Why can't we have jobs with this level of depth and customization in FFXIV?

FFXIV just ended it's first year (not counting 1.0), FFXI didn't have as much content at first either. This is an MMORPG, to play for years, not weeks. Be patient.

TL;DR the entire thread, so sorry if I missed this somewhere.

Our characters are only level 50. FFXI did not have depth and customization at level 50 cap. When the cap WAS 50 in FFXI, there were not as many jobs, and certainly not the more complex ones they released into the game over the years. Even now in FFXI for the most part, you can't do much with a lvl 50 character.

Take into consideration there are still level cap raises to happen in this game. Current jobs/classes may deepen with cap raises, new jobs which have not yet been introduced may bring more complexity to the table.

If we do get more complexity/depth in the future, you can be sure that people will complain about that, and beg for simpler jobs.

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Originally Posted by Estevo

You are correct to an extent. Yoshida has stated in multiple interviews that he's going to play it simple and safe for a year or two to come, just to set up the fanbase, the world, and give it a good amount of content, I'm sure also to give the team time to think of creative systems as well.

So as much as I believe they should stop playing it safe, I believe they will when they feel the time is right.

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And i think he is correct in doing so, they could NOT afford to fail after the disaster that was 1.0 so it's good to test the playerbase to see what sticks out.

but this game is only a year old, as someone already pointed out FFXI did not have much content or depth in it's 1st year or 2, people simply need to give this game time to grow.

FFXIV has two real problems that feed off of each other: the Trinity of Roles and Duty Finder. Without a dramatic adjustment to both to allow for multiple valid builds per role and also to allow for other roles (such as support), this will continue to be.

A lot of people don't realise that FFXI didn't even make it to NA until it had been out for 1 year and 5 months in Japan. So if FFXIV followed the FFXI formula this game wouldn't even exist outside japan at the moment (disregarding the 1.0 FFXIV) Plus to further the argument that FFXIV ARR should follow the timeline from 1.0 and as such has been in development for a significant period of time is nonsense as I played in 1.0 alpha/beta/release and ARR alpha/beta/release and the changes between ARR alpha and release are huge so they was clearly working from almost a clean slate mechanically.

So to pull job details from Puppetmaster that didn't exist until ToAU which wasn't released until 4 years after JP release. Not to mention its not really choice and customisation as in the major times for FFXI there was the cookie cutter method or GTFO which essentially even though you had "choice" for merit points or parts for your automaton. You didn't really have the choice as if it wasn't optimal you sucked.

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Originally Posted by Firepower

A lot of people don't realise that FFXI didn't even make it to NA until it had been out for 1 year and 5 months in Japan. So if FFXIV followed the FFXI formula this game wouldn't even exist outside japan at the moment (disregarding the 1.0 FFXIV) Plus to further the argument that FFXIV ARR should follow the timeline from 1.0 and as such has been in development for a significant period of time is nonsense as I played in 1.0 alpha/beta/release and ARR alpha/beta/release and the changes between ARR alpha and release are huge so they was clearly working from almost a clean slate mechanically.

So to pull job details from Puppetmaster that didn't exist until ToAU which wasn't released until 4 years after JP release. Not to mention its not really choice and customisation as in the major times for FFXI there was the cookie cutter method or GTFO which essentially even though you had "choice" for merit points or parts for your automaton. You didn't really have the choice as if it wasn't optimal you sucked.

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Except they spent two years remaking the game into ARR, so the comparison is kind of moot. Also they've stuck themselves in a bad situation with end game by oversimplifying things. There isn't enough options on the individual roles + cross class skill system to make anything interesting outside team jump roping. The game doesn't need to be D&D 3rd edition complex, but it needs to expand its horizons outside the overused norm of the industry. Whatever power this model held over gamers has been diminished significantly from years of abuse and overuse.

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Originally Posted by Lemuria

Black Mage gets what exactly? Spam fire until MP depletes, swap to Ice, go back to Fire once you've regened MP. Toss in a Thunder DoT for good measure when it drops. That's not really a 'choice', it's a rotation. And once you get into a rotation, it's pretty much the only way to play the class. Other jobs work in an identical fashion with their own rotations, excepting healers who at least are a bit more proactive.

I was absolutely furious when they removed half my nukes on Conjurer. This was, at the time, combined with a massive MP hike on spells meaning that I could literally cast only 4 cures before I was utterly drained. Still, I would have traded ALL of them to Thaumaturge if we'd still have something that still resembled a proper Black Mage.

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As long as it's not the Black Mage from XI where all you did was spam Thunder IV until out of MP then rest for 3 minutes. So much more complexity than this game...

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Originally Posted by Fendred

Except they spent two years remaking the game into ARR, so the comparison is kind of moot. Also they've stuck themselves in a bad situation with end game by oversimplifying things. There isn't enough options on the individual roles + cross class skill system to make anything interesting outside team jump roping. The game doesn't need to be D&D 3rd edition complex, but it needs to expand its horizons outside the overused norm of the industry. Whatever power this model held over gamers has been diminished significantly from years of abuse and overuse.

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Except that I'm sure FFXI had 2~3 years of building before it even released in Japan, so the point is valid. I'll say they cut down a lot of time because they didn't have to redo *all* of the lore, classes, names, and the like. But it's been said many times, it's still pretty different from 1.0~1.23. We should all realize that 2.0-3.0 is, "did we remake it so that people don't leave and we go free-to-play within 6 months?". Since it didn't happen, they can try some ballsy stuff with 3.0. If not, then FFXIV is likely doomed to become a niche MMO with only a few thousand subs in 1~5 years.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

...A request for more complex, thought out, deep jobs...

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... when in this game everyone talking about BiS, why anyone will think customization is exisited. ^^;

In this game, the multi job system is what your customization. Some ppl lv a tank, some lv a dps, some focus in healing.
IMO that's what OP asking, character customization, however, some ppl cannot see the whole picture and only focus on one job, or one weapon (ie. novus).

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

... You can even customize the AI??...

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It was somethings like your chocobo... tank/healer/dps chocobo.. ^^;

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Originally Posted by Nicobo

... when in this game everyone talking about BiS, why anyone will think customization is exisited. ^^;

In this game, the multi job system is what your customization. Some ppl lv a tank, some lv a dps, some focus in healing.
IMO that's what OP asking, character customization, however, some ppl cannot see the whole picture and only focus on one job, or one weapon (ie. novus).

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The "whole picture?" imho, the ability to be all classes/jobs on one character is a terrible, terrible one. It is not 'customization' in classes/jobs. Far from it.

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Originally Posted by TheRogueX

The "whole picture?" imho, the ability to be all classes/jobs on one character is a terrible, terrible one. It is not 'customization' in classes/jobs. Far from it.

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Please realise how the dev implemented those suggestions from the forum. ^^;

Btw, since YoshiP has mentioned that ARR was designed as all class/jobs on one character, I don't understand why someone would like to play it while saying it is terrible.

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Originally Posted by Hioki

-THEY HAVE TERRIBLE CODE AND CANNOT FIX THIS AGGRO BS THAT HAS BEEN IN THE GAME SINCE RELEASE. HOW HARD IS IT FOR ENEMIES TO CANCEL THEIR IMMEDIATE ACTION, STOP CROSSING AN ENTIRE FIELD, AND GO TO A DAMNED TANK AND BEGIN THEIR ATTACKS AS SOON AS THE TARGET IS CHANGED? WHY IS THIS STILL AN ISSUE A YEAR LATER?

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Because if monsters did this they could be locked down into ping pong aggro without doing any kind of attacks. Also, it would be possible to cancel their strong attacks by swapping hate.

"Terrible code" maybe, but I'm pretty sure you have no understanding of what you are talking about.

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Originally Posted by TheRogueX

The "whole picture?" imho, the ability to be all classes/jobs on one character is a terrible, terrible one. It is not 'customization' in classes/jobs. Far from it.

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While I am not wholly in favour of the current system (I prefer the early V1 armoury system) all classes on one character is a genius, genius idea. It worked in XI quite well. You could customize by subjob selection and merit traits/ability selection. Of course there were cookie cutter builds there, but that's the same in all MMOs.

Yoshi-P said they are looking into changing the armoury system somewhat, but that's quite a bit in the future and won't be as extreme as changing the foundation (you can be anything/everything).

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Originally Posted by Iriadysa

Because if monsters did this they could be locked down into ping pong aggro without doing any kind of attacks. Also, it would be possible to cancel their strong attacks by swapping hate.

"Terrible code" maybe, but I'm pretty sure you have no understanding of what you are talking about.

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Game balance is something many people don't seem to grasp very well.

Something that would help with the "depth" would be to put the elemental wheel back in. You know, make it so you would heal Ifrit if you hit him with Fire, you can kill the undead with Cure. I miss that...

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Originally Posted by MageBlack

Something that would help with the "depth" would be to put the elemental wheel back in. You know, make it so you would heal Ifrit if you hit him with Fire, you can kill the undead with Cure. I miss that...

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So make BLM utterly worthless in Ifrit. I like this idea.

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Originally Posted by MageBlack

Something that would help with the "depth" would be to put the elemental wheel back in. You know, make it so you would heal Ifrit if you hit him with Fire, you can kill the undead with Cure. I miss that...

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Elemental Wheel..
"Debuff Wheel", e.g if say Geomancer or Red Mage or whatever new mage they add casts Choke debuff you can't have that and its opposing element on at the same time.
Bring Back stat debuff skills.....you know, the Absorb - Stat/Defense/Attack stuff Thaumaturge had in 1.0?

Introduce the Helicies spells to SCH that they had from XI, which are powerful DoTs based on your nuke damage. The algorithm already exists in ARR with Thunder Cloud.

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Originally Posted by Exstal

So make BLM utterly worthless in Ifrit. I like this idea.

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The only reason this would be anywhere near true is because Yoshida decided that Thunder should be a DoT rather than a nuke.

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Originally Posted by Exstal

So make BLM utterly worthless in Ifrit. I like this idea.

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Or, y'know, give them the full complement of elemental spells like they should always have had. Like conjurer used to have in V1 (and it should always have been CNJ -> BLM, not THM -> BLM).

3 years on, still pissed off about that.

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Originally Posted by Aegis

Or, y'know, give them the full complement of elemental spells like they should always have had. Like conjurer used to have in V1 (and it should always have been CNJ -> BLM, not THM -> BLM).

3 years on, still pissed off about that.

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Yep.

Conjurer:
http://www.final-fantasy-14.org/abil...&submit=Filter

Thaumaturge:
http://www.final-fantasy-14.org/abil...&submit=Filter


So, honestly, THM was already setup for being a Red Mage/Dark Knight type of Job, but they took a lot of stuff from XI and mix/matched it on the Mages, just a shame people complained about: "too many skills/spells, I don't know when to use them."

I find it funny when FFXI players in here mention they jumped to here because Abyssea and SoA ruined everything then find disappointment that this game isn't what they wanted either and say it needs to be FFXI. I love FFXI as much as the next person, but why are you trying to completely change FFXIV into something it is not? Why are you not on the FFXI forums complaining you want the old day game play back? You get frustrated at FFXI and take it out on FFXIV. Just because this game is called Final Fantasy also doesn't mean it is obligated to use concepts of it's predecessor.

Your main issue when making "very deep and complex mechanics" for a job itself, it is the first step of creating a major imbalance. Don't believe me? Ask 3/4 of the jobs in FFXI that don't get invited to parties because a job with mechanics you are seeking gets ignored for more convenient, simple, and more efficient jobs to play. That was a real bummer to me and I feel like I have to force myself to play something I don't just to get more frequent party invites. This has been an issue in FFXI since advanced jobs became a thing and it hasn't been fixed since. In FFXIV, if you make it that you are more focused on your bar than the fight itself, something went wrong in it's design and good luck dodging things while performing efficient DPS.

I have actually been trying FFXI again to see what has changed and what is new. While I am having fun playing around on THF, I got unfortunate news that if I continue it, it will only come with hardships in joining groups. This issue is near non-existent in FFXIV. Why? Because it bases itself off of simplicity in job mechanics and lets the fights and environment around you be the complexity itself. My example is a different genre but still has a point. Super Mario Bros., all you need to learn is that "A" is to jump, and you can hold down "B" to move faster. Simple to learn right? How to play, yes. Now can the average person take on The Lost Levels(SMB2 in JP) and beat it? No, its very difficult because the level itself and not your controls and concepts. FFXIV runs under a similar concept that it depends on what is around you to determine the difficulty, not necessarily how well you build yourself up. Even then FFXIV still has some complexity in it's rotations and priorities. Go look at any guide here and there is much more to being efficient than hitting 1-2-3 and some buffs.

If you don't like that style and prefer FFXI's, its fine, its not necessarily better or worse, it is different and the game can be difficult in it's own way. I know I had some hair pulling moments in my 2003-2010 career. At the same time however, you have to realize that a lot of FFXI's concepts and mechanics simply do not work in this game. It can be held up to interpretation when expansions come and change things around, but I doubt ARR would ever change drastically to the point that overly complex pet or elemental systems would make it's way in there.

Find ways to make what is already in FFXIV now better without tearing down the wall and putting up something new. Unless proven broken, Dev's will listen to constructive criticism first before destructive criticism. I have my list of complaints with the game, but I wouldn't ever ask them to tear things down to just meet my own interest. I love that the game uses WoW as a blueprint to make it's own game while still bringing new things in. FFXIV has enough of it's own concepts and beautiful world with a rich story/lore that in my opinion to stand out greatly from other typical MMO's. I was actually hoping 1.xx was like this and we got well.....that.

FFXI and FFXIV are two completely different games. It was intentional by the developers. Play the one you prefer more, one is not truly better than the other at the end of the day. FFXI may feel out of date here and there, but still a great experience to play. Or maybe it is just nostalgia kicking in there.

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

Yep.

Conjurer:
http://www.final-fantasy-14.org/abil...&submit=Filter

Thaumaturge:
http://www.final-fantasy-14.org/abil...&submit=Filter


So, honestly, THM was already setup for being a Red Mage/Dark Knight type of Job, but they took a lot of stuff from XI and mix/matched it on the Mages, just a shame people complained about: "too many skills/spells, I don't know when to use them."

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I think Tanaka's goal was to create interesting new classes using abilities from classic FF classes and mix/matching them. If the game hadn't been such a flop it would have been interesting to see where he took them. But, since it did fail so hard, Yoshi-P was brought in and said

"You call this a Final Fantasy? There must be moar FF staples! moar!"

And so they had to shoehorn the classes into jobs. The class with all the lore about elementals and harnessing their power becomes White Mage (with Aero and Stone because...erm? elementals? but not the icky fire or ice elementals). The class with the lore about the giving and taking of life and the balance of life forces becomes Black Mage because they had the strongest nuke at the time.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

Your main issue when making "very deep and complex mechanics" for a job itself, it is the first step of creating a major imbalance. Don't believe me? Ask 3/4 of the jobs in FFXI that don't get invited to parties because a job with mechanics you are seeking gets ignored for more convenient, simple, and more efficient jobs to play.

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I actually levelled all but a couple of jobs in XI to at least 75 (the cap when I levelled them) and the ones I didn't were Corsair, Puppetmaster and Red Mage. I honestly didn't feel it was that hard to get parties. Of course, BRD got insta-party without even flagging up I would get invites as soon as I logged in, but the other classes? My DRK rarely waited noticably longer than my PLD, SCH, WHM or NIN.

BST I obviously rarely got parties on, but Duo'ing was fun. BLU got a lot of invites especially when I used to /THF in Wajaom/Bhaflau.

Even if there were discrepancies in wait time for you (I don't doubt there were, it just wasn't the case for me), in the end, wouldn't you say it was worth it for the differences between the jobs?
There was no job that played quite like THF (setting up SATAs, controlling hate), no job that played quite like NIN (balancing shadows, constantly scrabbling to stay top of the enmity table) or DRK (Last Resort, Souleater, Guillotine, manic laughter, insults from the WHM) or BLU (Self-SC'ing, MB'ing, masochistic spell learning) or SCH (AOE every buff, wake me up when they wear off).

I could literally give examples for every class where they had a playstyle-defining mechanic that none of the others had. What's a little queue time compared to that?

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Originally Posted by Velhart

I find it funny when FFXI players in here mention they jumped to here because Abyssea and SoA ruined everything then find disappointment that this game isn't what they wanted either and say it needs to be FFXI. I love FFXI as much as the next person, but why are you trying to completely change FFXIV into something it is not?

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To be fair XIV 1.x was never a WoW clone and they turned it into one rather than "fixing it", so it's long past the: "XIV isn't x stop blah blah blah" arguments people crop up with. And yes, Yoshida did make it VERY VERY clear his goal was to make ARR basically WoW for Japan.

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

To be fair XIV 1.x was never a WoW clone and they turned it into one rather than "fixing it", so it's long past the: "XIV isn't x stop blah blah blah" arguments people crop up with. And yes, Yoshida did make it VERY VERY clear his goal was to make ARR basically WoW for Japan.

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I love Yoshi-P's thinking.

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Originally Posted by Aegis

Even if there were discrepancies in wait time for you (I don't doubt there were, it just wasn't the case for me), in the end, wouldn't you say it was worth it for the differences between the jobs?

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Absolutely not, every job in the game should be just as desired as the next. ARR accomplished within one year that FFXI hasn't in twelve. Determined by the players ability to play the job and gear requirements. Not just because of the job itself. Its that thinking is why FFXI is such an unbalanced mess with it's jobs.

I firmly believe making it a WoW clone is only bad for people who've played WoW before.　It means absolutely nothing to those who haven't (majority of the Japanese, I reckon). So I don't think that's a bad argument.

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Originally Posted by Exstal

I firmly believe making it a WoW clone is only bad for people who've played WoW before.　It means absolutely nothing to those who haven't (majority of the Japanese, I reckon). So I don't think that's a bad argument.

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Indeed, and good for the people who enjoy that, which is why they bleed from their eyes and ears at the very sight of whenever someone mentions SE's other FF MMO, because they likely didn't like it or never even played it. XI was successful but it was at a time prior to MMOs being mainstream, so likewise, it also didn't have as much exposure since it was a primarily Japanese MMO. It just shows how flipflop people are when it comes to that subject though.

It also helped in ARR's favors that WoW has been in an awkward place the past year, so once this year finishes up and Blizzard is back on track with it, we'll see what the MMO trend is then, since if you didn't noticed, those moving away from copying WoW are now copying the more "TERA" style of MMO gameplay.