Moving will be made to interrupt spellcasting at a point in time...

[Monsalvato]

All I have to say is DON'T make balance decisions for PvP that negatively affect PvE. That was a big reason I got turned off WoW.

I concur.
Blizzard always refused to balance things in two different ways (i.e. making so they work in different ways in PvE and PvP) for two reasons:
1) too much work
2) ideological "defeat" of their approach

But that's what ultimately caused a lot of balance issues and, in the end, they probably had to put in much more work than they would have if they went for the "dual" approach from the beginning.
Dual approach is just the best in these situations. It allows you to make so that abilities that would normally be useful only in PVE (like Provoke) can have an use in PvP as well, by working differently on other players than they do on monsters.
This fine-tuning that changes how your actions work (altough it should normally be small changes/rebalancements of course) surely requires much more work at start, but in the long run makes everything more balanced and players happier.
Those who like PvP won't have to see some of their things dumbed down because of PvE issues and vice-versa, etc etc etc.

I completely support this!

[CrystalWeapon]

For casting classes, we will be allocating status ailment spells to each class.
They will be given debuff spells ranging from the core: sleep, paralyze, bind, charm, and heavy to spells that will lower enemy’s stats and resistance to magic.
(We are also planning to add a lot of spells to the currently existing classes at the time of 2.0.)

By commanding these spells which are called “crowd control spells” or “debuffs” in the MMORPG world, you can prevent enemies from getting near you and by combining this with spells that deal damage, you can defeat them before they come in contact with you. This is the fundamental stance for playing a caster class.

Additionally, in order to deal with emergencies when enemies get close, casters will also be armed with instant cast spells. This type of magic has no casting time and as long as the recast timer is up you can just target and activate it in a flash. (There is also non-target AoE magic as well…)
However, in exchange for there being no casting time for these instant cast spells, they will be balanced with low damage for attack spells, low effect duration times for debuffs, be easily resisted, and have long recast timers.

The reason why they are “casters” is because they are able to select from a variety of spells based on the situation, not only damaging spells.

I wasn't sure about this change, but this along with many other points about how he'll balance mages has brought me back on board.

As long as he doesn't make it so a 10 damage hit interupts casting as well, I'm fine with these changes.

[Monsalvato]

Concerning Yoshi-P's post about mages (he only talks about BLM tho.. what about supporter mages and healer mages?) I have a few comments to make.

I don't particularly dislike the style of solo-play BLMs have in FFXI, which clearly is the example Yoshi refers to, but it has to be considered this style of play which sounds so obvious to all of us who played FFXI, wasn't originally planned by the game designers of the game, it was rather a style that the gamers themselves developed to overcome the game's limits.
Also I still am not particularly fond of the approach "let's merge debuffs into damage spells". It's good to a certain degree, but relying ONLY on damaging spells to debuff enemies is a bit silly. I still hope they'll change things in 2.0 having more spells without debuffs, and more debuff-only spells which deal no damage but provide a very accurate and powerful debuff instead. And I'm on the same boat when it comes to debuff healing. Having too many like in FFXI maybe is unnecessarily complicated, but having a single one to cure everything sounds like the other way around. How about a more reasonable compromise between these two extremes?

My main concern now is in the appearent incoherence I see in Yoshi-P's posts, but maybe I'm just missing something so I would apreciate if anybody could let me know what's wrong in my reasonings.

First Yoshi-P talks about how he would like to make fights much more dynamic compared to the static-ness of FFXI (I REALLY like static combat, but I can agree it's a bit anachronistic in 2012 so not many will probably think the same), and when he said that he made the example of the Ifrit fight, saying that was just the beginning and that after 2.0 fights would have been much more dynamic requiring a lot of movement, dynamism, quick actions etc.
Ok, fine with that.
But then he comes here and say that casters are supposed not to move by a single inch while they spend a lot of time casting powerful spells on their foes.
How exactely does this fit with the "dynamic" picture Yoshi-P talked about?
I'm not saying I dislike this, I like both solutions (dynamism, and static casting), I'm just saying I don't see how these could fit together.
Maybe he changed his mind on dynamism?
Otherwise he should have picked up a different "model of play" for mages, instead of re-iterating the FFXI one.
Some silly examples would have been that of having a specific button to cancel actions, and still allow movement (but at a much reduced speed) during casting, or other things like that.

Surely he doesn't expect mages to be "unwanted" in fights like Ifrit in the future because they can't "move", making so only other classes will be accepted in pick up groups?
And surely he doesn't expect to "balance" this possible issue with the forementioned instacast spells? Because as much as we can't judge on them 'til we try them, he surely didn't introduce them as the most interesting of things (low potency, low damage, low accuracy, high recast, low numbers etc)

Because I don't think it's possible to rely on those to "balance" things, unless the dynamism he's thinking of is not particularly strong but very mild dynamism that will only occur on certain boss fights and only for brief moments... if that's the picture he has in mind then sure, instant spells would be perfect and I would have nothing to complain about. But still, such a picture would be VERY different from what he mentioned in the past talking about "dynamic fights", right?
And supposing he wants to make "really dynamic" fights, then no way the thing can be balanced out for mages thanks to Instant Cast Spells. You would have to give them A LOT of these spells (to counterbalance the high recast), and they would need to be really effective, not "lowacc, lowdamage, loweverything", otherwise on those fights you would basically be a shit DD and nobody would want you.
BUT if he makes instant cast too powerful, then people would only use them even in non-dynamic fights. I mean why bother with casting spells when you can use instant ones that are almost as powerful? We all know that the playerbase would go that way.
So yeah, I don't see how he can think to balance dynamic fights for mages just with instacast spells unless the dynamism he's thinking of is not "real" dynamism but a very mild form of it as I described above (and I personally wouldn't mind at all! I'm just saying...)

[Andrien]

Sometimes a facepalm just doesn't cut it...

edit:

Look people, what Yoshi-P gave us was an example. You have spells that instant cast that is good for close range combat, and you have high damaging spells that is good for long range. Above that you have debuff. As a mage you have the advantage if you skillfully use your spells and abilities correctly.

all this talk about pvp, its the same concept with pve, except no enmity to worry about.

[Shyd]

I am ok with this, ONLY, if the other damn actions did not lock your movement.

[Monsalvato]

I am ok with this, ONLY, if the other damn actions did not lock your movement.

That's another thing that's been asked for quite some time, and I'm sure in due time the majority of them if not all will receive the same treatment the Active/Passive mode thing did, i.e. allowing us to perform it while moving, even if with a small slowdown.
Doubt this will happen before 2.0 tho

[SwordCoheir]

I am ok with this, ONLY, if the other damn actions did not lock your movement.

Agreed, specifically in reference to Ifrit (although this would probably apply to other similar instanced battles in the future) it would make it nigh impossible to Cure or Nuke on a consistent basis where your constantly moving about to avoid Eruptions and the occasional Plume without taking serious risks. Taking into consideration of coming to a full stop, lag compensation between the client and the server, beginning animation lock, ending animation lock, and the spells cast time it likely would take a few more seconds to cast each spell successfully. That's not considering the time lost when a spell is cancelled from premature casting due to client/server lag, and the potential dangers animation lock already poses once a spell gets past the point of no return. I might be just over-analyzing though.

[Monsalvato]

The fact they're not "good" is debateable but I could very easily agree with that, at least to a certain extent.
But saying that is very different from saying "PVE experience gets ruined because all Blizzard cares for is balancing things for PVP consequentially breaking it for PVE".

That would be a very shortsighted opinion coming from someone who mainly cared for PVP, got burned, and never really cared that much to play PVE at high levels.

[Jinko]

Im all for movemenet interrupting spellcasting, that being said I agree with Jinrya-Geki and hope that PVP doesn't destroy this games PVE balance like it does in other games.

I'm not a fan of spell casting being interupted by monsters though, espeically if its going to be 100%.

PvP issues did not influence his decision on how solo and party playstyles will work.

Reading his post most of it is regarding PVP though, it definately comes across that the decision was made based mostly with that in mind if you ask me. (perhaps you interpreted it differently though)

[Krausus]

Reading his post most of it is regarding PVP though

no it isn't a majority of it has nothing to do with PvP.