Why can't we have jobs with this level of depth and customization in FFXIV?

[saeedaisspecial]

How about I post this video from 2006 I found on my old computer to show people how dreadfully boring the combat system was.

http://youtu.be/qWrvaVgX69s

Take off the rose tinted goggles please everyone.

That sure does work if the only thing people loved about XI was its combat.
But that isn't true at all.

[BloodPact]

Wasn't PUP (the job being compared to) released in Treasures of Aht Urhgan Expansion which was still lvl 75? It was released in 2006 btw, way before even FFXIV 1.0 was created so what are you talking about?.

That's still 25 levels above the current cap in this game. And it's 7 more years of development and planning compared to this game as well. My point still stands.
Furthermore, I'll tell you what; I have no idea what's being pointed at in XI when the OP means "level of depth" because, yes, there were many options to choose from in terms of abilities and spells but at 75 cap (which is when I left) you barely used half of those abilities, if anything, as a magic user. If melee it was even worse. Not to mention that you could watch two episodes of a series in Netflix before having to use your next weaponskill or while resting for MP.
Combos in this game give a flow to the abilites as you get them and it is a good way to make you use your whole arsenal instead of just spamming the most powerful skill, which is what usually ended up happening in XI's endgame.

[Aegis]

XI was just the most successful game in Square Enix's history.

Fixed that for you

[Renen]

Im all for having complex system.
Heck, I loved WHM in ff11.

You had so many spells aside from cures 1-3 and a handfull of heal over time effects.
You could raise resistance to every element, you could "precast" raise via the reraise spell.
They could raise resistance to things like paralyzed and poison.
You could even raise STR and INT of party members...
Was all of it useful? No.
But it was nice to have for times that did require it.

[Fendred]

Indeed. And unlike FFXI and WoW, FFXIV doesn't have 10(ish) years of development (yet. Here's hoping it does).

"Oh, but they should have learned from the past" You think they haven't? They have more access to what people do in the background of a game than any player ever will. All the "I think"s and "but all my friends" are not really good indicators of what the entire playerbase is doing.

The game is moving forward. What we have right now is the basic framework for the future, but it is not what the game will look like even one year from now (keeping in mind that expansions are often used as an opportunity to make sweeping changes to mechanics and classes).

They set up the game based on a lot of things that a western MMORPG developer trying to make a better MMORPG would probably avoid if not for how corporate money has influenced developers in the west.

Why was there exactly one tank, one healer, and two DPS positions in the party setup? Because they had 2 tank, 2 healer, and 4 DPS roles. They made an assumption that is plainly and obviously false to anyone who has been into MMORPGs in the west for a long time: That players will evenly distribute themselves throughout the available jobs when one or more jobs possess a clear DPS advantage. That's been around since WoW's release in 2004. I'd even venture the cross-server party match making system (duty finder), which was introduced in WoW as a last resort to solve the queue problem from the class imbalance, was simply put in because of its popularity in other games as opposed to why WoW's development team placed it in their game.

More recently, Yoshida was surprised to find people socially networking in order to overcome the challenge that hunts present. His accident created something that has the seeds of something good and genuine: Obstacles that can only be overcome by putting aside everyone's differences in order to overcome the challenge.

What I'm trying to say is, they don't know what necessarily will make an MMORPG in today's market successful and they've plainly stated that Japan does not have many MMORPG developers. They have no point of reference like we do from years of success and failures. Instead, the game is an experiment in putting different concepts together and seeing what happens.

[Exstal]

Why was there exactly one tank, one healer, and two DPS positions in the party setup? Because they had 2 tank, 2 healer, and 4 DPS roles.

Wrong. Duty finder is a thing and having 1 tank, and 1 healer is pretty much required with the other only two possible spots being DPS spots. Notice that any pre-made group can freely choose to ignore this configuration.

[Fendred]

Wrong. Duty finder is a thing and having 1 tank, and 1 healer is pretty much required with the other only two possible spots being DPS spots. Notice that any pre-made group can freely choose to ignore this configuration.

That people can freely choose to ignore the configuration is irrelevant. It has to do with the numbers one expects to see in terms of who is playing what. It is not a coincidence that the number of tanks, healers, and damage dealing roles currently in the game are proportional to the slots in a default party size. ST further cements this point by the fact Yoshida changed the default configuration and encounter design to accommodate the current job distributions.

Also, my point was that they have already stated they are trying to learn what works and doesn't work. We can debate the why's of their game mechanics all day, but all I'm doing is making an educated guess based on their visible system specs.

[Luvbunny]

Im all for having complex system. Heck, I loved WHM in ff11.You had so many spells aside from cures 1-3 and a handfull of heal over time effects.

LOLOLOL Sorry we do not need 6 cures, 5 curagas here in FF14 when in FFXI you only end up using Cure 3-4 and Curaga 3-4

You could raise resistance to every element, you could "precast" raise via the reraise spell.

Reraise spell would be a nice addition here, maybe with level cap?

They could raise resistance to things like paralyzed and poison.

Yes except those resistance does not always work, you still get poisoned and paralyzed etc, it's just another layer of "imaginary complexity"

You could even raise STR and INT of party members...

Probably will be added with level cap. Those spells do not exist at level 50. Please try to compare FFXI and FF14 with similar level cap and one year of development cycle, though with relaunch, FFXI Zilart would be a good comparison.

Was all of it useful? No. But it was nice to have for times that did require it.

Yeah we do not need 100 spells to deal with as healer. Esuna takes care of all. I certainly do not want separate abilities for each status debuff on party member.

Whm rotation in FFXI is not more complex than in FF14, you spam cure + curaga, maybe toss LOLRegen, and then cycle your hot buttons of erase, sacrifice, paralyna, stona, viruna, cursna, and haste.

[Velox]

snip

And WHM will have all those same skills again. People forget how long FFXI has been out. Currently we gain about 3 skills class skills and 2 job skills every 10 levels, so that's 5 skills. That means when the level cap is raised to 80 at some point in the future, we will have 15 more skills to work with for WHM. If you gave the current WHM all the skills from the current WHM in FFXI, you would have 0 room to grow. You also have to account for the amount of "fluff" in skills. There's really no logical point to having Shell and Protect as 2 different skills since they will ALWAYS be cast together, which is why SE combined them into 2. Same thing with how Raise now automatically moves you to the caster's spot, instead of having it split into 2 skills (one which moves your body and one which raises you).


At any given point, a MMO developer will have 2-3 years of content planned out, including class adjustments and skills. SE wants the current classes to have room to develop further, which is why things are so basic right now.

[Moqi]

And WHM will have all those same skills again.

So many useless skills. We already have Cure and Cure II that do the same thing, we don't need 4 more. If this is the kind of "complexity" people want, I hope we'll never come to that.