Comments from the Devs

[Hyan]

Well, maybe it was just me but when I clicked on the "agree" box I kind of expected these drastic changes would actually be beneficial to the game, and not just change for the sake of change. Of course that may have been just me.

I'm pretty sure Matsui won't listen either, but you are not really helping by being an apologizer, nor are the people justifying the decision with mediocre reasoning.

[Groovebox]

Well, maybe it was just me but when I clicked on the "agree" box I kind of expected these drastic changes would actually be beneficial to the game, and not just change for the sake of change. Of course that may have been just me.

I'm pretty sure Matsui won't listen either, but you are not really helping by being an apologizer, nor are the people justifying the decision with mediocre reasoning.

Nothing is more mediocre than you assuming this change won't be beneficial to the game before it even goes live. Wait. And. See. Then we'll know if it's beneficial.

[Hyan]

Yes, when it's too late. Great idea, champ. Criticizing doesn't hurt anyone, so I'll keep doing so until proven otherwise. If Matsui has a grand plan that changes the way auto-attack in an MMO functions then there is no need to fear of him changing his mind. If he has no such plan and this feature will be exactly as beneficial as I think it will be then at least it's not like he wasn't informed beforehand.

In the end it's a lot of work for results that could be achieved with far less effort, and while it may make the game better at the end of the day, I am not as optimistic as you, thinking they can take detours like this and get away with it. They have enough to work on as-is.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Yet something is missing from that game. Which one would you play if both it and XIV played similarly? Maybe it's just me, but the choice is quite obvious. I'd even prefer FF with a worse gameplay, but that proves nothing sadly considering my status over here. I don't think I'm alone though.

What exactly is missing? It's a stand-alone non-franchised game. That doesn't mean something is necessarily missing from it. Does every WoW player keep up with the books and world lore not present in the game? That's a rough argument to make. All you've really said here is that you're a fanboy who doesn't mind being a battered house wife because no matter what product they put out, you're brand-loyal.

Nothing against you, but there needs to be less people that think/feel this way if FFXIV is going to make anything of itself. There is a certain level of appeasement to the masses that is required for a MMO to be successful and thus far, SE isn't making the grade by a long shot. This goes right back to the argument of having the official forums and how it can/may/will create a backlog of shit the devs now feel they need to do to appease players. What they should have done, and what has been suggested about 100 times thus far in this forum section, was go find out what works, implement it, then tailor it to the FF-style. To launch with 0 content at all levels, a copypasta worldmap, terrible class balance, and no real goals to work toward was just a bad move. Of course I am hopeful for the game and admit that one of the reasons I began playing it was because of the title, but it was far from the only one. Also WoW-based MMOs don't appeal to me, but their game systems are certainly influential and difficult to ignore.

You can't help but feel that if they just went with what works from the beginning regarding auto-attack, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all.

[Lucavi]

I'm looking forward to auto attack myself, some classes like say... pug/mrd/lnc you just basically sit there going .... 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1
Like when you get victimize 2 and want to throw in a 600-800 damage attack, so you need 3000TP or simian thrash for max damage.

or the mrd+lnc miss-a-thon and the basic attack uses a decent amount of TP so your watching the stamina bar crawl (excluding lnc because they cheat )

Or in some cases you don't even get to use it, like gladiator tanking or very rarely like pug tanking just to get the light punch buff. Where "surviving" and holding threat is more important then swinging your sword about.

Although I do still keep some attack abilities, in case the group needs some extra dps or...
http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/989...=1#post4513697
someone needs their "daily death" ... right Elcura!? awwwww yeeeaaaahhhh!
(Gladiator... the #1 choice in your MPK needs)

You've played both styles (and extremely well, I might add - your hunter shit on mine in WoW, even though mine was hella strong), so you can see the point to having auto-attack so that your hands are now free to drum up a bunch of different attacks for each situation.

@Ald: I don't know if unrooting is good for XIV's player-base, who is as stubborn as anyone out there, God love em, but I agree with the fact that choice is typically a good thing. XIV really doesn't have a lot of mobs (just like with XI) that require constant movement. There aren't many cleaves or similar mechanics, so a DD can more often than not just sit in one place and pew pew with their 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 again and again. It certainly limits what you can do with your bosses and encounters, because you know you'll have to account for the fact that running, or even moving while attacking isn't really possible.

Take meteor, for instance. Everyone loves it in the FF series, but in XI it wasn't even really around. I'd have loved to have fought some mad Taru mage who stood up on a spire, spamming Comet and Meteor across the battlefield. Ranged attack would have to move and dodge the big-ass rocks (as indicated by a either a massive circle or a massive shadow on the ground), while melee would have to balance attacking up close and pulling back to heal, as say he casts a big ring of fire around him every now and then to keep the heavies off of him. Throw the fight in some crazy area with an outer-space backround like in CoP and presto, you have the makings of an epic fight.

Sadly, that could never happen under the current design. Spells are always designated to "always" hit the target, so instead of dodging one, you have to stun it or eat it. More freedom allows for greater concepts. Some movement applied, like with Proto-Ultima and his "GTFO BUSTER", but spells like Holy 2 couldn't be avoided. Proto-Omega would have benefit as well, as his guided missle spam could have tracked a character for a few seconds, then tapered off, allowing a character to run to escape it, or Line-of-Sight it behind a cliff or something.

@Hyan: Your problem isn't with AA, its with encounters being easy enough to where you can have nose-pickers in your party drooling along without pressing buttons and still winning the fight. When you have real battles where your raid must maintain a certain level of damage per second to have any hope of killing the boss within a certain time period, you better believe that people are going to be pressing everything they can to maximize their DPS. Auto-attack becomes the farthest thing from anyone's mind, because they have to worry about getting a solid rotation of abilities down, while still looking out for reactionaries, and while worrying about the actual mechanics of the fight.

You have this habit of looking at how the worst of players interact with a feature as your flagship method of criticizing said feature, and that's the wrong way to look at anything. I could do the same and say that cellphones should be deconstructed and banned because idiots use them while driving and kill people through negligence, and it would be just as nonsensical.

You still have your habit of doomsaying everything. Have you asked everyone how they feel about those changes? I'm pretty sure more people are wanting to see changes than not. Drastic changes means drastic changes. Time will tell if the changes work out for the better, but ask yourself how not making any real changes between beta and retail helped SE make money off of XIV when it launched.

Edit: Ooh, double.

[Hyan]

Nothing against you, but there needs to be less people that think/feel this way if FFXIV is going to make anything of itself.

What way? That if XIV played similarly to TERA (and had similar amount of content), I would choose XIV anyday? I don't think it's fair to say that makes me a battered house wife. TERA may have more shit in it than other Korean MMO's but it still boils down to the same generic (yet with more polygons) visuals and uninteresting lore that leaves gameplay as the appeal (which should be enough, but like I said, not everyone is looking just for good, challenging gameplay). Aside from Moogles, XIV is not based on FFs before it either, in that sense it is as stand-alone as anything. Moogles aren't enough to make me choose it over TERA. It simply doesn't have the appeal that would make someone play it over XIV were they similar in structure. The game still has something TERA doesn't at the end of the day (classiness, over-all stylish appeal instead of making the character models a pair of boobs and ass in the traditional Korean fashion? who knows), and before that changes I don't agree that you can have the cake and eat it too.

You can't help but feel that if they just went with what works from the beginning regarding auto-attack, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all.

This doesn't change anything. When the problem it all boils down to is that shit was not ready yet the game launched anyway, yes, I can help but feel we would be having this exact conversation with you. It'd be more like "this game is exactly like FFXI-2, just with less everything" though. Is that better?

Your problem isn't with AA, its with encounters being easy

That's what I said before, dear.

You still have your habit of doomsaying everything.

Come on, AA is not everything..

[Corrderio]

A bit off Topic but Yoshi-P did respond about character creation: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ll=1#post65168

Greetings everyone!

First off I wanted to say that it's great to hear the kinds of things you're looking for when it comes to updating the character creation options. We're seeing lots of interesting ideas pop up! We spoke with Yoshida and he said that of course, while these kinds of suggestions and ideas will take some time, they do have plans for it in the future! He also feels that it's important to offer the option to change your existing character's appearance at the same time, too.

Sounds pretty exciting, huh? What do you guys think?

[Hyan]

Adding to OP, not surprising considering they showed some models before the game launched.. so might as well finish the features while they're at it.

[Corrderio]

True, I did notice there was a 9th hairstyle never used. There is a bald one to, but I think that's only used for headgear.

[Woozer]

I was beginning to wonder if we'd ever see the rest of the missing creation options, like missing hair and whatnot. Or if they had become a victim to the reboot. Not like I'd consider those high priorities right now but it is nice to just hear that they haven't forgotten about it.

[Vuitton]

Well, FFXIV does have the ability to allow dynamic fights to avoid damage. For those not familiar with the final mission fight, you have to defeat two to three garlean soldiers, and you can do this one of two ways. There is a giant magitech airship cannon 'pinging' its targetting mechanism at you, and if you time it right, you can allow it to acquire its target and then run out of the final targeted area and have the soldiers eat the laser cannon blast and be defeated. (The other way is to just defeat the soldiers yourself, while avoiding the laser blast.)

Just replace the magitech airship thing with a taru mage, and replace the laser cannon blast with meteor, and its the same fight. You run out of range or eat the spell. FYI, the laser does 9999 damage. It took me several tries to get the movement down and learn how to position the soldiers.

Edit:

The Rank 15(?) Gridania mission fight also utilizes unique mechanics. You have to acquire elemental wards and cast them at the appropriate time to prevent elemental damage. The element changing about every 30 seconds.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Well, FFXIV does have the ability to allow dynamic fights to avoid damage. For those not familiar with the final mission fight, you have to defeat two to three garlean soldiers, and you can do this one of two ways. There is a giant magitech airship cannon 'pinging' its targetting mechanism at you, and if you time it right, you can allow it to acquire its target and then run out of the final targeted area and have the soldiers eat the laser cannon blast and be defeated. (The other way is to just defeat the soldiers yourself, while avoiding the laser blast.)

Which begs the question: "How many people completed this on first try" (watching video ahead of time does not count). I am going to go with 0 because they were not accustomed to mobile battle in this game at all. It should also be pointed out that this isn't exactly what mobile battle means. The stop/starting of your character while moving in FFXIV is very jittery and does not provide fluid movement. You have to stop to pull out/put away your weapon too. Just so awful in this regard ;x This is in fact why people think Fleet of Foot is the best thing since sliced bread.

[Cichy]

What way? That if XIV played similarly to TERA (and had similar amount of content), I would choose XIV anyday? I don't think it's fair to say that makes me a battered house wife. TERA may have more shit in it than other Korean MMO's but it still boils down to the same generic (yet with more polygons) visuals and uninteresting lore that leaves gameplay as the appeal (which should be enough, but like I said, not everyone is looking just for good, challenging gameplay). Aside from Moogles, XIV is not based on FFs before it either, in that sense it is as stand-alone as anything. Moogles aren't enough to make me choose it over TERA. It simply doesn't have the appeal that would make someone play it over XIV were they similar in structure. The game still has something TERA doesn't at the end of the day (classiness, over-all stylish appeal instead of making the character models a pair of boobs and ass in the traditional Korean fashion? who knows), and before that changes I don't agree that you can have the cake and eat it too.

You are completely speaking out of your ass. TERA is superior in every regard to FFXIV as it stands. We talked about it with my TERA guild people (who are mostly FF players) and all of them said that if someone slapped FF sticker on TERA everyone would eat it up and piss their pants on how good it is.

[Vuitton]

Why should anyone accomplish anything on the first try in any game? I enjoyed having to learn how to do the encounter. And trust me, the videos available are pretty useless. They were not made to teach you how to do it at all. I tried using them at first before I realized that they were pointless. Plus, its not like its a chore to make a reattempt. Wait 3min, heal up, and go for it. I think I even reset my stat points after the first try and pumped my VIT up high to help me out.

The point of unique encounters is that you shouldn't be used to any of the mechanics the first try. Its supposed to take you a few attempts to become skillfull at it.

Did everyone one-shot their first BCNMs in FFXI? No. One-shot their first avatar battles? You one-shot Omega/Ultima BCNM your first time ever? I bet not many people one shot anything at all in any game and at any level/rank.

People wipe doing low level shit, and people wipe doing high level shit their first time trying.

Edit:

As for moving with weapons drawn. You can do the entire final fight without ever drawing your weapon, if you want to utilize the laser. But even if you did, because maybe you want to use your shield or something, you'd move fast enough to get out of range if you knew when to move. And you would know when to move because you'll probably have died a few times figuring out when its time to move, by learning the timing and the range of the explosion.

It would take only minor tweaks to turn this into a challenging FIGHT (rather than the dance it is now). Remove the soldiers, make the magitech airship cannon thing the boss that has to be defeated, it retains its targetted laser cannon, and gains a few other abilities, and all of a sudden you have a fight that requires people to utilize avoidance strategies and other problem solving skills to be victorious.

[Vuitton]

I am sure SE could make the fight more intuitive for new players without changing the mechanics. This would give mouth breathers a bigger clue on what the fuck is going on. For the final fight you only get a special sound and a small red circle to indicate that the magi-cannon/whatever is about to fire *sometime* soon. 5 seconds? 10 seconds? 15 seconds? You don't know. You have to guess, and its important to time it right if you want to drag the soldiers into the blast. If you leave too early then the soldiers will run out of range of the blast, and if you leave too late you're gonna get blasted. In addition, how do you know when you're out of range? You don't know. You have to guess.

SE could make it so that when the laser makes its final target, the area targeted and the range of explosion is displayed with a glowing floor effect, and the player needs to run out of that displayed area to avoid damage.

But really, I think the mechanics are here to give the developers some creative freedom in designing encounters. I don't think the battle system means much currently to unique encounters. The encounters are designed around the battle system. So given that the battle system will be changing, the unique encounters are going to change as well.

[Hyan]

You are completely speaking out of your ass. TERA is superior in every regard to FFXIV as it stands. We talked about it with my TERA guild people (who are mostly FF players) and all of them said that if someone slapped FF sticker on TERA everyone would eat it up and piss their pants on how good it is.

Oh gee, if your TERA guild people said it then I guess that's the end of that!

Was I talking about "as it stands" situation? TERA doesn't look nor feel like an FF game, simply putting out pretty areas and sexy character models with lots of polygons and 'epic' orchestrated score (just a guess on my part on that one) isn't enough to accomplish that. What's the lore about? "Rift" or "Aion: The Tower of Eternity", while they do try hard, can't even compete with "The Exiled Realm of Arborea" in the generic department.

Strip away the gameplay, and it is nothing more than a generic Korean MMO #12314 with more race options. Although that model fits their home market quite well.

[Cureslime]

I stood outside of the circle during that quest and still got splattered. Awful awful.

As people have said, AA is great because it allows more flexibility in skill use during battle. Leaving it out in the first place was yet another goddamn awful anti-RMT tactic that did absolutely nothing.

[Vuitton]

I stood outside of the circle during that quest and still got splattered. Awful awful.

As people have said, AA is great because it allows more flexibility in skill use during battle. Leaving it out in the first place was yet another goddamn awful anti-RMT tactic that did absolutely nothing.

Well, that is what I meant. You get a sound and a red circle to indicate incoming fire, but neither tell you the range of the blast. That red indicator is actually very small, about the size of a galka, and the blast is about 10 yards.

[Cichy]

Oh gee, if your TERA guild people said it then I guess that's the end of that!

Was I talking about "as it stands" situation? TERA doesn't look nor feel like an FF game, simply putting out pretty areas and sexy character models with lots of polygons and 'epic' orchestrated score (just a guess on my part on that one) isn't enough to accomplish that. What's the lore about? "Rift" or "Aion: The Tower of Eternity", while they do try hard, can't even compete with "The Exiled Realm of Arborea" in the generic department.

Strip away the gameplay, and it is nothing more than a generic Korean MMO #12314 with more race options. Although that model fits their home market quite well.

Oh yeah because listening to people who played FFXI for years and played FFXIV is wrong. We got no valid points, go ask people on the street.
TERA is the closest you will find to FF experience and exponentially better than what XIV is. Even with another two years of development I doubt XIV will be close to what TERA has to offer.
If you think it's a generic Korean MMO than you're just dumb. TERA brings the MMO genera to the next level, more than other games on the market atm.

[Kurokikaze]

Will agree with Cichy's comment. If you think TERA is just some run of the mill Korean MMO then you clearly have not played it and are talking out of your ass. I'm personally not sure if they bring the genre in a new direction but theres definitely enough innovation in that game that you can argue for it.