[dev1206] Class Reforms: why the 15/11 limit?

[Monsalvato]

I'll provide an example where the horizontal variety can make a real impact which is often discounted.

Very good example.
As I said before, I wouldn't mind some solidification/homogeneization of -na spells. FFXI has a plethora, maybe too many, grouping them together in, say, 4 or 5 spells would be something I wouldn't mind, but releasing only a single spell for everything is really a loss in terms of game depth, imho.

P.S.
Are you the same Nagamaki from the Elemental Gorgets tests many years ago in FFXI?



@Orophinn
That's one hypothesys I came up with, which I could sum up with:
1) We have UI limits with the max number of actions
2) Balancing all these actions for all the classes/jobs will be quite a huge effort for the small team handling live FFXIV, which would have consequences on the amount of other things we can fix and content we can add
3) Why don't we set a simple 15 actions limit for every class? That will greatly reduce the load of work for us until 2.0 is out, at that point we'll do things the way we want them without having to accept these compromises
4) Win!

Were this true... I honestly wouldn't have any problem with it. And I can also understand why they can't clearly tell us it's that way, it wouldn't be right from a P.R. point of view, would it? Especially now that they're gonna start to charge people.
But really, if things were that way I wouldn't mind, I'd just consider it a necessary compromise to accept while 2.0 is on the way.
But if that's wrong and this is just the first signal of the new direction they want to game to go... then yes, I'm a bit sad.

P.S.
Are you Orophinn of Tribe LS, maybe?

[Nagamaki]

P.S.
Are you the same Nagamaki from the Elemental Gorgets tests many years ago in FFXI?

Yep, although I'd say my biggest contribution was figuring out, parsing and posting how accuracy and accuracy level correction worked (+2 = +1%, base % when acc == eva, etc). Still baffles me how long people had been arguing about gear without bothering to figure out something as basic as that.

[Orophin]

Very good example.
P.S.
Are you Orophinn of Tribe LS, maybe?

Newp, I'm the Orophin with one n on Figaro in Phoenix Order LS. I played on Gilgamesh in FF11.

[Orophin]

I'd just like to add that I think a lot of their decision making came from being limited from the current UI. Up until 1.20, they've used ability cost because there was really no way to fill all 30 ability slots, which is all that UI could handle. Now we're getting enough abilities between classes, jobs and cross-class, as well as traits (something else limited by cost before) to fill up the entire UI.

I would speculate since they're redoing so much of the game that they're probably going to be redoing the core UI for abilities as well, since with a level cap raise (probably not happening until 2.0) they need to accommodate for more abilities and the current UI just won't allow for it.

So the 15/5/10 and 11 traits is just what we have to work with for now. There's a very good chance things will change quite a bit in 2.0.

[Monsalvato]

Can only say it's a honour to see people like you are still around Nagamaki, always loved your contributions back in the days

Ok! I'll quit with the OT now!

[Estellios]

I just wanted to say that if you're in a nuking role, and you're worried about enmity, why wouldn't you just stop casting...?

Waiting for enmity to go down either from letting others get more or by using reduction abilities is a lot better than peppering with weak spells as waiting also allows you to recover MP and prevents you from continuing to accumulate enmity. Higher tier spells in FF11 were always a lot more MP efficient per damage dealt, too, so the scaling abilities will ensure that you're always casting at that high tier potency.

[Monsalvato]

Estellios, while some people may prefer a Tier system to a Scaling one, that's not really the big problem here (if we can even talk about "problem").
It's more the possibility of a lack of "horizontal variety" that scares some of us, I'm sure that despite of personal tastes nobody has really big issues against the Scaling System.

[Einar]

To sum the main points:

* Reducing the numbers of abilities to give more identity to the classes: understandable
* Limiting cross-class abilities: understandable
* Fixing to 15 abilities and 11 traits: problem

It's not the number of abilities per se that is the problem, rather a question of how rigid is the system. Some classes may be effective with 10 abilities, others with 17 (made up numbers): this affects magic users more because traditionally they had a larger pool of spells to pick from (even if you take into account the scaling).
If the "15/11" rule was just a rule of thumb (15+-STD, more or less), I doubt there'd be any problem. If it were 15, *period* it would be due to intrinsic differences between the classes.

And to reiterate, this doesn't touch anything on "useful" or "useless" abilities, it's an issue lower in the stack.

[AtryxEtair]

This thread should be re titled Text Labyrinth, so many walls. I read a lot and wasn't sure if this was mentioned. But we don't what classes will look like past 50 or how far they will go past 50. For all we know 50 could be the equivalent of level 25-30 in FFXI. Trying to insert some perspective in the discussion. Apologies if this has been considered.

[Nagamaki]

The point of the OP is not about the loss of tiers, because really each type or element still has at least 2 spells to it so it isn't like they are likely to all have the same potency/cast time/cost and in some cases like the cures, the differences are explicit in the descriptions.

He repeated that this wasn't the point a few times to try and get the conversation back on the right track but people keep posting counter arguments to the one person arguing that removing the tiers is a huge problem, which is really not the purpose of the thread.