Fundamental Game Play Issues

[Legomike]

Auto target does not work if a pet has hate. - i believe it broke around the time abys came out
Bst pets that just stop fighting. Something links it fights both but then stops when ones dies.
Delay when buying from guilds and crafting.

[Jerbob]

It is unbearably frustrating seeing people retort to white mage blinking issues with "USE <stal> NOOB" or similar rudeness. <stal> has its uses and benefits, but being good for reacting quickly is not one of them - and as a white mage in any situation worth discussing will know, fast reactions are paramount. Quicker targetting has saved a party member's life for me on many occasions, and the obvious inability to target out of party is a rarer problem but still hugely important. I am certain that there are some white mages who swear by <stal> exclusively, but I suspect the majority of the rude <stal>-as-a-bugfix proponents have not played a day of white mage in their lives, no offense intended.

Don't get me wrong - I have <stal> macros available for curing across parties or bad blinkers and they are extremely valuable; They are NOT, however, a solution to blinking. If mobs blinked every time they used a TP move then people would be outraged, even if there was a hacky and awkward targetting "solution".

Back on topic, I've not seen a list of the bugs that plague pet jobs here yet (or may have missed such a list), so my contributions are as follows. I am a summoner so apologies for this being summoner-centric.

1. Pets using an ability when a mob dies don't ever complete that action. As a SMN, if I use a Ward pact and the mob dies during the charging animation, I get no Ward effect and my timer is reset. Other pet jobs have the same issue with their abilites.
2. Avatars that are defeated by a DoT effect cannot be immediately resummoned - the infamous "pet already out" bug. Not just annoying but potentially fatal.
3. "Assault", "Fight" etc do not work if the pet is a certain distance away from the target - the pet will either ignore it or just saunter up to you and stand still. VERY irritating and all too common considering how poor pet pathfinding can be.
4. Dismissing Avatars (and presumably BST, PUP and DRG pets, though I don't have first hand experience) will cause linked mobs to attack the Summoner, regardless of who or what they are linked to or by. The Scorpion KSNM is notorious for this and it happens to me all the time.
5. It's probably intentional, but given the ridiculously long charging times for bloodpacts, disabling effects like Sleep, Stun, Break etc really shouldn't reset bloodpact timers.

I like this thread a lot, and like many others here would welcome a comprehensive bugfix overhaul update in the place of what passes for a content-rich one these days (:P). Here's hoping for some developer attention!

[Hashmalum]

Have Absorb-Stat Spells stack with Cruor Buffs already.

Not that they get used anymore except in the backline when weakened, but jesus, a year having neglected this is worrysome.

The flip side of this is that most stat down effects don't stack with Cruor buffs either. I'm happy to not be able to use Absorb-stats if it means I don't get nailed with crap like Riddle.

Annoyance: When your movement speed is increased, it doesn't take affect until you turn off autorun. Yet, when your movement speed is decreased, it does.

Seconding this one.

But there's one fundamental game play annoyance that I'm shocked to not see anywhere in this thread that cries out for a fix: the way that you miss communications via /tell, /party, and /linkshell when you change areas. For a fix for this, I would kill. A kitten. A mithra kitten!

[Arcon]

But there's one fundamental game play annoyance that I'm shocked to not see anywhere in this thread that cries out for a fix: the way that you miss communications via /tell, /party, and /linkshell when you change areas. For a fix for this, I would kill. A kitten. A mithra kitten!

So very true. Although I'm not sure this can be fixed easily, as it seems to be part of the zoning mechanism.. but I'd still absolutely love to see that fixed. Another thing that bothers me about /tells in particular... when people receive a /tell while zoning, the person who sent it will usually see an error notice, that the /tell was not received, and know they need to resend it again. But if they send it at just the right time before someone zones, they don't get that error notice at all, and the other person still doesn't receive the /tell. I don't think it would be too hard to work around it... the server obviously still sends that information, the client could just store it in a short buffer until the zoning process ends.

However, the "perfect" solution would be for the chatlog (and all of the UI, for that matter) to simply stay while zoning, don't make it go away in the first place. Let people even still chat and navigate menus while zoning, these two things should be different processes altogether. I know that some things are reloaded on zone (items and FL/BL for example), but you could just gray those options out while zoning (having them reload is bad design as well, although I'm guessing it's necessary for the PS2's sake).

[Rya]

there's one fundamental game play annoyance that I'm shocked to not see anywhere in this thread that cries out for a fix: the way that you miss communications via /tell, /party, and /linkshell when you change areas. For a fix for this, I would kill. A kitten. A mithra kitten!

Tells vs Other Chat
So happy to see it mentioned! I was gonna add this~
What strikes me about this issue is that the chat system can tell if a person is changing areas!! ...but only for /tell.

Observations
-- When you send a tell to someone who is zoning, you get a "changing areas" message or something like that.

-- It doesn't always work. Sometimes if you send someone a tell just as the "zoning process" is beginning or ending, it will fail, but you get no system message. I have tested this with my mule. :(

Theory
All I can think is that would be too taxing to perform this check for all other types of communication (say, shout, party, etc) because of the sheer volume of chat. But if system resources weren't an issue, it seems they could use the "tell routine" to check if other types of chat are headed for "zoning recipients"

Solutions
--Less taxing version: Use aforementioned check on all chat types, only send the system message to the intended recipient rather than the sender -- so I can go "Missed party chat?!?! WHO'S TALKING ABOUT ME?!?!"
.....== Port Jeuno ==
.....<System Message> You missed 1 party message.
.....<System Message> You missed 2 linkshell messages.

--More taxing version: Use the check to buffer/record what was sent, and dump it out as a system message when zoning is done:
.....== Port Jeuno ==
.....<System Message> The following messages happened while zoning:
.....<Tank> who wants my stuff, quitting today
.....<Bard> dibs!
.....Rya sighs dejectedly.

[Glamdring]

another idiot expounds about /stal in a thread about stupid game mechanics, sigh... let me put this in terms that hopefully all of you can understand.

WE ALL KNOW ABOUT THE /stal WORKAROUND!!! WE ARE ASKING TO NOT NEED A WORKAROUND!!! PLEASE STOP TRYING TO SABOTAGE EFFORTS AT REPAIRS BY SAYING TO JUST USE A WORKAROUND!!!

there, short, simple, to the point.

[Alhanelem]

another idiot expounds about /stal in a thread about stupid game mechanics, sigh... let me put this in terms that hopefully all of you can understand.

WE ALL KNOW ABOUT THE /stal WORKAROUND!!! WE ARE ASKING TO NOT NEED A WORKAROUND!!! PLEASE STOP TRYING TO SABOTAGE EFFORTS AT REPAIRS BY SAYING TO JUST USE A WORKAROUND!!!

there, short, simple, to the point.

I don't consider it a workaround. I consider it a reasonable valid solution. What exactly is wrong with <stal> ? They added that because it was much simpler than totally reworking an existing system to fix a small problem when an easier solution was available. When the dev team is small and their time is limited, it makes sense to go the route that takes less time. Unless you want less content in your updates, of course.

//devil's advocate, it would be nice for a targeting revamp, just not optimistic about it happening

[Meyi]

I don't consider it a workaround. I consider it a reasonable valid solution. What exactly is wrong with <stal> ? They added that because it was much simpler than totally reworking an existing system to fix a small problem when an easier solution was available. When the dev team is small and their time is limited, it makes sense to go the route that takes less time. Unless you want less content in your updates, of course.

//devil's advocate, it would be nice for a targeting revamp, just not optimistic about it happening

It would be nice indeed. But if it's impossible, perhaps they could make <stal> retarget the last previous target? I mean, the only annoyance I find with <stal> is having to constantly shift through names in an alliance to get to the person I'm trying to reach (especially with lag). If the blue arrow appeared on the previous person it had been on, I'd be a lot happier and a lot faster.

[Raksha]

I don't consider it a workaround. I consider it a reasonable valid solution. What exactly is wrong with <stal> ?

When you hit your <stal> macro the blue arrow starts on whoever you currently have targeted (or on you if you have nothing targeted). you then have to scroll up/down to wherever the target is and hit the confirm button to cast the spell. If you're curing the same person every time (the tank) it gets super annoying having to scroll down to him every time you hit the cure macro. If he/she is in a different party in the alliance it's even worse.

[Alhanelem]

When you hit your <stal> macro the blue arrow starts on whoever you currently have targeted (or on you if you have nothing targeted). you then have to scroll up/down to wherever the target is and hit the confirm button to cast the spell. If you're curing the same person every time (the tank) it gets super annoying having to scroll down to him every time you hit the cure macro. If he/she is in a different party in the alliance it's even worse.

If I'm curing the same person every time, I'm probably going to have them targeted already, so it's not really an issue to me.