The Grumpy Paladin » Game Mechanics

New level caps, why RDM tanking died, and stuff.

Tal — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 07:48:17 +0000

It’s really late in the game’s lifespan to be doing this. Like, way too late.

Yeah, everyone knew this was coming. They announced it a few months ago, and everyone could have gotten sufficiently prepared. As far as I can tell though, very few people put in the amount of dedication and effort into doing so. The game has been designed at the hard level cap being 75 for almost half a decade. This was short-sighted design, of course, since it meant that when the end of Rise of the Zilart came around, they were already implementing The Best Gear in The Game — Adaman Hauberks and Ridills and Relic Trinkets and shit.

One complaint I hear from World of Warcraft players is how irrelevant (and how fast) old gear becomes; new expansions meant better gear, which means more shit to get. Old content obsolesces fast in favor of new and different content. This had not existed in FFXI, which was drawing different complaints. Instead of obsolesced gear, gear progression was horizontal, and why everyone hates Dragon’s Aery.

This is how the endgame playerbase operated — investing in things when you’re 75 because that’s how far you’re able to go. You upgrade relics, salvage bodies, and stuff because that’s what’s you do at endgame.

It’s just that now, the endgame point has moved. Very pointlessly.

RDMs everywhere are crying because their spells have been hit in terms of enmity, and they can no longer serve as the “Most Efficient Tank”. My inherent assholeish nature propels me to give all those RDMs bitching about it the middle finger and to tell them to kiss my ass.

But then I read Kaeko’s post about the death of RDM tanking, and it got me thinking. Specifically:

“I think a lot of RDMs want to QQ over this and I can sympathize since I’ve found RDM tanking to be quite fun over the past few months, but I look at it in a different way. This is a game within a game. The creators (SE) have their own ideas on how the game “should” be played; we as players are the innovators and we sometimes popularize things they never intended to see happen (RDM tanking certainly being one of them).”

Square-Enix has always had a ridiculous amount of contempt for their players. Perhaps contempt isn’t the right word, but they do enjoy being antagonistic to their players. I understand that, as a game developer, you take a certain amount of egotistical pride in your creation. There’s nothing like pimply-faced geeks yelling at you about what they want and when they want it. It’s your game, after all, and you’ll design it however the hell you want.

That’s why RDM tanking died, because it’s not your game. You can’t do whatever you want in their game. Tabletop players will recognize this as a characteristic of a bad GM, that the GM doesn’t like their players going out of the confines of what they’ve established their players doing.

It’s pretty obvious that, at every turn, Square-Enix underestimated their player base, and it’s one of the things that they continue to do wrong and refuse to learn from. They were shocked how fast their playerbase leveled to 50, so they almost viciously ramped up the EXP requirements to 75. Yet, the playerbase did that, and over time leveled more than one job as well. Level more than one job to 75? That’s preposterous! You’re only supposed to have one job at 75!

To put it another way, the requirements from 75 to 80 alone is about 200,000 EXP, or one-fourth of leveling a whole new job from level 1. Plus the proposed cap now is going to be 99 over time, so you’re looking at leveling to 85, to 90, to 95, and then to 99. Even if we assume in the best possible world that each of those gaps is worth 200,000 exp, you’re looking at 1,000,000 worth of EXP, or practically leveling another job from 75 to 99. I have four jobs at 75, so I’d need four million exp if I wanted all of them to 99. I don’t even have four million EXP on all four of my jobs now.

This is something that, if Square-Enix was genuinely ever interested in doing as opposed to a last-ditch effort to try and reclaim their game, then it’s something they should have done a long time ago. I, personally, don’t have the time, energy, focus, or dedication to give a shit, and from what I can tell, I’m not all that alone on this. I’m not even one of those ridiculous players with relics out the ass who have to shove them through pointless and ridiculous Magian quests to try and shoehorn them into not being obsolete. I’m a shithead with only a salvage body upgraded, which, as it seems right now, is going to be obsolesced anyway.

I’ve Become One of THOSE People…

Tal — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:54:07 +0000

There’s a very poignant scene at the end of the movie Casino where Robert DeNiro’s character, Sam “Ace” Rothstein, reflects on the hubris that eventually brings down the Tangiers casino, a big portion of Cosa Nostra, and the eventual eradication of mafia influence over Las Vegas. The implication is that once the mafia was thrown out of Vegas, corporations filled in the power vacuum and completely decimated the once sinful mecca. Rothstein speaks with utter disdain and regret of this change, stating that the city was never going to be how it once was and will never be the same way again. The implication is that the way the mafia ran the casinos made going to the middle of the desert worth the while, and that the corporations don’t really give a shit about the experience the way the mafia did.

That feeling is pretty much how I feel about Astral Burning.

My First Job has always been Paladin. Nonetheless, I took a certain amount of egotistical pride when I leveled Warrior. You can probably look back at some of chronicles in this blog about doing so. I had hated leveling the job to 30 as a subjob for PLD, and I hated it even more when I leveled it to 37. So when I was told that PLDs don’t get invited to merit parties, I was furious. What did they expect me to do, level another job? Even more harrowing was the suggestion that I should level WAR to 75 because of the gear overlap with PLD. Warrior? Are you fucking kidding me? Nobody takes that job to 75! It’s a subjob-only job!

As I leveled it, though, I fell in love with the job. I loved dual-wielding, and I loved Rampage (THE weaponskill of choice for axe users). I loved calculating how long my attack round was between how much dual-wield trait I had and the amount of haste I would get. I loved leveling it with my friend, who was leveling corsair at the time, and having amazing 15k/hr exp parties, which were unheard of at the time. It was truly great.

Nothing lasts forever, though, and my love of dual-wielding was replaced with a need for using a great axe, ruined by a bunch of crybaby Dark Knights and Samurai who felt that they didn’t do enough damage. Suddenly, my swift dual-wielding and Rampage spamming was replaced with a dulled need to try and manage a six-hit build. Even then, I took pride in trying to understand game mechanics, figuring out what was the best combination of Store TP, Double Attack, and Haste.

These days, shit like that doesn’t even matter. There is no need to take pride in any job you level, or even care about how something might affect something else. Now you just sit in Korroloka Tunnel, gather all the mobs, sync to level 15, and let the Astral Flow fly. People are winning Earthen Abjuration: Body abjurations without even having any of the necessary weapons skilled up, just because they Astral Burned their job to 75. In fact, many of them are now better warriors than I because they have leftover gear from other jobs they can use on WAR; gear that I don’t have. Then, once you get bored of the job, then you just level up another job and reloot all kinds of new shinies. And why wouldn’t you? EXPing has never been easier. 40,000EXP for 45 minutes of work. You can’t beat that rate.

Granted, part of the problem is how utterly formulaic and predictable the game has become. Nonetheless, that might just be a testament to how archaic the game is in 2010. I doubt a level increase to 80, and eventually 99, will alter the predictability of the game.

Nonetheless, the real cause is the playerbase itself. The desire for the adventure will always lose out to the desire to Get Shit. These days, it’s never been easier to Get Shit, and quality of the player matters even less.

The Ridiculousness of the Hecatomb Cap

Tal — Wed, 26 May 2010 14:49:35 +0000

I figured I’d start with warrior, since it gives me the opportunity to rant about Neptunal Head.

TP:

Rune Chopper/Rose Strap/Fire Bomblet
Walahra Turban/Fortitude Torque/Fowling Earring/Brutal Earring
Adaman Hauberk/Dusk Gloves/Rajas Ring/Blood Ring
Amemet Mantle/Swift Belt/Byakko’s Haidate/Aurum Sabatons

All in all, this is probably the set I’m happiest with in all my jobs. There’s some room for upgrades that will probably never happen, namely a Toreador Ring instead of a Blood Ring, Cuchulain’s Mantle instead of Amemet, and a Velocious Belt instead of Swift.

+10 Store TP (Rose Strap, Brutal Earring, Rajas Ring) for times I’m subbing Samurai for a six-hit build. For all other not-/SAM builds a Rose Strap turns into a Pole Strap.

I love the Rune Chopper. Having +9%Haste in one slot is pretty god damn amazing… when you have a decent Red Mage. See, that latent effect on The Choppa (and, yes, you have to say it that way), is that for 9% Haste, it costs you 3MP per tic. If you have zero MP, then no haste. A Red Mage’s refresh spell gives 3MP per tic. So, a Red Mage has to refresh you in order to get that latest effect. Not surprisingly, a lot of time asking a Red Mage to refresh a Warrior is like the mountain moving to Mohammed. In those instances I just use the good ol’ Perdu Voulge. Ares Cuirass is awesome and all, but I don’t believe it fully activates the latent with it’s refresh effect.

The only problem with The Choppa is the amazing lack of an MP pool I have on WAR. When I weaponskill, I drop down to 10MP. Even though Refresh keeps my MP pool even, if the RDM is slow on the update, I could believably lose out on some haste for a bit. I have one MP merit to satisfy having an MP pool, but I wouldn’t put much more into it than that. This guy nicely explains why (even if it’s from 2006, jesus fuck this game is old and I’ve been playing it for far too long).

When I do get Refresh to feed to The Choppa, I’m suddenly wearing too much haste. +9 from the Choppa, +5 from Turban, +3 from Dusk, +4 from Swift, +5 from Haidate, and +2 from Sabatons, or 28% haste. Gear haste, that is, haste you’re wearing, caps at somewhere between 25~26%, so the number to hit is generally 26%. So I’m wearing excess haste. I have to lose 2 haste, and the easiest fix there is to replace the Aurum Sabatons. I don’t have anything to replace them with though! I could upgrade Ares Sabatons for +7 Accuracy/+7 Attack I suppose, but that seems like such a marginal upgrade from the other nice bonuses Aurum Sabatons provide, especially considering the cost.

I figure the most ideal situation would be to get a Velocious Belt. Then I could come up with a build of something like Choppa, Turban, V.Belt (+6 instead of +4), Haidate, Sabatons. This comes to 27%ish percent, and while still excessive, I could then possibly upgrade Ares Gauntlets, which have a nice +10 accuracy on them, and ideally could even let me switch out the precious (Adaman Hauberk) for Ares Cuirass. Maybe.

Raging Rush:

Rune Chopper/Rose Strap/Fire Bomblet
Aurum Armet/Fortitude Torque/Fowling Earring/Brutal Earring
Adaman Hauberk/Hecatomb Mittens/Rajas Ring/Ruby Ring
Amemet Mantle/Warwolf Belt/Byakko’s Haidate/Hecatomb Leggings

Man, I hate Raging Rush.

I hate Raging Rush because of how utterly, stupidly useful it is. I hate Raging Rush because the weaponskill animation doesn’t even come close to what the weaponskill is named. I hate Raging Rush because I have so much useful gear for it.

Raging Rush is one of those pesky “can critical” weaponskills. The more DEX you have, the higher your chances of critting during it are. DEX also increases your accuracy; for every 3DEX, you get 2 Accuracy.

I fucking hate using the Aurum Armet, but it’s the only headpiece I have. I built my Kupo d’etat hat for RNG and Slugwinder, since that weaponskill is stupidly inaccurate, so I can’t build that for WAR. I don’t even have an askar zuchetto to use. No, I’m stuck with +3STR in this stupid slot for probably a very long time. Ideally, I would use a Hecatomb Cap, but I’m pretty sure I will never see one of those ever.

More on that hat later.

King’s Justice:

Rune Chopper/Rose Strap/Fire Bomblet
Aurum Armet/Soil Gorget/Fowling Earring/Brutal Earring
Adaman Hauberk/Hecatomb Mittens/Rajas Ring/Ruby Ring
Amemet Mantle/Warrior’s Stone/Byakko’s Haidate/Hecatomb Leggings

I love King’s Justice. It’s too bad that for it’s utility, I really don’t get much more mileage out of it than I do Raging Rush. The nice thing is that this set is much more accurate than my Raging Rush set is. Soil is +10 accuracy (supposedly), and the Warrior’s Stone has the same amount of STR as a Warwolf Belt(5), but a bonus +7 accuracy on top of it.

King’s Justice can’t crit, so the only role DEX plays here is accuracy. Again, that fucking Aurum Armet rears it’s ugly head. Again, the ideal piece here is a Hecatomb Cap. Actually, for something like King’s Justice, I should just replace the Armet with my even fuglier Optical Hat (+10 accuracy), bust WAR AF2 legs out of storage, and use them (+5STR, +1% Double Attack). The real problem there is that I lose five inventory spaces and have to wear the O.Hat for what amounts to a marginal increase(+2STR). Ideally, I’d be using a pair of Haichryu Haidate for the +10STR, but Sarameya never drops that. Ever.

Steel Cyclone:

Rune Chopper/Rose Strap/Fire Bomblet
Genbu’s Kabuto/Fortitude Torque/Fowling Earring/Brutal Earring
Ares Cuirass/Hecatomb Mittens/Rajas Ring/Ruby Ring
Amemet Mantle/Warwolf Belt/Byakko’s Haidate/Hecatomb Leggings

You may be noticing that, at this point, a lot of my weaponskill sets look the same. This is very true.

Steel Cyclone is probably my favorite warrior weaponskill. I love the animation, and I love that it’s only one hit. I love that I can stack it with Warrior’s Charge and it’s got +75% STR and VIT (hence the kabuto and the cuirass) modifiers… The only thing that sucks about it is that it requires at least 200TP to be useful. Yeah, the big problem with Steel Cyclone is that unless you’re zerging and/or using Mighty Strikes, chances are you’re not going to be using Steel Cyclone. That’s why this particular set doesn’t have very much accuracy – if you’re zerging, chances are you have accuracy songs on you which will make up for any lost accuracy.

This also nicely illustrates the weakness of Ares Body for WAR. Adaman Hauberk comes with a flat out +15 accuracy, and an additional +10DEX on top of it, making it about +21~22 accuracy, on a single piece, let alone the +15 attack and +10STR. The Cuirass, which has more STR and attack as well as refresh, has zero accuracy on it.

So, that stupid Aurum Armet I use has +3STR, +4 Accuracy, and +4 attack. Most WARs worth their salt use a Hecatomb Cap. Except I don’t have one, because I don’t camp Fafnir and in about the ten Odins and one billion chambers we’ve done in Einherjar, we’ve seen ZERO neptunal head abjurations. Also an E.Body costs something like eleventy billion points and I will have no points anymore from here until the end of time to ever get an N.Head even if one does drop.

So, why do I pine for such a piece of equipment?

That is eleven strength on a head piece. That Adaman Hauberk I use, which is a body piece? Yeah, that only has +10 strength. This in of itself is stupid and excessive and ridiculous. However, here is the second best piece you can get for that slot.

You can get this if you level the first fifteen jobs to 66 and can beat the final limit break quest for each of those fifteen jobs.

I would really like to meet the Square-Enix designers some day, because I’ve never actually seen a man shove his head up his ass before. It must be quite the feat.

A Rush To the… Something

Tal — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 12:12:46 +0000

I’m down to 2,000 ISP, or 10 runic portal permits remaining.

I’m five assaults to captain rank.

I have all the parts needed for Ares Body, but they’re all in pieces; I need to find a smither.

I have even yet to start on any Magian weapon, and I know of at least three I can use.

Will Talint have to merit to inflate his imperial standing? Will he endlessly navigate the halls of Alzadaal with his salvage permit? Is he ever going to finish his Ares body? Will he even start his magian weapon escapades?

Chocobo Racing & the Swamptrot are Bullshit

Tal — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:14:49 +0000

This is my bird, Kikuichimonji:

He is my pride and joy. I bred and raised him for racing. His stats are:

Strength: SS
Endurance: SS
Discernment: B
Receptivity: F
Abilities: Gallop and Canter

He is, through and through, a racing bird. When equipped with a Speed Apple, he wins most races… Except for C1 races and the Passhow Swamptrot. It’s not like he’s placing Second or Third in a C1 race. He goes from placing first in a C2 to not placing. That means I’m out 10,000 gil on top of 74 chocobucks. There’s very little I can do besides change his item, and anything that’s not a Speed Apple isn’t worth using at all. If I had not maxed out his Strength or Endurance, then I could equip a different saddle on him to improve his stats, but because I maxed out his racing stats (since, y’know, he’s a fucking racing bird) there’s really nothing I can do about it.

And don’t get me fucking started on the Swamptrot… Hey look, the sheep and the rabbit each use Sheep Charge and Wild Carrot three times. That’s totally cool and fair.

Just another example of, “Hey, look, I did everything right. Oh well, too bad for me!”