Too much dancing

[Netsky]

I came to this thread expecting a compendium of keystroke combinations that allow my character to perform various dances in game when pressed in the correct order.

I'm walking away very disappointed.

[Jamez82]

SE really screwed a lot of potential strategies when they made the BLM work the way it does nothing except players have elemental resistances. That was a big screw up on their part.

[ZephyrAM]

SE really screwed a lot of potential strategies when they made the BLM work the way it does nothing except players have elemental resistances. That was a big screw up on their part.

They didn't remove the elemental wheel because they wanted BLM to work the way it does, they removed the elemental wheel to prevent the class stacking and/or useless classes that occurred in XI, and from there they could do whatever they wanted with BLM.

If enemies have a primary weakness, groups only bring the classes that are most capable against that weakness. If enemies have an immunity, groups forbid classes that rely on that immunity from ever joining. Sure, SE could've given every class the ability to use every element equally well... but that sounds like a whole bunch of complication and homogenization with no real payout.

[Sibyll]

SE really screwed a lot of potential strategies when they made the BLM work the way it does nothing except players have elemental resistances. That was a big screw up on their part.

Elemental resistances are bad design for the players and can be bad for the bosses and encounters. Resistance on the players gates content until an arbitrary resistance minimum is met. For boss encounters I could see this working if handled properly. For example, Ifrit might get increased damage from Ice, normal damage from Lightning and be healed by Fire and so a Black Mage might need to adjust his rotation between encounters. Design like this could give depth to the class, as there would be a huge difference between someone pushing buttons and someone that has taken the time to learn how his skills interact with encounter.

The thing you want to avoid is to just add elemental resistances just for the sake of having an arbitrary number to stack. It's just hard to argue what these stats would really add to the game in terms of depth.

[Bahd_Monkey]

For boss encounters I could see this working if handled properly. For example, Ifrit might get increased damage from Ice, normal damage from Lightning and be healed by Fire and so a Black Mage might need to adjust his rotation between encounters.

Not just boss encounters but mobs as well, especially if you had mobs made up of enemies that had different elemental and physical attack strengths and weaknesses. It would have to be balanced so that no job was left out (i.e. useless) and it would make fights a lot more interesting.

And how come healers can't cast healing spells on the undead to damage them, or swiftcast rez to kill them? This is a staple in other FF games and would make for a really fun mix up of the way the game is played now.

[Ticklefairy]

We should not be looking at FFXI for combat ideas. FFXI had terrible, slow combat. Waiting for TP to fill so you can stop auto attacking and do a special move and so someone else in your group can do a special move and then WEAPON SKILL CHAIN WOOOO...now we go back to auto attacking for a while...boo....

Or be a BLM...where you spam one elemental ability because it's a fire elemental so...duh...use ice ad nauseum. Super fun. Way more fun than, say, using a bunch of varied abilities and showing your mastery of the elements to defeat your foes in a multicolored blast, right?

Resistance blocks are dumb, Yoshida recognized that, and we should all be glad they're gone. They don't work in MMOs.

[Ticklefairy]

Also I played EQ1 back in the day too man. Have you gone back to play it? The best parts of that game are you making up things to do with friends in the environment...like swim races in a river or something or exploring a zone. The actual "game" is terrible 1 button stand still combat. Do you really expect SE to NOT move forward and have us pressing more buttons than that and moving around as well? Which, by the way, there are plenty of stand and deliver moments in FFXIV and PLENTY OF VARIED MECHANICS...but I won't reiterate what people have already said unless provoked from here on out.

EQ1 did a great job making the world feel large and scary and forcing players to band together to deal with it, but they got just about everything else wrong. What exactly was fun about sitting in the same spot in a dungeon and killing the same monsters over and over?

[Ticklefairy]

Wouldn't you rather fight your way through the Crushbone Fortress to finally defeat Emperor Crush only to spot Ambassador DVinn running out the back and having to chase and capture him? That's an experience. But they didn't give us that. They gave us killing everything in the throne room until Emperor Crush popped in for us. How nice of him.

EQ1 was revolutionary at the time and had great environmental atmosphere, but it was a bad game. So let's please move on so we can have better mechanics and less tedium.

PS. That being said we should totally have more scary things out in the world. Like Odin should cause more terror when he spawns. People should be screaming for Odin to be killed because of all the damage he's causing...things like that. And more things to explore and find. FFXIV has room to grow and expand. Give us stuff to find, Yoshida!

[Hiroradius]

Too much dancing?

When they make a fight that doesn't have the "dance" people cry it's too hard, when they put in the fight with the dance, people cry that they have to stop dpsing and move.

MMO's use to be around strategy and gear checks, but when they went that route, it took a LONG time to get the gear.. a LONG TIME. People complained that it was too hard to get the needed gear for these fights and didn't want to play. So to keep making money, keep the games going longer, the developers had to make it easier to get gear, and people still complained because they couldn't get the gear.. and then it was made easier, and complaints, and easier, and complain... see the pattern?

People expect and want their ideal game from every single mmo, and complain when it's not.

People complain about moving out of circles, YET in Final Fantasy 11 there wasn't circles to move, you just stood there and focused on your tp, mp, and timing, BUT people found that boring because they don't need to worry about what they were doing (in that game people didn't understand tank mechanics very well, so when a dark knight came along and did one of their combos and pulled hate or a thief SATA and wiped the group, it was the tanks fault, EVEN THOUGH they were the one's who went all out and killed the group), so to combat the boringness of just standing there waiting to do an ability, and try and add a bit of skill to the players so it isn't just outgear the fight and your done, games like WoW started adding fights you had to move around, you are still waiting on cooldowns while moving, but now just not standing there. It was a great idea, now you need not just gear but skill to play and dungeon and raid, but people who lacked the skill complained because they couldn't do it, so after a while to increase revenue to get those people who complained and were quitting, they started giving gear to allow you to overcome the skill. And that is where we are now in the mmo community.

Raid and boss battles that require skill, but that skill can be overcome by gear. Yes there are some fights that the gear check is there, but again look at turn 2 for example.. it is a skill check fight, but people who didn't have the skill to transfer a buff around, found a way to make it a tank n spank fight that required no skill whatsoever, just gear.. now you need gear alone to overcome the fight.. some people say it is a skill check.. ONLY ON HEALER, not on anyone else. Turn 1 was a skill fight with the slimes and position and dps control, but gear again turned it into an almost simple fight. DPS burns, off tank (or rare case bard) makes a slime and feeds until split, then you burn the boss.. the only skill that is still needed is making sure they die at same time.

Pharos is a skill fight, but people are so overgeared for it that it makes it harder because the try and tank n spank knowing they overgeared it.. and look what happenend? Pharos is the most hated dungeon there is.. why? Boss 1, boss 2, and boss 4 all required skill, gear doesn't overcome that, so people have to actually LEARN the boss mechanics and follow them. Boss 1, hit boss and then stop hitting boss and kill dogs otherwise dogs kill healer and group dies. What happenend when people first went in, burn boss, ignore adds, helaer dies "WTF you stupid healer why you die" or "WTF stupid tank, get adds", rinse and repeat.. nobody understood the fight they just figured their i70+ gear would let them overpower the dungeon with a gear check of i57. Boss 2, kill eggs too fast, boss enrages you go splat, kill eggs to slow you get overrun by adds. So first try was destroy eggs, boss kills, 2nd try don't kill eggs and got overrun by adds, 3rd try kill highlighted eggs boss enrages we go splat.. people give up. 3rd boss is just too weak so burn strat works. 4th boss was about add control, healing, positioning during her teleport, and interuppts.. yet most people STILL can't beat that boss, becasue either adds are ignored they grab healer healer can't heal we wipe, or people stand in center and get killed by Siren's attack, or tank doesn't interuppt and everyone takes major damage and a healing debuff that the healer panics because everyone is about to die and doesn't remove while healing at only 30% effective... those are strategy mechanic fights and most people can't do it.

[Sibyll]

Too much dancing?.....

I hope they just increase the rewards for Pharos instead of nerfing it. I understand people skip it because it's not worth the effort when Copperbell/Haukke HM give the same reward for significantly less effort, but I think it'd be better to give motivation for skilled players to get more bang for their buck.

The irritating thing about gear overcoming skill checks is that groups almost entirely go for the gear check method, ADS for example, making it insanely difficult to find a group that's willing to do the skill method or raising the gear expectations for groups looking to do the gear check method. The 2-split vs the 3-split method on Garuda Ex is another example. Try doing the 2-split method with tanks that are at i65-i70 and see how well that goes. Yet another fight where it's almost impossible to do it in the manner it was intended because people can't be bothered to learn simple mechanics or improve.