Wow!

That's given me a lot of food for thought.

First impressions....

1) I like the idea of changes being driven by the need for encouraging "skillful play". Hopefully, we won't suffer from players struggling with the changes - making fights "too hard", requiring things to be "scaled back" to allow easier fights...etc....

2) I like the idea of dungeons (or raids/instances, w/e you want to call them). It would be nice to see dungeons be large enough to perhaps not finish in a single session. Obtaining "locks" as you progress in would allow you to pick up where you left off the day before. Resets of all "locks" could be done after 7 days from the time you went in, regardless of how far in you are. But if you're going to give "awesome" rewards to match "awesome" dungeons, please make sure they really are "awesome" and have a reasonable drop rate. There's nothing more annoying than spending weeks working together in a party and learning how to complete a dungeon, only to get to the end and find that not only does the "awesome reward" have so poor a drop rate (I'd recommend it is made 100% rare/ex) that you'd actually need to do the run 100 times to get it for 1 person, but the stats on it and the look of it are so poor that you will wish you had all that time back because apart from the "challenge", you've just wasted your time.

3) I'm very interested to see how the new Hate Control will be managed. Wondering whether the "most cases" means class specific modifiers, or action specific modifiers might be involved (or perhaps both). Would be very interested in having the ability to not only see your hate (as a percentage bar), but also that of the entire party's - would potentially encourage players to watch what they're doing more carefully in a big fight to prevent wipes...etc...

4) Auto-attack? The lazy part of me likes, the other part isn't so fond, but overall I'm not too fussed. I wasn't aware implemeting auto-attack would be so hard, though (shows how little I know about these things). I would have thought it was just a matter of converting the "light strike/hit" action into the standard "hit", and setting a reasonable delay between hits. Guess we'll see what they plan.

5) I like the idea of potentially not having to change gear every time you change class. It would mean you can setup gear/action combos as you like for every class and now have to worry that you're missing a certain needed skill/piece of equipment when you're in a hurry.

6) I think leaving Battle Regimens till later is a good idea. Fix the basics, then add to it. What's there at the moment will suffice for now.

7) I'm guessing physical levels might therefore be on their way out completely if attributes are now going to be allocated on Rank? Physical doesn't really have much place in the world if that's the case. And I am looking forward to see what the changed "profound effect" of the attributes will be. Perhaps we will finally see a change in damage/evasion/defense in reality when changes are made, and not just numbers....

8) Altering who can use what skills for each class? That might annoy some people in the short term who've already levelled a load of classes. Saying that, a lot of the high end actions (especially the Rank 50 ones) are pretty poor compared to some lower Rank ones, so adjusting existing skills and potentially adding new ones instead could be good.

9) Whoa! Job system?! Wow. Especially the fact that you will need to have reached a certain Rank in the corresponding Basic class before you can do the unlock quest....I guess the question is: "What Rank will that be?". I would guess around 30, but I could see some people arguing for anywhere between 20 to 50. Personally, I think 20 too low, and 50 potentially too high (especially for the casual players). 30-40 would be reasonable I think. And the return of Job Specific Equipment (JSE)? I like the idea of that (AF is likely coming back in some form, lol).

Bottom Line: Well done Devs, a very good blueprint. Now let's see you put your money where your mouths are, and make this reality.