Things that need to change for the better

[tymora]

In any game, you must have a boss that can't be killed by most people.
For those who haven't taken it down yet, it will serve as a motivation to get better at the game.
For those who have beaten it, it will serve as a mark of pride (epeen).

In FFXI, Pandemonium Warden was hard to beat but it was possible to. AV was broken before SMN got Alexander because no group, no matter how good, could win fair and square.

This Ogre has become "farming status" for some LS already (records of <10 min clear of first floor 2 days after release), so there is absolutely no point to nerf it. I suggest looking at their playback videos...watch and learn.

On all your points...
1) Cure MP costs. Though drastic, this is a needed change.

2) Raises need to be on separate timers. This would be nice to have.

3) Stats need enhancing. Believe this is in the works. Anyway, correction to your claim. Only VIT and MND has a very noticeable effect. The other stats work more silently.

4) Gear damage from death needs to be abolished or reduced. This is a good gil drain from the game.

5) the r45 dungeon needs a slight nerf. Watch videos and learn...

6) Enmity needs to be fixed. Can't comment.

[Balbanes]

Betel, you are in violation of your own sig. When did you become a troll? 0.o

[Betelgeuzah]

When did everyone in this thread aside from dubont become a troll?!

It was a magical patch indeed!

[Zorano]

Your main problem is believing that FFXIV is an upgrade of FFXI.

Things work differently here, Provokes and WSs do not generate the same amount of hate as they do in FFXI, heck it even has different hate system.

[MartaDemireux]

I'm sure it has been said but you could impose the cure mp issue on yourself in FFXI haha. Galka Red Mage without major MP+ gear would have maybe 200-250MP when he learned Cure III (I think I'm remembering correctly) and that costs 46MP (though I think I do remember it costing more when the game launched in the states...).

Just remember that they can still change things as they see fit. They're like BigBrother and are watching at all times seeing if people are wiping from just mismanaged MP or legitimate MP issues. The same goes for the rest of the items on the list: they're watching and will change things when they need changing but don't want to hold back on 1.19's release. They'll likely put a couple of people aside and put out a 1.18a to fix any changes that THEY feel need changing (it's their game after all, not ours, we just play it).

Sit back, relax, try to find ways to have fun doing other things if something really bothers you. We're not losing any money yet. The game sells for $15 currently (got two friends to get in game) so it's not a big deal for new players and people like us who bought it when it was $50+ got our run I believe. Most $50+ RPG's don't have a year's worth of content.

[Skeloton]

1.Mp costs are only like 10-20mp too much and the THM DoTs cost less than the Banish Scorge spells. I would of thought that DoTs would have a bigger MP cost than single shot spells.

2. I was abit disappointed that Raise and Resurrect use the same cool down, havnt got the other Res spells but it would be helpful.

3. This is gonna get sorted one way or the other anyway

4. 7% hit is sort of what ive been getting, now Im an impulsive buyer in games (not real life) and as such Ive never needed a gil sink. The repair system should of just stayed as it was with the dark matter being a duct-tape solution in addition to it.

5. Im still in belief that this is only hard when you dont know what your doing. Saying that I went in with someone who did and we still got wiped. Only did it once and not because I found the dungeon hard but because getting into a party as a THM was harder

6. I believe theres a screw loose and 'voke is broken completely as many tanks have told me and said on these forums.

[Hayden]

Voke isn't broken, people just can't contemplate how it works now because there either very very slow or honestly confused.

Before patch 1.18 Voke was used as a primary methord for getting hate, now its simply a support. Voke ALONE (no matter how many times you rage spam it) will never get you the hate. you need to mix it with Damage like Heavy Stab, and other abilities, war drums and circle slash.

If you use voke to compliment the attacks and skills needed, you'll have no problem keeping hate.

DD's and such need to also learn how to control their damage as well and healers and such the same.

*GASP* You mean there's no longer one MAGIC button we can press to keep hate! You mean battles from here on will require effort and strategy and...gasp....PLANNING! Well that's it this game sucks I'm taking my ball and going home! *sarcasm*

[Physic]

Voke isn't broken, people just can't contemplate how it works now because there either very very slow or honestly confused.

Before patch 1.18 Voke was used as a primary methord for getting hate, now its simply a support. Voke ALONE (no matter how many times you rage spam it) will never get you the hate. you need to mix it with Damage like Heavy Stab, and other abilities, war drums and circle slash.

If you use voke to compliment the attacks and skills needed, you'll have no problem keeping hate.

DD's and such need to also learn how to control their damage as well and healers and such the same.

*GASP* You mean there's no longer one MAGIC button we can press to keep hate! You mean battles from here on will require effort and strategy and...gasp....PLANNING! Well that's it this game sucks I'm taking my ball and going home! *sarcasm*

my guess is, the hate problem has a lot to do with high defense monsters, Since they say that hate is mostly dps based now. With high defense monsters, tanks hate is going to go down drastically. Im also assuming cure works as having a % of it counted as dmg to the monster. Once again, with high end monsters, they will take very little dmg, but do a lot of dmg, cure is going unmitigated.

So say you are a gld, normally your hate tools work fine, because your voke is just in addition to some dmg, say you normally would do 1000 dmg in 30 seconds, take 1000 dmg, and with your enimity skills, and etc even getting healed for 1000 you would still be pretty high in hate.

But now, on high end monsters, you do 100 dmg, take 1000, get healed for 1000, even if your adding 700 enimity equivalent, the healer will still get smashed for keeping you alive. This is consistent with the fact that people are only really noticing emnity issues on NMs, for regular combat, it may be perfectly fine.

It may needs some adjusting, or maybe its just a bad idea, but probably people will have to experiment with hate and emnity a bit more in these situations, its possible that using the proper skills differently from before will solve the issues, its also possible its just messed up, more testing needs to occur though

[Ikuni]

Dubont you've said it multiple times in this thread... cures pull too much hate so why not have the tank cure themselves at the start to establish hate? It's a rather simple concept, and I'm not saying he needs to have CON48 for Cure III, Cure II will be sufficient and can be learned in a day or two.

Like others have stated the Ogre isn't that hard once you figure it out, we killed it 5+ times last night, even after wipes and needing to re-enter the room. Once our GLA was even killed within five seconds of starting the fight and we were able to Rebirth him and kill the Ogre. Learn to adapt, it doesn't need a nerf. A word of advice: with only a CON and THM neither of you should be nuking or you'll never have enough MP for the whole fight.

Have fun trying to figure out Batraal when you get there...

[Aldarin]

So I actually agree with many of these things. While I did enjoy the overall direction things went, there is still alot that can be changed for the better.

1) Cures and MP costs. I thank god that SE finally restricted cures to single targets. It adds an element of strategy into the game that was lacking with AoE cures and no ST cures. I also approve of the fact that curaga is 3 times as much as cure. At the same time however, I feel that doing both this and increasing cure mp costs by 3.5 times is a little too much. A x2 increase in mana costs across the board would have made more sense, as would have halving the mp pools of all character (leaving item bonuses the same). I would say that halving MP pools all round would probably have been the better solution as the MP regeneration would not need to be changed. As is, the MP for 3 cure IIs takes about 3 minutes to regen while standing still, which is a large amount of downtime.

2) raise on seperate timers. Yes. The 3 different raises all serve different purposes and have different recast times, putting them on the same recast timer makes little sense.

3) Stat effects. Stats have very little effect right now. This needs work, but I suspect that the developers are already working on it. Why they messed with balancing issues before doing stat balancing I have no clue, since they will need to balance actions again afterwards anyways. It may simply be that the changing abilities and MP costs are simply a temporary test to see how the game plays as such. Slightly annoying if that is the case, but understandable if the developers need more testing and data.

4) Gear Damage from death. I haven't been dying a whole lot lately, but I did notice this on the few occasions that I have died. I like the concept, it gives players an incentive to not die. At the same time with the current rates of death due to the cure changes, it seems that the penalty should be reduced slightly. The current rate probably wouldn't be as bad without the increase death toll.

5) Dungeons being too hard. I don't especially agree with this. What I do agree with is that Enemy AoE attacks are completely overpowered. If a single AoE is enough to take everyone in the party down to 1/3 to 1/2 health, then there is an issue. Especially with mobs spamming AoE attacks. Not completely sure what would be good to balance this, but making sure AoE don't go back to back would probably do it. On the other hand, it may be that these AoE attacks are interrupt-able, in which case the current situation is fine, and people simply need to discover how to stop them. Such is the situation with the AoE from Dream Toads, though I don't know about others.

6) Enmity needs to be fixed. I completely agree with this. Provoke and Taunt are just about useless. The timer recast I could deal with, but they provide very little enmity in comparison. Both abilities, even together, are overwhelmed by one weapon-skill, which people can normally put off at the start of the fight. The tanking abilities need to be more effective. Not sure about the enmity of cures, since I don't really use them anymore, but given that the tanking abilities are ineffective in the face of WS, the same situation is probably true with cures.

7) The forum community. I think that most people can agree that the game could not last in the old state. I think most people can also agree that the game still needs a large amount of changes, including balancing and adding new content. At this point there are two types of posts that I dislike. One type of poster that I dislike are those who believe that the game should go back to the old version because it was easier or they dislike the changes. The other type of poster I dislike are those who believe the game is absolutely perfect and who rail on those offering changes. Changes to a game should attempt to accomplish as much effect with as little change as possible. Small changes with large effects are simpler for developer to implement, and they cause less outcry from conservatives.

All in all, I'm surprised that the developers are not doing many more small patches for tweeks, since they shouldn't take long and will allow changes to be smoother. It will also help make sure that changes don't interfere with each other. My suggestions to the developers would be thus.

1) wait a week, then halve MP cost for cures, see what the response is. The game can always be reverted easily if desired.
1a) if the halving MP costs is good, consider either returning Cure MP cost to their original values and halving the MP pools of all player.
1b) if 1a is not agreeable, consider increasing the MP costs of all other abilities so that Cure I costs about the same as Shock Spikes. This would help balance the differing MP costs of the different spells.

2) Fiddle with the tank enmity abilities, try increasing them from the current point since the consensus is that they are too low, and continually keep an eye on them for balancing purposes. They might need to be reduced or even further increased.

I am assuming that all of these factors are variables in the game program that will only need to be changed in a one to a few areas. If that is not the case, fire whatever idiot initially programmed the file and resign yourself to the delays it will cause during file editing.