Making the game a little more user friendly

I can appreciate how busy the development team might be putting the finishing touches on the next major update and on future adjustments for the remainder of our journey to lv99 but there are a couple of admittedly minor things that have always bugged me about how the game functions.

#1 and the most annoying one is when trying to send somebody a message while they are zoning and getting an error that the message could not be delivered. I would imagine the amount of server memory required to buffer text to be sent to the clients AFTER loading the new zone is complete couldn't be so incredibly high considering hardware specs today that this small change couldn't find it's way into the game. This could also handle just about any text sent to the chat log including Linkshell and Party. I'm sure we've all missed small bits of information during event gathering while we were zoning to change jobs etc. Would be incredibly handy to see that the leader had requested you drop party while zoning and do so after zoning without them having to repeat it a couple minutes after you don't comply.

#2 This one honestly is kind of a no brainer :) When you job change it would be so nice if the game would automatically load the last used macro set for the main job when you switched to it. This could conceivably be used even on the subjob level so choosing NIN/WAR would load a different macro set than NIN/DNC.

An amusing side note. A long while ago I was playing RNG and decided to switch to DRK but forgot to load DRK macro set. Well I tended to pull mobs with poison on DRK and used a generic /ra <t> for RNG. Both were set up on the same macro. When I ran out and pulled the first mob on DRK an odd animation appeared. Being elvaan I just assumed my DRK hurt his back in the process of casting the spell but no. It was my beloved (600k at the time) bomb core about to be flung at the unsuspecting enemy. I must have been a bit tired at the time but by the time I realized what was happening it was too late to interrupt it and my bomb core went flying towards the raptor..... and missed :(

#3 this relates to BLU and possibly useful for /BLU as well. Saving spell sets. The update that simply saved your last spell set on job change was a god send {Thank you.} but I would suggest taking it a step further and allowing us to define and store spell sets for a tidy way to switch between solo and party configurations for example.

Thank you for reading my suggestions.

#3 definitely. Everytime my LS is picking jobs for an Abyssea run, I'm sitting in my mog house thinking, "don't say BLU, don't say BLU" only because it's a nuisance to manage spell sets.

I'd also add #4: a menu-driven (not shouting in zone-driven) system for forming parties. Model it after online poker lobbies. Alliance leader makes a "table" (alliance) and can control the table description (what the alliance is going after, what jobs they still need, what drops are free lot ... just a big text field they can edit). People can view the list of tables and request to join a table from anywhere in the world. The alliance leader can shuffle party members around. When they're all ready to go, the alliance leader clicks a button and anyone in the alliance who's, say, in a town (any town) gets warped to the alliance leader's location. Maybe have a set list of warp locations to avoid abuse.

This would 1) reduce shout spam in PJ, 2) reduce the mob of bodies hanging around horst/joachim, because it would no longer need to be the staging/warp point for abyssea alliances, and 3) reduce the number of people in PJ in general, because you would no longer need to be in PJ to see what alliances are forming.

Even if SE adds Joachim/Horst like NPCs to other cities, it won't do much to reduce the mob in PJ, because people gather in PJ to view the alliance shouts.

In general, I'd love to see them move away from all these obnoxious NPC- or world object- driven functions (joachim's traverser stones, atma infusionist's atma, cruor prospector's enhancements, magian moogles, etc.) and instead add these features to the existing game menus.

ow, that bomb core story broke my heart! :-(

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Originally Posted by Amperage

I can appreciate how busy the development team might be putting the finishing touches on the next major update and on future adjustments for the remainder of our journey to lv99 but there are a couple of admittedly minor things that have always bugged me about how the game functions.

#1 and the most annoying one is when trying to send somebody a message while they are zoning and getting an error that the message could not be delivered. I would imagine the amount of server memory required to buffer text to be sent to the clients AFTER loading the new zone is complete couldn't be so incredibly high considering hardware specs today that this small change couldn't find it's way into the game. This could also handle just about any text sent to the chat log including Linkshell and Party. I'm sure we've all missed small bits of information during event gathering while we were zoning to change jobs etc. Would be incredibly handy to see that the leader had requested you drop party while zoning and do so after zoning without them having to repeat it a couple minutes after you don't comply.

#2 This one honestly is kind of a no brainer :) When you job change it would be so nice if the game would automatically load the last used macro set for the main job when you switched to it. This could conceivably be used even on the subjob level so choosing NIN/WAR would load a different macro set than NIN/DNC.

An amusing side note. A long while ago I was playing RNG and decided to switch to DRK but forgot to load DRK macro set. Well I tended to pull mobs with poison on DRK and used a generic /ra <t> for RNG. Both were set up on the same macro. When I ran out and pulled the first mob on DRK an odd animation appeared. Being elvaan I just assumed my DRK hurt his back in the process of casting the spell but no. It was my beloved (600k at the time) bomb core about to be flung at the unsuspecting enemy. I must have been a bit tired at the time but by the time I realized what was happening it was too late to interrupt it and my bomb core went flying towards the raptor..... and missed :(

#3 this relates to BLU and possibly useful for /BLU as well. Saving spell sets. The update that simply saved your last spell set on job change was a god send {Thank you.} but I would suggest taking it a step further and allowing us to define and store spell sets for a tidy way to switch between solo and party configurations for example.

Thank you for reading my suggestions.

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#1 is mostly a nuance. All you do is count to 3 and hit space, up, enter for any tell that comes back "could not send". Though it would be nice for lost LS messages. I hate missing part of a conversation when zoning.

As a point, I have an entire macro bar set dedicated to switching macro bars to other jobs and my Ctrl+0 in every set sends me back to it. Ever since the implementation of text macro set change commands. This is an easy and mostly painless way to deal with #2.

#3, Yes please. I would love to be able to create some kind of "Main Spell Set"/"Magical Mode"/"Support Mode (with sleep spells, all Cures, and buffs)" Also, it would be nice if some more of our buffs (especially the ones that look like AoEs) actually were AoE without Diffusion. Our buffs rarely last for a decent time as is and limiting them to AoE at 20, or even 10 minute intervals makes them worthless to party members and barely worth casting on ourselves more than half the time.

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Originally Posted by Csitri

#3 definitely. Everytime my LS is picking jobs for an Abyssea run, I'm sitting in my mog house thinking, "don't say BLU, don't say BLU" only because it's a nuisance to manage spell sets.

I'd also add #4: a menu-driven (not shouting in zone-driven) system for forming parties. Model it after online poker lobbies. Alliance leader makes a "table" (alliance) and can control the table description (what the alliance is going after, what jobs they still need, what drops are free lot ... just a big text field they can edit). People can view the list of tables and request to join a table from anywhere in the world. The alliance leader can shuffle party members around. When they're all ready to go, the alliance leader clicks a button and anyone in the alliance who's, say, in a town (any town) gets warped to the alliance leader's location. Maybe have a set list of warp locations to avoid abuse.

This would 1) reduce shout spam in PJ, 2) reduce the mob of bodies hanging around horst/joachim, because it would no longer need to be the staging/warp point for abyssea alliances, and 3) reduce the number of people in PJ in general, because you would no longer need to be in PJ to see what alliances are forming.

Even if SE adds Joachim/Horst like NPCs to other cities, it won't do much to reduce the mob in PJ, because people gather in PJ to view the alliance shouts.

In general, I'd love to see them move away from all these obnoxious NPC- or world object- driven functions (joachim's traverser stones, atma infusionist's atma, cruor prospector's enhancements, magian moogles, etc.) and instead add these features to the existing game menus.

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Nothing personal against you here, but I hope that SE never chooses to take away the contact aspect of dealing with individuals over menus. The idea of shouts for parties is staple. If you're just clicking through menus and dropping into slots like at an online poker table, you're losing the connection you feel to the environment of the game.

As for mobbing the Abyssea NPCs, I made a suggestion elsewhere about a knockback type effect focused on idlers around them to clear the walkway.

The only shouts that I can't stand to see are the obnoxious language that I tend to find in the Jeuno area between people who sound like children that need their mouths washed out.

3 is really no more than a mechanic that's been in the game for awhile in other forms (like saving a job's last gearset) and it ahould have been there all along. Now if they would just do that to the attachments/pup frame change. Granted, there aren't that many jobs affected by having to select stuff like spells and attachments, but it really bogs things down in the field having to start from scratch everytime you want to make a change.

1 and 2, I could really care less. It's a bit annoying, but the extra 2 seconds to compensate isn't gonna ruin my day.