Thread: 2.0: New Disciple of Magic or Spell Reform?

Originally Posted by Jinrya-Geki

1. Are the games casters Fun to play?
Doesn't matter if you have 1 or 10 or more. If they aren't fun to play then why have them. Black Mage only have 1 good damaging combo line is not fun. Fire and Ice should be effective.

They took the Suikoden route of magic design, whcih means each element has a specific use. It's pretty clever if you want to condense stuff and not have clutter when it comes to abilities. Clutter happens to be something native to Final Fantasy's magic, so I wasn't so bothered by the decision.

2. Are there alot of casters? The world of magic is limitless. You can make up ANYTHING, and this isn't SEs first rodeo with casters. Why are there only two? For anyone who role-plays or just like playing casters, this game lacks it.

Black Magic, White Magic. That's it. Final Fantasy's magic was pretty much divided by these two schools, and they have been the real constants in the series, Sure, Blue Magic does exist, but is nigh uncontrollable and real hard to balance. Then comes the fact that you have to implement it in a way that makes sense. There's nothing in XIV that would make sense for Blue Magic, requiring the developers to re-imagine Blue Magic again and then implement a class for it to be built on and then actually release Blue Mage.

Personally, I think you're confusing schools of magic with fancy titles that we refer to as job names.

3. Don't limit casters. Makes a developer look lazy when you limit a caster to only a few abilities. Casters should have the most, and all of them should be useful. 15 abilities, for summoner that's gonna be half or more of their abilities just to summon, at least 8 for the elements and light and dark.

I expect Summoner to have individual action bars per avatar that's out.

4. Make sure they are all good for different situations. Nothing is more annoying that a class that is left out of events because it's useless. Example what will blm/thm be able to do against Ramuh or Titan? Or Against a mob that spams aoes and burns summoners pets and just makes them waste MP?

Situational play sucks and will regardless exclude someone. The answer is to make gameplay and encounters inclusive rather than exclusive.

5. [Are pet casters balanced to regular casters? Pet casters should be equal to or less than casters such as Black Mage considering they don't have a pet to do constant damage. I go by Everquest online adventures for the ps2 as an example. Perfect balance by the end game's life.

Balance should be between master and pet. If you want to do SMN vs BLM, I'd say both should be doing about the same DPS, but both bringing some form of utility that makes them nice to have around but not make either mandatory. Along of the lines of WoW, where you could bring a Warlock and a Mage and not have them overlap because despite both doing the same DPS, the Warlock would bring Blood Pact (+Stamina to the whole party) and Curse of the Elements (+Spell Damage taken on the mob) while the Mage could bring Amplify Magic (+Magic effects on a party member) and Time Warp (think Haste, but on steroids).