Things I think might be improved upon.

[Klive]

I know these type of threads are common and lead to being flame blasted, but I love you all anyways. These are my thoughts and views, take them for what they are.

First I'll start with, FF14 gets better with every patch. Not even a little better, but exponentially better. This game is currently on the right track with the right train. My friends/family think I'm nuts for still playing but I honestly enjoy playing this game.

So my first thing that bugs my and does disrupt my game play enjoyment, is the ability to swap classes/jobs at will. I know that was a selling point of FF14 v1.0 with the armory system, but I think has outlived its fun. During one instance I have changed my class/job over 6 times. This takes away from the game for me. When I enter a raid as an archer/bard, change to a thm/blm, and fight bosses as a cnj/whm; I don't feel like I'm playing an adventurer. Feels like I'm using the dress-sphere system from FF10-2 and I didn't play that one for a reason. This also makes having multiple classes/jobs a standard for raiding. I don't feel it improves the game and more of a mechanic that we just abuse now.

I just think something should be in place, so we can't change classes at whim, in raids, during fights, every couple seconds; that would improve game play for me. My humble suggestion would make we can change classes are aether crystals/gates. They are all over the place so place can still change classes easily.

Character customization is something I think is very important in an MMO. AF gear is out and people have a need to have their own look, I think vanity gear slots would be great. What are vanity gear slots? Gear slots that are shown over your current gear, but you don't get the stats. I'll use an example, since I couldn't think of a clear way to word it. If you put you AF chest piece in the vanity slot, you wouldn't get the stats. The graphic would be shown over what you really have put on your chest slot. This way, if you get an upgrade but like your current look, you can get the upgraded stats but keep you quinine look.

Kiting is another thing that bugs me. If there is more than one monster to tank, players kite them. I understand why we do this, it works very well. Why tank and heal? When you can tank the one you need to kill and have the rest chase one party member. I would like if this wasn't the best/only option for many tough fights. Getting my AF gear for many of my classes made me see how much we abuse kiting as a form of tanking.

Those are three thing that were on my mind. Feel free to flame blast, troll, add ideas, improve upon, or whatever you want to them. Just as a personal request, if you tl;dr just don't post to this thread. Granted, I think I'll get my tl;dr now for asking. Thank you fro your time.

[Wolfie]

I would like to see the combat class you enter an instance with get locked that way. Meaning, you can still change jobs, and to land/hand classes, but no swapping over from MRD to CNJ.

I feel that in the long run, it would allow Yoshi to better fine tune instances and fights, knowing that there will be a 'cookie cutter' group of sorts that enters them (i.e. 2 tank, 2 healer, 4 DPS, or whatever he wants for that specific instance).

[Airget]

Here's an idea, in terms of being able to change classes in dungeons. What if in a dungeon designated for 4 people there were 7 doors, the doors are unlocked upon beating the main boss and having said class active since the start without changing. Upon entering a dungeon you would be given the status of "Dedication" which would basically have the flavor info of "An adventurer dedicated to conquering the dungeon with his Class/Job without changing Arms"

The basic idea is this based on the amount of people who didn't change classes you would be able to do the following
If 1-3 didn't change Disciplines you can open 1 door
If 4-5 then you can open 2 doors
6-7 can open 3 doors
All 8 can open 4 doors

But the general idea is that open these doors may have an additional chest but the reward would range from start to end reward and be completely random, with final boss loot being extremely rare. but for those who may want additional loot they can go through the challenge of not changing disicplines for a chest to open additional chest at the end of the fight and to balance it out you make it where only a certain amuont of doors can be open so you can't have a run where you have every discipline involved then at the end open every door. So because of that there is the imposed 4 doors rule for a full party that doesn't change.

Perhaps this idea could work but I believe to outright deny people the right to change mid-dungeon just doesn't seem fair to those who took the time to level their classes, they leveled them to be more flexible so they should have the right to do as they please with them.

[Wolfie]

That would be an interesting idea for a single dungeon, but not all of them Airget.

The reason why I'm in favor of restricting classes on entering a dungeon is because it's easy to cheese mechanics and kill bosses with dumb setups so that it doesn't provide any real challenge. Does boss X favor ranged or magic DPS? Everyone switch to ARC and THM. Does the next boss favor physical/melee DPS? Everyone switch to your go-to melee DPS class.

That said, locking people into their class requires that both the classes and overall dungeon is balanced enough so that every class is equally favored and gets equal play time. Yoshi has done a good job so far balancing classes in my opinion, but class balance is a never ending battle and balance changes for other top notch MMOs happen every major patch. We'll see how it goes with 2.0 when more hardcore PVE is released.