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

[Nagamaki]

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

Replacing targeted -na spells will a universal has a significant negative effect on what the player can prioritize, in certain situations. Any time you only have 1 debuff on you the effect is more or less the same, although MP cost, casting time and recast time can't be set individually, but I wouldn't say that this is a huge loss as long as the catch-all spell has values towards the low end.

However if some attack (Bad Breath type attacks) or combination of attacks (a chain of WSs by a mob, or actions by different mobs in a group) happen to inflict a bunch of debuffs at the same time, being unable to target what you want to remove means being at the mercy of whatever mechanic is used to select what is removed.

The devs could design a priority order (silence is removed first, then para, then slow, then dots in a certain order) but that order wouldn't necessarily be optimal in every situation. Removing silence first makes a lot of sense for casters in most cases but is obviously useless for melees, except everyone can cast some spells (maybe not MNK DRG WAR depending what is excluded then, but all classes). Then in some fights a dot might do insane damage and be absolute priority while in another it does very little, etc.

Alternately they could use FIFO or LIFO (First In First Out, Last In First Out), ie remove the oldest or newest debuff respectively. Could also be based on remaining duration. Works, but a lot of the time the order in which you remove them won't be the order you might have wished for.

In XI you basically had a combination of the 2 types for white magic debuff removal (a range of -na for common debuffs and Erase as a catch-all for the rest, with Esuna being added later as an AoE version that could remove multiple debuffs and remove almost any type when certain conditions were met) but then dancer only had a catch-all with a ridiculously long recast and holy crap did it suck, especially when dealing with paralysis on you.

I suppose if the catch-all is nearly free, instacast with no recast none of those things matter, and almost any implementation would be better than Healing Waltz so we aren't doomed to something that bad, but combining the actions can make a real difference in this case, and there are situations where other common combinations being separatable can come into play such as with buffs and monsters with buff steal abilities, monsters that change element during battle, etc.

I'm eager to see how the class reform will play out in game but I think having concerns about some real losses in flexibility and the fate of the elemental wheel system is very legitimate given what we currently know.

[Shaedhen]

Are you talking damage or healing here you need to be more specific.

As a Damage dealer there is no waste to mana if you are doing the damage, so I assume you mean healing, yes overhealing is an issue I guess, but then healer will have to learn when they should use their spells and which ones they should use at the correct times.

Yes, I said this mainly for healers but it can also apply to nukers. For example depending on what your fighting you might simply not need to use a highly powerful spell because a less powerful one, combined with everyone's else actions will be enough to kill the mob.

Why not ? what standard is there to suggest this shouldn't be the case, and lets not point to FF11.

Well i don't know... It just seems simple logic to me. Let's just get rid of the whole enmity system then.

It seems sensible to me that as you increase in power your spells become more potent anyway, just because something is more powerful doesn't mean it should takes longer to perform.

As a MRD or LNC levels do they take longer to swing their weapon as their auto attack becomes more powerful ?

Skewer 1 and 2 use the same amount of TP and are executed at the same speed but do different damage.

Well yes ok that's how it works right now but i can't say i do agree with it. I think that at some point you should have acces to something of an higher grade, and this should come with a little downside. But you should also still have access to something less powerful if you want to. And again, to me it just part of the whole "let's give players less choices, make everything easier and not too complex. They will have only one action available for what they want to do, or maybe two because we got to be kind sometimes, so they won't have to ask themselves what is better given a specific situation and just stick with the same spells fulltime".

[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]

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.

[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.

[Bahn]

ah yes the tier argument, I wonder how many times you unequipped banish II and used I so you would take less hate

Cure II vs Cure III is a prime example. Mages use Cure II for usual battles to keep the tank alive while keeping healing MP costs down as it won't generate as much enmity. Cure III is for when you think the tank (or your other party members) need a huge heal (they get hit by a WS or you want to top them off before they get hit by an attack) and you had to consider the consequences of using it vs II since III will generate a ton of enmity.

The same goes for the use of DoT vs elemental vs ancient magicks. You used the ancient magicks to do a ton of spike damage (at the risk of wasting a ton of MP, which may come to bite you in the butt if you're both the healer and the nuker in a lowman party) with the risk of generate crazy enmity, elemental magicks to do steady damage while generating manageable enmity, and DoTs to do damage at very little MP cost and risk.

So yes, the current system does offer a lot of depth - maybe a lot less for the melee classes (there is ZERO reason to use the tier 1 version of a skill vs a tier 2 version), but it was definitely useful for the mage classes. The issue that I have with it now that I do agree with is that there are too many useless skills/spells and a lot of overlap. I definitely think that needs to be addressed in 1.20.

Edit: I'm also surprised at the civil discussion in this thread. No name calling or sweeping generalizations. This is very constructive discussion.

[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.