Matsui Responses Compilation threadFollow

The corollary is that just because some players want to use job X to function as type Y, doesn't mean there are design flaws or the system is broken.

Wanting the developers to develop an equal amount of content that allows the strength of different jobs (not just the same jobs over and over again) to shine isn't wanting "to use job X to function as type Y" unless type X is "job that isn't wanted in endgame" and type Y is "job that is desirable in endgame"

@Anza

Blue mage spells are less effective vs high level targets than melee damage. That example is faulty

Also, there is a HUGE imbalance in game content. This imbalance causes a very big problem for the enjoyability of the game. There is an overwhelming amount of content which REQUIRES zerging the fight in order to be effective. The number of jobs which are useful in a zerg is very limited in scope of how many jobs this game actually has.

Those making the argument that "IF you want to participate in X content, just level X job!" are being at best short-sighted and obtuse, or at worst (and I find this ridiculous) bigoted and condescending.

You think a game w/ 20 (and soon 22) jobs should Completely BAN jobs from content? Every event should be like the Marble Bridge?
The problem is that jobs ARE completely banned from content. Its not that some jobs are better at it than others, thats expected and thats fine. The problem is that if you are not a 2h dd, if you do NOT have a legendary weapon, or if you are not one of the best Support jobs, you have NO place in the content whatsoever.

As a counter to this, look at abyssea or the current dynamis. IN abyssea, any player can be very powerful, and you can achieve the content w/ many different jobs. Sure, WAr and NIn are best for proc'ing red, BLM best for proc'ing yellow, mnk/war + whm duo best for proc'ing blu for the different goals one may have. However, you can accompish these things even w/out optimum jobs.

Happy Friday everyone!

I have a couple of follow-ups in regards to the various topics discussed in this thread.

Before reading, please note that the below is based on discussions amongst the team as well as information that we confirmed with the lead directly. This information is not finalized.

As this is not a post directly from the developers themselves, there is a possibility that there is information here that is incorrect due to the fact this text has not been checked by them after it was written, meaning edits or additional supplementation may be made after the fact.

With that said… Here's what Matsui mentioned about defense.



The development team is currently looking into the below adjustments for the attack/defense ratio.

Even if defense is lowered, the damage received does not increase

Currently there is a cap imposed for the attack/defense ratio.

The damage you receive from an enemy's attack will increase up to 50% of your defense; however, if it is less (than 50%) you will still receive the same damage as if you had 50%.

This is the reason why even if you reduce your defense a lot when stacking Berserk and Last Resort, you won't see a large increase in the amount of damage you take.


Idea

1. Increase the cap value for the numbers calculated from the attack/defense ratio.
2. Damage received while defense is low will be larger.


Even if defense is increased, the damage received is not reduced

This is mainly for higher level enemies where the level difference correction is imposed.

Every level a value is added per level to the value that is calculated from the attack/defense ratio, and defense is lowered and then taken into account.


Idea

1, The monsters created after Seekers of Adoulin will be created without the imposing of a level difference correction, and when higher level monsters are created, modification will be placed on attack, defense, and stats.
2. Remove level difference correction
By removing the level difference correction, it will be possible to reduce the amount of damage taken by increasing your defense.


Also, with the adjustments to the attack/defense ratio and the level difference correction, weapons that have a modifier of 1.0 will become much stronger than what they are currently.



Below are some changes to the adjustment plans:

New Nyzul

Since the purpose of using Embrava was to increase the pace of defeating all enemies, instead of adjusting the floor warp range, we will be re-examining changes to monster strength.

- Adjustments to defense
Currently looking into making adjustments so that attacks that focus on enemies' weakness are even more deadly.

- Adjustments to the enemy's level per floor (*values are being adjusted)
Floors 01-20: Lowered by 10 levels
Floors 21-40: Lowered by 7 levels
Floors 41-60: Lowered by 4 levels
Floors 61-80: Lowered by 2 levels
Floors 81-100: No change

Legion

- Adjustments to HP/attack/defense

As mentioned above, we are looking into removing the level difference correction.
Due to the fact that removing the level difference correction and lowering the level of monsters at the same time would cause the monsters to become too weak, we are thinking about making adjustments to attack and defense, as well as HP.

Odin's Chamber II

- Adjustments to HP/attack/defense

Similar to Legion, due to the fact that removing the level difference correction and lowering the level of monsters at the same time would cause the monsters to become too weak, we are thinking about making adjustments to attack and defense, as well as HP.

Also, the development team is aware of everyone’s concerns that monster’s special attacks are a bit on the fierce side.

They are currently discussing making it similar to new Limbus, Odin’s Chamber II, and Meeble Burrows where you can formulate a strategy to evade special attacks, and also with the defense adjustments it will be possible to withstand an enemy’s attack more than now as their attack power is reduced. The goal is to change the conditions where you need to defeat a monster right away because even a single regular hit from them deals too much damage.


Next, on to dark knight…

There are two large principles that the development team is keeping in mind:

- To make job adjustments by comparing aspects collectively to close the gap between dark knight
- To not make adjustments by comparing only fire-power to leave dark knight behind

As mentioned previously, with the adjustments to the attack/defense ratio, a greater emphasis will be placed on defense. In the event that you jump into battles and pay no attention to your defense, you will take damage for nearly two-times the amount that it is now, so the way the job is played will change. With that said, based on these changes to the attack/defense ratio we will be fleshing out specifics for what kind of adjustments are necessary for other jobs and let you know once we have some information.


Finally, elemental magic.

When comparing the amount of damage a character deals, elemental magic possesses a higher potential than that of other front-line jobs. However, there is a wide variety of ways to support front-line jobs and not nearly as many ways to support back-line jobs.

Instead of focusing only on adjusting black mage, in addition to our our recently discussed elemental magic changes, we feel it would be better to address the support difference by enabling other jobs to offer more ways to enhance the capabilities of magic users.

Also, we do not have any plans to reduce the casting time or recast time any further than what was listed due to the fact that the average damage will increase and it will also be possible to deal good damage with tier II and III spells.

We are also planning to make adjustments to “-ga” and “-ja” type spells following these guidelines as well. Similarly, we are planning to make adjustments to ancient magic, slightly deviating from these guidelines.

Greetings!

Since there has been a lot of feedback and questions regarding level correction, I’d like to take this opportunity to add a bit to what we mentioned last week about how we are looking into eliminating level correction.

This level correction is what we will be using to make it so that when you increase your defense the damage you take will be reduced. In other words, the level correction will be focused on the monsters' attack power. Since we will not be making any changes to the level correction in regards to monster defense, damage towards higher level enemies will not see an increase from the level correction adjustments. Completely getting rid of level correction would make it easy at low levels to defeat monsters that have a difference of 20 levels or more.

With that said, from your character's perspective, these changes will only really be applicable to higher level monsters, and easy prey monsters or other lower level monsters will not become weaker. However, depending on the attack/defense ratio there may be variations.

We also understand that the current attack/defense ratio cap for single-handed and two-handed weapons is 2 and 2.25 respectively, and an idea was raised to set them both to 2.25. We will need to examine whether this value is good enough or if we need to make further changes in advance before we proceed with this adjustment.

Now to answer some questions…



Currently we do not have any plans to make adjustments to these kinds of weapon skills.



We understand the concerns associated with this and there is a possibility that we will be making separate adjustments to Counterstance.

As a final note, we do not have any plans at the moment to make adjustments to weapons that deal non-elemental damage; however, we do realize that they are extremely strong. Though this is speaking more about the future, since we will be introducing items that have a higher damage value, we expect that these weapons will not be something that are used full-time, and the situations for use will become limited.

In regards to the way we create monsters, we will still be adding features to them like you can see currently, where some monsters will be weak against piercing, while others weak against blunt damage or physical damage in general. However, instead of making it so you can only do damage via a certain method of attacking, we feel it would be better to create them so certain attack methods yield even more damage. To get a better idea of what we are talking about, Qutrub are a perfect example.

Also, the possibility that we add more weapons that deal non-elemental damage is extremely low.

Now then, just to wrap stuff up, below is a TL;DR version of the basic plan for these adjustments. Please keep in mind that none of this is finalized.


Attack/defense ratio adjustment plan

- Increase the cap value for the numbers calculated from the attack/defense ratio.
Make adjustments so that when a player’s defense is low, damage taken will increase.

- Increase the cap of the attack/defense ratio for single-handed weapons.
Look into increasing this to 2.25, the same attack/defense ratio of two-handed weapons.

Level correction adjustment plan

- Level correction for monsters’ attack power
Make adjustments so when a player’s defense is high, damage taken will be reduced.

- Make adjustments to monsters’ strength via parameters
Monsters created after Seekers of Adoulin will be made at a level where there is no level correction, and when higher level monsters are created modification will be placed on attack, defense, and stats.

I'd like to respond to a couple of questions and feedback that were brought up regarding the battle system adjustments.

Damage and Defense



To briefly reiterate what was announced previously, we will be making adjustments so that:

- The maximum value of damage received is increased higher than what it is currently.
- It will be possible to reduce damage more than currently.


We've also seen quite a lot of comments mentioning that backline jobs as well as lightly armored jobs would be affected negatively from the aforementioned defense adjustments.

As a general direction on this issue, while the defense of heavy armor jobs and light armor jobs will not be the same, in order to prevent this from becoming too large of a disparity we will be making it so there will not be situations where a certain job is unable to rush in and attack.

As was suggested in feedback, we will be looking into various ways to do this such as increasing the amount of light armor with damage reduction or increasing the amount of evasion gear.

Hate Cap



We plan on making adjustments to hate.

Producer Matsui will be explaining further details to provide insight on the current situation and how things will be changed. We also received the below message from him as well:



Regarding Weapons



Please understand that the adjustments that we are currently looking into for weapon adjustments are not the end. We would like to have each weapon have their own special traits, and the adjustments will take place step by step.

Finally, in regards to weapons that deal non-elemental damage, specifically the Twilight Scythe.

The below is a simple compilation of the opinions we've seen on the forums:

- Leaving it the way it is currently is fine
- It needs to be adjusted
- Leave the effect as it is and lower the damage value
- Change it to the same effect as Murasamemaru (WS are non-elemental damage)
- Increase the jobs that can equip it

Due to the fact that adding more jobs to this weapon doesn't lend itself very well as a solution, I'd like to remove this as one of the options; however, we would like to hear everyone's opinions for and against adjustments to Twilight Scythe. We would like to proceed carefully with this, but please keep in mind that just because one opinion is greater in volume does not mean that we will base our decision solely on that.

I'm surprised. Never really thought the Twilight Scythe was that huge of an advantage, especially since it's still subject to pDIF.

I can think of several NMs where it's great to have, but is there anything that simply impossible to complete otherwise?

As a general direction on this issue, while the defense of heavy armor jobs and light armor jobs will not be the same, in order to prevent this from becoming too large of a disparity we will be making it so there will not be situations where a certain job is unable to rush in and attack.