Question to Square Enix. Any new Automaton Frames in store?

[Killvearn]

Do you know what PUP needs less than anything? A party buff frame. We are DD's in and out. We are not some support job. As an addition if we did get a frame like this, we would never be able to use any other frame in party situations at all. As cool as the idea may be, there is no logic nor reason for it.

I'm not entirely sure that a support automaton will be useless, in low man situation for example, and yes it will be really cool (imagine a slot machine like system for cor or a musical box for brd), but i agree that having that will probably means less space for the others.

[Shinron-PUP]

Do you know what PUP needs less than anything? A party buff frame. We are DD's in and out. We are not some support job. As an addition if we did get a frame like this, we would never be able to use any other frame in party situations at all. As cool as the idea may be, there is no logic nor reason for it.

I'm sorry but completly discarding the faction of a new pet, even if it's a buffer pet, is a blasphemy to Puppetmaster in itself. Puppetmaster is not even now considered an end game job so the possibility that we would become a support job just because square enix throws in a buffer pet is indoubtably rediculous. Square Enix has unintentionally, but none the less, always did such a great job to make sure that anything Puppetmaster may come to endeavor in would not ever exceed or even become good enough to be qualified as a necessity for any end game or party situation. The job has been insimilated into Final Fantasy 11 seemingly for only one soul purpose: To solo, and this is what is the jobs greatest down fall because it can't even do that correctly. Don't get me wrong, soloing is my favorite part about the job, but that's no reason to neglect the job in other situations it may encounter. With that said, it's important to keep an open mind... even if this pet, that may not ever even happen, is a buffer pet that makes the job become a support job in parties, at the least consider yourself lucky you're needed at all.

[Telford]

PUP is a dd plain and simple, and like the other 11 physical dds in the game we have to compete for space in parties/end game but making us gimp brd via an automaton is not the way to go. Trying to force a job into a role it wasn't meant for or not taking advantage of all it has to offer is a bad idea and leads to unhappy players. THFs are annoyed when they're only invited to be a TH whore, SMNs didn't enjoy being a cure 3 spamming pseudo-whm; MNKs found chi-blast rotations boring and DRGs have more to offer than 5/5 angon.

Pups do have things to offer to endgame, but leaders dislike deviating from established methods and sadly PUP is the least played/understood job; not because its bad but because of the complexity of the job, combined with the high start-up cost and the fact that it's the only job that doesn't make a viable subjob which leaves it untried by the majority of the player base.

PUP is a dd, its why hopefully we all stuck with it to 90 because we all enjoy punching stuff while commanding a little robot to hit/shoot/nuke/and keep us alive so we can keep punching. We would all enjoy the popularity and fast invites of brds but it should be because our job shines at what it does instead of copying someone else.

Below is a long explanation I once posted on alla as to why under our current AI a brd automaton wouldn't work:

Why a BRD automaton sucks

When someone says it would be cool to have a brd automaton what they really mean is I want an automaton that casts only march, madrigal, minuet and ballads with maybe a few debuffs thrown in so I can get brd's fast invites. Every spell should have its own maneuver and it should be able to cast buffs without being deployed!

Awesome right!? But thats not how automatons work, to see how a brd auto would work first lets make a couple base assumptions based on the current workings:

• Singing/wind/string skill will be lumped in with magic because if we have to level a new skill from zero it would take weeks just to get the puppet functional.
• Songs like magic are tied to their respective elemental maneuvers.
• Songs like magic are only cast when deployed on a target.
• The puppet needs to be deployed within 15' in order to start casting.
• The puppet will have a universal song casting timer of ~25 seconds.
• The puppet will cast multiple tiers of the same song but will cast higher tier songs first.
• The head contains the song list, the body provides the instrument (lets assume a harp with a 15' range).
• If the target mob dies while still deployed the puppet will stop casting.
• The master and puppet's condition takes priority over other party members.

Real bards currently have 87 different songs (at 75). Chances are unless you're a brd you have never heard of the majority of these songs and have had even less cast on you. So excluding the "Brd exclusive" songs like the merit songs, movement speed, charm, rr etc. here's our song list (up to lv 75):

Level Song
DARK ELEMENT
10 Light Threnody
36 Light Carol
49 Goblin Gavotte

EARTH ELEMENT
1 Knight's Minne
21 Knight's Minne II
24 Lightning Threnody
30 Vivacious Etude
39 Battlefield Elegy
41 Knight's Minne III
48 Lightning Carol
59 Carnage Elegy
61 Knight's Minne IV
70 Vital Etude

FIRE ELEMENT
3 Valor Minuet
22 Ice Threnody
23 Valor Minuet II
34 Sinewy Etude
43 Valor Minuet III
46 Ice Carol
63 Valor Minuet IV
74 Herculean Etude

ICE ELEMENT
18 Wind Threnody
19 Scop's Operetta
26 Learned Etude
42 Wind Carol
66 Sage Etude
69 Puppet's Operetta

LIGHT ELEMENT
5 Army's Paeon
7 Foe Requiem
12 Dark Threnody
15 Army's Paeon II
16 Foe Lullaby
17 Foe Requiem II
22 Enchanting Etude
25 Mage's Ballad
27 Horde Lullaby
33 Magic Finale
33 Fowl Aubade
35 Army's Paeon III
37 Foe Requiem III
45 Army's Paeon IV
47 Foe Requiem IV
50 Dark Carol
55 Mage's Ballad II
56 Shining Fantasia
57 Foe Requiem V
62 Bewitching Etude
65 Army's Paeon V
67 Foe Requiem VI
73 Warding Round

THUNDER ELEMENT
9 Herb Pastoral
11 Sword Madrigal
16 Water Threnody
29 Advancing March
31 Hunter's Prelude
32 Dextrous Etude
40 Water Carol
51 Blade Madrigal
60 Victory March
71 Archer's Prelude
72 Uncanny Etude

WATER ELEMENT
20 Fire Threnody
24 Spirited Etude
44 Fire Carol
64 Logical Etude

WIND ELEMENT
13 Sheepfoe Mambo
14 Earth Threnody
28 Quick Etude
38 Earth Carol
53 Dragonfoe Mambo
54 Gold Capriccio
68 Swift Etude

Wow thats a lot of songs, getting your auto to cast one particular song would require an incredibly complex system of maneuvers and a lot of luck and would make the puppet about as useful as a brd yagudo that casts mages ballad with its last dying breath in order to save itself. So assume SE is really nice to us and pairs down the list and takes out the enfeebling resistance songs, the bar-element songs and even the stat+ songs, leaving us a spell list a lot more familiar to us non-bards:

EARTH ELEMENT
1 Knight's Minne
21 Knight's Minne II
39 Battlefield Elegy
41 Knight's Minne III
59 Carnage Elegy
61 Knight's Minne IV

FIRE ELEMENT
3 Valor Minuet
23 Valor Minuet II
43 Valor Minuet III
63 Valor Minuet IV

LIGHT ELEMENT
5 Army's Paeon
7 Foe Requiem
15 Army's Paeon II
16 Foe Lullaby
17 Foe Requiem II
25 Mage's Ballad
27 Horde Lullaby
33 Magic Finale
35 Army's Paeon III
37 Foe Requiem III
45 Army's Paeon IV
47 Foe Requiem IV
55 Mage's Ballad II
57 Foe Requiem V
65 Army's Paeon V
67 Foe Requiem VI

THUNDER ELEMENT
11 Sword Madrigal
29 Advancing March
31 Hunter's Prelude
51 Blade Madrigal
60 Victory March
71 Archer's Prelude

WIND ELEMENT
53 Dragonfoe Mambo
13 Sheepfoe Mambo



Thats not too bad and we've eliminated several elements that we can use to trigger different spells which is good because the light set of spells is still very long. So lets be optimistic and use Ice maneuvers to trigger enfeebling spells, dark maneuvers to trigger ballads, and water maneuvers for paeons (although realistically paeons would most likely be cast either based on a player-mob level difference like regen is or it takes priority when the puppet's or master's health drops below a certain point making DEA difficult to use). Two of our favourite melee buffs march and madrigal unfortunately end up both under thunder maneuvers along with the prelude songs so the best we can hope for is that some combination of thunder maneuvers will put the preludes at a lower priority then the others. (I see no reason why SE would chose to exclude the prelude songs other than the melee player's sentiment "Screw ranges and cor's I want my march/mad!") So for the sake of this example 3x for march, 2x for madrigal and 1x thunder for prelude which would let us get 2x march.

With a two minute song duration and a 25 second global cast time you can theoretically keep up a four song rotation of ballads and march/madrigal/minuet, but bards are more than buffers, they also have access to a potent slow, dot's, dispel and sleeps which when included would break you're already fragile buff cycle. Unfortunately for us, three of the four debuffs are triggered using a combination of Light+Ice manuevers which depending on the spell priority will make it very hard to sleep something without having a requiem cast instead, and then playing a lullaby instead of the much needed dispel. And if SE gives us Horde lullaby be ready to quickly take a knee or deactivate if you don't want to aggro everything around you.

Like a brd you'll be too busy trying to cast songs on your party members to melee but unlike a brd you actually do very good damage and have the gear and weaponskills to do it <insert melee brd debate here>. So now you're stuck with pulling /nin or backup healing /rdm (for refresh) or /sch (for sleep, dispel, erase) or to be sneaky you could /brd to speed up buffing or /cor for even more buffs. If pulling you'd want to be putting up your maneuvers between mobs but you'd have to leave while the current mob is still alive meaning you can't safely leave your puppet deployed because who knows what it'll cast while your away potentially ruining your buff cycle and more importantly making you wait for the global recast to cool down before you can try to fix it, so you'd have to take your puppet with you pulling which also wastes time it could be casting.

While with a generous cutting of the brd's spell list and with a maneuver/spell priority system more complex than mine you could technically get it to "work" but it would still be an awkward and cumbersome system too annoying to use for any length of time.

To me PUP is a damage dealer that is able to cover all forms of damage; blunt, slashing, piercing, magical, and dot's, and as an added bonus our puppet can also cure us so we can focus more on the masters damage while tossing out the odd enfeeble. As nice as it would be to have our puppets buff as well (I wouldn't say no to a protect or haste from soulsoother if it didn't cast them like it does the na's) it would move pup away form its role as a damage dealer and pigeon hole it as a support class (look what happens to rdm after it learns refresh and haste). Just because our automatons look like some of the jobs already in the game (pld, rdm, rng, whm, blm) doesn't mean we need new automatons to cover the other 14 jobs.

[Shinron-PUP]

It's wierd to think that people would ever stray away from the idea of something that would, at the least, be praised more by end games and parties. The job from day one has always strived on the aspect that it has absolute and utmost versitality like an Onion Knight... We can mix our pets in different combinations and seize them at our whim to defeat our foes with little thought because we can adapt and kill. A bard pet may call upon a new aspect to the job in end games, but who says that you have to use it if you do not want to. We're not puppets of other players; for we make it clear that we're the masters in the relationship... The game is to be enjoyed and you can easily tell anyone who tells you to swap pets to a bard type or any other enhancing type pet to eat one. That's one of the things in which I really struggle with when it comes to others and this game because people allow these pretentious "Elite Players" and "Elite linkshell leaders" to have complete domain over how they experience and play the game. Play puppetmaster the way you see fit and don't give up another chance to experience another side of puppetmaster just because you don't want to be seen as a support job.

Also, I don't think that anyone is really talking about have necessarily a "Bard" type pet... Morely we seek to have a pet that can access spells like Protect/Shell/Haste... And although, I may have skimmed over your post about why "Bard Pet" is not good, you seem to be looking at all the spells that're going to seemingly be compacted under certain elements. Constructing a bard automaton, I doubt, would even be anything like Bard and it wouldn't make any sense because without a way to manually activate the automaton's spells, alot of the spells would be overidded in a heap of other useless spells.

[Covenant]

Most cases for bards come down to either accuracy, evasion, def, ATT, mp song, or haste songs. All songs are elementals anyway. ACC=DEX, Eva=AGI etc. So making a automaton dance or sing particular songs is as simple as maneuvers. As I said, going pup/bard might offer a 3 song option.

Of course going the bard route will drop damage. It's the same for WHM automaton as would be for bard, granted WHM better at healing. SE could easily add some unique songs to these particular automatons not seen before.

[Shinron-PUP]

Most cases for bards come down to either accuracy, evasion, def, ATT, mp song, or haste songs. All songs are elementals anyway. ACC=DEX, Eva=AGI etc. So making a automaton dance or sing particular songs is as simple as maneuvers. As I said, going pup/bard might offer a 3 song option.

Of course going the bard route will drop damage. It's the same for WHM automaton as would be for bard, granted WHM better at healing. SE could easily add some unique songs to these particular automatons not seen before.

I agree... and that's why I say that bard would be completely constructed differently than in any way that automatons are controlled now and it would have no resemblance to the day to day bards we see in parties. Square Enix is not privy to liminations in which they have already set and can make a new automaton go in any which direction they choose and who knows... maybe this time they might make a pet that will meet our expectations

[Telford]

I don't fault anyone for not reading the entirety of my very long post, but it boils down to under the current AI (and thinking SE will rewrite the entire AI just to include one new automaton after years of doing nothing about our current complaints displays more optimism then I have to give) choosing from the large number of possible buffs available would be very cumbersome and require running around like an idiot waiting on maneuver timers, recast timers, and deploy/retrieve timers trying to position the automaton so the right buffs only hit the appropriate players.

When soulsoother came out PUPs tried to fill a healing role, strapping on /whm and our ample supply of mage gear. If we were in a party where the tank didn't take too much damage, and the mob didn't enfeeble too much we could just make it work but it was never ideal, not much fun and not what we signed up for when picking pup. But I do enjoy healing and have fun doing it on my whm.

By the same token I have to ask why is it so important to be on PUP that you would try to cram it into a role so completely removed form what it fills now instead of either playing the jobs that already exist that can fill the buffer roll better than we could ever hope to, or ask the dev team for enhancements to our current repertoire that will make the endgame community sit up and take notice?

While new puppets would be great to have, we currently have two puppets collecting dust and I would much rather see stormwaker finally get spells beyond lv 75 and poor harl repurposed so hes a viable option at any level and not just what you use until you get the real frames.

[Sanders]

The only "justification" I can think of for PUP getting a new head/frame is that BST gets new pets and SMN gets new avatars (forgive me for excluding DRG here). Aside from that opinion, I don't think we have a good argument for anything new beyond attachments (even though SMN defacto gets new BPs).

[Alhanelem]

I would like to see new frames/heads, but I'm not super optimistic that its getting any consideration right now. I think we should at least be able to get different heads/frames that are different cosmetically or in elemental capacity while still having the same base effects as the existing ones to make the automaton a little more customizable.

[Pyrobunny]

i want a acrolith