Give me challenge and give me death...

Most of my daily activities in FFXIV are extremely routine and boring: My friends and I get the same few leves we got two days before, we instantly teleport to one of the two same camps where we've been ranking up for the last five weeks, and we kill the same mobs one after the other. I can't recall, the last time any of us died, or were--even in the remotest sense-- in danger. There are at least 4 of us healing at every run (people of several classes, not only DoM) but most of the many cure spells spammed heal only a few HP, if any at all. This happens, because there's little need for anything in the rich array of abilities we all have learnt and equipped, the monsters are so weak! Plus, the spells take so long to cast, most of them die on our staves and wands without ever hitting the foe they were destined for. Not a thought ever crosses about enfeebling, draining stats, crowd control, or support.

We do this with about 6 different leves, but the process is the same all the time. Most of the party members don't bother anymore to cast, or use special abilities, since the mobs die so quickly. We're given 30 minutes to fulfill all objectives in a leve, but the game manages to make us use anything close to that amount of time only rarely. And this always by means of having us run back and forth from one end of a maze-like cave to the other, in search of identical (and identically-behaving) waves of foes again, and again. Most of the time is used in running, only a small fraction in actual combat. This could've been fun if we had had to perform this exercise a couple of times, but I've been doing this levequest almost daily for months, no end. We all have... for all of our classes. I now curse as I run through that cave.

I'm aware of the extensive redesign of the battle system currently underway, and I'm hopeful the new development team will take combat excitement all the way to where it should've been from day one. But sometimes I fret...

It's my opinion that mobs die too quickly and the pace of combat is much too fast; this is combined with buffs and abilities whose cool-off period clocks all too slowly. I'm sure this is evident enough, but I'm afraid the dev. team might think the corrective measures to take here have to do with accelerating the abilities and spell clocks. I happen to think this would be one step further towards trivializing combat and blurring the sense of cooperation and collective endeavor that every battle, at least in my mind, should become. In precipitous, breakneck, rushed combat, only those people who seem to have a compulsion to kill anything and kill it fast are satisfied. Even with a streamlined, swift, mouse-based combat interface, that type of battle tends to be perfunctory and far from gratifying to most Final Fantasy fans.

I would like to find out how many of you, out there, are for rich, dense, exhilarating combat in which the exhilaration does not come from breakneck speed, but rather challenging AI, surprising variations and unexpected turns that keep you on your toes, at a speed which allows for maneuvers and corrections, but still keeps you panting for breath. Battles in which there's a syncopated, jaunty rhythm to the participation of the party members, but plenty of time for all to do their thing, to feel we're all contributing something. I certainly would like to be able to use, at least once on a levequest, that ancient magic spell that takes so many seconds to cast, and finish casting before the mob is dead. To the developers I say: Please, don't solve this by making the spell cast faster.

Your thoughts...

I'm tired so I won't go into detail, but basically you hit the nail on the head. I definately am not a fan of fast battles and fast cooldowns. It makes all the moves feel trivial, instead of being built up to. I hate the way most mmorpgs have turned mages into archers. Spells should take longer to cast the higher their level, and give the tank a true job. In fantasy, everyone knows the knight protects the mage in order to give the mage time to cast anawesome spell.

Mobs don't die too quickly.

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Originally Posted by Amsai

I'm tired so I won't go into detail, but basically you hit the nail on the head. I definately am not a fan of fast battles and fast cooldowns. It makes all the moves feel trivial, instead of being built up to. I hate the way most mmorpgs have turned mages into archers. Spells should take longer to cast the higher their level, and give the tank a true job. In fantasy, everyone knows the knight protects the mage in order to give the mage time to cast anawesome spell.

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In fantasy, everyone knows that the knight doesn't press a "provoke" button that sends a giant red orb flying in the face of the target to get its attention either.

Basically everything with FF battle system is retarded.

My point being that there are many things that trivialise "combat" in FFXIV, and many of which aren't even related to the rapidity of battle pace.

I agree alot of the mobs die too quickly, however my leve group generally has the diffculty up above the point where we can just kill mobs within a few seconds and in instances they mobs even one or two shot our mages , but obviously sometimes the diffculty when you bump it up can sometimes end up making the battles alot harder than you would of thought, our group has a few deaths every run due to the diffculty being realistic to our capability, i dont know if you have it up on 5 stars all the time and thats not enough. But there is still alot of mob types even if you have the difficulty scaled correctly enough to suit your party such as Insect type mobs for example that have the hp very low, a mob like the zombie Pikeman/mages i would say have a good balence if your scaled correctly for your party , they have both good hp and offenive capabilitys and can wipe out a party if your mages arnt careful with they're hate and distance from they're breath attacks.
Theres no question there needs some serious balencing still and the difficultys made a bit clearer instead of what they have been labeled as currently, you can still get some challenge but even if you do ramp up the difficulty there are none or neglidgeable difference's in the Sp difference as we notice whenever we need to tone the Stars down on a leve, so there needs to be some incentive as well as balencing, I can also atest to even just using simple Scourge II spells and not even managing to get that off before a mob may be dead.

Um, you do know there are three cities, with up to six camps for the level range you are at?

And it isn't clear what you are suggesting. Are you looking for different AI types among the same monster?

Ok.

(You can have this.) (Death)

I think no matter what SE do we'll always be playing the UI not the Game. Even with the new battle system that we've n doubt overhyped.

I agree 100% with you, OP. Routine in itself (that is to say, spamming leves) wouldn't be so bad if combat was not so damn boring. Seriously I do the same thing on almost every mob: Light Stab, Sentinel + Outmaneuver, Phalanx II and Weapon Skills. That's my basic cycle for leves and while I sometimes use other stuff, it's just not fun at all.

That's what they're working on when they said they're trying to fix the battle system and add class uniqueness. You can't have difficulty and strategy with a broken combat system and classes that are practically identical to the next.

The first and better step was to limit party sizes, so they have a definitive number on how many players they work with in an encounter.

IMO one of the most interesting mob we are fighting all the time in leves are moles. Its one of the very few mobs that people need to keep focus on when it goes underground and then poping out doing massive aoe. Doing those leves with high ranking stars for your party level can be real challenging, forcing people to "move out of the way" (something we rarely need to do in this game), or trying to control your enmity since they can do they're aoe in the middle of casters and usually killing a couple of em in one shot.

This again force people to use more tactics and vary abilities like chainspell + stoneskin (fast one shot prevention) for low HP members or my favorite as a caster : featherfoot (giving a very high boost to evade), saved my butt countless of times.

Need more fights like this where you need to move and not just stay in one spot doing nuke nuke nuke, also they need to bring back "mob linking". In a leve/behest if you pull a group and another mob from the same leve is too close to em it will make his group aggro too, bringing back the "puller" job kinda. But with this idea they should remove that dumb 1 group claim limit.

Go fight Great Buffalo.

So every XI player is aware of a very basic Qufim party right?

In there even though you've grinded in one spot for hours you still have to keep an eye out for goblins and the position of the sun as the ghosts come out during the night. Also you have to make a careful run for mobs that complete the page and change areas when everybody has completed a page. To achieve this a good leader knows that the best time to move between the lake and the books is when the skeletons are not out.

While I was grinding my BLM I suddenly realized "DAMN in XI this is one of the most mundane tasks but in XIV NONE, I repeat NONE of the fights get this interesting and require such knowledge of the surroundings and enemies."

Don't you just love it when you're in pug alley and suddenly a panicked player runs through trying to make it to the zone line with a skeleton on it's back and everybody in the party has a sudden moment of horror wishing that the noob in question won't die in the middle of their grind spot?

Moments like that in XIV please.

Also the honorable mentions go to:

The aggroing bats and goblins in Valkrum.

Almost everything about the broken down mine of horror.

Rare occurrence of spook near the tomb.

Horrifying difficulty and the enchanting beauty of Caderva's Mire when soloing the PUP quest.

Come on guys! Emergent gameplay; look it up SE!

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Originally Posted by gifthorse

In fantasy, everyone knows that the knight doesn't press a "provoke" button that sends a giant red orb flying in the face of the target to get its attention either.

Basically everything with FF battle system is retarded.

My point being that there are many things that trivialise "combat" in FFXIV, and many of which aren't even related to the rapidity of battle pace.

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You sure picked out some odd example to back up your point? While seeming to miss mine. About the provoke thing?? Who frickin cares. Your point is retarded. And what about mages being archers? You are ok with that? How can you be? FFXI at least did that right. Its the ballance of having super damaging spells and weak defense, they must take a long time

It's almost impossible for there to be death or danger, or qufim/valkurm line trains/aggro in this game because mobs leash after you autorun for 10 seconds -_-

You can't even kite stuff as a mage, which was really hard to do, especially if the mob was immune to bind/sleep/gravity, and was fun. Why is something challenging + fun BAD? You can't do anything cool, unique, or fun in this combat system. It's skill cap and ceiling is below the floor, it's so simple, and there's nothing fun to be had with it. I'm not exactly sure why they thought completely destroying all attempts of kiting was a good idea, but it just shows another example of extreme things they've done because they're scared of stuff.

Can't kite because they're scared of people solo/duoing hard NM's, gil is handed out like candy because they're afraid of RMT, MW's exist because they're afraid of RMT, SP caps at +10 because they're afraid of astral burns/PLVL(yet PLVLing is even easier in this current system, odd). So many stupid things they've done just because they're afraid of things from FF11, making this game a ton worse and horrible in so many ways.

I really wish this game would get harder, but without completely revamping everything in the game(redesigning the game completely) I don't see how they could do this. So I hope, I really do, that they completely redesign everything combat/terrain/monster/player related.

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Originally Posted by Amsai

You sure picked out some odd example to back up your point? While seeming to miss mine. About the provoke thing?? Who frickin cares. Your point is retarded. And what about mages being archers? You are ok with that? How can you be? FFXI at least did that right. Its the ballance of having super damaging spells and weak defense, they must take a long time

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What I am saying is not beside the point. What I'm saying is that your suggested solution would still be a problem.

By and large, FF's "combat" is utterly trivial regardless of pacing. This is purely because the so-called tactics you hold in such high esteem are usually implemented so unrealistically and unengagingly and are tantamount to a math equation rather than a fight.

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Originally Posted by Shiyo

It's almost impossible for there to be death or danger, or qufim/valkurm line trains/aggro in this game because mobs leash after you autorun for 10 seconds -_-

You can't even kite stuff as a mage, which was really hard to do, especially if the mob was immune to bind/sleep/gravity, and was fun. Why is something challenging + fun BAD? You can't do anything cool, unique, or fun in this combat system. It's skill cap and ceiling is below the floor, it's so simple, and there's nothing fun to be had with it. I'm not exactly sure why they thought completely destroying all attempts of kiting was a good idea, but it just shows another example of extreme things they've done because they're scared of stuff.

Can't kite because they're scared of people solo/duoing hard NM's, gil is handed out like candy because they're afraid of RMT, MW's exist because they're afraid of RMT, SP caps at +10 because they're afraid of astral burns/PLVL(yet PLVLing is even easier in this current system, odd). So many stupid things they've done just because they're afraid of things from FF11, making this game a ton worse and horrible in so many ways.

I really wish this game would get harder, but without completely revamping everything in the game(redesigning the game completely) I don't see how they could do this. So I hope, I really do, that they completely redesign everything combat/terrain/monster/player related.

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Wow, you really hate this game. ^-^ Makes me question why you play. It must have been a nightmare getting your archer to 50...considering you want a completely different game and dislike all aspects of this current one. There is just no reasoning with you. because you don't want Final Fantasy XIV, you want something completely different, lol. ^-^;