More advanced battle system please!

[Enkidoh]

Problem is we live in a Brondo chugging, 'Ow My Balls' watching generation of MMO gamers. Yoshi wanted and got this game to cater to the lowest common denominator just like WoW did. He didn't come into this project to make a compelling, deep, complex game. He came at this with let's make this as Tinker Toy easy as possible so we can rope in as many people as possible. Ever wonder why when you watch the Academy Awards 90% of the awards go to films no one has ever seen? Because the greatest films are watched by only a very small number of people. The general populace wants simple characters, explosions, gratuitous sex and violence and that is what puts butts in the seats.

In this day and age what puts butts in the MMO seats is: ridiculous ease of entry, repetitive grind to catch a carrot on a stick, and LOTS of near naked women. FFXIV has all of this in spades. Yoshi read the demographics correctly when he took over the project. He made the quintessential Chicken McNugget MMO and people are eating them like they are going out of style. Unfortunately asking for more complexity would be like asking for complexity and character development from Twilight. It doesn't sell son!

I hate to use the word 'hipster' here, but that is the only way to describe this attitude. That's culture for you - no matter what the media, a fictional work costs money to make, and a couple of minor fans will not cover the bills associated with production. Even games these days cost more than films to produce and market - hence the greater chance that if a game fails to meet a certain sales target, it will often result in sending it's developer (and sometimes publisher as well) to the wall, just like if a book fails to sell a certain number of copies, a TV show fails to reach a ratings target after only a few episodes, or if a film fails to pull in enough tickets at the box office.

Also, an unpleasant truth, is most so called 'cult series/films/books' were, surprise surprise, actually created for the so-called 'lowest-common denominator', only to fail to hook it's intended audience for whatever reason and instead be picked up by a small, loyal but incredibly obsessive fanbase. Then word of mouth gets around and suddenly the original intended audience looks at it again and says "wow, this really is good!", and it finally achieves the mainstream popularity it wanted, leaving the 'true fans' angry that they weren't listened to and thus start hating it simply because it's now successful and popular. Sound familiar?

This is basically how you see FFXIV. Really, I can't understand why people don't just let go of this smug, 'I-liked-it-before-you-did' attitude, and just enjoy the game for what it's worth, battle system and all. After all, the whole point is to have fun right?

[Shadex]

I hate to use the word 'hipster' here, but that is the only way to describe this attitude. That's culture for you - no matter what the media, a fictional work costs money to make, and a couple of minor fans will not cover the bills associated with production. Even games these days cost more than films to produce and market - hence the greater chance that if a game fails to meet a certain sales target, it will often result in sending it's developer (and sometimes publisher as well) to the wall, just like if a book fails to sell a certain number of copies, a TV show fails to reach a ratings target after only a few episodes, or if a film fails to pull in enough tickets at the box office.

Also, an unpleasant truth, is most so called 'cult series/films/books' were, surprise surprise, actually created for the so-called 'lowest-common denominator', only to fail to hook it's intended audience for whatever reason and instead be picked up by a small, loyal but incredibly obsessive fanbase. Then word of mouth gets around and suddenly the original intended audience looks at it again and says "wow, this really is good!", and it finally achieves the mainstream popularity it wanted, leaving the 'true fans' angry that they weren't listened to and thus start hating it simply because it's now successful and popular. Sound familiar?

This is basically how you see FFXIV. Really, I can't understand why people don't just let go of this smug, 'I-liked-it-before-you-did' attitude, and just enjoy the game for what it's worth, battle system and all. After all, the whole point is to have fun right?

I see you agree with my point. The game was created to sell, not to do anything unique, astonishing, or impressive, just sell. Glad we're on the same page. As for the rest of your post... yeah... it had absolutely nothing to do with what I said but hey we all gotta hate on something. Guess your things is hipsters. *shrug* I never mentioned anything about liking anything before it was cool. Maybe reading comprehension isn't your thing. But hey I'm with ya, down with hipster and their funny hats!

[Stihllodeing]

sheep

Actually, I'm slowly starting to warm up to the insult in gaming communities if I'm to be honest here.
Just a small observation:

"OMG cash shop is pay to win so hard!"
"OMG this game is vertical and not horizontal or inside out or three dimensional!!"
"OMG end game is SO OP!!!!"
"There are LITERALLY no GMs in this game...OMG"
"Devs are the bots for tax purposes (PROOF INSIDE)"

*Logs onto other game site and says the same thing

I'm not saying you're like this, I just don't know who the hell the sheeple really are anymore. Heck, anymore if I go to a website of a company I regularly give money to and say, "Hey mate! Fantastic job you!" I can feel the warmth of the fire before I even log out. Hate is pretty popular. "Sheep" is usually used in this context. Ya know, hate, anger, insults, whatever.

snip

To be honest, all I really heard was: "No man the very BEST movie cinema can be had deep deep down in the darkest of darkest places where no one goes, wanna go down to the basement and see!!?"

No offense man lol. You just didn't do the best job there representin'....champ. Imo.

[Shadowkept]

I think it's funny how the same people who will label people as bad because they can't "dodge" aoe mechanics or memorize the timing of a lengthy fight, will simple say "no, this isn't an action game" when it comes to controllable blocking or parrying. Dodging to me looks silly in ARR comparative to other games with dodging because their no "dodge" animation and things you can dodge are limited, let's face it you're really just running or stepping out of some glowing indicator and it looks so epic.. fail.
A how to boss video on youtube looks more like square dancing than a choreographed fight scene.

All melee could benefit from an actual dodge animation unique to their job that moves them a set distance in one direction, with an animation lock to make other skill unusable while dodging. Could do something similar for casters as well. Oh well this isn't Tera. I just think the community is too quick say won't happen instead of can't or shouldn't with an explanation.

[Nutz]

Your first question is simple. Combat was purposely not designed that way because it's overly intricate and any latency greater than 100 ms or so would completely destroy it. When you're playing an MMO you're essentially streaming a game (at least parts of it) so when you want to parry a mob's attack, you'd have to hit the timing right, then the server would check it, then the server would send confirmation that it was right and the reaction would occur. This can happen quickly enough under ideal conditions, but any small hiccup would lead to missing blocks and parries frequently when it looked like it should have gone through. To combat this they'd have to make it more lenient, but then people would almost never miss them. It's better to have them occur based on math because it's easier to do, fair, and allows you to do things other than try to block/parry every single attack.

As to the second part. Well in team based combat what else would you expect? Healers heal, tanks tank, etc. If players weren't reliant on each other then why bother making group content? If they made all player characters more powerful to not rely on each other so much, but then made the fights harder to balance it out we'd be right back in the same spot but with bigger numbers (note that this actually is happening anyway).

EDIT: as to skill chain type combat mechanics: they were in v1.0 but eventually removed because they didn't work well. They worked on it a while but eventually decided not to re-implement them because they felt it was too much to do during combat. Given the pace of combat I think I agree, though perhaps they could create chains based on off-GCD skills that various classes have. Creating a combo between various classes' regular weapon skills (as it used to be, but combat was much slower) would do nothing more than sometimes create chains at random because people wouldn't be able to coordinate such things. Doing something like Howling Fist -> Dragonfire Dive = [some cool effect with additional damage] might be cool to have and add another layer to combat, but I haven't heard that they're considering anything like this.

[Tex_Mex]

If you are looking for an MMO that has a more complex, and action ability usage tanking style, I would recommend Tera. Tanking in that game is a blast and requires you to activate your "block" in real time, or else you can get smashed by bosses. There is something uniquely exciting, and unforgiving when you know that if you fail to block an attack, you can get one shot, even as a tank!

The downside is that because the game is more challenging, player skill levels vary wildly. But I played it for 6 months and had a blast with it!

[DoctorPepper]

They've pretty much stated that they don't want too much complexity in this game due to the large number of casual or less skilled people who are playing it.

Personally what bugs me the most is lack of complexity in gear stats, there are no special stats, just the cut and dry base stats with a small handful of substats.

I would love to see some unique stats on gear that do things like improve job abilities, allow you to attack multiple times during auto-attacks, allow you to reflect or mitigate certain types of damage occasionally, the possibilities are pretty much endless and things like this would make gear feel a lot more unique to me.

I would also love to see some expansion to the cross class/job skills, it feels really dumbed down at the moment getting to only pick from a handful of skills for 2 other classes. Combat would be a lot more fun to me if I could actually make semi-hybrid jobs. Obviously there would still have to be key skills that can't be used on an offclass but it almost feels like a nerf when you get your job crystal and lose all of the options available pre-30 to me.

[Sumimi]

Personally what bugs me the most is lack of complexity in gear stats, there are no special stats, just the cut and dry base stats with a small handful of substats.

Unfortunately they went away from this as well. FFXI had somewhere in the ballpark of 6 main stats and 20 sub stats (+120 skill stats) that fit itself into a formula. Every time an action was done, entire equipment sets were swapped to optimize every action. As an example...as a Blue Mage I had two very different sets, and about 8 sets in total. The first was a pure STR set, which was to be used with Sneak Attack + Spell (Sneak Attack > Vertical Cleave ). The second was a pure DEFENSE set, used specifically to do massive damage to Kirin, an end game triggered boss (Sneak Attack > Cannonball).

People will always try to math their way to optimization. However, most people are against the idea of carrying around even 3 sets of gear per class with our limited armory space.

[lololink]

It wouldn't work unless you rework the entire game unfortunately.

[Yshnal]

Chess is so outdated...

This is like saying that DA:O or D:OS combat suck because they aren't as action based as DAII, Skyrim, or Diablo, while in fact they have completely different and valid design choices that many people enjoy playing. Different styles for different players, I say.

Yes, you're comparing different kind of games (RPGs). FFXIV has taken a more classic (classic != outdated) aproach with his "turn" and stat based combat, and that doesn't make it bad per se. Different people have different tastes, after all, and the current system fits well in a FF MMO (it's quite similar to FFXII in some fronts, in fact). That doesn't mean, though, that it can't be improved and expanded (I miss playing with elemental resistances and weaknesses, for instance, or a more complex materia system).