1.18 Bittersweet.

[Dreadnought]

did you guys try it out solo before posting in here? I'm solo/duo player myself but I'm not going to complain till I tried it out first so just wanted to see if the opinions in here are from trying the game after the patch out.

If it's really that bad... hope wife don't get disappointed lol.

for someone thats still sticking with his THM, yes it is that bad.
i cant cure nuke or enfeeble well enough to be needed in any groups so far that ive experienced and so far that my LS is telling me.
i can still solo, but soloing leves gives really bad XP and does not change according to the level of the mob. also, you still cannot aoe kill mobs just as before.
to me the game largely feels the same pre patch.

[LuxLex]

Why your opinion is backwards and irrational. Forced partying pigeonholes gameplay into one style. For some reason, some players in these games seem to equate time with challenge. Artificial roadblocks that equate to time as difficult.

Yeah, it is a shame that people don't recognize that time sinks don't equal difficulty.

And that forcing people to party in this day and age will ultimately only hurt the game.

[Dreadnought]

Yeah, it is a shame that people don't recognize that time sinks don't equal difficulty.

And that forcing people to party in this day and age will ultimately only hurt the game.

thank you.

[Aldarin]

So I finally got the update downloaded today, and hopped on to see how the changes went. Overall, the battle system has a much better feel to it that pre-1.18. At the same time however, I found that progressing anywhere takes about 3-4 times as long. I leveled ARC up to 20 before the patch so I was close to the lower dungeon level. So I decide to try the normal options for xp. First stop, leves. Grabbed a few leves for Camp Tranquil, for each leve I earned about 3k xp total, including guardian's aspect. This is compared to the 5-6k I normally got before the patch. so half the experience, not horrible, except that it took twice as long. This was while using second wind and raging strike+bloodbath. I had to wait in between every group of mobs in order to regain health and MP. After this I tried soloing at camp horizon, with a variety of dodo's marmots, and aldgoat nannys ranging from level 16-28. Verdict, while before I could take the lev 24 dodos for about 150sp apiece, now I can only do the same continuous play with the marmots, for about 60sp apiece. Also not great at all. The thing about solo though is, CURES ARE USELESS. Bloodbath and Sacrifice are now equivalent to tier 2 cures, and while they have a long recast, they are far more continuous than any sort of magic healing. The difference being..........Bloodbath wait 30, Second Wind, wait 30, repeat versus, Cure, wait 30, Cure, wait 30, Cure, wait 4 minutes. All in all the increased MP cost makes cures pretty much useless for the DoW classes. Maybe if they had simply doubled the MP costs of cure then everything would be good, and at this point I think SE might want to simply half the MP costs of Cure and Sacrifice.

Anyways, I decide that I'm now done healing myself, lets go do some behest. Get into behest, 6 person party, we have a Gladiator for a tank and a Conj doing healing, and we head off into battle. First battle went badly, no more spamming cures means that only designated tanks can tank. So the first group gets killed and I've now died once, but meh, its a new system, kind-of expected that. Next set of mobs we try something different, I'm sent out to go pull the group back so we don't agro another. Launch my arrow, draw the group back, and the tank takes the marked mob.......except that there are still 2 more mobs that are attacking and they're both focused on me. Normally thats not an issue because the healers had AoE cure, so I was still getting healed, now....not so much. after experimenting with a couple of strategies we finally found one that works, every mob needs it's own designated tank so people don't get killed in seconds. Was thinking at this point that the play style for winning is very similar to FFXI party play at that point, except for the flanking mobs that need targets. So now whenever attacking a group of monsters, one person per monster gets to volunteer to get smacked, and the non-main tank better have heals or they will die. At this point I would just eliminate the groupings of mobs, as there is no way to have a designated tank anymore unless only facing one mob. Anyways, we finish behest and I port back to the crystal, look down to see what my labor has brought me.........800gp and 3k sp.......which is about the same as leves, and for 20minutes is about the same as not doing behest at all. Of course then there is also the fact that you can no longer go into the next behest in 10 minutes, the limit is now 55 minutes before signing up for behest again. What does this mean.....behest is now even less useful, may as well just solo on my own, except that that sucks as well. At this point I simply say screw this and log off.

All in all, some nice points, and then the crap.
+ the new battle system is very nice
+ skillful party play is now encouraged
- solo is now useless
- party play is only effective versus single targets, multiple targets almost guarantees a death in the group
+ some skills have been added, others have been balanced
- THM was utterly owned and some skills have now become useless

All in all, there better be some balancing soon, or playing this game will simply be disheartening.

P.S. my thm is 20, it is not my main, my main is lancer. even I can say that THM was utterly boned in this update.

[Gramul]

Why your opinion is backwards and irrational. Forced partying pigeonholes gameplay into one style. For some reason, some players in these games seem to equate time with challenge. Artificial roadblocks that equate to time as difficult.
This is not 2001 where you have at the most 500,000 players playing graphical MMORPGs. The market is larger, there are quite a few more customers in the market searching for something rational and attainable as a form of entertainment in their free time.

Some people work, and then come home and have families to take care of. Some of these people don't dump all the duties on their spouse(see: not a lazy slob). These people, the average human being, would enjoy to have a form of progression that allows them to enjoy some entertainment in shorter sessions. If to play FFXIV I have to form a group to do just about anything(not saying this is how it is yet, as I haven't experienced the new patch enough), that's time out of my short play session and on top of that unfair to those I form a group with when I must inform them of my departure within 30 minutes of beginning.

P.S. EQ was a bad game.
P.P.S. FFXI was a bad game, and you should feel bad for liking it.

I'm sorry.
I didn't know I had to sacrifice long term goals and challenging gameplay for people who don't even play the game very often. How arrogant and foolish of me to consider a long jouney to a distant reward entertaining. Thank you for making me realize that it's the people who only play the game when they're bored and have a little free time that really matter. I sure was dumb to commit myself to something I enjoyed and you didn't. I'll never make that mistake again.

[LuxLex]

I'm sorry.
I didn't know I had to sacrifice long term goals and challenging gameplay for people who don't even play the game very often. .

People "don't play very often" because the game is almost unplayable to most people.

A game that only appeals to a tiny fragment of fanatics will not pull in enough subscriptions to justify ongoing development.

If the developers can't find a way to make this game fun for normal people, it will be pulled offline or allowed to languish with nary an update for years.

[Cichy]

People "don't play very often" because the game is almost unplayable to most people.

A game that only appeals to a tiny fragment of fanatics will not pull in enough subscriptions to justify ongoing development.

If the developers can't find a way to make this game fun for normal people, it will be pulled offline or allowed to languish with nary an update for years.

Exactly, the game is NOT fun. Logged out yesterday after doing the grand company quests and realizing there still is nothing to strive for and I've had enough till next patch.

[LuxLex]

It really is sad, you know? I had high hopes for this game. I mean, I still want to see the story behind so many things.

Like these towers:

http://www.zam.com/Im/image/181944

I just don't see this game having the kind of mass appeal it needs to keep going if the devs make things less fun than they already are. And that's a shame.

I want to see my fisherman turn into a real (if only supporting class) that has its own intriguing storylines and goals to achieve.

I wanted to learn more about the shadowy dealings of the thaumaturge guild.

But I am not willing to participate in an agonizing grind to get access to these things. And then have nothing left...

[Dreadnought]

Exactly, the game is NOT fun. Logged out yesterday after doing the grand company quests and realizing there still is nothing to strive for and I've had enough till next patch.

yeah me too.
im still stuck saying the game has potential, but there are still so many things that could be fixed including what was supposedly fixed in this patch.
why mus i press enter after highlighting a mob in order to scroll through my bars? cant i just highlight a mob and start scrolling if im in active/battle mode?....

[Cichy]

It really is sad, you know? I had high hopes for this game. I mean, I still want to see the story behind so many things.

Like these towers:

http://www.zam.com/Im/image/181944

I just don't see this game having the kind of mass appeal it needs to keep going if the devs make things less fun than they already are. And that's a shame.

I want to see my fisherman turn into a real (if only supporting class) that has its own intriguing storylines and goals to achieve.

I wanted to learn more about the shadowy dealings of the thaumaturge guild.

But I am not willing to participate in an agonizing grind to get access to these things. And then have nothing left...

Same here, I was excited for possibility of playing a Blacksmith and having my own dealings in the world without necessarily part taking in combat. I thought they will make those classes interesting by providing their own missions, quests, guild assignments, etc, etc. However, we know Yoshi is already destroying those classes so that's done.

As far as agonizing grind goes I guess many wouldn't mind if there was a proper environment in which you could grind. But there isnt, leves give low sp, behest timer is at 55 min now and that gives crappy sp also, there is no search party option. Even if you have a party the placement of mobs in this game is so weird and unintuitive that it's a nightmare to find a proper camp. Once you're in a camp, gameplay is still clumsy and engaging/switching mobs is another headache.
If you're by yourself you can go solo some random mobs in the middle of nowhere which is also super boring.