What did FF14 have right, at launch?

[Rhomagus]

At first I disagreed with the OP, but then later in the thread I read about taking the RNG aspect out of it. I would've liked that.

I always envisioned XIV's leveling tiers to be that of XI's only the progression emphasis was reversed.

In XI, you leveled a job which had specific "sub skills" that were higher or lower based on the job you were playing. Each job had a specific cap at each level, and the higher the cap on the skills coincided with the skills that job utilized most commonly. You could still level up these skills on other jobs. This created a two tiered leveling system and provided incentives for playing in a particular manner on a particular class, creating job identity.

In essence, you had a "main" level supplemented by a "sub skill" level.

In vanilla XIV the "sub skill" level was emphasized and made more apparent allowing for more individual identity as opposed to creating job identity. Instead of leveling a job or class you were leveling a specific weapon. Basically XI's "skill up parties" became the main leveling system in XIV. Unfortunately the main level was neutralized so much that it became essentially purposeless.

In my opinion, they should have made the "Physical level" the harder to level up and the "Rank Level" the easier. They should have had main story quest availability based on physical level and class/job quest story based on "Rank Level" rather than everything being based off of Rank level.

Attaining physical level 50 was not seen as an accomplishment, while reaching Rank 50 met much more applause and you were given more in game incentives to level rank than you were physical level in the form of storyline progression and battle effectiveness.

The two leveling systems could've been done very well but they weren't fine tuned and imo their emphasis was swapped.

I loved putting my class together to fit the changing contexts of my situation. If someone had to go that was filling a certain role in the party, I could adjust my action bar accordingly, if I had previously earned those skills prior, while still being able to level my weapon class gaining access to yet more abilities and accomplishing what I had originally set out to do. Now if someone leaves in a party it turns into a "we have to replace X now. Time to /sh in Ul'dah or scour your linkshells and friends lists for a replacment".

As of recently I've been spending way too much time standing around putting parties together and not playing the game. In vanilla XIV the party could adjust on the fly without having to stop leveling their class. Hopefully some of this time will be offset when they include the content finder system in 2.0. and/or people actually start using the search function.

I also miss the stamina system. It felt like playing Secret of Mana all over again. In alpha they had a charge system similar to Secret of Mana as well. In Secret of Mana if you waited longer you would get a more accurate and powerful attack. I think in XIV beta, if you waited a short time you got a more accurate attack while if you waited a long time you got a more powerful attack. Unfortunately, the battle system was so lagged and the pacing of battles was so slow that it was not enjoyable. If they removed the lag and sped up the gauge I could see that system being very fun. That's just me though.

Don't get me wrong. While I enjoyed the flexibility of vanilla XIV, I very much enjoy actual combat in the current version. I'm loving the combo system. Still miss Battle Regimens. I love actually playing battles rather than endlessly "preparing" for them.

I don't much care for mage jobs though. Mage class > mage job mechanics doesn't match up with the story (The elemental class not having access to elemental spells), and the mechanics of spells seems flawed (i.e. Fire being AoE only across all "tiers", Thunder being single target only). I wish they would've left classes untouched and greatly increased the effectiveness of particular skills when you equipped a job stone (much like it was in XI), or blocked access to certain abilities when a job stone was equipped while giving access to job specific abilities (like they have now). That way you wouldn't have to worry about the bastardization that occurred with the mage classes. As of now they don't fit either XIV's mold or the traditional FF franchise mold.

But ya, if they removed the RNG from skill acquisition that would've been fine to me. It made you play in an anti-intuitive manner like in Final Fantasy II. You'd purposefully keep monsters alive so you could get more experience, kind of defeating the reason to be fighting a monster in the first place.

[Shurrikhan]

If they removed the lag and sped up the gauge I could see that system being very fun. That's just me though.

Seeing as I agree with everything you've said here, there's at least one more than "just me". :P

I would have loved for an improved stamina bar, a solid mage class base seen through to the end, and the physical level slightly reformed, rather than giving up on or sheerly deforming them.