Comments from the Devs

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

So do the details we've been given about combat and thats definitely 1.18.

Ah shit you're right. This patch will be extremely underwhelming for sure. Well, back to getting every craft to 50!

[Lordender]

Some of the battle revamp like auto attack, two dungeons, Uldah, limsa, gridiana quest hubs with beastmen hubs coming in 1.19. Who knows about jobs etc.

[Hyan]

Sounds like materia system is much further along in development than jobs.

Maybe not far enough for 1.18, but right now I'd say most of the combat stuff and armory tweaks + materia system and dungeons are in 1.18 while jobs, ifrit quest, the three beastmen regions and the rest of the combat stuff would be in 1.19.

I think we'll see another 1.5month or so wait for 1.19 too.

[Alkar]

I'm pretty sure it was mentioned somewhere that the Ifrit battle is planned for 1.18.

[Celeras]

Pretty much just gonna be auto attack and the dungeons most likely. S'all I'm setting my expectation bar to.

[Hyan]

Would be nice to get either ifrit battle, materia, job system or grand companies in 1.18 on top of the AA and dungeons.

I'm just skeptical about the Ifrit battle because they revealed it only few days ago. Materia system probably needs the other stat- and item-related adjustments out of the way before it can be implemented. Armory tweaks probably come before the Job system. Grand companies... hm, why not.

But ya, they haven't given us a reason to set the bar any higher than AA and dungeons, so all I expect is for them to do everything on that list of theirs by the end of August.

[Meko]

Is there a bug with the "Beckon of elements" quest? Every time I go into my journal and open it, it crashes the client.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

Hope they just roll something out. Population on Melmond is at a minimum. With two(used to be 3) ls's that I float between there's till not enough people on to do shit at my rank. I constantly skip doing battle leves because no one will go. My one shell does a run for every reset but they rotate different classes so I rarely have the right rank to go with them. The rest of the people I know don't care to understand the concept of abandoning leves (dunes/rain/levin/light/inferno) to get max sp each reset and still can't understand that a mob 10 ranks above you and a mob 20 ranks above you give the same SP. I know a lot of people that used to play a few weeks ago actually rerolled on XI and are playing that until this game (hopefully) gets better.

All the above would be made better if I wasn't fat lv2 on both weaver and leather and can't bare to get -20% sp on fleece paying 7.2k a synth. You know the game is dying when you're fatigued lv 2+ on multiple crafting classes.

[Lordender]

Whatever happens this patch isn't going to be able to live up to the hype, thats not to say it won't be a good or a great patch though. I just think the expectations went too high with a longer than normal wait.

I'll ask this though, if jobs aren't going to be in this patch, how serious can you really be about playing? Any worthwhile content we're going to get we will need to be grouped up for. Jobs are supposed to "excel" at roles in parties and I gotta assume once you unlock a job it starts from level 1 which effectively makes you start over again.

If it indeed does work this way, are you going to continue to level up classes that no one is going to really want for party play?

[solracht]

jobs are supposed to "excel" at roles in parties and I gotta assume once you unlock a job it starts from level 1 which effectively makes you start over again.

If the little information they've given us is any indication, you're assuming wrong. Supposedly jobs don't replace classes, they modify them (at the very least, it's what most people believe).

We'll see in a few weeks (months?).

[Lordender]

If the little information they've given us is any indication, you're assuming wrong. Supposedly (or at least, what most believe) jobs don't replace classes, they modify them.

We'll see in a few weeks (months?).

The way it sounds to me at least how they explained it, if you want to solo you will want to be the classes that we have now, an all purpose class, jobs are supposed to excel in party play under a role, no ones going to want current classes in party based play once jobs go live.

[solracht]

The way I read that: If you want to solo, you won't set any job on top of your class. If you want to party, you'll want to set a job on your class. No starting over.

[Hyan]

I'll ask this though, if jobs aren't going to be in this patch, how serious can you really be about playing? Any worthwhile content we're going to get we will need to be grouped up for. Jobs are supposed to "excel" at roles in parties and I gotta assume once you unlock a job it starts from level 1 which effectively makes you start over again.

Eh, they'll just design the content to be cleared with the current classes, and then adjust them for jobs later. The coming armory adjustments probably reflect this.

And yeah, I don't think these are advanced classes. You level glad = you level pally.

It would be quite restricting to separately need to rank up a party-only class.

Also I don't see anyone being hyped at all about 1.18 so far

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

Didn't they say that the 'jobs' were just quest based? Pretty sure I read somewhere you unlock a job at a certain rank then do quests to unlock abilities. No 'leveling' required.

[Celeras]

The quests better be epically long then, or something unlockable like weapon latents. It's far too easy to level multiple jobs right now, and that was the beauty of XI: always having something to do/level on the same character. Without some sort of timesink factor these jobs are just gonna become requirements/technicalities.

I'd expect to level something, or at the very least have some sort of unlock/progress bar.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

Highly doubt the quests will be anything near epically long. Look at the class quests right now. Conjurer was probably the biggest disappointment ever. That shit was just plain bad. I though THM and ARM quests were decent when you completed them at 36 since you at least had a twist or some kinda satisfaction with a bit of 'own'd y0 face stupid npc'. But overall all the class quests are poorly done with minimal 'lore' and not a lot of depth to keep you wanting to do the next one. Even some of the MQ's were a joke, but at least some of them were pretty cool and made up for it. I'm not expecting much.

Also my hope is fading fast with this game since they've announced they have another MMO in the works. Your second MMO hit the fan and shit went everywhere, you revamp the dev team for it, then announce a new MMO? Tie this to the lack of info on just about everything and I think SE is just covering their asses when they can't get this game to where it should be and decide to scrap it down the road.

[Hyan]

This is like, their 4th MMO or something.

[Celeras]

Also my hope is fading fast with this game since they've announced they have another MMO in the works. Your second MMO hit the fan and shit went everywhere, you revamp the dev team for it, then announce a new MMO? Tie this to the lack of info on just about everything and I think SE is just covering their asses when they can't get this game to where it should be and decide to scrap it down the road.

You realize its likely some Eidos Fortress crap or some other minor stuff from one of their smaller IPs yea?

And they didnt announce anything. They announced that they may announce something in 2012.

[Hyan]

Even then... I did notice quite a drop in XI's quality once they really started working on that Fantasy Earth Zero back then.

As far as grind is concerned, any and all kind of it is shunned on in the current MMO market. Wouldn't be surprised if there isn't any.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

All they said is they'd probably announce a new large scale MMO within the fiscal year and plan to operate 2-3 mmo's at the same time to create a stable cash flow. I just find it weird they'd bring up ANYTHING about a new mmo when XIV is still so far in the shitter(also: F2P), and 6 months down the road of a new team working on XIV and we've still got a lot of silence(and no game breaking improvements). But whatever, SE is a company and their goal is to make money.