Magic Scrolls - {Can I have it?}

[Lucifer]

Possibly a mentor. Nothing new.
I would suggest something more rewarding though. Possibly a quest for those more advanced spells. Something to slow people down in their quest to level fifty.

[PrettyPrincess]

They already have quests for job abilities.

[OMEGA_HACK]

FF titles where you purchased magic via Gil:
1/2/3/7/11

FF titles where you had to purchase them through something other than general experience gaining:
9/10/12/13

FF titles where you gained magic via exp:
4/5/6/8

(please correct me if I am wrong)

Either way, more often than not we have had to purchase our spells, i don't know where this idea of "we never had to buy them in any other FFs" is coming from. Maybe you've only played 1 Final Fantasy game besides this one? I don't know. But if my memory serves me correctly you will notice only 4 titles (and I was being generous by giving FF6 to the general exp, because its not really...but its ambiguous I believe) didn't have the purchasing of spells.

So that said, and since people are afraid they are not going to have enough money (I have no idea why anyone would think that with Leves giving insanely stupid amounts of gil vs their ease of access/completion) why not have ALL spells/abilities purchased via some points function? Ala, FFX/FFXII/FFXIII.

[Icecylee]

FF titles where you purchased magic via Gil:
1/2/3/7/11

FF titles where you had to purchase them through something other than general experience gaining:
9/10/12/13

FF titles where you gained magic via exp:
4/5/6/8

This is a little misleading.

You got AP/CP in 10/13 the same way you got XP, you just had to spend it on abilities you wanted on your own. (Same with the non-spell abilities. And attributes!) It's still more or less through leveling.

You actually did need to buy spell in 12, on top of the LP bit (which again was earned the same way XP was. And you had to buy the technique scrolls and buy for them with LP as well.) - which is the exact same way 5 handled it.

9 and 7 handle abilities a little strangely, but they handle all abilities like that and not just magic. (Heck, you can find a ton of materia without ever buying a single one, and if you ground out AP long enough to master one, it'd spit a free new one out at you as well.)

6 has spelled learned in a manner similar to 9, so it's strange that you'd list those under different headers. Outside of three specific characters (one of which was a blue mage, though yes the other two did learn them via leveling if you were patient enough).

Aaaand the way 8 handled it had absolutely nothing to do with EXP at all - if anything I'd put the draw mechanics closer to purchasing them; it's nothing at all like the way spelled were learned in 4 or 10 or 13.

And on the topic of buying spells, I'm pretty sure that while FF1/2/11 had you buy spells per character, FF3/5/12 had you buy them for the party at large. And on a similar note, in 6/7/9 you could move around the things that let you learn/use the various spells/abilities between any character in the party that could equip it. So, there's that as well. (FF8's different because while I'm pretty sure you can't shuffle spells you've drawn between characters, you can resign GFs in order to learn more abilities. Hah - actually I checked and you can shuffles drawn spells between people. Oops.)

(Just for the sake of completeness: FFT is more or less set up the same way as FF10/13, while FFTA/2 is fairly close to the way FF9 handled things. FFCC is probably the oddest of the bunch since you don't even keep your spells after you finish a level, unless you did super well on specific stages and could take the magicite orb/magic ring things as treasure.)

[Hachi-Roku]

No no no no no no no no. No more scroll acquisition.

"it cripples magic users variety" is a lie, btw. If you go to any other FF and take out every spell that isn't a flat upgrade (Fira and Firaga, for example), you'll find that you have far less diversity than you think you do.

[OMEGA_HACK]

Huh? So you are saying we shouldn't have separate tiered magic at the end of your post? Because I use the lower tier magics all the time when its MP efficient to do so. Also to say that Fire = Fira = Firaga (or any similar setup) is silly, they are all fire spells yes but they are all different in power and if you are in fact a MP conscious mage then you would use all your tiers and consider them all unique in the fact that they cost less and deal varying amounts of damage.

I like the idea of obtaining scrolls to get magic, however, that said, I don't want any mage to have to go through something similar to FFXI's tier IV magic spells with less that 2% drop rates on monsters that spawn once every 15 minutes, or purchase them for insane amounts of gil.

But the mere fact that you have to obtain those spells (and I think some abilities that are not directly tied to the weapon; ie: WSs) give yet another sense of achievement, making you feel more proud to have your character, and that you didn't just grind/PL to 50 with little to no merit.

[ReapKarmah]

Huh? So you are saying we shouldn't have separate tiered magic at the end of your post? Because I use the lower tier magics all the time when its MP efficient to do so. Also to say that Fire = Fira = Firaga (or any similar setup) is silly, they are all fire spells yes but they are all different in power and if you are in fact a MP conscious mage then you would use all your tiers and consider them all unique in the fact that they cost less and deal varying amounts of damage.

I like the idea of obtaining scrolls to get magic, however, that said, I don't want any mage to have to go through something similar to FFXI's tier IV magic spells with less that 2% drop rates on monsters that spawn once every 15 minutes, or purchase them for insane amounts of gil.

But the mere fact that you have to obtain those spells (and I think some abilities that are not directly tied to the weapon; ie: WSs) give yet another sense of achievement, making you feel more proud to have your character, and that you didn't just grind/PL to 50 with little to no merit.

I personally love the idea of earning really powerful spells with a sense of achievement. But I refuse to have to buy Cure, Fire, Blizzard, etc.. We should be able to learn the common spells at least. I can completely understand wanting to feel like you earned the rights to use Burst, Quake, Freeze or Flood (Ancient Magic).

I certainly refuse to have to buy any spells. If you don't learn it by leveling, the only way you should acquire it is through scrolls or quests. Not through currency of any kind. This is now an MMO Final Fantasy, not a single player adventure where gil is practically thrown at you.

That's how I feel.

[Lucifer]

Gil is thrown at you and this is an MMO...

[Icecylee]

I like the idea of obtaining scrolls to get magic, however, that said, I don't want any mage to have to go through something similar to FFXI's tier IV magic spells with less that 2% drop rates on monsters that spawn once every 15 minutes, or purchase them for insane amounts of gil.

But the mere fact that you have to obtain those spells (and I think some abilities that are not directly tied to the weapon; ie: WSs) give yet another sense of achievement, making you feel more proud to have your character, and that you didn't just grind/PL to 50 with little to no merit.

I personally love the idea of earning really powerful spells with a sense of achievement. But I refuse to have to buy Cure, Fire, Blizzard, etc.. We should be able to learn the common spells at least. I can completely understand wanting to feel like you earned the rights to use Burst, Quake, Freeze or Flood (Ancient Magic).

So... sort of like how they're implementing Job quests that you have to complete before getting access to the bigger and badder spells?

[Skies]

Huh? So you are saying we shouldn't have separate tiered magic at the end of your post? Because I use the lower tier magics all the time when its MP efficient to do so. Also to say that Fire = Fira = Firaga (or any similar setup) is silly, they are all fire spells yes but they are all different in power and if you are in fact a MP conscious mage then you would use all your tiers and consider them all unique in the fact that they cost less and deal varying amounts of damage.

I am forced to comment on that point. The ONLY difference between Fire/Fira/Firaga in the majority of games (or so memory serves me, I might be wrong) is merely the amount of Damage and MP involved in each. They are quite literally the same spell, just stronger and stronger. They do not give you any variety at all, at best MP fine-tuning when, and IF, there are even enemies where a Fire spell will actually deal sufficient damage to be worth the amount of hits you take between it and the next.
You cannot call "Same thing but bigger" variety, you certainly can call "Different effects" or "Similar but different" variety, however. Like comparing XII's Fire and Firaja, THOSE are different, because Fire deals damage and Firaja is Damage+Status. Whereas Fire and Firaga have Damage and Damage which is essentially the same. And given they want all abilities to scale (makes it simpler not only on a coding scale but ALSO on a player level, because if you have to choose between "Fire Damage" and "Ice Damage" and "Fire Damage+Blind" (random examples, unrelated to any actual XIV ability) it's far less... Mathematically-challaging than seeing which ratio of Damage:MP:Time is most effective for every spell cast.