Minor Beastmen/Summoner Info/Dengenki Article

[Hyan]

What the hell? Who are you?

Who are you?

If classes are simply weapon (or in the case of mages, magic) types, as SE seems to imply, they can not make pet classes if they don't somehow make the pets become the "weapons" itself.. which I don't see them doing. Thus, we are most probably not going to see pet classes.

What we are probably going to see though, are pets not based on any class whatsoever allowing much more versatility, which seems to be the point of this whole Armoury system. When the pets aren't locked to one class, you have more weapon choices and more customization options than just using an Axe or Scythe for example. If you want to be a pet user wielding a lance, then be one. And to strengthen your added pet, you'd have to sacrifice the master's power. The system would balance itself, although since that kind of flexibility allows for much abuse from the player's end, it's no wonder SE doesn't want to make them available right at the start of the game.

[Spira]

Who are you?

If classes are simply weapon (or in the case of mages, magic) types, as SE seems to imply, they can not make pet classes if they don't somehow make the pets become the "weapons" itself.. which I don't see them doing. Thus, we are most probably not going to see pet classes.

this is where i disagree with you.
a pet as a weapon is hardly far fetched and if a needle as a tool can be a weapon then an puppet isnt an unlikely option either. It would defy the basic concept of the armoury system.. yes.. but isnt impossible.

for a puppet as a weapon, Lulu's doll weapons in FFX come to mind, as well as ffxi's PUP and VIIs cait sith.

or if you think unconventionally.. anything could be used as a weapon if it directly controls a summon.. just because it doesnt directly attack doesnt mean it can never be used somehow

[Hyan]

That's possible, but would that mean the master itself has not a weapon available to him, aside from the pet? What if it dies, for example?

[Nirokun!]

I can understand where he's coming from, because everything seems so centered on the weapon, but I wonder if they're just going to introduce it like a school of magic. Like, all disciples of magic would be limited to staves and wands, but obviously an offensive magic user (BLM) is going to have a different set of skills than a healing magic user (WHM). But they're both still disciples of magic. Whatever separates those two can also be introduced to separate a new class that would use pets.

(I still think BST is going to be a shoe-in what with the fleshed out mob system. It just seems like there should be a specialist with that.)

(That just makes me think that perhaps all jobs would have access to pets with varying proficiency, disciples of magic could excel at the avatars, and the disciples of the hand would be better suited to mobs in the wild [esp. archers.])

I just wonder if they'll implement a pet system as a separate entity from the player, or if they'll introduce them like single spells or attacks that appear, do whatever they do, and poof. I really want the separate entity back, I like the dynamic between pet and master, I like having my summoned shield! :D

[Hyan]

I don't think they'll restrict the disciples of magic classes to only one type of magic, since from what they've said in regards to disciples of war, those classes can take up many roles instead of just one, even though they might excel in something like tanking.

So, having the mages excel in only one type of magic would be a bit nonsensical as well. I mean, we have Thaumaturge and Illusionist right now (although Illusionist isn't listed on the website yet). basically, a curse-user and illusion-user. What do these magic types actually do? I think it's not as clear as it was in XI, and they can take many roles depending on their preferences.

I don't think every mage class can adapt to just any role though, but possibly more than one.

But yeah, I think the whole Armoury system would benefit from having pets available outside of the whole classes thing, so I don't see why SE would make things more complicated on themselves and kinda turn around the purpose of the system in the process just to give us a pet class. Summoner might get away with it if they can implement "summoning" type of magic though. That'd still be believable.

[Nirokun!]

That's what I mean by excel. I know that there's more of a blur between individual classes, and there's less specialization than in FFXI (early on, not talking about redundancy later on), but there's definitely going to be some distinction between the strongest caster's and a disciple of war. Sure, disciples of war can use some magic, but there's a difference. There's going to be a weapon difference, that has been stated, but there has to be something else. Either a skill tree, or a slightly different kind of weapon, or access to different, mutually-exclusive ability/item/something a la light arts/dark arts with scholar, preventing a disciple of magic from having full access to the strongest spell of every type and category. It may be that Thaumaturge and Illusionist is a marked separation between heavy and moderate magic usage in battle, with each allowing some kind of toggle function to use "white" and "black" magic.

What I'm getting at is that whatever they use to separate heavy black magic from heavy white magic (unlikely that you'd ever see a player able to use both, with high proficiency, at the same time without doing some kind of switch), they can use to add in another heavy magic category (namely, summons.) Not saying they will, I'm just saying it's still feasible without breaking their weapon system.

(Personally I think the flexibility was inputted to get rid of the subjob system, so you can have similar functionality without having 2 rigidly-defined jobs.)

[Hyan]

Yes, I think too that Summoning could work that way. Disciples of Magic, aside from probably using different types of weapons, also use different types of magic, so allowing some class to summon pets while wielding a different weapon type would actually make sense.

Disciples of War classes, though, are only separated by the weapon they're using so if they want to keep the diversity of the system, they shouldn't make the pets only available to one class (one weapon type) if possible. What if you want to be an axe user, for example, but don't want to use pets? What if you want to be a Lance user with wyvern as your pet? If pets are only available to one class, lots of possibilities will go down the drain.

[Nirokun!]

The could do some kind of trapping quest or something. The mob behavior is really fleshed out and I wouldnt be surprised if they introduced a job (or subset of archer) that would be proficient in trapping and training a monster as a companion or as a call in to do an attack then leave. Or take a page from WoW and let people get their own little buddies

[Spira]

hmmm it is a good point there.. pets themselves are at odds with the armoury system, but if it were separate from it in terms of its implementation then it'd definitely be much more feasible and possibly easier to balance.. in which case, pets are not class specific but something that everyone can have (like fellowship NPCs perhaps)

some class types would still probably excel more with a pet than others.. I like the whole beast for melee, summon for mage idea.. but its probably wishful thinking at this point

[Hyan]

Well, we must look no further than Tanner's description in the official website; "..many who choose this profession tend to dabble in hunting and trapping as well".

It could mean many things, what you proposed being one of them!

[Kael]

I feel I should point out that a Summoner class does not need to be a Pet Class.

They can simply go back to the instant effect summon spells in previous Final Fantasy Games.

[Necronus]

Yeah, their concept sounds more like WOW tanking to me, where tanks routinely have to hold aggro on 4+ mobs. At first I was turned off to it, but then as you get used to it there are actually a lot of intricacies to the style in the same way FFXI's single mob fight's had things like skillchains, etc. All depends on how well the developers execute the idea, really.

Edit: Also, not a big deal, but I noticed I spelled Dengeki wrong in the thread title. Drr.

For further comparrison, tanks in City of Heroes routinely tank as many as 17 mobs, and thats only because they capped it to 17, when originally it was uncapped and certian builds could tank 50 assuming their build was tailored to specific enemies. Not counting when Tanks pop their "Invincible" equivalent and used to be able to hold 100+ for about 30 seconds.

Of course CoH is a bit of a different beast as far as MMO combat is concerned, but it goes to show combat can vary from 1 on 1, to party on party, to 1 superhero clobbering an entire crowd of thugs.

[Khamsin]

I'm sure their armory system will be more than just plain old weapons. There's nothing preventing their spear from having some magical ability that lets you jump, or having a staff that miraculously lets you cast cure.

Who says there can't be some wand or staff type weapon that carries with it the ability to summon things?

Summons would fit perfectly within the armory system. There's no job that wouldn't, as long as weapons can have abilities beyond simply being sharp.

[Hyan]

Pets would fit within the Armoury system perfectly, yes, but I don't think they'd fit into the whole "class" thing (ex. there being a Puppetmaster or Beastmaster class).

[Rokku]

I'd hope that they'd just devote something to allowing people to use them as instant casts regardless of other circumstances ala the old FF games, and not create another trainwreck of a job like SMN was.

[Khamsin]

Pets would fit within the Armoury system perfectly, yes, but I don't think they'd fit into the whole "class" thing (ex. there being a Puppetmaster or Beastmaster class).

The class system is the armory system. But since pet classes are, well, classes I don't see why it wouldn't fit. Summoner is a class that specializes in summoning things. Beastmaster is a class that specializes in manipulating field monsters. Pugilist is a class that specializes in punching stuff. And so forth.

[Hyan]

No, it's not. The classes are there for the same reason the races are there: To not make the game feel like it's gone too far from the system used in XI and other MMO's. That's what they said a long time ago. The system is skill based, so the classes kinda act only as something familiar from the past, which serves not much purpose by itself. If I understood what SE said right, it wouldn't really matter if SE removed the "classes" and only left the disciplines there. But that's straying too far from the norm for most people, so they chose to not to do it that way. Thus we have "classes".

Each class is basically a weapon type (in the case of mages, the magic type as well). Pets aren't weapon types. Either they make them weapons, which would mean no other weapon for the master, or they make it outside the class system, within the armory system. Since classes are pretty much there to help people adapt, it won't matter much if they're actual classes or not, as long as they're within the disciplines of war/magic systems.

[LD]

That's not what I got from SE at all.

The way I see it, there are just ability types (attack, healing, buff/debuff) and ultimately they can all be attached to any player's gear set. One type of ability may be found more regularly on a certain set of equipment (like defender on a plate class), but a high degree of customization is supposedly present. SE has been playing it up. So they could make, like, a pair of glasses that you can take off dramatically to perform Charm on enemies or make a set of trinkets that attract a particular family of mobs. You can use this while using Jump with your dagger and casting black magic. They've already said that fighter mages will exist and that will be a product of your personal development, not necessarily a class tree.

Basically, the 'get an NPC to fight with you' ability isn't out of the question unless SE says they wont have any pet classes. As far as I know, they only admitted that they fucked them up in FFXI, which they did.

[Hyan]

LD, that a response to my post? Because you're kinda agreeing with me there. There doesn't have to be any pet classes for there to be "get an NPC to fight with you" ability.

[Khamsin]

Each class is basically a weapon type (in the case of mages, the magic type as well). Pets aren't weapon types. Either they make them weapons, which would mean no other weapon for the master, or they make it outside the class system, within the armory system. Since classes are pretty much there to help people adapt, it won't matter much if they're actual classes or not, as long as they're within the disciplines of war/magic systems.

Think of pets like magic. Magic isn't the weapon, but perhaps using a particular type of weapon may enable proficient magic use. Maybe a particular weapon will enable manipulation of pets. Imagine if one handed axes had a "charm animals" skill associated with it.

Even if there were no classes, and you just practiced summoning and charming field monsters until you got good enough to be considered a summoner or beastmaster... if there were classes. Just as a classless lance user is better at using a lance than a classless sword user, a classless beastmaster would be able to charm higher level things than someone who's primarily a sword user.

Now can you use a sword and still charm monsters? Probably, just as I'm sure you'll be able to use a sword and a lance. But there'll probably be some system in place to prevent someone from being good at everything. If you can have two A+ skills, say, and everything else lowers a'la crafting, then you could pick charming and axes. Or swords and lances. Or white magic and great axes. Or summoning and black magic.