FFXIV A Realm Reborn

[Vizzer]

While I think in total ARR is an improvement on 1.0, I can't help but feel the battle system lost some strategy.

Most of the time I feel like I'm spamming abilities almost mindlessly (on monk anyway) because battles move so fast, there's no time to stop and think "what skill would be really effective here?".

I also find it difficult to really notice some enfeeble effects. For example Archer can Venom an enemy but whether this does any noticeable damage I have no idea because again the battles are so quick I can just spam my hot bar until it dies.

I think this system is appealing at first, it looks flashy and cool but what I love about ffxi is that with some battles you have to make important decisions and in some cases a bad decision will make you die.

First you are basing an entire game off of 20 levels of a beta, and second what battles in XI require you to make important decisions, the biggest decision I see people making during delve content, is what to watch on TV while they are there.

[SqEnisfilledwithgeniuses]

First you are basing an entire game off of 20 levels of a beta, and second what battles in XI require you to make important decisions, the biggest decision I see people making during delve content, is what to watch on TV while they are there.

Not really true...My biggest decision was to level THM or CNJ on the beta while in delve. TV is overrated.

[Deifact]

First you are basing an entire game off of 20 levels of a beta, and second what battles in XI require you to make important decisions, the biggest decision I see people making during delve content, is what to watch on TV while they are there.

Well I had my 1.0 characters this weekend, so around level ~45. And my post is just my opinion, based largely on FFXI content outside of herp derp delve, or even Abyssea etc., since people seem to forget there is a lot of game out there outside of these events.

I'm sure come release there will be battles that require kiting or hate management etc. but from what I've seen so far, we won't be seeing the same amount of variety in battle strategy as is available in FFXI. Maybe when the game reaches its 11th birthday.

[Vizzer]

The content was only about up to level 20, they had higher level enemies, but no quests and high level dungeons, because it is beta, and the main point of this last weekend was to do a run at transferring over 1.0 character data, and seeing how the fixes for things found last week were working. As for battles not needing strategy, did you run any of the dungeons, like having to kite the slimes in copperbell mines while someone spawned the bombs, then you had to kill the enemies trying to kill the bombs, so they would self destruct, while you kited the slimes into the blast range, causing the slimes to split until they were small enough to be killed? And that was a level 15 dungeon, and if you read the posts from the devs, they plan to up the difficulty and battle mechanics as you get higher levels, the early levels are more for turorial, and also to help introduce players to the mmorpg type of game, because they understand not every has played mmo's for the last 10 years. All the enemies you saw up around 45, were nothing but trash mobs, I don't remember any trash mobs in XI that required some elaborate strategy to kill. And I'm guessing you didn't play towards the end of the original XIV 1.20-1.23 where the mechanics were upped a ton with primal fights, Aurum Vale, Cutter's Cry, and the White Raven fight.

[Merton9999]

While I think in total ARR is an improvement on 1.0, I can't help but feel the battle system lost some strategy.

Most of the time I feel like I'm spamming abilities almost mindlessly (on monk anyway) because battles move so fast, there's no time to stop and think "what skill would be really effective here?".

I also find it difficult to really notice some enfeeble effects. For example Archer can Venom an enemy but whether this does any noticeable damage I have no idea because again the battles are so quick I can just spam my hot bar until it dies.

I think this system is appealing at first, it looks flashy and cool but what I love about ffxi is that with some battles you have to make important decisions and in some cases a bad decision will make you die.

I understand what you mean. Well, on melee jobs anyway. On the other hand, THM early levels I found incredibly engaging. Much more so than BLM 1-20 in XI by miles. You still have to be concerned about MP and drop your dps considerably when recovering, but you can remain active. A couple early abilities add a nice bit of thought to soloing if you care to try some mobs a bit above your level too, which was very fun for me.

When I switched to pugilist and lancer, that's where it just felt spammy. However, I had to keep in mind that these are early levels and they probably didn't put as much thought into those early soloing levels on every class. But, on the three classes I got to 10-15, I still found the job-specific quests well designed, requiring smart use of all the jobs' abilities in addition to food and items. I'm not yet balancing a queue of 10 pending actions that change with the situation like I do on SCH 99, but for early levels I was impressed. Overall. I really like that every job can always be active, and not just reactive or afk.

Also, DoT spell potency was increased recently, right before last weekend's beta period. I noticed a nice difference with aero and thunder.

[SqEnisfilledwithgeniuses]

I understand what you mean. Well, on melee jobs anyway. On the other hand, THM early levels I found incredibly engaging. Much more so than BLM 1-20 in XI by miles. You still have to be concerned about MP and drop your dps considerably when recovering, but you can remain active. A couple early abilities add a nice bit of thought to soloing if you care to try some mobs a bit above your level too, which was very fun for me.

When I switched to pugilist and lancer, that's where it just felt spammy. However, I had to keep in mind that these are early levels and they probably didn't put as much thought into those early soloing levels on every class. But, on the three classes I got to 10-15, I still found the job-specific quests well designed, requiring smart use of all the jobs' abilities in addition to food and items. I'm not yet balancing a queue of 10 pending actions that change with the situation like I do on SCH 99, but for early levels I was impressed. Overall. I really like that every job can always be active, and not just reactive or afk.

Also, DoT spell potency was increased recently, right before last weekend's beta period. I noticed a nice difference with aero and thunder.

2 ice spell casts in a row gives you umbril ice effect, which massively increases your MP refresh rate. Using the ability (forgot the name) that shifts Astral Fire <> Umbril Ice allows you to empty your mp pool blasting out fire spells, then quickly regenerate it in moments.

I was able to sub the cure spell in on THM and maintain DPS as well as main heal some of the lower tier dungeons. But hell, no strategy there I suppose.

[Merton9999]

2 ice spell casts in a row gives you umbril ice effect, which massively increases your MP refresh rate. Using the ability (forgot the name) that shifts Astral Fire <> Umbril Ice allows you to empty your mp pool blasting out fire spells, then quickly regenerate it in moments.

I was able to sub the cure spell in on THM and maintain DPS as well as main heal some of the lower tier dungeons. But hell, no strategy there I suppose.

Yeah that's what I was talking about. My point isn't that there's massive strategy there. It's that I managed a few different things (sleep, effective THM curing with the CNJ ability that swaps MND<->INT and MP recovery), and could stay active while doing it, all in a very low level mobile partying atmosphere. My comparison is stationary 10-20 leveling parties on BLM, which were: rest half the fight and throw out a few nukes and a DoT or two. I don't know how the highest levels available now in XIV compare to XI, but I was happy with the low levels on that class compared to XI.

[SqEnisfilledwithgeniuses]

Yeah that's what I was talking about. My point isn't that there's massive strategy there. It's that I managed a few different things (sleep, effective THM curing with the CNJ ability that swaps MND<->INT and MP recovery), and could stay active while doing it, all in a very low level mobile partying atmosphere. My comparison is stationary 10-20 leveling parties on BLM, which were: rest half the fight and throw out a few nukes and a DoT or two. I don't know how the highest levels available now in XIV compare to XI, but I was happy with the low levels on that class compared to XI.

I agree entirely. The BLM job throughout 1-99 was fairly disappointing to me, as much as SAM was. There are only a few jobs in XI that even require strategy anymore, for the most part people don't even want that.

I'm looking forward to FFXIV. Also, myself and 5 others I know will be taking residence on the Ragnarok server. The more the merrier.

[SqEnisfilledwithgeniuses]

I see people hung up on XIVs battle system. Let's look at XIs flawless system real quick. Take the current highest tier content, delve.

Paladin > Stand and get knocked around for 45 minutes.
Healers > Pro/shell/cure/erase/haste
DD > Auto Attack until 100%tp then ws.
Corsair > Hunter's Roll, Chaos Roll, Evoker's Roll, 7 minute nap
BRD > Minuet/Madrigal/March Elegy pull, lullaby.

Things that are missing: Skillchains, magic bursts, weaknesses, etc, etc.

In reality, all anyone is really clinging on to is "I've spent 'X' many years in this game."

I've played the beta last weekend and this weekend. I'll be switching to XIV in August. XIV has potential, XI is bleeding out.

[Vizzer]

They don't have a red mage in XIV, and with their current system, it would be tricky to implement it. Right now there are disciples of war and magic, disciples of war do not get access to damaging spells, and disciples of magic do not get access to weaponskills, not saying that it won't happen in the future, but if they do, it will be with their XIV spin on it, just have to wait and hope and see.