Battle System Improvements (02/22/2008)

[Callisto]

Ok, would someone please tell me when solo black mages started partying? That makes absolutely no sense.

Back around the September update, surprised you missed it.


Anyways, I'm personally liking the music change, it always bugged me in places like the Garden where my alliance would be fighting Jailer of Temperance, but if I wasn't looking at the screen there was 0 audio clues that I might just happen to be fighting a FRIGGIN LEVEL 85 MONSTER! Standing around and fighting sounded exactly the same, that irked me.

Same with pulling merit parties as BRD, I like the idea that it might sound like I'm actually involved in the party now.

[Silent Howler]

The question is, who says soloing BLMs actually enjoy the battle music? When i'm actively in battle, I want battle music. I'm healing people from outside of the battle? No, thank you. I've always liked that melees would have the battle music when they engage and mages, from the back line, listen to the music of whatever zone they're in.

I, for one, did not think this particular aspect of the game was broken. I have no idea why they felt the need to fix it.

Well that's what the whole on/off things someone mentioned would be for, which is probably a good idea. I admit I don't always want to be listening to the battle music either, but sometimes it's nice. So having the option to choose wouldn't be a bad idea.

Ok, would someone please tell me when solo black mages started partying? That makes absolutely no sense.

It was just a comment to show how "having music start when any party member engages" would not apply in solo Black Mage cases (or if you would rather have me say mana burn parties I'd give you that).

[Malacite]

>. > I'd just like to note that the reason I bitch profusely about SMN is because I've been on the game since launch, I have played the job to 33 on my taru TYVM and find it fundamentally broken. SE has admitted this publicly on their website no less, and said they will address it. My problem is when?

Look at how long it took them to fix DRG for Christ sake @_@


Back on topic, yes, please fix the status icons/notices. How about changing Ninjutsu to have it's own debuff icon and have it stackable with magic?

Yes, that would be seriously powerful with a NIN BRD and Mage present, but outside of merits and end game that doesn't happen terribly often.

Lastly, are they ever going to change the merit system to refund points? Excuse me for not wanting to blow hours upon hours just to test out something to see if I like it or not.

[Aksannyi]

Lastly, are they ever going to change the merit system to refund points? Excuse me for not wanting to blow hours upon hours just to test out something to see if I like it or not.

I'm quite sure the reason they don't allow this is so you don't spend your time getting say ... 50 merits ... and then whenever you change jobs, you just undo your merits from one of them and apply them to the other. They want you to work to merit your character, no matter how many 75's you have.

Also, I rather like the idea that you have to choose wisely. You've got WHM and PLD leveled. Do you merit emnity + or -? That puts you in a bit of a pickle. I like that system, making you think about what you want.

I can understand about the testing thing, but I definitely understand why merits are the way they are. Right now I could finish meriting my WHM with all the merits I've used on RDM.

[Armando]

I agree with Aksannyi. However, partial refunds wouldn't be game-breaking. If you got half a point back for every point you removed, you don't lose as much time and effort, but it's still a big enough setback for anyone attempting to change his entire merit setup around constantly.

[little ninja]

The macro's are cool as with the battle music. But thats something that could have been implemented over the last 4 years. No point waiting this long to fix it or actually address it.

[Balfree]

they say they do stuff based on what people want.. so that might be the biggest reason as to why things werent done before

i doubt theyre doing the battle theme thing just because it occurred to them, it was probably suggested before and theyve been trying to do it.

[Yellow Mage]

S-E set up a playground. Players trashed it. Then, demanded S-E clean up the mess. The Devs are probably grumbling about why players aren't using the content as intended.

QFT, srsly

[Malacite]

Yeah, I understand the point about people suddenly stopping meriting, but they could maybe set it up so that you can't transfer merits from 1 job to another.

It would make the system a lot more complex and somewhat nightmarish, but it would prevent the abuse you're talking about. Basically, when you earn your merit points, you would first put them into a menu (Stats, Combat Skills, etc) which then locks those points into said menu, and you can only move them around from there.


I know it's asking a lot, but I got 2 points to make.

1) There's already too many people at merit camps as it is. Seriously, would it really hurt the game if suddenly camps became less crowded?

2) I'll use RDM as my example here. Going into an assault run, say lebross PSC, and I want Bio 3. Then later, I need Slow II maxed out for sky or what have you. Well, am I the only who thinks having to undo 90,000 EXP worth of work and then earning another 90,000 is a bit obscene?

I mean shit, we're free to play around with everything else, so why is it merits have to be such a pain in the ass? SE can't seriously be that worried about people quiting in droves because suddenly they have one less end game activity to do (that's not even fun and is really just a mind-numbing chore)

[Neomage]

I have an idea. What if SE made it so merits were interchangeable within their category, but could not be moved to other categories? For example, somebody who has a PLD and a BLM could alternate their merits between Enimity- and Enimity+ as needed, without suffering any penalties, but they could not take the Enimity- merits out of BLM and get Thunder Magic Potency.

[Raydeus]

I have an idea. What if SE made it so merits were interchangeable within their category, but could not be moved to other categories? For example, somebody who has a PLD and a BLM could alternate their merits between Enimity- and Enimity+ as needed, without suffering any penalties, but they could not take the Enimity- merits out of BLM and get Thunder Magic Potency.

That idea has come up before (specially in the ask SE section). And we are still waiting for it to happen.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

I have an idea. What if SE made it so merits were interchangeable within their category, but could not be moved to other categories? For example, somebody who has a PLD and a BLM could alternate their merits between Enimity- and Enimity+ as needed, without suffering any penalties, but they could not take the Enimity- merits out of BLM and get Thunder Magic Potency.

You'd still end up with roughly the same problem. A PLD could put his 20 combat merits into 8 sword, 4 parry, 4 shield and 4 evasion. And then when he switches to THF, he could move the 8 sword to 8 dagger. Etc etc. There's a whole lot of flexibility just within the combat skills category.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

What the hell? You think that I, as a Warrior, feel more like my BRD is doing 6x as much work if I see 6 lines of text instead of 2? You think people don't just filter the shit out of everything but themselves anyway?

That's just it - you can filter it out. What IfritnoItazura complains about is not all that terribly different from people who crab about being /checked all the time. You can filter it out, you've been able to filter it out for five years. If its a problem for you, filter it and it stops.

Its probably also just a ton easier to log the 6 lines than a single sentence accounting for those in range. The server has to check which targets were in range that recieved the buff and log it, so it probably IS easier to code it so they account for each target separately.

If we want to get real picky about space and consistancy, I could go through the all the items in the game that screwed up items with possessive names ending in "s's," which is incorrect.

And again, I find all this "consistancy" talk humorous. "March is not Haste, March is March." What does Haste do? What does March do? Decrease delay and lower Magic recast timers. They're both Haste, March is just given in two tiers of percentages. Haste Samba is not a true Haste, it only gives reduced weapon delay without lowering recast timers. There is a distinction there.

I'm not arguing for the sake of doing so, but because half of the argument presented is flawed. You want to make a distinction between Flash and Blind, fine, but the end result is the same with different potentcies and magic types. Flash is a stronger blind with shorter duration and a signifigant enmity spike. Blind has a longer duration, weaker effect and smaller enmity generation. They both still blind and they both get the same status icon.

Really, if we asked SE to make all these petty distinctions, our status bars would be loaded with different icons and we'd probably lose track of which meant what. Best to keep it simple sometimes, I'm sure these guys have more than enough work.

[Ziero]

>. > I'd just like to note that the reason I bitch profusely about SMN is because I've been on the game since launch, I have played the job to 33 on my taru TYVM and find it fundamentally broken. SE has admitted this publicly on their website no less, and said they will address it. My problem is when?

Look at how long it took them to fix DRG for Christ sake @_@


Back on topic, yes, please fix the status icons/notices. How about changing Ninjutsu to have it's own debuff icon and have it stackable with magic?

Yes, that would be seriously powerful with a NIN BRD and Mage present, but outside of merits and end game that doesn't happen terribly often.

Lastly, are they ever going to change the merit system to refund points? Excuse me for not wanting to blow hours upon hours just to test out something to see if I like it or not.

Getting the job to 33 is barely scratching it's potential.

Ninjutsu debuffs and Rdm debuffs don't stack not because of some error, but because they're the same exact effect. It was done intentionally as they have different names and are cast with different restrictions, but accomplish the same exact thing.

And the Merit system is the way it is to allow players some uniquness inherient to their characters while at the same time letting them keep the option to modify what they have done, but at a price. Merits should not be treated like a piece of gear or a sub job, to be changed at a whim.

2) I'll use RDM as my example here. Going into an assault run, say lebross PSC, and I want Bio 3. Then later, I need Slow II maxed out for sky or what have you. Well, am I the only who thinks having to undo 90,000 EXP worth of work and then earning another 90,000 is a bit obscene?

I mean shit, we're free to play around with everything else, so why is it merits have to be such a pain in the ass? SE can't seriously be that worried about people quiting in droves because suddenly they have one less end game activity to do (that's not even fun and is really just a mind-numbing chore)

You're given the choice of either unlocking multiple spells or putting all your effort into one. It makes you, as a player, able to make a character that's just a little different then that guy with the same job, the same gear, the same race and even the same damn face. It's SE's attempt at a skill tree system, while still allowing you to keep your options open. They didn't want Merits to be something that could just be thrown around at a whim like gear or Subjobs, they wanted them to be something that you had to put thought and effort into before going through with your choice. And even allowing the option to erase that choice is a big bonus to the system. Though I certainly wouldn't say partial refunds of points would be a bad thing.

That's just it - you can filter it out. What IfritnoItazura complains about is not all that terribly different from people who crab about being /checked all the time. You can filter it out, you've been able to filter it out for five years. If its a problem for you, filter it and it stops.

Its probably also just a ton easier to log the 6 lines than a single sentence accounting for those in range. The server has to check which targets were in range that recieved the buff and log it, so it probably IS easier to code it so they account for each target separately.

It's not about filtering the effects entirely, it's making it so the effects don't fill up the entire chat log when used. They still want to *see* when the effects land or wear off, but would prefer it to be done in a more compact way.

And again, I find all this "consistancy" talk humorous. "March is not Haste, March is March." What does Haste do? What does March do? Decrease delay and lower Magic recast timers. They're both Haste, March is just given in two tiers of percentages. Haste Samba is not a true Haste, it only gives reduced weapon delay without lowering recast timers. There is a distinction there.

No matter how much you disagree, Haste is NOT March and Flash is NOT Blind. The effects are similar, but they're still different from each other. If they were the same, they would not be able to stack with each other. Much like Hastga, Haste and Refueling do not stack, because they all give Haste. March is a similar but different effect.

I'm not arguing for the sake of doing so, but because half of the argument presented is flawed. You want to make a distinction between Flash and Blind, fine, but the end result is the same with different potentcies and magic types. Flash is a stronger blind with shorter duration and a signifigant enmity spike. Blind has a longer duration, weaker effect and smaller enmity generation. They both still blind and they both get the same status icon.

Really, if we asked SE to make all these petty distinctions, our status bars would be loaded with different icons and we'd probably lose track of which meant what. Best to keep it simple sometimes, I'm sure these guys have more than enough work.

Flash *already* has an icon that will appear while a mob is flashed. And unlike how Blind, Kurayami and Sandspray's blind do not stack, Flash CAN be up while a mob is Blinded and have no effect on the actual Blind effect. Just because Flash and Blind lower accuracy does not mean they're the same thing. Infact there are numerous "accuracy down" abilities that also stack with blind, and it will infact say that the mob's "Accuracy Down" effect wears off. They even have a unique Icon for the acc down status. But in the end, it does the same exact thing as Blind, yet has it's own text and icon while being able to stack with blind. That makes it a different effect from Blind...just like Flash.

Changing some Texts, especially ones that have already been fixed for the JP version, would have no negative effect on gameplay. At all.

[Feba]

How about letting you get merit points back as EXP, but not as merit points? That way, if you decide to level another job, or if your 75 is about to delevel, you can put the points to use, but not towards other merit points.


of course there would need to be some limits in place to keep people from meripo burning their low level jobs to high levels, but still.