Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW!

[Masekase_Hurricane]

Everyone's taste will vary on this. Non-stop button mashing and dancing is not my idea of a fun fight. While XI's combat is slower, the fights were still incredibly fun and challenging. Definitely required more team work to pull off, which is a plus IMO.

Wasn't just the fights actually getting to them was a challenge in itself. No map unless you found it, True sight/hearing mobs, random Notorious monster spawning whilst trying to level, going through an area that was way above your level to get to a destination and no running unless you are a thief. You want your basic artefact gear go look for it/fight for it, you want next set of levels go unlock them.

lol just to unlock chocobo u had to take the death walk and hope u lived getting to the main city, travelling 3 zones with many of the mobs being able to 1 shot you. Then you had zones that was a complete maze to navigate with or without the map (if you could even locate the map).

I also miss the friends on 11 I invited people to my linkshell because I had a laugh with them. In 14 you invite people to your company cause u want to get stuff done and hopefully become friends.

The community in a way was better very few gave up regardless if it was their first attempt or 10th killing a boss. Lol sometimes whole party had weakness and would just throw bodies at the mob, while some healed up just to stop someone else taking it.

These are the stuff I miss non instanced filler. FFXIV is just DF and FATE with a load of beautiful zones under used. Everything SE is making atm is just to drag it out to the next patch it's not even interesting it's just the same thing over and over again.

Not sure who makes the seasonal events either but if their only idea is "oh lets put it in a FATE" needs fired. As for classes I am not sure why you give us such a choice, then only be able to max out a couple between patches. Fine adding more classes but damn increase the lore from 450 a week and weekly limits at the very least to 2 drops.

As for the weekly limits on red scrips,lore,savage,Weeping City and Alex they are way too low for the amount of classes. We wouldn't need all these weekly limits if people could max many classes (I don't expect all but at least 25% of them would be nice), also the DF would benefit from more people leveling up/grinding tomes, instead of just doing lore etc on Tuesday and then not seen again for another week.

I still like 14 but I can see why many friends have left and got tired of the game.

[Jynx]

So did the original developers. Remind me how that went?

Tanaka has been quoted saying he was pressured to make FFXIV as different from XI as possible and that's why the game wound up lackluster. So they really didn't try to make XI-2...

[Nicolepwned]

As for classes I am not sure why you give us such a choice, then only be able to max out a couple between patches. Fine adding more classes but damn increase the lore from 450 a week and weekly limits at the very least to 2 drops.

As for the weekly limits on red scrips,lore,savage,Weeping City and Alex they are way too low for the amount of classes. We wouldn't need all these weekly limits if people could max many classes (I don't expect all but at least 25% of them would be nice), also the DF would benefit from more people leveling up/grinding tomes, instead of just doing lore etc on Tuesday and then not seen again for another week.

I've always thought that having class-specific tome lockouts (albeit probably lowered, so like 200 Tomes per class each lockout) would make more sense. One of XIV's selling factors is the versatile class swapping system junk. Having recently gotten almost all my battle classes to 60, I'm feeling this hardcore.

[Sandpark]

Button mashing to me = non-stop pressing of buttons, regardless if there is a rotation or not. In XIV you are expected to keep up your rotation and fill spare moments with off-GCD abiliites while dancing around to non-stop AoEs. This is not fun to me, but as I said, everyone's taste varies.

I agree on what button mashing means in that sense. They couldn't slow down the constant presses here though because of the GCD. People already complain it's slower than WoW or other GCD games. Other than server issues, high cost MP/TP skills could slow down enough with GCD removal but it won't happen.

[Skivvy]

I've always thought that having class-specific tome lockouts (albeit probably lowered, so like 200 Tomes per class each lockout) would make more sense. One of XIV's selling factors is the versatile class swapping system junk. Having recently gotten almost all my battle classes to 60, I'm feeling this hardcore.

That right there would give players more freedom when playing, and I can only hope they bring this into the game. The lockouts killed off my desire to play multiple jobs ages ago.

[Shurrikhan]

I agree on what button mashing means in that sense. They couldn't slow down the constant presses here though because of the GCD. People already complain it's slower than WoW or other GCD games. Other than server issues, high cost MP/TP skills could slow down enough with GCD removal but it won't happen.

At a 2.5 GCD, you'd have to weaving an average of two oGCDs for every three GCDs to make the apm (actions per minute) comparative to WoW's.

Fun little sidenote: WoW has no invasive animations for most oGCDs, even attaching "can be cast while casting" to the tooltips of most, so it doesn't generally have to "weave" a damn thing", and its GCD animations are usually limited to a single swing or thrust, as thus restricted, according to Blizzard, by its short GCD (1.5s - Haste for most classes, or 1.0s - Haste for DKs).

Channeled, charged, and GCD-skill cooldowns (without any ever-useful filler remaining) all slow down the action rate, but XIV has none of these (even EA, the only CDed weaponskill, is optimally used as a pure oGCD). That's every bit as at "fault" for the high (by which I really mean average, compared to most MMOs other than XI) button-press rate.

All the GCD really does is give a new mechanic to watch out for ("weave"), one I think most double-weave classes tend to enjoy... as long as their ping doesn't prevent them from making use of it.

You could technically go the other way and make macros wholly supported, at least for appropriately queuing weaponskills while manually supplying your GCDs in between. You could even toss "Gambits" in.
...Theoretically. I'm not so sure the community would be appreciative of the latter gesture especially.

Personally I wouldn't give a damn if someone wanted to just press Full Thrust (m) once to have all three combo skills go off in order, and just spend their time between picking their target for each, moving, and using their oGCDs. I wouldn't even mind if the game would allow you to move short distances automatically, on toggle or macro option, to stay in range of your melee target rather than losing a bit of uptime for not creeping forward as silly tanks spin or nudge mob packs about. Even if they macroed the whole DRG rotation down with blank slots for WT or F&C, at least they still have to pick which of the two came up, their oGCD order, and when to Geirskogul. They wouldn't exactly be losing out on tactical value. Though they might mistime something a manual player would not have if they're not at least as careful.

[Sandpark]

@Shurrikhan
I don't think most here would like combat to slow down to XI levels, I wouldn't mind it either way. I don't want to go back to auto attack, but I also don't like the fast action combat associated with exuberant amounts of button presses especially as more and more skills get added. I would like see control and weight or momentum have a place here which my idea you read previously on gives me away.

I know Dark Souls combat would not work in an mmo but it has the pacing I like most. Cerebral by the moment versus cerebral when learning then movesets then full blinding action speed God Of War mode. With a note on weight not hampering movement or counters by much, I want to see less global robotic mechanics from enemy AI and have more, I don't even know the right word? AI changing on circumstances?

My combo does punishing damage a few times, the monster gets wind of my rotation, and then bam! It catches me off guard and does something differently.

[Khalithar]

That right there would give players more freedom when playing, and I can only hope they bring this into the game. The lockouts killed off my desire to play multiple jobs ages ago.

After they added the whole specialist system as a means of reducing the power of omni-crafters and the way the drop systems are, it is my belief that the devs genuinely want us to only ever focus on 1-2 classes at most with having a bunch of them leveled just letting you switch to a new class when the ilevel goes up if you want (by reducing the cap on the old tomestones to let you gear it up quickly by grinding dungeons).

[Shurrikhan]

@Shurrikhan
I don't think most here would like combat to slow down to XI levels, I wouldn't mind it either way. I don't want to go back to auto attack, but I also don't like the fast action combat associated with exuberant amounts of button presses especially as more and more skills get added. I would like see control and weight or momentum have a place here which my idea you read previously on gives me away.

I know Dark Souls combat would not work in an mmo but it has the pacing I like most. Cerebral by the moment versus cerebral when learning then movesets then full blinding action speed God Of War mode. With a note on weight not hampering movement or counters by much, I want to see less global robotic mechanics from enemy AI and have more, I don't even know the right word? AI changing on circumstances?

My combo does punishing damage a few times, the monster gets wind of my rotation, and then bam! It catches me off guard and does something differently.

Intelligence. You'd want their scripting to better feign intelligence. Or "conditional scripting". : P

The thing is though, they literally only have AAs and one to two iCD or sCD (or, say, XI/1.0 TP-based) skills. There wouldn't really be anything for intelligence to act on anyways, except to do something as annoying as instantly moving behind its attacker at all times as not to be targetable, LoSing every ranged attack, or run away and not look back while pulling other mobs into you. You know... the only things we'd be capable with silence, pacified, and suffering from amnesia. First thing's first – they're going to need more stuff to do.

The pacing you mentioned, however, is something belonging to ARPGs and H&S MMOs, and one that can suffer heavily from latency. You could swing, but then you'd be in action lock and unable to dodge (run the 1.x Ifrit horror pictures). Otherwise you memorize the timings and rotations (no different from the dodge dodge revolution of today, except that there are typically no obvious indicators) and just stay idle or only use light or auto attacks until the dodge, and resume from there for the allowed duration. That's what DS comes down to, and I can't honestly see why it'd be considered more cerebral than what we have now. It's mostly just a matter of bringing back the inability to move for a variable length of time while executing a skill, to ensure that you have breaks by which you can either remember to stop attacking, or you're maimed, and perhaps instituting variable GCDs based on weapon speed, or replacing GCDs with a pure animation lock or "time-locked" system as I've mentioned before in your thread. At present, we still have this sort of desync or forced downtime for casters during frequent movement, whereas the H&S paradigm usually focuses more on the melee. The closest other representation of that we have is saving burst for a more vulnerable phase. I think AI and mob skillset improvements should pave the way for the kind of variance you're looking for, rather than trying to approach from a more time-locked / H&S / ARPG model.

[Sandpark]

@Shurrikhan
Here is a talk from another forum and some of the ideas they were tossing around about AI were pretty cool to me.
http://ffxiv.zam.com/forum.html?foru...98&h=50&p=1#30

When I was more active in MU* coding, how I'd handle mob behavior was one of this things I mulled on from time if I made my own game. As is, current MMOs tend to be either heavily scripted or little more than "spam this to keep a hidden number high so a mob focuses on you" sort of manipulation.

On the statistical end, I had affix behaviors like:
Confrontational = Focus on the character with the highest Attack/Strength.
Standoffish = Focus on the character with the highest HP/Vitality.
Deft = Focus on the character with the highest Dexterity.
Nimble = Focus on the character with the highest Agility.
Discerning = Focus on the character with the highest Magic Attack/Intelligence.
Zealous = Focus on the character with the highest Mind.
Flamboyant = Focus on the character with the highest Charisma.

These traits would be hidden to the player and would vary as things respawn, effectively making each fight potentially different. However, I upped the random factor further in that mobs could have further enhancements to the above mentioned categories. Depending on their move sets, you might not even notice, but a traditionally STR-heavy mob getting an even further STR bonus might facilitate a slightly different strategy. Especially since fights typically weren't going to be Many Allies vs. 1 Monster, but something more variable where I further distinguished mobs into size categories with party formations that followed.

Since this is an MMO and not text-based, however, we could technically go further in their (re)actions. Wear red when you fight a bull-type mob? You might be the target. Cast Ice magic against a mob that really hates the cold? It might wanna pick on you. Could even have ones that prefer hit and run tactics or might not even want to fight at all, instead turtling up and constantly curing themselves. Yoinking a page from FF4, anyone wearing metallic gear could receive slight debuffs simply being around certain mob types due to a magnetic aura. Some traits can be consistent, sure, as that's part of what makes a race/species/whatever, but I really do believe that if we want to make players distinguishable, our foes need to be, too. And not just because some want PvP that way.

Plus it kinda fits more snugly into my ideal crafting systems where items are more customized to our play style than every Iron Sword being exactly the same.

And more...

Well, that's when I'd confess that fights would not only be turn-based, but also "instanced" like you'd see in earlier FFs. I mentioned mob formations, but you'd also have your party. Perhaps imagine a mix of Suikoden II and FF12, where you could have a 6-man group, either full of players or the gambit-like AIs filling in as needed. Obviously, if I wanted to be an ***, I could go more TRPG and make the fights 2D grids, but I figure each version has strengths and weaknesses.

I mention Suikoden in particular, though, because it also did things with weapons like having have short, medium, and long range types. Where you were positioned would affect what you could attack on the enemy end relative to your weapon choice. However, since I planned on skills to customizable, a sword move that starts off hitting one foe could be trained to eventually hit a row, column, or even the whole enemy unit at varying costs of damage and something like AP. I'd also idealized spells being broken down into elements, where an affinity you chose at the start would reflect how easily you could raise others on the grid. In time, that aforementioned sword ability could've gotten fire magic magic imbued into it. Or something like Ice was actually a combination of Water and Wind, but independently a mob may not be weak to either of those.

There was a lot of ruminating on combos, weapon types, their strengths and weakness that went on back then, to the point I successfully intimidated myself because I didn't know anyone else who could either run with such or even be interested. MU*s could certainly be their own drama pools.