Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Awoken (Patch 2.1)

[Jakson]

Also don't remember if it was in this thread but BLM in FFXI Ballista was deadly when geared properly to the point of almost unfairness if you were on a team that didn't handle it properly. Of course that was mainly uncapped, though.

75WHM/37NIN with poison pots aww yeah take that blm

[Lucavi]

There weren't any useless jobs in 60 cap Ballista, it's basically like having noob monks in FFXIV, initially the job was deemed inferior because it was harder than other jobs to play at its full potential. This just goes to show how anyone not obsessed with Ballista didn't fully grasp it and thus can't get full enjoyment out of it. BLU isn't even that great or common in the pro 60 cap matches (the dedicated players only play 60 cap because it's most balanced). Anyways if we want to reminisce about Ballista we should take it to PM's so we don't derail this thread completely.

First of all, I'm talking about TOAU-era, when ballista was at its peak in terms of popularity and and attendance, and second of all, its not that important of a subject to warrant taking to PMs. Blu was a god when TOAU launched. A literal God. To claim otherwise was to not play Ballista in 5/06, especially in 60 cap.

What metagame Ballista has evolved into in 2013 is of no concern to me as its heyday is long-since over, just as the heyday of the game itself has ended. With all of the buffs that have occurred since 2006, it would not surprise me in the slightest that today's Jobs are all useful, but by no stretch of any imagination could one make a reasonable argument that all Jobs had a dominant presence in 2005 and 2006.

[Zirk]

No one was playing anything close to optimum Ballista in 05/06, it was still a big shit show with noobs and first timers on a regular basis. RNG is bar none the most overpowered job in 60 cap, way more than BLU, being able to quarry while dealing ranged damage while wearing Earth staff while having 12% movement speed with no MP limitations. I can't remember when RNG nerfs happened, but if they weren't nerfed yet they would have been even more OP then. Ignore a BLU and they run out of MP and become way less of a threat long term, but in 05/06 everyone is killing mindlessly so BLU's can keep respawning with full MP and wrecking havoc.

[Seravi Edalborez]

There weren't any useless jobs in 60 cap Ballista

My views are antiquated and my ballista experience is like zilch but... Bard? Summoner?

[Lucavi]

Smn was useful if you were anti-shadow bait through diaga/poisonga, but anyone could pull that off, so yeah. Provided people were slept, smns were alright because of burst, but you're right that they were useless compared to the jobs of the day, ala Rng, ranged sam, one-shotting drg, unstoppable CC rdm, ect.

We're horribly off-tangent, but ARR's getting PVP in a week, so....

[Zirk]

Bard is ridiculous because songs hit alliance wide, not just party. One bard in a large match is one of the greatest assets for a team (same with COR whose buffs are also alliance wide). SMN is definitely one of the hardest to play and still one of the weaker jobs. It is by no means useless though, it still has a few things going for it like Diabolos whose Nightmare AoE sleep is unaffected by the other team having Poison Pots/DoT's, and although no standard Ballista player would know this, the pros figured out the quarry algorithm and can greatly increase the chance of quarrying Revitalizers, so in a 1 hour match you could count on seeing 10 astral flows from a single SMN easily.

I'm not a SMN expert, but in present day Ballista optimum SMN would probably be more support based, healing and giving AoE team buffs like stoneskin, ice spikes or phalanx, racking up petras, and busting out astral flows whenever they get a Revitalizer. Even without revitalizer hax, SMN is still not useless and can contribute well if played great. If we are talking 05/06 era Ballista, and you put a pro as SMN on a team (without revitalizers), they would have a huge effect on their team's winning chances.

When everyone works together and knows the strategies, Ballista becomes amazingly fun. That was impossible to come by though in regular server matches so Ballista ultimately failed. No job was useless because every job can quarry/score petras and prevent the other team from scoring, which is really what Ballista was all about, but the mindset of just wanting to kill people was far too popular.

[Zirk]

Another big flaw in Ballista that is worth pointing out because it's relevant to FFXIV is matchmaking. In Ballista teams were randomly formed from participants, so if one team got a better mix of jobs, or more likely, they got more of the skilled players, the match would be a complete blow out and is not much fun for either team. This won't be that much of an issue if FFXIV PvP matches are short, so you aren't stuck playing for an hour with a hopeless team. Being able to make your own team will help, but if you still get matched against a superior team, having to get your ass handed to you for a long period of time isn't fun either.

Easy to understand game so entire team is on the same page + good matchmaking so you face opponents of equivalent skill will be huge factors in FFXIV's PvP success. The game being easy to understand also means most players will be of similar skill level, unlike Ballista where there is a whole bag of hidden tricks.

[Niiro]

In the beginning of FFXIV the ideal Monk rotation was harder than other jobs to figure out on your own and execute. If I were playing Monk now and never read BG I'd probably be doing my rotation wrong for the first good while.

If you look at the first few pages of the Monk thread on BG, people weren't feeling too great about Monk early on, meanwhile Bard was the best thing ever because it was so easy.

Ohhh, my bad, I misread your post as "monks in FFXI".

[Zirk]

Another thing FFXIV PvP has going for it is convenience. Got some spare time? Can just jump in the duty finder solo for FFXIV. Got spare time and want to play Ballista? Sorry the next match you want to play in isn't for another 7 hours. Overall Ballista was a great game at it's core, just the administration couldn't have been more wrong. It's looking like FFXIV won't be having the massive flaws that killed Ballista, so that's exciting at least.

I haven't been following FFXIV PvP closely, but did someone say in a future patch they are going to be adding more game modes for PvP? That would actually be a brilliant roll out strategy. Release deathmatch early so everyone can get acquainted with the new abilities, accumulate PvP gear, learn new mechanics specific to PvP, etc. then release the more robust games and people can focus more on how to accomplish the objectives rather than learning the basics of combat. Different game modes will also keep people just looking to bash some skulls from ruining the more stategic game modes. With the current FFXIV infrastructure, Ballista could probably even succeed as one of the game modes. This probably won't happen because Ballista gets such a bad rap, and SE knows it by not considering Ballista to be "genuine PvP".

[Kelenae]

I haven't been following FFXIV PvP closely, but did someone say in a future patch they are going to be adding more game modes for PvP? That would actually be a brilliant roll out strategy. Release deathmatch early so everyone can get acquainted with the new abilities, accumulate PvP gear, learn new mechanics specific to PvP, etc. then release the more robust games and people can focus more on how to accomplish the objectives rather than learning the basics of combat. Different game modes will also keep people just looking to bash some skulls from ruining the more stategic game modes. With the current FFXIV infrastructure, Ballista could probably even succeed as one of the game modes. This probably won't happen because Ballista gets such a bad rap, and SE knows it by not considering Ballista to be "genuine PvP".

Ya Frontlines is going to be the next step

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...2g/frontlines/

[Zirk]

If they can figure out matchmaking that looks decent, although still seems kinda deathmatchy for me personally. If it's randomly assigned teams from the duty finder without any sort of player rankings it's gonna be like Ballista and if one team gets lots of people who just want to fuck around or don't know what they are doing that team is in for a hard time. Since it looks like it will involve a large number of people the game will probably last for a longer time too, so getting stuck with an incohesive team would really suck.

[Kipling]

"Attacks on Titan" would have been far more current and amusing.

I think they one they actually went with was much better.

Also... Simpson's reference and amazing puns... I love this team so much right now. Can't stop laughing.

[Cutriss]

With the current FFXIV infrastructure, Ballista could probably even succeed as one of the game modes. This probably won't happen because Ballista gets such a bad rap, and SE knows it by not considering Ballista to be "genuine PvP".

A bad rap? I doubt it. I mean, other than the zone/cap arrangements being difficult to manage for newbs for non-reserved Ballista, I don't think anyone thought Ballista was *bad*...they just groaned about it because they wanted dueling and felt that SE was ignoring them in favor of some lovey-dovey team-based thing that they didn't want. They didn't really have an opinion on Ballista.

Let alone Brenner.

[Zirk]

When SE announced that they were going to be introducing PvP into FFXIV, I think the first thought 99% of FFXI players who knew about Ballista had was "I hope it won't be like Ballista". This is why I think SE specifically said that FFXIV would have the first genuine PvP in an FF game, they were specifically not including Ballista because it was such a failure and they don't want people to think it's going to be anything similar. They probably don't even want non-FFXI players even knowing about Ballista or Brenner because they don't want them to know about SE's terrible track record with PvP.

Whether FFXI players make the distinction between Ballista as a game or Ballista as the whole FFXI PvP experience is irrelevant, I don't think SE wants FFXIV PvP to be associated with Ballista at all.

[Kaslo]

I think they one they actually went with was much better.

Also... Simpson's reference and amazing puns... I love this team so much right now. Can't stop laughing.

I got the game on Black Friday, and just cracked up over the weekend at "Every Little Thing She Does is Magitek"

[Kipling]

I got the game on Black Friday, and just cracked up over the weekend at "Every Little Thing She Does is Magitek"

LOL.

If you love puns this game is fucking amazing. All of my FC members groan, but I just laugh my head off. The dev blog post about new hair styles being named "Combing soon" almost gave me an aneurysm.

[Lucavi]

Ballista was akward based on the engine, no so much the game itself. I don't remember a lot of people on Hades complaining about the team-based nature, moreso that they either didn't like PVP in general (never played other PVP games and didn't like the concept of dying and getting frustrated) or they had played other games and didn't like the movement in XI. Both are completely understandable. You had to get over a lot of things to really get into Ballista if you'd played other games.

I do miss Brenner, or whatever short-lived one involved the Posterns that fired tier III-ga magic at everyone in uncapped. The two or so months we had that people actually played that was fun as hell. Crazy rules and such, but fun.

[Alkar]

If they can figure out matchmaking that looks decent, although still seems kinda deathmatchy for me personally. If it's randomly assigned teams from the duty finder without any sort of player rankings it's gonna be like Ballista and if one team gets lots of people who just want to fuck around or don't know what they are doing that team is in for a hard time. Since it looks like it will involve a large number of people the game will probably last for a longer time too, so getting stuck with an incohesive team would really suck.

Right now the matchmaking is gonna be : randomly generated teams (people who join via Duty Finder on their own) will face other randoms, pre-made parties against other pre-mades. Other than Frontlines they also mentioned capture the flag I believe?

[Edelweiss]

I think they one they actually went with was much better.

Also... Simpson's reference and amazing puns... I love this team so much right now. Can't stop laughing.

toyotomi pls

[Lucavi]

This game will not be complete until I see some panicked Lalafell black mage running for his life with a flag.