#Combat Styles Improvements - Ranged Beta.

5430 messages · Page 6 of 6 (latest)

vale palm
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which is a little swirl around the player that is less noticeable than the prayer renewal one

mellow frigate
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do they have different audio cues?

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if so that's good enough imo

terse vale
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agreed that something has to be done to distinguish the two clearly, it's not always practical to be looking at the target at that moment to check for the hitsplats or the debuff before deciding on one's next ability

vale palm
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idk if they have different audio cues since almost everything is louder than the temporal anomaly audio cue

hardy mango
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This is critically important to add to the game imo

terse vale
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I was completely fine with other mtx lovers having their playstyles destroyed

I deliberately chose the poison build as a concrete example using the Vampyrism aura because it's already earnable in-game through Marks of War, thus putting the example playstyle within reach of an Iron who has never touched a Loyalty Point. (Technically, Loyalty Points are an extended subscription incentive, which is predatory but not soliciting real money purely for the virtual goods, so not quite a microtransaction.) This is about as far away from MTX use as one can get, yet you have falsely lumped it in with "MTX enjoyers".

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I don't recall leaning on any criticisms of buffs being time gated or temporary

Here is where you complained about temporary buffs: #1450511863589900410 message You said:

It's a common sentiment nowadays that there are too many buffs to keep track of in this game

Yet your only initial proposal for providing any aura buffs elsewhere was Summoning familiars, which are themselves temporary. #1450511863589900410 message (On top of that, most combat already either uses the familiar slot or has the slot blocked by the fight, which makes that inherently a playstyle-breaking proposal for combat where there are actual choices in auras. It's even a playstyle-breaking proposal for skilling that uses familiars, such as Croesus and Gate of Elidinis.)

This is another reason I chose the poison build as my concrete example: not only does it already use the familiar slot, it does so in a way where the interactivity of the familiar is not replaceable to players who enjoyed the process of playing the build over the results. (As a bonus, it was even primarily a Ranged build due to Bik arrows, and was a major part of the fun and usefulness of Bik arrows.)

But rather than engage with the example playstyle presented, you chose to:

  • dismiss the output of the build #1450511863589900410 message (which wasn't the point);
  • dismiss the playstyle's pre-existing claim on the familiar slot #1450511863589900410 message ; and
  • present as your only alternative "powder of vampyrism" #1450511863589900410 message , which would be just as temporary as auras, potentially time-gated depending on implementation, and have no worn equipment slot to prompt the player for it.
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[auras] offer no gameplay, while having no attachment to anything in the game

I already rebutted that claim at #1450511863589900410 message , #1450511863589900410 message , and finally showing the poison build as an example of an interesting playstyle enabled by a buff outside of your "potions food and summoning familiars" #1450511863589900410 message . You have offered no reason that a new player would consider a fully earned-in-game no-cooldown aura system to be any different than any other worn equipment slot or buff system, yet you have chosen to bring that claim back up as if I haven't countered it. Since you brought it back up: concede the point, pause the point, bow out of the conversation, or offer a not-yet-countered argument on the point.

But I suspect this isn't the point that really matters to you...

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my main point is that [auras] are a tainted system ... Yes, I am completely fine with breaking other players' beloved builds and play styles as a consequence of getting auras out of the game

This is your true rejection of proposals to revise the aura system or fold their buffs into in-game earning methods, isn't it? After all, you do say it's your main point.

Everything about gameplay choice offered by combat auras, about the enjoyment of builds and playstyles that currently use auras, about forever presenting new players with the daunting-to-them task of levelling combat skills to 120 ( #1450511863589900410 message ) , ... none of that matters to you because you consider auras permanently tainted by their origin? And you consider that taint extended to any method involving an aura and any player using such a method, regardless of the in-game earnability of the aura or the health of the method given such in-game means?

If not, you must have a very interesting explanation for why you lumped the use of the already in-game-earnable Vampyrism under "MTX enjoyers", and why your first response to each point I mentioned was to dismiss the perspective of players other than yourself rather than enter dialogue on mutually satisfactory solutions.

If so, well, you certainly don't seem to consider spoiling other players' fun to be a last resort, or frankly even a detriment. You seem to aggressively refuse to tolerate aura usage remaining in the game, which is why you jumped in by refusing to solve problems that would be introduced by removing the Berserker aura series ( #1450511863589900410 message ), and the rest is just window dressing.

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auras confirmed removed I have won

Likewise how you claim "I have won", treating it as a win/lose competition rather than a collaborative effort.

You're certainly entitled to hold that position, and even to insist that no argument from an aura user or "MTX enjoyer" can convince you otherwise, but I doubt you'll like the results.

It means you have essentially told Jagex that they have to choose one of two groups to make happy: every current, returning, and prospective player who enjoys or would enjoy any playstyle that currently uses auras, along with everyone else who benefits from their presence in the game - or your tiny militant faction that seeks to cast down and cast out all aura users. That someone is going to be unhappy with the outcome, because you're unhappy with any path forward that doesn't make current and potential aura users unhappy.

(Meanwhile, the players who don't like auras but first seek mutually satisfactory solutions get dialogue that can result in useful proposals, like #1450511863589900410 message . As demonstrated, I have little interest in the slot for its own sake and much interest in the healthy gameplay it currently enables.)

This forced choice is a Paradox of Tolerance ( https://philosophyterms.com/paradox-of-tolerance/ ) situation, which itself suggests the resolution that those who refuse to abide by the social contract of tolerance are no longer protected by it.

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Or if you want to look at Jagex's past behaviour, look at the players who aggressively insisted that removing forced PvP from the Wilderness would be "contrary to the spirit of the zone" and refused to accept opt-in PvP. They got roundly ignored by Jagex, while the PvPers who are willing to leave non-PvPers in peace got their opt-in and can still have a good time. Likewise, look at the supply-control merchers who complained about the introduction of weapon piece transmutation because they wanted to keep spoiling everyone else's fun by buying up every copy of a legendary weapon piece; there's a reason Jagex didn't make the transmutations Group Ironman-exclusive.

Or considering Jagex's future business outlook, their whole plan to sustain the game without predatory MTX revolves around making the game great enough that lots of people are willing to pay for membership in the long term. This task requires a certain amount of mass appeal, and benefits from casting as wide a net as permitted by mutually exclusive demands and needing to make the game great enough at something to compete for players' time and money. Insisting on excluding a wide range of playstyles just because they currently involve auras makes it more profitable, and better at funding further development, to instead exclude you.

To expand on "funding further development": more paying members -> more money for Jagex -> more money that Jagex is willing and able to reinvest in developing and running the game -> more content updates, better balancing, more stable servers, ... for all players, including you should you choose to continue playing. This means that by default, including more players (by supporting their playstyles) is a benefit unto you, and overriding that default requires that inclusion to cause harm rather than mere non-interaction. Or in game theory terms, the default interaction between player groups is positive-sum via common funding of the developer.

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One way that game developers successfully pursue long-term player count is by deliberately pursuing a diverse playerbase, widening their net to support different player types. This is why there's a profusion of generic player classification systems, including Richard Bartle's classic Achiever / Explorer / Socializer / Killer taxonomy, and long-running games tend to make their own specialized systems. (Some specialized systems even make a point that their categories aren't mutually exclusive, such as both of Magic: the Gathering's Timmy / Johnny / Spike and Vorthos / Mel groupings.) After all, what do you think "PvMer / skiller / quester / chatter / ..." is?

But the really good game developers pursue playerbase diversity for more than just the simple logic of "well if more people have fun-for-them things to do in our game, more people will play our game". They intuitively understand a point that is rarely stated bluntly: a playerbase is not a monolith, nor a disconnected set of monoliths - a playerbase is an ecosystem. That is, players interact in ways that are essential to the long-term health of the game, and a tiny player group can turn out to be a keystone species that keeps the whole thing from crashing down.

Some of those interactions are so obvious in the game as to be directly codified in it; for example, we have a player-driven economy. (And in-game trades are often across player groups, since the sellers of an item often have no need to buy it.) Others are conducted entirely outside the game, through content creators and fansites and communities like this one. And there are plenty in between: friends and clanmates hanging out, players offering advice in-game, players teaching bosses, ...

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(If you want the original essay that stated the "playerbase ecosystem" concept bluntly, well, blame Twitter for getting it locked and scattered across nine different links on the Wayback Machine. Said links are collected at the bottom of the OP of https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/491888-Embracing-Diversity-A-Belated-10th-Anniversary-Reflection , because Square Enix failed to grasp the concept.)

I wrote plenty to Jagex upthread and I didn't feel the need to explain the playerbase ecosystem to them, because they already understand it. Why does Jagex support the wiki's hosting and actively integrate it with the game? Why does Jagex devote an entire timeslot at RuneFest every year to the Golden Gnomes, when only a tiny percentage of the playerbase will ever be eligible for one? Because content creators, fansite maintainers, and guide makers support the enjoyment of far more players than their own personal group size, so Jagex wants to celebrate and support those load-bearing groups.

Now, you might want to claim that your stance of hating all aura users makes you part of one of those keystone species of the playerbase ecosystem, the groups that are essential even if they are tiny. But there's a couple of important factors all those groups share, that enable them to have their outsize contribution to a healthy playerbase:

  1. They don't expect, let alone require, playing like their own group in order to benefit from their work (wiki editors provide information to players who don't edit the wiki, etc.); and
  2. They make the game and its community a more enjoyable and pleasant place to be, including for players who don't play like them.

Refusing to share the game with players who aren't hurting anyone with their playstyles is the opposite of both of those things. It can have an outsize impact, but if so it will be an outsize destructive impact, driving players away from the game.

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In fact, treating the game's design as a win/lose competition between player groups doesn't just drive your "opponent" player groups (and everyone whose enjoyment depends on them) out of the game - it also drives respect, kindness, honesty, and reason out of the community, in turn pushing even more players from the game.

Let me tell you a cautionary tale about exactly that happening, and also about major changes to combat.

FFXIV used to have a combat style called Summoner. Some players loved it, while other players complained that it wasn't enough like a "traditional Final Fantasy SMN" for them.

So for the next iteration, Square Enix tried to satisfy both groups by adding more traditional FF elements while keeping the playstyle intact for those who enjoyed the previous version of the style. Some of the players who had complained were happy with this and started playing the style, while others complained that it still wasn't traditional enough for them. This process repeated a couple more times, with the traditionalist group narrowing to more extreme players each time.

The next time around, Square Enix could have gone looking deeper into both the complaints and the playstyles that Summoner was already supporting. Instead, as one part of a broader paradigm shift intended to reflect the will of the players, they destroyed the pre-existing playstyles and gave the combat style entirely over to the previous complainers.

(One may argue - correctly even - that doing so was an inept reflection of the will of the players. More on that below.)

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And this traditionalist group, having gotten what they wanted, split in two. Those who had sympathy for the previous users of the style weren't happy with Square Enix, having wanted a mutually satisfactory solution rather than ruining other players' fun to obtain their own. Meanwhile, those who treated it as a competition between player groups, and therefore themselves as having won it, loudly and aggressively did their virtual victory dances towards anyone who expressed support for the no-longer-available playstyles and the players who enjoyed them.

The same sort of virtual victory dance you did with "auras confirmed removed I have won". The same sort of aggressive picking fights you've been doing with anyone who expresses support for builds or playstyles currently enabled by auras.

And in the short term, those players who got what they wanted created a player spike on the combat style, which further encouraged those who saw previous Summoner players as enemies to shout down everyone else. That fostered resentment in everyone else and led Square Enix to make more extreme decisions, which in turn led all involved to expect fighting rather than civil collaborative discussion. The old Summoner players almost entirely didn't hate the traditionalist players until their very reasonable concerns got met with jeers and shouted down by the most militant subgroup.

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It's been 4 years, 1 month, and 18 days since Square Enix destroyed old Summoner, and in that time FFXIV's community experience has gone from "almost entirely kind and fiercely welcoming to new players" to "polarized seething hotbed of hate and bad faith, even on topics unrelated to combat, under a thin veneer of politeness from a culturally Japanese TOS and some leftover habits of helping each other". Summoner's player count has long since plummeted since there was no care taken to make it reasonable to play under the shiny new exterior, even brand new players regularly get frustrated by the playstyle gaps left behind and promptly disappear, the whole game's player count is going down the toilet as its playerbase ecosystem gradually collapses (the reasons and dynamics of which deserve several essays outside the scope of this tale), and Summoner is still a focal point of faction warfare as everyone argues their favoured theories of what exactly went wrong with the game.

Content creators there are now burning out not only on FFXIV itself, or even on Square Enix's decisions, but on dealing with the increasingly polarized and vicious community, leading to self-admitted rants like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mKkPVceGpE (Note that in that video, WeskAlber makes the error of assuming that a zero long-term retention rate of players introduced by external factors like COVID lockdowns and fleeing WoW is expected, when in fact that's a red flag just as it would be for any entertainment or hobby. But that's an easy error to make for someone who's sick of seeing hate and looking for counterpoints.) Not only does that bode ill for their playerbase ecosystem, it's a sign of how badly and in what ways their community has degraded.

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It turns out that virtual victory dances, delighting in others' pain, dismissing and shouting at the concerns of people you see as "enemies", and more broadly abandoning the norms of collaborative discourse don't just drive away the people who enjoy whatever thing you're arguing should be changed, whether out of the game or out of its public sphere.

Such behaviour also preferentially drives away people who behave with respect, kindness, honesty, reason, and civil collaborative inquiry, regardless of their position on Summoner, auras, or whatever other underlying subject matter. No one likes making the effort to dialogue in good faith and being dismissed as an "enemy" for their trouble, and the people most committed to good faith community don't like seeing that happen to anyone. Meanwhile, such behaviour emboldens and draws in people who will happily abandon respect, kindness, honesty, reason, and civil collaborative inquiry the moment it suits their cause to do so - or even because they enjoy bringing others down - since they see such abandonment as accepted in the community, easy to get the last word in with, and even rewarded with the success of one's cause (i.e. changes to the game and/or driving out "enemies"). And the people with no strong inclination either way are moved away from good faith collaboration and towards hateful shouting matches, having seen the latter behaviour both modelled for them in the community and working!

And then in the next interaction, the same remains true, further driving the community population and standards of behaviour towards hateful shouting matches. Thus the vicious spiral, until the entire community is dominated by polarized bad faith faction warfare and fight-picking even on completely unrelated topics, and the people who just want to enjoy themselves in peace also leave either the community or the whole game.

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Is that really the sort of community you want around RuneScape? Is that really the sort of community Jagex wants around RuneScape? If not - and whether you are willing to accept such a community, I highly doubt Jagex is - attempting to make current aura users "lose" does not serve your purpose.

Now, as I mentioned before, one might correctly argue that Square Enix was inept in reflecting the will of the players - that aside from broader paradigm choices like "fight-centric design" and "2 minute meta", the destruction of old Summoner's playstyles was a) not necessary to satisfy traditionalist FF players and/or b) came with consequences that the players of the time would not have endorsed in retrospect given full understanding of them.

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a) was true for the vast majority of traditionalist FF players, especially if one includes those who were happy with earlier rounds of changes to the style. Most of them just wanted the style to include more aesthetic throwbacks to prior FF summons and provide a reason to swap between summons regularly in all fights; they didn't mind the style also serving other playstyles through its gameplay, or even wanted the style to do so for their own enjoyment of style balance and/or gameplay identity. Square Enix could have made both them and old Summoner players happy simultaneously, and it is developer error that they did not do so. (Though the implementation is not necessarily obvious without understanding technical details of how the FFXIV engine handles pets, which are definitely outside the scope of this tale.) The only subgroup of traditionalist FF players that Square Enix could not have satisfied alongside old Summoner players are the tiny minority who insisted that the style not be anything more than a throwback, whether because they refused to adapt the gameplay of turn-based singleplayer games where each player controls a whole party of characters for dozens of hours to a real-time MMO where each player controls only a single character for hundreds to thousands of hours, or because they took offense to the idea of other players enjoying the style in a different way and sought to cast those players out.

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Note the nature of Square Enix's error: they destroyed other playstyles when they didn't need to. Whether that was due to failing to allocate enough dev time to properly investigating the situation and implementing a mutually satisfactory solution, underestimating the importance of those other playstyles, or choosing to sacrifice them to cater to the extreme traditionalists who wouldn't accept anything less than casting out others is up for debate - but going around dismissing any argument that describes benefits currently provided by auras regardless of the merits of the argument encourages Jagex to allocate less dev time to investigating the situation and implementing a mutually satisfactory solution, underestimate the importance of playstyles currently supported by auras, and choose to sacrifice those playstyles to cater to you and those who won't accept anything less than casting out others. So even if you maintain civility, arguing indiscriminately against playstyles and players currently supported by auras encourages the exact same type of mistake. To avoid doing so, you must consider the merits of the concerns expressed before deciding how to respond.

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Moreover, Square Enix destroyed pre-existing playstyles rather than declining to support new ones, thus spurning the investments of the previous Summoner players. This was dangerous for the same reasons I described in my original feedback to Jagex on the Ranged beta: #1450511863589900410 message And auras were first released almost 15 years ago, on June 28, 2011 ( https://runescape.wiki/w/Update:Members'_Loyalty_Programme_–_Now_Available! ), even before EoC. Regardless of your feelings on the origins of auras, that's a long time for systems to be designed around auras, healthy playstyles to have grown around them, and players to invest in those playstyles. Indiscriminately bulldozing auras now would just leave new scars on the game in the form of playstyle gaps, thus fostering resentment in existing players and reducing retention of new players.

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b) is obviously true. Vanishingly few players, even among the original traditionalist complainers, would have endorsed all of:

  • the direct destruction of old Summoner and the playstyles it supported;
  • the false impression Square Enix gave that some player group must lose in order for another to gain (because the players who instead believe that Square Enix made a mistake were disproportionately likely to quit);
  • the community effects I described above;
  • the resentful players who find themselves unheard by the community going beyond the community to be heard / take revenge (the DDoSes timed to FFXIV's patch cycle are extremely telling, and I'm sure plenty of former players have gone around anti-recommending the game to all their friends);
  • the unbalanceability of the combat styles that resulted from neglecting gameplay and systems considerations to remove playstyles rather than retaining them;
  • the playstyle gaps left behind likewise;
  • the pervasive fear that one's own playstyle might be destroyed next, whether directly in response to some complaint or indirectly through balance failure;
  • the corresponding loss of trust in Square Enix and in interactions with unknown members of the FFXIV community (who might be openly, secretly, or even inadvertently telling Square Enix to break one's own playstyle next);
  • the cascading effects on the playerbase ecosystem from all of the above; and
  • the reduced development resources for the whole game arising from players quitting.
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And these consequences, or direct analogues mutatis mutandis, can occur - most even automatically occur - as a result of any destruction of playstyles that doesn't come with a clear dividing line and impact justification like "this is literally illegal gambling" or "this requires deliberate choice to spoil someone else's fun" to prevent it. "This playstyle is currently supported by auras" has no such dividing line or impact justification, especially in the face of Jagex moving fast and breaking things - like with this week's UI update and the resulting UI design problems extensive enough to receive their own feedback thread. (That "decluttering content that hasn't stood the test of 25 years" line in the roadmap post is already inspiring fear.) So again, arguing indiscriminately against playstyles and players currently supported by auras encourages the exact same types of problems.

That Square Enix ineptly reflected the will of the players makes this cautionary tale more relevant, not less so. Unless you are trying to damage the game, attempting to make current aura users "lose" does not serve your purpose in the long term.

(As a bonus note, many of those former Summoner players are now looking for other games to play and have acquired a strong preference for highly interactive pet systems, for reasons you might begin to imagine from the name of the style. Familiars that just passively provide a buff will not count for them, whether that buff was formerly provided by an aura or not. In contrast, the blood reaver's use in the poison build was constantly interactive and so has a good chance of appealing to those players in a uniquely RuneScape way, providing extra reason for Jagex to pay attention to it and me to use it for my example playstyle. And since FFXIV is a much lower-APM game, it's not reasonable to assume that those players are able or willing to perfectly Soul Split flick to drive the healing -> damage -> healing loop.)

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In summary: You are entitled to personally consider auras forever tainted by their origin, but if you want a healthy game and pleasant community you should still consider breaking someone's build or playstyle to be a last resort, to be used with sadness rather than glee. Please stop treating the aura overhaul as a competition between you and "MTX enjoyers". You are clearly at least somewhat capable of civil collaborative discourse, based on your comments on other subjects.

vale palm
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what the fuck

swift olive
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because I ain't reading all that

timid olive
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I'm on mobile and if I swipe as quickly as I can I can't get over that wall, the scrolling runs out of momentum. Try to be more concise when responding

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Nothing wrong with an in depth post but that's way too much for one offhand statement. No breathing room

terse vale
swift olive
terse vale
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which is counterproductive to a healthy game and community

crystal plover
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What exact concerns about removing auras? That one has less boosts? That can be solved by balance changes, such as increased skill level (which give passive damage + accuracy).

vale palm
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I do not value any kind of gameplay that auras as a separate buff facilitated. Period.

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Rather than lecturing another person about being more constructive to your messages, learn to pick your battles basically?

swift olive
lusty bison
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What unique things do auras do that aren't already done in-game :peepospy:

  • Zerk auras dmg boost and accuracy boost far outweigh the damage taken to the point where in encounters where people take massive damage like zuk, zerk auras are preferred due to the time tested formula of kill thing before things kill you, plus the 120 boost practically resolves that issue
  • you have plenty of options for survivability to replace vamp aura albeit at a cost, mage can use animate dead, I've been getting insane mileage out of Sara bow eof at range hm zuk, I swap between vamp and grim while meleeing hm zuk, and even in vestments it's not super hard to heal back up without using consumables, necromancy no question has ghost, hellhound exists too, far more diegetic than toggle this glowy thing and you heal chip damage which soulsplit already does
  • penance aura can be replaced by penance powder, if the consumable being expensive is a problem jagex can make them easier to get if required
  • I'll probably miss supreme invigorating for hybrid but it doesn't meaningfully impact your rotation other than adding buffer adren
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The only thing equilibrium aura does is flatten your damage profile for more consistency, my rotation if I'm using equilibrium or mahjarrat doesn't meaningfully change

terse vale
# crystal plover What exact concerns about removing auras? That one has less boosts? That can be ...

Sure, I'd be fine with seeing skills and systems rebalanced to work well without auras. I've even made a proposal to that end.

What I'm not fine with is:

  • ignoring the concerns about what would need to be rebalanced to work well without auras (including for newer players who don't already have 120s),
  • lying by implication about the availability of an example playstyle without MTX (explanation: #1450511863589900410 message ),
  • reaching for spurious objections before finally making a proposal which isn't even up to their own standard (explanation: #1450511863589900410 message),
  • continuing to bring up already-countered points while making no new argument supporting them (explanation: #1450511863589900410 message + playing "not a game developer" just now when I explained extensively why players benefit from the game supporting playstyles other than their own starting at #1450511863589900410 message ), and
  • generally choosing to pick fights rather than examine player concerns surrounding auras on their merits.
terse vale
terse vale
# vale palm I do not automatically value anything in this game because another person likes ...

I do not automatically value anything in this game because another person likes it, and I have no reason to as I am not a developer of it.

I explained exactly why it is beneficial to you as a player for the game to support playstyles other than your own, starting at #1450511863589900410 message . That is, in fact, the reason I had to write so much. If you don't offer a counterargument, you don't get to pretend you've countered.

You shouldn't take it personally that someone is happy with an outcome they liked, just because you didn't like it.

Once again with the false statements!

I was able to come up with a proposal for removing the aura slot in a conversation interleaved with yours ( #1450511863589900410 message ), so clearly I don't have a problem with the slot being removed, which is what Jagex actually announced. I have a problem with playstyles being removed, which is not what Jagex announced but is what you keep advocating. My happiness or unhappiness with the announced aura overhaul is entirely dependent on whether healthy playstyles remain supported after said overhaul.

Moreover, you have actively encouraged people to take it personally. #1450511863589900410 message There is no reason to publicly post "I have won" in a thread that wasn't even for the announcement except to rub it in the faces of the people you see as "losing". Which encourages them to see you as an enemy, furthering exactly the sort of antagonistic community interaction I explained is bad for you as a player.

If you feel like someone is dismissing your concerns, you don't have to reply.

Oh, I know I don't have to reply. I chose to reply because I think you could use a chance to see the road your fight-picking leads down, and so does anyone who cares to read my explanation.

swift olive
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it's not that deep I promise you

terse vale
# vale palm Rather than lecturing another person about being more constructive to *your* mes...

Rather than lecturing another person about being more constructive to your messages, learn to pick your battles basically?

Guess what? I picked this battle because I don't want Jagex to make ill-informed decisions or the community to become an antagonistic hellhole!

And that's only after you picked a battle with someone other than me, who was simply expressing concerns about how auras are handled in the Ranged beta: #1450511863589900410 message

swift olive
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I think it's time to put discord down for a little while Aurelle

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for your sanity

terse vale
vale palm
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I don't have a problem with the slot being removed, which is what Jagex actually announced. I have a problem with playstyles being removed, which is not what Jagex announced but is what you keep advocating.
I only advocated for auras to be removed

There is no reason to publicly post "I have won" in a thread that wasn't even for the announcement except to rub it in the faces of the people you see as "losing".
It was a cheeky callback to the conversation and more of a general statement of satisfaction. Instead of assuming that I was rubbing it in your face, you should have asked if I was rubbing it in your face

I chose to reply because I think you could use a chance to see the road your fight-picking leads down
Getting pinged 3 days later with longwinded messages?

I picked this battle because I don't want Jagex to make ill-informed decisions or the community to become an antagonistic hellhole!
When you find that you are arguing or attempting to debate with someone that you feel to be replying dismissively or in bad faith, everyone is better off if you disengage. Attempting to lecture others on their conduct, especially when you're already under the impression that they're arguing in bad faith or being dismissive, doesn't actually lead to improved behavior or even an improved environment. What you are doing instead is basically a form of flaming, you're keeping the dysfunctional conversation going to no end other than satisfying yourself.

And that's only after you picked a battle with someone other than me, who was simply expressing concerns about how auras are handled in the Ranged beta: ⁠recent-updates⁠Combat Styles Improvements - Ra…
I expressed my opinion.

lusty bison
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I'm confused what playstyles are being removed with auras that cannot be quickly alleviated using other systems or existing systems already

swift olive
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and as far as I know, they have already stated they want to take what auras do, and bake them into skills/gameplay, not a interface with a CD timer

lusty bison
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Sounds like a fair suggestion

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Invention perks currently just add free damage and mitigation outside of like four relevant abilities so integrating some would be nice even if I dislike the stupid gacha system

swift olive
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Vamp as an weapon invention perk would be.... a pretty nice QoL, even if it is a lesser version than the aura

terse vale
# lusty bison I'm confused what playstyles are being removed with auras that cannot be quickly...

As a concrete example to invite proposals of how to redistribute the buffs, in the original discussion I mentioned the old poison build and players' interest in it returning with a new familiar, where the current Vampyrism effect helped drive the damage -> healing -> damage loop (especially for players who can't Soul Split flick well / while using Split Soul): #1450511863589900410 message More suggestions on that would be cool, and fruitful feedback for Jagex.

But Eiki tried to duck the question of how to support the build instead: #1450511863589900410 message

(I'm sure there are more playstyles that will need a close look at how to make them work without auras, the old poison build was just a convenient concrete example for a variety of reasons including being a Ranged build.)

swift olive
fleet wharf
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Yes, they are failing to adhere to the established language game; but by responding to side-tangents like the red herrings you identified, you're actively re-platforming them. In a formal debate the point of discussion should be continuous, but people will sadly almost always end up defaulting to polarised opinions without substantiating them. I understand your annoyance, and my addition to this discussion is an explication rather than a justification. Yes, calling it out will help in a pro-intellectual setting, but shifting the focus of the discussion actively de-platforms the original discussion.

#

Post Jagex' response the direction is already decided, the finer details are yet to be finalised and that's where the discussion should head.

hybrid moon
vale palm
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Not dislike, do not value

terse vale
# swift olive Not everyone is going to agree with you or attempt to work with you on a solutio...

If they had just said "auras shouldn't be in the game", that would be perfectly fine. If they had chosen to disengage at that point, that would also be perfectly fine. Heck, even if they had said "I don't think the poison build should make a return" and given a truthful reason for that position, that would be annoying but we could have found another example.

But when someone implies that use of an in-game-earnable aura is necessarily "MTX enjoying", that's a false implication and anyone seeing that gets to call them on it. #1450511863589900410 message When someone complains "too many temporary buffs" as a reason to remove auras and then only offers other forms of temporary buffs as replacements, that argument isn't internally consistent and anyone seeing that gets to call them on it. #1450511863589900410 message When someone leads with "put similar buffs on Summoning familiars" and then makes completely irrelevant claims the moment they're presented with an example where the familiar slot is already taken, that's trying to dismiss an inconvenient example and anyone seeing that gets to call them on it. (ditto) When someone claims that auras offer no gameplay after being presented with a counterargument they haven't answered, that's pretending the ball isn't in their court and anyone seeing that gets to call them on it. #1450511863589900410 message

People are welcome to disagree with me, and to disengage from conversations with me, honestly and within the basic rules of civil argument. That behaviour was neither honest nor within the basic rules of civil argument.

mellow frigate
#

it does feel like you're looking a bit too hard for gotchas in a forum most people are engaging in very casually without a large degree of care about their choice of words mate

visual grail
# lusty bison What unique things do auras do that aren't already done in-game :peepospy: - Ze...

I like the fact that you can choose between auras depending on your play style, be it invigorating to give you consistency at the cost of damage, berserker which give you more damage at the cost of taking significantly more damage (ignoring accuracy issues) and also are suitable for style camping, aegis to take less damage, etc.

due to the time tested formula of kill thing before things kill you
It actually makes surviving harder though, so if you're struggling mahj would likely be a better option (ignoring accuracy issues)
it doesn't meaningfully impact your rotation other than adding buffer adren
It makes things significantly more consistent, very much so in a meaningful way. Have you tried seeing the difference bridding at like Solak or Amascut with and without it?

lusty bison
terse vale
# fleet wharf Post Jagex' response the direction is already decided, the finer details are yet...

I would love to have a productive discussion on how to make the aura overhaul go well; where to rebalance skills, where to make the buff a levelling benefit, where to make the buff a permanent unlock, where to make the buff a temporary consumable, where the buff isn't really helpful or healthy, ... But those discussions are much harder to have when someone refuses to abide by the rules of honest civil discussion and instead keeps dismissing the playstyles that currently use auras.

visual grail
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I do still think aura effects should be integrated into other reward spaces in a more immersive manner instead of it being pop and done
I wouldn't mind if it was done in a good way, but sadly only thing we're getting is complete removal without any replacement 🥲

terse vale
terse vale
visual grail
terse vale
barren bane
#

Figure it's cause I'm not stalling a incend?

#

And instead trying to build into meteor

visual grail
#

Incend stall is only for tribrid, which is worse than hybrid now :^)

true nimbus
visual grail
true nimbus
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Yes XD

visual grail
#

starts flaming weapon poison

true nimbus
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nuu

visual grail
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But now get going to end the phase with 100% for arms and legs! Smirkse

true nimbus
#

For hybrid, I was thinking I could have the adren to gconc tsunami grico there

visual grail
#

Idk how it works in solos, but in groups you'd usually use nami for the legs

true nimbus
#

Yeah I think that's doable but only 3 stacks on incite fear

#

Oh wait that's arms nvm

visual grail
#

Yeah, usually you'd sun+fsoa b4 arms, then release stalled chain into gconc wm

#

But probably doesn't work well in solo w/ other arm

true nimbus
#

Hmm it might with the usual melee solo rootling

#

Though that's rng

#

As far as I remember

#

or maybe I could make a rot with incend mixed in during range burst but would be sketchy

heady sigil
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With range changing… should I work on getting 120 now or later once the update is live? I’m roughly 4-5m iirc from 120.

vale palm
#

thats like 2-3 hours go ahead

spark ermine
#

i'd like to add a point, if it hadn't already been debated on.

which is the cause and effect?

are players' content built around existing boss' content?

or, are boss content built around players' content?

meaning, do we design boss mechanics around existing player's mechanics, or the other way around?

as such, this sets the direction of what we should address more strictly over the other.

true nimbus
#

Hmm that could be a hard one. Like ED5 only has a stun check because that's like a unique thing that the player can do against an enemey, the scarab, so that's designed because of the player kit.
It is also known that bosses be default are gonna interact with defensive abilities, so that's why they made bone shield because big attacks like that are what bosses do, which you counter with defensives regardless

floral niche
#

ED5? didn't we have only 4 of them

true nimbus
#

Sanctum I mean, tbh I forgot how they planned to do ED's in the future

barren bane
terse vale
# spark ermine i'd like to add a point, if it hadn't already been debated on. which is the cau...

Excellent question!

If Jagex was designing a brand new game, either the combat styles or the bosses could come first in the design process, inspiring the other to fit. (Though there would likely still be some iteration back and forth before such a hypothetical game launched.)

Given that we already have 25 years of fights in RuneScape and redoing or scrapping them all would be a big upheaval, for the purposes of this beta we mostly have to take the fights as both coming first and already designed, then design the players' style toolkits to fit that. That's what I started with in my design process recommendations and example Ranged ability kit: #1450511863589900410 message

That said, that doesn't mean that future bosses can't be designed around the toolkits Jagex eventually settles on for each style, so if you think some character capability should exist to enable a type of boss mechanic you would want to see, that's valid feedback. (We already know we're getting some new early-game bosses based around mechanical concepts Jagex wants to teach players.) It's also possible that a comprehensive review of the bosses (and even Slayer monsters) already in the game will lead Jagex to change some outlier content.

mild onyx
#

Heyo Folks,

Just wanna pop in here and give some insight into the Combat Beta, we are currently working on a lot of projects at the moment especially with the launch of our Roadmap this week but we aim to have an update to the Combat Beta next week.

Waiting on some confirmation on the exact days but its likely Thursday. Should come with a blog outlining more of the changes.

true nimbus
#

Thank you for the update :] it does seem a bit rushed but hope the content creators gave some good feedback

wise moon
visual grail
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Surely the rumors of more bad gutting and ruining game mechanics / hybridding were just wrong 🙏

barren bane
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Great news!

final juniper
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Good to know finally. hoping for a change to deathspore arrows away from crit rng if range is really going to reshift its identity

tough pebble
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is the release really next month? i read before that there would be way more beta testing, that and next week is right before feb? doesnt seem like much time at all if another round with stuff actually working is going to be tested

terse vale
#

Thank you for the update, Mod Azanna! Looking forward to the blog post.

terse vale
# tough pebble is the release really next month? i read before that there would be way more bet...

I definitely share this concern; we don't yet have a full pitch for the styles, let alone a second beta round, and after the beta reaches a state where players of all skill levels are happy with it, there would still be time required in the production pipeline to prepare it for release (any new animations, final approval, etc.). We're almost at February already, and I don't think a month is enough time to make all that happen with good feedback on a second beta round.

That said, I did see some combat changes listed in the roadmap that don't need so much iteration, such as making solid food more useful (less adrenaline drain, static healing amounts) and tutorializing ability unlocks with a pop-up rather than auto-adding them to the player's hotbar. If those are the February changes and then the ability changes come at a later stage, that would make a lot of sense.

hybrid moon
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Debilitate should be changed. Currently it reduces the damage the target deals to you by half, same as Reflect in single combat except worthless in multi, not even considering the reflected damage. It should be changed to either A. Debilitate gives the 50% damage reduction to the whole group (probably overpowered) or B. Remove Debilitate and give Reflect two charges, and have it scale with shield tier and the Bulwark perk. I would prefer the second option personally.
Plus, turning Debilitate into a second Reflect charge would help reduce ability bloat which the Jmods have talked about.

vale palm
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only if it scales from 1%

#

going up 0.5% per shield tier

fleet moth
true nimbus
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It isn't though. It's more like deleting parts of the complexity like ability bloat and maybe overload timers. The difficult parts are more so becoming partly standardized rather than removed

terse vale
# fleet moth Making everyone happy is impossible. Jagex aims for the future and expansion to...

Making everyone happy is impossible.

Making players of all skill levels (distinct from "everyone") happy is possible, has been achieved, and is necessary for the long-term health of the game, as I covered in my original feedback to Jagex: #1450511863589900410 message I even gave an example Ranged ability kit as a demonstration, complete with discussion of how players at different skill levels would have different experiences of the same abilities.

Jagex aims for the future and expansion towards new players.
The numbers show majority prefers necro and of this simplicity.
Thats the direction.

Focusing only on the majority - and for that matter, the short-term interest of the majority rather than keeping them from getting bored in their eventual progression as players - would constitute a failure to properly nurture the playerbase ecosystem and thus a failure to foster the long-term health and growth of the game. (Something must keep the content creators, guide makers, etc. entertained and excited, and any fights that could do that without high skill expression in the styles would be impossible for the vast majority of players.) As I believe Jagex understands the playerbase ecosystem just fine, I only alluded to this concept in my original feedback, but I can provide detailed coverage if you are willing to read essays.

Further, I expect Jagex does not intend simplicity to be the combat direction, for precisely that reason. (I believe there has been at least one JMod statement that the beta we currently have is too simple, though I heard that second-hand so I don't have a source.) My understanding of the combat direction is a combination of better teaching and level progression to help casual players learn, removing "noob traps" like the extreme adrenaline cost of solid food, and replacing uninteresting complexity (like ability bloat to roll the GCD) with interesting complexity.

terse vale
fleet moth
true nimbus
#

There's more to the numbers game than that. You will severely damage the content scene if gutting the core complexity and how many players will actually become combat players if they already dedicated themselves to skilling?

spark ermine
# hybrid moon Debilitate should be changed. Currently it reduces the damage the target deals t...

on target debuffs that applies to the target wholly has been interestingly subjected to very few sources - such as the vuln-like spells from magic

hilariously not a single defensive ability applies such on-target debuffs that does that, and one has to wonder why

all defensive abilities are single-target or player-centric, with none focused on group

that's probably one of the design flaws of combat abilities too (quake, pulverise, dazing shot seems to be an exception?)

civic tree
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as far as I can tell this is a totally arbitrary threshold. There will always be always some players at every skill level who are happy with the combat system no matter what they do with it.

#

The actual question is how many people are happy with it

#

and I would argue that the majority of players are not happy with the current state of combat.

hybrid moon
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I like how Magic is right now, but I do have t95 wands so a lower-geared player may not feel the same. RS3 combat is extremely backloaded, with only two or three early game bosses released in the past decade (nm Glacor and Mhek, maybe Hermod counts but he’s probably closer to midgame). They are adding Obor and Scurrius with Havenhythe thankfully 😄

random widget
hybrid moon
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With bone shield, neither does reflect 😛

random widget
terse vale
civic tree
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ah ok I just misunderstood you then. In that case I pretty much agree

terse vale
#

glad we could clear that up!

lusty bison
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We might see shb summoner return next expac

#

Funnily enough jagex can learn lessons from ffxiv on how simplifying to an extent can immensely help with the play experience and increase playrates without nuking skill ceiling too much (Paladin, Gunbreaker, 7.05 Samurai, Monk, Red Mage etc) and how not to (Black Mage (subjectively) and Summoner (objectively)

rich igloo
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id definitly say the most current GNB changes did nuke the skill ceiling. the entire dificulty of the job was gauge management, and they verry much did remove that, but this isnt a ffxiv discussion thread lol.

still its a good point of comparison

civic tree
lusty bison
civic tree
#

not actuallly complaining lol its just funny

terse vale
# fleet moth Short term interest? Getting bored? This is all your personal assumption. Don’...

I provided substantial reasoning in my original feedback post and I linked you directly to the relevant section. Discussing the necessity of deep systems to fuel long-term player investment in an MMO - when that is Jagex's new monetization strategy - and the omnidisciplinary nature of the World Guardian requiring a pathway for players who don't want to dig deep into every style is hardly the "personal opinion" or "assumption" you accuse me of.

However, there is substantially more evidence available that Jagex is most likely already aware of, some of which I alluded to both in my original feedback post and directly in my earlier reply to you. I even offered to provide explanation, yet your reply embeds the false premise that no explanation exists.

The term "playerbase ecosystem" that I used was in fact coined by professional game developer Damion Schubert, whose specialties include MMOs and monetization, in a Twitter essay whose original posting has since fallen victim to difficulties with Twitter. The Wayback Machine preservation of that essay is necessarily split across many links, all of which are collected at the bottom of the OP of https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/491888-Embracing-Diversity-A-Belated-10th-Anniversary-Reflection. Note that in that essay, Schubert spent considerable time discussing support for an extremely wide skill range as a key component of games' playerbase ecosystem, and thus commercial success, across many genres. This concept is understood by many successful studios and even companies catering to developers - try looking for game community management advice via search terms like "a playerbase is an ecosystem" and see what you get, and there are loads of player categorization systems to attend to different player groups: what do you think "PvMer / skiller / quester / chatter / ..." is?

terse vale
# fleet moth Short term interest? Getting bored? This is all your personal assumption. Don’...

(see also above)

Short term interest?
Getting bored?

... making decision on numbers and they talk

If you consider the above insufficient, we also have evidence of what happens when a combat style is given too low a skill ceiling (highest level of player skill rewarded), regardless of whether the decision is motivated by numbers at the time. FFXIV lowered the skill ceiling of 1 out of 19 of their combat styles too far in a rework that was based on player feedback, the same players who had asked for that rework did get bored of it in short order, and it was a pivotal factor in the concentrated ire of players who actually care about combat style design and the disengagement of guide makers, fansite maintainers, and content creators more generally who support the enjoyment of even casual players. The same OP who dug up links to Schubert's original essay also responded to that rework with a chilling account of how MMOs die, including how many appealing metrics are outright misleading if not correctly analyzed in the context of the playerbase ecosystem: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/493922-The-Threefold-Problem-of-Magical-Ranged-Balance-3-2-Difficulty-Continued

Numbers do talk in context. Immediate raw player count is not the correct metric, because it does not even identify load-bearing player groups in the playerbase ecosystem.

terse vale
# fleet moth Short term interest? Getting bored? This is all your personal assumption. Don’...

(see also above)

thats the simple reason why the combat design is heading towards necro.

You have now asserted this twice without source as a statement about the styles' skill ceilings - the implication of your earlier statement "majority prefers necro and of this simplicity" in context is the exclusion of higher-skilled players - and as a done deal. Please provide an official source that states intention to lower the skill ceiling, as distinct from lowering the skill floor (e.g. providing a basic attack with which to roll the GCD) and from improvements in in-game teaching (e.g. ability progression, pop-ups explaining new abilities).

lusty bison
# terse vale (see also above) > Short term interest? > Getting bored? > > ... making decisi...

It's both hilarious and sad that the summoner rework to make it incredibly simple actually makes it unfavourable and sometimes detrimental for the high end fights in Dawntrail

Excess simplification drastically reduced its flexibility which made it almost impossible to deal optimal damage in certain fights like Futures Rewritten (Ultimate), The Ageless Necropolis (Extreme) and some mechanics in the current savage tier like the water ball add phase in M10S or Orbital Omen in M11S due to fight mechanics or forced downtime

You can't even hold damage for other harder and more flexible jobs to build their resources

It is to the point where PVP summoner is considered the ideal and objectively more fun for many players and that has like 6 buttons

I'm just trying to add more context to be a cautionary tale

terse vale
# true nimbus There's more to the numbers game than that. You will severely damage the content...

This is a correct informal flag of two key factors in a successful playerbase ecosystem:

  • "You will severely damage the content scene if gutting the core complexity" -> content creators rely on a high skill ceiling for their personal enjoyment (after all, they are a subset of ultra-hardcore players) and support their audiences in enjoying the game and potentially being recruited into the game, who in turn support all current and prospective players they interact with, and so on cascading through the playerbase.
  • "[H]ow many players will actually become combat players if they already dedicated themselves to skilling" -> if the game fails to provide a good on-ramp to combat enjoyment, in the form of both a low skill floor and showing casual players that improvement is fun and within reach, players will instead conclude "I can't understand this" (as most did with the original EoC) and the pathway to midcore -> hardcore -> ultra-hardcore -> content creator breaks down, plus even casual players lose an avenue for long-term gameplay.

Thus "[t]here's more to the numbers game than that" is also correct, because those factors are important to long-term player retention.

true nimbus
#

The second point more so meant that you have to carefully consider player loss and gain. You'll make some things simple and maybe lose 5% of the current endgame playerbase. The thing wasn't too detrimental to complexity, so the change doesn't have a big effect but does get more players invested into the combat and give them potential to get to the same point as the players who left, so that one might be worth it. You also have to consider that people are unlikely to become an endgame player in general and more so enjoy the early-mid game, so an endgame player has value in the sense that they are most dedicated to the game's progression already. If the change is too simplistic enough where half of the most gameplay progressed players quit and then you think about who else is going to progress enough to become that dedicated, then you probably skip that change and do something else

visual grail
true nimbus
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Not much flexibility there ye

true nimbus
#

I will say though, that if they are able to take a current system that players enjoy even if it's a bit janky, then do a faithful remaster to that system that keeps similar thematics and complexity, something that feels like a spiritual successor to the old one and spices things up a bit, then that has potential

sick talon
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Idk why Making it simple, to getting into pvm we got necro

true nimbus
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I think there's different context for the word simple too, so it's hard to say what's going on exactly

visual grail
true nimbus
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I have a few theories about what they are doing and I think they will initially miss a few points of complexity which they will hopefully address but overall I have faith that they'll be able to make something fun

#

If they are unable to remaster something to the obvious complexity level of the last iteration though, then I think they'll keep that stuff in

solar hazel
true nimbus
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I do think there's no point in catering combat to players who don't give rotations a chance, like that's a bit too far from the current combat enjoyers

solar hazel
true nimbus
#

I mean there's smaller rotations too right

#

Ulti and then a few combos

terse vale
# lusty bison We might see shb summoner return next expac

I'll believe it when I see it. (Have you seen DT Monk handholding the player through the combo loop?) Yoshi-P has burned so much trust with EW and DT, DT bungled a truly astonishing number of systems, and unfortunately his response to good faith criticism that seems to contradict previous feedback is to retreat further from the players rather than trying to understand why he's getting the feedback he's getting.

Context for non-FFXIV players:

Yoshi-P is the producer and director of FFXIV, giving him a similar community role as "CEO of Jagex". However, he's held the title for nearly the game's entire lifespan and Japanese culture is more hierarchical, so his personal direction and tendencies have more impact on the game as a whole. He also acts as the main "face of the devs" to players, with much fewer cases of bringing a specific dev on stream / video to present their own work.

FFXIV has gone through 6 expansions so far; in order: A Realm Reborn (ARR), Heavensward (HW), Stormblood (SB), Shadowbringers (ShB), Endwalker (EW), and Dawntrail (DT). Their combat styles are usually called "jobs" - it's a Final Fantasy term, and yes it does get confusing when trying to talk about the employment expectations of the developer or assigning a fight mechanic task to a specific character (because "role" is also taken by the Holy Trinity system for different types of jobs). Every expansion so far, they've added 2-3 new jobs. FFXIV's player character is also much less autonomous than the World Guardian; the game is exclusively Full Manual (which implies no auto-retaliate) with no auto-pathing.

One job that they've had around since ARR is Summoner. From ARR through SB, it was fun for skilled players (high skill ceiling) but hard to get into properly (high skill floor except for getting partial auto-retaliate out of the pet, bad teaching and stepping stones).

terse vale
# lusty bison Funnily enough jagex can learn lessons from ffxiv on how simplifying to an exten...

ShB lowered the skill floor of Summoner dramatically - to the point that a casual player could very nearly use a Revo bar despite the game not having Revo - and made the levelling and casual play process better teach the foundational player skills for serious play, all without really touching the skill ceiling. (What top-end rotations looked like shifted around, of course, but optimizing the job was still an extremely difficult task that used similar concepts.) ShB also gave Summoner a more distinct gameplay identity, replacing its ill-fitting RNG proc with a deterministic system to set it apart from the other two "casters" offering different styles of RNG procs and being built around their use.

EW lowered the skill ceiling of Summoner dramatically, taking the job away from the players who really enjoyed its gameplay to no benefit for casual players; casual players operate near the skill floor, not the skill ceiling, and already had a low skill floor to work with. (Ironically, since the skill floor is content-dependent and Square Enix killed off the job's pet AI, the very weakest players (usually disabled) who were relying on the partial auto-retaliate found the skill floor for their content raised out from under them.) EW also removed Summoner's gameplay identity, since it removed the gameplay to have an identity about, and removed the casual player teaching since the job literally got easier as one levelled.

#

Both of these changes could have been, and were, described as "simplifying the job". Both of these changes created an immediate player spike and wave of happy casual player feedback. (In the latter case, that feedback came from players happy about either the aesthetic or taking away the opportunity for strong players to do better than them.) But one of them was a spectacular long-term success in which serious players were happy to welcome casual players to share the job, and the other was a spectacular long-term failure that polarized hardcore players and casual players against each other as one part of severely damaging the game's playerbase ecosystem.

(You know how in this game, flame wars between casual and hardcore players usually start with casual players flaming "elites" out of resentment over the top players' much higher DPS making bosses unprofitable to kill casually and pricing casual-midcore players out of the best consumables? In FFXIV, the flame wars usually start with hardcore players flaming casual players out of resentment over Square Enix misguidedly taking away the hardcore players' skill ceilings due to misinterpreting feedback. Trying to play the game still fuels the fire, but in the opposite direction.)

FFXIV has lots of other jobs, many of which have histories that demonstrated the same principles at one point or another. But the sheer intensity of Summoner's history makes it a great example, both of what to do and what not to do. To someone who deeply understands FFXIV's design history, a good chunk of my feedback to Jagex on the non-Necromancy styles could be summarized as "do what ShB Summoner did, not what EW Summoner did", but anyone who knows that doesn't need me to tell them which one to emulate and which one was a fiasco.

#

The first lesson to be learned is that treating a combat style as having a single difficulty hides essential information. A style's difficulty is a curve from skill floor to skill ceiling, allowing all players who are happy somewhere on that curve to comfortably share the style. (A more detailed explanation of difficulty curves has also been provided in the context of FFXIV Summoner: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/493921-The-Threefold-Problem-of-Magical-Ranged-Balance-3-1-Difficulty Really good players are often very good at math, and that goes double for Summoner since its foundation class is literally magic through math. EW's clash between the job's lore identity / power fantasy and its lacking gameplay didn't help one bit.) This is also why I discussed the difficulty curve in my original feedback post: #1450511863589900410 message

Further, a player's feedback on a style is usually about their own point on its difficulty curve unless otherwise specified, and should be interpreted in the context of whatever point(s) they're talking about. Players tend to be pretty good at specifying if they're not talking about their own current point on the difficulty curve; phrases like "my friend found", "when I was learning", "to new players", ... pop up and make it obvious.

#

Taking a player's feedback as justification to change parts of a style's difficulty curve that aren't affecting them and they're not talking about to help others is just a mistake. An expert player who says "this part of the levelling process is teaching new players the wrong thing about how to use this ability at endgame" is trying to help other players and probably has a point. An expert player who says "new players shouldn't be allowed to kill bosses until they learn to juggle arrow stacks" is being a toxic elitist and should be ignored. A casual player who says "well-practiced Full Manual shouldn't do any better than Revo" is being a toxic casual and should also be ignored.

The second lesson to be learned from FFXIV regarding style difficulty, mostly from its other jobs and previous iterations of its underlying combat systems, is the difference between difficulty that's fun - even if momentarily frustrating - and tasks that are just annoying. The line depends on the game design, and to some extent on the player, but tasks that are uncontroversially annoying are needless deterrents to playing the style and should be removed. (Tasks that are annoying to some players and fun to others can wind up being parts of style identity.) If they're contributing to the skill ceiling of the style, replace them with something fun, but often they're only even noticeable to casual players (the strong players have pushed past them already) so they can just be removed without replacement and the resulting lowered skill floor is a happy side effect.

solar hazel
# true nimbus I mean there's smaller rotations too right

And they will continue to exist probably.
Just hopefully will be easier to get into without having to look outside of the game for perfect dps rotations and with less abilities that don't ever get used except for that 1 time on that one random boss

terse vale
#

(see also above)

Jagex has already removed various combat annoyances at endgame; adrenaline stalling is a great example. (Though there's a good argument to make that a non-issue from the beginning, rather than a story reward, both to teach players right from the beginning and because experiencing the story in order takes a long time to get to Legacy of Zamorak.) (For the FFXIV players: compare the older Umbral Soul stalling on Black Mage to the new system where it just holds your phase.) I believe much of what's left would require engine work to fix, like giving us the option to have conventional modifier key handling, or is already on the chopping block due to large-scale feedback. (If anything, it's important to be careful that large-scale feedback isn't hiding players who enjoy the task and perhaps don't realize that others have complained about it.) For this reason, I didn't really make a point of it in my original feedback post.

The third lesson to be learned is that there are lots of ways to improve communicating to and teaching the player without affecting the style's skill ceiling at all. For example, the Alt1 "job gauges" are ripped directly from FFXIV - hence the term "job" rather than "style" - where they were added in SB as a native feature, and they very much help players track what's going on in the job / style. They make things easier on casual players without affecting the skill ceiling at all - they're obviously pure information displays or Alt1 couldn't run them, they don't tell players what to press, and top-end players are used to juggling their resources in their heads anyway.

#

Likewise, hardcore players already know how their style(s) of choice work. Teaching players better in the game doesn't affect the skill ceiling, it just makes the learning process more realistic and appealing for everyone who's not already there. A variety of teaching improvements were already test run with Necromancy, so instead I focused that aspect of my feedback on rewarding players for incremental improvements to encourage practice. This smooths out the difficulty curve rather than producing large jumps, but again it leaves the skill ceiling alone.

Right now, the non-Necromancy combat styles are in the position that HW-SB Summoner was: there's a lot of fun stuff in there for the players who can reach it, but a lot of players can't get into the styles and are justifiably annoyed. We want what ShB Summoner did, bringing those players in while keeping the skill ceiling high for the players who are already serious about combat. Not only do we not want what EW Summoner did - pushing midcore-hardcore players out by lowering the skill ceiling - that did an enormous amount of damage to a healthy game and the entire point of the integrity focus is that RuneScape isn't currently a healthy game.

true nimbus
solar hazel
terse vale
# true nimbus I think there's different context for the word simple too, so it's hard to say w...

I think the concept you're looking for is "skill floor vs. skill ceiling", or more broadly "difficulty curve", which I covered in my original feedback post (Observation 3, IIRC that's right where you stopped) and some more in my context-giving just now. Jagex can lower the skill floor to let more casual players have fun with the combat styles without lowering the skill ceiling (which would take the styles away from stronger players), even though both of those possibilities would be described as "simplifying the style".

true nimbus
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Not exactly making it simple but making crunching down on the abilities that are the core focus

terse vale
# solar hazel Because it's nice that non-rotation-spreadsheet gamers might one day be able to ...

I think you're also looking for the concept of a difficulty curve, or at least "skill floor vs. skill ceiling".

Sure, combat should be understandable and fun without a spreadsheet. That's a statement about the skill floor, and basically no one other than toxic elitists will dispute it. A spreadsheet feeling necessary is a design error, namely a skill floor that's too high.

That doesn't prevent more complex rotations, including spreadsheet rotations, from existing for players who enjoy making or executing them. The existence of spreadsheet rotations is entirely based on the skill ceiling, and really has no bearing on the casual player experience. The nonexistence of spreadsheets about combat is also a design error, namely a skill ceiling that's too low.

solar hazel
true nimbus
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I do feel like the upgrades help with that a lot. With bolg you know when you should proc it (it could have ability highlighters too) and after rapid fire/asphyx, you know to dump all your stuff after those

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And of course you gotta be under effects that are advantageous to those core combos like swiftness and high adren in general

true nimbus
hybrid moon
terse vale
# solar hazel I never said theres a problem with how much skill is required / can be displayed...

I never said theres a problem with how much skill is required / can be displayed at the high end.

While I don't see you strictly saying that, you do seem to be confused in a way that is resolved by differentiating the skill floor and the skill ceiling.

For example: #1450511863589900410 message

maybe the current combat enjoyers just need to accept that not everyone wants to have their first steps into pvm just be "look up X or Y rotation and manually press those buttons

The vast majority of the current combat enjoyers already accept this. They're not looking to keep you out, they'd rather see you learn the styles to your own interest level. But they don't really have the power to change the skill floor; that's in Jagex's hands. What they want to keep for themselves is the skill ceilings.

If you think of each style as having a single difficulty, their feedback of "we want the skill ceiling to stay high" sounds like "we want the styles to stay complex" sounds like "we want the skill floor to stay high" sounds like "we want to keep the casual players out", which would explain the confusion.

looking up some 3rd party rotation simulator that doesn't even really explain what makes the rotation good

This is a case of "the guide you found wasn't the right guide for you". To what extent that's a failure of the game vs. a failure of the community is a complex topic that would depend in part on how you wound up with a rotation simulator spreadsheet instead of a guide breaking down the concepts of each style. Because even now, each style does have core concepts. You can learn about the different Ranged arrow types, or Magic ability priorities to increase effective crit rate, or so on.

solar hazel
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^ might be a problem on how i worded things idk.

terse vale
# hybrid moon > The nonexistence of spreadsheets about combat is also a design error, namely a...

That statement was about a perception that getting into combat requires copying spreadsheet rotations. I would expect Magic spreadsheets to be less "this is the rotation" and more "analysis of how to effectively utilize procs", such as calculating how many wand resets can be used without compromising adrenaline generation for the next Sunshine and/or defensives. (Proc-based FFXIV jobs used to have a similar style of spreadsheets, though their archival appears to have been something of an issue.)

terse vale
terse vale
# lusty bison It's both hilarious and sad that the summoner rework to make it incredibly simpl...

More context for the non-FFXIV players:

  • Ultimate is the highest difficulty, existing purely for the challenge and the bragging rights cosmetic rewards. Imagine a fight you expect to die to 1k times just to learn it, even if you're already good enough as a player and at your style, and then you don't even get a meaningful gear upgrade.
  • Savage (the "S" suffix on those abbreviated fight names) is the second highest difficulty, and the highest that gives practical gear rewards. These span a substantial difficulty range.
  • Extreme is the third highest difficulty, and the lowest that's considered "take this seriously" rather than "casual / story".

The point made is that despite EW-DT Summoner being vastly oversimplified and thus easy to operate, its rigidity from that oversimplification holds it back across the entire range of "serious" (high-end) content. And this by extension holds the whole party back, because FFXIV's difficult fights near-universally include harsh DPS checks (there, "enrage" means "kill the boss before it finishes this cast or it kills the whole party") and that prevents Square Enix from imposing a Necromancy-style damage output curve onto Summoner.

EW Summoner is a massive cautionary tale for a whole lot of reasons.

lusty bison
# terse vale More context for the non-FFXIV players: - Ultimate is the highest difficulty, e...

Tbh ew summoner was fine on expac, the core was ripe for expansion
For every person who told me about how dot job summoner was peak I've had the same amount of voices critcizing it but as I've only joined late in endwalker I have no comments about how whatever it was a decade ago

Dawntrail summoner is where it sucks ass since instead of making something like a different filler cycle every other minute which literally every summoner player including ones I spoke to who played from ARR to DT in high end content, they did a baffling upgrade to your burst summon and it was unique to the one in endwalker so dying was excessively even more punishing than any other job since it reset to the big UNGA BUNGA summon instead of whatever you had coming up for your 1 minute window, you had to press your filler auto equivalent that you generally shouldn't press outside of extreme scenarios until it aligned back again

I kinda hope Jagex understands that the once the core post reworks is solid enough, to try to go for branching out and experimentation with builds and stuff

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(I do think DT monk is an improvement over EW monk 🏃‍♂️ )

indigo sun
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TLDR; Why are we discussing mechanics from different franchises, making lengthy comparisons.

midnight bridge
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these combat changes are motivating people to write their dissertation

rich igloo
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if someone did not like it, then there was like 9 other dps jobs, 10 if you count the one they added in that expansion, to play. and they should have played something else that they did like. not kill the job for the people who did like it

rich igloo
hybrid moon
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One thing I haven’t seen a huge amount of discussion of is the longer-duration threshold stuns being cut down into having two charges on the short basic stun. Both work for “just stun now” mechanics, but sometimes I do manually use the threshold stun at bosses like Telos or Kezalam where I want more breathing time. The basic stun has such a short duration that often it doesn’t matter at all in terms of slowing down the boss’s autoattacks since the 2-tick stun will run out before the next attack will have triggered anyway.

Maybe have 2 different toggles: one toggle for if the stunning ability will knockback the target (unlocked by Scare Tactics) and one toggle if the stun has a longer duration but costs adrenaline to compensate.

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Also, Barge inflicting a bind but not a stun is just really weird. I know it’s necessary in order to solo Kalphite King, but maybe solo KK should just be de-janked anyway. Currently you have to have Freedom active before he uses the Beetlejuice stun, then Barge him tick-perfect and Dive away tick-perfect, then activate Resonance or Devotion tick-perfect soon as it comes off CD.

visual grail
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You can't even barge him before getting hit by green

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And reso/devo aren't tick perfect either

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I think they should just finally let you be able to stun the last attack of a KK cycle, that would let you skip all the greens

hybrid moon
# visual grail > then Barge him tick-perfect Not needed at all, you just barge *or* freedom bef...

Oh really? I thought you had to Freedom first to block the bind he applies then Barge to apply a bind but not a stun (if you used a stun he would freedom it away and clear the bind too). Then you needed to dive away so that he had to wait for his bind to expire before he can walk toward and attack you, and only by that time your defensive abilities would become available.

But yeah just let us stun him to skip Beetlejuice on melee phase. You can already do that on ranged phase so it should work on melee too.

mellow frigate
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just delete kalphite king problem solved

cloud sky
cloud sky
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pack it up guys they fixed SMN this patch

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barren bane
terse vale
# true nimbus The second point more so meant that you have to carefully consider player loss a...

The second point more so meant that you have to carefully consider player loss and gain.

This is true, but it's not complete. You're on the right track though.

You also have to consider that people are unlikely to become an endgame player in general and more so enjoy the early-mid game, so an endgame player has value in the sense that they are most dedicated to the game's progression already.

Not only is a (combat) endgame player more dedicated, and so more inclined to keep their membership going to play the game, they also have beneficial effects on the playerbase even without being a content creator. They're more likely to recommend the game to their friends, teach their friends and clanmates, make friends in the game, ... All of these things aren't binary, they're progressively more likely over new / returning -> casual -> midcore -> hardcore -> ultra-hardcore players.

You'll make some things simple and maybe lose 5% of the current endgame playerbase. ... If the change is too simplistic enough where half of the most gameplay progressed players quit and then you think about who else is going to progress enough to become that dedicated, then you probably skip that change and do something else

It's not just how many players in a given group quit right away. How many of them enjoy the game less and it grates at them over time? How many of them lose trust in enjoying future updates? How many of them become less dedicated and thus cut out all those beneficial community effects, even though their prior dedication has given them the knowledge to stay in their player group? How many of them treat it as a grievance on the pile towards eventually quitting?

Player quitting isn't linear or binary, it's a trust thermocline situation: https://web.archive.org/web/20241227050445/https://every.to/p/breaching-the-trust-thermocline-is-the-biggest-hidden-risk-in-business And more serious players are more likely to have their trust shaken by lowered complexity.

#

MMOs are extremely delicate, because they have to juggle the trust thermoclines of every group (or at least every load-bearing group) in their playerbase ecosystem, deal with network effects and learning investment effects hiding problems, and do so while having limited dev time and a production pipeline restricting what the devs can do with the game.

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This is why I've given so much feedback on lowering the skill floor and improving combat teaching while keeping a high skill ceiling - being able to help casual players with their legitimate grievances without creating new grievances from hardcore players makes that juggling a lot more viable, but that's not obviously possible without some concepts.

terse vale
# lusty bison Tbh ew summoner was fine on expac, the core was ripe for expansion For every p...

as I've only joined late in endwalker I have no comments about how whatever it was a decade ago

This makes my point in a whole different way - you've never seen FFXIV in a healthy state and yet you can tell that there's something deeply wrong with Summoner! Playstyle gaps and balance problems left behind by carelessly removing things really stick around...

For every person who told me about how dot job summoner was peak I've had the same amount of voices critcizing it

That's because of a) people not understanding when a job isn't for them (and Square Enix feeding that misunderstanding rather than correcting it), b) polarization over the job (and job simplification more broadly) because Square Enix kept failing to make both groups happy, and c) players who like / care about complex jobs (even other jobs) disproportionately quitting.

DOTs weren't even really part of the core of the job (rather than one of many systems) since HW, but people emphasized that as a way to implicitly flame the job. Calling ShB Summoner "DOT job" would be kind of like calling Magic "4TAA style" when currently there's one 4TAA / ABS per minute to effectively utilize the tick left over to make Sunshine and Asphyxiate perfectly align; playing well absolutely does include understanding how that influences the rest of the rotation, but it's long since stopped being a thing to press all the time.

Tbh ew summoner was fine on expac, the core was ripe for expansion

Two problems with that (specific to difficulty, there are way more counting other factors):

  1. EW Summoner's gameplay at endgame would have been fine for level 40, but instead it was the endgame to be played for the whole expansion.
  2. Square Enix doesn't really treat one expansion's version of a job as a core to build complexity on for the next expansion (unless they explicitly say that when they simplify) - they didn't do that for ShB Machinist or tanks or healers either.
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Dawntrail summoner is where it sucks ass since instead of making something like a different filler cycle every other minute which literally every summoner player including ones I spoke to who played from ARR to DT in high end content, they did a baffling upgrade to your burst summon

It's baffling from the perspective of making a good game. It's totally predictable from Square Enix's patterns, which is why the high-end guide makers predicted it.

They don't investigate the root causes of the feedback they get, they just take it on a very surface level or don't take it at all. (Ask around for the reasons players asked for furniture on Island Sanctuary!) They see apparently contradictory feedback as a reason to give up rather than investigate. So they can't tell the toxic casuals apart from everyone else, they're terrified of offending said toxic casuals, they miss the players who are quietly enjoying a thing (even things they explicitly promised like character faces), they get constantly fooled by players' drive for efficiency into removing the fun from the game, and they wind up cherry-picking what makes the game easy to develop rather than good.

Upgrading the burst summon was easy to develop and didn't add to the complexity of the job, so they did it.

and it was unique to the one in endwalker so dying was excessively even more punishing than any other job since it reset to the big UNGA BUNGA summon instead of whatever you had coming up for your 1 minute window, you had to press your filler auto equivalent that you generally shouldn't press outside of extreme scenarios until it aligned back again

Yup! They wanted to continue leaning into the 2 minute meta (another easy-to-develop decision) and adding back flexibility in primal alignment would be hard to develop and offend toxic casuals!

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I kinda hope Jagex understands that the once the core post reworks is solid enough, to try to go for branching out and experimentation with builds and stuff

Jagex actually might add complexity back after reworks, but all the talk about "like Necromancy" and "decluttering" inspires fear, especially with casual players going around flaming skilled players and/or asserting that Jagex is going to lower the skill ceilings of the styles to "cater to the majority".

Plus the ability kit itself has to be interesting enough and convey style identity well enough to draw in the players who would enjoy any builds on top of it, or players won't know what to invest their time and GP in.

I do think DT monk is an improvement over EW monk

Lighting up the specific buttons to press did not need to happen. That's just coddling players who don't even need high DPS in the first place.

lusty bison
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I think we're veering insanely off topic atp

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Anyway I'm excited for the update tomorrow

true nimbus
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Same

true nimbus
lusty bison
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I do wish they reused bits from the league code so we can go muck around the beta from the base client itself instead of screwing around with a link or whatever

true nimbus
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Last 2 betas my computer was just completely uncompatible with the beta client, so I'm just happy that I can use my normal PC for it XD

barren bane
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Yeah I'm kinda surprised they've not figured out a way to set up a beta world.

#

It seems like the obvious play?

terse vale
# indigo sun TLDR; Why are we discussing mechanics from different franchises, making lengthy ...

Why are we talking about FFXIV in here?

Jagex is trying to have something of a paradigm shift in combat, and rework the non-Necromancy styles accordingly. FFXIV has done that between 4 and 6 times depending on how you count, and has gone from 9 to 21 combat styles over time. That's a lot of information, including both huge successes and huge failures, about how to handle such combat style changes.

Jagex is trying to get casual players to learn the fundamentals of combat. FFXIV has done that when it comes to fight mechanics, as a necessary part of forcing all players through over 200 bosses just to unlock the endgame in a game that is all about being at the endgame. FFXIV has tried to do that when it comes to the combat styles, to mixed success, which is again informational on how to make it work.

Jagex is already copying some things from FFXIV, and so are players through Alt1. The ground telegraphs, the limited resurrections in Sanctum of Rebirth Normal, and the Alt1 "job gauges" (note the term "job") all come directly from FFXIV. So what should be copied - and what shouldn't be - makes sense to point out.

Jagex is trying to grow the game. FFXIV has made combat design changes that helped grow the game massively, and combat design changes that made "former FFXIV player" an MMO demographic unto itself looking for a new home. A demographic that gets wary of anything that looks like "simplification" or "homogenization" of game systems, because that's what broke the styles and systems they loved. A demographic that has seen the occasional misdirected hostility over finding the wrong guide or not understanding difficulty curves turn into polarized faction warfare over the combat styles, in part because the devs catered the styles only to one group and that fanned the flames, and really doesn't want to get flamed or see this game go down the same road.

terse vale
silk pumice
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They could just be 1 style agnostic ability

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No cost on use, with adr. Cost if used again within a cd

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Even then, since 98% of mobs ignore displacement
They have more value for flavor, than actual combat

ashen idol
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A couple things about the new auto-attack.

Boxing is back!
After a little testing on the beta comparing the legacy combat to the new auto-attack, the two are near identical in terms of damage (2k unarmed and 6.5k with goliath gloves with legacy vs 20k unarmed and 72k with goliath gloves with legacy being 10% the damage scaling).
Unfortunately at the moment this seems bugged as if you don't have a weapon equip the auto-attack will not fire (you click to attack an enemy and will run up and just stare them in the face. You can manually trigger the auto-attack over and over for the above damages)

Currently if you're only using the auto-attack, the off-hand is also never used. On the main game you'll alternate hits with main hand and off hand but the beta makes this so only the main hand weapon is used. Visually this is fairly dull while also shutting down using a main hand weapon of one style and an off hand of another (not that this is ever useful), this is particularly noticeable while boxing as you wouldn't have access to abilities for any other animations so switching between main hand and off hand for auto attacks would add a little bit of variety (the main game doesn't alternate for unarmed attacks, just ones with dual wielded weapons)

Tl;dr, boxing is great but seemed bugged to need manual input for auto attacking, legacy can probably be removed (only reason I could see for legacy staying were situations that need unarmed combat), auto attacks alternating between main and off hand would add some visual variety which is particularly lacking while boxing

hybrid moon
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I do hope they come out with an answer on legacy off-style dual wielding. It’s only really useful at Tormented Demons but it’s really useful at Tormented Demons so I hope we get a response on that.

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The Basic Attack ability only attacks with your main hand weapon and just adds the damage value of the offhand if it’s the same style, which breaks off-style combat entirely.

ashen idol
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I'm fairly certain legacy itself will be axed but the new auto-attack does the same thing, necromancy is also great for tormented demons but off-style dual wielding is kinda cooler even if there's no world where it'd ever be good

silk pumice
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Bow-sword wen?

cloud sky
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I just realized

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with rapid fire not having a cd I can just spam the hell out of it in elite dungeons

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rapid fire, rapid fire, adrenaline pot, rapid fire or something like that

hybrid moon
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Rapid Fire will have a CD, but not Snapshot. I think anyway…

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Depending on the changes to Incendiary and/or its cost, you would be able to just spam Rapid Fire forever if it had no CD.

true nimbus
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Yeah I think he mixed the names up

cloud sky
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less mixing the names up and more just forgetting they put a cd on it, been a sec since I touched the beta

true nimbus
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Hmm

spice gust
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Went back for ew on ffxiv and my dot smn became a necromancer. Legit necromancy rot feels like the smn rot now and its just so bad. I miss the more complexity of the game 😆 I ended up swapping to sch and even on that your smn auto does everything now. Game went full easy mode.
Cant have dos meters and yoshi p had to make public statements saying they'll make hard content cause the games too easy. I hope we dont lean more into that lol

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Came to see if there was any info on the new beta release but ffxiv was unexpected haha

true nimbus
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There's a lot of things inspired by other games too when trying to make combat exciting, I generally have faith that they will

spice gust
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I hope so, but necromancy is really boring and the beta fir range we got so far felt the same

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Spamming 1 basic attack feels bad if its half your rot with no change kinda thing

true nimbus
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It's more like a backup thing as far as I know, you might like range more when playing with endgame gear though

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Another thing I heard is that they might be adding an additional layer to range that most players will notice (though it might not feel new to people who are already used to the endgame)

spice gust
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I dunno i main mage n I find the ability stacking and wep swapping the fun part

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Sounds like its gonna be not similar

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So we gonna have to see

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The spells being basic concept sounds horrible to me and defeats the purpose of ability removal and all that. And 2x adren building with dw

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But yeah remaining hopeful it might be fun in some way

lusty bison
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I'd wait for the beta to come first, play with it for a bit then think about the rest tbh

true nimbus
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Hmm, I didn't hear about the 2x adren dual wield part

spice gust
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Rsguy mentioned it in a steam

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Dw had 2x the atk rate

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So built adren 2x as fast

true nimbus
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Hmm, might be slang from other games

spice gust
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Been watching the vods when at work 😄 been worried forever about 4taa removal

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And sounds like auto stacking is gone

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So been listening to everything

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Only learned full manual with 4taa /magic cause how easy it makes cds and such and the utility

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Gonna be a revo warrior again maybe

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So interested in maybe swapping g main styles off feel

true nimbus
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They did make magic into like a channeling style, I did support the suggestion to keep 2 gcds in the same tick in the game though

spice gust
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Yee they kinda did huh thinking about it

true nimbus
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Like it's gonna be noticeable at new bosses like Nakatra and such

spice gust
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Ye she 1 im learning hm atm 😆

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So much going on with timing 😆

true nimbus
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Exaactly yeah

spice gust
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Getting grim gonna help too 😆 but 1 thing at a time

true nimbus
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It's still hard to say which gear should have a lower level equivalent, like there's some fun stuff at endgame already

spice gust
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Ye i mean magics kinda well of tbh

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You got ahrims/gano/ virtus/anima core of sliske/crypto, tec, and resplindent

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All endgame viable

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I mean not gonna get the best kills in ahrims but I dont many hm Kerry/zuk in it haha

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Necro is ok. Melee n range is feel get hit the hardest

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Necro prolly more than ok

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T70 n you farming nakatra 😄

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T80 weps maybe

true nimbus
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Hmm, one of my GIM friends keeps saying that it's not worth using fsoa until like 80% of the upgrades

lusty bison
true nimbus
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Fsoa specifically makes gconc way more powerful and puts in more of the channel locked stuff

true nimbus
spice gust
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Mmm id say you need a good bit

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Im missing grim / have biting 3.

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Id say the less you have the more important channeler ring is

lusty bison
true nimbus
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:p

spice gust
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Ye can swap abs/ember back to ans

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Abs

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Err iban/ember to abs. Jesus its late

lusty bison
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I have an iron friend who had fsoa before grim because he went giga dry at solak

spice gust
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Amen

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Honestly I like amascut book for grim alternative

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When im lacking grim

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2nd time being rimless with fsoa

lusty bison
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Pre gconc changes the t80 to t90 mage dw progression sucked ass

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But allowing staff to gconc fixed that issue

spice gust
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Yee

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Honestly having wand/orb from nm nakatra changes a lot for progression now

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The rago skip is so nice for nubs like me who never learned

barren bane
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Skipping T90/T92 in general seems to be super nice

terse vale
# spice gust Went back for ew on ffxiv and my dot smn became a necromancer. Legit necromancy ...

Went back for ew on ffxiv and my dot smn became a necromancer. Legit necromancy rot feels like the smn rot now and its just so bad. I miss the more complexity of the game 😆

Hey, treating EW Summoner as like Necromancy is an insult to Necromancy! 😛 At least Necromancy has some things to think about and the conjures do more than just stand there uselessly!

(If you enjoyed old SMN, you may enjoy my original feedback post to Jagex #1450511863589900410 message , especially the part where I talk about applying the lessons of FFXIV's good designs to RuneScape's combat styles complete with example ability kit #1450511863589900410 message .)

I ended up swapping to sch and even on that your smn auto does everything now. Game went full easy mode.

Ah Scholar, FFXIV's last bastion of job complexity (kind of) and Real Pets. That's what I swapped to too.

yoshi p had to make public statements saying they'll make hard content cause the games too easy. I hope we dont lean more into that lol

And then the hard content gets boring because we run out of things to optimize before we're done getting its uniques, we still wind up being expected to do content that's not hard, and that's with a content cadence Jagex can't use - can you imagine the riots in Falador if RuneScape released a boss casual players outright couldn't kill every 2 months?

(And that's setting aside DT's terrible choices to stress lots of things players can't improve at, like deliberately visually obscuring fights and screwing over players with visual impairments or even just a different retinal layout.)

You and @pallid bear are neatly demonstrating why FFXIV's combat mistakes are topical to this thread. Let the styles have high skill ceilings!

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terse vale
barren bane
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Staff doesn't fix the wand orb had better auto speeds for lossless vuln/smokes, buuut getting rid of autos standardises that, albeit at the cost of everyone losing a gcd or two

lusty bison
# terse vale > Went back for ew on ffxiv and my dot smn became a necromancer. Legit necromanc...

Wdym by visually obscuring fights? The only fight that had that issue in DT were FRU and the Zelenia fight which was fixed quickly, even then in FRU's case it was still 90% visible to everyone progging to the point where most people thought it was a challenge fitting an ultimate raid and an intended mechanic
The only fight where I've heard complaints about it being visually obscure and annoying was P3S phoinix back in endwalker

The only other thing was some aoes in m9 looking similar to dark knight's salted earth but even that was fixed pretty quickly

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It's ok my guy I think jagex knows enough how square fucked up summoner and is on the road to end of service before new world shuts down

true nimbus
lusty bison
barren bane
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I don't know if I like mod Ryan's proposed solution to smoke cloud/vuln of just delete it.
I like the idea of minute buff upkeep

pallid bear
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Wut,

barren bane
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But I see similar pushback in terms of overload buff upkeep.

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Less engaged players don't seem to want to maintain a buff stack

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Which makes sense as they're less engaged

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And so it's like okay, where's the line? Enfeeble has to go as well? What about ruby aroura?

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Ultimately, just deleting minute buffs becomes a much more laborious decision than it seems on the surface

lusty bison
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Or tweak stuff so it's worth the gcd cast

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Idk how I feel about vuln bombs since I'm very used to throwing them willy nilly

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Plus it's one of the few great revenue sources for skillers since it's in demand all year round

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All my favourite iterations of each style were removed

  • my favourite iteration for melee was masterwork, dual wield khops, zgs, spear and scythe and rotating them all, slowly they removed or replaced everything, nowadays melee for most people including high end is just camp ezk in vestments
  • I loved and still miss pre nerf fsoa but I accepted that it's an important change for balancing, even now mage doesn't make me feel like how fun it was with it
  • At first I disliked it but soon grew to like bolt range and now it's bow meta with the gap between crossbows and bows ever widening by each update and absolutely nothing to show for crossbows even on the horizon

I get how it feels for your favourite gameplay getting stripped away slowly over time or immediately but sometimes you have no choice but to move on either with the same game or another game

mystic rose
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pre nerf fsoa was literally broken to the point it was lagging servers

lusty bison
mystic rose
lusty bison
mystic rose
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sometimes games are the most fun when theyre broken

lusty bison
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I'm still holding out hope for weaponmaster melee returning

true nimbus
# lusty bison All my favourite iterations of each style were removed - my favourite iteration ...

Tbh might be the same for me.
Mage fsoa spam was fun rotations even though it didn't really interact with the boss compared to being channel locked. 4TAA meta was probably my fav mage meta
Melee, I liked masterwork berserk when bosses weren't powercreeped but spear was always annoying me. Powercreep was bad, even with vestments but I liked switching between risk stuff and bleed full rotations compared to the incremental rotations before that. Either way, both are gone.
Range, I really respected the ecb meta. People interacting with the boss by sacrificing healing. Some of that still exists though and I like the stack management making different rotations at each boss too, so overall I prefer current range I think

mild onyx
lusty bison
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Thank you for the heads up

terse vale
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Thanks for letting us know!

visual grail
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Although I liked spell effects having more value with the old fsoa design

stone walrus
cloud sky
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hold on

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also not just terrain or mechanics but ultimate weapons are fucking awful

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my weapon did not look like this in EW

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here's the lochs

fix_the_lighting_pls.png
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anything with lightning attacks which DT has a good chunk of is basically reduced to visual vomit light fuckery that bleeds bloom everywhere

lusty bison
cloud sky
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here's a more clear example of with bloom vs without

lusty bison
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I always thought the left was the arena, didn't know about it when I was in ew

cloud sky
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waymarks also accentuate the issue because those also bleed a lot of lighting and some mechs rely on specific positioning around them

lusty bison
cloud sky
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it's kinda insidious and infuriating, they had the option to natively remove bloom, SQEX in their infinite wisdom just decided to remove it because fuck our eyes I guess

terse vale
# cloud sky it's kinda insidious and infuriating, they *had* the option to natively remove b...

probably because Square Enix only considered the visual needs and graphics settings choices of one to a few able-bodied playtesters when wanting everyone to really notice that they did a graphics update, went nuts making flashy environment lighting that relied on bloom (including reworking pre-DT environments), and then took out the bloom toggle in a panic when they realized that using it made some of the lighting they'd introduced look less pretty - unfortunately some of Jagex's recent UI choices bear a certain resemblance to those "accessibility as a non-thought" results

terse vale
# lusty bison Wdym by visually obscuring fights? The only fight that had that issue in DT were...

Wdym by visually obscuring fights?

On top of what Yugi said about the impact of forced bloom, going over DT's visual design with a disability-aware fine-toothed comb reveals a ton of differences from prior expansions, choices made either through inattention or deliberately to slow players down in seeing what's going on without most able-bodied players noticing. Since fight design is mostly off-topic for this thread except where it interacts with style design - if anything, the visual choices are more relevant to the UI thread - I'll just refer you to said fine-toothed comb getting applied to 7.0: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/513214-A-Disabled-Raider-s-Review-of-Patch-7.0-Duty-Design (Skipping down to the mechanic-by-mechanic review is faster to read, but the preceding sections may help you make sense of it.)

terse vale
# lusty bison Don't get me wrong, it's a fair and good thing that you don't want jagex to make...

Don't get me wrong, it's a fair and good thing that you don't want jagex to make the same mistakes square did but I feel like you're hammering the point too much

In my original feedback post #1450511863589900410 message I mostly didn't talk about FFXIV, and where I did it was almost entirely distilling what Square Enix did right rather than talking about what they did wrong. The central lesson being that any one combat style can support a wide range of player skill levels, so there's no need for player skill groups to fight each other over the combat styles.

I didn't give EW or DT more than a passing mention in here until I got replies advocating for Jagex to take combat styles and/or builds away from player groups anyway. EW Summoner is one heck of a cautionary tale against that attitude and developers feeding it, and even then I addressed specific problems with those replies rather than just telling the cautionary tale, like this: #1450511863589900410 message

Some of the community behaviour is disturbingly similar to the end of ShB - even misconceptions due to finding the wrong guide were there too. And the fact that Jagex has been taking away UI options and content options inspires fear in the direction of the roadmap that this combat rework is part of.

And then people kept bringing FFXIV up! And conversations about other subjects keep ending much faster! Apparently FFXIV brings out the conversation.

lusty bison
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Aite thanks I'll check the links out

true nimbus
visual grail
true nimbus
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I actually never tried it, there are definitely people who would defend that rot the whole day though :p

terse vale
# lusty bison Aite thanks I'll check the links out

👍 Your visually impaired friends may also be interested in that fight review - there's a lot of visual processing opti breakdown in there, as well as other techniques that can compensate for taking longer to see what's going on.

terse vale
visual grail
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1h cauldrons please 🙏

swift olive
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Don't need to make wars more lazy friendly than it already is

visual grail
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Rather not have to tele to poh just because!

swift olive
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If they make PoH actually worth something in their PoH update, I would rather the cauldron be there instead Wars retreat being the 1 stop shop for quite literally everything in the game pvm, you tele to prif/max guild to sell things, then press the other green tele button to go back to wars and get a health boost/bank/full prayer/full adren/book swaps/prayer swaps/pre build on dummies/4 boss portals, do we really need to add even more laziness with a cauldron that gives you a 1hr buff

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I am still in the group of wars was a good idea in theory but it gave us wayyyy to much

solar hazel
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But at the same time putting it in the PoH just so it's not in wars just adds an annoying extra step to it

swift olive
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well ideally they would take most things out of wars and put it in the PoH

cloud sky
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tbh idc where the cauldron is, I just want one

swift olive
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like an actual bank for starters

cloud sky
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wait let me cook

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configurable blessed flasks for poison and antifires

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let the grind begin

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blessed flasks for every potion would be a flex

visual grail
swift olive
# visual grail So just make things more inconvenient, reduce the social aspect and ruin wars at...

There is no social aspect to wars retreat, you tele, dive to the bank or prayer altar, dive back to War, Surge to the adren crystal, and then walk 2 feet into a boss portal, if anything it takes the social aspect out of the game because you used to actually see people run around in the world, that is not the case anymore, and while I personally would be ecstatic if wars got nuked from the game, I don't think that would be the right call, you could very easily turn into a Combat achievement hub, have trophies, leaderboards, fastest kill times, ect.

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so those players could still sit there and socialize

solar hazel
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It's the same social experience seeing peopel run in the world as we have seeing them diving/surging around wars

swift olive
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Agree to disagree, if I see someone actively out in the wild I think it's visually more pleasing than watching 20 people tele to the same purple spot, doing the same movement on repeat

visual grail
true nimbus
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Would't mind caulron at PoH since you only go there once per hour but generally like all the other stuff at wars

visual grail
swift olive
visual grail
swift olive
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you're implying it are you not? because if giving it a cauldron for a 1hr buff is too much of a inconvience, where is that line drawn

visual grail
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I am not 🙂
You can make pohs good without putting stuff in that shouldn't be there just because and having it become an annoying side-step 🙂

solar hazel
swift olive
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PVM is already the most lazy piece of content you can engage with purely because wars exist, they might as well just add portals to all the skilling nodes inside of wars retreat as well, or just make a pestilence retreat dedicated to skilling

solar hazel
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We call that the max guild garden tyvm

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Just needs some updates on the possible teleports but it already exists 😛

visual grail
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Having a tele to content = lazy content 🤔

swift olive
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having 1 area to access every single boss in the game is 100% lazy

true nimbus
swift olive
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I think the community would freak out if they couldn't kill a boss once then tele back and immedately get their inventory back, I can't imagine how much people forgot how to actually sustain in fights for a few kills

visual grail
visual grail
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(spamming defensives to sustain / using necro isn't anything special)

true nimbus
swift olive
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Ah yes, necro exist which means wars is needed

visual grail
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Who are you quoting

swift olive
visual grail
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👍

barren bane
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I'd consider osrs poh more flawed than wars tbh

true nimbus
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Someone in pvme was saying that dracolich release made range rotations way easier with bolg. Would you guys say that the gloom bow release made the rotations kinda hard again?

barren bane
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No opinion there, I checked out of range when they messed up zammy blm

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I'll probably pick it up again this or next week

mortal meteor
mild onyx
# stone walrus is there any chance we get the blog still today?

Nah, ideally y'all get the blog and the beta side by side so ya can get a feel for things. Speculation on this kinda stuff likely just leads to assumptions and expectations and at least to me it makes more sense to let ya play around with stuff at the same time

stone walrus
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fair enough thanks for the response 🙂

spice gust
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Amen to that, speculation just kinda blah 😄 so hopeful for tomorrow! Thx fir the update!

barren bane
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Offstyle grico is apparently dead

vale palm
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better be

spice gust
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Cause id be happy

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Only, guess I needa get divert

true nimbus
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I saw that there was some confusion around how stalling works, so I wanted to try to explain it and measure it's complexity.

So it's basically that you press 3 buttons really fast and try to time it to happen at at the start of a boss fight or phase starting.

The 3 buttons that you press at specific timing are: 1 target cycle 2 releasing the stalled ability and 3 pressing the follow-up ability. Even though the 3 buttons should be pressed with in a tick, another condition is that they can't be pressed at the exact same time or else the stall fails. The button order is the same as the 1 2 3 order. Really fast within a tick but not at the same time.

This consistency skill check along with the timing of the stall depending on specific boss spawn/phase animation is one of the main aspects of stalling that people enjoy. Will provides some examples below too. Example 1 is executing as explained (though I probably still lost a tick on the timing)

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And to measure the complexity, going to also show an efficient start without stalling (not in terms of ability choice) with Example 2

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There is generally a bug where you aren't able to spam target cycle into a follow-up ability while standing still, so that's why I'm running around in example 2 and spamming (in example 1 I wasn't trying to). In general, you lost the complexity of doing those 3 actions within a tick if not using stalling and also since you are spamming the buttons, you also lose the complexity of looking for a specific spawn animation

true nimbus
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Even if not looking for a specific spawn animation however, there is still timing involved, for example some rare scenarios where you might be looking to take advantage of double dipping on the gloves of passage buff. Instead of timing your stall around the boss animation, you time your stall around your global cooldowns. Will show an example of that as well

terse vale
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Thank you for the example clips! Great use of the ability tracker.

visual grail
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(oh I just noticed you mention gop later on)

true nimbus
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:>

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Tbh I talk about gop a lot but not many others want to talk about it XD

visual grail
true nimbus
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Hmm true, I haven't found that part very complex though

visual grail
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Also nice to be able to stall stuff mid-fight during down times like at Amascut, Solak, Kerapac, Zamorak, Telos, AoD, Vorkath, etc. etc.

visual grail
true nimbus
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True :p I enjoy the complexity part of it more and I'm guessing the company doesn't quite have the resources to replace it with something else equally as complex

visual grail
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Doesn't have the will to replace it*
Smirkse

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Doesn't need to be complex tho! The possibilities it allows you in modifying your rotation and skill expressing is the nice part :>

true nimbus
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A fun consistency skill check for the player's skill expression, yeah

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That's probably the core of it (though it's a bit broad, so also has to keep the skill ceiling. running into range for example is less intense and therefore can be less fun)

mild onyx
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Looking to be more close to 3 then 2 atm

terse vale
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thanks for the heads up!

spice gust
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Was just checking what time in gmt it was 😆