?


It doesn't require programming knowledge (IANAP). It does require knowledge of how games are designed and balanced. There are multiple values associated with every ability and trait--statistical algorithms and modifiers, ranges, timers, etc. As a system, you balance ALL those values against the monster values that you design for encounters.

The usual way to balance these is to throw some monsters together, then send your classes in against them, then adjust the classes until the difficulty is about where you want it. As a result, the player units are only balanced against -as a whole- against the enemy units. But they usually do not contribute equally -as a whole-. Some units are strictly better than others, while some work better with certain units present. For the most part they don't bother to work out which unit roles (or sometimes even which classes are better) as long as certain groups can handle the monster. They'll just leave it up to you to build a party that works. But as a result, party configuration matters a lot. Having the high value units/roles matters a lot. And they can't design well-balanced encounters because if a party can have "value" between 10-100, the best they can do is set monsters to a range where most parties can handle it. But whether the party can handle it is usually decided before the encounter even starts.

When you balance classes using PvP, it's much easier to establish baseline values for an encounter that ALL classes contribute to equally based on the player values you balanced. Then you can deviate from that model as you want to favor different classes, tactics, etc. When you design your classes against monsters that you pull out of your ***, you're designing every new monster in the dark, or at best, using that monster as a template. But you can't vary from that template as much because your class balance is more lopsided than it otherwise would be. It makes it harder to tilt the encounter towards less valuable units.

Thayos wrote:
Quote:
roles of the trinity


Kind of unrelated, but why is the "trinity" term used in connection with Final Fantasy, when really, there are five over-arching categories of jobs, as well as some jobs that are hybrids of more than one category?

Edited, Jun 2nd 2013 12:18pm by Thayos


Thayos wrote:
Quote:
Also, the same argument... I now say that Beastmaster and Dark Knight should be able to heal just as well as a WHM. It's absolutely asinine that a DARK KNIGHT cannot heal as well as a white mage. I can't believe the gull of anyone who doesn't believe this! They must be complete buffoons, clinging to their Final Fantasy ways... the idiots.


I don't think it's quite like that... basically Kachi is saying that the potency of a white mage's healing should completely offset the damage dealt by a drk, and that whm should be able to deal enough damage while casting all these cure/protective spells that it should win against a drk roughly 50 percent of the time. That makes sense for PvP, but would create a different kind of balance in PvE, which is the issue this thread has moved toward.

However, what if the fight was a rdm vs. a drk? The rdm, with its primary role as a crowd control expert, could just use gravity+bind+sleep+nuke to just grind down the drk, and there would be nothing the drk could do about it (kind of like what Hyrist said in the post above). If we were to have 1:1 balancing on a job vs. job basis, then the drk (and all melee damage dealers) would need to be given abilities to nullify gravity that could be used as often as the spell is cast. And then the rdm would possibly need to be given either stronger defensive spells, or perhaps more powerful cure spells to offset the damage done by the drk's superior DD... and then the rdm may even need some kind of attack-boosting spell (more powerful than enspells) to be able to keep up with the drk... and in the event the rdm uses chainspell nuking, the drk would need some super defensive ability to counter that, too...

Anyway, you see where this is going. To balance jobs on a 1:1 basis not only seems unreasonable, but it doesn't seem like doing so would create a very fun game. This does sound a lot like Guild Wars 2, which was fun for a short while, but got old really quick, because the game required virtually no skill to play, because everyone was the same.

FFXIV is shaping up to be much more solo-friendly than FFXI, but with the class/job system, the development team seems intent upon preserving the emphasis on party roles in meaningful PvE content. I think the devs are handling all of this about as well as they can. They'll have more hybrid classes for people who want to solo and low-man things, and more role-intensive jobs for people who want to do party-intensive endgame content... as well as separate PvP abilities that might bring more 1:1 balance to jobs and classes without ruining the party balancing used in the rest of the game.

Quote:
Tank/Damage/Support. That is the trinity in which every job is based, there are some variations sure, but at the end of they day, they follow the trinity in some shape or form, and FF not an exception just because is FF.


Ah, gotcha... I always thought it was tank/damage/healer. The use of the word "support" as just one kind of job is such a misnomer though, because that encompasses healers, crowd control and party buffers, and each of those is a very unique role.

Like, a bard is support, but not a healer... and a whm is a healer, but not really support. If anything, it should be the "Holy Quad" of tank/dd/healer/support.

Edited, Jun 2nd 2013 1:06pm by Thayos

Edited, Jun 2nd 2013 1:11pm by Thayos


People reduce the roles down to three arbitrarily. You can have as many roles as you want, and ideally that's how you differentiate classes--around the mechanics you created.

As for the difficult of balancing classes 1:1, it's not that hard! It's not as if every class has to have a 50% chance of beating every other class. Matchup advantages are fine. Having a significant advantage is fine, too. What you don't want is classes which are far more powerful in PvE than PvP and vice versa. Healers in a lot of MMOs have several times more power in PvE than other classes.

Parathyroid wrote:
Pawkeshup, Averter of the Apocalypse wrote:


Look around you. Just look. If you were a developer, these are your customers. They are telling you the product they want to see. And you are telling them that they are wrong. Marketing 101 hotshot. Here's a community clawing at your door, wanting a specific experience, and, if you had your way, you would not be giving it to them. Instead, you insist on making your ideal game. That you like. And sure, others will, but blinding yourself that there (gasp) is another way is nothing short of career suicide.

Listen to the player base. They are who pays your salary.

Edited, Jun 2nd 2013 5:33pm by Pawkeshup


+one million


Smiley: lolSmiley: lolSmiley: lolSmiley: lol

First off, this is like five people-- who don't even really understand what I'm saying-- trying to tell me why they don't like it. It's like having a bus full of backseat drivers, none of whom know the roads any better than you do, and the people in the front row all swear that this isn't the fastest way (but they certainly don't know how to get there).

Secondly, the first law of game design is that most people are bad at it and don't know what they like until they've tried it. It's like the oldest story in the book--give the fans what they want, and they hate it. If a fan can tell me why they like something, I'll listen. When they dismiss an idea that they don't even understand out of hand, you have to know not to listen to it. It's like saying you don't like pizza because it sounds weird, but you've never had it.

Finally, I'm talking about a design methodology--not a style of play! You can't possibly know anything about my games because I haven't told you anything about them. You're just making a poorly educated guess based on a design methodology that you don't even half understand. You might as well say that you don't like games where the monsters are balanced iteratively. As a player, you'd never even know the process that the developers used, but damn it if you aren't sure that the result would be a disaster.

The majority of players are unhappy with class balancing, so listening to a few people who think a method doesn't work (when I know it does), but offer no new solutions, doesn't seem the least bit prudent to me.
------------

I got into this because I like talking about design. I thought some other people might find it interesting. But I'm starting to feel less like people care about understanding new ideas, and would rather leap viscerally to "I disagree, and I'm gonna win this debate." Reminds me of a quote by Bill Clinton:

Quote:
I wanted to try to explain that in very simple terms. No one else would do that; no one . Unless you were being driven by ideology instead of by evidence. This is a practical country. We have ideals. We have philosophies. But the problem with any ideology is that it gives the answer before you look at the evidence. So you have to mold the evidence to get the answer that you've already decided you've got to have. It doesn't work that way.


So at this point, I'm happy to answer questions, talk about design and balance, etc... I'm done with the arguments. If you have an argument and it makes you feel better to get it all out here on the intranets, go 'head.

Edited, Jun 2nd 2013 5:26pm by Kachi
#195 Jun 02 2013 at 6:28 PM Rating: Default
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1,122 posts
If I wanted to play a game with balanced PVP classes, I would play an FPS or a fighting game. MMOs are meant to model somewhat realistic worlds right? Realistic conflict is rarely balanced and the result is typically the side that came to the fight with the most information and cunning. If you cut that out, the winner is by and large the side with the most forces, leading to very shallow gameplay.

People who are annoyed that their support class isn't good at lone combat should switch to a class that is. If there is only trivial differentiation between classes what is the point of even having them? Vanity?
#196 Jun 02 2013 at 6:42 PM Rating: Good
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6,899 posts
Kachi wrote:
Re: variables, the purpose of doing it this way is so that you don't have to readjust character variables. The only weakness to the method in that regard is that if you DO want to update a class that is already balanced, you might have to update all the classes unilaterally, but arguably you'd do that anyway rather than play favorites with a class.
Re: GW2, No, because we're not watering down the roles--I said that before. I said that exact thing.


I wasn't talking character variables. I was talking encounter variables. I said that before. I said that exact thing. Apparently you just don't understand what I'm arguing. That's very clear. See what I did there?

Kachi wrote:
I'm going to make this simple: you don't know what I'm arguing. That's very clear. So there's no point in providing a counterpoint until you do.


"Nobody understands me! My ideas are unique snowflakes that are way above others comprehension."

Actually, I think I get what you're arguing quite well. I don't agree with it. That's the entire idea of an argument, two people with opposing viewpoints. I think you're just acting like a child and failing to admit that there could possibly be flaws in your perfectly designed little schemes. It's like my 5 year old niece when she doesn't get her way... she just sticks her fingers in her ears and screams "I can't hear you! Lalalalala!"

Based on everything I've read from you in the past several months though, I'm not really surprised. Somehow you think your experience in the gaming industry, even though it has NOTHING to do with mmo's, means that whatever you say is automatically right, regardless of the fact that people offer counter-arguments which you just constantly ignore because "they don't understand what I'm arguing". We understand, you apparently just don't understand what a counter argument is.

Keep living in your fantasy world where everything you say is solid gold and above interpretation. I'll just get a good chuckle every time I read your arrogant posts, knowing that you're just full of hot air.

Edit: This was hilarious I have to respond:
Kachi wrote:
The majority of players are unhappy with class balancing, so listening to a few people who think a method doesn't work (when I know it does), but offer no new solutions, doesn't seem the least bit prudent to me.


Smiley: laugh Oh, you know it does? Oh yeah? Care to prove it? Where's this magic game you created with this balance to classes, with all this interesting, well-designed PvE content? I'll wait while you point it out to me...

Edited, Jun 2nd 2013 8:48pm by BartelX
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#197 Jun 02 2013 at 6:54 PM Rating: Default
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262 posts
For the purpose that this thread was started, I don't like open world PvP. I've tried it, and I hate it. I really don't want it in ARR.

As far as the balancing mechanics and backend numbers, I don't care. I'm not a game designer. It's not my job, playing games is my hobby.

I just know that as a WHM going into PvP, I'm not putting my team at a disadvantage with me trying to go toe to toe with a DD.
#198 Jun 02 2013 at 6:54 PM Rating: Decent
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9,997 posts
Quote:
So at this point, I'm happy to answer questions, talk about design and balance, etc... I'm done with the arguments. If you have an argument and it makes you feel better to get it all out here on the intranets, go 'head.
#199 Jun 02 2013 at 7:05 PM Rating: Good
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6,899 posts
Kachi wrote:
Quote:
So at this point, I'm happy to answer questions, talk about design and balance, etc... I'm done with the arguments. If you have an argument and it makes you feel better to get it all out here on the intranets, go 'head.


Smiley: lol Keep sticking those fingers in your ears. Wouldn't want you to accidentally hear someones point of view that doesn't coincide with your own.
#200 Jun 02 2013 at 7:18 PM Rating: Decent
Dizmo wrote:
If I wanted to play a game with balanced PVP classes, I would play an FPS or a fighting game. MMOs are meant to model somewhat realistic worlds right? Realistic conflict is rarely balanced and the result is typically the side that came to the fight with the most information and cunning. If you cut that out, the winner is by and large the side with the most forces, leading to very shallow gameplay.

People who are annoyed that their support class isn't good at lone combat should switch to a class that is. If there is only trivial differentiation between classes what is the point of even having them? Vanity?


In a somewhat realistic world, a mage would not become an instant kill for a melee warrior, if i where a warlord, and i had an army, in which there was a magical unit, i would train them in hand to hand combat, what is the point of having a magical unit, that becomes useless if the line is broken and a few soldiers get to them, and they just become dead meat ? Where do we draw the line in this fake realism, could 5 warriors kill 500 mages, because well mages do 0 damage, so GG!? I mean if we are supposed to have a semi realistic world, then anybody can kill anybody, in real war/battles, nobody is inmune to an arrow, or a sword, or a spell(Well theorically) you can be the greatest warrior to have walked the earth, one mistake in battle, and you are dead. That is realism.
#201 Jun 02 2013 at 7:20 PM Rating: Default
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61 posts
Quote:
I now say that Beastmaster and Dark Knight should be able to heal just as well as a WHM. It's absolutely asinine that a DARK KNIGHT cannot heal as well as a white mage. I can't believe the gull of anyone who doesn't believe this! They must be complete buffoons, clinging to their Final Fantasy ways... the idiots.


Best thing I have ever read EVER!
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