Let’s See How Far We’ve Come

[Xerius]

The point of this thread is to dissect the latest updates and critique them for better or worse. I’ll be using the “comment format.” So, if you see a part you agree with give it a “like” and if you see something you don’t like violently disagree with me and describe to me why I’m not worthy to play this game.

[Xerius]

Reives:

The Good: Reives were obviously put into the game broken and Square Enix seems hard at work trying to fix the problems. A lot of people have been claiming that the effort-reward ratio is a bit too low compared to say Campaign or Abyssea. Besides the broken parts I personally find the rewards to be fine. There’s one thing to remember while doing this and it’s that you can do Reives way more frequently than a Campaign battle. They’re a great way to jump right into the action and get some quick Bayld and Exp.

The Bad: For one thing it can be very difficult to find a Reive with enough people to actually finish it. Some of them don’t need too many people to finish but it’s not too hard to imagine that as we move further and further into Ulbuka the Reives will start to increase in challenges and as it stands some of the Reives can pose a challenge to an alliance of 99s (any Reive with Mantids in them are a good example).
Another big problem with them is the 10-minute limit if you exit a Reive. It was obviously put in there so people can’t just exit the Reive before they’re about to die and then re-enter when they have HP back. However, if you’re just trying to pass through the area or trying to go to another Reive the 10-minute cool down is a bit annoying. I’d recommend that it be reduced to 5 minutes or simply you cannot participate in that particular Reive again if you leave.

[Xerius]

Missions & Quests:

The Good: There is a fair amount of content in Seekers of Adoulin at launch and it’s a bit refreshing to receive Exp as a reward instead of 100 Gil or a weapon or armor piece that you’re just going to toss. The cut-scenes seem well animated, which is one of the reasons I loved Wings of the Goddess so much. The new heroine seems interesting and the plot… well… I’ll get into that in a bit.

The Bad: Like I was saying, the plot is pretty much nonexistent at this point. I know that more will added in the future but where’s the hook? Where’s the grab? We only met two real characters from what I can tell and honestly I’m not even sure why I’m there. I know I’m supposed to be a pioneer but I just feel like an errand-boy right now. Which brings me to my next point, the NPCs. Does anyone else feel like the NPCs are a little to “soft” to be living on the razor’s edge of civilization? Half of them can’t even be bothered to walk across town to get their items fixed or acquire some fertilizer for their gardens. The coalitions are fun but it’s easy to see that some will progress way faster than others. It’s way easier to do a Courier Coalition’s quest of “deliver this to there” when “there” is maybe a 5 minute run away. Compared to the Inventor’s Coalition’s quest of “Acquire 5 of item X” it sounds easy enough but the item drops maybe 33% of the time with Treasure Hunter 7 and the monsters can be quite a challenge.

[Xerius]

Enmity and Damage 2.0:

The Good: I honestly have nothing…

The Bad: For a lot of jobs the changes to Enmity is pretty hard to see. However, if you change to a healing or pet job you notice an immediate difference. I’m a Summoner through-and-through so, when I hopped into Ulbuka and had Garuda attack a Grasshopper. I had the pleasure of immediately eating dirt. No matter how much damage Garuda does, me simply using Assault or any Blood Pact causes my foe to automatically focus it’s attack on me. This is a problem when you’re a Tarutaru Summoner with only 800 HP. If I had to wager a guess, I’d say the made it so damage generates less enmity but doing actions such as casting or using an ability generates the same or more enmity.
The new defense renovation is a whole other can of worms. It’s hard to tell whether it’s the new damage system or if the new monsters are really supposed to hit that hard. However, when I see a Paladin holding 6~8 monsters in a Reive without much of a problem I have to assume it’s the new damage system. It appears that they just increased the amount of damage that jobs take as long as that job cannot wear heavy armor. If you can wear heavy armor then you take the same amount of damage. It’s not hard to see why this becomes a problem fast.

[Xerius]

Geomancer (GEO):

The Good: I’ve been enjoying this job quite a bit. Its aura mechanic is really unique and breathes some fresh life into an aging job system. A lot of people seem to be claiming that the job is overpowered when compared to Red Mage and there’s one thing to remember when it comes to that. Red Mage isn’t restricted to only having two effects going at once and these effects stack with Red Mage’s enfeebles. Red Mage’s real problems lie in the Meta-game and the fact that most content that’s created these days is made to be zerged which is a system where enfeebles lose value quickly. Another thing I’ve been hearing is that the skills are too hard to level and to these people I say, maybe you shouldn’t have ran off to Abyssea with your new toy, as soon as you received it. You can’t complain about how you leveled a job to 99 and now you don’t know how to use it that is YOUR fault and only your fault.

The Bad: Geomancer is a job that brings a lot and a lot of nothing to the table at the same time. As cool as Geomancer is, it lacks a real selling point right now. Most of it’s enhancing effects can be obtained from a WHM/SCH and most of it’s enfeebles from a SMN or a RDM there are a few exceptions but not enough to make this job stand on it’s own. I doubt this job will see much use in any of the older content with the exception of maybe a few battlefields that have a lot of enemies.
Another big problem is that I hear that the animations from the sphere’s are making people dizzy/sick and I’m pretty sure that this can be turned off, if you do you lose the ability to see how far your effects can reach. An easy fix for this would be to offer a “clear sphere” option. That way you can see the outline of your aura effects but shouldn’t make anyone sick. Also, why only a C in Geomancy and Handbell? The job doesn’t even have an A- in any skill and it’s not like it has a lot of skills to play with.

[Xerius]

Rune Fencer (RUN):

The Good: This is a job that has been a long time coming. I’m extremely excited to see a job that expands on the elemental weakness/strength system. Up until now it’s just kind of been there. Sure WHM can increase resistances but it only rarely found use I guess then, the question is will RUN see any use then. It seems that the newer content will be much more elemental based. The Rune system also adds a lot of versatility to the job as a damage dealer and supporting-type job.

The Bad: As with GEO I can see this job being great for newer content but falling short on any older content since the elemental system is utilized so little. The job has damage dealing capabilities but I don’t see it replacing Dark Knight, Warrior or Monk anytime soon. This job also has been marketed as a tank but takes damage like it’s made out of pudding. If it’s not on the receiving edge of magic damage it really doesn’t have many selling points.

[Xerius]

In Conclusion:

I’m really enjoying this new content and am looking forward to the future updates that will smooth out the rough spots and add some meat to the story. I think that in an update or two the expansion will really feel like an addition to the game and GEO and RUN will be fleshed out enough to have utility. Also, I’m sure there’s plenty of things that we as the players haven’t even discovered yet.
I feel like I have to take a moment to express that most of these are my own personal opinions so feel free to be as brutal as you can be when analyzing them. However, let’s try to keep this discussion on topic and keep it friendly!