[Dev11232] Why is there still a cap?

[MeowyWowie]

Ya, but weren't people complaining how fast mobs die in XIV? Even XI meripo PTs killed the enjoyment for many players.

I thought SE was taking XIV in the direction of old school skillchain parties like we had before AU released. Fights that took coordination, required debuffs, strategies (no matter how simple they were). Anything is better than the spam we're seeing now IMO, and I thought our playerbase agreed on this as well.

[Betelgeuzah]

I thought SE was taking XIV in the direction of old school skillchain parties like we had before AU released. Fights that took coordination, required debuffs, strategies (no matter how simple they were). Anything is better than the spam we're seeing now IMO, and I thought our playerbase agreed on this as well.

I liked keeping the chain going more than beating a crab for five minutes, sorry.

That wasn't exactly easy to pull off either. Coordination was required, debuffs too unless your party was totally OP. It wasn't brainless and if you losed focus the chain was lost.

I hope that comes back. Mamool Ja are awesome.

[MeowyWowie]

I liked keeping the chain going more than beating a crab for five minutes, sorry.

That wasn't exactly easy to pull off either. Coordination was required, debuffs too unless your party was totally OP. It wasn't brainless and if you losed focus the chain was lost.

I hope that comes back. Mamool Ja are awesome.

Hmm, AU meripo PTs took no skill at all lol. If you weren't getting chain 6+ your party "sucked" lol. (I'm not saying your party sucked, just in general.)

Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy to see exp chains being added. However, I'd prefer my fights to take at least a little bit of strategy, some thinking, quick reflexes (think silena and paralyna), among other things. Overall, I'm 100% FOR exp chains, but the speed that's required, in my opinion, is way too fast.

I'd rather they lengthened the fights themselves while increasing overall exp per kill, resulting in the same exp/hour but giving us more in depth fights.

Edit:

To the OP: Sorry, I didn't mean to derail your thread. I think we're still talking about the same thing, just different ways of achieving it.

[Exni]

It's still to early to be thinking of raising the level cap. It'll prolly be at, or after, the PS3 release... so that playerbase doesn't feel as though they are too far behind initially.

Hmm, AU meripo PTs took no skill at all lol. If you weren't getting chain 6+ your party "sucked" lol. (I'm not saying your party sucked, just in general.)

Not true. I'll agree it didn't take a whole lot of skill to get chain 5+, but there were parties out there that struggled with even that. Meripo's that took skill had a goal of chain 100++. Usually no true 'tank' was involved so the DDs balancing hate, the puller keeping the fast pace by holding multiple mobs in queue while still DD'ing/buffing/debuffing, and the healer(s) keeping everyone up without having an actual tank or pulling hate..

I figured you were pretty experienced in XI from some of your previous posts. This post really confuses me.. because you really should already known that. Screenie of you in a group at chain 200+ (which was an everyday thing for groups that had 'skill'..) or your just talking BS here.

[MeowyWowie]

Screenie of you in a group at chain 200+ (which was an everyday thing for groups that had 'skill'..) or your just talking BS here.

Really? Well that's unfortunate then since I quit playing FFXI about 2 years ago and have since formatted my HD on my old laptop which means all my pics are gone. And besides, I really didn't find getting chain 200+ to be anything worth taking an SS of, it was just how merit parties were meant to be played. Often times I would get chain 500+ as long as other parties didn't try to take over our camp. (Yeah, I had a lot of free time back then.)

The class that took the most skill was definitely the BRD, however I didn't play BRD in XI, so I can't comment there. I guess I was just extremely fortunate to always have good BRDs? I don't know.. Other than that, not much skill was required.

RDMs just had to Haste, Refresh and Cure, nothing new for them really. And if you happened to be meriting on something other than birds then they would also Slow and Sleep the mobs (Usually BRD would take care of this on birds).

Melee just had to spam WS when they had tp while always facing the next target before the current target died, letting auto-target do the work for them. Sadly, this likely won't work in XIV because we still won't be able to hold claim on multiple mobs unless they're linked or in a party. And even if we could, the auto-target system doesn't auto-target the next claimed mob anyways.

Sure, it was definitely easier with good players, and even easier with good players that were geared well, but I think some of you are missing my point. Meripo parties post AU took much less strategy than the SC/MB parties that came before them. It didn't matter what family of mob you were fighting, the basic strategy was always the same.

You never had to worry about a DD taking hate from a big WS because they died so fast. You didn't have to coordinate SCs and MBs, again because they died too fast. The only debuffs you really needed were Slow/Elegy. There was rarely ever any "oh shit" moments where you had to quickly counter with a Cure/Silena/Flash/Stun/whatever. And this is all with a time limit of 30 seconds.

Now, in FFXIV, the limit will be 10 seconds. 10 seconds.. How much strategy can you fit into 10 seconds, realistically? Not to mention the time between mobs. Keep in mind that auto-target doesn't work the same way here so you can't just position yourself correctly and automatically change target after each kill. People are already complaining how they don't even get a chance to hit mobs before the ARC kills them.

I see 2 outcomes:

1) Seeing chain 6+ will be extremely rare unless you're fighting a group of equal level mobs that are very close together and have a quick respawn.

2) Mobs ~10 levels above your parties level die within 5-10 seconds allowing us to keep the chain going. In other words, you barely get one attack in before they die, IF you're even that lucky.

When SE said that they wanted to focus on making battles require teamwork and strategy I just assumed they meant all battles, not just instanced boss fights.

When SE said that they were shooting for 30-45 second fights when soloing an equal level mob I just assumed the same would hold true for a party fighting mobs ~10 levels above them.

I apologize if anyone took any of my comments as insults, that's not what I intended. I'd just prefer to see combat in this game require teamwork, coordination and strategy. Zerging enemies in under 10 seconds a piece doesn't count.

[Mahayana]

Hmm, AU meripo PTs took no skill at all lol. If you weren't getting chain 6+ your party "sucked" lol. (I'm not saying your party sucked, just in general.)

Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy to see exp chains being added. However, I'd prefer my fights to take at least a little bit of strategy, some thinking, quick reflexes (think silena and paralyna), among other things. Overall, I'm 100% FOR exp chains, but the speed that's required, in my opinion, is way too fast.

I'd rather they lengthened the fights themselves while increasing overall exp per kill, resulting in the same exp/hour but giving us more in depth fights.

Edit:

To the OP: Sorry, I didn't mean to derail your thread. I think we're still talking about the same thing, just different ways of achieving it.

No I see where your getting at and I really don't care how its achieved as long as it is achieved. In my last thread I was basically asking for the cap to be either removed or drastically raised because I feel like I get no sense of accomplishment when my party just mindlessly beats on raptors. I miss that sense of accomplishment I had in XI when i took down some pretty tough grinding mobs like Goobbues, Treants, Ghost, and Skeletons to name a few. I always had a sense of "Phew! close one again!" after I defeated mobs like them. I just want that back again because 1-50....has been no sense of accomplishment so far and I doubt my last 5 levels will be unless this cap is drastically lifted.