An idea to ease the restrictions and limits on number of Job Abilities available

[Ophannus]

Consolidating similar abilites that serve the same functions for pet-jobs would open up several slots. As you know, players can only have one pet out at a time, thus the following job abilities should be allocated to the same time like how SP abilities share a timer.


1. Banish your pet: [Dismiss/Leave/Deactivate/Release]
2. Make your pet come to you: Retrieve/Heel/Retreat
3. Force your pet to attack target: Fight/Assault/Deploy

We don't need 3 completely different abilities to make pets attack. Why can't Retrieve/Heel/Retreat simply all be consolidated into an ability called 'Retreat' learned by SMN/PUP/BST at level 1 and it applies to all of the applicable pets(Avatar/Automaton/Called Pet/Charmed Pet)? By consolidating these abilities we can reduce the above 10 to 3 abilities, just rename them something generic and give them to each pet job with shared timers.

SMN/BST/PUP/DRG all should get the same shared 'Leave' ability.
BST/PUP/SMN should all get the same "Assault" ability.
BST/PUP/SMN should all get the same 'Retreat" ability.

We don't need 4 abilities on the job ability list for 4 different jobs that all have the same function, just make one ability that sends your pet away, one ability that retreats your pet and one ability that makes your pet attack, and give the same named abilities to all pet jobs.

*Note: Dragoon is different and doesn't have a Retrieve/Attack since the Wyvern mimics whatever action the Dragoon does, so those abilities aren't applicable but the Dismiss/Leave one is.

[Rwolf]

I agree with the intent of your post, but I don't think that will alleviate any space given how Matsui just worded it in the other thread.

That’s correct that previously we were in a situation where it was difficult to add new abilities as we had reached the limit for recast timer slots. However, while it differs from job to job, we’ve succeeded in increasing the amount of slots and it is now possible to add abilities. We will be making a careful decision as to whether or not we use up this limited space to add abilities taking battle balance into consideration.

If the amount of job ability space varies from job to job, then consolidating them to one name would just have no effect and have 4 job abilities with the same name. If this is not the case, which I could be reading it completely wrong then I'd be all for doing anything to condense space on redundant job abilities.

[Byrth]

Also relevant:

we’ve succeeded in increasing the amount of slots and it is now possible to add abilities

AKA it's not a problem.

[Ophannus]

AKA it's not a problem.

Quote Originally Posted by Akihiko_Matsui View Post
That’s correct that previously we were in a situation where it was difficult to add new abilities as we had reached the limit for recast timer slots. However, while it differs from job to job, we’ve succeeded in increasing the amount of slots and it is now possible to add abilities. We will be making a careful decision as to whether or not we use up this limited space to add abilities taking battle balance into consideration.

Limited space is limited.

[Byrth]

Limited, when they cannot even get their act together enough to add the SP2s that they made over a year ago? You are worrying about the wrong problems.

To solidify this point:
11/2011: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...hour-abilities
8/2012 : http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...-Job-Abilities

They're no longer even in the "Testing in Progress" subforum. The worst part of this is that we know that >half of them had animations, names, were functional, etc. If the Dev team can't even implement JAs that already work, I don't know how much we have to worry about them creating heretofore unseen JAs.

[Babekeke]

The thing with SP2s though is that we don't know why they are being delayed.

Is it because they're aimed to make stuff much easier to low-man and they're holding out for a further population decrease?

Is it that they need tweaking since they've added new content so that it doesn't make it too easy?

Is it just that they have no idea what to give RUN and GEO?

Is it that in their morning briefs every day someone says "So has anyone had any thoughts as to what we could give to RDM that doesn't suck?"

Is it because the ability that they gave to THF had absolutely no value when SoA mobs had no 2 hours?

A dev team response to clarify would, however be appreciated.