ARR often feels very contradictory in its design (long)

[NefGP]

@ OP: And this is why FFXI's job system is still the best of any MMO ever, bar none. The only thing that really made it horrible was the fact that XI had so many skills and if your main job lacked the skills your subjob offered natively (for example WAR doesn't have Elemental Magic) then any abilities related to those skills were also cut in their usefulness severely; A WAR/WHM would not only suffer from half the spells that a WHM main would, but half of the skill too making the added support rather pointless. FFXIV fixed this by ditching the whole notion of skill levels entirely which would give players loads more freedom using XI's system (not to mention that each job could use multiple weapon types as well as weapon skills in addition to spells, not just 1 or the other)


At least in 1.0 under the old armory system you could much more freely mix & match skills and even traits - under the current system there's absolutely no room for creativity whatsoever unlike say Dragoon/Blue Mage in XI which was something of an oddball combination at first glance but a surprisingly potent soloer in action. It continues to amaze me how YP has ignored virtually everything that was GOOD about XI. No one here wants another rehashing of XI with pretty HD textures (though that would be cool) - we all appreciate having a new game and a new world to play in, we just feel like they tossed out the good along with the bad in the process.

[Jubez187]

^THIS

I actually get the impression that most of the devs don't actually play.. they just kinda make stuff up and throw it at us. A lot of incoherence and nonsense in the game systems.

Like seriously though, it could be sick if I could cross class lancer combos and stuff. I do only get 5 skills to cross class, so it's not like anyone would be able to make super soldiers. Or even if they confined it to only secondary and tertiary classes, at least let us cross class the whole combos.

[Beetle]

For them to fix these issues they really need to throw alot of money and development into this game.
Would it pay off? Hell Yes. Would flock more players to play this game & for much longer period. This game feels short ended already this far into the game. Mainly because everything is easy and is handed to you with ease.

Many things that are wrong with the games design for a MMO. This game feels more made for a single player.

[Beetle]

List is quite huge, everything from classes/jobs to crafting to world design to enemies to dungeons to exp...

They need to some how fix the EXP giveaways & item giveaways. This would be first thing you would do is slow down players progression of zerging through your content.
Next is adding content that be enjoyed and also takes awhile toget to such as lv50+ Crafting guildquests. Takes you awhile to reach lv50 & would have more content after you get to 50. This also can go with lv35+ class quests and Job quests.

Slowing down progression is needed for this game badly. Already got that for dailys but there is no real reward at the end of those. Maybe bring back grand Company Rank and seal grinding for rank ups like in 1.22~

[Davionx]

Game doesn't have everything so its a failure. Ok. Bye.

[Parodine]

^Did you even read the post? *sigh*

Honestly, I agree with everything. I've been enjoying the game, but I do feel like the direction could be so much better. And like the materia/dye aspect was mentioned...you know how much I would love to have Dyeable Acolyte or Infantry gear? *drools*

[Nenin]

I'm sure it has been pointed out already but this recent PvP implementation is completely incompatible with the armory system. How it made it through alpha testing in this state is beyond me.



I'm not talking about balance issues like SMN/SCH/MRD being far better in all situations than their counterparts. I'm not even talking about their unfathomable decision to ignore the proven system of spell pushback and opt for IMMEDIATE spell interruption upon receiving ANY direct damage (yes ANYthing, a pet auto attacking you when you're at 3.9s out of a 4s Flare cast cancels it instantly), or their decision to make CC last the full duration in PvP, or their decision to make Miasma the only ability in the entire game whose effects (healing debuff + snare) stack with other healing debuffs and snares (It is also unaffected by Tempered Will), or their failure to realize that simply spamming jump makes you nigh-invincible by screwing with positional checks.




What I'm talking about is how the PvP points you accumulate by ranking up, and then spend to unlock essential PvP abilities, are shared across ALL JOBS AND CLASSES.

Let's use myself as an example. I've played hundreds of arenas as BLM and naturally I've dumped all the rewards into the same job. I recently got PLD to 50 and although I'd love to try it out for a change of pace, I can't. If I switch to PLD and queue up for a game I have no PvP abilities and I will never get any. OK, I have some, but they are all from BLM and are thus unusable by PLD. I don't mean they suck coming from a PLD, I mean they cannot be used by a PLD period. I can't even start as a Rank 1 PLD and re-grind all the PvP points I earned as BLM because once spent, they are permanently stuck in that ability.

Technically there are two ways of resetting those points but you'd have to be batsh!t crazy to do either one. The first is I could switch my Grand Company and start back at Rank 1. However, doing so would also erase all the points i spent in BLM, leaving me with two equally useless jobs until I grinded all the way back up to my previous rank. GC can only be changed once a month as well, meaning I couldn't even go back to BLM for 30 days if I decided that I hated PLD anyway.

The other is I could buy an item from a PvP vendor to refund my points. Great! So why not do that? Because it costs about 5,000 wolf marks. If I wanted to buy one, put all my points into PLD, and then 'respec' back to BLM that would cost roughly 10,000 wolf marks. If the queue times were instant (lol) and I queued up nonstop while winning 100% of my games extremely quickly (2 mins per game + 1 min pregame) it would still take me 10 hours without a pee break to get 10,000 wolf marks. More realistic numbers for the average player are 5 mins between games, 3.5 minute durations, and a 50% win ratio. At that rate you're looking at an unbelievable 53 hours of back-to-back queueing with no breaks.


I can hear the fanboys screaming now, "YOSHI ALREADY POSTED ABOUT IT!". Yes, he vaguely referenced PvP items having their cost reexamined sometime in January. FFXIV has never missed a tentative deadline before so I've got complete confidence that these changes will occur in a timely fashion.

[KoujiGeki]

I'm sure it has been pointed out already but this recent PvP implementation is completely incompatible with the armory system. How it made it through alpha testing in this state is beyond me.



I'm not talking about balance issues like SMN/SCH/MRD being far better in all situations than their counterparts. I'm not even talking about their unfathomable decision to ignore the proven system of spell pushback and opt for IMMEDIATE spell interruption upon receiving ANY direct damage (yes ANYthing, a pet auto attacking you when you're at 3.9s out of a 4s Flare cast cancels it instantly), or their decision to make CC last the full duration in PvP, or their decision to make Miasma the only ability in the entire game whose effects (healing debuff + snare) stack with other healing debuffs and snares (It is also unaffected by Tempered Will), or their failure to realize that simply spamming jump makes you nigh-invincible by screwing with positional checks.




What I'm talking about is how the PvP points you accumulate by ranking up, and then spend to unlock essential PvP abilities, are shared across ALL JOBS AND CLASSES.

Let's use myself as an example. I've played hundreds of arenas as BLM and naturally I've dumped all the rewards into the same job. I recently got PLD to 50 and although I'd love to try it out for a change of pace, I can't. If I switch to PLD and queue up for a game I have no PvP abilities and I will never get any. OK, I have some, but they are all from BLM and are thus unusable by PLD. I don't mean they suck coming from a PLD, I mean they cannot be used by a PLD period. I can't even start as a Rank 1 PLD and re-grind all the PvP points I earned as BLM because once spent, they are permanently stuck in that ability.

Technically there are two ways of resetting those points but you'd have to be batsh!t crazy to do either one. The first is I could switch my Grand Company and start back at Rank 1. However, doing so would also erase all the points i spent in BLM, leaving me with two equally useless jobs until I grinded all the way back up to my previous rank. GC can only be changed once a month as well, meaning I couldn't even go back to BLM for 30 days if I decided that I hated PLD anyway.

The other is I could buy an item from a PvP vendor to refund my points. Great! So why not do that? Because it costs about 5,000 wolf marks. If I wanted to buy one, put all my points into PLD, and then 'respec' back to BLM that would cost roughly 10,000 wolf marks. If the queue times were instant (lol) and I queued up nonstop while winning 100% of my games extremely quickly (2 mins per game + 1 min pregame) it would still take me 10 hours without a pee break to get 10,000 wolf marks. More realistic numbers for the average player are 5 mins between games, 3.5 minute durations, and a 50% win ratio. At that rate you're looking at an unbelievable 53 hours of back-to-back queueing with no breaks.


I can hear the fanboys screaming now, "YOSHI ALREADY POSTED ABOUT IT!". Yes, he vaguely referenced PvP items having their cost reexamined sometime in January. FFXIV has never missed a tentative deadline before so I've got complete confidence that these changes will occur in a timely fashion.

i laughed
/10char

[SolArisa]

From how everyone described 1.23, it seem to have been a really good "classic mmo" direction the game was going, fixing the problems with the earlier 1.0. I regret not rejoining at that time, I never got the news about how much the update changed things. What's weird is this update was under Yoshi, yes? What was with the sudden change in direction if both were made by the same person?

That's easy to explain.

1.0 was a broken game he had to fix. First priority: Keep people playing to minimize the loss. So he chose to listen to his customers and fulfill their expectations. And thus 1.23 became good and fulfilling.

2.x is a game he could create to his wishes. First priority: Save the brand, please the stack holders. Second priority: Cerate a game he likes to play himself (And don't forget that he has zero to none FF experience, he never got involved in a FF game nor played XI). So he listens to the marketing people and fulfills their and his own expectations. And thus 1.0 became what it is now.

Yoshi-P did his job. Now would be the time to pay him a gratification and replace him.

[synaesthetic]

There's a reason why "good classic MMOs" like XIV 1.23 don't exist anymore.

They don't make money in 2014.