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

[PrettyPrincess]

Or they can make a single action called "attack" that does everything for you no matter what's going on in the fight.

It's not about giving an illusion of freedom, it's about making fights more tactical and force you to work in team. See what others do, use the appropriate spell or action to gain full benefit of what others did before. What you suggest is just an extreme simplification of battle mechanics

not really. there really is no reason to have multiple tiers of an elemental spell really. Having spells that scale in moderate damage and spells that scale in high damage I am in favor of however. I wouldn't necessarily want a wall, because you wont always need protect and shell at the same time. no reason to have different nas if you can just have esuna. etc etc.

[Monsalvato]

I think you will be surprised that we haven't lost much at all.

Conjurer-wise we lost 4 out of 6 elemental spells, and 6 elemental debuffs (no big deal).
Anything else? Nothing particularly important, but the "mess" they did with CNJ and THM (blaming the original team here, not Yoshi's) continues to have its consequences now.
That's why I said to make things right without creating lore or in-game issues they should have made CNJ get BOTH WHM and BLM, but alas that's not what's going to happen.

THM lost, or rather "changed", way more than CNJ did, imho.

[Jinko]

Agree with Prettyprincess.

The only spells which need tiers really are cures, but now we just have a weak heal and strong heal.

Is it tactical for me to cast stoneskin 1 when I could have cast stoneskin 2 .. nope didn't think so.

And as a mage/blackmage your job is to do as much damage as you can (well in most MMO's) SE's idea of hate and enmity is a stupid one, in most cases it holds you back from doing your best, yes some may consider it strategical and tactical but it really isn't, standing around for 10 seconds after I cast a powerful spell is no fun.

Having a spell which scales with my level and is less likely to pull massive hate is a lot more fun imo. (assuming it works this way :P)

[Shaedhen]

not really. there really is no reason to have multiple tiers of an elemental spell really.

I see 3 obvious ones :

-Depending on your mp pool
-Depending on the enmity you want to generate
-Depending on the time you can allow yourself to be defenseless while casting

[PrettyPrincess]

I see 3 obvious ones :

-Depending on your mp pool
-Depending on the enmity you want to generate
-Depending on the time you can allow yourself to be defenseless while casting

which is why we have spells that scale from moderate and spells that scale in high damage. such as the cures.

[Lucifer]

I see 3 obvious ones :

-Depending on your mp pool
-Depending on the enmity you want to generate
-Depending on the time you can allow yourself to be defenseless while casting

They don't want to understand this.

[Jinko]

I see 3 obvious ones :

-Depending on your mp pool

Now skills mp will scale with your level so no big deal here, unless of course you have burnt all your mana then too bad.

-Depending on the enmity you want to generate

Enmity should be less of an issue with skills that scale this includes ones that generate enmity on GLA and MRD.

-Depending on the time you can allow yourself to be defenseless while casting

I assume this is solo, you shouldn't be fighting monsters much more powerful than yourself anyway. (if you are then expect to take a beating or come close to death)

Personally I always follow up my nuking with a sleep spell when soloing, does the trick.

[Forerunner]

I see 3 obvious ones :

-Depending on your mp pool
-Depending on the enmity you want to generate
-Depending on the time you can allow yourself to be defenseless while casting

[Size=100] This. 100% this. [/size]

[Monsalvato]

Or they can make a single action called "attack" that does everything for you no matter what's going on in the fight.

It's not about giving an illusion of freedom, it's about making fights more tactical and force you to work in team. See what others do, use the appropriate spell or action to gain full benefit of what others did before. What you suggest is just an extreme simplification of battle mechanics

Don't exxageate now :P
"tiered system" and "scaling system" both are fine and both have pros and cons, as I said many times in this thread. The fact that many recent games still choose for one or the other should be proof enough.

Scaling System
pros: your actions automatically become better with each level you gain, you don't have to wait the next tier. It's also easier for developers to handle and balance them
cons: it can get messy for those situations where you want to use a lower tier action on purpose. This doesn't happen often with damaging actions, but it's quite common for defensive/healing actions. The way most games solve this is by adding more spells. So as a comparison, whereas in FFXI you have Cure1, Cure2, Cure3 and so on and use them accordingly to how big of a spell you need and how much mp left you have, in other games (WoW?) you have a "big curing spell that consumes a lot of mp" and a "small curing spell that's mp-cheap". Both of them scale with your level, and you use one or another according to what the fight needs at any moment.

Tiered system
Pros: more complexities, more tacticity, more choices in the hands of players who can adapt to every possible situation, especially true for healing/defensive actions
Cons: harder for developers to handle and balance, you need to wait the "next tier" to make your action better, and also this system can be even too much complex, while giving sometimes just a fake feeling of more choices.


So yeah, don't say one is better than the other, it's just a matter of tastes and pros/cons imho.
But still, part of what you said is true. The "elemental choices" typical of many FF games (even more in games like Persona) is a really deep and interesting stratetic aspect.
For example in WoW you don't have this aspect anymore. Each class uses its own element (or set of elements) and enemies are not "weakr" to fire or "strong" to water. The type of element you use makes no difference, is just aesthetics.
Enemies' weaknesses and strenghts are divided between physical damage (no matter the source) and magical damage (no matter the source).

I don't want to say WoW is a game without depth (it sure has a lot!), but still what I'm saying is that I SURE HOPE the elemental tactical use typical of FF games is not going away.
I'm not saying this is what will happen, just what I'm afraid of after reading the changes to DoM.

[Lucifer]

I don't want to say WoW is a game without depth (it sure has a lot!), but still what I'm saying is that I SURE HOPE the elemental tactical use typical of FF games is not going away.
I'm not saying this is what will happen, just what I'm afraid of after reading the changes to DoM.

That is what I think is going to happen, but if you look at Stone, you can reduce stone evasion. Obviously it's not enough information to determine anything, but you can at least hope they are keeping elemental weaknesses.