"A system that rewards effort and innovation" can't be buzzwords for imbalance-get

If you implement a system or team that's dedicated to researching trends in efforts to provide information for the development team to balance the game, you can also implement a marketing gimmick, something along the lines of the game is constantly evolving and enemies adapt to players, they learn from you and "strike back harder" bla bla blah... and use that as a twist to cover your adjustments basically tweaking enemy strengths and resistance against specific play styles that you believe are against the original vision for how the battle would have gone down.

Talk is cheap.

I/We had more fun in one day in FF11, then the whole time in FF14. Strive for the holy grail is nice and all, but at the end of the day, something decent is by far not the worse thing to happen.

There will always be balance problems, and broken tactics, community harassment and so on. This is by the definition of MMO and games alike.

Even if repeating every single one of FF11's mistakes is still better then FF14's current form. Should they do better? Heck yes. Should they start forgetting every past thing, because it was imperfect, especially when it's their bread and butter...

I wouldn't mind a FF11-2 to start off with because at least I'll actually make that white box collecting dust worth something rather then it's current form.

We expect something better, but at this point almost anything solid is better then current trends.

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Originally Posted by kukurumei

Talk is cheap.

I/We had more fun in one day in FF11, then the whole time in FF14. Strive for the holy grail is nice and all, but at the end of the day, something decent is by far not the worse thing to happen.

There will always be balance problems, and broken tactics, community harassment and so on. This is by the definition of MMO and games alike.

Even if repeating every single one of FF11's mistakes is still better then FF14's current form. Should they do better? Heck yes. Should they start forgetting every past thing, because it was imperfect, especially when it's their bread and butter...

I wouldn't mind a FF11-2 to start off with because at least I'll actually make that white box collecting dust worth something rather then it's current form.

We expect something better, but at this point almost anything solid is better then current trends.

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ffxi still exists, there is no advantage to recreating it. And the reason this game is not comparing to ffxi, is because they have added no new content for 8 months. If we had to stay in the 3 main zones in ffxi with no cap raises at level 40, no bcnms and only access to rank 2 missions for 8 months, i guarantee you FFxi would be extremely wack. back when we played ffxi, i was in jueno within like a week or two tops. this game hasnt even released its non starting city town.

the problem is lack of content and a release filled with bugs and oversights.

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Originally Posted by kukurumei

I/We had more fun in one day in FF11, then the whole time in FF14. Strive for the holy grail is nice and all, but at the end of the day, something decent is by far not the worse thing to happen.

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That may have been true for you/your group, however, it by no means holds true for the rest of us. Personally, I've enjoyed the rather broken world of XIV far and above more then any or all of my days in XI, in large part because they're different games and designed to be so.

XI still exists, even still gets expansions. SE had no reason whatsoever to even attempt to remake or make a sequel to a game still in the business, especially since no matter what they do they're going to alienate potential players 'somewhere', so why not go for two different fanbases for their two running MMO's?

I say, fix what's broken, break some more stuff, fix that, and break more again if you must... just don't pull XI into this.

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Originally Posted by Physic

ffxi still exists, there is no advantage to recreating it. And the reason this game is not comparing to ffxi, is because they have added no new content for 8 months. If we had to stay in the 3 main zones in ffxi with no cap raises at level 40, no bcnms and only access to rank 2 missions for 8 months, i guarantee you FFxi would be extremely wack. back when we played ffxi, i was in jueno within like a week or two tops. this game hasnt even released its non starting city town..

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You need a bit of a history lesson as far as XI is concerned. http://zeusls.llima.net/download/ffxiupdatehistory.html

It's almost eerie how similar the progression of these games has been.

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Originally Posted by Physic

ffxi still exists, there is no advantage to recreating it. And the reason this game is not comparing to ffxi, is because they have added no new content for 8 months. If we had to stay in the 3 main zones in ffxi with no cap raises at level 40, no bcnms and only access to rank 2 missions for 8 months, i guarantee you FFxi would be extremely wack. back when we played ffxi, i was in jueno within like a week or two tops. this game hasnt even released its non starting city town.

the problem is lack of content and a release filled with bugs and oversights.

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Kinda pointless to put in any content that would have to be reworked as soon as the battle system is reworked.

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Originally Posted by Peregrine

Things that aren't "innovation" so much as they are copouts designed to step around any system that aims to reward effort and innovation:

Mob hits too hard. "Innovation": Kiting
Mob hits too hard. "Innovation": Terrain blocking
Mob hits too hard. "Innovation": DoT death by attrition
Mob hits too hard. "Innovation": Bind rotations
Mob hits too hard. "Innovation": Stunlocking
Mob hits too hard. "Innovation": Don't feed it TP.
Mob doesn't die fast enough. "Innovation": Rangering ranger on their rangers
Mob has heavy AoE. "Innovation": Rangering ranger on their rangers
Too many mobs. "Innovation": Manaburning
Too many mobs. "Innovation": Spike damage whoring
Devastating AoE debilititations. "Innovation": No meleers.
Timed fight with pressure. "Innovation": Zerg rushing

Unless the developers have novel ideas on how the population won't take their "system that rewards effort and innovation" and turn it into a system that "rewards archers and thaumaturges for being archers and thaumaturges" I really don't see this new direction enhancing the game's quality.

Effort will become "If you want to be useful, level a useful job."
Innovation will become...well nothing. It'll be the same copouts the population has relied on to shirk difficult content for years.

The tanks, mages, and ranged fans in the crowd are licking their lips at these buzzwords, because they know that ultimately it's their jobs that will come out on top of the ensuing mess. Sorry meleers. Looks like you'll be standing in the corner of the Ouryu fight again, lest you ruin the blm's "innovation."

Player-driven innovation is weak, derivative, exclusionary, and elitist.

Innovation can only come through the developers ironically, in creating a challenging system that doesn't exclude people but rather by necessity includes everyone who plays the game. Not just the same jobs over and over.

People will claim it's the players' faults for resorting to cheap tactics and relying on the easywin tactics, but it isn't. It's the developers' faults for not designing quality game design. If their solution to an easy game is to just throw a berserk boss fest at 20% HP, a bunch of paralyze-class AoE's at the players, and to make them hit like a truck...well we already know how to handle those situations: just bring the 3 best classes in the game suitable for that kind of cliché "difficulty" and ditch the dead weight.

Cliché challenge calls for cliché behaviors. They worked before. They'll work again. I don't want to see this game become a playground for prima donna archers and mages like FFXI did from years 1-4, and we'll be well down that road come fall unless the developers have some NEW challenge up their sleeves that demands REAL innovation and effort.

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omg still crying? wait till patch comes to post your complaints

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Originally Posted by Physic

the problem is lack of content and a release filled with bugs and oversights.

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If that was the only reasons FF14 wouldn't be in this state. You can wave the magical memory modification wand, all you want...no one is effect by it at this point.

Let's face it, you can try to pamper the story of the "FF14 that wasn't" all you want, but it was grade A trash and still probably is to many players and former players.

If it even got to the level of classical FF11, it wouldn't have gotten ranked down so hard. That's cold hard truth.

The fact that a bit of FF11-2 creeping back in is still leagues better then the original plan of self implosion. Our standards are so low at this point, it's better we have some then nothing. The bread and butter of FF11 that worked fairly well shouldn't be sneered at even if it's not the greatest taste on earth.

It's like the titanic sinking and you refuse to get on the life boats because it's too crowded for your tastes.

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Originally Posted by Shampooo

omg still crying? wait till patch comes to post your complaints

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My sentiments exactly. Theorycrafting is fun until you get some wannabe know-it-all picking apart things that havent even been put ingame yet.

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Originally Posted by Airlea

You need a bit of a history lesson as far as XI is concerned. http://zeusls.llima.net/download/ffxiupdatehistory.html

It's almost eerie how similar the progression of these games has been.

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oh i know, but vthey had lots of updates and a lot of content in the first 8 months, they got jueno, 5 new jobs, announcement of expansion 2 level cap raises, northlands unlocked

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oh i know, but vthey had lots of updates and a lot of content in the first 8 months, they got jueno, 5 new jobs, announcement of expansion 2 level cap raises, northlands unlocked

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But... we got chocobos!
Oh wait.

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Originally Posted by kukurumei

If that was the only reasons FF14 wouldn't be in this state. You can wave the magical memory modification wand, all you want...no one is effect by it at this point.

Let's face it, you can try to pamper the story of the "FF14 that wasn't" all you want, but it was grade A trash and still probably is to many players and former players.

If it even got to the level of classical FF11, it wouldn't have gotten ranked down so hard. That's cold hard truth.

The fact that a bit of FF11-2 creeping back in is still leagues better then the original plan of self implosion. Our standards are so low at this point, it's better we have some then nothing. The bread and butter of FF11 that worked fairly well shouldn't be sneered at even if it's not the greatest taste on earth.

It's like the titanic sinking and you refuse to get on the life boats because it's too crowded for your tastes.

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its a bad plan, because your competing only with a shrinking market, and the competitor is yourself. FFXI of now cannot even come close to competing with future games, it can still have a profitable niche though, but not if FFXIV canabalizes it, then you ll have two games not making profit.

Better to strike off in a different direction, heck go F2p or Buy2p, slowly build your game, and cut back servers, but remaking FFXI will kill both properties.

Aside from that in all honesty i had a lot of fun exploring this game, and some of the biggest probs and things people talked about, was fixing the bugs, and all of the cool stuff they would add, like new jobs, new zones, Boss monsters, cool gears, hax skills, etc.
For me this game was much more fun than ffxi was at its basics, they needed to develop the world, there is no point in a battle system with no content, lack of content and bugs is why people quit. The battle system is changing, but they better have a crap load of content to match it. about 8 months worth.

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Originally Posted by Airlea

You need a bit of a history lesson as far as XI is concerned. http://zeusls.llima.net/download/ffxiupdatehistory.html

It's almost eerie how similar the progression of these games has been.

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Awesome link... thanks!

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Originally Posted by Shampooo

omg still crying? wait till patch comes to post your complaints

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Originally Posted by Issachar

My sentiments exactly. Theorycrafting is fun until you get some wannabe know-it-all picking apart things that havent even been put ingame yet.

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Oh you two. What silly advice. Because continuing on and seeing how things go has done this game WONDERS amirite?

Nah, some of us in the crowd aren't like Square. We can actually see obvious problems before they happen. I know it's all voodoo and magic to some people out there, but honestly this is easy. No, a vote to see how things go is a vote to keep things going the way they are, which is to play right into a pack of archers' hands.

Like you two, by the way. Gee, that's a surprise.

That won't bring people back to the game world.

Fun brings people back to the game world. Talk the "holy grail" talk but at the end of the day, you don't need to high-nose some delusions of grandeur plan of brilliance to show people a fun time.

Trying to go brain shattering originality is stupid when you're sinking quickly.

As an aside, betting content is laughable when about 70% of the crowd up and left before they even went through the content. They won't be lure by more content because they have no desire to experience said brokenness with more content.

SE is sure as heck not betting the words of less then 30k people that have stuck it out for 8months. That's why they did polls to see the areas needing mass improvement.

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Originally Posted by Peregrine

Reward Diversity
-Party bonus: Strength in Diversity. Share the burden of the fight efficiently, decreasing stamina costs. Effectively haste.

Prevent job-stacking synergy
-Eliminate buff preservation on hit 2 and 3 of multishot
-Change archer's heavy shot to a status effect that can be multipliedx3, reduces regain instead of depletes TP.
-Enemy rage mode or enhanced weaponskill activation for damage dominated by DoT or certain types of damage. Enemy protection from 1-shot TKO methods (chi blasting, manaburning, multishot*5).

Eliminate cliché challenge
-Enhance unique gameplay features involved in 20% boss overdrive modes
-Reduce reliance on heavier AoE, more frequent AoE, and 1-shot weaponskills in 20% boss overdrive modes.
-Add status effect doughnut abilities to penalize ranged attack on bosses to compensate for any meleeing AoE's implemented: 1:1 ratio overall.
-Enhance access to key abilities like stun if stunning is implemented as a required tactic.
-Enhance access to true crowd control, or reduce occasions where difficulty primarily lies in the N of the enemy group. Eg: marauder: AoE petrify (pseudosleep). Pugilist: Knockout (single-target pseudosleep). Lancer: Pacify (lock an enemy in a hold, sacrificing your actions to prevent theirs)

Prevent ranged jobs from dominating endgame
-Enhance meleer output. Balance output required for fights to ensure ranged damage is usually insufficient to succeed alone.
-Eliminate TP-feeding argument on bosses that prevent light DPS meleeing
-Provide meleers party strengths that they are actually invited for (Marauder's aren't invited to AoE, or CC, pugs aren't invited to tank)

Eliminate job stigmas quickly
-Respond to warning signs of job impotency (lolmrd comments, anti-lnc arguments, pug is a waste of a party slot, why invite X when there's Y to do it better) quickly, first with verbal acknowledgement that the job is insufficient and that a patch will be produced within 3 months= of the start of warning signs.

Do not allow imbalance to snowball
-monitor Youtube for bragging tactic videos using repetitive styles.
-Edit new: Record setups brought to and results of key battles to monitor for imbalanced shifts in player choices.
-Quickly incorporate player-designed tactics into the game by modifying and approving the tactic officially, or patch an unacceptable tactic. Time frame: within 1 month of discovering the tactics' use.
-Fix all imbalances within a period of level cycling to prevent an entire generation of players levelling a job just for the imbalance and effectively rendering balance correction unpopular by biased participation.

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Quoting for emphasis. These are good ideas.

I especially like the "Do not allow imbalance to snowball" section.

That was part of the reason for my "implement timetrails and leaderboards along with achievements" suggestion thread since you can quickly see just how strong certain job setups fare against others by pitting all of the server in competition against each other.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...632#post129632

Right, you can't allow an imbalanced job or tactic to sit there and accumulate fanboys of it. Before you know it, the imbalance will kill the dissenting voice and you'll lose the signal that something is wrong as players quit and leave, or be converted over to the imbalance and become fans of it in the process themselves.

The only thing that remains once you let imbalance snowball is a destroyed joke of a game like XI was after CoP, and the only solution is to take a torch to the house of Black Mage and Ranger to try to regain what is your majority of players, now gone, against the will of your old-minority now-majority of players...who grew fat on the excesses of the thing you're about to take a bat to.

Everyone will hate you at that point. The people you ignored for being way too late, and the people you're about to enrage by touching their power source.

As much as some rangers and black mages deserved to be exterminated, no one wants to see it come to that.

Even now, balancing archer is going to be harder than it had to be because now there are way too many archer fanboys high on multishot and ws spam. Now some of them will ragequit if you touch archer. Devs should have never let them get the false idea and false hope that archer will stay like this. It can't. It won't.

You're much too assumptuous that people will ragequit because of a nerf. Hell, you're much too assumptuous that nobody but you knows how to play MMOs. Ignorance won't balance a game.

Your ignorance, not mine. If you played FFXI before ToAU, you obviously learned nothing from that encounter.

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Originally Posted by Peregrine

Your ignorance, not mine. If you played FFXI before ToAU, you obviously learned nothing from that encounter.

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Nice, a "NO U" retort. :/ Keep riding that high-horse, because it ain't thoroughbred...thats for sure.

Citing one's ignorance without knowing the situation of the playerbase as-is is ignorance in and of itself. The people who have stayed with the game this far aren't going to quit because of some nerf. Not like there's any real way to assert class dominance as it is. It's simply being king of turd mountain right now. Comparing pre-Aht Urghan FFXI and FFXIV at this time is like comparing a hot fudge sundae to a half-melted stick of butter. Completely different entities entirely. If you want to pull the 'HUUR UR A DUM ARCHER" card again, just remember...you took CON, arguably the easiest class in FFXIV, up to 50...and nothing else whatsoever. Don't be a hypocrite ;) Besides, I sold all of my Archer stuff off because...yeah, it is kinda overplayed and I enjoy my LNC much better.

Anyways, I'm thoroughly convinced you're just trying to overcompensate for something now, so I'll quit replying to you.

Nope they're pretty much the same thing, this game's mistakes and that one's. It's just that in this game, you can't be a problem because there's no point in being one. Too bad, so sad. Your hot fudge sunday didn't get finished it seems, so that archer will just have to wait until you can subvert its imbalance back into the game by whining in topics about balance.

Enjoy your lancer while it lasts, because if it's left up to players like you who don't pay attention to what you should have learned a long time ago, you'll be back on archer by christmas.

50/50 shot you want to be, because you like how that makes you feel.

Pay attention to history. You're in a lesson right now.

So do you guys write your own material or what?

This is all actually 7 year old content. Nothing new can be said. You can just either learn from the past mistakes and who was wrong in this discussion before, and who was right. This has all happened before.

I am just going to throw some ideas out there that might make some sense since I don't really want to make a major argument over this. I will start with Archer and Lancer issues:

Idea #1: Lancer vs Archer damage types

Lancers do better damage with their polearm weapons vs larger heavily armored opponents while archers do better damage toward medium and smaller targets.

Idea #2: Archer Range from target and size of target.

Induce penalties for range and accuracy for archers based on ranges from targets. Also have accuracy changes for archer firing on smaller targets from range. Firing at a peiste at long...no problem. Firing on a beetle or ladybug at long...problem unless they get close to do so.

Idea #3: Base damage system for DD's on "risk/reward" curve.

Lancers would do best spike damage of the DD classes while archers would do less spike damage as a DD due to the risk involved to each class. You want to see big numbers then you have to play a front line battle class.

Idea #4: Class restriction/distinction workings

Since archer has so many things that require a bow and cannot be used with other classes like Multi-shot, make it so archer can not use a majority of damage boosting and accuracy buffs from other classes. This would dumb down their spike damage from WSs and multi-shot. At the very least they should make the buffs only affect the first shot from multi-shot which would make multi-shot more of a TP building ability than anything else.

Idea #5: Archer HP reduction

If you build the hate...they will come. Take down Archer HP to be equal or only slightly better than other back line classes (in effect having same HP as mages but able to to take a hit better due to better armors). Increase the hate values of attacks they make (ie. make multi-shot net the hate of three separate attacks rather than one) and make hate relief slower for high spikes of damage. These methods teach an Archer (or any high spike damage class) that there is a time and place for all things. Solo it would still allow them to go nuts but in a party they would have to pace themselves.

In regards to Thaumaturge:

Idea #1: Emulate restrictions

Emulate should be an emergency move only. Make the timer 5 or 10 mins. Restrict it to Thaumaturge only. If a Thaumaturge really wants to tank then let him pull skills from classes that can actually tank or SE should just flat out make them a tank class by changing their ability set and be done with it.

Idea #2: Ranges and AoE for Thaumaturge and Conjurer

Conjurer = longer range but smaller AoE.
Thaumaturge = shorter range but larger AoE.

Idea #3: Initiation

Passing absorbed abilities from the Thaumaturge to another player lets the Thaumaturge also keep the abilities currently. This should be changed to one of the following:

a) Passing abilities causes both the target and the Thaumaturge to both have them but the time is halved for both.
b) Passing abilities causes the effect to fade form the Thaumaturge and only be on the target of the power.

Idea #4: Healing

AoE healing should have a greater hate value.

Those are some things that might help resolve some of what the tension is all about. What SE will implement is anyones guess but I will not smash them just yet. I will however remain cautiously optimistic about this patch until I see what they actually do.

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Originally Posted by Mortikhan

I am just going to throw some ideas out there that might make some sense since I don't really want to make a major argument over this. I will start with Archer and Lancer issues:

Idea #1: Lancer vs Archer damage types

Lancers do better damage with their polearm weapons vs larger heavily armored opponents while archers do better damage toward medium and smaller targets.

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Backwards. The English longbow could puncture steel plate. A spear is better for hitting a moving/more agile target. Spears are a more primitive weapon; the development of armor required the development of weapons ( such as greatswords and axes ) that could be swung with enough momentum to penetrate the armor- a spear's thrusting motion is not as effective for that as is an overhand swing- also a reason other polearms such as longaxes were developed.

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Idea #5: Archer HP reduction

If you build the hate...they will come. Take down Archer HP to be equal or only slightly better than other back line classes (in effect having same HP as mages but able to to take a hit better due to better armors). Increase the hate values of attacks they make (ie. make multi-shot net the hate of three separate attacks rather than one) and make hate relief slower for high spikes of damage. These methods teach an Archer (or any high spike damage class) that there is a time and place for all things. Solo it would still allow them to go nuts but in a party they would have to pace themselves.

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The hate formulae are being reworked to be proportional to actual damage delivered. As far as HP reduction goes, archers need rather to have their effectiveness diminished significantly by wearing heavier armor.

Bows and arrows are actually incredibly nonlethal, any bow hunter will tell you that they don't work like in the movies where things just fall down. The most realistic depiction of what happens when you get hit by arrows is actually in LotR, where the hero gets hit by one and keeps fighting. Gets hit by two and still fights. Gets hit by three and alright fine. The tension pneumothorax FINALLY got him. Arrows are a statistical game. They remove the fighter from the battle...eventually. Hours. Days. Weeks. The timing wasn't important.

Arrows tamponade the damage they do to blood vessels and honestly don't transfer that much energy to tissues. Functionally, death by arrow injury occurs by either tension pneumothorax which takes minutes at best, cardiac tamponade which takes minutes at best, or bleeding which takes hours because the arrow stops most of the bleeding it causes.

It's backwards. Archer not only wouldn't do as much damage as any of these other jobs realistically, but they would not even remotely be good at spike damage. You can inflict guaranteed lethality with a knife in under 10 seconds by systematically aiming at two major blood vessels. Even a direct hit to the heart or head with an arrow won't drop a large animal, and if you miss a vital organ the thing could literally fight or run for days before it eventually died from starvation or infection.

Archer is realistically the job you choose to go get marmot pelts. You could functionally shoot arrows at uraeus all day long and just piss it off. Its lungs are under it.

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Originally Posted by Lerris

Backwards. The English longbow could puncture steel plate. A spear is better for hitting a moving/more agile target. Spears are a more primitive weapon; the development of armor required the development of weapons ( such as greatswords and axes ) that could be swung with enough momentum to penetrate the armor- a spear's thrusting motion is not as effective for that as is an overhand swing- also a reason other polearms such as longaxes were developed.

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Yes and no. English Longbows and more advanced polearms were in use at the same time period. However my point was not so much the peicing power of the weapons but the damage they did to a body. An arrow could pierce heavy armors but those armors hindered their progress so much so that the force of impact and the depth of the wound would not be as severe. The probability of an arrow flying through a target in steel plate armor was not a high one.

The sheer size of a polearms business end would cause a massive wound resulting in terrible amounts of blood loss. This brings me to my second point...follow through. An arrow would strike an opponent. The opponent would not yank the arrow out. They would break the shaft off at the wound and continue to fight or be taken away for medical attention. The wound (if it did not strike vital organs) was survivable. When a polearm was successful in its attack it inflicted the damage and the person with the polearm had the option of twisting, impaling or gouging the wound to make it more extensive. Additionally, removing the polearm from the wound could cause the target to bleed out and collapse.

But enough about real world battles. If we apply real world battle results to this game then Archers would get annihilated in most fights once something closed on them. Drawing a bow and firing in hand to hand combat was suicide for real world archers and reload times alone would end them if they tried to fight like that. In this game that is not the case.

It's funny how it got to realistic historical figures that shouldn't make any impact on fantasy rpg numbers.

Historically bows (and later crossbows) were primarily used (outside of hunting) by infantry (in the west) and horse back (in the east) to their greatest effect. That and sieges it was when they shined.

Talking about lethality is kinda hard even stupid by real world standards because you have to talk about skill, situation, type of bow and era, etc. Infantry rarely had decent armor, and if you had a horse back bowmen, you were pretty much dead or dead. More so if you were a simple villager caught in a raid.

If FF14 was a war game type MMO, then archery would have been systemically better, and if we had a chocobo rider class.

One thing that you got to give credit to Blizzard for is that despite the multitudes of class readjustments that come with every major patch, they manage to make every class desirable no matter the situation (at least, back in WotLK... healers saw some imbalance in Cata). Every type of healer brings their own unique form of group enhancement and status ailment dispels. Tanks all have their own unique gimmicks which enhances the group, but functionally the same in performance (provided the person knows what they're doing). Damage dealers were the only imbalance you can find, and even then the low man on the totem pole can outperform the "OP class" if he knows how to play better and abuse his abilities to the best of their capabilities.

In addition, encounters were made so that trying to cheese the boss simply doesn't work. There are no stunlocking, and all kiting were done with a purpose. Throwing six rogues or six hunters at a boss will end up with some fight mechanic ruining your day, so you have to bring a balanced group. Trying to zerg doesn't work either, the health pool is simply too large to burn down within the span of Bloodlust, and there's a 10 minute cooldown after each use.

I'm not saying make WoW mk2. Instead, look at what Blizzard did to make their game successful, and see how it can apply to XIV. So far, they've only brought over the solo-capable aspect of the game. Start looking at how group mechanics worked in other MMOs, and see how you can bring over some aspects. BR with skillchain ease of use is a good starting point.

Right, they have to control the cheese tactics much better than they did in FFXI. This isn't Square's strength. Unlike blizzard, their games did not inherently mature Square's sense of balance. Bliz, on the other hand, constantly had to keep that in mind otherwise their offline product was permanent crap as people just found a quick imbalance and used it to win the game and degrade the quality of it in the process.

But Square spent 8 years trying to keep blms and rngs from running away with FFXI, you would have thought they'd learn their lesson. Unfortunately archer is just as busted as ranger was, and thaumaturge just as busted as black mage.

They have got to pay more attention to balance in this game than they did in FFXI, from the start. The start is the most important. Get it wrong at the start, and you fight the player base who has grown accustomed to bad gaming power and imbalance tooth and nail. They will hate you for trying to improve your product and their experience, because they like the power and accomplishment that imbalance brings and can't see healthy rewarding gameplay's potential if it means losing their cheese first.