Improvements to the Battle System - Each Monster Should Have One or More Weakness

[Jeeqbit]

Why can't you implement a system where each monster would have a certain weakness, exploiting which would give you a certain percentage of bonus damage and as a result encourage players to think and fight a little differently?

Because it would disadvantage classes that do not have an advantage, and cause them to be excluded from parties. People who main those classes would find themselves under pressure to not play it anymore.

It does happen with blue mage and I think they are willing to explore it in limited areas like how it was done in eureka.

[Brightamethyst]

Why would I invite? Because it's a game? You won't get into this fight but you'll get into another.

Words cannot even describe how glad I am that you are not on the design team.

[Ashgarth]

Bunch of text

First i'm just going to assume your signature is severly outdated or that's an alt, otherwise i really dont understand why are you having this discussion.

Leaving that aside, creating a scenario in which some classes are at a clear disadvantage just for the sake of it is simply not fun. If you do enjoy this kind of game design, you can try any of the other mmos that follow that philosophy and join the hundreds of players in their forums that complain each new content release because their classes or specs are useless or unefficient in it and can't get groups.

[Dzian]

It sounds like some people want FFXIV to be a fundamentally different game than what it is. And that's fine to wish the game were different, but it's highly unlikely to go through that sort of shift.

Black mage and red mage for example would have to be severely redesigned for this kind of thing to function and not be broken.

to be honest it sounds like people want it to be you know a "final fantasy" game..

Even yoshi said something similar back in 2019 i think it was. The final fantasy franchise needs to go back to its fanbase and not mainstream audiences if it has any hope of survival.

[Bright-Flower]

to be honest it sounds like people want it to be you know a "final fantasy" game..

Even yoshi said something similar back in 2019 i think it was. The final fantasy franchise needs to go back to its fanbase and not mainstream audiences if it has any hope of survival.

I'd need to see the specific context of that quote, because that doesn't necessarily mean 'putting elemental weaknesses back into the game.'

Regardless of the rest of the franchise XIV is still doing well. And elemental weaknesses are not something you can just slap into the game as is and call it a day without huge overhauls to several jobs.

'This enemy is weak to fire' works great in older gams where your black mage has fire, thunder and blizzard etc doing the same thing but used against different enemies to exploit weaknesses.

When your black mage is cycling through fire burst phases burning their MP and ice regen phases to get it back while throwing out lightning dots, and you need them to be both viable but also not brokenly OP to the point of not taking other dps jobs in tiers of raid encounters etc, that doesn't work so well.

[Dzian]

I'd need to see the specific context of that quote, because that doesn't necessarily mean 'putting elemental weaknesses back into the game.'

Regardless of the rest of the franchise XIV is still doing well. And elemental weaknesses are not something you can just slap into the game as is and call it a day without huge overhauls to several jobs.

'This enemy is weak to fire' works great in older gams where your black mage has fire, thunder and blizzard etc doing the same thing but used against different enemies to exploit weaknesses.

When your black mage is cycling through fire burst phases burning their MP and ice regen phases to get it back while throwing out lightning dots, and you need them to be both viable but also not brokenly OP to the point of not taking other dps jobs in tiers of raid encounters etc, that doesn't work so well.

oh no it doesnt refer to that specifically. the quote was from fanfest 2019 i believe..

but in general a lot of people seem to making a lot of comments about how bland and boring thigns are right now and many of the things that come up aretypically elements that are common in final fantasy games. it seems to be quite a common opinion that they need to bring some of this finalfantasy depth back in one form or another

[Bright-Flower]

oh no it doesnt refer to that specifically. the quote was from fanfest 2019 i believe..

but in general a lot of people seem to making a lot of comments about how bland and boring thigns are right now and many of the things that come up aretypically elements that are common in final fantasy games. it seems to be quite a common opinion that they need to bring some of this finalfantasy depth back in one form or another

There may be other things they can do in general to improve the game by drawing on past FF games. But elemental weaknesses is not one of them, not without huge changes to things like job design, job and raid encounter balance etc. And I'm only addressing this one topic because it's what the thread is about. There might be other ideas I'd support, but this one gets a hard nope from me considering how it would affect other aspects of the game.

[ItMe]

I brought this up on some other Internet resources and so far nobody can give me a clear answer as to why FF XIV doesn't try to have a more traditional battle system. It's silly when you're fighting bosses like Shiva and you attack her with fire, but it deals the same kind of damage ice attacks would.

FF14 did try and have a more traditional battle system.
We had one until shortly before Heavensward.
Back then we had materia that would enhance your resistance to, or damage for, certain elements.
Parties of BLMs would load up on materia for whatever element a boss was weak to and blitz them down before they could really do any mechanics (really bad in Garuda).

But the final straw when when SMN used Titan egi to tank Ramu EX. Tank jobs were told to go home and turned away from parties because the pet was naturally resistant to Ramu's all thunder kit, and it had 90% magic resist (to stop it from dying from raidwides).

We tried having a "more traditional battle system" based on elemental weaknesses, and the devs didn't like how it rarely enhanced content, but mainly gave players ways to circumvent content entirely.
They didn't like it so much they emergency hotfixed it out, didn't even wait for an expac or even a patch to remove it.

[ForteNightshade]

Why would I invite? Because it's a game? You won't get into this fight but you'll get into another. Having some planning would also make the game more interesting, and if people can't learn how to not exploit the systems - it's only their fault and that can be penalized.

If they did have that, I'd rather have it back!

For the sake of argument, let's assume this happened. We'll use Leviathan Unreal since he already has a mechanic which resists range attacks. If said mechanic persisted throughout the fight on both his head and tail, that means bringing anything but four melee would be detrimental. If we said limit it to say, he only resists magic attacks, Casters are worthless and healers can't DPS.

Do you not see the serious issue that would cause. For reference sake, Ninja was completely locked out of Titania and Innocence at Shadowbringers launch simply because its damage laughably inferior to every other melee and caster. Imagine entire fights where that philosophy became the norm. You'd drive far more people away from the game than adding elemental weaknesses ever will. Put bluntly, I doubt very many people care.

As for redesigning jobs to accommodate such a system. Are you okay with literally no new content for a year, possibly two? Changes like the ones you're asking for necessitate huge amounts of resources. Which means instead of new raids or even jobs (Sage and Maiming Melee DPS come to mind), we'll get elemental weaknesses and niche concepts better utilized on Blue Mage. These aren't changes to make eight years into a game's lifespan as it's likely to upset the current playerbase who already enjoys—even prefers—the current systems. Basically, you're asking for FFXIV to be a different game. That isn't going to happen.

[SilverObi]

Any combat system that results in preferential treatment of one job over another would need to restructure both the fights available and the reward system so people don't end up getting locked out of upgrading due to maining the "wrong" job for a patch of content.

In XI job favoritism was indeed rampant among higher tiers of content and reared its ugly head in certain leveling spots/ranges but that game also had, in my opinion, a stronger sense of community and friendship so you could get your oddball jobs into parties with friends or folks from your LS without much pain.

At the end of the day, XIV has been directed to make every job balanced on a razor's edge which leaves no room for depth outside of learning a rotation and a boss's routine. But from what I hear that itself is hard for people so who's to say we need more depth when what little we do have is difficult to grasp.