Suggested Improvements for Combat

Diversify healing abilities: Localized and Ranged Heals

In Final Fantasy Tactics, the monk could heal adjescent party members with his chakra. However, doing so came at the risk of enemies using AoE attacks on him and his nearby allies. Ranged heals allowed a party member to avoid being clumped up, but created a situation where the healer could be flanked. Understanding the abilities of your opponent becomes very important, as well as positioning. I feel the same could help bring more depth to combat in FFXIV.

You might be able to tank the boss, but his minions are another story...

Swarms of regular strength opponents using specialized tactics to take down individual players are far more threatening than a couple of elite dragons. Tanking becomes a task of knocking down and repositioning opponents to prevent them from achieving their ideal tactical positions instead of managing a threat meter. Its these encounters that open up the possibility of traditional tanks doing more interesting things than being meat shields as well as allowing damage dealers the chance to protect their allies (something that is kind of missing in MMORPG combat).

Make aggro a more dynamic mechanic (Don't think I can't see what you're doing there!)

In Final Fantasy XI, different monsters had different forms of detection. Some were sight based, others sound based, and yet others olfactory based. If your healer is standing in plane sight of the dragon while throwing heals at the tank, that should be creating a ton more aggro than if he were behind the dragon. Similarly, if a black mage were standing close to a giant bat demon while casting spells, that demon has a whole lot of incentives to go after the black mage instead of the paladin. It just makes sense.

Include lvl 50+ mobs in each zone as part of an "Elder" version of low tier mobs.

Imagine a fresh new GLD walking out to central thanalan and seeing a level 53 adamantoise among the ladybugs or a veteran ilvl 110 level bumping into a lvl 69 Gigas roaming near the entrance to ST. These mobs are not marks and are just normal enemies and spawn at the same rate upon defeat. Drops HQ mats at a higher rate.

Varied weapon selections, specifically for Marauder, Lancer and Archer.

Marauders need hammers, Lancers need jousts, Archers need greatbows. It can be identical in base stats to axes, spears, bows (since it easier to balance) or they can adjust it entirely to create a sense of "trade-off" (more for hardcore but probably won't ever happen due to the current system).

EDIT:

Bazaar

Similar to the FFXII or FFT versions where you trade in specific items and quantities of said item to an in-game npc to receive a new item available to purchase. It can go hand in hand with the lvl 50+ mobs dropping specific items at a higher rate but not exclusive to high tier mobs. It will also be available through the lower tier but at a much lower drop rate. I would also include the ability to trade for glamour items for those who have no crafting to 50.

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Originally Posted by Fendred

In Final Fantasy XI, different monsters had different forms of detection. Some were sight based, others sound based, and yet others olfactory based.

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Just a small clarification, our open world monsters also have those three different way to detect you, at least initially.

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Originally Posted by Alukah

Just a small clarification, our open world monsters also have those three different way to detect you, at least initially.

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Not quite actually. We had sight and two types of sound in 1.0.

1. Jobs are fine the way they are, I consider these jobs to be step one, step two will be the new expansion jobs.

2. wouldn't work in this game, would be a bad idea due to the fact that if you couldn't keep hate and whm dies in dungeon you are dead and as much as whm spams heal would kill the whm instantly if you are going by FFXI enmity terms plus no way in hell jobs here can least take some hits before they die like in ffxi also.

3. would be a bad idea because of empty spots in the game nobody really goes to much anymore, they need a quest in that area monsters are too hard and can't get help you will see a decline, remember SOA in FFXI soon as they did that making stronger monsters and couldn't get people to help it was a deserted wasteland.

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Originally Posted by ispano

Not quite actually. We had sight and two types of sound in 1.0.

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Well then, two of the mentioned :p point is they are still here, they never went away.

I Don't really understand the point of these.

#1. Just sounds like normal heals with shorter ranges, enemies already have cleaves and AoE's so standing near others to heal already
has a cost.

#2. So a normal boss fight? Many fights have add spawns that must be picked up before they devour your healers. And tanking properly is far more then being a meat shield. Many strategies are tuned toward reducing the need for this. I.e solo Titan-Ex strat.

#3. Kinda like running behind some mobs can keep them from targeting you? Or just crank it to eleven on existing mobs and prevent speedruns?

#4. And what would they do, other then encourage players to camp them and gather better materials for crafting? There are guides to HQ crafting using NQ materials. So players already have a work around for that idea.

#5. Why? A jousting lance is nothing like a spear used by footmen. WTF is a greatbow? We have huge bows already in game. The Bow of Crags and several late game bows are already near player height. Axes -> Hammers is possible, but what would it do, other then take a weapon that could be used by another Job.

What is the point of making enmity so important?
Guess what? IT"S NOT!

Holding aggro is a completely binary mechanic . Either the tank has it, or they don't.

Even if we combined 2 of your ideas. Which no doubt was your intention. 1 and 3. Would just cause a complete drop of melee classes. Why would you want to run to melee to heal targets, risk dying and wiping? When you can just stand in the back and heal ranged safely and smoothly.

eh FFT was all about cheesing end game. only when you couldn't do any of the op tactics did you have to consider things.

I really hope they add lvl50+ mobs to the overworld... It may ease up on the people who SB in dungeons. =\

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Originally Posted by Anapingofness

I really hope they add lvl50+ mobs to the overworld... It may ease up on the people who SB in dungeons. =\

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Until you start getting dungeons that also have mobs over level 50.

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Originally Posted by HeroSamson

1. Jobs are fine the way they are, I consider these jobs to be step one, step two will be the new expansion jobs.

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While we are getting new jobs, we are not getting new roles. So you might get a tank that use a hammer or something, but gameplay won't change much. I wouldn't consider this "step two".

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Originally Posted by Jennika

While we are getting new jobs, we are not getting new roles. So you might get a tank that use a hammer or something, but gameplay won't change much. I wouldn't consider this "step two".

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Well you already know it might be the same as always.

tank, dps, healer. I don't see anything other than those being made, we will get a updated better versions of the jobs. just called something different.

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Originally Posted by HeroSamson

Well you already know it might be the same as always.

tank, dps, healer. I don't see anything other than those being made, we will get a updated better versions of the jobs. just called something different.

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Yoshi was asked about this in the last live letter, if we could get more support style roles, and his answer was no, he felt adding in a fourth archetype would make it difficult for new players to comprehend, and we all know that we can't have complex now, because someone that starts to play two years from now will need it to be simple.

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Originally Posted by Deusteele

What is the point of making enmity so important?
Guess what? IT"S NOT!

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I disagree. I don't like the way enmity was handled in this game. Very uninteresting, and very boring and very forgiving. I would rather have to use other ways to protect allies: Cover, Holmgang, CC, ETC rather than flash spam every mob that comes around. Enmity does have its moments of mastery seeing as the enemy list doesn't tell you when you're losing only when you're gaining aggro, so cycling through targets and split rotations is important. But those instances are very few and far between.

You seemed to have skipped a part of that quote.

Enmity has been, and will always be boring and uninteresting. Where and how it's displayed is immaterial. There could be a dozen chocobo's dancing across the screen tell you how much hate you have. And while that would be an interesting sight, it still wouldn't change the fact that enmity is wholly binary and dull, and one of the worst systems to build a trinity around. All it does is punish players for having tanks with L2P problems or tanks that have had poor loot luck.

The issue from which all other issues stem in this game currently is the combat. Because its so oversimplified, he cannot create any depth to encounters, resulting in everything being formulaic. It completely messes up the social aspect of end game by stratifying the community into those that have done the encounter and those that have not. These two groups eventually have conflicting interests and it turns the entire community against itself.

If there is more than one way to tackle an encounter (as in entirely different strategies), then the hard core community would get its replayability and depth its been asking for, while at the same time discouraging the current farm group mentality.

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Originally Posted by Mcshiggs

Yoshi was asked about this in the last live letter, if we could get more support style roles, and his answer was no, he felt adding in a fourth archetype would make it difficult for new players to comprehend, and we all know that we can't have complex now, because someone that starts to play two years from now will need it to be simple.

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Seriously? He's not going to do anything to increase the depth of combat? That's been numero uno on the complaints list from the hard core community. He simply can't address that concern without changing how combat works.

Also, he is basically insulting the intelligence of the people paying for his product and making a self fulfilling prophecy.

Yoshida, if you make a game that panders to the lowest common denominator, you get the lowest denominator. You make a game that respects a persons intelligence, you get intelligent people. Gamers are more than sufficiently intelligent to handle a system with more depth to it. We play games like that all the time. I'm playing Divinity: Original Sin, and I've played both Dragon's Age games; I've also played Path of Exile which has one hell of a customization tree for any given class; And I've played every Final Fantasy to date. If you are not interested in listening to players on the matter, make that clear so we can go someplace else.

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Originally Posted by Fendred

Seriously? He's not going to do anything to increase the depth of combat? That's been numero uno on the complaints list from the hard core community. He simply can't address that concern without changing how combat works.

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http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-Updates/page5
Q48: Are there any plans to implement a new role such as buffer or debuffer?

A48: We will be sticking with our existing roles (Tank, DPS, Healer) for a while. This is mainly because the matching process is much faster and it’s easier to understand for the newer players. While we are not completely ruling this out, we are currently putting an emphasis on making the game easy to understand for the new players that may start playing the game from patch 3.0.

I guess not ruled out entirely, just don't look for it anytime soon.

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Originally Posted by Mcshiggs

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-Updates/page5
Q48: Are there any plans to implement a new role such as buffer or debuffer?

A48: We will be sticking with our existing roles (Tank, DPS, Healer) for a while. This is mainly because the matching process is much faster and it’s easier to understand for the newer players. While we are not completely ruling this out, we are currently putting an emphasis on making the game easy to understand for the new players that may start playing the game from patch 3.0.

I guess not ruled out entirely, just don't look for it anytime soon.

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I don't know how to respond to that. Because that is a really weird thing to say given he's basically got the majority of players from NA, JP, and EU that would be interested in his game. There isn't really a whole lot of potential left to tap here. And the number of subs from PC users are dropping steadily as predicted for an MMORPG of this kind. The same would happen for PS4 users eventually.

They also said comes 3.0(expansion) they are revamping the whole class/job system etc. so we'll have to see how that turns out

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Originally Posted by Barimu

They also said comes 3.0(expansion) they are revamping the whole class/job system etc. so we'll have to see how that turns out

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I'm actually looking forward to it. Even if I kind of exploded like crazy here (and why wouldn't I after I spent some time trying to give suggestions only for someone to quote mine Yoshida purposely to have me explode... gj on that btw...) I actually do like a lot of the game and I want to see it succeed. Hopefully in the coming patches some of the factors contributing to end game hostilities will get fixed and things will become more accessible.

I think adding a new class "Support" will obviously need some combat overhaul so it's understandable that they are still debating it, but adding a class that plays similar to a bard is not that hard I would think. I imagine a Time Mage would be easy to implement since they can dps using skills like Demi or Umbra while buffing the party with Haste, Reflect, etc.