Can players' interests and needs be balanced?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Can players' interests and needs be balanced?

If this game didn't require nearly as much grinding as it currently does, you might see the player base willing to loosen up and allow some more "fun" approaches to be taken.

Trimming the EXP curve has already proven the opposite of what you claim it would solve. People didn't loosen up, they got even more obsessive about it. So I don't think dumbing the EXP curve down would improve the situation, it would only serve to worsen it.

Any by making merits and levels easier to obtain, by making more jobs more soloable, you end up turning FFXI into the big lie WoW happens to be. FFXI shows you there's competition from the start, WoW lures you in by trying to get you to overlook that fact before endgame and that is the biggest issue with WoW, people have more fun with the grind and PvP than they do endgame. FFXI its just the other way around.

Our endgame isn't perfect, but at least we weren't spoiled on soloing before we got there.

[Mhurron]

Re: Can players' interests and needs be balanced?

You're trying to allude to the fact that it's the player base that makes the decisions, not S-E, right?

Oh you're good.

What if in the WotG update, Red Mages were given Flash, Stun, and Provoke. You don't think Rdm/nins would start tanking? What if Ninjas lost all dual wield except for the first trait, and Utsusemi:Ni only gave 1 shadow when subbed. What if all skillchains became 100% accurate (so every darkness is an extra WS or WS.5 worth of damage).

Ok, no you're not. There is nothing stopping a player going SAM/BLM and doing a Blizzard MB off of Distortion. The game lets you do this, no changes need to be made. You then try to compare that to situations where changes do need to be made. One of these things is not like the other.

[Lmnop]

Re: Can players' interests and needs be balanced?

There is nothing in the games mechanics stopping a SAM from doing that.

You're trying to allude to the fact that it's the player base that makes the decisions, not S-E, right?

What if in the WotG update, Red Mages were given Flash, Stun, and Provoke. You don't think Rdm/nins would start tanking? What if Ninjas lost all dual wield except for the first trait, and Utsusemi:Ni only gave 1 shadow when subbed. What if all skillchains became 100% accurate (so every darkness is an extra WS or WS.5 worth of damage).

It's true that the players make the decisions. But it's so easy to provide the illusion of choice. Dark Knight was certainly not built as a main healer. Yet it has just as many cure spells as a Summoner, which most certainly has become a healer. A+ Scythe, attack bonus traits-> obviously gonna melee; B rank staff, mage HP-> not gonna melee.

[Feba]

Re: Can players' interests and needs be balanced?

Because no one likes to spend hours just trying to get a party for 1 lousy level (if that) or racking up money etc.

Or possibly it's because Blizzard already had a very very large fanbase playing online games.

or because Blizzard has put a lot of money into advertising and hype.

Or it could be because a lot of people already play it, and it's become such a social place that even people that hate it join in (look at myspace)

Really, WoW has a ton of advantages over FFXI. FFXI's gameplay is about the smallest problem.

[Mhurron]

Re: Can players' interests and needs be balanced?

God forbid a SAM could sub BLM and have fun making their own SC + MB for example

There is nothing in the games mechanics stopping a SAM from doing that.

[Malacite]

Re: Can players' interests and needs be balanced?

I agree about the grind. It is the single greatest factor in detracting players from this game and what makes WoW so damn popular (among other things)


WoW has nine million subscribers, while we have 1/18 of that. Why? Because no one likes to spend hours just trying to get a party for 1 lousy level (if that) or racking up money etc.

I'm not saying SE should make the game easy, but they could tone it down a bit at least when it comes to EXP. Parties should be fun, and hard mobs (or rather standard pre-ToAU I should say) should be properly rewarding for their relative difficulty. IMO, this is the hardest thing for SE to grasp. The concept of Time:Rewards seems to elude ever still.


God forbid a SAM could sub BLM and have fun making their own SC + MB for example (anyone who wants to pipe with "Oh, but BLU can do that already" is obviously missing the point here)

[Saren]

Re: Can players' interests and needs be balanced?

First off I wanted to say I love the question and I think it's really well worded. SE seem to be a bit full of suprises at the moment (2hand update, scholar) and it would be interesting to see if they will hint at some more.

Fundamentally, cure bot'ing seems boring because there isn't enough to do, and what there is to do isn't important enough.
...
Healer in general--and White Mage in particular--is exciting to play when there's danger; it is the pillar which keeps the sky from crushing the party.

I have to say this, and several other things in the post, hit the nail on the head for me. What I love about whm is when I get to make the party run smoothly quietly from the background and then, because I have cast intelligently and anticipated the mob well, have the mp and the time to jump in an help save the day when things go wrong. Without getting occasionally to jump in and save the day, it gets a little flat.

At the moment in good parties I don't really feel like I have enough to do, even in parties with barely any nin or /nin and a pld tank. I seem to spend a lot of my standing up time waiting for the haste recast to be up with nothing useful to cast and not quite enough time to grab a tick of rest. I have guilty pleasure when we have a slightly bad tank or something so I have more to do.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Can players' interests and needs be balanced?

For the matter of main healing for example, nobody likes being a cure bot but it's so time and mp intensive to do that it's very hard to juggle along with things that people consider more fun, like meleeing, summoning or using damage spells. If the cast time and cost of curative spells was lower then versatile-type jobs that can cure could regain some of their versatility.

I think you're very wrong here--and I'm likely to be the only one. XD "Cure bot" is boring to play not because keeping the party healthy is a boring thing to do, nor because it takes time away from "other stuff", and definitely not because it's takes MP away.

Fundamentally, cure bot'ing seems boring because there isn't enough to do, and what there is to do isn't important enough.

Talk with those career White Mage, and you'd see that what they love the most is being able to anticipate the status ailments and fix them before melees even notice them, or drop that Cure V in right before what would've been a death blow, and keep the tank upright and the alliance from wiping. It's about smartly take a few seconds to Regen II/III a DD as soon as the tank's Utusemi: Ni casting completes. It's eying the PLD's use of Sentinel and such to sneak in two ticks of MP rest, and magically have enough MP to save everyone from death when monsters run amok a minute later. It's tossing that stressed out RDM a Devotion when he's down to 80 MP and still 90 seconds from next Convert, so he doesn't have a panic attack.

Healer in general--and White Mage in particular--is exciting to play when there's danger; it is the pillar which keeps the sky from crushing the party.


However, when there's no real tank, and you're just tossing periodic Curagas, sporadic Cure III's, and stuck on auto-repeat with Silena in a party full of Utsusemi'ed up DDs, that is boring. It's watching status effects which debilitate your PLD's tanking ability but nothing you can do about, and keep hearing other players that RDMs and SMNs can do just as good of job as you with all the Bar Spell, Regen, and Cure cast speed merits, etc., that will make you lose heart.

I'm probably at least as much of a broken record as Karinya here, but the weakness of monsters is one cause of this (and many other) problems. The strength of the front line players--defensive power of /NIN directly, and the damage output of DDs indirectly--is the other cause. Combined, the imbalance between players and monsters makes leveling a "healer job" boring to many, and make WHM, RDM, and SMN seem interchangeable.

Player mentality is part of it, but the game balance issues are the root causes of "Don't make me a cure bot!" syndrome.

Make the role more important, and WHM, RDM, and SMN can all call themselves as healers with pride. WHM should be the reigning king, but the RDM and SMN each can claim unique, nifty tools, of course.

* * *

Can you tell I'm sick of RDMs whining about having to be healers? :p My RDM/WHM is not as good of a healer as true WHMs, but I will keep a party standing called to be a healer-and, yes, I do it with pride--and with at least a Paralyze every fight.

[Karinya]

Re: Can players' interests and needs be balanced?

Well, if you mean is there some way to get the DD-only masses to play some useful jobs, probably not. Every other MMO has had the same problem. Allowing DD-heavy exp parties is sort of a solution for exp (although I wish they were only about as good as a conventional party instead of enormously better), but anything worthy of the term "endgame" is going to require real teamwork and tactics that can't be satisfied by 17 DD/NINs and one support job.

As far as the current job balance issues, I think a change to monster exp values that makes the RoZ and CoP camps more valuable, the ToAU camps less valuable (at least relatively) and/or introduces new, equally valuable camps on high level monsters would solve a lot of problems, and a nerf to subbed Utsusemi such as making it not 100% reliable (or maybe all Utsusemi, but in that case, it should be skill based so main NINs will keep 80-90% chance of having a shadow take the hit) would solve a lot of problems. Once those two changes are made we could take another look at the game and see if there were any additional changes necessary.

P.S. We don't need more tank jobs. We need more ways to make WAR and BLU tanks more attractive. Having those jobs both pigeonholed into DD by player mentality is what creates a tank shortage (and in BLU's case, contributes to a healer shortage too, although SCH will probably already alleviate that one somewhat).

[Akashimo]

Re: Can players' interests and needs be balanced?

All points are valid and true to the roots of the problem in my view.
Honestly, its gotten to a point where DD's don't know what areas like Cape Terrigen, Meadows, Sky, Valley of Sorrows, Moon and Labrnyth of Onzozo are for outside of HNMs, NMs and missions. Majority will hands down pick, Nyzle Isle mire or thickets, or Mamool Ja staging point or standard imp/fly camps. Root of the problem, this generation of dd/support/mages/tanks don't know what we grew up with in this game. And how things changed. All they know is ToAU. Until we strike a perfect rebalance, definined at before ToAU came out, for all mobs, this trend can and will continue. Ask a dd if they know what the Tormama do and why it can make or break a whm with in Onzozo, i doubt they'll know. It'll mobs are at the difficulty and provide the same challenge of what we know that was RoZ and CoP, this trend will stick forever. Signet changes were nice, but, it did little to shift the player base for Conquest zones.

Two handed weapons, very nice, yet very damaging. Now the ToAU areas, 2handers and a mage is the only way to go otherwise you're lol. All single handers were badly burned by this. THF and MNK haven't gotten anything of use outside of group two merits. THF easily by todays standards is just a subjob like whm to rdm. THF's defining quality has been taken as a two handed weapon user's own main ability. Dagger being only real weapon of choice is nothing more but lolthf in the eyes of sam/thf, drk/thf and war/thf. BLU easily lands any kind of physical spell with SA and TA in an almost broken manner. MNK is probally gonna get to an early lol status i can feel it. H2H either needs a change or be considered a two handed weapon. And the possiblity of new abilities, skills or traits to open up.

Those at least are main concerns I feel that should be brought up.


post number 1000 for me, yay.

[Feba]

Re: Can players' interests and needs be balanced?

Really the only way people are going to feel free in their jobs is if you raise the EXP monsters give by quite a bit, but leave a capped, so all smaller and less powerful parties lose is EXP chain XP.

But that would probably make it far too easy to level.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Re: Can players' interests and needs be balanced?

I think the only way to make the player base less demanding in this respect is to reduce the amount of grinding required in this game. When it comes to exp/merits, it's not that the player base has chosen efficiency over fun. These activities are hardly fun to start with.

If this game didn't require nearly as much grinding as it currently does, you might see the player base willing to loosen up and allow some more "fun" approaches to be taken.

[Nekoterra]

Re: Can players' interests and needs be balanced?

I for one think this sounds like the best question that I've seen, has a RDM the only invites I've had in the longest while have been for main healing, I don't complain about doing that but I would much rather do the job that I leveled RDM for it's like people think I like being a gimp WHM in my red armor

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Can players' interests and needs be balanced?

If I offer my BRD, then you may ask for it. If I say "RNG or COR?" then BRD clearly isn't among your options. If you want a BRD so bad, then you level one.

While the rest of your post is spot-on, I feel the need to state that, if more people took this attitude to the game, I can't help but feel it'd be a better one.

[Malacite]

Re: Can players' interests and needs be balanced?

I for one, am no longer reliant on BRD nor do I feel boxed in as one - I have seen to that and anyone that wants to insist that I should play BRD for any situation other than those of my choosing can kindly piss off. Just because you are whipped on BRD does not mean you are owed a BRD. No one dictates what I play, not until you start paying my monthly fees and for my internet connection.

DAMN RIGHT!