A Use for Classes.

[Bishop81]

FFXIV raid combat is a lot like WoWs. Heavy on the dodging - something that is heavily latency dependent. No preparation required to raid.

How about letting Classes bypass the dodging in raids but require them to "prepare"? i.e. a trade of sorts.

After all, Classes are suppose to have "customisation" as their raison d'être. With proper selection of gear and skills, you can let them survive boss attacks the "old way" - i.e. customization; like old school FF.

The downside is of course, you must "grind" for your skills, gear, and consumables - which excludes people tight on time. But as I said, it a trade to not have to dodge - something that excludes people with bad ping.

Edit:

My reasons for proposing this are 3 fold,

• I want to see classes useful - kind of a waste to toss out all that lore after Lv 30.
• I want to see more horizontal progression - which is what collecting of specialized skills and gear will be.
• I want to be able to do content as a high ping player.

[Percimont]

The thought of just standing in one and completely ignoring the AoE effects sounds pretty boring to me, and I'm a dragoon.

In all seriousness, I understand your concerns, but I think there has to be some compromise. I don't think you should just make it so players can ignore the in-game mechanics. Those are what add interesting aspects to each of the fights. To be able to stand in one place and just focus on doing damage would cheapen the encounter in my opinion.

Even if you found a way to make this work, what's to keep someone with a good internet connection from having heavy damage mitigation AND dodging mechanics? Would characters with high vitality and resistance wear really heavy armor that made them move slowly? This could be interesting, but nobody would want to wait for them, and people would complain that they couldn't move as fast as everyone else.

[Bishop81]

The thought of just standing in one and completely ignoring the AoE effects sounds pretty boring to me, and I'm a dragoon.

...

Well, you don't really just negate them without doing anything. You do have to get your gear and skill set in order. In old school FF there is no such thing as dodge, you either have the right setup (and know how to use it) to survive the boss's attacks or you don't and wipe.

If they want to dodge despite having heavy damage mitigation, I don't see the harm. They grinded the gear and skills for it. Kind of redundant though.

[Saccharin]

FFXIV raid combat is a lot like WoWs. Heavy on the dodging - something that is heavily latency dependent. No preparation required to raid.

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.

How about letting Classes bypass the dodging in raids but require them to "prepare"? i.e. a trade of sorts.

After all, Classes are suppose to have "customisation" as their raison d'être. With proper selection of gear and skills, you can let them survive boss attacks the "old way" - i.e. customization; like old school FF.

The downside is of course, you must "grind" for your skills, gear, and consumables - which excludes people tight on time. But as I said, it a trade to not have to dodge - something that excludes people with bad ping.

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.

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.

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.

[Airget]

Ya concepts like skill grind and grinding in general were just methods to stretch out the fluff of content. It's hard to develop an MMO under the idea of developing skills because even though you might seem to have options the reality is unless you follow certain formulas you are hurting yourself cause the best setups are usually found quite quickly and deviating from that set path alienates you from the community.

In a single player rpg, the concept of developing skills is easier because you have control over a unit, it's not just you playing by yourself and relying on the skills of others but rather the ability to develop your team in your own way and easily being able to adapt based on how you grow their skills.

It's hard to do that in an MMO concept because the way you set yourself up may not be compatible with the other people in the party and you just become a hindrance to the group.

With that in mind though, the idea they mentioned that I imagine they are using to keep old dungeons relevant wherein you control a unit and bring them through the dungeon, those characters could be given an in depth skill tree/customization because you can develop that group of 3-4 how you like and adapt their skillsets based on the overall group.

With unit based that you control it's easier to add customization because the variable of player confliction is nullified and it just turns into a single player rpg experience which in all honesty it will be fun to see how they implement these soldiers/mercenaries and how much control the player will have over them.

[Verlyn]

All of the classes are just their respective jobs without their best tools in exchange for some terrible cross class skills. Do you really want to dps as an Arcanist?

[Velox]

Classes would be slightly more viable if they removed the stat boost soul crystals give (since right now stats trump skills in effectiveness).

[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]

All of the classes are just their respective jobs without their best tools in exchange for some terrible cross class skills. Do you really want to dps as an Arcanist?

Do you really think ACN won't get additional tools if this is implemented?