Battle system changes

[SpeckledBurd]

It's not so much a rework of the entire battle system as it is just a rework of the actions and skills available. They've mentioned that they're looking at changing the effects of or removing certain actions that are underutilized such as Featherfoot, Haymaker, Keen Flurry, and a few others. Some actions that do see use in normal rotations that should have useful effects that aren't exceptionally useful due to either fight design or other actions with the same effect might see changes (Dragon Kick, Rage of Halone). They've also mentioned it's possible that they might be doing away with persistent damage resistance down effects like Disembowel.


The only thing that's known for certain right now is that they're going to be changing the way cross class actions work. Instead of having to level alternate classes to use actions like Blood for Blood, they're going to be assigned to Roles and will be useable by Job's that fall within that pool. IE, Melee DPS won't need to level Monk/Dragoon to have access to Blood For Blood, Internal Release and Invigorate, they'll be able to take them immediately.

[NovaLevossida]

The "depth" in FFXI's subjob system was a false choice though. Sure you could technically do whatever you liked, but in my 10 years the community always had BiS and god help you if you deviated even a little.

I don't get why you would put depth in quotes or talk about false choice. There's one way to play NIN in this game. In XI, there was /RNG for shuriken spam and /caster with elemental spam at certain level ranges with /WAR for tanking. And there were oddball combinations for various jobs in various endgame fights over the years that saw the light of day that wouldn't be considered the normal way you'd play the game. My "depth" in XIV is I either execute the optimal BLM rotation or I fix what I did wrong the next time I do the fight.

If you want to talk about communities being stupid in how they acted, XI was insular and didn't like anything out of the ordinary while XIV is hostile with unreasonable expectations and just complains all the time (check 24 man raids or party finder, and a good recent example was when Zurvan came out).

So long as XIV is a game with no room for "depth," it wouldn't matter how much work they put into a cross-class system. Better to just remove it if it's just going to not be used well.

[Driavna]

...

You are wrong. Why? The game does a very bad job informing the player how cross-class system works, first the quest that advances your class to a job has a red marker, unless you have already leveled the other necessary class, so a new player will assume that his level is not high enough for it, because until that point was how the system worked. A proper design will allow picking the quest right away to inform the player what it's needed.

Also, the player is never informed that he has cross skills with more than one class and the only way to know it in-game will be by unlocking every single class first to check all skills.

So yes, was a bad design choice and SB will fix it.

[Valenth]

Main goal: to reduce button bloat
New actions: look a lot like button bloat.

They confirmed with the pruning of actions and the new ones we should have about as many at the new lv cap as we do now currently in the game. I adopted a keybinding that makes it possible to effectively use most actions, so no button bloat for me yet on my bars.

[Shurrikhan]

They confirmed with the pruning of actions and the new ones we should have about as many at the new lv cap as we do now currently in the game. I adopted a keybinding that makes it possible to effectively use most actions, so no button bloat for me yet on my bars.

If they go and prune "non-essential" actions only to add new actions that are considered essential because they provide significant output value (only) in combination with other abilities, but do so in ways that would be more intuitive to simply roll into those paired abilities (e.g. where it would be inferior in all cases to use them separately from the other) or functionally replace the other, then we've simply swapped outlying skills (which one could forgo in most situations) for additional obligatory button presses; personally, I would consider that a slight increase to button bloat rather than any improvement.

Again, it's not like we have enough information to determine whether that will be the case at this time, but so far every ability added, in line with their philosophy for change, has appeared to be an obligatory rotational skill, rather than anything situational, and the examples I gave before would appear even to be either redundancies and/or actions with near zero nuance available (such as a BotD-consuming nuke that provides the same burst function as an early Geirskogul but has an exact optimal time for use since it appears to be single-target and would not adjust priorities—instead shifting later BFB-BotD syncs and forcing a new rotation rather than allowing for variance between the two unless the AoE damage of a bonus Geirskogul may outweigh the ST bonus potency of this new skill). Personally, I'd rather take a situational skill like Keen Flurry over a skill that it used only once per burst phase at an exact second, simply replacing one keystroke (Geirskogul) with another, or works only to bypass or otherwise devalue a core mechanic (such as by instantly granting 3 stacks of GL).

[Kaethra]

No one can figure out Provoke is a Gladiator skill. They should change that.

Should change it yes (as I have never said they shouldn't). But I'm pretty sure most can figure out that Provoke can be used on WAR and DRK.

[Malzian]

Should change it yes (as I have never said they shouldn't). But I'm pretty sure most can figure out that Provoke can be used on WAR and DRK.

They are changing it. This is the whole purpose (and honestly the argument for) the change from Cross-Class to Role skills. All tanks will have Provoke in Stormblood. This is a change we know is happening.

[Kaethra]

They are changing it. This is the whole purpose (and honestly the argument for) the change from Cross-Class to Role skills. All tanks will have Provoke in Stormblood. This is a change we know is happening.

I think you missed the discussion of what I said earlier. Which many of you are missing. Lemme lay it out for you all, and everytime one of you misses it (as I'm sure you all are ought to do again):

1. I know it will change.
2. I want it to change.
3. 'Newbies' will use it if they want to.
4. Bads will simply ignore it, as they do now.
5. The four points above are facts that many of you are burying your heads to avoid.

[loreleidiangelo]

They confirmed with the pruning of actions and the new ones we should have about as many at the new lv cap as we do now currently in the game. I adopted a keybinding that makes it possible to effectively use most actions, so no button bloat for me yet on my bars.

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I think we had too much button bloat in HW already. I'm not happy that they're "maintaining the status quo" in this regard; I'd rather them pare down the four hotbars I have by at least 1. I also feel like a ton of buttons are redundant or needlessly convolute rotations, but that might be a contentious viewpoint for this game.

[LalaRu]

About unneeded rotations, dunno other PLDs around here, but when I start the "mana back" rotation I will stop at the 2nd combo (the one that gives effectively mana back) and will not bother to go ahead to 3rd combo, as long as I either return to aggro combo, or restart mana combo because, well, I need mana if I go there, and third combo skill there is pretty ignored.