We got new WS in the last update, and for the most part they kind of sucked. Some were interesting but most were complete busts. I am left wondering after years and years of wishing that SE would give us more meaningful updates and just more stuff if we have gotten to the point where we don't need a whole lot more stuff. What we need is refinement, and we got a lot of that in the Job Adjustments update notes, but outside of the absolute beauty of these new weaponskills, is there anything substantial to them? The question boils down to this: Is it going to beat the WS I use right now?
What SE needs to show is a little less flash and a little more finesse. What is compelling about these new WS? After looking at a couple WS worth of butterflies, I haven't used Tachi: Ageha outside of testing and goofing-off. The problem is that the level of commitment in testing and figuring things out just isn't as high as it used to be. If there are any little tricks to these new WS then most people aren't that willing to put a ton of work into finding them out. I would like for SE to look over old WS's to make sure they were all usable, even if just situationally.
So, I guess what I am saying is that we have matured past candy and sweets and what we really want is meat and potatoes level improvements. The move to increase the level cap was a meat and potatoes improvement. New Job Abilities (as long as they are useful) are meat and potatoes improvements. New WS are just sugar and spice and everything nice, but they won't sustain you. At this point, a lot of new WS are all flash and no substance. Keep giving us meat and potatoes improvements. Give better ways to move around, give us more storage, give us more JA's (that don't share timers), don't give us more pretty stuff we are never going to use.
I am getting too used to SE giving us good content. I feel like I am looking a gift horse in the mouth.
Monday, August 30, 2010
SE Gives More But Do We Really Need It?
Friday, June 04, 2010
Dissecting the New Weaponskills.
It's not very often (ever?) that SE randomly releases videos for new content. It's also pretty rare that SE raises the level cap and gives us new WS's. I decided to watch the video and dissect the animations and the etymology of the titles of the new WS's. Here is my run down:
Tornado Kick - Why does a WS called Tornado have flame animations? Wouldn't Firestorm Kick be a better idea?
Blade: Yu - Ok, seriously, WTF hax? That Mithra is dual wielding Nagi's. SE dupes too! Blade: "Boil" looks about right for the WS. While it does look water based, it also has a geyser look to it, and it has a cloud animation at the top of it. Looks appropriate.
Aeolian Edge - Aeolus is the greek god of wind. Obviously wind based, and it looks AoE. Probably wind-based in line with the Gust Slash and Cyclone WS's.
Numbing Shot - Two-hit, melee ranged WS? Name implies it might be a stun WS.
Sanguine Blade - Obviously referring to blood in this case. Appears to be a one-hit HP drain WS. Like PLD needs more useful WS's. Also, I think that the sword that he PLD is using is a new weapon model.
Bora Axe - The Bora is a wind along the southern to south-eastern coast of Europe on the Mediterranean coast. Derived from Boreas the greek god for the cold North wind. Boreas was one of the Anemoi, the greek gods of wind. The Roman equivalent is Aquilo. I think the WS is an interesting combination of the throwing aspect kind of being derived from the wind as there are small swirl animations, and the main animation is obviously of ice which is why they used the cold North wind.
Herculean Slash - Obvious reference to Hercules, but I don't think there is any specific relation to ice in the name, but the great sword WS line have some ice effects.
Cataclysm - Stolen directly from WoW . Looks Dark based with magic runes and symbols. Cataclysm actually means "wash down" in greek and refers to the Deluge mythos that runs back pretty far throughout history.
Infernal Scythe - Infernal is anything in reference to hell. Probably the most interesting looking WS to be added. It has an initial dark effect effect around the player which is kind of neat, and then two huge blades or perhaps claws reaching up from the ground/hell.
Tachi: Ageha - Ageha being Japanese for Swallowtail Butterfly, the little effects flying off of the animation are indeed butterflies. Looks like a single-hit WS.
Sonic Thrust - Looks pretty standard, though it might be ranged. As sonic means anything about acoustics, perhaps it has a silence effect?
Flash Nova - I find this to be one of the most interesting WS so far. At the end of the animation there are flashing lights over the head of the mob. Add that fact with the name of the WS and we can conclude it probably causes a Flash effect. This WS might be useful for PLD?
Refulgent Arrow - Refulgent means radiant or radiance. The WS has an animation on the player before the shot is fired.
Fell Cleave - This could mean a couple different things. Fell are mountains or a mountainous area. To fell can mean to chop down, but so can cleave. Fell can also be in reference to an animal skin or hide. So, it could mean a lot of things. I am leaning toward mountain cleave or hide cleave though. Outside of the name though, there doesn't appear to be anything that significant about the animation.
Monday, April 05, 2010
You got your Rage in my TP! You got your TP in my Rage!
While I might reference other games like WoW in columns it is not that often that I dedicate a whole column to the issue. But today Blizzard made an announcement that I think is interesting enough to include here.
The best thing about this is that I KNEW it was coming. I almost wrote a column about it before, but decided you might not care.
A bit of background: In WoW, Warriors uses a mechanic called Rage to use abilities. Rage is usually gained through one of two ways, either doing damage or taking damage. This is one of those things that sounds good on paper, but in practice you have to wonder how Blizzard let this mechanic exist through the base game and two expansions. The problem? Well, Warriors can either be melee DD (DPS) or tanks. For melee DD, if you are undergeared, then you are going to be doing less damage, and if you do less damage you get less rage, and if you get less rage you can do less abilities and thus do less damage to get less rage, and on and on. But there is a point at which you get enough gear to do enough damage to always have rage to always do more damage to get more rage, etc. It isn't well balanced at all. Tanks have the opposite problem. They get rage based on the damage they take. When you are fighting something really hard, you take a lot of damage, so you have a lot of rage. But as your gear improves, you take less damage and gain less rage, so you aren't able to hold hate as well because you can't use your abilities. So when you aren't doing high level events, you actually have more trouble holding hate than you would against something that is pounding your face in.
Now, this might seem slightly familiar. FFXI has a mechanic that is similar but applies across all melee DDs. Well it just got a whole lot more similarer.
Check below to see how Blizzard is now changing Rage into TP.
Essentially, Blizzard's new plan for Warrior (and Druid) Rage system is the same as SE's system in FFXI for TP. After their new expansion Warriors will gain rage based on their base swing speed, and that gain will be adjusted for all weapon speeds. Does this remind you of something? That is exactly how TP is determined in FFXI. Blizzard did add a little flair to the system by making Crits gain double the normal Rage and off-hand swings only getting 50% that weapon's normal Rage. Then again FFXI has Store TP to increase your TP per swing. Also, Blizzard is changing the way that tanks will get rage from being hit, so that they will get rage more equally from lower damage mobs. In FFXI, players still get TP from getting hit, but it is not fundamental to their jobs. PLD does get a large benefit from their increased TP gain from being hit, but it is not critical to doing their job.
Blizzard's system is also different in how Rage functions and is used, like Rage caps at 100 and abilities only cost a set amount but those amounts vary depending on the ability. So how a WoW Warrior spends their TP is more like how a Dancer uses their TP, instead of how a normal WS works. WoW Warriors spend little chunks of their Rage at a time, while a melee DD in FFXI spends all of their TP at once.
I have to say right now, that I was thinking this was Blizzard's only real solution to the problems they were having with Rage, and it was my idea and they totally ripped me off! :) The reason that it works in FFXI and the reason that Blizzard needed to use it for WoW is that it is based on something that is external to the gearing of a player. All of the other jobs in WoW just get their "resource", or their "stuff" to use their abilities, for free. Warriors had to take damage or do damage to get their "resource". This wasn't very stable at all to determine if you could use an ability or not. The only stable factor that exists across all jobs (even across both games) is swing speed. The faster weapons get less Rage/TP and the slower weapons get more Rage/TP. It all equals out in the end. SE figured this out pretty early on, and hasn't had to change the system all that much (there was one tweak when they removed the TP floor for low delay weapons).
Blizzard doesn't have a decrease weapon delay function outside of haste, and haste is going to function the same way that it does in FFXI for Rage gain purposes (i.e. it isn't going to effect it at all). They also don't have a "Store TP" function either, but they do have a much larger spread of swing speeds, so I think that even if they don't have a system that allows for an "X-hit build", they might want to consider how much rage they get from a weapon swing. If they can get to a round number faster with a higher delay weapon that might just be beneficial. For example, if one weapon gives 24 Rage per swing, and another weapon give 25 Rage per swing, and one of their abilities takes 25 Rage then it may be better to go with the slower weapon because you will be able to use your 25 Rage ability first. I would not be surprise for Warriors to quickly discover this "trick" in much the same way that melee DD in FFXI try to get to "X-hit builds".
There really aren't that many more differences between how the two systems functions. I think it was a good decision for WoW because it means that how a players chooses to use their abilities and when they use them will be more reflective of their potential damage output than just getting the best gear and having infinite rage. If you know about how things were before the "TP nerf" was implemented in FFXI, then you can imagine it in slightly the same way. The problem is that SE fixed the TP issue (getting full TP from multi-hit weapons) really early in the game, but it took Blizzard two expansions to figure it out.
Of course you are going to have some WoW people complain about it because they had the best gear and could do anything they wanted because they never had to worry about getting Rage because they already had it. But those people are dumb, and don't understand why fixing broken things is good for the game overall.
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