Quote Originally Posted by Duelle View Post
This already weakens your proposal, as it goes entirely against the design for magic currently in place in relation to classes and their respective jobs. I haven't leveled THM to really learn how they're explaining the transition from THM to BLM, but full elemental wheel being given back to CON means that the job quests and WHM/BLM would have to change so that both stem from CON and have other mage jobs stem from THM (whether this is how it should have been since the beginning or not is moot).
I think whether 'that was how it should have been in the beginning' is the most relevant question one can ask, or at least to, in considering the quality of the idea, put aside for the moment what has been set, especially if what has been set is not fully satisfying. If one bases their ideas first and foremost off half-measures, and then each following idea off the half-measures before it, the ideal that really shouldn't have been so difficult before seems now to be fantasy. It's a point of contingency, rather than being intrinsic.

I'm aware prior changes to the classes would have to be changed yet again to match this system. I also don't consider that a problem as long as this idea is taken further, completed for all aspects of the game. In all honesty, I wouldn't take this idea alone. But I'd sure as hell take a complete set, something ideal, over numerous small changes again and again or left even without those minor repairs in the name of "good enough". I've started this line of thought in this subject because I felt it would be a good first step, and that it wouldn't be mutually exclusive with either future ideas and the current system.


Quote Originally Posted by Duelle View Post
Your overall system fits better in a single player RPG rather than an MMO. There's a reason why mechanics in general are so limited between the fact that you alone are not controlling all aspects of the battle, latency, delay and slow individual reaction times and so on. I will grant you that there's a benefit to not being entirely commited to one school of magic (the reason why WoW and games that followed use elemental alignments as flavor for casters), but I'm still not sold on this idea.
Isn't the condition that aspects of battle are no longer in your hands alone exactly what makes teamwork enjoyable in an MMO? For what other reasons would we play them? We count on other factors, other people. And none of those factors limit this system, seeing as the timing it would bring to use is still within the error of latency. Programming, such as through a mantle system (point-check-count-release), is also possible in order to remove latency issues in simultaneous casting. But, as simultaneous casting was never that far separate from sequential in this system to begin with, I don't see how that would be an issue.