Comments from the Devs

[Grey Jorildyn]

I wouldn't mind if equipping an affinity trait was the only way to use that class' skills either, as long as it was restricted to like two other classes only. Personally I think we could all get by on that. The skill system is just way too open-ended for tastes. There ought to be some limiting factor to it.

[mightyg]

Personally I'd rather have them go with what I think they were initially planning with using two weapons, one in off hand. Example being opening limsa lominsa scene with axe/gun. This way you get your melee weapon and your ranged weapon, or you get your melee and mage weapon etc. This solves the problem of having spells available and no magic potency/accuracy on your sword. So it's kinda like being 2 classes at once, not a main/sub where the sub is gimped or not visually or physically involved. Which would also play well with the whole stat customization. Activate the appropriate ability, and your character swaps to the appropriate weapon on the spot and uses it. Would work with auto attack too by switching to your melee or ranged weapon at the appropriate distances.

[Hyan]

No one could argue against that truly Cichy, but that doesn't make it a good idea. It worked then, and works now for a single game. In general though the concept is not sound. There are better ways to extend the shelf life of a game than make you gear-hunt. It's to the point that the fights themselves are unimportant, and always were. It was always about claiming in the end game for the longest time. It wasn't until Salvage/Einherjar that skill started playing any kind of factor in XI. Challenging encounters, environment traps, things that make a person think are what is important. The rewards are earned then, rather than expected (and they become as such when you need 30 adaman hauberks for your entire roster rather than just 10 for your main dps).

But in any case, these aren't dev comments. And on a related note, I hope they never consider open gear swapping in XIV.

I don't know what this has to do with "skill" at all.

People have this utopistic thinking where you could have it both ways. It's naive. At this point you can have it the "other MMO" way (which is quite perfected to this day, solo possibilities aside) or the FFXI way (which can be improved by a significant margin still). Both come with their pro's and con's.

Still, what's incredibly annoying is that all of you keep saying how bad it is, yet there is little criticism about the concept itself. Only the usual "it's not realistic!!1" arguments. They could just make us work for situational "atmas" that go to your key items and trigger during specific abilities and spells, boosting them. Although the lack of visual aesthetic is a downside to that, but at least it's not "dumb" and the concept stays the same.

Anyway, what else would you people suggest for a system where gear is upgraded, say, once per expansion instead of every 3 months?

[Niiro]

This solves the problem of having spells available and no magic potency/accuracy on your sword.

Melee weapons have magic potency/acc already they're just not visible in-game.

[mightyg]

Melee weapons have magic potency/acc already they're just not visible in-game.

Guessing they're not ideal though regardless.

As for the whole gear thing is concerned, I think they need to synergize crafting armor, with the stat customization (materia), and the reward system of end game content (Einherjar point system plus key items for clearing challenges). This way you can make/obtain armor from crafting/dungeon/nm, earn materia from all three but get more from group oriented content. All the while customizing your gears color and get visual aesthetic rewards for yourself and your linkshells insignia/banner. I'd personally lean more towards the ffxi route of slight upgrade/side-grade, just a little more of a gradual increase in significance to go along with each end game content update. But yeah, no gear swapping, as that is a lot like spamming regular attacks in ffxiv right now in terms of being extra button pressing and overly complicated. If they can get us solid and gradual crafting, armor customization (visual and statistical), end game, and storyline content. I think that could add up to being enough to do without being too much of a blatant timesink, while keeping the game from being a constant catch up-fest for more casual players.

[Waraji]

Hello.

Producer next letter, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, so hard to be published, please wait a little longer (aim for tomorrow is the feeling.) P Yoshida manuscripts are already nervous, and we are gearing up video with translation work.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...581#post177581

Producer letter at earliest tomorrow, latest day after tomorrow. Wtf does "video with translation work" mean?

[Alkar]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...581#post177581

Producer letter at earliest tomorrow, latest day after tomorrow. Wtf does "video with translation work" mean?

The next letter is supposed to have a video showing the new battle system.

[Waraji]

Seem's logical, although I feel obligated to ask: Sauce?

[Celeras]

You posted the source >.>; If you mean the video thing, one of the previous letters said they were gonna do a video highlighting the new combat changes. Probably the battle Q&A.

[Waraji]

Ah, I guess I didn't quite remember any of the letters mentioning a video on the combat changes, nvm. (Yes I meant the video thing lol)

[Celeras]

Found it: And that about does it for this letter. For next time, I’m planning to write all about our progress on auto-attack, and hope to be able to present the feature to you in fully animated glory rather than with dull screenshots. (Note to self: have Lodestone crew implement video embedding on the website.)

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/11012

[Dooom]

Still, what's incredibly annoying is that all of you keep saying how bad it is, yet there is little criticism about the concept itself. Only the usual "it's not realistic!!1" arguments.

With how XI handled it, it encouraged some things which kinda went against the idea of "play any job on one character". Gear-swapping in fights promoted niche equipment sets, which has an obvious impact on your inventory, so obviously has an impact on how many jobs you can play - unless you have an army of mules and spend 30 minutes character hopping for gear whenever you job change. It also practically forced people to use Windower macros or Spellcast because of in-game macro limits, and I think any system which encourages (however unintentionally) people to use third party tools is bad. And yes, it led to gear stagnation; up until very recently, the best armors for most jobs came from an expansion from 2003. Whether these are flaws of execution or concept seems kinda blah to me, as I think they'll always be linked.

Personally I'd rather have them go with what I think they were initially planning with using two weapons, one in off hand.

How would this be handled for 2-handed weapons?

[Hyan]

Whether these are flaws of execution or concept seems kinda blah to me, as I think they'll always be linked.

Yet none of the issues you mentioned are even remotely hard to fix. Most have been given a good solution already.

The concept works fine- the execution was lacking. It doesn't even seem that the developers intentionally tried to build the system that way. It just came together through the years. Do you think there will be no difference between intentionally balancing the system to work with sidegrades from the very beginning versus accidentally coming up with something that works? Because I can guarantee you there will be.

Not doing it this way due to problems that can be fixed easily today makes no sense to me. Inventory space? Macro slots? Proper itemization from the very beginning?If they can't get around these issues, the game may as well be put out of it's misery right now.

Anyway, more interesting right now will be to see whether the video&letter makes up for the inevitable patch delay :3

[Kurokikaze]

So tomorrow or day after huh... Hype hype hype.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

I can't wait to be disappointed!

[Gulkeeva]

I'm expecting much praise/trolling/complaints many pages long once the video is released.

I'm really hoping they show off the new af sets though in the video more then just auto attack and instances/raids, and hoping the af sets look semi close to what was shown to us in yoshi p's drawings he showed us months ago

[Zettofaia]

Don't get your hopes up, it'll prob be 10 seconds long and will feature a rank 1 character (won't be glad) hitting junk for 3 rounds. :/

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

I'm callin rank 30. That way you get a few different weaponskills/abilities you can use and they can show off how stamina doesn't factor in anymore.

[Spider-Dan]

Gear swapping mid-fight is also a silly concept, it makes no sense at all. It's also a huge inventory hog; look at modern XI, where people are often carrying around 70+ pieces of gear for some jobs without even having anything too fancy or specialized (unless you consider PDT and MDT sets specialized, which will get you laughed out of any serious endgame group).

Without gear swapping, most of the content in XI is utterly pointless. For DDs, you would have exactly two gearsets: haste/ATK/STR and ACC/ATK/STR. Almost all AF/relic (read: Dynamis) gear is useless, Nyzul is pointless, etc.

Believe it or not, gear swapping (combined with, you know, the release of gear that matters) would help a great deal towards increasing the content of this game. Without swapping, the amount of gear that you are incentivized to acquire is significantly reduced.

[Niiro]

I'm expecting much praise/trolling/complaints many pages long once the video is released.

I'm really hoping they show off the new af sets though in the video more then just auto attack and instances/raids, and hoping the af sets look semi close to what was shown to us in yoshi p's drawings he showed us months ago

Which drawings are you referring to? I haven't seen them but anything by Yoshi gives me a raging art-on.

I hadn't heard about them planning AF yet, and semi-related, if the new job system implements ye olde FF staples I kinda hope they don't go all the way as far as gear design (ie: bright purple DRGs) since the gear we've seen so far has a very "real" look and texture that I like a lot. I was kinda hoping they'd keep with the trend of brand new classes, as nice as the old FF jobs are I like the new ones and kinda hoped they'd expand on that without them simply evolving into PLD/DRK/RDM/etc.

Also, as mentioned earlier a few times, I think it's a gyp that we don't have access to all our current job's abilities by default, at the very least they could make them have a lower action cost. When on CON it gets tedious having to look ahead at what mobs I'll be fighting and set the correct spells I need in advance for everything I do because there's just not enough room for all the different elements.