I guess it's time

[Velhart]

>_> Main pup since it came out and believe it or not, I was actually allowed to come pup for pretty much all of the relevant endgame(sky, sea, einherjar, salvage etc) so... lol And currently in XI, it's even easier for a pup to get in since they're able to tank just as well if not better than pld. My experience in 11 years of playing XI, if you didn't suck thal's balls at your job and were decently geared and didn't have half the server hating you, chances are, people would still invite you to things.

I never said no group/LS let a PUP in. I said PUP was looked down upon by the community and most definitely last in line or not even invited to parties. Sure you can put one in. Sure you can succeed with one. At the time though, pretty much every job could outperform you and bring more to the table. Not knocking on your choice for PUP, its just the example I give to prove SE did a poor job balancing.

And that's why we can play every job on the same character >_> It's not like leveling is hard in XIV, people have been known to go 1-50 in under 2 days and if you actually put effort into it, you can go 50-60 in less than a week. If someone really wanted to get content done that required a certain element that only a few jobs have, they'd make the effort to level that job and use it. Right now, it doesn't really matter what job you come in XIV, everything is just so bland and whether you have 4 mnks, 4 drg, 4 nin or a mixture of those in a pt, theres really no difference at all. That's another reason why content is so dumbed down in XIV, they're trying too hard to make everything balanced which ends up creating boring content.

All is well on the armory system, but simply having a job at 60 does not mean you are optimal for a party. You are ultimately focusing on one job to get gear for and that is your preference in a raid situation. Also, each job plays differently from one another and yes they do in fact have a large learning curve to be optimal in DPS/heal/tanking if you are actually serious about the game. Sure you can go in casual content and just hit the 1 button, but you are being carried by others.

Let me ask, what makes an elemental system so interesting? Ohh hes weak to fire? Wear fire armor and bring BLM's to cast fire. That is interesting? Different strokes, different folks.

Nothing about the jobs makes them stand out, which is pretty boring in a mmo. How would you feel if you bought an rpg that boasted "20+ different classes to pick from!" and when you actually got into it, you realized they're all exactly the same, just different names? Pretty boring, right?

Again, no job in this game plays exactly like one another. They may have similar roles, but how you execute them is very different. Ask a WHM who has never played SCH to jump on and be just as efficient healing that in raiding as a WHM. Ask a BRD to play MCH for the first time and see if he can pump as much DPS.

Formulas? I mean, I feel like the only two formulas worth considering is Spell Speed and Skill Speed. Beyond those two, everything else is pretty cut and dry, not even worth noting much. Your secondary stats aren't exactly worth racking your head over. No need to make them sound -that- complex when in reality it is far from it. The only ones I see having any complexity in stat building are healers for DPSing purposes in raiding...which perhaps 80-90% of the population doesn't delve too deep in that aspect. The mechanics we've seen aren't exactly new ones. You could fumble your rotations on most of the content and still complete it because most of the content doesn't require you to -perfect- it to the T. Just do mechanics so you don't stress your healers as much. As long as your healer and tank are competent, they could actually carry most of the group.

Ever heard of complexity through the content itself? Depth should lie in content, not how much you have to manage your gear outside the content.

A Samurai example? That's nice. XI's complexity(Samurai anyway) didn't derive solely from sitting there and getting TP to WS. It came from your gear setups and equipment swapping. You can be that Samurai who's just doing 8-10 hit builds, in turn doing terrible overall damage. Or you can be that Samurai with 5 hit builds. All depending on the gear you had available. But funny enough, just because you could achieve a 5 Hit Build doesn't mean it was the best thing because your speed/accuracy/attack could suffer just from stacking Store TP only.

I played SAM for 10 years, I know how it works. You are proving my point that battle systems are more than you make them out to be. I never said FFXI's systems were not complex necessarily. I said they complexity is heavily flawed and was pointing out you can go into content in that game only doing the minimal amount just like FFXIV and most games.

Was the mob actions something to be concerned about? Not to the degree of XIV, but there are some fights that did require you to do more than just "sit there and spam WS".

A lot of difficulty in FFXI was how much you were gated from trying again. Not saying FFXI was not hard (my god AV/PW), but if the bosses had the same level accessibility that ARR currently had, content in that game would be destroyed quickly. I won't really compare the difficulty differences between the two because the approach is different enough that it is hard to compare.

Were you even around when Gordias and Astrologian first came to be? Do you remember the thousands of threads saying Astrologian was inferior to White Mage? Yes, this was a thing. A lot of people didn't take Astrologian because it "couldn't keep up". Now that is to say that the content wasn't impossible with one. People proved otherwise. But it put stress on the other players, more than what was necessary. Players opted to go WHM/SCH because it is that easier and safer. AST have been excluded back then. However, I'll let you have this one since you said "currently" after tons of changes and balances. Though I still don't see where you're seeing the exclusion of anything. I'm not really trying to be "blind" to prove a point because I remember LolDRG being a staple as I was one. There is ALWAYS going to be something more beneficial. Nothing gets "excluded" unless you're dealing with a ignorant player. Those exist everywhere. So I apologize your experiences differ so greatly from my own and it seems someone else in the thread disagrees as well.

Yes I was. That is the nature of new jobs. Either come in incredibly OP, or come in very gimp. I apologize if I came off saying FFXIV was not immune to this. Both MCH and AST had issues and DRK some to an extent. Its either people don't know how to play the job, or a major oversight by the developers. How long did it take though? A cycle at worst? Difference with them is they focused on making them balance out as soon as they could. Jobs like PUP sat for -years- with barely getting touched and just now found some relevancy after 10+ years of it's existence because they couldn't properly balance the job with the systems in place. They dug themselves a hole. At least ARR's system that can manage because they are set on simpler stat/potency allocations. It actually makes my point more valid that people are quick to ditch a job if it doesn't bring much to the table. That is a system people apparently want back.

While elemental wheel and skill chains were quite complex in their own right, I disagree it was the only thing. Perhaps I don't see a real issue with the BLM's ability to do spike damage for their MP cost. If anything, I'd look over some Melee numbers because the number of WS they could put out was far greater DoT than what BLM was capable of. Though End Game was far different because you didn't necessarily want too many people feeding TP.

FFXI were strategic fights. I won't ever argue that. The issue I am talking about is job balance. Job balance was absolutely horrifying.

To each their own. But never once did I ask for "change it to XI's battle system". Only that I ask for more depth because the rotations from each job are so simple that it doesn't require much thought. Again, outside of MCH which is you at RNG's mercy. I suppose BLM is a fair example depending on the pace of the fight.

It does have depth. Content itself is the depth. Why do people believe things like element wheels and 50 different stat allocations for 50 different situations is depth? Its needless complexity and the depth of the content itself suffers for it. Successful games to me are ones that can make very in depth content while keeping the system simple. Please look to Super Mario Bros. for an example. Weird example but its a good example of letting content be the depth.

As someone else mentioned...Palace of the Dead is a good concept. But I don't hold my expectations high because of how the game rewards its players. It's going to be nothing more than glamour because everyone has to be on equal footing. We can't make this content "mandatory". Clear it once. What incentive do you have to go back in? "For the fun of it"? Sure. If that floats your boat, then power to you.

That seems like a different topic. Go offer your feedback that it should be more rewarding if it ends up not being so. Not saying ARR is perfect, it has enough issues for me to write a novel, but not so much that I completely tear it down and put a worse system up.