Quote Originally Posted by midnitdragoon View Post
Combat is good, but lacks the final fantasy feel. Final Fantasy 11 menu-based combat feels way better and would have been better fit for this game had it been developed around it from the ground up.

Combat is currently a spam fest, memorized rotations to be executed as fast as possible. Personally, i don't believe it requires much thought, which is good if you want this game accessible to the masses.
While I agree the combat does lack the final fantasy feel especially with all the adjustemnts they've made over the years. and while I loved XI in the nearly 10 years i spent playing it. I honestly don't think i'd prefer the menu based system.. but this is where i feel the 1.23 combat system had things right and looked like it was going in a solid direction. until they abandoned it and wnet warcraft instead.

XI did have a lot more depth to it though. which came down to the bestiary in many ways. you had mobs with high armour like crabs, then fast and agile birds squishy but pretty evasive. slow but hard hitting gigas, every mob felt different and thus required a different approach. even in weapon skills. doing a fusion skill chain on a fire based monster whooops.

it wasnt perfect though because this variety ended up being rather short lived. you could go onto ffxiclopedia (if it still exists) go through the bestiary and notice that 75% of all mobs shared the same weaknesses, ice, thunder, piercing. which is why those becasme the only things you would ever invest merit points into.. but i do think if they'd learnt from that and made sure to diversify it a bit more that it would have been so much better.

but in XIV they went totally the other way and made every monster the exact same. the only thing that changes from one to the next is how much hp they have.. they all have the same defence, the same evasion, the same weaknesses and resistances. and it just makes things boring.

jobs in XI were also way better than in XIV. and while the above flaws kinda made some preferable over others there was still a great deal of flexibility to be had.. look at tanks. ninja, paladin warrior, samuarai, dancer, monk,, bluemage, probably more could all be incredibly solid tanks. i would quite often tank sky gods as a monk using counterstance. or a samurai with seigan. an attack that would stip all a ninjas shadows a samurai could just anticpate and ignore.. opened up many ways of playing jobs not just 1 mindless rotation that never changes.

all things that made it much more fun. and things i wish xiv incorporated more rather than kept stripping away. but i dont think id go back to a menu style system.