Magic

[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.

[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.

[Estellios]

What spells did they add one patch and remove the next? The only ones that come to mind are Curaga II and Raise II + Rebirth. I don't think that qualifies really since they are redundant with the new system and they were put in to help balance mechanics while they were finalizing the action revamps.

[Xianghua]

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.

When they added the spells that was before 2.0 was even announced and no the didn't have a sense of direction. After 2.0 and class/jobs reform was announced. They got their sense of direction. To change the spells again, Which is what the OP and those who agree with him are suggesting would take away all of that. Everything you just said is in the past. Yes they had no direction back then. but that was then this is now. I'm against more drastic changes and you are seriously arguing with me about it? while you yourself are complaining about the very same thing.

[AdvancedWind]

We need a bit more variety on our spells, that I do agree. Having our number of learned spells be equal to the number of melee abilties is far too limiting, I too agree with that.

However, more variety does not / should not equal having 50+ spell out of which you will still only really need 10~15 for 95% of the content and then *ohhh* that one NM uses that one ability that might require me to use that one spell I last used 2 months ago, so deeeep. But that's what a few people seem to want.

We also don't need variables out of our control to get a level 4 spell (Your initial town is 3rd place? Go to the other side of the goddamn world on your level 4 Black Mage to get a incredibly basic skill or hope that a good soul is selling this thing for a price you can afford, taking into account you're likely starved on gil at this point. Brilliant game design!).

Come on guys, it's 2011. Jobs are already going to require quests that (hopefully) are both engaging and sufficiently challenging, future skills might even require incredibly hard as hell battles (hopefully), and the battle system (hopefully) will be refined further with the comeback of Regimens and the next level cap.

We don't need 50 abilties and random spell drops to have an engaging battle system and character progression.

[Rokien]

I never said anything about having 50 skills I was just comparing it ^.^. I also said jobs abilities will be learned through quests as well. I also said I would like to learn magic through gil, quests, guild marks. Doesn't matter to me, just adds more content for people to do.

[darkstarpoet1]

What spells did they add one patch and remove the next? The only ones that come to mind are Curaga II and Raise II + Rebirth. I don't think that qualifies really since they are redundant with the new system and they were put in to help balance mechanics while they were finalizing the action revamps.

how does that not qualify? they added something and then removed it. that is not a set direction. that is the exact opposite of it.

the point is they should have had a plan on what to do before they started doing things. you don't fix a car's engine by tearing it apart before you know the problem and the steps needed to fix it.

[Estellios]

It was a few months between them adding those spells and removing them. Raise II and Rebirth got overwritten with the current Enhanced Raise trait. Curaga got added and II was removed because now spells scale with potency. The battle revamps were not finished and they added the new spells in the meantime because as it was AOE healing was retarded overpowered and needed to be dealt with if content was to have any semblance of difficulty as well as what I see as offering us a bone and beginning to carve out a niche for CNJ.

At the end of the day we still have Rebirth in spirit and much better than it was before and Curaga is still around with different mechanics, so those added spells never left in the first place. That's why I don't understand why you claim they are switching around stuff without a plan because the spells they did add were pretty much leading up to how spells act now. The devs were talking about (and letting us know that they were talking about) battle revamps for a very long time.

[AceofRains]

I think they said that your job quest is part of questing your abilities. I'm good with that. Games actually good on magic.

Now,

That blue mage thread i belive was my thread. And actually it would work pretty nicely. I've thought up even more on that and MY vision for blue mage would make an excellent addition to game play. but of course its my Opinion. I'll share.

Jobstone: BLU
Classes: GLD CNJ PET
(IF a 2+:1 ratio, you may switch your style between classes as a blue mage. if that were possible with the job system, I personally would never play another game because of the sheer depth that it adds to both the armory and job systems.)

Each job gets 5 abilities as of right now.
Magic 1 - Magic Slot
-> Learn a new "blue magic"
Magic 2 - Magic Slot
-> Learn a new "blue magic"
Magic 3 - Magic Slot
-> Learn a new "blue magic"
Ability 1 - Azure Oblivion
-> Your next blue magic will be used at maximum capacity. Afterwards the ability will be forgotten. Fills HP MP and TP to the top. (this is a desperation skill at best, it is not overpowered because the glory of it is you have to learn your magics again, which takes time, and we all know, time is money ^^)
Weapon Skill 1 - Beast Bane
Attack with weapon in hand, dealing damage based on your currently equipped magic and monster family.
(Essentially, this skill takes the monster property of the magic you currently know, and uses their monster properties to deal advantageous damage.