Magic

[Xianghua]

that's exactly what they are asking us to do starting this week. pay or a year worth of service and have blind faith that 2.0 will be awesome.

Yes but right now 2.0 has the sense of direction. the core of the system is pretty much in place. However if down the road they decided to change the system all the direction would be lost. and would increase the time to implement the changes. Which would be a horrible move.

[darkstarpoet1]

Yes but right now 2.0 has the sense of direction. the core of the system is pretty much in place. However if down the road they decided to change the system all the direction would be lost. and would increase the time to implement the changes. Which would be a horrible move.

what direction? the one where the dev staff added spells in one patch or the one where they removed them on the next? that's not direction. that is just changing things every few months to change them because they have no set direction.

[Rokien]

You are giving them money as well? >.>;

[Xianghua]

You are giving them money as well? >.>;

You completely missed the point. My question was not if you are subbing. It was if you would sub if they said they were changing the battle system again. No I would not give SE my money if they made this decision.

[Brigandier]

I want magic to be learned(bought, guild marks, few rare quests). I don't want another FFXI but I do want the stuff that FFXI did right. If they made it where you had to buy your spells, they could add WEAPON SKILLS for mages. They would be silly ones that didn't do much of nothing

No seriously. Blowing all your gil on abilities that are *KEY* to your job (read: sleepga, utsusemi, obscure ancient magics) was not something FFXI did right. Also mage weapon skills were stupid as well. Last thing we need is more "it's okay guys, I'm melee red mage / winja".

If you're wanting to work for your abilities, you're going to get that chance. The job system is going to require questing to unlock the full potentials of each.

[Dibria]

Purchase of spells seems like a bad idea to me, though some form of crafting would certainly fit XIVs feel, if be very difficult to implement for the sheer number of spells they would need to produce for it to be a similar crafting tree to the others.

I would assume that the intention at the start was to add new spells and equipment in the first expansion (assuming one was/is planned) but that the expansions has been put on indefinite hold when they fixed what is already there. In think that and raising the level cap to 55 or so was likely what they had planned at the beginning.

I like the current system though, I like that while there may only be a dozen or so abilities per class you can swap a lot in-between them, ok so adding ARC techniques to your THM ability set won't work but it is still one of the most flexible systems around and I would rather they add only another half dozen spells or so and have them keep the current flexibly than gain 300 new spells that have to be class locked for balance concerns.

Perhaps purchasable single use scrolls with a greater variety of effects than the default spells may be the kind of thing you want them to add?

[Rokien]

IDK maybe they can make the tier spells/abilities punchable using guild marks soo you get the base cure, then if you want cure 2-3 you have to buy em with guild marks

[Xianghua]

Honestly I'm not against more spells and a better in depth battle system. Just against everything that has to be done to make that a reality. People will not wait for ever for 2.0 to happen.

[SuzakuCMX]

Nope.

Reason 1: Action bars are already a pain
Reason 2: The lack of spells leaves a lot of room for more classes and jobs in the future
Reason 3: Having to spend what little income I make from grinding leves and the sparse mainline quests just to ensure I can actually play my class seems dumb. What was worse in FFXI was that you had to get your spells from a random drop/AH. It makes starting as a mage on a new char a pain in the ass.
Reason 4: Classes can function fine without 40 spells each
Reason 5: There's no reason to have 40 spells when you only need about 8-10 to function as a mage (2-3 elemental damage, 2-3 debuffs, heal, raise, MP regain)

EDIT: But maybe 3-4 more spells for each battle class. That'd be kool. Kinda sad that CNJ only has 2 (?) elements and THM only has 3. Also no DoTs to cast if I remember correctly, it's just a chance effect on some of the elemental spells.

[UmJammerSully]

Personally, I really feel like the mages could just use some more variety in their spells. ESPECIALLY Thaumaturge which has become dangerously boring and narrow-focused post-patch.

I agree that having too many useless spells is just pointless but it's really pretty easy to think of 4-5 that are a mysterious absent from THM. Drain HP/MP, Poison and Silence seem like some obvious choices.

"Thaumaturge is fine how it is." is not wrong in the sense that it can do it's job well, which is dealing damage, but more importantly is it fun to play? In my opinion, no it's not.

Someone is going to argue that THM will be getting new skills when BLM arrives next month, but let's look at the BLM skills:

- Burst
- Flare
- Freeze
- Sleepga
- Convert

WTF? Just more elemental spells and an AoE sleep? All of which we had before 1.20 anyway. Convert is definitely a plus at least, but it looks like BLM will still be lacking variety. All the other jobs seem to be getting far more interesting and unique abilities in my opinion.