Comments from the Devs

[Kurokikaze]

Edit: Upon checking there are exactly four non-dated daggers, including the Goblin and U/U Toto-rak daggers. I mean, unless we're talking about throwing daggers, then there's 3 more of those. I digress, "Dated" recipes are set to be removed before 2.0, yeah? So that means there are literally four daggers to worry about, I don't think it's too much to simply change them to "THF" instead of "GLA"

You know people on the official forums are gonna bitch about that. Even though 99.9% of GLA/PLDs aren't using daggers. "YOU TAKING AWAY MY CHOICE THAT I CHOOSE NOT TO MAKE!?"

[Corrderio]

He wasn't planning to add new classes. Just keep the daggers in for now and move them to the Thief/Ninja class later on.
They can easily add new weapons to classes or remove existing ones, there's no rule about this.

Possible, but could have sworn when asked about this he said he didn't even want to touch it and admit it was a mistake.

[Raldo]

I always assumed they'd tie THF to PGL and allow THF to use shared PGL/THF weapons and THF-specific dual-daggers (single item - like current hand-to-hand weapons) or something.

[solracht]

Thief with Fist of Earth, Fists of Fire, and punching abilities. Looks great.

Not that Dark Knight with Sentinel, AoE Rampart, Flashga and three defensive shield skills would look much better.

I don't see how two jobs per class is going to work without another class/skill rehaul. Currently the system isn't as open to expansion as people are saying, and if you're hoping for sweeping changes to fit extra jobs into each class then you don't really sound much different than those hoping for SE to backpedal and remove classes.

[Raldo]

Ah, I hadn't thought of that. I was really only thinking about the lore and evasion-based abilities.

A backpedal over classes is really sounding good right about now.

[Kurokikaze]

SE's own fans are gonna drive the game into it's grave by turning it into something that will only appeal to them.

The results from the recent player poll are gonna be interesting.

[Spider-Dan]

Thief with Fist of Earth, Fists of Fire, and punching abilities. Looks great.

Not that Dark Knight with Sentinel, AoE Rampart, Flashga and three defensive shield skills would look much better.

If you can get used to DRKs with Defender and Provoke, PLDs with Berserk, BLMs with Raise and Curaga, and WHMs with Drain and Bio, you can get used to DRK with Sentinel and shield skills.

[LD]

SE's own fans are gonna drive the game into it's grave by turning it into something that will only appeal to them.

This is my biggest fucking fear. All the potential that this game has being wasted on people who convinced themselves that SE's worst ideas weren't that bad and any attempt at changing them is trying to be like WoW.

[solracht]

If you can get used to DRKs with Defender and Provoke, PLDs with Berserk, BLMs with Raise and Curaga, and WHMs with Drain and Bio, you can get used to DRK with Sentinel and shield skills.

There's a huge difference between a SJ system that adds a few skills you'll never use (on top of a bunch of useful ones, plus extra traits), and a system where half of your base skills and traits are either useless, awkward, or out of place for your job (especially when the useful additions from said job are minimal).

If you really can't see the difference between the two systems, then there's really no point in arguing past this.

The current class>job jump is too straightforward for most classes and I really don't see how it leaves room to expand into a "two/three jobs per class"-system without changing quite a few things.

Do tell me how you would add extra jobs for the existing classes without:
-Restructuring the base skills that classes get.
-Changing what it means to equip a job (for example, adding job traits, extra skills, or making skills change their behavior).
-Making the second job have a similar role to what the first job (and by extension, the class) already has.

I'm listening.

EDIT: Just so we're clear, I'm all for multiple jobs per class (Kuro surely remembers all the fun we had in the official forum last year), but people are assuming too much given the current system. We shouldn't assume that 2 jobs per class is the next step (especially if we're using this as an argument to support the job system) unless we're expecting huge class changes alongside it, because the current system could barely support it.

Before someone says it, I don't think Yoshida's self-admitted rants count, especially when he specifically said he was "just toying with ideas" before the job system actually came out.

[Burningthought]

There's a huge difference between a SJ system that adds a few skills you'll never use (on top of a bunch of useful ones, plus extra traits), and a system where half of your base skills and traits are either useless, awkward, or out of place for your job (especially when the useful additions from said job are minimal).

If you really can't see the difference between the two systems, then there's really no point in arguing past this.

The current class>job jump is too straightforward for most classes and I really don't see how it leaves room for expansion without changing quite a few things.

Do tell me how you would add extra jobs into the current system without:
-Restructuring the base skills that classes get.
-Changing what it means to equip a job (for example, adding job traits, extra skills, or making skills change their behavior).
-Making the second job have a similar role to what the first job (and by extension, the class) already has.

I'm listening.

EDIT: Just so we're clear, I'm all for multiple jobs per class (Kuro surely remembers all the fun we had in the official forum last year), but people are assuming too much given the current system. We shouldn't assume that 2 jobs per class is the next step (especially if we're using this as an argument to support the job system) unless we're expecting huge class changes alongside it, because the current system could barely support it.

Before someone says it, I don't think Yoshida's self-admitted rants count, especially when he specifically said he was "just toying with ideas" before the job system actually came out.

Why do any of that when you can just add new classes and just have 1 job per class? We already know Musketeer, Thief, Arcanist, and some pet class is on the way. Not to mention what jobs will come from those.

[solracht]

Why do any of that when you can just add new classes and just have 1 job per class? We already know Musketeer, Thief, Arcanist, and some pet class is on the way. Not to mention what jobs will come from those.

I wasn't saying they should do anything. Sorry if the length of the post made the point get lost.

I edited some part to clarify anyway.

[Lordender]

SE's own fans are gonna drive the game into it's grave by turning it into something that will only appeal to them.

I don't think its that surprising to be honest, going to be funny once 2.0 + PS3 versions come out and the game sees a very small population boost because all SE did was try to please former XI players instead of making the best game they could that entices a wide audience.

When its all said and done the question Yoshida needs to be asking is this:

Why should I choose FFXIV over X MMO title when 2.0 goes live? If the answer is "because i'm a fan of Final Fantasy" Yoshi-P is gonna be disappointed along with the rest of SE's brass.

[Corrderio]

SE's own fans are gonna drive the game into it's grave by turning it into something that will only appeal to them.

The results from the recent player poll are gonna be interesting.

Sad but true. I can't really recommend this game to anyone unless they're looking to relive the XI experience. As of now I literally see nothing that's setting this game apart from the competition (Biggest being TERA/GW2) or anything that will ensure the survival when 2.0 hits.

You're right about the results. I wonder how many people are going to defend the combo system or ask for classes we don't need.

[Kurokikaze]

Honestly the combo system I think is great considering what they're working with. As I said before, at this point they just need to add something similar to skillchains/magic bursts/cooperative damage+effect stuff and not make it as clunky as Battle Regimens.

[Niiro]

Guys, I think SE reads BG more than we thought.



When you see it...

[miokomioko]

I was right.

[Fievel]

....lol

[Lucavi]

This is my biggest fucking fear. All the potential that this game has being wasted on people who convinced themselves that SE's worst ideas weren't that bad and any attempt at changing them is trying to be like WoW.

We've been saying this for years. We said this pre-XIV, we said this during the long pre-alpha wait, we said this during alpha, we said this during beta, and we shook our heads at launch.

Hell, there's a lot of active posters that were former SE-apologists right around the alpha/beta phase. Calling them out does nothing, as there's nothing wrong with hope, but it can take a long time for people to "see the light", and seeing the light =/= being some WoW fanboy.

I think that's the hardest lesson for most people to learn

[LD]

I don't understand how that's supposed to affect what I said.

It's not about being an SE apologist, I'm afraid there are people who now actually like it the way it is. It's like when someone said that the speed of the game wasn't a problem a couple of months ago on here. It isn't simply liking a faceless organization, they got used to the gameplay. A slower pace is a habit now. Maybe if it's tuned correctly that's not entirely bad, but (again) not everyone wants chess. The standard right now is the pace set by WoW's input flow. Even if you don't mimic their interface like everyone else does, you have to understand that agency requires a fair amount of instant gratification with little wait time. In the same way that "skip a turn" elements in board games are retarded because they have you do nothing, recast timers need to be tuned in such a way that you need to do something else while you're waiting on it. Otherwise, how are you affecting your environment?

Sorry, that was a bit much. Since I started playing FFXIV again, things are better than I expected in terms of battle and even the Super abilities on the Jobs are at a reasonable 15 minutes. But I still encounter this weird mentality. Best two examples are the opening job quests and Chameleon. I get that FFXIV is trying to be more party-centric, but if Jobs are meant for parties, wouldn't you want the quest that unlocks a job to be soloable so that everyone can start partying at max efficiency early (or at least at the point you unlock the quest)? While most people admit Chameleon is ranked too high for an all-class skill, everyone encourages you to get it anyway even though the best way to get it lowered is to show SE that it's too annoying to be bothered with. I seems like SE is still in the mind that we need to earn the right to play this game and players are still in the mind that we have to go along with game elements rather than point out how stupid they are.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Well I don't personally feel that any of those abilities are reasonable being on a 15minute timer. They're all underwhelming and could probably be on a 10minutes timer, or less, with few exceptions (let's say Convert and Hallowed Ground). I don't mind the silliness of the jobs only being able to cross-class abilities from two classes, but I'd also like to see a special slot for one ability from any class. But yeah, the FF crowd (read: large masses of squeaky wheels) will always want the game to be FF and not WoW. They could simply improve upon the backbone idea of "Disciple of War" and "Disciple of Magic" by each having a pool of abilities they share and Chameleon could be one of those. Too bad that's not what we're gonna see.

Where the pace of battle is concerned, SE has issues with balancing encounters when things have low recast timers. For example, Steel Cyclone is currently a 30s combo finisher to a frontal combo. All other combo finishers are 60 or 80s. You can bet your ass they are going to see that as a problem and increase the recast, lower the accuracy, or find some way to generally make it less useful than it is now. That will be the way of it because "we know SE". Why not just lower the recasts of the other big finishers? That would quicken the pace of combat, but then things would get too far out of hand for them to manage. It's why we don't have a GCD and probably never will.

But they're making strides in that regard at least (speaking about instances now, where most battle is experienced). XI's biggest thing for awhile was Dynamis. Boring 3h event that people lost interest in. Then we had Limbus, then Nyzul and Salvage. The time we spent in content got lower and lower over time, awhile they increased the challenge and added mini-objectives rather than one over-arching goal for the event. This is what we have in the current raids and it ain't too bad (perform some stuff, get an extra chest at the end). It's a copy-pasted concept throughout all 3 end game raids, but it's gotten people interested in playing the game and experiencing the direction they're taking the game. Battles are relatively quick and recasts on trash are not an issue. It's when we get to the bosses things become a little tighter and not to the degree that we are struggling or feel overly challenged. <insert proposal for hard/expert mode raids here>.

The real issue of course is class-stacking and from what I've seen thus far, this is only mitigated by the addition of BRD, which added the support slot to the mix. Seems like present boss strategies still utilize 4-5 members in the party being the same job that provides the largest chunk of damage.