A Use for Classes.

[Bishop81]

I'd say compared to WoW FF14 has lot more dodging mechanics but WoW is starting to take them up more often. Since you brought up WoW. One of the devs at Blizzard told us at some point that they design encounters around a 350ms latency. Incredible people can play like that but apparently they can. one of the main reasons is that WoW's servers have code that compensates for poor latency so you cast/dodge just like someone with much lower latency.

This would be my first FF game but not my first MMO. (WoW was actually my second; LoTRO, for a short time, my first.) While this suggestion has no chance of being implemented I'll share with you why I think it shouldn't. First of all it would make encounters fairly boring. You would stand still and just attack the boss and use the occasional counter. In ST for example you'd have 24 people not moving a single time. Does that seem exciting. Not to me. Remember an MMO is all about other people not just you. Teamwork.

So you consider all the old FF games boring? Half the time there isn't even positioning.

In an MMO customisation is a fallacy. If there's a best way to do something then that's what you should do to be the best. It's all mathematics. The developers have been very careful when planning the rebirth and have incorporated tried and tested features and learned a little too. Having 50 buttons and a spell of every occasion just isn't good gameplay. There's no choice and by extension no skill in having a counter for everything. Even the mighty Blizzard have reduced the number of buttons, or as they called it, button bloat. This had mixed signals with the player base but seems to have done more good than bad.

I really wish people wouldn't take Blizzard's words as gospel. Not every game has to be like WoW. I think WoW's success has done enough damage to the genre already, killing creativity as everyone blindly follows in their footsteps afraid to try anything that WoW didn't do, lets not continue this downward decline.

When I say customise, I mean customise load-out per fight. There is no change in the number of buttons, you will only carry a finite set (of your choice) into combat.

Grind just isn't something that the majority of players want now, especially for skills. Players want to be entertained each week not grind 5 hours for one skill increase. A recent case in point is Wildstar. For those of you that don't follow MMO news it is an action combat MMO that promised to bring back the hardcore, which they now deny, element back to MMOs. They are now in significant trouble population wise and company wise. Wildstar listened to the types of posts that complained that it's too easy and made a game for these people but what everyone released is that these people are not your target audience any longer for MMOs. They too had skills to grind and slowly but surely they are easing up on the grind because the majority don't like it.

Given how popular crafting is in FFXIV ... crafting is mostly a grind. You grind for your cross-skills. You have to if you don't want to go broke.

[Saccharin]

So you consider all the old FF games boring? Half the time there isn't even positioning.

How about quoting the right part. It would also give you an answer too.

[Bishop81]

How about quoting the right part. It would also give you an answer too.

There I fixed it. Happy? It got cut because the forums complained it was too long. But lets not get side-tracked.

Dodging isn't the only way to do combat.

Old school FF fights were just as challenging despite having no "dodging" whatsoever.

[Saccharin]

I really wish people wouldn't take Blizzard's words as gospel. Not every game has to be like WoW. I think WoW's success has done enough damage to the genre already, killing creativity as everyone blindly follows in their footsteps afraid to try anything that WoW didn't do, lets not continue this downward decline.

When I say customise, I mean customise load-out per fight. There is no change in the number of buttons, you will only carry a finite set (of your choice) into combat.

Like it or not WoW is popular because they give people what they wanted. before WoW MMOs were a niche genre and to a certain extent they still are. If you look at most of the recent MMO flops, and some went free to play the started development while WoW was still rising. The suits got greedy and though yes we too can have millions of people playing a sub. It didn't work because they didn't understand why WoW worked. If it wasn't for WoW then most of these wow-clones would never had existed.

ARR went with the wow type because it's known to work but still kept enough to make it unique. Most importantly they kept it accessible - no hardcore raiding that so few actually take part in. Yoshi P in his post mortem of 1.0 said that they tried to make a FF11 2.0 but it wasn't FF11 and it bombed.

I see what you mean now by skills but it's the same effect. This is an MMO and it requires people and part of that is working as a team and these encounters require movement to survive an ability. Is popping a cooldown really that interesting rather than moving so far from the party not to kill anyone. To me it's not. We have some cooldowns that allow use to survive certain abilities but we can't use them often and I prefer that.

Given how popular crafting is in FFXIV ... crafting is mostly a grind. You grind for your cross-skills. You have to if you don't want to go broke.

Is crafting that popular? I guess levelling it can be a grind but in general I wouldn't call it a grind. I think crafting is FF is possibly the best system I have seen but with one problem. If it's not HQ (at level cap) it's close to vendor trash.

[Felis]

So you consider all the old FF games boring? Half the time there isn't even positioning.

Because the most FF games had a 2D battle screen (enemies left, party right).