Give me challenge and give me death...

[Rutelor]

Most of my daily activities in FFXIV are extremely routine and boring: My friends and I get the same few leves we got two days before, we instantly teleport to one of the two same camps where we've been ranking up for the last five weeks, and we kill the same mobs one after the other. I can't recall, the last time any of us died, or were--even in the remotest sense-- in danger. There are at least 4 of us healing at every run (people of several classes, not only DoM) but most of the many cure spells spammed heal only a few HP, if any at all. This happens, because there's little need for anything in the rich array of abilities we all have learnt and equipped, the monsters are so weak! Plus, the spells take so long to cast, most of them die on our staves and wands without ever hitting the foe they were destined for. Not a thought ever crosses about enfeebling, draining stats, crowd control, or support.

We do this with about 6 different leves, but the process is the same all the time. Most of the party members don't bother anymore to cast, or use special abilities, since the mobs die so quickly. We're given 30 minutes to fulfill all objectives in a leve, but the game manages to make us use anything close to that amount of time only rarely. And this always by means of having us run back and forth from one end of a maze-like cave to the other, in search of identical (and identically-behaving) waves of foes again, and again. Most of the time is used in running, only a small fraction in actual combat. This could've been fun if we had had to perform this exercise a couple of times, but I've been doing this levequest almost daily for months, no end. We all have... for all of our classes. I now curse as I run through that cave.

I'm aware of the extensive redesign of the battle system currently underway, and I'm hopeful the new development team will take combat excitement all the way to where it should've been from day one. But sometimes I fret...

It's my opinion that mobs die too quickly and the pace of combat is much too fast; this is combined with buffs and abilities whose cool-off period clocks all too slowly. I'm sure this is evident enough, but I'm afraid the dev. team might think the corrective measures to take here have to do with accelerating the abilities and spell clocks. I happen to think this would be one step further towards trivializing combat and blurring the sense of cooperation and collective endeavor that every battle, at least in my mind, should become. In precipitous, breakneck, rushed combat, only those people who seem to have a compulsion to kill anything and kill it fast are satisfied. Even with a streamlined, swift, mouse-based combat interface, that type of battle tends to be perfunctory and far from gratifying to most Final Fantasy fans.

I would like to find out how many of you, out there, are for rich, dense, exhilarating combat in which the exhilaration does not come from breakneck speed, but rather challenging AI, surprising variations and unexpected turns that keep you on your toes, at a speed which allows for maneuvers and corrections, but still keeps you panting for breath. Battles in which there's a syncopated, jaunty rhythm to the participation of the party members, but plenty of time for all to do their thing, to feel we're all contributing something. I certainly would like to be able to use, at least once on a levequest, that ancient magic spell that takes so many seconds to cast, and finish casting before the mob is dead. To the developers I say: Please, don't solve this by making the spell cast faster.

Your thoughts...

[Amsai]

I'm tired so I won't go into detail, but basically you hit the nail on the head. I definately am not a fan of fast battles and fast cooldowns. It makes all the moves feel trivial, instead of being built up to. I hate the way most mmorpgs have turned mages into archers. Spells should take longer to cast the higher their level, and give the tank a true job. In fantasy, everyone knows the knight protects the mage in order to give the mage time to cast anawesome spell.

[gifthorse]

Mobs don't die too quickly.

[gifthorse]

I'm tired so I won't go into detail, but basically you hit the nail on the head. I definately am not a fan of fast battles and fast cooldowns. It makes all the moves feel trivial, instead of being built up to. I hate the way most mmorpgs have turned mages into archers. Spells should take longer to cast the higher their level, and give the tank a true job. In fantasy, everyone knows the knight protects the mage in order to give the mage time to cast anawesome spell.

In fantasy, everyone knows that the knight doesn't press a "provoke" button that sends a giant red orb flying in the face of the target to get its attention either.

Basically everything with FF battle system is retarded.

My point being that there are many things that trivialise "combat" in FFXIV, and many of which aren't even related to the rapidity of battle pace.

[ManekiKanji]

I agree alot of the mobs die too quickly, however my leve group generally has the diffculty up above the point where we can just kill mobs within a few seconds and in instances they mobs even one or two shot our mages , but obviously sometimes the diffculty when you bump it up can sometimes end up making the battles alot harder than you would of thought, our group has a few deaths every run due to the diffculty being realistic to our capability, i dont know if you have it up on 5 stars all the time and thats not enough. But there is still alot of mob types even if you have the difficulty scaled correctly enough to suit your party such as Insect type mobs for example that have the hp very low, a mob like the zombie Pikeman/mages i would say have a good balence if your scaled correctly for your party , they have both good hp and offenive capabilitys and can wipe out a party if your mages arnt careful with they're hate and distance from they're breath attacks.
Theres no question there needs some serious balencing still and the difficultys made a bit clearer instead of what they have been labeled as currently, you can still get some challenge but even if you do ramp up the difficulty there are none or neglidgeable difference's in the Sp difference as we notice whenever we need to tone the Stars down on a leve, so there needs to be some incentive as well as balencing, I can also atest to even just using simple Scourge II spells and not even managing to get that off before a mob may be dead.

[Kallera]

Um, you do know there are three cities, with up to six camps for the level range you are at?

And it isn't clear what you are suggesting. Are you looking for different AI types among the same monster?

[Reika]

Ok.

(You can have this.) (Death)

[viion]

I think no matter what SE do we'll always be playing the UI not the Game. Even with the new battle system that we've n doubt overhyped.

[Nilheim]

I agree 100% with you, OP. Routine in itself (that is to say, spamming leves) wouldn't be so bad if combat was not so damn boring. Seriously I do the same thing on almost every mob: Light Stab, Sentinel + Outmaneuver, Phalanx II and Weapon Skills. That's my basic cycle for leves and while I sometimes use other stuff, it's just not fun at all.

[Wolfie]

That's what they're working on when they said they're trying to fix the battle system and add class uniqueness. You can't have difficulty and strategy with a broken combat system and classes that are practically identical to the next.

The first and better step was to limit party sizes, so they have a definitive number on how many players they work with in an encounter.