SUGGESTIONS
This is a post of segguestions for some classes(only ones i play since making segguestions for ones i dont would be dumb) some changes i would like to see, and some improvements i would like to segguest. Hope square enix finds this useful. If not well atleast i put it out there. And im sure ill see alot of negative feedback on these but these are just my thoughts. Its up to the big guy to make them happen.
RDM:
Convert: MP/HP swap 5-10 minute cooldown. Allows for more mp. Consistent with ffxi RDM. this may seem redundant and im sure alot of people will say our MP Regen is fine currently. And while for the most part i do agree, i disagree when it comes to things such as progression runs or PUGS. this is due to the vast amount of rezzing needed. As a result healers prioritize keeping members currently alive, alive. Which should be the case. But with this it would allow RDM to support healers as a REZ mage. Along with this it would make mana shift a beneficial role ability to pickup for red mage since they would have surplus. Other pro’s to this are for soloists which is something RDM is known for.
Buff/Debuff bonus trait for finishing moves: haste party buff for finishing move on one of the moves. dmg increase for the other or something to make RDM more desired in raid progressions aside from rez mage.i just feel personally that there isnt much raid utility outside of a RDM’s ability to rez people fast, and embolden. Where as in ff11 RDM was desired due to the large amount of debuffs/buffs they could provide as well as support abilities such as refresh. All things RDM is lacking in 14.
Finishing move/buff for using enchanted moulinette(stacks up to 4 times):damage increase for either self or party for using enchanted moulinette multiple times in a row, stacking buff. This would be beneficial as a way to both change up rotations especially for AOE pulls, as well as providing an additional incentive for RDM’s to use this skill. Most RDM’s i feel only use scatter and neglect the amazing combo that is the 4 enchanted moulinettes(EM>EM>Manafication>EM>EM)
Refresh: some would say this is a token RDM ability and not needed but i disagree. This is Iconic from FFXI. Great for raid progression. Makes RDM more desirable. Could be incorporated into the finishing move buff for party as one of the finishing move party buffs. Making RDM’s “AIM” for a specific finishing move even if they have a proc. Meaning more thought put into rotations.
WAR:
Overpower: would like to see WAR gain 5 rage per use of overpower to allow beast gauge to fill while doing large pulls in dungeons or while dealing with adds in dungeons. As a WAR who runs alot of dungeons i know sometimes when doing a BIG pull that all i use is overpower/tomohawk to pull mob’s and establish enmity. The problem is when infuriate is not up or some things are on cooldown because your progressing fast through a dungeon. Or just misclicks or any reason in general. Also due to GCD there appears to be no real reason not to. Since theres far faster ways to generate RAGE gauge. The difference is those require consecutive combos. Which may not always be the case.
SMN:
Self scaling Physick: currently it is completely useless ability as is except maybe at earlier levels. Considering how many bloat abilities were removed on launch of stormblood im amazed they took sustain at first (before giving it back) instead of physick. Sustain heals pets. Arcanist has whm in its history why not allow their heal to at least scale for healing themselves. I do not think it should scale to the same degree that Vercure does being that its next to impossible to run out of mana as a SMN unless your not doing any sort of proper rotation. It should only effect the SMN and not its pet due to preventing overpowered pet tanking.
More EGI glamour: there's all the primals there. So why not? Why so many carbuncles? Not that im complaining just asking for a friend. >.>;
Crafting:
Multiple HQ crafts w/ scaling difficulty:
Waste not 1&2 need to be renamed or changed(the name no longer fits and to be honest it never did.):thoughts for revamp to keep name would be to be able to use this ability to prolong step used abilities such as steady hand II not getting used when not used by an ability with less then 100% sucess rate. Such as innovation then a touch ability would use 1 instead of 2 uses of steady hand 2. This would create wider and more diverse rotations for crafting.
Condition change ability:
ability to force a condition change on the item being crafted to a randomized(i.e. Go from normal to excellent or poor) but in order to make this work it would require it not being counted as a “step” otherwise there would be no point. Such as trying to force a condition prior to using a finishing move for crafting. That or it would have to have the additional ability of extending any active abilities by one.(i.e if steady hand is at 5/5 use this ability and it remains there along with any other buffs active). This would mean if a poor quality it would have a chance to go normal or excellent. If normal it would go poor or excellent, and if excellent it would go poor or normal(why anyone would use it then i don’t know but just basic principle.)
Crafting leves relocated to major cities(ARR):
this is fairly self explanatory. Both HW and SB realized that travel is the most annoying part of crafting leves, and moved the issue/turn in area to one area. This was amazing. I think this was hands down one of the best moves Square enix made. Some might see this as being lazy or as a reason to not unlock leves in the areas that have combat leves. But since combat and gathering leves would still be available in ARR areas. Those npcs wouldnt need to be moved. This would be similar to how the scrip turn in npcs are now located in all major cities. A prerequisite could also still exist for unlocking leves in areas in order to turn in basically the only thing that would change is that all the leves would start/end in the same area. This would only be for crafting since thats what its for with the new expansions.
Scroll exchange:
buff scrolls from squadron adventures and from quests are very useful...until you reach max level. It would be nice to exchange 1/1 for another type of scroll. Say all my DOH are max lvl but my combat classes need leveled. Exchanging the crafting ones for combat scrolls would make them more desirable. Another thought is changing them into an item or materia.
Leve Allowance trading/selling/exchange:
hands down leves are the most amazing thing for leveling a crafting/gathering job. They make the whole process faster. Only problem is when you have max leve’s and have no use for them anymore. It’s a currency thats auto generating similar to the one for beast tribe quests. This could be great to either trade to other people who might need them creating a new demand in the economy also boosting sales of leve items used for crafting and gathering(fishing). Thereby giving crafters who are leveling a means to make money to work towards their next level set. Since they will be able to lvl up 5 lvl’s then craft the previous 5 lvls item turn ins HQ and sell them. Thereby creating a self perpetuating train. Could be limited to people in an FC/friend list for trade.
Or if you could trade them in for something like a future leve credit that becomes an item that when used gives 3 leves. This would allow crafters to stockpile leves for future expansions. But would in essence create the same current situation. But if you could turn in leves for useful crafting materials or scrips or something useful it would at least allow something that's very useful and needed in the game to not go to waste. Lastly a thought would be to erase the leve allowances all together and just allow people to use leves like they would quests. Since they are heavily dependant on items in the first place having a limitation on them seems almost pointless.
Quick synthesis faster:
Currently quick synthesis feels like it takes far too long for “quick” there seems to be a major delay in the animation creating a large time where it feels like your character is doing nothing at all. Cutting some of the animation would speed up the process. Or having the ability to select quick synthesis and then being able to use only synthesis abilities at a higher progress difficulty crafting them all in one shot.(i.e. Muscle Memory,Piece by piece, Piece by piece, careful synthesis IIIx3 and so on.) and having the durabilty the same as what the item durability normally is. This would allow quicker creation of NQ items en-mass. Creating a true “quick synthesis”. There is an appeal that some items will be HQ but theres also usually a chance for failure which is slightly anoying. And seeing as how the only reason that we dont just craft every single item from basics is time, and quick synthesis is supposed to help with that, then why not just make it truly quick.
Crafting via mobile app:
considering everything else that is going to be in the mobile app is mostly storage related, or market board related. Having the ability to craft from your phone would be amazing. This would allow players to set themselves up for a raid ahead of time for a whole group or to allow them to craft large quantities of HQ items on the go. (I.E. on the train home from tokyo to yokosuka.) you would be able to make your own macros just for your phone. Seeing as how crafting doesnt really need to be seen on your character you just need the window for crafting this seems like a smart idea for a mobile app. A user interface might be difficult to make for too many abilities. But considering we can fit a keyboard onto our phones i think it could be done.
Achievements for crafting/gathering tools off hand/ main hand:
one thing i loved about the HW achievements was that you could in essence get “free” Best in slot main hand tools by crafting each unique recipe. I would love to see this brought back. But i would like to see off-hands included some way.
Quick synth requirements FOR NOT FAILING:
adding a representation of how much craftsmanship is required for quick synth to reach the least amount of possible failures occuring would be nice. The feature of recommended stats was added in 4.3 and it just seems logical. (that or change quick synth to what i stated above.)
Customizable crafting representation tools:
This is super minor and pretty much just a glamour thing. But it would be pretty kool to choose your “tools” for crafting. What i mean by this is the workbench everyone sees you using when your crafting. Now to be honest im not sure if level or item dictates this for things except main hands that glow gold. But to be able to select a golden anvil for armorsmithing or dye your leatherworking table green/blue/red would be nifty.
Gathering:
Aetherial reduction for shards:allow collectables from the ARR to be reduced to shards would be amazing.
Bloat reduction: i feel like a few abilities need to be cut out due to the bloat. List to follow:
Gathering mini games:
make gathering fun. Turn it into more of a minigame type deal for those who are max lvl and they will be more inclined to gather more items(kind of like the MGP BTN/MNR mini games but something less RNG more like leves but with fun boosts added like a buff that doubles yield without you needing to use kings yield for a set amount of time). Making arenas (with enviroments based on the gatherer miner or botanist) with random nodes and having them try to gather as many as they can and giving bonuses for HQ items in the form of a return of materials that they select before entering would be awesome. (such as specific shards/crystals/clusters/ores/logs/etc)Ways to make it more difficult would be to include monsters they have to avoid using the stealth ability to get to better nodes and watching for patrolling mobs would be a fun way to make it more entertaining. As well as adding more buffs to nodes. Even adding a gold node or something thats super special. Adding special node or two with a high rate of difficulty would be enjoyable as well.
Achievements for gathering tools off hand/ main hand:
Same as the crafting one.
General:
Auto-rotating skills(i.e pvp rotation buttons in pve): its already in pvp just add it as an option in pve. So people who dont want to use them dont have to but those who do to reduce bloat can. This would be ideal for controller players to reduce button bloat.
Gathering expeditions with retainers:
another way to make gathering more enjoyable would be to be able to use retainers and go on a gathering “Venture” with them based on their gear level would determine their skill lvl’s and returns and they would follow you as you go gathering. Basically selecting an item then being teleported to the area where that item is most dense and farming with your retainers(or an instanced area.) This could be used in a number of ways for combat/gathering. I.e. since your retainer can only be as high a lvl as your equivalent job then if you sent a RDM retainer and went in as another RDM (AI dependant) they would both be able to heal. But if you went in as a WAR then they would be able to heal you but not you them. This would encourage players to lvl more jobs to be able to farm better/faster. This would also allow people to level multiple retainers fasters(so it would need to grant EXP) and adding floating buff bonuses that give + to exp would be nice and make it so there is some more random and interesting factors.
Meld food for increased chances:
there is already foods for almost everything else in the game except 2 things. Materia condensing due to the fact that you use an NPC for this function it wouldn't matter. And for materia melding. The most disappointing thing about melding is that nothing seems to affect its ability to succeed. Even desynthing has bacon broth and tinkerers potion. Why not something similar for melding. Or be able to affect it via crafting stats making it worth using food to meld materia.
Wider variety of foods:
Currently food is basically just a stat boosters or a mild regen. Would love to see more things done with potions and food. I love the teas for crafting that were added into SB. problem is that they are pretty much the same as food but considered a different Buff. meaning they can stack. Why not a cp regen potion that does 2cp per step(NQ) 4(HQ) same goes for gathering. A food that allows for GP regen while farming would be amazing especially combining it with cordials. And if the food/tea/potion used BTN/MNR/FSH then it would create a perpetuating demand. As a result this would make farming items a bit less anoying since you can go at a more constant pace. And for crafting it would create more diverse crafting rotations(making makers mark more enjoyable.)
Crafters able to move 1 or two primary stats:
if crafters could augment their own gear 4 stats for instance. Moving 4 points of vitality to intelligence would be a huge thing. And if made a crafting exclusive would encourage players to level crafting. If not then being able to do this for other players would create another demand for crafters. But for best results would need to be able to do it to any and all gear. This would also create more diversity among players and playstyles.
Randomized item stats:
Something that was awesome about the diadem was the chance to get gear that had better/more stats. Made an almost diablo 3 feeling to earning gear. As a result this also made running it more beneficial to try to get the most optimum stat gear. Allowing crafters to do this would be interesting. How to accomplish this i do not currently know the only examples i can think of would be from diablo game series such as the horadric cube, gambling, identifying items. Incorporating something like this would make some things more fun. And if incorporated into some of the roulettes would make people want to do them more. Because lets face it theres not alot of people that want to sit through MSQ cutscenes even with the rewards being what they are its still a bit annoying.
Airships:
currently theres not much content with these(especially with subs now a thing) id like to see more involvement with them. currently there just good for farming large quantities of items, and old items only obtainable via airship(such as the zu mount) since diadem is dead this is also probably the only way anyones getting into it anymore for the minion brachiosaur. why not try to make them a bit relavant atleast in the new content?
Salvaged objects:
currently i dont know about anyone else but i have a bunch of "salvaged [ring,necklace,bracelet]" items from sub ventures. why not make these exclusive crafting items instead of just vendor trash items? imagine being able to give out a +15% exp ring to lvl 60 to FC members? or something nice like that. scaling gear maybe? World of warcraft did it in frozen throne and i wont lie i wouldnt mind seeing similar in ff14 to allow for less worrying about gear while leveling new jobs.
Closing note:
One thing that i love about this is game is its vast amount of content. And the fact that it appeals to such a wide crowd.
Something i dislike about the game is some things that exist i feel are being forgotten/negelected.
Things like the diadem, this was a great concept and was bustling on release. But is dead now. Id like to see square enix spend more time revamping old things to be more relavent then currently there is.
A side note is that while i am posting a rather large amount of things, and im sure alot of response to these would/will be negative from people that disagree for this reason and that. I think ff14 is an amazing game and i hope it continues for a very long long time. Its very enjoyable and i would like to thank square enix for making something so amazing. But the only way to make content for players is if players give feedback/input. So heres my 2 gil and i hope that its useful and who knows hopefully something will be seen in game someday ^.^ thank you square enix and keep making amazing games.