What is RDM all about?

[Ophannus]

I;d even rate Mystic Knight more useful than RDM. Giving a Mystic Knight Double-Cast obliterates RDM completely.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

And here we demonstrate yet another one of Red Mage's biggest forum weaknesses. People like to relate FFXI online mechanics to Old FF single player mechanics and get huffy when the jobs don't play the same way.

If I hear "But Red Mage could do XXX in FF# so it should do it here" one more time, I'm going to slap a ho.

In fairness, if they didn't want people to do that they'd have done like FFXIV and not added the actual jobs names in it (not including that they're now)

[cidbahamut]

In fairness, if they didn't want people to do that they'd have done like FFXIV and not added the actual jobs names in it (not including that they're now)

Bullshit.

Look at Summoner. Now look at Rydia. Now look at Summoner again. Sadly Summoner is not Rydia.

[Greatguardian]

In fairness, if they didn't want people to do that they'd have done like FFXIV and not added the actual jobs names in it (not including that they're now)

Or maybe they just overestimated their playerbase when making the game.

The reason they changed names for XIV in the first place was likely because of all the crap they had to put up with in XI, since players seemed functionally incapable of telling the difference between offline and online games and completely independent titles in the same "series".

This is also fairly well represented by the absolutely massive player misunderstanding of the Job system. The Devs never wanted people to pick "Main" jobs. It's fairly obvious, when looking at game content and the Dev's actions over the past 8 years, that they didn't want people to try and push their "Favorite" job into a situation where it's useless or wasteful. When a situation calls for NIN NIN BLM, they expect players to go to their Mog House and change to NIN NIN BLM.

People who understand that this is "An MMORPG that uses the name Final Fantasy and happens to share somewhat familiar class names" and not "The eleventh Final Fantasy game which derives its elements from the previous ten" are at a significant advantage over their peers.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

This is also fairly well represented by the absolutely massive player misunderstanding of the Job system. The Devs never wanted people to pick "Main" jobs. It's fairly obvious, when looking at game content and the Dev's actions over the past 8 years, that they didn't want people to try and push their "Favorite" job into a situation where it's useless or wasteful. When a situation calls for NIN NIN BLM, they expect players to go to their Mog House and change to NIN NIN BLM.

Which goes out the window when they handle the game like they have FFXI.

Make a game with 20 Jobs - check
Ability to change equipment for every action - check
Make content that requires you to constantly change jobs - check
Give a ridiculously limited amount of storage space to do all of this - check

[Neisan_Quetz]

Ps2 Limitations.

Also they've been alleviating storage concerns quite a bit lately, with Porter moogles and allowing you to mail some r/ex items to mules.

[Greatguardian]

Ps2 Limitations.

Also they've been alleviating storage concerns quite a bit lately, with Porter moogles and allowing you to mail some r/ex items to mules.

This ^. The PS2 can't hold more than 160 items in RAM at the same time, effectively limiting player inventory to 80 slots per "Unit".

For some reason, the Devs also seemed to vastly underestimate how much effort players would put into their gear swaps. When you look at test server videos or dev videos, you see the test characters sitting around in atrocious gear and barely blinking at all.

In general, you essentially had a team that was unprepared to deal with the realities of an MMORPG. A lot of "Early" MMOs had similar problems as well. Was it Ultima Online where one of the Devs logged into his character on a world to give an interview and forgot to turn Invincibility on, only to be repeatedly MPK'd by the playerbase?

[Daniel_Hatcher]

This ^. The PS2 can't hold more than 160 items in RAM at the same time, effectively limiting player inventory to 80 slots per "Unit".

For some reason, the Devs also seemed to vastly underestimate how much effort players would put into their gear swaps. When you look at test server videos or dev videos, you see the test characters sitting around in atrocious gear and barely blinking at all.

In general, you essentially had a team that was unprepared to deal with the realities of an MMORPG. A lot of "Early" MMOs had similar problems as well. Was it Ultima Online where one of the Devs logged into his character on a world to give an interview and forgot to turn Invincibility on, only to be repeatedly MPK'd by the playerbase?

I don't doubt that PS2 Limitations are the issue, but they must have figured out to some degree if they added 20 jobs there'd be issues.

Lets look at it realistically, even if you only have one set for every job in you'd just be under the cap on items (not including Satchel) surely someone at SE would have seen that beforehand and figured out a method to counteract this.

Also the limitations only go so far as an excuse, they can add more an more sections like Satchel, Safe and so on when they run out. Where they fail is by NOT allowing you to macro from any of these sections.

Ps2 Limitations.

Also they've been alleviating storage concerns quite a bit lately, with Porter moogles and allowing you to mail some r/ex items to mules.

Porter moogles are fine but rather limiting, and with the new Relic+2 equipment coming will most likely not be storable. mailing r/ex items to separate characters are good but I hate paying more money to store items on another character and having to jump back and forth to get gear.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Well for me I use it for r/ex pieces I can't stand tossing but still won't be using anytime soon/at all, like Widowmaker.

I'll make a judgment on Relic+2 after augments are revealed, I can't see more than a few pieces being useful still.

[saevel]

I;d even rate Mystic Knight more useful than RDM. Giving a Mystic Knight Double-Cast obliterates RDM completely.

Oh... now you've proven you've never actually played this game for any length of time. Mystic Knight is one of the strongest class's in the game, SpellBlade can do things no other job can especially if it's paired with Rapid Shot. RS is 4x attacks but at 1/2 attack power, the attacks will have 100% accuracy. SB allows to you attribute an element to your attacks ~and~ adds the base spell power to your attack power. When combined the SP addition is after the 1/2 of RS but before the 2x bonus for elemental weakness. Basically you can do 9999 x 4 in one attack round. When equiped on Free Lancer you can do 9999 x 8 in one attack round. This strategy is critical to beating Omega and Omega MK2 as both iterations have 90% physical evasion and 90% magic evasion along with permanent shell, protect and reflect. It actually works on many super boss's. Flare SB is the exception as it adds a flat +50 AP after the 1/2 RS reduction and makes your weapon non-elemental type.

And why the hell would you put DC onto a Mystic Knight? You put DC onto a BLM or WHM or better yet, onto your Mime who is White Lance DC or White Black DC.

Anywho I'm not trying to compare FFXI to previous FF's, just correcting some of the misunderstandings, or downright lies, of the RDM history in previous games. FFXI is a completely different beast, you can play yourself but you can't play the other five people in your party.