MP Regen

[Shiyo]

I don't care if the game doesn't take 90000000 hours, it's the fact that "casual" for MMO developers means "easy" and not "less time consuming" is the problem. When they design for "casuals" they're basically designing stuff for "idiots", because that's what they assume casuals are I think?

I want a challenge, it doesn't have to be a long grindy challenge, but the current game is so easy my cat can play it.

COP was great, I'd love more things like that. The partying system in FFXI(pre-TOAU) was great, you were rewarded for being better, and encouraged to improve. Bad players gained less exp/hour than better players. FF14 has no skill scaling, no encouraging of proper usage of abilities/teamwork, and everyone games the same sp/hour because any idiot can spam 4 buttons and 2 shot mobs.

[Anonymoose]

Bad players gained less exp/hour than better players.

I agree with your accusations of FFXIV's flaws except this one. An overwhelming majority of the time, you didn't get more SP per hour by being better at your job, you got it by playing a job people liked more. Birds were the prey, and piercing was the demand - you weren't a bad player just because you wanted to be a DRK and thus failed to outstab with your pity slashing attacks.

I, too, want to up the challenge, but cannot stress enough that it is a big mistake to do so with such simplistic reasoning. What I'm seeing is too much "Mages have too much MP, so let's attack their most obvious source of it." and not enough consideration towards the mechanics that make the flow of the game better. Some serious back-end balancing needs to take place, but not by just scrapping the most recent thing that added to the issue - especially if it was a good change.

The best suggestion I've seen here so far is that you should have to officially leave battle, not just disengage, to auto regen MP. It's not that the mechanic exists, it's not the speed it works at - it's that players can use it as too big of an advantage in an area they already have abilities suited to that purpose. That's the problem that needs fixing. If players have to run far enough away from the battle so that something terrible can happen before they can fix it, problem solved.