MND, Cure Potency, INT, and Black Magic Potency

For a long time, I've been disappointed by the cap on healing magic. If you're a low-level Tarutaru, the damage you can do with black magic spells rises beyond the cap where cure potency is capped. So if you're an Elvaan, you suffer both the curse of low MP and the low cap of your cure spells, putting all that extra MND to waste. Tarutaru, though, has the benefit of both high MP and higher caps on the damage they can do.

For developers with such a huge concern for game balance, why didn't they balance in this area? Since Elvaans have so little MP, they should be able to cast Cure I for 60-70 HP at lower levels, especially since they have higher VIT than Taru and can take more hits in low level parties. Tarus have more MP but low MND, which is right for them since their smaller cures shouldn't draw as much hate.

been a while since I looked up the formulas... but seem to recall the sum of the mods gets divided by 5 or something, so the disparity b/t racial stats is likely negligible at lower levels--likely only come into play at much higher levels. If they started tweaked things even more so one race was more blatently obvious for particular jobs like that, then you'd have even more racial division than we currently have now. I vote for leaving it as is, but maybe offer more potency options on lower level gears maybe.

mind is important to cure V, i do not know about cure VI

but yes it is a problem with cure I, II, III, IV

it is an increasing problem now that sub can cure the same as main cure

(i/e why is PLD/ SCH/ RDM stuck on same cure power as /sub)

Max MP isn't as important as your ability to recover MP, which isn't affected by race. A tarutaru will take longer to run out of MP, but when they have run out, will also take longer to recover it.

Max MP is more important that your ability to recover MP in many situations. It represents the total amount of spellcasting capacity between rest periods - for any activity constrained to single bursts of spellcasting, where the length of an individual rest period is irrelevent, Max MP is critical to ensure you can land all of the spells that need to be landed.

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Originally Posted by Coephoros

Max MP is more important that your ability to recover MP in many situations. It represents the total amount of spellcasting capacity between rest periods - for any activity constrained to single bursts of spellcasting, where the length of an individual rest period is irrelevent, Max MP is critical to ensure you can land all of the spells that need to be landed.

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only applays to soloing, even then idealy yuou have max mp gear then change to int gear as you use it.

max mp is a joke with support.

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(i/e why is PLD/ SCH/ RDM stuck on same cure power as /sub)

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I used to discuss this back in the old days. It is obviously "overpowered" but in a convenient way that makes nobody complain. But where you to suggest full potency BLM nukes or BRD songs... then people just go on and on and on about how it would break the game.

In short. Boring things can be full power, cool things must be restricted to only main jobs.

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Originally Posted by Malamasala

I used to discuss this back in the old days. It is obviously "overpowered" but in a convenient way that makes nobody complain. But where you to suggest full potency BLM nukes or BRD songs... then people just go on and on and on about how it would break the game.

In short. Boring things can be full power, cool things must be restricted to only main jobs.

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I look at it from a financial viewpoint, too. I love the speed with which I can kill monsters with Vaan in Final Fantasy XII, but Final Fantasy XI has a very slow kill method that takes longer and longer as you level up. It's easy to solo a tough at Lv.5, but soloing a tough at Lv.75 is a different matter. It takes a lot longer and you have to know what you're doing. That's because we actually get weaker relative to monsters as we level up, so it really does take more skill to stay alive and defeat the monster. Look at it this way... When I'm Lv.60 RDM and a monster is Lv.70, he can kill me in about five or six hits, or less. But if I get to Lv.80 and go back to fight that same Lv.70 monster as RDM, I'll spend probably two or three minutes killing him with about 30-40 hits. Why? Well, it's brilliance, really, from a creativity standpoint, and a financial standpoint. If we could all kill monsters quickly and get through the whole game, that's less money for Square Enix. But somehow they managed to create a game that is both addictive and frustratingly slow with regard to soloing high-level monsters. Good for Square-Enix. I'm glad for the recent boost in experience points, but I'd still even like to see the current rates doubled again. I've got a play time of 389 days (started January 2005) and I've enjoyed every one of those days, but I've spent so much time crafting and farming that I don't even have a Lv.90 job yet. My highest level is RDM75, and I've got a Lv.67 WHM, and a Lv.65 THF, and a Lv.46 BLM. All the rest of my jobs are Lv.39 or lower, simply because having done the major grind for RDM, I cannot stomach repeating it all for all those other jobs. I do want to level them all, but it's just soooo slow and boring, which is why I've spent so much time crafting and farming... That's fun to me. I spend about 10% of my time fighting, 70% farming or crafting, and 20% muling... and this AH merger will cut my muling by about 75%, I think, so I'm happy for that. :)

Anyway, I digressed. I'd like to see our strength curve go up relative to monsters, so if a Lv.70 monster can kill me in five hits when I'm Lv.60, then when I get to Lv.70, I want to be able to kill a Lv.60 monster in five hits. At Lv.70 Thief, I want to be able to use a crossbow bolt and one-shot a Lv.50 monster.

And my hope for that is why I've kept paying my subscription fees every month. I would like to think that Square Enix, once this game has become non-viable for online operation, will become a nifty and massive offline game that I can play by myself, with the same type of killing power enjoyed in games like Final Fantasy XI. Even make the speed of killing user-adjustable with a difficulty setting.

I want to finish the story, but I'm tired of waiting for parties or alliances just to get through it all. Now that SE has collected from me about $1,800 in subscription fees, plus the cost of buying the game discs and add-ons (I have all of them), I think that I and all players deserve to continue playing, even after the game dies as an online adventure. If we had the option to go offline with it today, even if it means giving up our opportunity to come back online, I'd take it, not to save money, but just to finally get through it all solo.

I would like an option to go solo or have five NPC partners. Perhaps they could each be programmed with gambits like there are in FFXII, so your WHM is a computer monitoring everyone's HP and never misses a cure, but tries to keep from getting hate while preventing deaths.

I fantasize about SE having such a thing in the future of FFXI, a final re-release of a game that has grown to a gargantuan size and would make for a nice game for people who never wanted to play it online because of the subscription fees. There might even be some way for the programmers to give it a few tweaks to boost performance and have a better item storage and organization, stackable potions, getting all crafts to Lv.100, etc.... My brain is watering just thinking about what this game could become as an offline adventure. I look forward to it, but I will miss the online community aspect of it -- the pleasure of seeing other people doing things in the game world and knowing it's a real human operating the character, not just the computer.