Any specifically AoE spells should be ground-targetable.

[Roughgalaxy]

Blizzard, Flamestrike (I'm sure among others, I couldn't stand wow after a certain point) have targetting indicators on the ground that show where the spell is going to hit.

yup and it's practical. certainly more user friendly than the stupid toggle flashy mobs mess they got now.

[Anty]

Na im not back in ignorance mode (for that to be the case I would have had to have entered this mode in the first place). I just tire of reading thread after thread of "Wow has this, rift has that, FF should have it too". The game sucks, but uniquely sucks, and doesn't need functions from western MMo's to improve it other than mailboxes and transport.

AoE ground targetting wouldn't fit in with any Final Fantasy game I can recall (except maybe tactics). AoE's have always been strategically targetted on an NPC/Player, and also, imagine the aoe spam in cities if they were to allow this to happen. We might have self control, but the other 27 players don't.

i don't like wow but a feature like this has nothing to do with this. It's as if someone is asking for great animations or more creative spells/spellnames (instead of copy from ffxi) and people say, this game has crappy animation and its unique as it is, if you want better spell animations play another mmo... i don't get it.

It may or may not work with ffxiv but thats a different story!

SE with ffxiv so far is in my top 5 of uncreative spells, spell animations and boring fights - since there are no strategies needed. Everything that makes the system better and more varied is greatly welcome. I think its not a bad suggestion.

I just hope the devs at SE get creative anytime soon, so these posts won't be needed anymore. I highly doubt it but i hope for it. Why not give other suggestions of how to improve it instead of bashing people with suggestions with "go back to wow crap".

The game will still feel like ff if it had more options for spellcasters (it can use more options for DD/tanks as well ofc).

Lol why do you think that so many people would use this in cities for no reason? Perhaps to try it out but ... its not as the cities are flurishing and full of life atm... FFXIV so far has too many restrictions already... i didnt play wow, i tried rift though - people didnt spam spells in cities there once - but the ideas they had for casters, no matter if healers or DD casters... they did a nice job imho. Still i don't like the game i prefer FFXIV to get better and healthy. But they need to be creative - not to copy - but a mechanic like that isnt a copy to me that will hurt the game one bit.

Reinventing the wheel when its not needed, who needs that? Its better to build on a great mechanic and make it even better. And the game isnt unique in a lot of ways, it needs uniqueness badly, but in other ways. Being unique by being so bad in many ways isnt what will save the game.

[Laughlyn]

Reinventing the wheel when its not needed, who needs that? Its better to build on a great mechanic and make it even better. And the game isnt unique in a lot of ways, it needs uniqueness badly, but in other ways. Being unique by being so bad in many ways isnt what will save the game.

( ^.^)b wise words & should be looked into.

Id go with the FFXI mechanics & evolve it further. (so ya, copy, paste & evolve)
Obviously not all, but the best of the best ofc.

[Vahzl]

i don't like wow but a feature like this has nothing to do with this. It's as if someone is asking for great animations or more creative spells/spellnames (instead of copy from ffxi) and people say, this game has crappy animation and its unique as it is, if you want better spell animations play another mmo... i don't get it.

It may or may not work with ffxiv but thats a different story!

SE with ffxiv so far is in my top 5 of uncreative spells, spell animations and boring fights - since there are no strategies needed. Everything that makes the system better and more varied is greatly welcome. I think its not a bad suggestion.

I just hope the devs at SE get creative anytime soon, so these posts won't be needed anymore. I highly doubt it but i hope for it. Why not give other suggestions of how to improve it instead of bashing people with suggestions with "go back to wow crap".

The game will still feel like ff if it had more options for spellcasters (it can use more options for DD/tanks as well ofc).

Lol why do you think that so many people would use this in cities for no reason? Perhaps to try it out but ... its not as the cities are flurishing and full of life atm... FFXIV so far has too many restrictions already... i didnt play wow, i tried rift though - people didnt spam spells in cities there once - but the ideas they had for casters, no matter if healers or DD casters... they did a nice job imho. Still i don't like the game i prefer FFXIV to get better and healthy. But they need to be creative - not to copy - but a mechanic like that isnt a copy to me that will hurt the game one bit.

Reinventing the wheel when its not needed, who needs that? Its better to build on a great mechanic and make it even better. And the game isnt unique in a lot of ways, it needs uniqueness badly, but in other ways. Being unique by being so bad in many ways isnt what will save the game.

My problem is that all other MMo's out there follow 2 structures. WoW clone, or Ragnarok Online clone. Final Fantasy XI was a very unique experience for MMo gamers, as it didn't match anything else out there.

FFXIV has the very same opportunity, but as soon as you start pulling mechanics in from entirely different battle systems, that come from a completely different style of MMo, you begin to walk the same path as said MMo, and the uniqueness slowly rots away.

Junk the AoE toggle, don't put in targetted ground circles of magic and wonder, and just give us ga spells. Sorted.

[Alhanelem]

This is not World of Warcraft, if you wish it to be, please go play World of Warcraft and leave this one to us

Who the hell said this was world of warcraft? Will people stop bleeping saying that to every decent suggestion?

This is a feature common to virtually every intelligently made realtime RPG, both before and after WoW.

Why should people have to guess where their AoE is going to hit? That's not a skill element, that's just an element of frustration.

Final Fantasy XI was a very unique experience for MMo gamers,

In case you weren't aware, virtually everything that was unique about the experience outside of storyline cutscenes is being thrown out the window with the battle system revamp. Auto attack, removal of the stamina bar, etc.

That said, implementing good user interface elements does not automatically make a game a "WoW clone." Just as an FYI, I was in the first wave of alpha testing. I'm not a newcomer, as little as I have posted here. I've been watching the game evolve and improve. This would be an improvement. Just because they make some kind of intelligent addition to the game does not mean it was because of WoW.

The current spell casting system makes for poor AoE spell animations. The dependency on targets for spellcasting limits the ability to improve this. The current system of targeting limits your ability to control what the AoE hits due to the center having to always be around a target.

[Elexia]

Hmm..every intelligently made RPG? I've played a lot, A LOT of RPGs from 1980s to 2011 and I can safely say aside WoW and TERA (online wise) I've never seen this feature employed in most. It's not a "good" or "bad" design, it just means you can spam spells for absolutely no reason (or to try to claim stuff, i.e TERA) and well, it's just a different type of AoE casting, nothing that is "standard" by any means.

I think people jot back to WoW because somehow everytime someone makes a suggestion "oh its an MMORPG standard", when 99% of time it's far from standard. You don't guess where your AoE hits, if you see 4 mobs clumped up, you can guarantee it will hit them all.

[Alhanelem]

I've never seen this feature employed in most.

You haven't played too many RPGs then, have you. The Dungeon Siege series, Every PC D&D game e.g. Neverwinter Nights series, Dragon Age series, D&D Online, LotR Online, practically every other semi-succesful MMO (except for the more fast-action based games like Dungeon Fighter or Vindictus), and going outside of RPG land, virtually every RTS game made since Warcraft III. Virtually every other kind of game these days where the precise placement of something is valuable, has had a targeting indicator. Even bleeping Tetris.

It's just simply a good interface function- not a game-defining feature that makes your game a WoW clone.

I think people jot back to WoW because somehow everytime someone makes a suggestion "oh its an MMORPG standard"

It's not just an MMORPG standard. It's a standard in almost any kind of game where you need to carefully position objects or target anything anywhere.

You don't guess where your AoE hits, if you see 4 mobs clumped up, you can guarantee it will hit them all.

No, you can't guarantee that. The game doesn't tell you or give any indication of the size of the area of effect. You have no way of knowing for sure until you've cast the same spell a million times. And what if you only want to hit 3 of those 4 mobs? With ground-targeted AoE, you can do that. Otherwise all you can do is hope only one of them moves and moves far enough. Also bad is the fact that apparently some spells are radial AoE and others are conal, and the game doesn't even have the courtesy to let you know that before you cast.

[Eekiki]

I like this idea.

[Spellbinder]

Having never played WOW (never understood what was so wonderful about it, but that's another flame war), I found this type of targeting to be useful in other games that I've played such as Ragnarok Online and Dungeon Siege. Not sure if it would fit this game, but I don't think it's something to be totally ignored assuming it was in the realm of possibilities for what this game's engine can do.

[Elexia]

You haven't played too many RPGs then, have you.

Well...

I've played a lot, A LOT of RPGs from 1980s to 2011

Pretty sure I have. You then list:

The Dungeon Siege series, Every PC D&D game e.g. Neverwinter Nights series, Dragon Age series, D&D Online, LotR Online

DS never interested me, I dislike D&D in P&P era and much prefer later iterations of the RPG genre and I heavily dislike DA, only liked their Mass Effect series, since you forgot to read where I wrote:

I've never seen this feature employed in most

That didn't say "never been used at all" as most of the RPGs I've played from the 80s to now didn't use it as a standard feature.

No, you can't guarantee that. The game doesn't tell you or give any indication of the size of the area of effect.

So, 4 mobs are sitting on each other or lined up side by side, has gaming really sunk so low that common sense would fail you and you need to be told "Using that spell will hit 4 mobs stacked on each other"? You don't need an indicator to tell you that 4 mobs sitting on each other is a lot more likely to be hit by an AoE spell/skill than 4 mobs who are more than 30 feet apart of each other. Since you seem to bring up "many rpgs" in your argument, many RPGs and MMOs have sizable AoE/Conal radii where it almost always hits groups of mobs clumped onto each other.

Oh and:

Also bad is the fact that apparently some spells are radial AoE and others are conal, and the game doesn't even have the courtesy to let you know that before you cast.

The Skill descriptions tell you, Status effect tells you (e.g Steadfast will turn attacks and WS conal) as well as class description, THM = Conal mage, CON = AoE mage.