Class details, Beta info & Battle System Details! (Famitsu&Dengeki 3/25 issue)

[senshikarasu]

Long time lurker, first time poster, so I'll take this chance to say hi to the board.

As far as the miner thing goes, I don't think there is a reason for a miner to go along unless he needs protection while going for ore. The incentive is that you get access to that ore, the sales from that ore, and/ore the treasure hunter bonus. Especially if it's a place where there is a new or rare ore that's needed for some awesome armor of doom that was just released. You don't believe those incentives are good enough to invite a miner?

It's not like you need to take a miner to fight a frigging NM, or into an ocean battle, or to raze an enemy village. I don't think a miner needs or wants to join an exp party since he'll be gaining skills from mining. There's only one reason a miner would need to join your party. Protection. For ore. It's up to you to decide if it's worth protecting this guy for whatever he's going after. Maybe you get a cut of the ore or sales somehow for helping out. And if by some chance there is some NM that is guarding some rare/new ore, well then, the incentive of bringing some miner off the street is that you now have access to that ore.

We're not even including special miner guildleves. What if there is a leve that a miner needs a party for? Your incentive is more guildleve choice and rewards that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. I think that's a pretty good tradeoff.

[McGoonagle]

Unless this mean the monsters literally become stronger once TH is applied, the logic here is that you should be rewarded for carrying a worthless classes in a fight...but that's retarded

You will be rewarded for taking a risk...

[Uzor]

I'm not talking about decimal parsing, I'm talking about bringing melee to ouryu, about giving bst a purpose in most alliance fight...etc

People will always be biased to a certain extent, and there will be fad, but certain thing are simply not justified. Bringing a job for it's TH ability alone is ridiculous from a gameplay perspective.



That's how I understand it, and why I'm bitching. They are creating the same issue they did in FFXI with thief...a TH whore. I don't understand the logic behind this when everyone agree that TH is retarded.

The difference between Miner and Thief is that the Miner isn't designed to be a DD job. It's designed to be a crafting job. SE already said they don't intend for crafting jobs to be versatile in battle, they're there mainly to repair armor, the TH and enfeebling of Gold-bases mobs is just a bonus.

Really, why are you bitching? You don't have to bring Miner in to battle if you don't want to. you can level Miner solo all the way to the highest level through Guildleves that requires no fighting. Its a crafting job, not a battle job.

[GRT]

i suppose the proper respond to your "crafting job, not battle job" is then: why the hell would they put a battle result ability in a crafting job then?

[Destinye]

I know if I was a weaver and someone tried to attack me I'd use my various sharp tools to protect myself.

[senshikarasu]

So that they won't be completely useless if they are asked to join a party for some reason, or so they won't be completely helpless and will at least have some limited means of protecting themselves if they need to go out into the world and gather materials solo.

[GRT]

I know if I was a weaver and someone tried to attack me I'd use my various sharp tools to protect myself.

you would avoid the attack altogether if you just instead went into the kitchen

[Hyan]

only two reason i see someone inviting a miner

#1 i want more stuffs please
#2 your a blacksmith and want the ore he is mining

i'm looking forward to all walks of life on 14 but miner seems a little wiffy in terms of sounding

Well, I don't think Miner is for someone who would like to be invited in the first place. However, if some things require you to be in a group, it's good that there is an incentive, instead of just getting to come along out of pity.

[McGoonagle]

i suppose the proper respond to your "crafting job, not battle job" is then: why the hell would they put a battle result ability in a crafting job then?

To create an interaction between fighters and crafters.

Another thing to remember is that you can change jobs in the field. Full combat party goes out, does preliminary clear so that mobs are popping at a manageable rate. One of the pt changes jobs to miner, allowing the pt to continue working the mobs while increasing drop rates and values. If things start getting a little hot, the miner can change back to smackdown artist.

The question is how big an effect will the miner have? At what point will the rewards be great enough to take the risk?

[dusted]

i suppose the proper respond to your "crafting job, not battle job" is then: why the hell would they put a battle result ability in a crafting job then?

Seems like they're trying something new, maybe it's fair enough to say it should be obvious how bad an idea it is, but it's their will to try and make it work, and there's nothing to say that they won't decide to nix the battle benefits if it really is quite terrible.

It feels like this was their solution to preventing gilsellers/farmers running around places and scooping prize ore and whatnot by removing the capabilities of having an actual class and being able to mine/log/etc at the same, whilst leaving minimal abilities for the regular playerbase, who have presumably would have more skill to manage in a high level and difficult area...or something, and giving miners Treasure Hunter is there as a reward for to the party for taking one.

The only real problem is that in FFXI, trash mobs didn't drop anything besides a couple specific items, I haven't played for several years so maybe it's changed, but if ffxiv is going to be similar, fighting a mob that only drops the equivalent of crystals and one or two particular crafting materials doesn't really give much reason to bring one in the first place.

[Kaylia]

First of all...if any of you believe for one second that TH in FFXI was a good idea, we probably haven't played the same game.

Secondly, if you're arguing that TH on miner is a good thing in FFXIV when we know next to nothing about the game, you're retarded. The concept of TH is a poor idea in the first place, and we have every reasons to be worried about it considering that's how they make it sound.


And lastly, if the you were convinced by the "handicap" argument, keep in mind we could say the exact same thing about thief in FFXI pretty often. I'm all for handicap, but the concept of bringing one specific class (you won't bring a tanner, blacksmith, cook or w/e) isn't a fun way to increase difficulty level. Do it like WoW and add hard mode to everything if you want to reward players for doing more with less.

Hopefully, what he meant was limited to "an increased ore drop rate" or something like this...which is fine since the profession is meant to make money, but if it's anything like TH, you will want it on all the time, and a similar scenario will be repeated.

You will be rewarded for taking a risk...

And bringing a thief to nyzul was an increased risk since they kill slower than samurai?

+ risk +reward is a great concept, but not when it makes everyone do the same thing.


If they were giving this ability to every craft, it would makes some sense. Giving it to a single class is stupid in theory.

Really, why are you bitching? You don't have to bring Miner in to battle if you don't want to. you can level Miner solo all the way to the highest level through Guildleves that requires no fighting. Its a crafting job, not a battle job.

You don't have to bring a thief if you don't have to...wait you do, cause spending 15% less times on something that takes a year to get is freaking awesome.

[GRT]

meh, all's speculation so far anyway, i just have a hard time giving SE the benefit of the doubt, especially with something that sounds like a retarded idea in the first place

we all know how frustrating some of the ff11 mechanics were and how slow SE was attending to problems that have existed for years

[Altanass]

i get the impression there will no hard cap on the amount of skills/classes a player can learn overall. So for xp parties everyone will go the usual DD/etc route, but then for things like the new salvage or the new HNMs, some members cant come as their DD job, instead they have to come as miner for drops etc. They will just stand back doing not very much at all. So this leads me to think that this is just another way for SE to sell more accounts - it make players pay for dual-boxing because who is going to be a career miner/TH-whore(with no damage capability except throwing pebbles lol) at every event. And which LSs will want their tank or healer to come as a miner.

Also, I can just see the deception and resulting arguments when LS's do events and only the "LS miner" can see points and get ore. Greedy leaders are going to just say there was nothing in the mining point.

Also, could it be that each element is seperated into their own school, so we'l have firemages, earthmages running around. Will each element school have their own damage spells, AOE, buffs, debuffs, utilitites, meganuke, etc

[Hyan]

Hopefully, what he meant was limited to "an increased ore drop rate" or something like this...which is fine since the profession is meant to make money, but if it's anything like TH, you will want it on all the time, and a similar scenario will be repeated.

One would guess that the skill would benefit the Miner as well as others, and I don't think increased drop rate on Mage robe X will benefit the Miner in the slightest, if it can't use most of the equipment in the game. However, if more ores drop, that's always good for the Miner.

"Miner" and "Treasure hunter" don't sound like they would fit together, honestly. But "increased ore drop rate" sounds like it would. I don't think the Miner would be interested in fighting anything that drops stuff for Cook or Weaver anyway, so they don't really need a universal TH skill imo. And if the miner is only invited to fights with mobs that drop ore, I don't think that's a bad thing- what else would a miner want to fight anyway?

[McGoonagle]

And bringing a thief to nyzul was an increased risk since they kill slower than samurai?

+ risk +reward is a great concept, but not when it makes everyone do the same thing

Not knowing the risk vs. the reward makes the point kind of vacuous.

XIV > XI even for very large values of XI. With different jobs, battle and progression systems, you should try to avoid grafting your prejudices about XI onto XIV.

[Kaylia]

i get the impression there will no hard cap on the amount of skills/classes a player can learn overall. So for xp parties everyone will go the usual DD/etc route, but then for things like the new salvage or the new HNMs, some members cant come as their DD job, instead they have to come as miner for drops etc. They will just stand back doing not very much at all. So this leads me to think that this is just another way for SE to sell more accounts - it make players pay for dual-boxing because who is going to be a career miner/TH-whore(with no damage capability except throwing pebbles lol) at every event. And which LSs will want their tank or healer to come as a miner.

Also, I can just see the deception and resulting arguments when LS's do events and only the "LS miner" can see points and get ore. Greedy leaders are going to just say there was nothing in the mining point.

Also, could it be that each element is seperated into their own school, so we'l have firemages, earthmages running around. Will each element school have their own damage spells, AOE, buffs, debuffs, utilitites, meganuke, etc

I hope there won't be any cap. Restarting a character sucks when you're maxed, and it does add to the longevity of the game to allow players to unlock everything.


And there is many way around the situation you described (rare item automatically added to the pool for example).

[Celeras]

- Can players use Guard or some other defensive command? Or will this activate randomly?

A: Actually, both are true. There will be a Defend command that lets you actively defend yourself, and also players with a shield equipped will automatically block some attacks provided they have improved their skill with a shield to an extent.

- Will the damage from Tackle improve the farther away from the enemy you start?

A: Yes, having a running start increases the damage.

- The spell Siphon Magic (absorbs MP from enemies) says it only works on enemies that are unable to take an action. What exactly does this mean?

A: This means their HP has been depleted, and they are defeated.

Parts that interested me the most!

[Kaylia]

Not knowing the risk vs. the reward makes the point kind of vacuous.

XIV > XI even for very large values of XI. With different jobs, battle and progression systems, you should try to avoid grafting your prejudices about XI onto XIV.

I'm using XI for conveniance sake, but the idea of "bringing a job for a single ability" is terrible design for any mmo. It's not the kind of complexity you should be looking for.

I'm not worried if it's something else than TH (if it's useless, or limited to certain item), but the interview didn't sound that way.

One would guess that the skill would benefit the Miner as well as others, and I don't think increased drop rate on Mage robe X will benefit the Miner in the slightest, if it can't use most of the equipment in the game. However, if more ores drop, that's always good for the Miner.

"Miner" and "Treasure hunter" don't sound like they would fit together, honestly. But "increased ore drop rate" sounds like it would. I don't think the Miner would be interested in fighting anything that drops stuff for Cook or Weaver anyway, so they don't really need a universal TH skill imo. And if the miner is only invited to fights with mobs that drop ore, I don't think that's a bad thing- what else would a miner want to fight anyway?

If bringing a miner would give everyone a chance at khroma ore, I would take the 3k xp loss at collibri and bring him. That's what I meant.

The situation I'm worried about is a straight increase to drop rate on endgame items (the one everyone want). I'm calling it TH simply because that's how it sounded from the interview, but if it's different, then it might be fine.

[LD]

From a gameplay standpoint, whether a miner is useless or not depends entirely on exactly how much treasure he adds to the pool and the potency of his anti-rock monster abilities. If a stone monster gets a massive debuff or if everyone gets 3x the loot they'd normally get, he can't really be 'useless' in the grand scheme of things. Of course, this is an unknown. We just have to wait and see.

From an RP stand point, I personally love it. Games are always filled with parties where each member is battle-ready, but we sometimes forget that in a lot of fantasy books and shows only a few people are the actual fighting types. I'm reminded of the timeless classic Mighty Max. Norman was the only real fighting type, Max came up with stuff on the fly, but Virgil was the one who did the research for whatever the Hell. Imagine a group is sent to an ancient temple to find and decipher some ancient tablets. Only a handful of people can read the crap, so you drag one such person down to the depths of the place, guarding his ass the way down. You find the tablets, he translates them, he writes some notes, you GTFO, and you all get paid. The guy probably never fought, but he wasn't useless if he was the only asshole who could do what you went down there for.

[Uzor]

First of, if you go with 6 people to Nyzul, and a THF is the difference between win and loss, your group sucks anyway. I'm sorry, but that is the harsh reality of things. Second, we've only just heard of miner's th ability, we don't know if the other land or hand jobs have them. Throwing judgement on the failure of these jobs for the single reason of Miner having TH, before Alpha even started -or hell, before game even released - is beyond retarded. Giving the job the benefit of the doubt is not retarded, as you seem to claim. This is not ffxi, so comparing miner to thief is just plain stupid.

Edit: There is one thing I find strange though. Despite having a mining pick, the Dengeki article make it sound like pebbles are their only weapon, lol. If you had a mining pick, would you choose to throw pebbles or slam their head in with a pick?