Risk Factor. Can I have it?

[Darkillumina]

@Malachite
Thanks for being so horribly reasonable, it's rather offsetting coming from these forums.

I can empathise with some of what you're asking for, but I generally just assume that it'll come into effect with the addition of more abilities and content. It does, however, require GOOD balancing of class roles and perceptions (perception being key) - A party is not at its best sitting around forever waiting for a Conjuror to log on as the only "healer" in the game. (Not that I think healers are necessary in a FF14 experience party, but to make a successful exp party without them requires that nonexistent "skill" you're talking about.) The pace of FF11 was so glacial, as a non-red mage, you spent large amounts of your time staring at the floor (this is before level cap raises), which is hardly engaging.

Pigeonholing people into class roles actually paradoxically limits dynamism and causes another plethora of problems by throwing the player onto the mercy of public perception. Remember pre-Colibri Dragoons? The joke was they had the job ability "Auto-Leader", because there certainly was very little of a snowflake's chance in hell they'd get a party otherwise.

You fail to recognize that FFXI's ideas could be implemented without the weaknesses. None of us are advocating for a identical copy of FFXI. Instead we are looking at some of the things that the game did very well and looking at ways to implement them successfully in this game. The battle system in FFXIV as it stands, lacks an identity besides spam as much as possible to kill as fast as you can.

For instance, the linearity of leveling in FFXI (Robber Crab or bust) could be changed in FFXIV by the utilization of skill-chains. Certain enemies could be very susceptible to certain skill-chains each of which is done by utilizing different classes/jobs. No matter the party makeup, people would then have options to level but in a challenging way. It would also ensure that people weren't leveling on robber crabs for 10 levels. This would prevent the 'staring at the floor' disease that you seem to have such issue with.

By the way if you were staring at the floor in FFXI, you were doing it wrong. This is coming from a DRK. Also every functional MMO needs certain class roles. Deal with it. FFXIV can attempt to avoid this by having more than one class/job being able to fulfill a role. Sure one job could do it better, but it can be perfectly viable for other classes to accomplish certain roles.

I personally prefer the structure and order of early FFXI's battle system to the wandering whirlwind of death we have now. I enjoyed finding a camp, settling in and pulling mobs as well as the excitement of dealing with an unplanned add. Again, it doesn't have to be as painful as it was in FFXI but you are simply ignorant if you think FFXI was a total detriment to the player base.