Thinking Ahead: Is the Game Doomed to have more Ability Bloat Updates?

[Mysticdraggon]

Honestly, the game is so, SOOOOO much more hosed due to its inadequate database that can barely even seem to handle the current number of items.

Ability bloat is fixable by simply tweaking abilities and removing some here and there (which WoW has been doing as well, out of necessity). The database issue, however, is a much bigger beast to slay.

The number of items in the game is only going to grow larger, which means more need for glamour logs and better storage solutions, neither of which the devs seem keen on adding due to lack of ability to do so.

ive always thought that bloat in general would be the game's downfall. glamour alone seems to force people to keep most of the items they get for the sake of cosmetics when the system itself could be updated. i mean, do we really need grade 1-5 glamour prism types, DoH craft requirements, 6 types of glamour prisms including dispellers and empty prisms? same could be said for crafting due to the amount of items required for crafting; some of those items only exist for one craft! plus the amount of items needed for one single fisher class.

so yeah, i really want to see a massive "item bloat" update if it would improve the game's quality, paving the way to new content and updates.

[RichardButte]

ive always thought that bloat in general would be the game's downfall. glamour alone seems to force people to keep most of the items they get for the sake of cosmetics when the system itself could be updated. i mean, do we really need grade 1-5 glamour prism types, DoH craft requirements, 6 types of glamour prisms including dispellers and empty prisms? same could be said for crafting due to the amount of items required for crafting; some of those items only exist for one craft! plus the amount of items needed for one single fisher class.

so yeah, i really want to see a massive "item bloat" update if it would improve the game's quality, paving the way to new content and updates.

Exactly.

It's a shame because the depth of the crafting/gathering systems in this game are what make them so damn good, but at the same time, it produces many times the number of items that your average MMO would add every xpac.

Also, storage sucks because many 61-70 recipes require items from HW or earlier, meaning getting rid of old mats is often a bad idea as you'll need to rebuy them if you do. :\

[Mysticdraggon]

Exactly.

It's a shame because the depth of the crafting/gathering systems in this game are what make them so damn good, but at the same time, it produces many times the number of items that your average MMO would add every xpac.

Also, storage sucks because many 61-70 recipes require items from HW or earlier, meaning getting rid of old mats is often a bad idea as you'll need to rebuy them if you do. :\

i never found a good reason to continue crafting beyond level 50. the motivation back then was so that i could craft glamours. now after reaching level 55 Blacksmith in HW, it was all just one big giant loop of pointlessness. basically, you need to be a good gatherer of raw HQ items to be a good Crafter (for both crafting and crafting gear), thus you need to have good HQ gear to be a good Gatherer, but you need to be a good Crafter to make HQ gathering gear! if you dont have all HQ gear, your going to have a really bad time in both gathering and crafting.

some may say that its good for gil farming, but as a solo player and homeless, my gil income by just doing daily roulettes, beast tribe missions, and fates is getting me more gil than i can spend PLUS a lot of EXP.

i'm also doing just fine without HQ gear for DoW jobs, since most events i participate in are usually going to be level synced. on top of this, the best gear available in the game has nothing to do with crafting. glamour items are also not really a problem since most of the best looking gear are dropped from dungeons. even if i did need a little more kick, ill just place materia on my gear, and they would probably be just as good as the HQ version. cant meld materia due to crafter level too low? well the only problem there is convenience. go to the next city and pay the materia melder less than what i believ to be 1000 gil per meld.

overall, i have nothing else against crafting other than the fact that the time spent crafting IS NOT WORTH IT. or at least in my case.

[RichardButte]

overall, i have nothing else against crafting other than the fact that the time spent crafting IS NOT WORTH IT. or at least in my case.

That's actually the beauty of crafting and gathering: if you don't want to do it, you really don't have to.

It's not like some games where you're going to need to buy your way to having the gear you need or whatnot. If you don't want to participate, chasing gil is entirely optional.

I mean, I just bought a rank 8 FC with a mansion attached to it from money I made through goldsmithing and castaway chocobo chicks, but most people have zero need for a mansion or even a house at all (I needed the basement to use as a machinima studio, and the med plot houses basements are sadly TINY...).

So again, the devs did a great job with the economy by allowing players to choose their investment level without being punished for it (unlike the database, which is going to destroy us all one day, heh).

[Sylvina]

They just plain out don't want to remove crowd control abilities, maybe they plan to use them again in normal gameplay, maybe they think newbies could get an use of them, but all the skills people consider useless have some sort of crowd control effect.

Either way the fact that you don't need crowd control in normal gameplay means you can just remove those abilities from your hotbar if you want to.

Some of the black mage quests would be nearly impossible without sleep. Just make sleep better, don't remove a vital spell in their arsenal for solo quests.

[Dzian]

so if, for example, Samurai's combo system worked the same as monks (and of course if Meikyo Shisui opened up all combos the same way Perfect Balance does), my macros would look something like this:

/micon "Kasha"
/ac "Kasha"
/ac "Shifu"
/ac "Hakaze"

/micon "Gekko"
/ac "Gekko"
/ac "Jinpu"
/ac "Hakaze"

/micon "Yukikaze"
/ac "Yukikaze"
/ac "Jinpu"

/micon "Mangetsu"
/ac "Mangetsu"
/ac "Fuga"

/micon "Oka"
/ac "Oka"
/ac "Fuga"

which would ultimately save me up to 4 slots within my first set!

this would certainly fix the issue in terms of classes that have combos, but as you have already mentioned, other classes that barely have combos need to find its own solution.

Honestly Sam is a million miles from bloated.. as it stands I basically use like 1 xhb and half the expanded one..

sets 1 and 2 are almost identical the only difference is ive put my aoes where my disengage combo and gap close are.. and set 4 is my expanded bar exactly the same on both sides.

i basically never have to press r1 or change sets ever once a fight starts... hell most of the time i never even need to let go of r2 on a boss fight.. (save for a third eye proc for seigan)

it's really not a bloated job at all..

i have all my jobs set up on 2 hotbars + the expanded one. and on nearly all of them half of set 1 and set 2 are exactly the same. deliberately done to minimise button presses and trigger swaps.. even on my paladin.

empty box there for random role skills i might need. interject reprisal etc

i can play most of my jobs and hardly ever have to change to a different hotbar set because the bloat really isn't that bad... in 70 content i might open on set 2 do a halone combo to start then go to set one and never change sets for the rest of the fight....

[LalaRu]

specifically in future expansions, are we doomed to have consistent Ability Bloat updates as we have just recently?

Recently, we had Ability un-bloating.

In the producer's last letters, and with the pre-SB live videos, devs already have expressed their concerns with too much buttons to press and how it is not a good thing for the game as it is intended to be played.

In fact, what had the most reflection in that words, is the PvP rewamp. You now have just a bunch of buttons, and a choose of few optional traits and skills to personalize your PvP job. While on the PvE side, you already noticed some tiered skills now just have one only button, that changes with the higher tier of the skill when unlocked.

About the future, it is very likely that, with new skills, there also will be a look at old ones and some of them removed and some other changed in order to make up for the ones removed.

I'd expect that the unwritten rule of "do all with three skill bars" will be kept on any expansion. I also want go blunt, and will welcome a future "do it all with two skill bars". I'm gone far but dreaming is still not a crime.

[Nezia]

I believe that one thing that greatly limits the class design and creates ability bloat is their senseless quest of making each job have the same number of skills.

Let's take a look at dragoon for example, why does heavy trust still exist? It served a purpose during 2.0 where the class was nothing but repeat the same boring combos and press buttons when off CD but this is no longer the case. And what about B4B? Why not just add it's effect to dragon sight and call it a day? What purpose B4B serves right now other than solo content, which can be easily worked around by giving the option of targeting yourself with DS. Mirage dive is another one, why not attach the eyes effect to the jumps themselves? Why is mirage dive a thing?

They really should not focus too much in the number of skills the classes have(unless one class has like 12 or so more skills than the others), and focus more on classes mechanics and identidy.