Instanced Raids Unveiled! (06/20/2011)

[Biggie]

That's actually a very good point. I recently got one of my friends that i played XI with to try Rift and he's surprisingly loving it. I say surprisingly because he's hated everything i've gotten him to try since quitting XI. His reasoning for liking it is the class system and being able to basically play 8 classes on 1 character instead of being stuck on just one. This is also what i loved and miss the most about XI and wish more companies would adopt moving forward.

Yeah I have to agree with that also about Rift, the class system seemed rather neat. That would be one of the reasons to make me give it another try. It was so much like WoW, but better imo

[Foxer]

This is also what i loved and miss the most about XI and wish more companies would adopt moving forward.

XI's job system was great for its time, but it eventually became the same old cookie cutter setup. Was nice that you can mess with things here and there though.

[Alderaan]

It's not so much about cookie cutter because let's face it, people are asked to come on whatever the best dps class or what the raid needs anyways. It's more about the fact that if my group needs it, i can switch roles anytime out of combat to either bard, tank, assassin, or ranger all inside the rogue archetype. It's amazing flexibility and saves time when you need a specific raid makeup to down content. Oh damn our main bard isn't on, someone switch to bard and let's go!

[Cichy]

I still prefer defined roles + flexibility of switching like in XI vs any other system out there. I dont like this whole GW2 you can play any role depending on play style.

[miokomioko]

Fuck being forced to start from scratch to experience a different play style. The world will be a better place when that no longer exists.

[Lucavi]

Fuck terrible imbalances in games that result in a player being unable to play a class they enjoy for years on end. XI's system is only as good as the devs are at balancing the system, and they were - and are - utter shit. XI's system on paper was great; in execution it was nothing but sam-blm for the first year, war-nin-rng-rdm-brd for the next 4 years, sam for the next two years, and so on. If those job imbalances had lasted for perhaps months instead of years, I'd be right along singing and dancing in the rain with all of you giddy girlies.

You guys must have been playing rng or dual-wield war back in the day or something, to have such a love of "hey, go bard or no slot for you" marathons for years on end.

[Cichy]

There's plenty of people who enjoyed playing pup and drg when they were gimped, sure they wouldnt let you zerg stuff if other class was around but you still could exp and stuff.
I dont see why everything has to be equal and every class has to be balanced, in my eyes it was good enough. Usually stuff looks balanced till someone figures out how to exploit something and even devs dint think about it, anyways I really never gave a shit about that sort of stuff.

[drwaffles]

Fuck terrible imbalances in games that result in a player being unable to play a class they enjoy for years on end. XI's system is only as good as the devs are at balancing the system, and they were - and are - utter shit. XI's system on paper was great; in execution it was nothing but sam-blm for the first year, war-nin-rng-rdm-brd for the next 4 years, sam for the next two years, and so on. If those job imbalances had lasted for perhaps months instead of years, I'd be right along singing and dancing in the rain with all of you giddy girlies.

You guys must have been playing rng or dual-wield war back in the day or something, to have such a love of "hey, go bard or no slot for you" marathons for years on end.

Just because SE is terrible at balancing doesn't mean the system of being able to play every class on one character isn't infinitely superior to the usual alternative. In fact I'd go as far as to say that the sense of attachment to one's character that comes with this type of system is a sizeable part of why a lot of people played XI for years and years, even when much of it sucked.

[Niiro]

That little summation made me realize just how under-appreciated MNK was for most of the game's history.

[Lucavi]

Just because SE is terrible at balancing doesn't mean the system of being able to play every class on one character isn't infinitely superior to the usual alternative. In fact I'd go as far as to say that the sense of attachment to one's character that comes with this type of system is a sizeable part of why a lot of people played XI for years and years, even when much of it sucked.

As I said, its a nice system, when its balanced. If I can "bring the player, not the class" in WoW's "one class per toon" system, and literally bring any class I want to a raid and compete and feel like I'm doing my job because I've geared myself well and perform well, then I'm going to prefer that system to one of "no matter how much effort I put in, the developers can't be arsed to allow my class to do anything reasonable outside of XP/solo" multi-class system.

Rift solves my problem nicely; the ability to play multiple classes on a single character, yet with the same attention to class balance and constant tweaking as a Blizzard product.

And yeah, Cichy, there was plenty to do, just nothing that resulted in actual acquiring end-game gear. "Oh, fantastic, I can campaign or ballista all day. Wonderful."

[Cichy]

Yeah, the jobs that shared endgame gear with the "preferred jobs" were completely screwed, like how drg back in the days could forget hecatomb gear.
I guess I looked at it not necessarily as problem with the job but a problem with the crazy time sink that anything in XI was. I think balancing was needed more on the content side if anything. I dont know much how abyssea works but seems like that's a more forgiving content for everyone.

[Lucavi]

It was a combination of problem with the job, but also the fact that the difficulty of combat was not in killing the boss, but claiming whatever was required for the boss. People didn't have time to dick around since things had time limits and there was usually only one way to get a boss - using whatever exploit necessary to claim trigger mobs or the boss itself.

I'd like to say that if big ass bosses sat in the back of an instanced dungeon, we wouldn't have seen so much player-reinforcement of the shitty job balancing, but that's probably a pipe dream. People enjoy putting others down. Those who had the desired jobs and loved the desired jobs enjoyed trolling and ostracizing those who did not. They always say that MMOs are excellent windows into the real world and XI was an excellent example. That's why developers have to make it a priority to balance jobs as tightly as possible - you have to remove any element that you can that easily allows for human nature to take over and fuck everything up.

Thankfully in XIV there's nothing worth killing or even doing that leads to people leaving certain classes to rot. Keep up the good work, SE! Slow that content down to a trickle.

[Corrderio]

Well lets hope they can keep jobs/classes and reward vs effort ratio balanced so we don't end up with a disaster like XI's endgame.

[Siatdiat]

Who the fuck gives a shit about non-end game loot? Whats stopping you from killing mid level NMs with 50s to get some gear for your 30?

The only way this is going to be bad is if XIV repeats XI when it comes to gear in that some low level gear (PCC, Emp Pin, Lizzie, Kotes, etc) trumps a lot of end game gear.

i'm pretty sure if there is not some sort of level cap, then people will get a 50 and faceroll this leveling content solo, and make it hard for newer players to group.

I say this like these dungeons will reward xp. I won't be surprised if they don't.

[Siatdiat]

I think its a misconception, people say "omg WoW is ez mode, in FFXI, we had dynamis, salvage and they were challenging!" yet they don't realize just how small of a population in WoW's raiding community is 13/13 heroic progress. FFXI introduced events where it was "figure it out" type of deal, once the events got figured out you could refine the run down for maximum efficiency while making the time-limit. In WoW it doesn't matter how much you refine strategy, shit will always go wrong a lot. Every boss in WoW is like a quiz in school, you better know the fight because if you don't you can and WILL wipe the raid everytime you fail at x or y mechanic during the fight.

I don't think FFXI events were "bad", I think they could have been a lot better though.

The last time I remember reading on these forums whatever about people comparing WoW raids to ffxi "raids" (aka bullshit like dynamis and sky,) hardcore ffxi peeps were like "well, that sounds too stressful."

[Takiwaki]

This is one reason I am excited about guild wars 2 dungeons, and their loot system, each dungeon no matter what level gives very unique skinned gear available to only that dungeon, which u can use to skin ur good stat gear later on or whenever u want with transmutation stones, allowing for so much more individualism, also regions are scaled in terms of levels, not that u will be level capped to a low level dungeon or region if you are high level, you retain all ur high level abilities but they are powered down to still make those areas challenging and allow you to play with your lower level friends etc.

[Cichy]

i'm pretty sure if there is not some sort of level cap, then people will get a 50 and faceroll this leveling content solo, and make it hard for newer players to group.

I say this like these dungeons will reward xp. I won't be surprised if they don't.

The Devs said today that the dungeons will reward exp.

[Siatdiat]

The Devs said today that the dungeons will reward exp.

I find that shocking. I bet some people on official forums are PISSED about that.

[Kuya]

What i find interesting in GW2 is their alleged attempt to eliminate a dedicated healer class, and leaving healing to be a role that needs to be adopted by the entire group. I like it because it might mean that one class will not be the make or break linchpin of a group. This happens all the time. In warfronts, if one side has lots of healers and you have practically none, you willl likely lose. In raids, if you lose your healers, you lose. And in many activities, there is a reliance on finding that healer to actually be able to perform an activity. The possibility of not needing any of this, might be very game changing and for the better. But that's not very rrelevant to this thread though. Makes me excited though.

[Siatdiat]

I post angry defensive crap?

Do you guys even read your posts before hitting the reply button or what?
You guys keep calling Hyan and the others "white knights" or "fanboys" yet the only people I see bring up FFXI vs WoW and its clones are others. Who's the fanboy here? Those that say "Actually I think FFXI is better because..." or those that post crap like "WoW/Rift/Aion are better because I say so"?
You guys act like FFXI was crap and even shitty games like Aion and Rift are better.. are you serious?
Yes, FFXI is among the most successful MMOs in history. It's at the top 5 if not top 3 iirc. It's been going on for 9 years and people still play.
I know it sucks to admit that you're wrong and it'll never happen so I'll just drop it here.
I simply ask, please, to leave this crap out of here and go revitalize the Rift/Aion threads if you think those games are so amazing and successful. Thank you.
We don't need a FFXI vs WoW/clones war in every thread where one side can only insult the other and not read at all.

You answered your own question.