May 8th, 2022 Livestream Thread

If people watched the 20th stream, and ever get their hopes up again... They really have no-one to blame but themselves.

Not even a demo of a new zone, or stats on the new weapons, or previews of Empyrean +3. Nothing.

This right here is spot on lol. Like I went in with low expectations and got what I expected for the most part.

General Rule of thumb when playing this game: Just wait and see what they actually do. Don't even bother being excited or hopeful, and take what they say with skepticism until it plays out. Just play the game as is right now, and whatever they do later, view it as a bonus.

After almost 20 years of play you think I would know this by now. Sometimes hope creeps it's way back out.

I was referencing arguing with others, not you :)


Not sure what you mean here. They were very clear on that one


They clearly say that they thought they were done with individual job adjustments, but after revaluation they decided to make another one for RNG and PLD, because they think "progression system they plan for all jobs" wont balance those jobs on its own and they still require individual adjustment Direct quote
This is another evidence that for them progression system for all jobs is the same thing that job adjustment for 22 jobs btw and they believe that progression system will balance/adjust jobs (just not enough for RNG without Hover Shot apparently like they wrote).

People are just stubborn or troll if they really think they were talking about progression system for all jobs and job adjustment for all jobs in the same time and in the same context, but they meant two different things :)

bravo man. I feel very Mandela'd in terms of my bad memory hehe.

You taking one set of comments from the same chat and saying people are stubborn when it isn't the case lol. They talked about this stuff even back when pld got its first of 100 "job progression" changes. Again end of the day it doesn't matter and clearly se thinking the game is more balanced because it gave everyone the same set of stats from just grinding out more exp is a good thing so meh.

Edit keep in mind people asked about these job adjustments way before rng was even on the table for adjustments or before we knew about master levels

My only question would be, why would they think the job progression system to all 22 jobs (Master Levels) would have addressed RNG being weak "as far as ranged attackers go"? Master Levels adds stats to all jobs equally, but if it's below average or barely better than other Ratt jobs (Cor), MLs wouldn't change anything at all. It would be at the same place after MLs Weird they would have to do "Careful consideration", should be obvious, no?

Put another way: if every DD job in the game has a 12" stick, but RNG has a 8" stick, giving every job another 4" on their stick doesn't fix the gap with RNG at all, it just elevates everyone 4". You're still at the same place you were when you started. The fact that they would have even thought MLs would have lowered that gap (again, its the same thing for all jobs) is kind of head scratching. Either they are are playing dumb with their words, or they actually did mean the job progression system was intended to balance jobs individually, not adjust them all collectively.

FTR, Master Levels sounds exactly like what they had announced, but their explanation for RNG's deficiencies and how they planned to address seem to imply they assume MLs would have fixed the problem, when there's no way it could. And no, im not reading too much into it, just taking their explanation and trying to see how it makes sense.

PLD will get Foil from Master Levels, /DRG got Super Jumps, /WAR will get Fencer II, /DRK got SMite III and PDL III, /whm got CuragaIII etc.

Some of those are big gameplay/balance changes for main jobs using those subs and even opens up new possibilities. It's much more than just stats.

Just to be pedantic, it does reduce the gap in the analogy here. It goes from RNGs being 33.3% behind to only being 25% behind. The raw difference doesn't matter.

I think you got confused. They thought exactly opposite. They thought Master Levels WON'T solve this issue, that's why the decided for individual adjustment in form of Hover shot to improve RNG's as ranged attacker.

This is my mindset behind it because this is clearly what they meant and seems players Simon and others knew they meant this. Now idk what kinda crack they smoking but this was in no way shape or form gonna help out with balance.

I understand that, but we have to compare the jobs that are "Ranged attackers", according to what SE was explaining. That boils down to COR + RNG, not all jobs. The exact quote:


I'm curious: how could Master Levels improve RNG substantially (to close whatever gap players complained about) in a way where COR wouldn't equally benefit from it? It would get the exact same access to support jobs and stats. Unless there is a native stat growth difference in jobs, Master Levels alone wouldn't make RNG stronger than COR. That's where the statement they made is a little unclear.

I know this. That's my question. Why would they have ever though MLs could solve the issue?

Probably because they hadn't worked out the details on the system at that time. Maybe one of the options they were considering but eventually didn't go with was one that gave different bonuses to different jobs, like job points.

So again if this was the mindset then they shouldn't have said all 22 jobs because master levels don't help all 22 jobs.

Except master levels do help all 22 jobs?

Master level balances job individually too. DPS is not the only gauge to balance jobs. PLD getting Foil from /run is form of individual balancing for PLD. RDM/WHM getting curaga III is form of balancing RDM's aoe cure potential. /war getting Fencer III opens up more possibilities for for example DRG with Naegling or maybe even DNC with single wielding dagger. Being able to sub /drg gives you ability to reset hate, which is also a form of balancing some DD jobs etc.

You can say it's not ideal, or that it kinda works for all jobs, because everyone can sub everything, but it clearly works better for some main jobs and solve specific issues for them. So it balances all jobs, some more than other, but also not all jobs require same balance intervention. You can say it's not enough, but it is exactly what they were saying.

That's funny, because that's exactly where the confusion on the previous pages stemmed from. People thought they were getting job-related progression system with tailored bonuses per job (Job Points 2.0), but they released all-jobs related progression system that unlocked same thing equally. I'm not miffed at all, but it definitely could be interpreted by some as the old bait-and-switch tactic, and not necessarily "you misunderstood the intentions".

SE: It's going to be X (of which Y or Z are both valid interpretations).

Later:

SE: It's Y.

That's not bait and switch no matter how much players assumed of the original post.

Expect they don't. If you compare it to acutal adjustments. If all the jobs got baseline stat upgrades they all on the same field just like before. What it is now is jobs got baseline stats and some jobs got benefits from subjob levels.

It doesn't help all jobs equally, even if the core of the system technically adds the same thing to everyone. Foil for PLD is a huge deal, while for WAR it's useless. PDL II for DRK drom sub is useless, while for BLU it's very good. Fencer II from /WAR is useless for RNG, but it's awesome for DRG and potentially DNC (especially with additional Double attack too).

Helping jobs is entirely different from helping jobs in comparison to each other. Master levels absolutely helped all 22 jobs.

Any adjustment that updated all 22 jobs by its very nature would have to help some more than others.

That's also ignoring the fact that some jobs absolutely get a lot more out of base stats, higher subjobs, and skills than others. For example, RDM gets large bonuses from MLs, while GEO gets relatively little.

It didn't but we aren't gonna agree on this because again depends on the job you main and what you see as problems for jobs played. Example not saying how master levels helped drk absorb spells any of the fact sam can't use a full job trait still because of everything having some form of counter or cone debuff. Geo is a whole bag also where you can pick apart. I think I just see helping differently

Those are not argument against Master level helping all jobs (not all of them the same). Those are arguments that they haven't helped enough in your opinion or targeted different things.

If you ask me for a liquid because you want to drink something and I will give you water, while what you really wanted was apple juice, then it doesn't mean water is not a liquid, because it didn't satisfy you.

Master levels cause Absorb spells to have more magic accuracy and last longer, which is beneficial because they are already used (albeit some more than others).

SAMs can more safely stay in front of mobs because they've got more HP and Defense.

Bows get more benefit than Guns do from more STR, so technically that's an adjustment that would benefit RNG more than COR that comes directly from Mastery Levels. Prime Bow needs to be PRIME in order to capitalize on that difference.

Without knowing what the upcoming gear and weapons are going to look like, there is no way to qualify how well Mastery Levels are going to fit the expectations we had from garbled engrish translations. I'd bench the disappointment or hope at least until we see the +2s in a couple months.

I personally think they have done RNG an excellent service based on the few Arebati parse data i've seen on higher difficulty. Jobs may not be balanced but almost all of them are more than playable and more fun than they probably have ever been.

and of course, at the end of the day, in a game defined by the ability to play all the jobs available rather than picking a class day one and being stuck, do all jobs honestly need to be balanced, or is it actually better to just create scenarios where different jobs are needed to justify them?

I'm much happier in a world where different jobs get "moments" to shine compared to one where you can just take whatever to anything.

...essentially only writing this as we devolve into a job balance issue discussion, that I think most of us are just tired of having, and in reality matters less than relevance, even if limited.

Also I should say game adjustment also would've helped alot more but that's my opinion like everything we talking about now is just opinions.

One can hope they eventually do both broad "adjustments" via ML opening up more options/stat increases and then individual job adjustments for those that didnt get much benefit from this system