Blue Mage and Summoner responses worry me

[Dyvid]

Rather than talk about balance, its about class feel. A lot of people want summoner to be focused on their summons, which makes sense. Instead, we can't, because its not simple enough. So we get a "summoner" that's more of a "dot'er" with pets tagged on. They aren't willing to move outside of the box at all.

A lot of people feel a lot of things. You can't be surprised that the devs don't want to completely redesign a class simple because a few aren't happy with it.

[Dyvid]

snip.

You get a like because it's rare to find common sense in the forums

[Rex]

OP,

Yoshi-P wants to create a simple game at first, and over time add to the complexity. We can't say for sure what we'll see in the future.

As of right now, he wants all classes and jobs to have a fighting chance. Meaning, if you want to play a certain job, that job has a chance to be included in content, instead of people saying "that job is useless" and never being invited into content. Everything is in a "balance" right now. Mostly.

I guarantee you years from now, the game will be so different, we'll look back at these days and say "wow there was like nothing going on."

[SevValen]

It has been highly contested form the beginning though, and has less basis on the summons, as well as least impressive summons of every final fantasy ever. I know I personally feel they did not meet up to the franchises previous standards of the class is my opinion, but I see more agree to that than not, as well as people who aren't big into FF feeling the pet doesn't add anything.

In any case, arguing about the feel of a summoner isn't my overall points. It's that they wont change it because they refuse to make anything complicated, it all has to be equally simple for every class/job.

That's what you guys get the oh "I want all these old classes to return and nothing new" im tired of seeing the same old classes return over and over in each game. Wheres my gunblade class? Where's my magitek engineer doh class? Where's my mage class that relies on crystals?

[MrSmiley]

For Blue Mage, think about it: the abilities you learned in FFXI made it to where you could, in theory, play just about any role in a party... but you were still a Blue Mage.

Apply this to queuing up for duties, and I'm sure the dilemma is obvious. You would get a BLU in a party, but perhaps they don't have all the skills needed to fill a support slot. Or they only have mitigation/tanking abilities active. Or maybe they hate healing, etc.

If you get a WHM that doesn't want to heal, you... kick them for a healer that is there to heal. Same thing for Warriors that want to DPS, but they have to queue as tanks because of the strict system.

So they would have to adjust EVERYTHING and break the whole system currently in place, just for BLU. Given they have already delayed 2.4 for NIN, I can't imagine how long it would take for them to even get close to having BLU. But I, like others, will wait and hope for that day.

There are ways around it, the system could have changes, not just for BLU but for future classes/jobs as well. For example, the blues role and queue could be determined by their skill set's major statistics (if for example, we used the XI system, which I doubt we would just rip). My point though isn't just for blu in particular, but rather that they have a made a very rigid system that will not budge, and they have (seemingly) no intention of attempting to move forward with it. I understand blu in particular is a more complicated case, but the combination of both answers worries me.

[MrSmiley]

That's what you guys get the oh "I want all these old classes to return and nothing new" im tired of seeing the same old classes return over and over in each game. Wheres my gunblade class? Where's my magitek engineer doh class? Where's my mage class that relies on crystals?

I hope we see new jobs too, maybe he expansion will surprise us. When they make old jobs though, they should try to capture their FF feel.

OP,

Yoshi-P wants to create a simple game at first, and over time add to the complexity. We can't say for sure what we'll see in the future.

As of right now, he wants all classes and jobs to have a fighting chance. Meaning, if you want to play a certain job, that job has a chance to be included in content, instead of people saying "that job is useless" and never being invited into content. Everything is in a "balance" right now. Mostly.

I guarantee you years from now, the game will be so different, we'll look back at these days and say "wow there was like nothing going on."

My worry isn't for the simple game now, but with an expansion coming the responses don't seem to point to adding this complexity later either. We won't really know enough until october, but these responses gave me a sinking feeling regarding if the expansion will really move forward or not.

[Dyvid]

There are ways around it, the system could have changes, not just for BLU but for future classes/jobs as well. For example, the blues role and queue could be determined by their skill set's major statistics (if for example, we used the XI system, which I doubt we would just rip). My point though isn't just for blu in particular, but rather that they have a made a very rigid system that will not budge, and they have (seemingly) no intention of attempting to move forward with it. I understand blu in particular is a more complicated case, but the combination of both answers worries me.

You realize game developers have been trying to find an alternative to the "Trinity" for years with little to no success. Until someone finds something that works it's tank, healer, or dps.

[Dotsusama]

[snip] the combination of both answers worries me.

I feel like one of the faults is that the long-standing MMO tradition of the Holy Trinity (Tank, Healer, DPS) combination is what has boxed them in. Not that I blame them, since it's the easiest way to figure out who should be brought to any fight. But it's been Yoshida's long-time and consistent answer that he doesn't want too many variables such as buffs because it makes playing too complicated and would affect the balance of all encounters.

Maybe they can find a compromise. Make a base class for BLU and then have one branching Job for each kind of role. I have no idea how they'd name them, but that's the least of the issues.

Also, I worry about how they would implement learning new skills. Doing it via job quests is not very exciting, but forming parties to go learn high-level skills without dying to them could be difficult for the other players involved. Like spirit-bonding but for job abilities.

[Magis]

I feel like one of the faults is that the long-standing MMO tradition of the Holy Trinity (Tank, Healer, DPS) combination is what has boxed them in.

I think that's what the OP is getting at. They have simplified the game to just strictly follow that trinity. Not only that, a job cannot even get out of it's pre-define roll even if it had abilities that could go into another one (IE: arcanist), because the DF would refuse to queue them in a non-specified role.

[MrSmiley]

You realize game developers have been trying to find an alternative to the "Trinity" for years with little to no success. Until someone finds something that works it's tank, healer, or dps.

What I am saying is, BLU could be a tank, healer, or dps based on skillset. This is again, "as if" it was a rip of XI system. If the skills they had gave them a heavy VIT focus, they would be marked as a tank, if they had a heavy MND focus, they would be marked and queue as healer.

I feel like one of the faults is that the long-standing MMO tradition of the Holy Trinity (Tank, Healer, DPS) combination is what has boxed them in. Not that I blame them, since it's the easiest way to figure out who should be brought to any fight. But it's been Yoshida's long-time and consistent answer that he doesn't want too many variables such as buffs because it makes playing too complicated and would affect the balance of all encounters.

Maybe they can find a compromise. Make a base class for BLU and then have one branching Job for each kind of role. I have no idea how they'd name them, but that's the least of the issues.

Also, I worry about how they would implement learning new skills. Doing it via job quests is not very exciting, but forming parties to go learn high-level skills without dying to them could be difficult for the other players involved. Like spirit-bonding but for job abilities.

While I feel BLU may indeed be too complicated, what I don't like is that they are going for overall class design, not just role to all be equally simple and contain no difficulty in playing. It's like the gear in this game, there is little thought put into it, you just get higher ilv's you can nitpick some sidegrades with better secondaries but accuracy aside they hardly matter. With classes, there is little depth to playing them and their responses are they have no desire to add any for any class.