FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn Opening Movie Now Live! (01/07/2013)

[Ratatapa]

I'm not going to lie. I enjoyed holy. I enjoyed magic bursting it too, when I had nothing better going on and was sitting on too much mp (rare enough, but it happened).

Yes, it was useless.
Yes, I enjoyed it.

Haste was useless, it didn't do damage at all

[Rakisho]

Haste was useless, it didn't do damage at all

Very special little post from a very special little guy. Thanks for that input.

[Izzy]

Very special little post from a very special little guy. Thanks for that input.

wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooshhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhh

[Ratatapa]

Lol

[Rakisho]

wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooshhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhh

My bad, for whatever reason the only thing that popped into my head was "Holy? PLD" (Not that they used it either). Been a while.

[Ratatapa]

The only spell I think that i used less then holy, was Deodorize

[miokomioko]

I never would have kill-shot Dynamis Lord as the last one standing on 75BRD if it weren't for trash spells like Banish.

[Jakson]

Double MBing with Banish and Holy on WHM ftw!

[Alkar]

I can't believe people miss useless spells sitting there in their list. Thank god they got rid of tiers as well because it was completely pointless (although the upcoming changes to elemental magic in XI will likely change that).
Honestly as a BLM in XI how many spells of your list did you actually cast on a regular basis? Likely 10% or less.

[miokomioko]

I don't mind highly niche spells (read: useless) because they're generally different and variety and fun and blah blah blah. What I really hate is getting multiple tiers of a single spell that each render the previous tier worthless since they literally do the exact same thing except... better.

[Lucavi]

The only good thing about tiers is the fact that you wind up with more graphical spells than in a game that simply has ranks. I mean, you look at WoW and you probably have 30+ ranks of Firebolt by now, and every one of them looks exactly the same as when you first got the spell at level 1 or 2. You get to endgame and you're still flinging around these measly little spells at big bads. Put a few casters in a single alliance and it looks like a bunch of small children hurling snowballs at the boss, which isn't exactly conducive to displaying power.

Flip that to XI and you had some pretty nice looking spells by the time end-game rolled around. Some of those Tier IV Ga-spells looked downright impressive, much less the Tier II ancient magic spells. The downside (more of a downside of XI and not of tiers) is that every spell was essentially cast "on" or "around" the enemy, instead of having a mix of some flying at the target and others enveloping the target. There's also the fact that you're never going to use those original spells again, unless it was for dicking around on the side. If the mob didn't outright resist it, they were mana and DPS inefficient when factoring in time-to-damage ratios.

The obvious solution is simply to mix the two. If you're going to do either spell ranks or a static spell that grows in power with every player level (the most current system out there), simply have the spell's animation grow in conjunction. That way we aren't casting dinky little firebolt spells at level 99, even if they are doing a ton of damage.

[Patriarch]

Fuck that I loved niche spells

bored as shit because you got stuck as whm on 1st window tia?

yeah, im gonna nuke too

BANISH II

not to mention holy looked cool. Even if the spell doesn't have mainstream use in parties/events with LS, they are still fun to have for solo/random play

[Lucavi]

Fuck that I loved niche spells

bored as shit because you got stuck as whm on 1st window tia?

That's... kind of the issue, here. XI was such a boring or routine game, combat-wise (for certain classes), when compared to other active MMOs that this is about the 4th person so far who has commented specifically on using low-class spells simply from boredom, ranging from inefficiency to downright uselessness.

Being that bored (whether from windows or otherwise) shouldn't be happening on a MMO, hence no use for those types of spells.

In terms of Holy, the change is simple: make the spell fucking useful, like its been in every other FF to date. Why it was not the light-based equivilant to flare is a mystery to me, aside from the notion that perhaps SE didn't want whms to be locked into casting a spell that takes upwards of 15 seconds to successfully finish. The solution to that is is also simple: either don't pidgeon-hole whms into doing nothing but casting the same 2 healing spells ad nauseum, change the cast time for spells as a whole (as other MMOs do), or incorporate either talents or traits that, when triggered, allow for the instant firing of certain spells (as other MMOs also do). As flare is effectively the same thing to blm as Pyroblast is to Pyromancer in Rift, aside from being non-elemental, a similar talent as hot streak, which allows for instant-casts of Pyroblast (on a percentage chance) when another, more commonly-used spell crits.

Point being, there's tons of ways to make useless (but core in the FF lore) spells not only useful but integrated into the class as a whole. Most of this stuff is already entirely feasible, based strictly on the alpha videos they've already released of combat.

[miokomioko]

I like that XIV has done away with spell/ability tiers, but yes, there should be some sort of minor graphical improvement as you advance in levels. It would be nice if they simply updated the animation every 15 levels or something... unfortunately that's a lot of memory used up and probably not worth it.

[Lucavi]

I hope they deem it "worth it" in the long run. The lack of increasing spell-animations is one of my chief complaints and annoyances with WoW, GW2, ect. Seeing a dozen people whacking away at the kneecap of a monster with mages pelting them from afar with red snowballs or tiny balls of lightning makes the whole "the hero is strong enough to rival gods, essentially" storyline they try to feed you seem that much less believable.

[nelly1]

Hmm its seems pretty interesting!

[Stanislaw]

If I remember correctly there actually was a dev responce on the issue if the spell/WS animations will improve over time. Way too sleepy to look for it at the moment, though. Someone go find it. =P

[Spider-Dan]

Yeah, I love that they got rid of Cure II and Fire II. Cura and Fira were much better!

They didn't "get rid" of tiers in 1.0. They just made magic cost more MP as you increased in level (low level magic has nearly always increased in potency as you level up in FF, so that was not a new addition).

[Takiwaki]

I always had a wish that tiers would change, and become more involved, where one would have to channel spells in order to cast the higher tier, like combine 3 level 1 spells in order to cast t3, also leaves room for cool combinations like casting wind and earth to make gravity etc.

[Gokulo]

(although the upcoming changes to elemental magic in XI will likely change that).

Any links to some info? Would like to check that out.