7.0 wishlist

**Shurrikhan** · 07-21-2023 07:34 AM

Originally Posted by Asako

Take everything they done with Endwalker and do the complete opposite. Easily the worst expansion they have released to date. Shame too because the initial story 6.0 to 6.1 was handled well. Everything else has been absolutely shocking bad.

I doubt this would be very productive. Nearly all potential outcomes, decisions, balance states, etc., are bad; what would be 'good' is a fraction of a fraction of a percent of what's possible. Shooting into the dark any which way so long as it's not the same trajectory as Endwalker would most likely do worse than Endwalker.

And that's coming from someone who thinks that overall the game went to crap with 5.0 and has only gotten worse since.

Now, I do absolutely think that 7.0 needs to make sweeping fundamental changes before the opportunity (with this new arc) passes them by, but I do think those need to be deliberate per whatever new vision they take for the game, rather than merely reactionary (solely trying to undo recent gameplay degradation).

Are there some changes that should be reverted, especially with improvements to "solve" the "issues" those changes were meant to address? Absolutely.

Let's take melee movement consequent to differing AoEs, for instance.

One of the main pain points previous to changing nearly all conal AoEs into radial AoEs was that those who could not rapidly change targets would have to always move with the tank and out of melee-occluding AoEs respective to their target. As such, despite that conal AoEs had 60% more reach than circular AoEs, many a controller-based player found them annoying to leverage. The cost was that melee lost any sense of repositioning during AoEs, something that used to be at least as vital as positionals during single-target attacks. That greatly reduced a form of APM and engagement that didn't even require buttons. But there was a much, much less intrusive alternative fix possible for that: simply no longer require conal AoEs to have a target; that way they could be aimed according to player facing rather than solely according to player-to-target angle, removing the disproportionate penalty faced by those who couldn't simply click on a new target.

Or take positionals themselves.

One of the largest pain-points for positionals is that what the player sees isn't that close to what the server sees at the time our skills are actuated. This is hellish in PvP, too, of course, but at least in PvP there exists some reason not to let a lagging player melee and enemy from what would appear to the victim to be from 10+ yalms away. In PvE, though, there's no victim of that exchange if we were to, say, move the positional check to a quarter-second earlier and then repeat it twice more each quarter-second after and count success among any of the three as a positional success. In that way, whether we successfully reacted to our visuals OR predicted what the server would read, we still get our success.

The other is the "bloat" of True North. While it ultimately offers far more room for optimization than, say, the likes of Surecast or Arm's Length as knockback-negation, its impact obviously isn't going to be as noticeable to most players, and most seem to feel that rather than the skill offering some new featural capacity, it exists just to apologize its way out of a core mechanic (those positionals). But, we could as easily just replace it with the passive that allows us to bank, say, 4 charges of guaranteed positionals, where those charges are infrequently generated per X successful positionals, Y GCDs' time, or some combination of the two (success and time). Whatever -- so long as it costs no buttons, wastes virtually no successes, and just generally feels plenty smooth. That would also make it so that, unlike the remaining actions you could correctly position during True North, no successful positionals wholly go to waste unless capped (with only one such free positional per 15 seconds or so, overall). Therein you'd have a less button-costly and slightly more intuitive solution that'd also smoothly allow for, say, Monk to gain back its positionals on most skills instead of having only two of them.

**Shurrikhan** · 07-21-2023 07:35 AM

WIP. (Still editing my list... and may replace it with a Google Doc link for prettier/more readable formatting. The actual thing is... really quite long.)

Some highlights for now:

Inventory un-bloating and greater customization.

Materia replaced with the Junction system.
Gear now carries only 3 Secondary Stats: Will, Speed, and Break.

However, each is versatile; the Junction system allows players to determine exactly how they want to make use of each stat.
Will can increase %Throughput, %Mitigation, or %MP restoration.
Speed can increase Periodic Damage, GCD Speed, or Movement Speed (atop reducing the cooldown of Sprint and offering it additional partial charges).
Break can increase Critical Hit Chance, Critical Hit Bonus, or Evasion (chance to reduce an incoming attack's damage by 25%, occurring after and stacking with parry and block, but also able to affect magic damage).
(These are spitball examples, not exhaustive.)

Players can set up Junction Plates to determine what effects to prioritize to what thresholds and into what effect(s) to (equally) dump whatever of each Secondary Stat remain. Yes, in this example, Direct Hit has been removed, since it is an utter bloat stat.
Raid currencies consolidated, with purchasing permissions being moved from the arrangement of pages instead to achievements.

Rather than having 5 separate item drops from Savage Raids to differentiate what players can buy as they progress, there is now just one item drop per raid tier, stored within Currency, and one's clear progress instead determines what you can buy. Once you clear Floor 2, you can buy anything Floor 2's Pages would be able to purchase. Etc., etc.

Further alt-friendliness changes (+ continued inventory un-bloating)

Dungeon gear sets are now all dyable and those that are mere redyes of another set have been renamed and now carry the stats and affinities of both Gear Classes.
For instance, an otherwise identical Casting and Healing set would be renamed, be usable by both Casters and Healers, and carry both Mind and Intelligence, and an otherwise identical Striking and Scouting or Striking and Maiming or Scouting and Aiming set, etc., etc., would be usable by the jobs of both gear classes and would carry both the relevant primary Power stats.
All EXP rates increased by 30%, with MSQ experience reduced in compensation, but the %EXP bonus from pre-order earrings has been removed; they're now just nice in that you don't have to replace them and can use them across all Armor Sets up until the latest expansion's starting level. (Maybe a ring will also be offered to retain that pre-order incentive, but likewise purely at the level of convenience rather than grind-reduction.)
Buying any item with weekly tomes now unlocks that same piece across all other jobs to be purchasable with uncapped tomes.

Many general QoL improvements added.

Enemy AoE actuation times are now more consistent. All AoEs led by a cast will now actuate their snapshot precisely upon end of cast.
In PvE, the actual queuing 'moment' has been moved up by 0.2 seconds, and all actions which check for a position will triple-check, repeating every 0.2 seconds twice after that initial moment, and taking the best of the two. For instance, if a Rear positional skill were actuated just as a boss were to be forcibly spun in starting a new mechanic but 0.2 seconds prior the attacker would have been correctly positioned (and therefore appear, on their screen, to have done correctly), that will count as a successful positional.
Enemies may now temporarily expand or flip their hit zones, including by becoming omnipositional, during certain mechanics. Bosses that jump to the edge of the arena, for instance, may expand their Flanks to encompass most of their Front and flip the remainder of that Front to count as Rear, or may just temporarily guarantee positionals regardless of attack angle.
Glamour Collection. Unlimited glamour count, and any gear you spiritbind is added to that collection automatically and for free, account-wide. You can also find any search for any glamour you have or do not yet have and see concise information on from where to get it.
Appearance data is no longer attached to gear, but instead to purely appearance slots (for head, chest, hands, ring 1, ring 2, etc.) stored job-by-job. Upgrading an item therefore no longer requires that one replace its glamour; because gear and glamour are now separate, the latter persists regardless.
All actions may now be queued, including ground-targeting actions, even if casted.
Server confirmation no longer resets the ~0.6s timer after actuating any action before another action can be used (which previously caused each action to have its "animation lock" or "truly global cooldown" to be increased by one's roundtrip ping).
A new class of actions, called Techniques, now ignores even the above "animation lock" and can thereby be used even in the middle of another action's animation. These include Sprint, all pet actions, and certain other basically null-animation actions.
Monk regains positionals on all ST skills (minus SSS) and regains traditional ramp-up, but in a revised form that does away with the need for Form Shift and slightly revitalizes Chakra.

Rather than increasing potency, Monk's positionals now causes the affected skill to have a 10% greater critical hit chance. Moreover, Monk may now start directly in any form, but is now balanced around a new Trait, Flowing Fists, which increases the critical hit chance bonus of a successful positional by a further 20% per different form used in the past 2 GCDs. E.g., if rotating all three forms, you'd have a 50% crit bonus at all times, but rotating just Dragon Kick and Bootshine together would drop that by 20% per GCD until left with just the base 10%. Skills used while in Perfect Balance always count as 'different' forms. As such, MNK would again take a couple GCDs to ramp up, much like in late Stormblood, but also would have full reason to have all its single-target action buttons even outside of Perfect Balance, and could do away with the bloat of Form Shift.

While we're at it, we'll revise MNK's Chakra expenditure to consume 1-7 Chakra for varying effects, where 5 is usually the optimal point, but all have use, and we'll have Monk regenerate one Chakra per half-GCD automatically while the GCD is not cooling, forgoing the need for Meditation now that one could use their Chakra attack earlier.

Near-reversions and similar changes to certain fundamentals that focus on maximizing enjoyable engagement rather than merely minimizing annoyance.

Anything which previously offered nuance or engagement and was removed solely because it could be annoying (rather than to make room for nuances it previously precluded) has been returned, but generally with its pain-points fixed in ways that do not sacrifice engagement.

Some examples:
The repositioning required during melee AoEs through rotation of conal and radial AoEs has been returned. However, conal and linear AoEs no longer require a target; instead, they check the number of viable (not CCed, reflecting, or invulnerable) targets within both character facing and facing towards the current target and use the greater of the two, removing the need to frequently retarget in order to optimize line of attack while dodging AoEs that'd block parts of melee movement and/or dealing with not-great tank movement.

Shadowfang returned as a rotational element of NIN; Goring Blade returned as a rotational element of PLD. However, Fight or Flight now allows for you next unprepared combo action within 5 seconds to grant its full effect without requiring its prior combo action. Blade of Valor will now consume existing Goring Blade duration to extend its duration to up to 30 seconds.

60s and 90s raid buffs have been returned, but certain skills have been made slightly more bankable in order to better leverage them.

Where singular filler actions are especially prevalent, such as on healers or Bard, DoT durations have been reduced nearer to their original durations (e.g., 21 and 30s for Bard DoTs, with Iron Jaws removed for the bloat it is, and healer DoTs reduced to 18-24s).

Some charges removed where they otherwise pigeon-holed an excessive portion of consequential play to just 15s per 2 minutes, with alternate means of providing the given flexibility.

Jobs' early experience simplification rolled back through a return of traits that allow initial durations to start at lower values better fit to the kits and gameplay at that time, and through a shifting of abilities' acquisition levels into earlier levels (e.g., a current level 60 kit by 40).

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