Remove AOE Toggle

[Shiyo]

Kinda seperate but at the same time on the AoE theme...It'd be nice if during leves/behest etc your aoe *only* hits the marked targets, i.e. behest/leve targets.

That would make AOEing even more thoughtless, you'd never turn it off, lol. We want to encourage paying attention, not discourage it even more.

[Zuellni]

About the gamepad button assigned to AOE, even if they took out AOE, you still wouldn't be able to use it to cycle through targets. The button normally acts as a party/enemy sign menu button or use the skill as battle regimen button. A better solution to that part of your concerns would be to let us bind buttons to functions as we please.

I do think that AOE isn't very interesting at the moment but I don't think it needs to be separated into different spells or removed all together. I personally think that when you toggle to AOE, the cooldown and MP cost for AOE spells should be increased. And if naming conventions is really that important to some of you, I'm sure SE could make the spell names change as well when the MP cost and cooldown changes. For example, Fire II when switched to AOE could be labeled Firaga II and costs 60mp with 20s cooldown or something like that.

On a side note, I always thought separating out similar spells like AOE/Non-AOE was a cop-out from devs being too lazy to come up with unique spells to flesh out a skill list but that's probably just me.

[Ava]

At the people complaining about Action slot issues. You're not supposed to equip every spell at once. They designed the system to be flexible, you choose the spells you want depending on the situation. When you solo, sure you might want all your important debuffs, heals, and nukes, but the goal of SE is to inject a sense of strategy and skill into the game. With a system where AoE is not handed out to everyone and action slots are more important, you could have one person equip all of their CC and single target heals (RDM), another person equip all of their heals + aoe heals + a couple important debuffs (WHM), and another person equipping all of their offensive attacks + AOE + Elemental debuffs (for the elements the fight requires) + some basic single target heals (BLM). Why do people feel the need to equip everything at once all the time?

About the gamepad button assigned to AOE, even if they took out AOE, you still wouldn't be able to use it to cycle through targets. The button normally acts as a party/enemy sign menu button or use the skill as battle regimen button. A better solution to that part of your concerns would be to let us bind buttons to functions as we please.

This is true, but I suppose I was thinking more along the lines of the button being changed to cycle target modes in Active/Attack mode only. Then they could remove the AOE toggle and keep the rest of the functionality of the button outside of Active/Attack mode. I dunno, as a mage I feel like the whole system is really awful and clunky and I haven't seen any debate about it yet.

[Shiyo]

They feel the need to equip everything at once because this game easily lets you do that right now, which is why every class is basically the same >_<

[AlexiaKidd]

I think it would be better if they kept it as is BUT made AOE cost twice as much MP and the effect is split between the targets. So if you can cure for 500 on a single target then if you AOE and hit 5 people they will be cured for 100 each. That way people would actually have to worry about getting hit and not be able to just spam attacks standing next to the tank getting AOE cured.

[Shiyo]

I think it would be better if they kept it as is BUT made AOE cost twice as much MP and the effect is split between the targets. So if you can cure for 500 on a single target then if you AOE and hit 5 people they will be cured for 100 each. That way people would actually have to worry about getting hit and not be able to just spam attacks standing next to the tank getting AOE cured.

Yeah this would be nice too, anything to encourage paying attention is good in my book :x

[Impulse]

AOE Toggle right now is an inconvenience, and it consumes an entire button on the controller. This button could be used for many more important things like cycling through target modes, or toggle battle regimens.

The AoE toggle button is already shared by the Emote/Target Marker List as well as the BR button on a gamepad, so it isn't "wasting space".

I propose the AOE toggle gets removed to free up the button on the controller for more important functions, and in place give us aoe -ga spells.

XI was the only game to my knowledge that used -GA spells to be the only AoEs and leave everything else to single target. Most other FFs, you could "AoE" with near any spell.

I think that by removing the AOE toggle, it would really balance out some classes and present some excellent opportunities for class uniqueness. Just think of how important Scholar was in FFXI. The ability to AOE any spell they wanted to was huge, that was an entire role in itself. FFXIV gives this ability to every class and sort of homogenizes them.

Only DoM's can AoE spells. Others can't. You'll notice that when preparing to cast a buff, heal or for whatever reason, an offensive magic spell as a GLA, LNC, PGL, etc will result in the AoE toggle image not showing up and of course, not AoEing.

[darkstarpoet1]

I think it would be better if they kept it as is BUT made AOE cost twice as much MP and the effect is split between the targets. So if you can cure for 500 on a single target then if you AOE and hit 5 people they will be cured for 100 each. That way people would actually have to worry about getting hit and not be able to just spam attacks standing next to the tank getting AOE cured.

lol take away the aoe heals and i'll see most of you laying down dead during battles. i'd be glad to walk over your dead bodies and take the mob you spent a while tryin to kill just to run out of mp due to the double mp cost.

you want a system that punishes aoe heals when you are fighting against mobs that do around 700-1000 damage per aoe attack. if you did the suggestion above and made aoe only heal each person for 100 with twice the cool down you would need 7 mages and one dd to try and fight a mob such as a great buffalo.

[Reika]

Yea, increasing the MP cost for AOE isnt too bad (Except in long NM Fights), but splitting the effectiveness across targets = Death.

[Demacia]

lol take away the aoe heals and i'll see most of you laying down dead during battles. i'd be glad to walk over your dead bodies and take the mob you spent a while tryin to kill just to run out of mp due to the double mp cost.

you want a system that punishes aoe heals when you are fighting against mobs that do around 700-1000 damage per aoe attack. if you did the suggestion above and made aoe only heal each person for 100 with twice the cool down you would need 7 mages and one dd to try and fight a mob such as a great buffalo.

Of course you would die when you have such a retarded battle system in place. Healing shouldn't be about mashing AoE heals as fast as possible. There's absolutely zero depth to FFXIV's combat so why not change that?