FFXIV Patch 1.18 Reception

[miokomioko]

1.18a is strengthening most of the attacks of all the "benched" melee classes (PGL/MRD/LNC) in a few days. This might be their response to the overuse of Archer as of late. I, personally, believe that Archer's ranged capabilities should be balanced out by high enmity and/or lower damage so there's a trade-off of being able to fully function from a safe distance instead of being the best damage-dealer on top of those benefits. Obviously, it depends on how much they actually improve these attacks.

[Lucavi]

They're not boosting the white damage of the melee classes, though, which is unfortunate as it continues to constrain the game around the prospect of WS or bust. Its the same deal with the mobs as well, which makes boss fights not as innovative as they could be. I'm all for a boss flipping its shit when its close to death and spamming its big guns, but a boss should be able to do more than simply do its standard WSes and force people to either get away from the boss, or get to a particular side of the boss.

There's plenty of time for the game to work on more innovative design, but its kind of sad that the engine is already begun to show its age, although, to be fair, the engine was showing its age straight out of Alpha. I'd like to not see the game revolve so much around TP moves, though, as it keeps players for developing a true rhythm to combat. Being on your toes all the time is fine, but this really isn't being on your toes either: its waiting for other people to have TP as well and then firing shit one after another. Players should have the choice between going full-bore for max damage or holding back because of enmity or the mechanics/pace of the battle, not because if they don't combine attacks with another member, nothing gets done efficiently.

[Sephiroth]

MRD is one of the best classes you can take into the rank 50 dungeon, I guess most people don't know how to utilise it.

[Gulkeeva]

The constant raining in many zones is story-related.

I think it rained all the time before any events actually...

[Celeras]

Sure increasing the costs made fights more "strategic" (add more CON and ARC) but it benched melee fighters. Fights can still be done with melee of course but no one bothers because now they've become mp sponges in certain instances whereas before, they were not.

You're only an MP sponge if you suck, since pretty much every TP move in the game can be avoided.

Regardless, they're working on changing it so you can continue to faceroll melee.

[Cichy]

Maybe if it was an interactive, dynamic world event people might actually know about the rain. But it's like everything else in this game... if you don't LOOK for it, you don't KNOW anything about it. It's like living in a world where you know nothing and never learn anything passively. It's a big disconnect and is inherent to everything in this game.. quests, leves, NMs. The dungeons actually have some basis for a storyline. Kudos to SE there I guess.

I'd say thats my biggest complaint. When I play I feel disconnected from the world and other players, it feels like I'm playing solo when I wonder around those vast areas with seemingly nothing or no one in them and overall lack of purpose.

[Gulkeeva]

If you have alot of melee classes lvl'ed.. having defender 2, sentinel, rampart 2, etc etc all up at various times for any aoe, you'll reduce your "mp spongyness" by alot. Or do crazy things like tank buffalo on archer for 50% of its hp etc.

Also... waiting for news on swimsuits... gotta love the new emote too.. add both together and you get...

http://www.neko-sentai.com/images9ruf/up128486.jpg

[Hyan]

MP changes is one of my main gripes

I don't think that's your main gripe. Increasing the difficulty only brought to daylight problems that have been there from the beginning, but didn't really matter because the difficulty just wasn't there.

I think the trend started with 1.18a will only become more apparent later on. If the rumours about a Bard job are true. Archers DPS won't improve much (aside from the buffs the job will have, that benefit everyone) and once the monsters will be tuned for the dps jobs stats, Archer won't cut it no longer.

Not to mention, as bard makes its return (as well as whm) I could bet on us getting more options to restore mp as well as cure mp costs and efficiency getting a boost.

However, Matsui and Yoshida have made it sound like 1.18 action changes came 'ahead of time', and the majority of action changes would happen with 1.19. Which makes sense, considering the new stat and damage algorithms are introduced at the same time. How will MND affect curing potency? How much HP and MP will we have?

[Lokus]

You're only an MP sponge if you suck, since pretty much every TP move in the game can be avoided.

Regardless, they're working on changing it so you can continue to faceroll melee.

As opposed to facerolling with Conjurers and Archers? Same shit.

I know very well about avoiding TP moves, most are like fireballs in Tekken, sidestep that shit and you're golden. But when encounters are made that heavily favor certain classes, then some balance needs to be made. I'm just one of those people that thinks it's wonky to get gear for classes that are not encouraged to participate in events. It's completely viable that the community hasn't figured out to properly use them yet. Took 3 years till people figured out melee burning shit was more efficient in XI after all. I don't think the dev team used CON CON CON CON ARC ARC MRD MRD to get the sword/bow chest after all. If they did then well, guess they expect us to have all classes leveled.

@Hyan The difficulty hasn't really been increased too much, people are just finally more cautious about MP. There's enough MP management actions to suffice for the encounters as they are.

@Gulk, I know what you mean, being able to cross class alot of those defensive buffs makes you very resilient. Almost a requirement at this point. Buffalo is a pussy anyway, emulate still wrecks his attacks coupled with Flashfreeze II and you don't have to worry about anything.

[Lordender]

They're not boosting the white damage of the melee classes, though, which is unfortunate as it continues to constrain the game around the prospect of WS or bust. Its the same deal with the mobs as well, which makes boss fights not as innovative as they could be. I'm all for a boss flipping its shit when its close to death and spamming its big guns, but a boss should be able to do more than simply do its standard WSes and force people to either get away from the boss, or get to a particular side of the boss.

Thats why the combat is going to always be shitty in this game until the rules are changed by going in a different direction. I know this is a diff dev team but the same train of thought is there, balance based around the tp system is going to limit what they can do in the long run. I have little to no faith that they can have a class/job system thats going to allow all classes to be wanted and contribute effectively. The first major group content was released and it feels very FFXI where facerolling with 3 ranged DD's is the accepted way.

Why does SE have such a hard time with making DD's on equal footing while allowing them to bring something desired to the group? In XI we saw certain DD's that were completely lol for years(and still are) due to non-crit WS's or just bad DoT, bad ws mods, accuracy issues etc etc. I see a lot of similarities in XIV, not as bad as in XI but they do exist. Not trying to turn this into "Be better by avoiding tp moves." I guess this is more about the overall perception, I was hoping to see them force more balanced groups in worthwhile group content.

If I'm Yoshida you better believe all future bosses will have periods of immunity to magic, arrows, diff melee weapons all in which is constantly shifting, spamming mass dispel on itself to remove dots or possibly dot reflection back at the person who casted it on the boss with x 10 potency. They need to do a better job on forcing diversity which is something FFXI failed very horribly at and looks to be going down the same route in XIV(for now).

This isn't about players being good or bad, its about making sure that all classes are going to be wanted and competitive without being forced to level the acceptable classes.

[Nevex]

I was considering giving this game another try, then I saw all those THM nerfs and changed my mind. You don't boost classes by nerfing the others, why can't you learn this simple concept SE?

[Lucavi]

SE tries too hard not to homogenize classes, I think, and it hurts them greatly in the long run. You look at XI: SE refuses to give any DD any main-class skill that could ever be similar to another job's, and the players have dealt with this for so long that they've completely bought into the system, for better or for worse. SE talks about a ranger ability that works "slightly" like Trick Attack, and all the thieves start crying. Give Dark Knight an ability that would resemble Hasso, and you can be sure that all the Sams would be up in arms, crying. Its part of the reason that XI has so few abilities anyway, and why the game continues to stick to that "everyone wait till 100% or a proc before doing anything powerful!" mantra. Hell, SE even refuses to update their pet classes to the modern standard by giving every pet class the choice to have their pet stay/attack/ect. Their reasoning for not allowing summoners to have more control over the movement of their pet? Because they don't want smns crowding on Bsts territory. I'm sorry, I forgot smns can capture avatars in the wild just by seeing them.

You don't have this problem in other MMOs, especially ones with a plethora of abilities. You can have a Warrior have a few shield blocking abilities like a Paladin without both classes crying. You can give Paladin a beefy attack that's based off of some paladin stat without all of the other DPS crying or the devs claiming that its going to make no one stick with DPS classes. You're already starting to see it with XIV, despite the fact that you can take abilities from other classes (for a substantial nerf of their power and a substantial increase in their recast).

[Alkar]

SE tries too hard not to homogenize classes, I think, and it hurts them greatly in the long run. You look at XI: SE refuses to give any DD any main-class skill that could ever be similar to another job's, and the players have dealt with this for so long that they've completely bought into the system, for better or for worse. SE talks about a ranger ability that works "slightly" like Trick Attack, and all the thieves start crying. Give Dark Knight an ability that would resemble Hasso, and you can be sure that all the Sams would be up in arms, crying. Its part of the reason that XI has so few abilities anyway, and why the game continues to stick to that "everyone wait till 100% or a proc before doing anything powerful!" mantra. Hell, SE even refuses to update their pet classes to the modern standard by giving every pet class the choice to have their pet stay/attack/ect. Their reasoning for not allowing summoners to have more control over the movement of their pet? Because they don't want smns crowding on Bsts territory. I'm sorry, I forgot smns can capture avatars in the wild just by seeing them.

You don't have this problem in other MMOs, especially ones with a plethora of abilities. You can have a Warrior have a few shield blocking abilities like a Paladin without both classes crying. You can give Paladin a beefy attack that's based off of some paladin stat without all of the other DPS crying or the devs claiming that its going to make no one stick with DPS classes. You're already starting to see it with XIV, despite the fact that you can take abilities from other classes (for a substantial nerf of their power and a substantial increase in their recast).

The actual quote is :

We have no plans to add the “Stay” command outside of beastmasters.

Which does not mean "We're not adding Stay because it should be BST exclusive". And I don't see how giving Stay to SMN would suddenly give them more control over their avatars' movement considering "Stay" tells your pet to stand in place and do nothing lol.

[Jeryhn]

Never had aggro as a summoner I take it?

[Lucavi]

Apparently he hasn't, and apparently he hasn't considered that giving a Dragoon's wyvern stay command would allow for far easier and more beneficial heals. Dragoon -does-, in fact, have a pet, after all. Alkar, you're a perfect reason why SE rarely has to change anything with XI to keep the majority happy, and that's fine considering the game is as old as it is and still turns a nice little profit. Step outside of XI's little world, though, and things get a bit more complicated.

[Caina Malebolge]

I was considering giving this game another try, then I saw all those THM nerfs and changed my mind. You don't boost classes by nerfing the others, why can't you learn this simple concept SE?

They have been doing this for months, apparently its easier to make things worse for everyone than it is to add content (ex : Fishing Grades). THM is/was insanely powerful, I don't think they intended for people to solo Dodore & Haughtpox so easily, it all just makes the game more challenging. Imagine how easy the Darkhold would be with the old MP/AoE settings.

[dfdfpp]

You don't have this problem in other MMOs, especially ones with a plethora of abilities. You can have a Warrior have a few shield blocking abilities like a Paladin without both classes crying. You can give Paladin a beefy attack that's based off of some paladin stat without all of the other DPS crying or the devs claiming that its going to make no one stick with DPS classes.

Which MMO is this again?

[goodr]

Which MMO is this again?

/facepalm

[fussel]

MP cost might seems to screw with solo players, but it is actually pretty balanced (IMO) when it comes to parties.

I 2nd that. Had a very nice ffxi-like exp/sp-party last night with 4 people around lvl 32 grinding on Ixals. 300 sp a mob and we were going and going and going and MP was never an issue. You just have to switch to passive mode between fights when the puller's heading out.

[Carraway]

Balance is pretty good right now, actually, and I feel it'll get better. People will always gravitate toward what is most efficient for them at any given point in time; what separates the hardcore endgame players from everyone else is that they will constantly adapt as they get more comfortable with what's going on, and everyone else will just stick to what worked first. Groups are now taking MRD tanks into DH whereas on day 1 after 1.18 MRD was regarded as completely useless by a lot of people.

THM is actually amazing in a group setting; most serious THMs I know either love or are comfortable with the changes in 1.18. It just lost a lot of its solo power, but so did everyone else except for GLA.