Patch 1.18: Miscellaneous Adjustments (07/14/2011)

[fussel]

And I fully expected the durability hit. There really isn't a penalty for death at the moment. It's mostly to keep people from D4ing back since Return has no recast when you're dead.

D4? Did I miss a memo?

/edit: Seriously, I know D2 from FF11 days, but where does D4 come from?

Another thing about item durability: I hate it, because it's annoying. But I would like it, if they'd add permanent item damage on non-unique items, i.e. maximum durability goes down 1% each time the item is repaired. This would make 2nd hand stuff less valuable than freshly crafted stuff. This worked out pretty well in Neocron, where it wasn't even limited to common stuff, but also hit your rare weapons.

[Fiddle Sticks]

For those talking about in-combat and out-of-combat raises, they're called raises and battle raises (or rezzes). Most healers in other MMOs have at least one or the other, or in some cases, both. Out of combat raises typically never have a recast, as the battle is already over, so there's nothing wrong with getting the team right up to try again. Battle rezzes are typically on a 5-10 minute cooldown, and if the game has talents, the cooldown can typically be talented down for faster rezzes.

Lol You're acting like that is a standard for all games or something. I think I have played about every MMO out there, and spent a lot of time with each one (besides RIFT, only played for like 3 days) I only know of the "Battle Rez" from WoW, and just because they have it, does not mean it should be a standard. I'm not saying it is not a good idea, but FFXIV can easily do without the need of a "Battle Rez" with just lowering the cool down timer on raise.

[Lucavi]

WoW has them, Rift has them, AoC has them. Pretty sure Warhammer had a brez as well. You know of any other MMOs that captured over a million subs? I'd say that when the biggest modern MMOs have a feature, its considered standard.

[XalienLevi]

I think you're reading into Lucavi's post too much. I understand the problems with having raises on low or non-existent CDs (Aion's Stormwing battle being a pretty damn good example) but if the battle is over there should be a faster way for a group to recover and continue onto whatever they are doing. If SE thinks we should all sacrifice 2 points for Raise I then that's that I guess.

However, when you're trying to get a shit ton of people to play your game. It kind of makes sense to bring in SOME ideas from other popular games. Whether you like it or not.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Does every car on the market have a steering wheel and tires?

Differentiating between battle res and out of combat res is a standard in the mmo industry. I am not campaigning that they should have it, but people are making good points in that locking FFXIV into a game of cast and recast timers isn't the best way to bring variety to the combat system (because let's face--raising is directly tied to the combat system).

[Lucavi]

Its only 2 points, so your point is valid, Xalien. Still, essentially requiring people to have a healing job leveled simply to run an instance (because you know that its going to happen; even if SE's intentions weren't to "police" the populace, the populace itself is going to make it mandatory in order to save time) isn't a very smart or player-friendly solution.

@GJ: Its cool man. When the combat and level of "difficulty" of fights once again suffers due to it taking so long to restart a boss fight or tough trash encounter, the same arguments that are made against XI's difficulty compared to the rest of the market will once again ring true. We'll be back to square one; comparing the difficulty of Fafnir to Sindragosa, haha. Plus, what's more thrilling than someone popping a clutch brez on a healer or tank to save a potentially wiping fight? I figured XIV players would want to have more ways to stay alive or get back into the fray, considering they can't hide behind shadows again and actually have to take hits in this game. But I'm sure we'll just measure the difficulty of a fight not based on movement, strategy, positioning or anything, instead judge it based on how hard the mob hits the party members.

[Grey Jorildyn]

I agree and disagree. On the one hand, not everyone wants to play a healing class. On the other hand, tier I raises will be Level 14 and they made getting to 20 a total joke (plus you're not really going to be partying as a healer at that stage of the game anyway--this is a whole 'nother problem altogether though). This is a game where your whole purpose in life is to diversify your skill-based portfolio, as it were. Perhaps I'm biased because I will have access to all this shit day 0 but still, it's not like it will take an epic journey to obtain at least a basic res spell now.

Who doesn't have Cure II and/or Sacrifice II by now? If you don't, then you're probably not playing FFXIV.

[XalienLevi]

That's another issue I have with this set up. Personally, and I'm sure everyone else here knows you can get to Rank 14 now in about 30 minutes. We also know that the original idea of this class system was to potentially become "stronger" by leveling multiple classes. New people won't know that and some just don't want to play any kind of mage class. Where are the options for these players? How long does it take to draw a feather icon, name it Phoenix Down, create a recipe for it and put it in the game? It can even have a cooldown!

[Lucavi]

Its not that it takes a long time, its that you're making healing/raising a prerequisite in a game that really wasn't built for it. SE is now trying to do the same thing that Guild Wars II is doing, although they already sound like they're doing it far better. Everyone has a heal in GW2, and everyone has the ability to pick up fallen teammates mid-combat and continue the fight. It once again makes XIV's system feel clunky and outdated in comparison. You have to level the corresponding jobs (not bad, but if you're intending for everyone to have it, why not just offer it when they level up, period?), set the corresponding ability, then deal with with the long recast - outside of combat, once the battle has already been decided.

@Xalien: That'd be GW2's raise, which sounds a lot like running to a friendly and reviving them in Gears of War, honestly. SE could do something similar and simply give players who are still alive the ability to raise a fallen ally with a "phoenix down" "item" that is infinite, but on a cooldown, and can be used mid-battle. Give it standard to players and start designing actual challenging encounters where death is something to be expected, and revolve the strategy around outlasting and eventually overpowering the enemy instead of "KILL IT OR WIPE IT UP, WAIT 10 MINUTES FOR EVERYONE TO BE REZZED/UNWEAK, THEN WE TRY AGAIN!!" You're looking at a far more dynamic combat system, which already sounds like something that people are wanting, considering how many people are flat-out upset about the current combat system.

[XalienLevi]

Well see Guild Wars 2 is replacing the need to level up a crap ton of different classes and just giving us a ton of content to work with instead on the first day. So maybe it's not very fair to compare the two

[Lucavi]

Its not even a slam on XIV, its just showing how outdated the mechanics are. There's already a game out there that successfully incorporates old-style mechanics, and its called XI. Its doing pretty damned well, to boot. Clearly XIV has shown us that there isn't room for two, so why try to cut out of your own market by making such old-school decisions? DCing and getting ported outside of the dungeon? Come on, man.

[XalienLevi]

Its the purists man. They're gonna take us all down with 'em!

[Vuitton]

Yoshida said he has been playing DAoC for 6 years. What's that game like? Is it purist old mechanics?

[Alderaan]

It's widely regarded as the best PVP MMO. Yes it'd oldschool but what it had that every MMO since has been missing is 3 factions.

[Ropeydonkey]

This just comes back to the whole 'death penalty' issue. Knowing death will mean waiting on recasts or whatever is just another good reason to fear death. If death has no xp penalty, no tangible durability/cost penalty, no trek back to a location because everyone in the game has raise or whatever on tap, nobody will give a shit about dying. Personally, I liked fearing death in XI be it due to xp loss, losing time or just general inconvenience. These look about right to me, if not too lenient on players, but that's just me though I guess...

[Arximiro]

He wants to promote skillful play. Dying too much? Fucking suck less. With 8 people that have raise and probably a lot of people that have both versions equipped it will be more than enough. When did you become such a prissy whiny bitch Lucavi? You were fucking cool in beta? If you don't want to deal with purist old-school mechanics go play an easy-mode game and stfu already. Some of us enjoy old-school mechanics, in the same fucking fashion as some of us enjoy playing older games. Just because you love your western herpa fucking dooerp MMOs doesn't mean that everyone does.

Christ on a God Damn bike

[Lucavi]

Yoshida said he has been playing DAoC for 6 years. What's that game like? Is it purist old mechanics?

PVP out the wazoo with 3 factions and a lot of greifers, but a great game, especially for its time.

@Ropey: You say "who cares about dying" if there's no death penalty. I say "who cares about fighting the fight", save for the drops? I mean, honestly, those NMs that were released. Who cares about them? They had shitty drops and the fights were meh, so who cares about them? You're going to put a death penalty in (nobody cares about a weakness death penalty - its in rift, and barely slows anything down; port back to town, pay to get it off; keep fighting), and keep these same terrible fights that boil down to "you tank this guy and everyone else DPS and stand back when the big bad mob "readies" XXX aoe for 8k"? Go for it. We'll see how many subs this "Return to Vana'diel!" system brings in.

@Arx: Skillful play? Old-school mechanics? Okay, the game is just for you, then. You should be happy about its state, then, because its doing an excellent job of those good ol-fashioned old-school mechanics. You make it sound like the game has a million "new school" mechanics, and that's why it failed so hard. And you're equating "new school" somehow to "western", which is all kinds of wrong. TERA has plenty of "new school" mechanics (unlocked combat probably being the "newest") and its far from a Blizzard title. But okay, that's cool. Its also a shame that there weren't enough "some of you"'s to keep the game non-free-to-play. I bet SE wishes it had captured a lot more of the "some of us" market.

[Lordender]

He wants to promote skillful play. Dying too much? Fucking suck less. With 8 people that have raise and probably a lot of people that have both versions equipped it will be more than enough. When did you become such a prissy whiny bitch Lucavi? You were fucking cool in beta? If you don't want to deal with purist old-school mechanics go play an easy-mode game and stfu already. Some of us enjoy old-school mechanics, in the same fucking fashion as some of us enjoy playing older games. Just because you love your western herpa fucking dooerp MMOs doesn't mean that everyone does.

Christ on a God Damn bike

LOL.

10/10, almost as good as the NFL CBA "negotiations"

[miokomioko]

There definitely has to be a penalty for death... It's just that they moved it from a progress penalty (exp) to a monetary penalty (repairs). The former created a solid "fear" of death but it also made it extremely frustrating when someone else got you killed. I can't count the number of times I was done playing XI for the day because some moron pickup group reversed my progress on a job or killed my buffer. The latter is not really going to instill fear... it's just going to be a minor nuisance for high-rank (rich) players and a slightly larger nuisance for casual (broke) players.

However, I don't have any other ideas of how to instill a death penalty outside of ridiculous body-looting shit... How do other MMORPGs do it?

[Alderaan]

Death penalties are almost nonexistent in new themepark MMO's. They only exist in sandboxes. While i'm in favor of the bringing the fear of dying back, i don't think a death penalty is the way to go. I honestly don't think most devs have any idea how to implement one that isn't annoying as fuck, which is why the concept is being phased out.