Random Question Thread (FFXI Related)

As would be the patching of PLD Empyrean+3 set bonus, but this is SE.

In your professional programming experience? What did you find is the root cause behind it, and could you share your branch with us so we can see the details of your easy fix?

One variable which should be positive is negative, or vice versa.

You have now made it possible to fish up odyssey gaol NMs and corsair rolls now cause instant death to anyone in range during a bust

Same logic applies to changing Augmented necks though right?

That logic doesn't apply to either, but one is blatantly visible to everyone who plays if people start abusing it and the other is a super niche bug that is likely tied specifically to the combat logic used by humanoid mobs in dyna w3 and hasn't even been properly verified by players as far as I know.

Granted, neither should be hard to fix if known. In all likelihood, emp bug is a signed value overflowing. The augmented necks are just a missing check in a handler.

Wait what, PLD has bugged Empyrean armor? What's the bug?

If you wear it in dynamis damage taken relative to enmity or the absorb set bonus underflows.

Aka: instead of 0 you take 10000

And it's been broken for years and reported broken many times

At this point its just a feature to bring some small excitement to an otherwise mind-numbing event

Something is wrong with my 2nd char (this one). I keep getting tells asking why I never answered a tell but I never got that tell. Other people that messaged will message my other char and ask why I ignored their tell but even if I press CTR+R their name doesn't come up. What could be causing this?

IDK Thorny, K123 already cracked the case, turns out the problem is:


So just figure out where to put that "-" and you're all set.

It doesn't actually matter WHAT the bug is. While a scaling DT is a neat idea, a PLD should theoretically have the highest threat and the full DT on it anyway. If it's bugged and they either can't find it or it's going to break other ***, simply change the entire thing to be "-12% DT taken" or 6% or w/e if they don't want to give us the full 12 permanently. There's no way to *** that up.

There's so many things they could have done, ranging from hard to simply taking a couple minutes to fix, and they have chosen to not give a ***every time over the last couple years.

I should make a 89 +1/2 body and see if the bug exist still. For all we know the "Mitigates dmg. taken based on enmity" has always been bugged for decades and it never presented itself before.

[6/3 edit] Confirmed 89 +2 body also exhibits the same bug.

How often do people fight mobs that can use player usable WS's?

Go poke Shadowhand in Xarc[s] and see if her Staff WS's deal extra damage. I really dont know any other mobs that use player usable WS's. Maybe the Animated Weapons in Dyna-Xarc?

Shikarees i guess

The body has 20% SIRD on it, so it's used in most midcast spell sets. Dynamis is the only place that most us go where it happens, but it is a great body to use in Dynamis, and we have to make special sets with different SIRD combos of slots when we are in there.

Recently, I started swapping in the Adamantite body in all of my Idle/Engaged etc. sets, so it's really just a SIRD thing for me atm, but Empy is an amazing jack-of-all-trades body with amazing stats across the board, so it sucks that it just can't be used in Dynamis at all, and for people unlucky enough to not get the Adamantite to drop, I think it's a great idle and engaged body as well.

These would be better since they're atleast ilvl targets.

Sortie fomors can do it too, but never seen it drop a pld

Do sortie fomors live long enough for plds to really build up any enmity?

The Delitarius might live for a few seconds.

AFAIK the upstairs fomors do regular fomor attacks, only the basement ones use PC weaponskills?

Nah upstairs have access to both fomor and regular ws tied to that weapon

No guarantee it's not specifically tied to something in Dynamis, either. I don't think I've seen anyone mention having it happen anywhere else.

Ah yeah now that you mention it, I'm sure I've been hit by Full break by one of the WARs, must have slipped my mind. I was thinking of being hit by Grim Halo and assumed it was one or the other, never occurred to me they would have both.

I agree it seems to be isolated to Dynamis for some reason, which is why I don't think it's a simple "forgot to put a minus sign somewhere" fix.

AFAIK it's a unique effect that doesn't exist on any other piece of equipment in the game, it only happens on a single enemy type, doesn't (seem to) happen 100% of the time, only happens on WS and not auto-attacks...

IDK though, according to experts in the field all coding problems are a typo on a single line, so it should be a pretty easy fix. I'm sure the code for calculating damage is probably a single simple function with very few inputs, probably less than 10 lines total. Should have it coded, fixed, and tested by lunchtime.

It really is likely to be a pretty simple fix, but without the source code we can't know for sure. Going from a reduction to a giant boost is almost certain to be a signed value overflowing. All they need to do is follow the server code for damage calculation on a known to be effected WS to where it meets the stat mod for the armor, and look at all related values for signed integers(likely int8 or int16) that could overflow in that manner. Increase the size of the integer or add a check to ensure it doesn't overflow. Done.

This might sound complicated to a layperson, but any explanation that doesn't result in it being a relatively fast(sub-hour for sure, potentially sub-5min) fix is exponentially less likely. By lunchtime would be incredibly generous if they told a competent person who'd touched FFXI before to fix it.

I bet I could fix it if I could see the code. I doubt elite level programming knowledge would be required, regardless of how much that hurts Male's feelings.

Where else do enemy targets that survive longer than 10 seconds use player usable WS's? I scanned through the empy bugged thread, and every time someone took bugged damage, it was always from a Volte NM, not fodder.

I doubt anyones burning a Sortie run for this, but I'm certain a pld in emp body holding and building enmity on Deletrius (or anything) for a few min will eventually eat the same 5 digit OHKO.

I haven't gone back through the thread for full context, but... If we're just talking a mob that uses player WS for test purposes, the Fomor in SoA areas, Spurrned? in Ra'kaznar reives, etc, Can use player WS. Also the ones you farm the Vagary entry item from should as well.

I have a vaaague recollection of trying to trigger the empy body bug on them , but never getting any results. Wouldn't take it as fact or anything, been a long time, and I don't think I dedicated that much time to it.

Yea, it does seem most likely it's specifically tied to mobs using player WS (or mobs with player models/gear.. depending how that's implemented back end) rather than dynamis. But, we don't know for sure.. could be they did something weird with enmity cap for the zone to try to make the w3 boss less awful(just throwing this out as a way it could be zone related rather than mob related, nothing to back this up).

Changes to enmity caps in DynaD would explain any overflow issues.

It doesnt explain why it only applies to Volte though. Tier 2 boss isnt a 30 second fight and no ones reporting 5k digit damage. Unless the enmity change only applies to wave 3?