[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[The Casualty]

yeah using off rotation stuff is easy comms. People regularly go "holy shit a NIN that knows to use the aggro dump skills on the tank and heal and goads!" which i guess is rare?

Very true. If I see a Ninja using Goad and Shadewalker that is an insta-com. Sadly I can't remember the last time I saw a Ninja use those abilities.

[Anzaman]

Very true. If I see a Ninja using Goad and Shadewalker that is an insta-com. Sadly I can't remember the last time I saw a Ninja use those abilities.

Used to play NIN before I went Bard for Foe Requiem - was doing Nidhogg Ex and accidentally popped Smokescreen instead of Shadewalker on tank, ever since tank has jokingly talked about those two abilities.

Oh well, seen couple situations where Smokescreen is actually quite handy ability when tank-swapping is required, especially if other tank is WAR.

[Eleccybubb]

Wow. Gilgamesh is open. That is pretty damn rare even at early times in the US. Now if Balmung would just open I could start my Arcanist alt on there -,-. Just want a Scholar on the US servers I imagine playing a healer from EU on US isn't that bad.

[Kazgrel]

This
is
beyond
funny.

Just imagine, that guy/girl is probably your stalker, everytime you are in town, (s)he's probably hiding behind the market board, peeking over the edge and hiding behind it everytime you look/notice something coming from that direction... and (s)he finally came towards you and told you his/her feelings.

And you didn't notice... why didn't you notice, senpai.

You know what? Let them do that, because maybe that keeps them from stalking someone IRL, which I'd call far more deplorable than using a digital avatar to stalk someone else's digital avatar. I'm not advocating such behavior, mind you; it's weird and creep-tastic regardless of where it occurs.

On the topic of comms, I'm at 1390 in a year and a half. Oddly enough, I'd venture a guess that about 75-80% of those are from my time as BLM...people tend to notice when all the mobs melt at the same time (although I've had my ass handed to me dps wise by some savage geared SMNs). My record for most at one time still stands with WHM, funny enough...and it was first time I ever healed any sort of 8 man content. Think it was the Chimaera trial for the ARR relic weapon (which I was working on for WHM) and ka-boom, 6 comms. o.o

[Eleccybubb]

And Gilg closed. Meh I'll roll on Hyperion or Sargatanas.

[Kazgrel]

Wow. Gilgamesh is open. That is pretty damn rare even at early times in the US. Now if Balmung would just open I could start my Arcanist alt on there -,-. Just want a Scholar on the US servers I imagine playing a healer from EU on US isn't that bad.

Honestly believe that Balmung has been open for new characters for all of 5 minutes total since HW launch.

[Eleccybubb]

Honestly believe that Balmung has been open for new characters for all of 5 minutes total since HW launch.

Yeah apparently some old friends I know play on Sarg and Hyperion. Problem is they are entirely different data centres despite being in the same country. Just wondering how bad healing would be as an EU player on a US server?

[Kazgrel]

Yeah apparently some old friends I know play on Sarg and Hyperion. Problem is they are entirely different data centres despite being in the same country. Just wondering how bad healing would be as an EU player on a US server?

That stinks. I was thinking Sarg was in Primal also, but nope, it's over here in Aether, under the shadow of Gilga-mung.

I'm from the US here, so I can't say with any certainty how latentcy would be for someone in EU playing in Aether/Primal (the NA datacenters). They are located in Montreal, so at least they are closer to EU than if they were in California.

[Eleccybubb]

That stinks. I was thinking Sarg was in Primal also, but nope, it's over here in Aether, under the shadow of Gilga-mung.

I'm from the US here, so I can't say with any certainty how latentcy would be for someone in EU playing in Aether/Primal (the NA datacenters). They are located in Montreal, so at least they are closer to EU than if they were in California.

To be honest never understood why they don't merge Primal and Aether together since they are in the same country anyway. Same with Gaia, Mana and Elemental for Japan. I mean would really give duty finder a boost and raid finder.

[Remilia]

Yup, can't log in.

Also give me an outfit like this in game. Please. I love this outfit in PSO2 atm, lol. Would love it to be in FFXIV, and every game.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...1211154037.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...1211154042.png

[Wrecktangle]

It does start impeding the enjoyment of a game when in this case a spec end up under performing quite a bit in compared to other specs from the same class or even roles. Hence why you see quite a bit of people complaining in WoW.

I find that people under-perform more than any spec does. I gave an example about me as Ret, yet I've been invited to countless pugs/raids/guilds etc despite being one of the worst performing specs in the game. I also don't trust people complaining as any evidence of an issue. I know that 98% of people in this game are either young and inexperienced, or not qualified (i.e. career choice that offers any actual qualitative insight into development). My brother and I had a discussion not too long ago and his clear lack of the SDLC preventing him from objectively discussing the topic at hand.

Fortunately for me you have a background in QA which helps me relate the discussion to you better now (I was in QA for the mortgage software business a few years back, now I'm a liaison between the IT/Dev community and the business for banking software. While neither one of us are dev's its funny that we're on both ends of the spectrum and it shows in our outlook. I don't curtail the business' expectations based on what i think the Dev's can handle/will say. I ask for what they/I want, and define how critical each ask is. Dev will come back with what they can do, can't do, and their input. That's why I always advocate not caring about Dev responsibilities when proposing ideas/changes.

Its not fun knowing the class or spec you like to play the most is dragging the rest of the group down or making it harder that it can be in the content that matters to that person the most. Especially if its caused by these knob turning.

A big issue with this statement is that what qualifies as "dragging the group down"? Is it doing 2% less DPS? Is it not having a piece of critical utility, etc.? I find that uninformed individuals often say that if you're not the #1 DPS spec (even if its top by .000009% then you're holding the group back) which I think we can both agree on is highly unrealistic.

If MM performs 3% better than BM (under perfect conditions) is that really a big enough difference to upset you to the point of quitting? What if its 10% better? 20%?

Part of my reasoning for bringing this up is that people put way too much faith into Sims and not practical gameplay. For instance one spec may only be as "strong" as its advertised if you have a certain trinket or played at a impeccable execution level (not capable of 85-90% of players), without that its other spec may be stronger, but your average uninformed reader will say that BM > MM because of the Sim, without understanding why the Sim is higher. Sims make too many assumptions to really give a fair idea IMO.

An example of this was the Seraphim talent Ret had access to in WoD. It was simmed higher, but only assuming x% of uptime, minimal to no mechanic interruption etc. If you were truly an impeccable player you could pull miracles with it, but you could have just selected FV and done 3% less damage and devoted 50% more attention to mechanics rather than cooldown/gcd usage and had room for mistakes.

Its not about being negative its more being realistic I guess, with information and experience gained in the last 10 years.
No I assume that giving more choices has the greater potential of breaking things beyond the value they are adding.
again simply an observation of things I saw the last 10 years in the games I have played.

I don't disagree that with additional choice you expose yourself to the risk of more imbalance/breakage, but you also are afforded the chance at more of a reward. How much you as a person or a dev as a team/company is willing to consider is always going to differ.

My argument was that hopefully you don't avoid all forms of risk due to some things that happened almost a decade ago you know? Adding some much needed depth and choice in FF14 should be welcomed, even if it shakes the balance up (which I don't think it will significantly) because it is easy enough to fix.

But at least before MoP, There where situations where 1 of the specs was performing decently with the other DPS classes/specs,while the remaining specs of the class where usually near the bottom compared to the other Pure DPS specs (not talking about the older hybrid classes) there where other DPS classes that had similar problems, warlocks had similar problems I believe.

I think what you're getting at is that if MM performs x% better (no matter how minute) you feel pressured to have to play that, but that you personally (or others) may enjoy playing a different spec. That's a fair POV to have (and one I can't really share/relate to as a career Ret (I have no choice but to manage whatever hand I'm dealt). I do stand by my original point that in very few/rare circumstances does a sub-spec perform so badly that you're benched for it with justification.

I was already expecting you where from the higher raiding/guild segment. So your view is now starting to make better sense.

However dont forget that people in the higher guild segments usually do have a very different mindset and stance on raiding and classes/re rolling/specs and even resort to maintaining multiple characters just to stay on top, than people that are in the mediocre or lower segments.

People in the higher segments usually dont really mind what class they play or even what specs they play as long as they can be competitive for first world clears or content clears in general or the content that matters the most to them. There are always exceptions ofcource but its the general vibe I am getting when talking to people that are in the higher segment.

I'm no world first player or raid splitter. That's a job, not a hobby. What you're saying kinda gets back to my first response above. You have uninformed players/raid leaders who can't tell the difference between a non-viable spec or a weaker player.

Its similar behavior I am seeing currently in FF even in my static. or the more HC statics in my guild. There are a couple of people that have more a mentality of people in the higher segment not full high-end but just skirting around the border. They tend to gear multiple Jobs dont mind switching classes etc gearing and tweaking materia to the ninths. Most even go full out in the other static groups. While me and a couple of others are more from the mediocre segment are really attached to one specific Job even if we dab around in other jobs for fun we still rather prefer raiding on that one specific job.
Of course there are always outlines and there are a couple of those in the FC they are super casual and either have multiple classes maxed(not gear wise) but dont really participate in high end content or just have one character they play on but dont do any high end stuff..

I played DRG in SCoB at a high level when people stacked MNKs (because DRGs were not optimal). Our static leader was a MNK with almost 5-6 ilvl on me and still lost to me and I regularly beat every single other player I played again, even ones with T9 weapons. The bottom line is even perceived weaker classes can still have room to shine in good hands. If anyone tried to force me to reroll I'd laugh. I'd sooner quit the static/fc before a single person forced me to reroll.

You where asking for examples so guess here are some that I can still remember:

Very old example BC during SSC Marks was DPS wise higher then Surv, BM was Quite decent at a certain point even OP.
I was literally working my ass off as Surv trying to do x amount of damage yet when I rolled Marks I was doing much higher damage without even knowing what the heck I was doing and even with less effort.
Then people caught on that surv wasn't that bad because if the exposed buff they brought rest of raid damage went up. One of our better marks went Surv and after a couple of raids started complaining because his dps was lower then he was used to as a marks(he was one of the few that was usually in top 5 on the meters during raids and he was hanging around the same dps mark I had as a surv). So I offered to go back surv because I liked playing that spec and dint care about dps and as a marks I had lower dps compared to the other marks hunter.
As you see in the end it worked out but it did annoy the hell out of me knowing that no matter what and how hard I was trying in x spec I could get much better results in an other spec with less effort.

The only recent ones I have is from MoP dint raid in WoD and not playing Legion.
Where I remember a fellow hunter talking about his favorite marks spec that was under performing compared to BM at that time and he was complaining about the same issues I had in BC with Surv and Marks (more damage/better performance with less effort.).

And last one: During ToT a fellow Shaman had issues with being sat out.
I cant remember clearly but he liked playing either ench or elemental. And one of the two was quite a bit better then the other but he liked the one that was not doing so well.
So during raids where we had to switch comps (eg getting extra healer). If that guy was playing his favorite spec he was usually near the bottom of the dps and
while in the other dps spec he performed much better, he just dint like the play style of it. But if he did choose to play the favorite spec in those raids he was most the time being replaced for the healer. Sure they asked him to switch heal which he did in the start but he dint like playing healer. So he stopped doing it.

The bottom line here is he got benched (forced to heal) because he was consistently playing poorly, not because of his spec.

The first example is too old (and shows that uninformed playerbase was the issue, not the spec).

The second example of playing an easier spec and doing more damage is a tricky note. Are you doing more damage for less effort because the spec requires less talent or because of the spec itself? That's a very difficult question to quantify. I'm also not sold that is necessarily a bad thing.

I am not sure why you are even making this so personal.

Not making anything personal from a negative standpoint, just having a discussion that's all. You never know you might say or pose an idea that forces me to rethink my beliefs/opinions or vice versa. I just like to question peoples comments to test their conviction.

No it can be relevant. What if its the only spec you like playing? Then your basically forced to to play something you dont like. I have been in both situations and while the temp one is not my biggest problem I dont mind switching for an evening if it means the team can raid. However if it happens regularly it can make someone demotivated to play or perform at his/hers best. In the other situation if its a patch or expansion thing (eg your fave spec in the gutter compared to other specs) it has more long term effects that result in not being able to raid or doing the content you want to do like pvp for example or even quitting the game completely.

Understandable. I mentioned that if its a feels thing about what spec you like the most that there's some merit in what you're saying. My argument was to discern at what point does it become an issue? Was it 2% DPS, 5%, 10%, etc.?

First of all, that might also be caused by language barrier. Tbh I am quite saddened that you are attempting to lean so heavy on certain word use to just invalidate valid concerns.
Second just because I use certain words or let me rephrase that, specific words that for some reason dont sit well with you personally because they have a "tone" you dont like, does not make an discussion instantly invalid or closes it.

The reason I point out the words is in hopes that you'd try to use more objective words in the discussion to accurately identify why you felt a certain way. Kind of like the difference between arguing logically or emotionally (not that this discussion is at the point).

Personally I am finding this quite childish or odd behavior. I would never shut a discussion down with someone or consider his or her opinion invalid, just because the person is using negative, neutral or positive "tone" word phrases.

The fact I am still taking time to respond in earnest and trying to give you an other view on things testifies that I have no qualms continuing the discussion, dont you think?

Allow to me a clarify a bit, because I can see why you're getting a little frustrated. I'm saying that it feels as if you're not opening up your mind to considering other viewpoints by drawing on negative connotations. You're very clearly defending your viewpoints, but I don't think you're open to the idea of them changing. Does that make sense?

An example where I demonstrate objectivity is acknowledging that perhaps my understanding of switching specs isn't as robust as I imagine it is due to being a career Ret (i.e. only 1 spec to pick vs. a pure's choice). Your examples and point of view did that. Not me.

Again its my personal experiences and things I have seen floating around quite a bit lately,why are quite a bit of people complaining that their classes feel so hollowed out currently in WoW? I still think that unfortunately it was a direct result of wanted to give classes separate talent trees.
In my case specifically when I came back to try Legion and booted up my hunter my class felt like an empty hollowed out shell. All the things I was used having in my class where either taken out of my core kit and put in the trees or even removed from the specific spec and put in an other spec or even completely removed.

Well the pruning explains that fairly simply. The question is whether the pruning was warranted or not or if it was too extreme/not extreme enough.

I could posit that FF14 is about to run into its own issue with this in Stormblood. We'll see how they approach/implement.

I am not a game developer but I am a Q&A Tester by profession. So I am aware that the more variables you add the more cases you have to check and test and the more combinations there are going to be that you have to support. In the end out of all those combinations there's pretty much always a high end (optimum), low end and something in between (or even multiple in between) So its the choice of the Devs how they tune the content based on that.

This is a good point I want to key in on that goes back to my PoV. We as customers should be asking for what we want, and Dev should be deciding what they can/can't or won't/will do not us the players. That's what I was trying to say. We shouldn't be curtailing our expectations before, but after the discussion. If I want to ask for 100%, but know they can't do it and ask for 50%, Dev's going to say sure we can do 50% and do it. If I ask for 100% Dev could come back and say no, can't do it, shooting for 85% though, or if we got lucky they'd say yes. Dev never does more than you ask for, at least I've never seen it, have you?

About your example for a tester and in a certain sense the developer its much more complicated like that. What are you basing your example on just one topic per sandwich? what if its 2,3,4?
That means more combinations to cover.
If your just allowed 1 topic per sandwich its just 24 different sandwiches to deal with in your situation. and yes easy and a done deal in minutes.
However if you are allowed 2 topics per sandwich this raises the combinations from 24 to over 200 combinations just in an instant, and you have to support all those 200+ combos even if you think they dont make any sense or you find them disgusting.
Talent trees work in a similar way. All combinations need to be viable or people will automatically start complaining and that's why anyone cant just say reroll/respec or "just take these talents to be viable instead" and then proceed to tell people to suck it up.

The thing is though, all combinations don't need to be viable immediately. They can test and tune, identify ideas they didn't come up with etc. I.e. This one lady orders mustard on her meatball sandwich. No one does that ever, but she likes it. You can't build a test case for something that like because it is so far outside the guidelines that it would never normally come up. Sure some wierdo builds it, you as a tester find it accidentally and you update your test case.

If you relate this back to in this case specifically with WoW and the current way things are set up there.
Take your paladin for example every spec since legion has his own talent tree. There are 7 level rows with 3 abilities each, some have damage modifiers others might not.
If you have access to 1 row you have 3 different options to pick.
When you have 2 rows have 9 different combinations to pick.
When you have 3 rows you have 27 different combinations to pick/choose from.
I hope you can see whats happening when you keep adding rows.

I see it, no issue there. The original point was: is 27 too much too manage for a dev? We can't possibly know, so why curtail expectations ahead of time, rather than ask for it, then have them tell us yes/no and why.

Currently the 7 rows, total around 2100+ ish different combinations (sure some combinations players might never pick because they dont make any sense)
I dont know how blizzard internally tests things. Do they test all combinations? Do they just pick the one combination with all damage modifiers and one combination with no modifiers? or perhaps a mish mash of stuff who knows.
But that's just one Spec in one class...

Ahem, we don't know their internal controls, but come on lets be honest (We know they don't do shit internally and leave it up to public guinea pigs )

IRL example :There's nothing more funny watching that sales person strolling into the office telling a customer wants extra configuration and options. Only to hear a collective groan coming from the Dev room. And then I start working out my cases seeing it grow exceptionally. And after its all done you find out that the majority of the options are not even being used because the customer is going with the route of least resistance, but hey at least that customer has his choices right?
Even more funny when you find out that specific customer is barely a dent in our profits from our software.

And yes unfortunately this pretty much reality for me.
I am not expecting it to be much different for the team that tests and tune classes.

To be fair your example is perfect at identifying a clear lack of my job at your company lol. There should be someone mitigating the wants/needs/questions of the business (sales person) and translating that into expectations for the Dev team. As a BA my job is to identify why the customer wants them, how they're going to use it, how often, help identify if the cost/benefit is there to do it, etc. Building something for someone and not having them use it is the hallmark sign of a poor BA.

This make's it easier for the Devs/tuners to keep things managed and centralized. And still give people the configuration options they apparently seem to crave for.

Agreed. I have no issue with this statement (minus the slightly condescending choice of the word apparently).

The question I posed was between 2 ideas:

1) Difficulty for Dev - Moderate
Added Choice - Low-Moderate

2) Difficulty for Dev - Hard
Added Choice - Moderate-High

I said I was comfortable with the added risk for more choice. You said you're not. We both detailed why we believe the way we do. That's what we've been discussing.

[Sorrior]

To be honest never understood why they don't merge Primal and Aether together since they are in the same country anyway. Same with Gaia, Mana and Elemental for Japan. I mean would really give duty finder a boost and raid finder.

Welllll originally we had no data centers if I recall right and every region abd server were placed in the exact sane que....their servers did not like it very much...

[Kazgrel]

To be honest never understood why they don't merge Primal and Aether together since they are in the same country anyway. Same with Gaia, Mana and Elemental for Japan. I mean would really give duty finder a boost and raid finder.

Wouldn't be totally shocked if that's what they did come Stormblood, honestly. It would make more sense to me if one of the two NA datacenters were located somewhere on the west coast (California, or if they have to stay in Canada for reasons, Vancouver, maybe?).

The upcoming cross server PF should help boost things along nicely...now if only the game went full on cross realm; not as big an issue since gathering nodes are personal and there's no world pvp, but I'm certain I'm overlooking some possible negatives (like the ungodly amount of crowding around for a world event).

[Sorrior]

Wouldn't be totally shocked if that's what they did come Stormblood, honestly. It would make more sense to me if one of the two NA datacenters were located somewhere on the west coast (California, or if they have to stay in Canada for reasons, Vancouver, maybe?).

The upcoming cross server PF should help boost things along nicely...now if only the game went full on cross realm; not as big an issue since gathering nodes are personal and there's no world pvp, but I'm certain I'm overlooking some possible negatives (like the ungodly amount of crowding around for a world event).

OH GODS ODIN WITH THAT!!!???? Nooooo

[Kazgrel]

OH GODS ODIN WITH THAT!!!???? Nooooo

Yeah...Balmung alone manages to attract a small army (50-60 people) for Odin unless it pops at like 3-4 AM or such. Doesn't grind my PC to a halt or anything, but my rig isn't exactly a toaster.

[Zaehl]

-snip-

A well written response with some excellent insight. We could use you over in the warrior forums! lol

[Eleccybubb]

Gilgamesh is open again. I'd advise anyone wanting a toon there to do it quickly.

And it closed pretty damn quickly.

[Remilia]

If going by the tweet from above, it's not actually SE's fault, it's a fault in one of the network jumps to the server. It's not unheard of and happened with Blizzard before, well, technically people DDOSed the network node, and not the server themselves before. Due that, it only affects certain people and depending on ISP and location.

[threads]

i should really stop waiting until monday to finish WT and cap tomes. oh well.

[ryanmahaffe]

I hope there is a boost with the xpac. Because the character I had seemed to be on a rather dead realm (don't remember which one) and I hear there are only like 4 really popular realms anyway so I wouldn't want to reroll and go through all the "amazing" story of the first 35 levels again.