Free magic use in cities

[Kaych]

I may be out of line here, but here goes.

Since "the beginning" of the game, I have always been in need of switching jobs in order to example: warp, teleport, retrace etc. And when you switch a job, you are in a city somewhere... Wich got me thinking, why is switching a job necesseay? I mean, how many times have you been in a party of 6, then you switch to your teleport job, tele everyone, then warp back to the city, change your job and OP (or something else, Maw, shout for another teleport or w/e)...

Its kinda time consuming and IMO not necessary. So my suggestion is that, when you are in a city, you can use all the spells you have learned. Of course, things like summon spells cant be used cos... well, you are in a city>_> (Cept in Al Zahbi and not during a Besieged^_-) Then when you zone out of the city, you "free-magic-use" stops.

I think this could be very practical and at the same time ease the "getting-somewhere"-process, but I feel alot of people may not approve this. Who knows, maybe I have been spoiled with all the Abyssea,- and Maw teleports:P

And when I say "free-magic-use", I mean access to all the magic, not free as in no MP use^^ (tho thats also an idiea... hmmm.. :D)

[Bumbeen]

that doesn't make sense, thf/nin can't cast teleport-altep, no mp, and thf can't use magic at all

Though when I read the topic title I thought you meant no MP usage, which is actually a really good idea. And I support that fully.

[Mirage]

I guess what the OP is thinking about is something like how it was in some other FF games, where you could use magic in menus outside of battle, without having to change that character to the appropriate job first if the character had a job with (for example) a cure spell leveled already.

I'm not sure where I stand on this.

[Kaych]

I guess what the OP is thinking about is something like how it was in some other FF games, where you could use magic in menus outside of battle, without having to change that character to the appropriate job first if the character had a job with (for example) a cure spell leveled already.

I'm not sure where I stand on this.

Yeah, you nailed it. The cities would sorta be like "The world map" in other Final Fantasys, where you can choose whatever spell you need. Like in FFVIII. Many people didnt equip magic since using magic would decrease the stats of whoever used it. So the menu was often equipped like this Attack, GF, Item, Draw/Card/Doom or w/e. y point is, as soon as the battle ended you didnt have to equip magic again in order to cure yourself. You could choose whatever spell you wanted to use so you didnt have to equip/unequip all the time(like you have to with the job system in FFXI).

Therefore allowing this free-magic in citys, would avoid the timeconsuming job-changes all the time. Like it was in the other Final Fantasys on the world map ^_-

(Thank you Mirage, I can be kinda misleading sometimes :P)

But you make a point there Bumbeen about the MP. Maybe it should be free mp and free spells. Some sort of solution to this might be no skill-ups allowed or something so it wont be exploited^_-

[Ihnako]

Hmm... I can see the merit in your request but on the other hand I'm glad that SE didn't involved the whole harty /star system in the way you change jobs.
As far as you can go - there is allways a moogle involved in changing your jobs - so you can say job changing is moogle magic.

Also there are many ways implemented to reach your destination. In the begining it was just teleport, warp, chocobo, airship and OP warp but by now you could also use different items and NPCs. So there is no real need for that anymore.

Atm - there are only two areas you can't reach directly but SE told us that these areas would be added in the next patch.

See: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/9515-dev1018-Assorted-Refinements

[Nynja]

So a job that cant cant cast teleport/recall/retrace will be able to cast them if they have the job leveled in town? That doesnt have cause for exploitative concern, or someones to cheap to pay 3k for a tele/retrace. And free MP in cities, since it was discussed...once again, extensive cause for exploitative concern. skillup bot will run rampant

[Bumbeen]

It's pretty easy to put /heal on /wait 500 /heal off in a skillup bot

[Zaknafein]

extensive cause for exploitative concern. skillup bot will run rampant

1234567890

[RAIST]

Unfortunately, this goes against the core design of their character structure--this late in the game, not likely to happen. The code jockeys that wrote that portion may no longer even be employed by SE, which could present another problem too with all the tweaking and patching done over the years...layers and layers of bandaids to sort through could create side effects that would need more patching---and so and so and so forth.

It's basic design...been that way for a decade...don't count on it changing anytime soon.

[Kaych]

Unfortunately, this goes against the core design of their character structure--this late in the game, not likely to happen. The code jockeys that wrote that portion may no longer even be employed by SE, which could present another problem too with all the tweaking and patching done over the years...layers and layers of bandaids to sort through could create side effects that would need more patching---and so and so and so forth.

It's basic design...been that way for a decade...don't count on it changing anytime soon.

Yeah, I dont reallyXD But then again, I never counted on a lvl cap either :D

[Kaych]

So a job that cant cant cast teleport/recall/retrace will be able to cast them if they have the job leveled in town? That doesnt have cause for exploitative concern, or someones to cheap to pay 3k for a tele/retrace. And free MP in cities, since it was discussed...once again, extensive cause for exploitative concern. skillup bot will run rampant

Yeah, you have a point. The exploit-ness may be an issue. But, here is a suggestion:
If you are WHM/nin, then you can skill up healing, divine, enfeebeling and enhanching. But, you could not skill your ninjitsu:)

That could be a solution :D

[Kaych]

Hmm... I can see the merit in your request but on the other hand I'm glad that SE didn't involved the whole harty /star system in the way you change jobs.
As far as you can go - there is allways a moogle involved in changing your jobs - so you can say job changing is moogle magic.

Also there are many ways implemented to reach your destination. In the begining it was just teleport, warp, chocobo, airship and OP warp but by now you could also use different items and NPCs. So there is no real need for that anymore.

Atm - there are only two areas you can't reach directly but SE told us that these areas would be added in the next patch.

See: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/9515-dev1018-Assorted-Refinements

Omg, that is so awsome :D I didnt notice that one^_-

That sure will help with getting around ^_^

[RAIST]

Yeah, I dont reallyXD But then again, I never counted on a lvl cap either :D

Actually, the original placeholder for character level went into triple digits, the level cap is and always has been a decision SE made dealing with game balance. Some of the worst NM's for the longest time were like level 80-85. Think there was a blurb a long time ago where they said they were technically set to go to level 120 or something with what was supported by the code (stat value increases and what not). Aside from job abilites, spells, armor, etc--increasing the level cap is more or less the matter of changing a paramater that puts the ceiling on your max level and populating the xp values for achiving the levels if they aren't already generated as well. All that code already exists and resources have been declared already.

What I was talking about is the functional design of the original code. There is a lot happening in the background when you job change, which may the reason they've restricted it to "city" areas where the PS2 environment has more assets available to handle swapping all the data through various tables when you job change. It probably isn't just the matter of toggling a value to unlock acess to spells and abilities when you zone to a city--they may be bound to a view that is only accessible when your job is set to the proper values. Changing this behavior could be a bit more complex then just creating a new view that allows you to see/trigger all your spells in the magic list. For starters, it has to preload not only all the assets required for the animations..but the calculations as well. you have the animations loaded for other people to cast the magic, but not all the logic that goes along with those spells (not to mention the whole mp issue as well). Right there you could be ramping up what has to get loaded into memory when you zone in to the city, then you'll have to shed all that when you zone back out to free memory to load all the additional assets for the adventuring areas.