Limit breaks

[Ruinaru]

FF10 is a single player game. The only person you are waiting on is yourself. In an MMO, you have to take into consideration others as well. If limit breaks are a necessity for fighting bosses, then that adds another barrier to entry to joining a party. For example, take the whole controversy surrounding Sentinel.

"I'm making an Ifrit Party"
"I want to join"
"Do you have sentinel?"
"No"
"Ummm..."


"I'm making an Ifrit Party"
"I want to join"
"Do you have a full limit gauge?"
"No"
"Ummm..."

I'm not saying that this one thing makes the concept of limit breaks untenable. What I am saying is that there are serious unintended consequences that must be taken into consideration for the sake of balance and smooth party play.

That's the thing, though. I, for one, don't want Limit Breaks to be so important that you can't beat bosses without them. I want them to be an option in case something goes wrong, or if you wanna see some big numbers every now and then. The kinda thing that just builds up as you do stuff and then you keep it handy until you really need it. You never really saw people using their 2-hours in FFXI just for fun, because they prefer to have them ready "just in case." The same, I think, would happen here.

I don't think "Do you have a full limit gauge?" is really that huge of a deal. I can't see it being the kind of thing that leads to a lot of people being excluded from things, because I can't imagine that a lot of people would just walk around with an empty gauge. Especially if they're actively trying to do something like Ifrit, or some other primal where they know they might need it. Way, way less of a deal than having to level another class just to get a particular skill.

Of course there are checks and balances that need to be in place, but that's what game designers get paid to do. I'm sure Limit Breaks could be incorporated into FFXIV, and I don't see it requiring that much effort on the balance/consequences front.