FFXIV 3.0 : Heavensward - Expansion Information and Discussion

[Seravi Edalborez]

While we're off on a tangent, this is why I kind of liked the "job" system of FF13. Brief tl;dr for anyone who doesn't know of it:

DPS - Commando/Ravager in tandem (Ravager builds a damage bonus meter quickly, Commando stabilizes it from falling rapidly and does high damage when full)
Tank - Sentinel
Healer - Medic
De/Buffer - Sabotuer (also stabilizes meter somewhat) / Synergist

And you swap on the fly, so you don't have someone dicking around in heal or buff stances when shit doesnt need healing or buffing.

SCH has shades of this when swapping (mostly) seamlessly between DPS mode and Heal mode (echoing for the 10th time). While a Cleric or Defiance like toggle might be lazy design, it's probably the only way to introduce a hybrid in this game. But then you have to make it ok at one and good at the other (in SCH's case, good at healing and ok at DPS).

[Niiro]

They should just do away with the TP system, replace it with the old stamina and that is your sprint. They could make it work in the ways D2 had their stamina system setup. You can choose to sprint when you choose to and it will deplete the meter steadily and then when you're out of combat you'll slowly regenerate your meter, that way for raid setting you can't just sprint whenever you want and it would be another potential resource to manage for players.

Having a resource that determines how much long you can trigger weapon skills is dumb. If someone would be upset with them doing that, then rename class specific attacks as techniques and cross class abilities can be referenced as talents then.

I don't think we need stamina either. Why can't GCDs be the sole determiner of the usability of an ability? Keep combos and just let the GCD and combo potential reflect how often you want someone using a particular move. TP doesn't really add depth to the system, as you can accomplish the same thing with GCDs.

I was actually thinking that exact thing the other day: sprint working only when the button is held down and only draining extra TP/tic until you stopped.

But likewise, I think it'd be just lovely if they just nixed TP altogether, there's no depth to its use, you either use it and eventually need Paeon or you sit around waiting for TP tics until Invigorate is up then use it until it depletes again, it adds nothing strategically other than hamstringing you into needing a BRD in a lot of fights.

[kisada]

unfortunately the devs are fuckin retarded so any of those changes would be pipe dreams

[Niiro]

Yup.

Machinist will have a TP regenerating gizmo (and an MP regenerating one).

They'll be used in lieu of a gizmo that increases damage in some way.

[Spider-Dan]

Foe increases damage without penalty, so MAC isn't totally hopeless when it comes to a buff along that line.

If I were a betting man, I'd say MAC will have a penalty-free Foe substitute that only buffs melee damage (SE will never add a buff that just helps physical ranged).

[Lucavi]

I'm still waiting for you to explain why a BRD/COR with a group damage boost enough to make up for 1 DPS slot won't work in this game.

1) You never asked me to do it in the first place, so that's a thing. If you're going on my last post as a "waiting" measure of time, then I apologize for making you wait all of 15 minutes. What an endeavor that must have been for you.
2) If you're talking about having the ability to double the output of the remaining DPS's damage for standard parts of a fight and tripling it during DPS check moments, then, provided the support's health was high enough to endure HP checks, it -would- work. If SE were to balance the buff output to the extent that the crunched numbers evened out, while still having enough buttons to push and resources/cooldowns/ranges to manage to satisfy whatever margin of difficulty SE wishes to preserve for each job, then why not? I'm not against it, its just as I said: it hasn't been done before in a holy trinity MMO. The closest thing I've seen was a bard spec in Rift, but even then, Bards were pouring points into other rouge specs for damage, like Saboteur.
3) You should be asking SE that, not me, as I can't do shit about it, unlike them.

Aside from the balancing of difficulty vs. reward in terms of the job (singing a song with an AOE radius inherently isn't difficult , and that wouldn't fly with these devs), the hardest part would be balancing the buffs to the point where people don't feel compelled to always bring the job, which is something that SE cares about in this game as opposed to not caring about in XI. Think about how many difficult boss/HNM fights at end-game people didn't bring Brd/Cor to. Now picture the same in ARR. People wouldn't be pleased, and SE wouldn't be pleased, but hey, that's their problem to manage, should it ever come to it.

You also have to consider that every job must be solo-capable in ARR because of its questing nature. For a class to essentially buff its allies high enough to compensate for its own complete lack of damage, it would still have to be able to do enough damage alone to be able to solo quest/story content. Think conj/whm with cleric stance. That could be something as simple as introducing a "support" stance where they sacrifice all damage in order to buff their allies, but if they're doing a fair trade-off to personal damage >> buffed allies, why not simply NEVER use the stance and simply DPS the boss as normal? Then you'd run into the obvious "if I'm never using my buff stance because it isn't improving damage overall, why are people taking this job to do the content?" question, assuming that another DPS wasn't doing more damage than the support would be outside of the buff stance, which goes back to the 33/33/33 example.

I'll say this: making a pure supporter would be easier than making a pure debuffer. Debuffs account for shit in this game aside from the int debuff and the magdef debuff. I'd honestly laugh if I got to sit in a SE meeting where they discussed having a job provide enough strong debuffs to warrant a slot without completely going overboard and breaking the game.

[Deadgye]

The only hard part about making a support class work would be balancing it between 4p, 8p, and 24p content.

Also, you do realize the silliness in saying that a non-holy trinity setup hasn't been done before in a holy trinity MMO, right? It's kind of mutually exclusive.

[Lucavi]

I'll mutually exclusive you.

[Taruking]

FFXI style brd and cor won't work in FFXIV. The number of party member is fixed in FFXI. Similar mechanism in ffxiv means the jobs will be 4 times more effective in a 8-man than a 4 man party, and completely useless when the only dps is dead in 4 mangroup.

[Eldelphia]

To have a class which supports in some way still be soloable could you not scale the, effectiveness of their buffs dependent on the number of people on the party? You only have to worry about up to 8 people then. So solo, buff does little ( could have buff inversely related to damage you do?), 2-3 people it does a little, 4 people it does a bit more and 8 even more? Dunno, I'm probably talking crap.

[Taruking]

Why would you create a job class so convoluted just to fill a dps role? In FFXI, BRD and COR belong to a distinct class specifically designed to enhance the performance of the rest of the party members. In other words, groups with a BRD or COR will always outperform groups without. Until SE add buffer role to FFXIV it's impossible to introduce similar mechanism without breaking job balance.

[Elcura]

In other words, groups with a BRD or COR will always outperform groups without. Until SE add buffer role to FFXIV it's impossible to introduce similar mechanism without breaking job balance.

I honestly don't know why the buffer/pure support role is heavily considered. Without a lot of tweaks and thought making a 2.5s active buffer (with or without DPS) is probably not going to be easy. At worst it just won't be fun, either.

[Karbuncle]

I honestly don't know why the buffer/pure support role is heavily considered. Without a lot of tweaks and thought making a 2.5s active buffer (with or without DPS) is probably not going to be easy. At worst it just won't be fun, either.

Make their Songs a Rhythm game \o/!

1 .. wait wait wait .. 2! wait wait wait ... 3! <Perfect!> Buff Potency +20%!


I'm being sarcastic, honestly, but a pure buff job could be done without it being terribly boring (*No more boring than any other class in XIV, subjectively). However It would need some sort of DPS ability as every class in the game does, that goes without saying. But for the most part, I think a Buffer class would be best suited as a Buffer/DPS or Buffer/Healer with it being 80% buff 20% other give or take instead of BRD-tier, thus giving them things to do inbetween buffs.

But my only worry is how they would fit in Dungeons and Queues. Would they replace a DD slot and risk getting 2 buffers making the dungeon painfully slow? Would they add a 5th Slot to light-parties forcing a Buffer in one, thus making queue times longer? Would it be optional - If so, why bother? Adding a 4th Link in the trinity that we have now would cause a lot of smaller-to-bigger issues than just "how potent are their buffs" or "how boring will it be". I do like the idea of a Buffing job, but making it work in XIV would be quite the task.

[Twilight Sky]

We're playing a game where, the producers' idea of challenging is by lacing a mob with 1 hit kill mobs and retarded HP, and 100% resistance to everything, nevermind being able to wreck an entire party with the same debuffs.

I can't see him making a debuffer class or debuffing in general, viable. I would LOVE that though because I was so good at it in FFXI. But that's probably why it got dumbed down in this game; Debuffs when used properly can shift the difficulty a great deal.

[Thiefami]

I hear this a lot, and to me, it always comes down to two things:

1) If you're enhancing without the job providing DPS/Healing, you must enhance enough to equal the DPS/healing lost by the slot.
2) If you're enfeebling (provided the encounter allows for enfeebling), again, the debuffs must equal the lost DPS/healing.

If these two requirements are not met, you're going to run into an issue of the class not being worth bringing compared to bringing more damage, more healing or more mitigation. This is enhanced in a game that has so many boss checks, and this buffing/enfeebling must be able to be activated quickly enough to allow for quick checks to be completed.

We'll use an easy encounter for an example. Take the heads of the 5-headed dragon in WoD. Blowing up each head to lower the damage on his super move is a DPS check. DPS too slow and heads survive and the damage eventually becomes unsurvivable. Simple stuff. If you're going to have a pure support job, you'd either have to have enough buffing to boost everyone else's DPS high enough to make up for the loss of DPS in the support class, or enough debuffing of the boss to negate the extra damage that losing the DPS check would entail.

If your solution to that is simply to "remove the checks", then you've removed one aspect of content so you can introduce another into the game, and that's walking a pretty dangerous path when you're talking about maintaining subs in a pretty popular MMO.

To be fair I stressed "and the content that calls for it." Current content certainly doesn't call for enfeebling or enhancing specialists.

I think we have two trains of thoughts on what two new roles could entail. Because I see tanking as a support role, the hybrid spec is dps. But what if a group were to mix and match (with content that requires it available, of course) to where a Support(tank) hybrid healer were possible or a Crowdcontrol/enhancing support role. Or a tank/crowdcontroller.

Extending the range of each job would allow them to create a wider range of content.


When I mention classes, presuming they are attempting to detach all future jobs from having a class basis, they could function merely as a smorgasboard of actions for jobs. Meaning, they do not have to be created equal. In fact, functionality at best would be moot. Later added classes can simply borrow from existing classes, forming their basis off of what currently exists to attain max level and unlock all of your skills which in turn could be used for jobs.

I am only brainstorming on ways they could introduce additional roles for increased versatility. I personally do not think SE will stray from their current formula. To reiterate, they would have to design their content in a way it calls for it.

[Lucavi]

I just don't see a lot of risk being taken now that the money's rolling in pretty solid. Who knows, though.

[Cutriss]

In precisely the same sense and to the extent that people "play" XIV without using job stones, sure; you don't start the game with subjobs, so you have to unlock them first.

Negative. There are a couple of documented instances of people deliberately leveling to 75 without a subjob.

You said "literally no one". I am saying you are either abusing the word "literally" or you're just plain wrong.

[solracht]

is this real life

[Destinye]

I just don't see a lot of risk being taken now that the money's rolling in pretty solid. Who knows, though.

Honestly, he said 2.x was the "safety net" and didn't want to take risks. 3.x is time to actually start taking risks. I mean hell, he's been doing shit people bashed the living hell out of Tanaka/Komoto/Matsui for doing because yoshi "eased the tip in" rather than the others just jamming it into you, so he gets praised for it.

So it won't be surprising at all if he returns old 1.x (or even more XI) mechanics into the game systems and people eat it up just because it's YoshiP. Augmented gear (i.e "Enhance x skill/trait") like the old 1.x relics and so on, would be welcomed. Restoring the TP materia would also be welcomed because it also allows less reliance on people needing a slot for Invigorate for example when you can slowly boost your max TP or even a 'Store TP" like the old one. Honestly, in every MMO I played with an expansion or "expansion like update" is when they take risks because it's a big enough change to warrant it. How many MMOs can you load up that's been around for awhile that drastically changed by/after the first expansion compared to MMOs that stay EXACTLY the same from day 1?

3.x is definitely the time to take off the training wheels.

[Detzu]

is this real life

It can be discussed.