Class Reforms (11/11/2011)

[Calais~]

Please, please let these changes and combos mean that I can use Simian Thrash without evading shit first.

Overall everything sounds pretty good though.

[Hyan]

I'm surprised that a lot of players are happy with the combo system. People were raging at the possibility of having skills rotation less than a year ago, and that's pretty much what they are giving you now.

Tbh it's the hint at co-op combos/skillchain/rotation/whatthefuckever that makes this intriguing. Yeah I won't be happy if they just do this and that's that.

[Scary]

Let's hope this is how the new Cure mechanism works in the game. Basically one spell, but multiple tiers within its casting period.

[solracht]

"Wishful thinking" doesn't even begin to describe what that is, we're talking about Square Enix: they already removed something similar that existed during the alpha.

Putting that aside, I find that needlessly complex when they could simply add more curing spells.

[Spider-Dan]

Seconded. At best, that is an XIV-2 mechanic; in the current engine, the only thing that change would accomplish is frustrating players who consistently get a cure they don't want.

[Lucavi]

Three separate cures. That's all they need as a start.

[Alkar]

Three separate cures. That's all they need as a start.

See, this is the issue. That's pretty much what we have right now.
Removing Cure II and Cure III and replacing them with Cura and Curaja or anything else won't really change much and would make the whole purpose of this announcement void for healing.
No matter how many gimmicks you can put in different cure spells it'll still be a tier system if you have more than one in there.
I honestly hope they have an answer soon enough for this because two spells won't cut it with those MP costs and enmity generation.
Mages are going to take the biggest hit out of these changes though because both have a lot more than 15 spells/abilities when you take out tiers. I actually think that Conjurer is gonna lose all of its nukes.
I don't know... maybe they should be waiting for the job system before removing all these spells from the game.
Maybe to save some space they'll remove every single -na spell and replace them with Esuna.

[Lucavi]

Its not a tier system if the cures serve different purposes. Its not all about healing amount vs. mp spent. You have to factor in casting times, recast times, enmity gained, and a whole host of other factors. FFXI/XIV has never had an instant-curing spell short of a 2-hour. The simple act of having a cast-less, timer-less, movement-enabled cure would shake up the entire "tier" system. Make it a small cure, but usable on the run and usable for topping off a target. Have a long-cast, mp-efficient, moderate-healing cure for standard fights where the tank and healer aren't under a lot of stress as a "main" cure. Have an emergency spike-heal that has a small cast, heals for a ton, and generates a ton of enimity on a healthy recast timer for emergencies. Have a heal that deals the excess HP cured as splash healing to other targets.

There are many good ideas for healing that are already done in other games. SE has shown that they're willing to dip into the pot of other games for ideas. They simply need to immerse their hands more than they've currently let on.

[Spider-Dan]

I just realized something:

If all traits are class-exclusive (and free) in 1.20, presuming that traits bear some resemblance to the way they are now, that means:

- GLA cannot use Intimidation
- ARC cannot use Fleet of Foot
- mages cannot use Out of Sight or Prime Conditioning
- THM cannot use Fastcast

I really hope that I've gotten something wrong here, because this sounds ridiculous. Instead of a system where you intelligently manage the traits that you want for a given activity, it would be "here are your traits, you get them all for free, and you can't use anything else."

[Dakin]

Agree w/ Lucavi. All Cure spells have same cast time correct? There are certainly ways to make healing less monotonous and actually fun.

-Standard cure w/ moderate MP cost/cast time.

-Big cure w/ larger MP cost/cast time.

-Small cure w/ smaller MP cost and almost instant cast time.

-Regen - self explanatory - possibly a trait that makes the regen jump to a single party member w/ in a certain radius when it expires? Heals for x amount on all members within x radius after it expires?

-Cure that places a buff on a party member that cures for x HP every x seconds in a certain radius for all members.

-Cure that places defense buff on target.

-Cure that increases movement speed of target for x seconds.

-"Oh shit" cure - Instant cast. Heals for all HP of target, but target gets a debuff that causes x damage when it wears off. Or target gets debuff that causes x damage every x seconds.

I think they'll add a lot more variety once Jobs hit and we actually get WHM. I have never had fun healing in FFXI or FFXIV.

I just realized something:

If all traits are class-exclusive (and free) in 1.20, presuming that traits bear some resemblance to the way they are now, that means:

- GLA cannot use Intimidation
- ARC cannot use Fleet of Foot
- mages cannot use Out of Sight or Prime Conditioning
- THM cannot use Fastcast

I really hope that I've gotten something wrong here, because this sounds ridiculous. Instead of a system where you intelligently manage the traits that you want for a given activity, it would be "here are your traits, you get them all for free, and you can't use anything else."

Class identity.

[Hyan]

I really hope that I've gotten something wrong here, because this sounds ridiculous. Instead of a system where you intelligently manage the traits that you want for a given activity, it would be "here are your traits, you get them all for free, and you can't use anything else."

What I got from the official description is that now traits will be used to create a gap between class actions and cross-class actions.

What the post doesn't mention is whether cross-class skills keep their full traitless potency. So that would be nice to know.

[Spider-Dan]

What I got from the official description is that now traits will be used to create a gap between class actions and cross-class actions.

What the post doesn't mention is whether cross-class skills keep their full traitless potency. So that would be nice to know.

Doesn't seem like it to me. If you read the notes, there is a distinction between "class-specific" and "class-exclusive". The section dealing with traits states:

All traits will be made class-exclusive.
Adjustments will be made so that certain actions will only unleash their full potential when paired with traits belonging to the same class.

Now, it's possible that they were talking about making the stat-swap traits individually exclusive to particular classes (although that interpretation is arguably an even worse result). I read it as traits belonging to classes, and the affinity traits working the opposite of the way they do now: instead of Bowmanship being a high-level ARC trait that slightly un-nerfs ARC abilities on other jobs, Bowmanship would be a rank 1 ARC-exclusive trait that un-nerfs every ARC ability to 100% on ARC.

[Hyan]

It's essentially the same thing, only this time they are making it seem like a "bonus" to the class the action belongs to via class-exclusive trait instead of a "nerf" to the action itself when cross-classed. You also aren't forced to play another class until a certain level to unlock the next tier of the same action (or a trait to un-nerf said action), as it will be an automated process.

Although it does say that certain actions will have pairing traits to go with them, so unless the cross-class skills have inferior potency to their main class counterparts it would seem that some cross-class skills retain their full potential (aside from not being able to be comboed). What they mean by "full potential" would also be interesting to know, as it may not simply mean full potency of existing effects but additional effects altogether.

[Nevex]

The removal of tiers is stupid.
Instead of making things overly complex, they could have done something like this:

Cure - single target, small/medium potency
Cura - AoE, small/medium potency
Curaga - single target, medium/large potency
Curaja - AoE, medium/large potency

Same thing with nukes.
This would have ensured that all spell tiers would be useful depending on the situation and developers while keeping things easy and efficient.
FFXIII did this and it worked wonders.

But no, let's take the needlessly complex route that gives both players and developers a headache.

Also, casting times are outdated. Make all spells instant. If spamming a particular spell would result in brokeness, then just increase the recast timer for that spell.

[Hyan]

And a system like that is not possible in this new environment... why exactly?

If you change the specifics of a Cure of a different tier enough... it's a new spell altogether, not a stronger version of the existing spell. That's what they can and should do.

[Jamison]

Hey, can we please stop bringing up the cure thing? They'll let us know specifics soon enough and until then everyone just sounds like an idiot complaining.

[Nevex]

No, because that's just how bad it is.
Everything boils down to "If they don't add more healing spells then this is going to suck", as several other posts have already pointed out.

[Gokulo]

And there might be more than a single healing spell, we don't know that.

Was a damn mistake of theirs to release the info but leave the skill lists for after the weekend. As if the usual amount of absurd speculation wasn't enough

[Jamison]

No, because that's just how bad it is.

Really? You have some magical insight into the new ability list for each class? Great, then post it for us, why don't you?

Point is, we're all just speculating out of our ass, assuming a worst-case scenario, and riding that train to the end of the line. It's stupid and it makes BG look bad. Yoshida hasn't let anything that big slip through the cracks yet, and there's no reason to think this is going to be any different.

[Hyan]

Was a damn mistake of theirs to release the info but leave the skill lists for after the weekend. As if the usual amount of absurd speculation wasn't enough

Ohohhoh, you are assuming that the skill lists won't create even more questions and speculation!

Also hyperbole.

This is a really stupid idea and it is totally un-FF like. FF has always had tiered spells even since the very first game. By taking out the tiered spells, youre taking away from the FF feel this game has.

:D