The Letter is up

[Elexia]

Another thing.. lol sorry kind of slow today.. what does this mean "Recast timers will be adjusted for certain actions obtained via quests and guild marks whose action costs were managed solely through the stamina gauge."?

Means exactly what it says.

[KumaAkuma]

People over hyped this patch way to much, do people honestly not get what they had to do here just to add auto attack?

Most if not all of the algorithms and code for battle had to be rewritten.

I think most people don't get this. But apparently those of us who do are also not allowed to complain, correct?

I think most people don't get how easy it would be to rewrite that code...

[Orcishgrappler]

I just want some content already.......I'm Running out of Gathering levels to get I says!

[tachikoma]

There is clearly a lot of things going on that we don't see in this letter. I'm not expecting miracles with this patch but i'm not going to lie, if this patch doesn't deliver i'm done.

1.18:
-auto attack
-UI adjustments = I see plenty of UI changes in that video, all of which make combat smoother/cleaner. I see less clutter (obviously due to no stamina bar), recast timer filling the individual icons as they become available with a little glow when its ready.
-Physical Level Removal = Automatic setting of attributes based on class/job, with optional attribute point allotment
-Action assignment = Auto set basic job specific actions when learned, adjust how to set cross class skills
-Skill/attribute re-working = Adjusting what skills each job gets and when they become available, I know they talked about this as a part of the battle system overhaul and this is a big task even just evaluating what skills are useful and where they make most sense to add in.
-new jobs?/quests? = This is a TON of work to implement, new quests to unlock the jobs, skills, etc?
-new animations = Motion capture is a big task and they use this for all their current in game animations
-Leve balancing = This could be a big change to how we play, if they adjust SP gains past 24 or adjust how the leve's reward SP it could drastically change my play. I static and leve fail every reset as do most ppl especially on dunes/rainines etc. If they rewarded me with SP or other incentives to finish leve's my static might change. Also we might try new leve's if the SP gains were anywhere close to the golden Dunes/RR.
-Emnity calculations = They did tease the possibility to view emnity durring combat, they said they were going to redo the formulas entirely rather then tweak whats there. This is a large area that needs testing.
-Battle formulas = They said they were adjusting these as the current calculations were too complicated. This is major as we currently see a very Dlvl dependant system where adding more STR causes fractional increases in dmg, also VIT/STR for battle classes appear to be the only meaningfull stats alot seems broken. Hope this helps make gear matter.
-New Raiding areas = This could be more then just 1 small dungeon to visit, we don't know how the system will work but I can hope its something like Apolyon-Temenos from FFXI's limbus system. These zones were small in nature but required a lot of everything good about MMO's to master: teamwork, luck, focus, battle planning, communication, small goals with meaningful drops each run with a long term boss in sight. If this system offered the new jobs drops I could see this as a real success.
-Company quests expanded = this could be built around larger scale content and at the very least involves some form of quest line.
-Crafting updates = new recipes & simplified current ones (new gear/models/colors etc)
-Server lag/updates = I know they are working on overhauling the way our clients interact with the servers this is a big topic and one they have talked about for months. This should be a very big change and hopefully fixes how we sell/buy/trade goods.

-----------------------------

1.18+ possibilities based on prior letters due some time from 1.18 till end of summer:
-materia system
-transportation
-death penalty
-new skills / spells
-large scale battles
-linkshell management
-deliver box
-monster adjustments to make world dangerous
-new beast tribes
-summer seasonal event
-Addition of shortcuts to improve battle controls (hope this means /assist /subtarget etc)
-behest reward balances
-

Am I missing anything? or did I include things that probably won't make it? Let me know.

[Blair]

Hm..

I think Letter XI (Video) is not decent enough to post much reply...

Hope more update.

[Laughlyn]

Holy Shit! lol... screw the Auto-Attack function, i think the weaponskills look cool enough.
Havent had the pleasure of partying with a GLD much sso idk much about what they have or not.

One of the problems imo, there's not much "Need" / "Wanted" for party classes, it lacks the class uniqueness i guess.

Anywayz, this should be fun to explore....im wishing for a "Haste" spell rigth now lol.

Aye aye!, looking forward to see the Auto-attacking Mages lolol

[charliesheen]

I think most people don't get how easy it would be to rewrite that code...

Normally this would be correct. But then if you take into consideration that they couldn't write the code correctly to begin with, even though they already had a fully functioning MMO to base it off of, it becomes less correct. Maybe they fired all the good programmers?

[KumaAkuma]

Normally this would be correct. But then if you take into consideration that they couldn't write the code correctly to begin with, even though they already had a fully functioning MMO to base it off of, it becomes less correct. Maybe they fired all the good programmers?

Aye. Probably after FF6/7

[DurtiMonkeyToe]

I think most people don't get how easy it would be to rewrite that code...

Rewriting the code is only part of the development process. I don't think people realize how much the auto-attack and the loss of the stamina bar actually effects the battle system and so they expect it to be just a simple fix when really the Devs have to look at the effects across the whole system.

[Zahak]

I don't think anybody here knows exactly what SE has to do. SE going to take all the time it wants/needs me thinks