~Poll~ Longer fights <Do you want it?>

[Soukyuu]

Hrm, I see.
I must have a very unusual gameplay experience. I remember very often on my Lancer tossing out various WSes, most specifically Leg Sweep.
Only time I barely managed to do a Weaponskill was when my Gladiator was levelling in a group with my friends's Thaumaturge/Archer. They kept using ST nukes on me

It does heavily depend on party composition, yes. Maybe it's more of a class balancing issue than encounter length balancing issue.

does this guy make ridiculous petitions daily..?

You're late to the party. Read last page. And maybe contribute something useful on topic instead.

[Velhart]

Something around 30 seconds. That way you can build enough TP to start a combo, finish it and be able to switch to the next one.

The 5-6 seconds is after the first THM finishes casting, first damage marking the start of the encounter for me. I haven't actually timed it, but that's how long it feels. It's not specifically about a certain time span for me, but more about how many skills you can execute before the mob drops dead.

Can't say how it will be in 2.0, but currently, melees such as DRG and MNK cannot truly interact with the smaller mobs because jobs like Warrior and Black Mage have more convenient AoE abilities that makes those two jobs feel useless.

Honestly, I think the flow of battle is fine for the most part. I do believe however that single target oriented DPS need to have some unique advantage over AoE jobs that go beyond damage. Having DRG and MNK do have their one AoE ability, but it cannot keep up to the pace of Steel Cyclone and Fire spells. It is pretty much this reason alone why people request BLM's and WAR's through the dungeon process (Not talking about the bosses.).

How do we fix this? I don't know the best approach to it. The options basically are:

1. Help make DRG and MNK more convenient in all dungeon situations. (Not saying they are useless, but not as convenient.). Even something as simple as making future dungeons not based on speed runs would kind of help on this.

2. Gimp the AoE'ers. Now this one I do not agree to. SE is famous for making one job better by gimping another. I don't believe a job needs to be gimped unless they are OP to the point that it is game breaking. What they need to do is find ways to making the jobs that are lacking certain aspects better. No one likes seeing their favorite job gimped.

As I said above. What we have is what we have. Developer's attempt to bring some things of 2.0 into the current game either kind of work or just have a hard time mixing in. I do believe we will see some light on proper party play and all jobs will be able to equally interact with the battles without feeling useless. Just my input however.

[Soukyuu]

Can't say how it will be in 2.0, but currently, melees such as DRG and MNK cannot truly interact with the smaller mobs because jobs like Warrior and Black Mage have more convenient AoE abilities that makes those two jobs feel useless.

Honestly, I think the flow of battle is fine for the most part.

I'm not basing my opinion solely on my MNK experience, I don't think it's fine for BLMs to just spam Fire (maybe followed by Fira if other BLMs were slow) all the time either. With mobs being so squishy, they just die before the end of a spell combo. The side effect of that being melees not even getting to do anything except AA/first skill.

[Skies]

Can't say how it will be in 2.0, but currently, melees such as DRG and MNK cannot truly interact with the smaller mobs because jobs like Warrior and Black Mage have more convenient AoE abilities that makes those two jobs feel useless.

Wait, wait wait wait, what? I mean-
This is unrelated to the discussion itself, but what exactly does Warrior has AoE-wise over Dragoon?

[Velhart]

Wait, wait wait wait, what? I mean-
This is unrelated to the discussion itself, but what exactly does Warrior has AoE-wise over Dragoon?

Steel Cyclone and Whirlwind? Steel Cyclone has a much smaller cool down time than Ring of Talons.

[Skies]

Does Warrior have access to Keen Flurry? I sincerely don't remember.
If they do, then yeah they have an advantage, otherwise i'd say they don't.

(with that I close my off-topic mini-discussion)

[Hyrist]

Does Warrior have access to Keen Flurry? I sincerely don't remember.
If they do, then yeah they have an advantage, otherwise i'd say they don't.

(with that I close my off-topic mini-discussion)

No they don't. The idea that Warrior has better AoE potential than Wyvern is because of Overpower, a conal AoE that triggers as a counter, and the misnomer that DRG's don't have AoEs.

Dragoons have 4 AoE skills. Sweep, which is an AoE stun centered around the Dragoon which leads into Dread Spike, which is a line AoE between the Dragoon and the Target. Ring of Talons, which is our Steel Cyclone, except it costs 1000 more TP. And Dragonfire Dive, which is our 15 minute ability.

A Dragoon that wants to impress a group with a burst AoE does the following while surrounded.

With 2k TP, Quelling Strike + Keen Fury straight Ring of Talons, follow up with a Dragonfire Dive, and Immediately Ring of Talons again, provided enough enemies are alive to pull you back up to 2k TP with Dragonfire Dive.

If you can survive long enough to complete the combo, most enemies around you will have likely bit the dust.

[khaled]

Leave the long fights for NM and boss battles.

This. 10char.

[Ceryn]

My two brothers and I recently restarted XIV, and since I found my characters separated on two different servers, I decided to just reroll entirely to play with them and leave my original character where she is, in hopes of someday getting her back on the same server. Most of my experience of the newer balancing has thus been seen through the filter of a trio going through the world. Lancer, Conjurer, Thaumaturge.

I wouldn't be opposed to some kind of sliding scale system being implemented that would work something like (as an example only): Fight in Party against monster: X seconds; Fight solo against same monster: add ~5-10 seconds

This gives benefits to being grouped up, while not completely annihilating the soloability of a mob. You 'could' solo on FFXI, but it required good gear, certain camps, certain subjobs, (or rolling BST. ) and it was largely just a long, drawn out pain. This is not something that needs to return. Ever. Especially not if anyone wants to see 2.0 do better than vanilla. Grouping wasn't much better in XI, though. Pre-Abyssea, I was often bored to tears by the first hour of a party. The knowledge that it would take a handful more to see a ding made it an exercise in masochism for me, more often than not. Granted, I largely played Summoner and back then all we got to do was play at healing because no one could find a WHM or RDM, but still. Actually being able to summon in a fight, other than just the odd buff, did more wonders for my enjoyment of playing my SMN than any speeding up of exp ever did. But that's a separate issue.

The only con to the sliding scale of adding roughly 10 seconds onto a party-kill-time of 20-30 is then you hit 25-35+ to solo one monster, and that's where you're going to run into problems, in my opinion. It already seems to take a good bit more time to level alone when compared to even a trio, even at the tiny levels my new character is at. So that 'disparity' or 'encouragement to group' already exists. What we need is a way for monsters to survive a bit longer when in group play without it just being artificial bloat on the solo gamer. It would keep solo play viable, since I've read nothing (correct me if I'm wrong, I've been out of the loop a while) about their focus shifting to more party heavy, or party exclusive, while maybe adding some length to the fights for people while grouping so that everyone feels as if they've actually contributed to the fight. It would probably require some testing and formula tweaks on their part, but I'm sure they can figure it out.

XI length fights are not something I would ever want to return to, however. If I did, I would resub to XI and intentionally go drag a bunch of people out to one of the camps to get it. (Yeah, good luck.) But I haven't, and I will not. It isn't so much about a 'now now now' or 'current generation' mentality, as I've been gaming since the Atari and NES, and I spent over 5 years (the latter of it more off and on) in XI and kept on, despite never hitting cap pre-Abyssea, and not hitting it after. It's more about "I now realize that I enjoy a game more when even if I can only play an hour, I see *significant, noteworthy* progress on my character." If I don't, I will get bored or frustrated. Simple. It's about progress, and not having to sink 5+ hours/day to see anything of note. That's not a game, that's a job.

That said, I don't think buffing current mobs up to last ~30 seconds in party play is an overall terrible idea. Just so long as it doesn't push solo kill times up even higher and frustrate the solo/small man playerbase, of which I happen to be part of. And endgame, I couldn't care less what they do or do not do with it, as I have never touched it in any MMO I've ever been part of.

[Alhanelem]

can't believe how this is turning out. people really want longer fights? It's stupid. it doesn't take 200 stabs with a sword to kill somebody. If you want long fights, fight bosses and NMs. There are plenty of fights of varying lengths in the game.