Comments from the Devs

[Toth]

Okay maybe not another DD but I meant more of an alternative to the magic / support job of arcanist for non-mage players. Was arcanist meant to be a debuffer btw?

[LD]

ok, since this is kinda wandering, I'm just gunna say play the End of an Era CG normally until the acapella singing stops, then mute it and play "Love Will Find You" over the rest of the trailer.

[Spider-Dan]

Another healing class is definitely needed, and hopefully they look to BRD as the proper way to implement future support jobs (healers included). They did a decent job with WHM retaining CNJ's nuking ability but I'm afraid that the bar for healing has been set too high considering all of the 8 man events you could do with just 1 WHM (with how piss-poor Cure was on BRD you could hardly even consider it a backup healer).

I think some of the healing issues would be resolved if they made Cura cross-classable (which, in practice, would make it usable for PLD/BRD/THM).

THM/BRD should be perfectly capable of filling a RDM/DNC-lite role in this game, and that would give THM more of a useful purpose (other than just BLM-but-worse). It's possible that Arcanist will step in and completely fill this gap, but I'm skeptical.

[vadre]

I hope the second set of jobs are rolled out quite early in 2.0's life cycle, for most of the playerbase it's not that obvious what the point of classes/jobs are right now and they just seem like 5 more skills tacked on for the sake of it. A second set of jobs that add some new skills to the basic classes to make them more flexible would be great, and effectively would add a new 'talent spec' for each. It's all been discussed before, but I think classes need a bunch of different skills, and then jobs cut them off from some of their own basic skills and cause them to excel in one particular area. For example, I think THM could also have access to some 'time' spells such as slow, gravity, quick etc. If they used black mage these would be inaccessible, or they could switch to time mage and have the majority of their nukes cut off, perhaps just leaving fire and thunder for some filler. THM would get access to some of both, making it useful for smaller groups like originally intended.

If we got those in say, the 2nd or 3rd patch, we'd have a whole bunch of options to fill different roles and it wouldn't be such a bottleneck. I'd vote for red mage as a frontline buffer to provide an alternative to bard (note: not refresh whore), berserker could be a heavy melee dps for marauder if warrior's going to be more tank-focussed, THM or arcanist could get a healing spec, and the other one could maybe get a debuffer. There are plenty of options and it would certainly be easier to add in new 'specs' than it would be to create whole new classes.

I also think for 2.0 they need to ditch the silly job slot items, and make a talent screen that shows each job available and their respective additional skills/role. Then you can basically just select which one you want to be on the fly (although out of combat i suppose). The extra item being equipped for jobs is just bad design, equipping a weapon to switch should be enough in that respect.

Edit: Another opinion of mine on classes and jobs, I think they should ditch cross-class skills and focus more on making each individual class unique through new mechanics etc. Right now (and in 2.0) it seems they're just using MP and TP for everyone, which isn't particularly exciting for mmo combat. All classes should probably have access to some form of self heal (which could be cut off when using jobs if necessary), but extra things like combo points or whatever could certainly make the individual classes a bit more interesting to play (combo points just being an example, not a particularly exciting mechanic in and of itself).

[LD]

With MNK (and probably PGL) up in the air in terms of mechanics and an ability overhaul for PvP, I wouldn't expect many new classes. Arcanist/Summoner may seem to put holes in this feeling, but announcing Summoner is a strong marketing play and I wouldn't put it past SE (even one run by Yoshi) to use it and push it out early just to get attention.

[millionsknives]

/tangent

What's the deal with the Water spell in XIV, and why is everyone so interested in it?

[Burningthought]

/tangent

What's the deal with the Water spell in XIV, and why is everyone so interested in it?

It was taken out during the class revamps and they're bringing it back for ARR. I'd go into more detail but lolnda.

[Gokulo]

People are excited because it means classes can get more new abilities, which is something that we did not really expect to happen (or at least nothing was pointing out that there's this possibility before).

[Gulkeeva]

Yeah I think, at some point loooonnngggg ago, Me and some others, were screwing around with the spell FFXIV dats, and found stuff like Water IV V, and other high lvl type mystery spells not ingame (even a early prototype meteor like thing).

Found the video of a bit of demonstration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE963HswQsg
(note the upload date)

and a random video of model swapping... >.>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQJTS1MaoD0

erm anyway, there were alot of "ideas" in FFXIV 1.X never used (well I didn't see when playing), would be interesting to see how the stuff will play out in FFXIV 2.0 when/if its used.

[Oreth]

Am I the only one who thinks if they will ever introduce new playable races they really should have put them in for the relaunch considering we are going to be allowed to remake how our character looks? it would be the best time considering the SE MMO model of one character throughout your game time!

But maybe on the other hand they can only really tie them into the story / lore with an expansion or new area?

[Tomino]

Did not know where to post this but... Admiring this clearer, more definied version of ARR artwork...

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me...7ifyo1_500.jpg

...It seems that Shiva will be wearing a coat.

[LD]

Am I the only one who thinks if they will ever introduce new playable races they really should have put them in for the relaunch considering we are going to be allowed to remake how our character looks? it would be the best time considering the SE MMO model of one character throughout your game time!

But maybe on the other hand they can only really tie them into the story / lore with an expansion or new area?

Would it be nice if they were able to do that? Yes. Is it reasonable to expect that at relaunch? No. It has nothing to do with story or what's convenient for the players and everything to do with the sheer amount of work that goes into the basics. Is modeling, texturing, rigging, animating (and or mocap) and testing an entire race (two genders, two tribes, and sliders) necessary when your still trying to hammer out remaking the other five? With the optimization changes, I wouldn't be surprised if they had to edit all of their textures and normals. SE being SE has ridiculously detailed crap, so any amount of time it takes you to slap a brick targa on an unbeveled cube is multiplied for a fuckton. Granted, they're presumably experts, but it still takes time.

Imagining UVing any of this crap makes my balls hurt.

In terms of characters, we're getting male Mi...Mithra, Female Highlanders, and Roego. That's 1 whole gender per tribe across 5 tribes. They're already throwing at least 2 races worth of material at us for relaunch and that's not counting any edits they made to everything else.

[vadre]

People are excited because it means classes can get more new abilities, which is something that we did not really expect to happen (or at least nothing was pointing out that there's this possibility before).

(Except Yoshi saying they were going to add quite a lot of new spells/skills in 2.0 when people complained about jobs only getting 5)

I'm pretty happy with the amount of extra race options being added, although I fear rolling on a new realm will mean 2913712847 miqote males

[Oreth]

When you put it like that then i guess its a lot harder then i originally thought and requires much more work!. I'm not disappointed that there isn't any new races at launch or am i specifically wanting any but just from a purpose point of view given we will have the opportunity to remake ourselves, something that probably wont happen again it would be the most ideal time.

Would it be nice if they were able to do that? Yes. Is it reasonable to expect that at relaunch? No. It has nothing to do with story or what's convenient for the players and everything to do with the sheer amount of work that goes into the basics. Is modeling, texturing, rigging, animating (and or mocap) and testing an entire race (two genders, two tribes, and sliders) necessary when your still trying to hammer out remaking the other five? With the optimization changes, I wouldn't be surprised if they had to edit all of their textures and normals. SE being SE has ridiculously detailed crap, so any amount of time it takes you to slap a brick targa on an unbeveled cube is multiplied for a fuckton. Granted, they're presumably experts, but it still takes time.

Imagining UVing any of this crap makes my balls hurt.

In terms of characters, we're getting male Mi...Mithra, Female Highlanders, and Roego. That's 1 whole gender per tribe across 5 tribes. They're already throwing at least 2 races worth of material at us for relaunch and that's not counting any edits they made to everything else.

[LD]

I did the math wrong, it's more like 1 race of material...no wait, I was right the first time. 3 body types instead of 2, and accompanying work. Like 1.5.

I understand the reasoning, but it's just not logistically possible. I would just hope that SE eventually sets up a race change service in the far future. For my sake I'd only consider another race if they started looking like Amani from TERA or Charr from GW2. Reogo are just big and tough, I want something that can eat mother fuckers.

[Alkar]

I think some of the healing issues would be resolved if they made Cura cross-classable (which, in practice, would make it usable for PLD/BRD/THM).

THM/BRD should be perfectly capable of filling a RDM/DNC-lite role in this game, and that would give THM more of a useful purpose (other than just BLM-but-worse). It's possible that Arcanist will step in and completely fill this gap, but I'm skeptical.

Oh god can we please stop with this nonsense? PLD already has a strong Cure and THM does not need to heal, they need to give it another purpose that's not healing. Making Cura cross class is a really stupid idea.... if all classes can equip it CNJ/WHM will easily be replaced.
We need a new healing class/job that works with White Mage and not against it.

[Gadritan]

Oh god can we please stop with this nonsense?

It's Dan. Auto-disregard.

I'm so terribly torn on starting fresh on the newbie servers or going back to my old one. Like, I'd love to play with the same ppls, but I just want to forget V1 ever happened and start from scratch and get the full experience.

[Elcura]

Would it be nice if they were able to do that? Yes. Is it reasonable to expect that at relaunch? No. It has nothing to do with story or what's convenient for the players and everything to do with the sheer amount of work that goes into the basics. Is modeling, texturing, rigging, animating (and or mocap) and testing an entire race (two genders, two tribes, and sliders) necessary when your still trying to hammer out remaking the other five? With the optimization changes, I wouldn't be surprised if they had to edit all of their textures and normals. SE being SE has ridiculously detailed crap, so any amount of time it takes you to slap a brick targa on an unbeveled cube is multiplied for a fuckton. Granted, they're presumably experts, but it still takes time.

Imagining UVing any of this crap makes my balls hurt.

In terms of characters, we're getting male Mi...Mithra, Female Highlanders, and Roego. That's 1 whole gender per tribe across 5 tribes. They're already throwing at least 2 races worth of material at us for relaunch and that's not counting any edits they made to everything else.

It would be a slow starter, but once you have the right base new stuff doesn't take nearly as long. For a pro using the right software, UV'ing anything shouldn't take more than 2-3 hours. This can happen while making the game because the framework for the new races is the same as the old ones. Same/similar polycounts, similiar skeleton and rig (depends on race specifics, like the need for flappy ears or tail). Only textures would be significantly different, but the texture size and split would be the same as other characters (IE if all chars use 1024x1024 textures for the face, a new race isn't going to use 2048x2048 or some other shit). Normals are pretty much automatically generated when you have the hi-poly model, so the only edits you really need to do are to clean up the normal map, this process is only as long as it takes to make the hi-poly model. Sometimes this can take weeks, other times it can be done in hours. Mileage varies with experience and expertise which you can assume SE has a crapton of.

Basically what I'm saying is once this stuff has been done a couple of times it becomes far easier and faster to do the rest. In terms of making characters I wouldn't be surprised if SE is reusing the hands for all races and making minor changes, same with the feet, possibly the ears, the eyes, mouth box.

[Achitophel]

Wait, has the two-jobs-for-one-class thing been confirmed? It seems like such an obviously advantageous route to take, I just haven't heard of it actually happening. In fact, I seem to remember someone saying that Yoshi had no plans for it.

[miokomioko]

I don't believe any official source has even acknowledged it.