Maintenance for the week of July 8:
• PC/Mac: No maintenance - July 8
• PC/Mac: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – July 9, 4:00AM EDT (8:00 UTC) - 9:00AM EDT (13:00 UTC)
• Xbox: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – July 10, 4:00AM EDT (8:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EDT (16:00 UTC)
• PlayStation®: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – July 10, 4:00AM EDT (8:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EDT (16:00 UTC)
• PC/Mac: No maintenance - July 8
• PC/Mac: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – July 9, 4:00AM EDT (8:00 UTC) - 9:00AM EDT (13:00 UTC)
• Xbox: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – July 10, 4:00AM EDT (8:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EDT (16:00 UTC)
• PlayStation®: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – July 10, 4:00AM EDT (8:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EDT (16:00 UTC)
Update 43 is now available for testing on the PTS! You can read the latest patch notes here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/662078/
Feedback and communication to Raiders ESO vs FFXIV
TheGreatBlackBear
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Background: The first boss (known as a "door boss" because if you're not beating him you're not getting in to the real action) of Abyssos: The Eighth Circle (Savage) was a bit overtuned in its dps check meaning that you had to play your class perfectly, not die (you get a debuff called weakness that decreases your damage and healing by 25% for about two minutes when you die. This can go to two stacks if you die before the first stack clears resulting in a 50% penalty), not get damage down (a second separate debuff that can exist simultaneously with weakness that occurs if you fail certain mechanics) and even then you still had the possibility of seeing enrage and wiping if you played classes that did less damage relative to others of their role. The damage gap between tanks was especially horrendous as the difference between the top performer and lowest performer by itself could potentially contribute half of the missing dps check needed to beat the enrage and move on. The fight was not impossible to beat however and many players who are accustomed clearing early did so again. Myself included. The devs made some adjustments earlier this week which lowered the health of the boss by approximately 1% and they also buffed the bottom two performing tanks. The reasoning they gave in the patch notes was that based on testing they didn't anticipate this problem. So there were a lot of memes and good natured ribbing of how the internal QA team must be the best the world then. Below is a post from Yoshi P the director and producer. Read that then compare that to the response in ESO (if we've even gotten any) to many players expressing concern over balance, low dps, low hps resulting the inability to clear content like VDSR HM and VRG HM with in the speedrun time frame. Or at all. Night and day difference.
Hello, this is Naoki Yoshida, Producer and Director of FINAL FANTASY XIV.
There has been a lot of discussion surrounding our explanation for adjusting the HP of the boss in Abyssos: The Eighth Circle (Savage) in Patch 6.21, as well as the necessity of the adjustment itself.
Firstly, please allow me to apologize for the disruption caused by this balancing issue, and for any offense resulting from the insufficient explanation we initially provided.
In this post, I hope to clear up any misunderstandings as to how and why this adjustment was made.
Reason for the HP Adjustment
As was explained in the Patch 6.21 notes, a miscalculation on our part resulted in the boss's HP being roughly 1% too high in comparison to the difficulty of previous fourth-stage Savage raids.
We do, of course, understand and appreciate that many players nevertheless honed their ability rotations, raised item levels, and repeated the fight over and over in order to claim victory.
Having the HP set to this higher value, however, had other undesirable consequences, including:
Certain jobs being excluded from party recruitment
A growing dissatisfaction with the overly punishing degree of difficulty
As our miscalculation was the root cause of these issues, we decided that the best course of action was to explain our mistake and correct the inflated HP to the value it should have been in the first place. This type of correction has little precedence in FFXIV's development, and although the decision was made after considerable debate, we once again apologize for the impact it had on player enjoyment.
Source of the Miscalculation
This issue was touched upon in the patch notes, but allow me to explain our balancing process in further detail.
Firstly, the development team bases adjustments on the following premise:
The top percentage of players are overwhelmingly better at the game than we are.
We regret not stating this more clearly in the previous explanation, but said premise is the reason why we do not release content tuned precisely as it was when the battle team’s balance testers cleared it.
We always add a little bit extra to the boss values before rechecking the fight and releasing it live.
The team responsible for balancing boss fights does so without debug commands and at the appropriate item level, employing available materia, foods, and medicines while experimenting with mitigating actions and various job compositions. Yet we recognize that player skill far exceeds our own. If we were to ship content with the same values which challenged our battle team, the top raiders would be deprived of that by-the-skin-of-your-teeth victory in the initial week of release.
Based on the team's skill and our experience, that "little bit extra" usually translates to:
Balance test clear values +1-2% HP
The final values account for other mathematical factors too, of course, such as the estimated damage the party could deal from the moment of victory to the end of the time limit, as well as total burst damage potential based on frequency and amount inflicted. The numbers these various calculations are based on are what we were referencing when we said that our team’s performance was higher than anticipated.
This latest installment features a boss closely tied to the dark past of a major character, and so we were focused on making this battle even more of a challenge than usual. As such, the battle team spent an inordinate amount of time together designing and testing the fight mechanics, which in turn led to them improving party coordination and communication beyond what they might usually achieve for a given boss fight. Final adjustments were, however, still based on the team's victory data, and so the "little bit extra" we added for the release proved to be that little bit too much.
Reasons aside, our adjustments were off by that crucial 1% and we again offer our apologies to those whose gaming experience was adversely affected by the correction and insufficient explanation.
A high-difficulty raid is a special kind of battle. We want players to enjoy a satisfying, hard-won victory, and we keep that ideal in mind when making tweaks and balance adjustments. Although we failed to walk that delicate line this time, the experience will help us to design a more perfectly thrilling battle in the future.
Why Adjust the Duty, Rather than Job Balance?
When balancing jobs, each job’s base damage numbers at the applicable item level are adjusted with respect to the difficulty of playing that particular job and its rotation, as well as its support actions and their effects.
Naturally, the above factors are also affected by the mechanics and combination thereof at work in each battle─meaning that every job’s numbers will not necessarily be at ideal values during all available battles. In addition to this inherent variance, there are indeed times when our calculations or adjustments are incorrect, producing damage numbers lower than intended and requiring subsequent strengthening of a job.
In this case, when considering job balance more broadly, the jobs that needed emergency adjustment in this fashion were Paladin and Warrior. However, the aforementioned issue with Abyssos: The Eighth Circle (Savage) also caused certain jobs to be better suited to the raid than others, and made the damage check required to clear extremely strict, resulting in a situation where players felt obligated to choose jobs with higher damage output when attempting the raid.
Attempting to ameliorate this by buffing certain jobs without making changes to the raid itself would have negatively impacted overall balance within each role, and likely resulted in disappointment for those whose jobs were already dealing sufficient damage for the raid and therefore received no adjustments. Unfortunately, adjusting all jobs in such a short period is also not feasible.
Thus:
The root cause of the issue was a mistake in balancing the duty
An immediate fix that maintains role balance was required.
It is a game design fundamental as well as our policy that, rather than adjust the jobs to suit each battle, we balance the jobs independently, and only then set the battle content difficulty. Changing the job balance for one single duty would end up causing more problems than it solves, and so we decided to address the problem in the manner we did─by ameliorating the root cause.
I appreciate that, regardless of our rationale, this issue has been a source of frustration for many, and I apologize for that. I hope, however, that this has helped clarify our approach.
In Conclusion
The adjustment to Abyssos: The Eighth Circle was never intended to be a “nerf,” but merely the correction of values that were set inappropriately for a fourth-stage Savage raid to begin with.
Nevertheless, I understand that it feels like a nerf for those who worked hard and were on the verge of clearing the fight as it was originally implemented, and I regret having caused such disappointment.
As we strongly wish you to continue enjoying fiercely challenging Savage fights, particularly in the early days after release, we will do our utmost to further improve the tuning of these battles. Furthermore, we will strive to better understand what our players think about such issues and improve our operational protocols─perhaps by waiting a week before implementing fixes, in addition to providing details on our perspective─so that if we again find ourselves in a similar situation, we may arrive at a solution that is more satisfying to everyone.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I sincerely apologize for any disruption that our error may have caused to your gameplay experience, and appreciate your patience.
Naoki Yoshida
FINAL FANTASY XIV Producer & Director
Edited by ZOS_Icy on September 16, 2022 4:47PM Hello, this is Naoki Yoshida, Producer and Director of FINAL FANTASY XIV.
There has been a lot of discussion surrounding our explanation for adjusting the HP of the boss in Abyssos: The Eighth Circle (Savage) in Patch 6.21, as well as the necessity of the adjustment itself.
Firstly, please allow me to apologize for the disruption caused by this balancing issue, and for any offense resulting from the insufficient explanation we initially provided.
In this post, I hope to clear up any misunderstandings as to how and why this adjustment was made.
Reason for the HP Adjustment
As was explained in the Patch 6.21 notes, a miscalculation on our part resulted in the boss's HP being roughly 1% too high in comparison to the difficulty of previous fourth-stage Savage raids.
We do, of course, understand and appreciate that many players nevertheless honed their ability rotations, raised item levels, and repeated the fight over and over in order to claim victory.
Having the HP set to this higher value, however, had other undesirable consequences, including:
Certain jobs being excluded from party recruitment
A growing dissatisfaction with the overly punishing degree of difficulty
As our miscalculation was the root cause of these issues, we decided that the best course of action was to explain our mistake and correct the inflated HP to the value it should have been in the first place. This type of correction has little precedence in FFXIV's development, and although the decision was made after considerable debate, we once again apologize for the impact it had on player enjoyment.
Source of the Miscalculation
This issue was touched upon in the patch notes, but allow me to explain our balancing process in further detail.
Firstly, the development team bases adjustments on the following premise:
The top percentage of players are overwhelmingly better at the game than we are.
We regret not stating this more clearly in the previous explanation, but said premise is the reason why we do not release content tuned precisely as it was when the battle team’s balance testers cleared it.
We always add a little bit extra to the boss values before rechecking the fight and releasing it live.
The team responsible for balancing boss fights does so without debug commands and at the appropriate item level, employing available materia, foods, and medicines while experimenting with mitigating actions and various job compositions. Yet we recognize that player skill far exceeds our own. If we were to ship content with the same values which challenged our battle team, the top raiders would be deprived of that by-the-skin-of-your-teeth victory in the initial week of release.
Based on the team's skill and our experience, that "little bit extra" usually translates to:
Balance test clear values +1-2% HP
The final values account for other mathematical factors too, of course, such as the estimated damage the party could deal from the moment of victory to the end of the time limit, as well as total burst damage potential based on frequency and amount inflicted. The numbers these various calculations are based on are what we were referencing when we said that our team’s performance was higher than anticipated.
This latest installment features a boss closely tied to the dark past of a major character, and so we were focused on making this battle even more of a challenge than usual. As such, the battle team spent an inordinate amount of time together designing and testing the fight mechanics, which in turn led to them improving party coordination and communication beyond what they might usually achieve for a given boss fight. Final adjustments were, however, still based on the team's victory data, and so the "little bit extra" we added for the release proved to be that little bit too much.
Reasons aside, our adjustments were off by that crucial 1% and we again offer our apologies to those whose gaming experience was adversely affected by the correction and insufficient explanation.
A high-difficulty raid is a special kind of battle. We want players to enjoy a satisfying, hard-won victory, and we keep that ideal in mind when making tweaks and balance adjustments. Although we failed to walk that delicate line this time, the experience will help us to design a more perfectly thrilling battle in the future.
Why Adjust the Duty, Rather than Job Balance?
When balancing jobs, each job’s base damage numbers at the applicable item level are adjusted with respect to the difficulty of playing that particular job and its rotation, as well as its support actions and their effects.
Naturally, the above factors are also affected by the mechanics and combination thereof at work in each battle─meaning that every job’s numbers will not necessarily be at ideal values during all available battles. In addition to this inherent variance, there are indeed times when our calculations or adjustments are incorrect, producing damage numbers lower than intended and requiring subsequent strengthening of a job.
In this case, when considering job balance more broadly, the jobs that needed emergency adjustment in this fashion were Paladin and Warrior. However, the aforementioned issue with Abyssos: The Eighth Circle (Savage) also caused certain jobs to be better suited to the raid than others, and made the damage check required to clear extremely strict, resulting in a situation where players felt obligated to choose jobs with higher damage output when attempting the raid.
Attempting to ameliorate this by buffing certain jobs without making changes to the raid itself would have negatively impacted overall balance within each role, and likely resulted in disappointment for those whose jobs were already dealing sufficient damage for the raid and therefore received no adjustments. Unfortunately, adjusting all jobs in such a short period is also not feasible.
Thus:
The root cause of the issue was a mistake in balancing the duty
An immediate fix that maintains role balance was required.
It is a game design fundamental as well as our policy that, rather than adjust the jobs to suit each battle, we balance the jobs independently, and only then set the battle content difficulty. Changing the job balance for one single duty would end up causing more problems than it solves, and so we decided to address the problem in the manner we did─by ameliorating the root cause.
I appreciate that, regardless of our rationale, this issue has been a source of frustration for many, and I apologize for that. I hope, however, that this has helped clarify our approach.
In Conclusion
The adjustment to Abyssos: The Eighth Circle was never intended to be a “nerf,” but merely the correction of values that were set inappropriately for a fourth-stage Savage raid to begin with.
Nevertheless, I understand that it feels like a nerf for those who worked hard and were on the verge of clearing the fight as it was originally implemented, and I regret having caused such disappointment.
As we strongly wish you to continue enjoying fiercely challenging Savage fights, particularly in the early days after release, we will do our utmost to further improve the tuning of these battles. Furthermore, we will strive to better understand what our players think about such issues and improve our operational protocols─perhaps by waiting a week before implementing fixes, in addition to providing details on our perspective─so that if we again find ourselves in a similar situation, we may arrive at a solution that is more satisfying to everyone.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I sincerely apologize for any disruption that our error may have caused to your gameplay experience, and appreciate your patience.
Naoki Yoshida
FINAL FANTASY XIV Producer & Director
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Charon_on_Vacation✭✭✭✭you can't compare these two games, because the FFXIV Devs actually do care about their players.19
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Suddwrath✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭@ZOS_GinaBruno you have asked us what “communication” means to us, please for the love of the Nine Divines, just take a look at the way the FFXIV dev team communicates with the player base.
Do you want to know what caused me to start playing FFXIV over a year ago instead of ESO? It wasn’t the 8+ years of ongoing bugs in ESO. It wasn’t the terrible server performance in ESO. It wasn’t the sledgehammer approach to ‘balance’. It was seeing the night and day difference in the way the FFXIV team communicated with and treated their players.21 -
Klingenlied✭✭✭✭Ah well. Final is legendary for it's community management. Yoshi would never ever talk about "kneejerk reactions" when fans of his game worry about upcoming changes, he would take it seriously. Not saying he would change everything just because people are worrying. But the way he does communicate with the community is worlds apart from what we have here.
Generally:
- In Final you feel valued as a player. The game is made to be enjoyed by you. It is not perfect, but the devs strife to make it a as good experience for the playerbase as they can.
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- in ESO, you feel hated as a player. The game is there to steal your money. ESO too is not perfect, but the devs don't care to make it a good experience for the playerbase, being a cash cow with "Elder Scrolls" slapped on is good enough.
I understand I am a little bit extreme here and this actually is not my general opinion. But, that is what I felt with U35. And I stand on the "I feel hated as a player" - because instead of valuing my feedback, I feel offended because in giving feedback, I feel I belong to those people giving that "knee jerk reactions". And his is on the ESO community team / the Lambert guy.
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FluffyBird✭✭✭✭✭
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I read these words and ESO uninstalled itself, what have you done!TheGreatBlackBear wrote: »apologize for the disruption caused by this balancing issue, and for any offense resulting from the insufficient explanation
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sbr32✭✭✭✭Combine this with the mea culpa ArenaNet's mea culpa on balancing Guild Wars 2 from last month and it is pretty clear that there are MMO developers out there that appreciate and like their player base.10
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ZOS_IcymodGreetings,
While we understand that you may have interest in other games, this forum was created to talk about ESO. As we want to keep the discussion on the forums focused on this game, we've closed this thread.
Thank you for your understanding.2
This discussion has been closed.