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

[niwaar]

Hey Elmer... thanks for the translation.

I would make a thread for this, but the JP official site was updated with some of this info this morning. Too bad I can't read it to know if there is any info that expounds on the wonderful info you already translated for us.

New music as well it seems on the JP site.

[Purrrfect]

Nice work Elmer.^^ Fucking want to play so bad now after reading all this. >< Thaumatugre and Lancer look interesting... They need to update our shit...

music seems interesting..
intro almost feels too long for a battle track tho.. then again, that depends on how long battles in XIV are. Probably evens out if its a party vs party battle..

Maybe the music is not 'per fight' but runs 'per battle' as they said they want players to focus on managing themselves for the whole duration and not just single camp fights?

Does this sound as bad to anyone else as it does me? People already hated having to rest forever to recover hp and mp, not it seems when you rest you don't get mp back, so can only get mp from using job abilities and items. Someone please tell me thats not what this says.

I don't recall the videos exactly, but maybe there is no resting at all, since they said you can't regain mp that way?

Not sure if im happy about the having to select a specific element of choice.
If you can change your element by quests or something, but not instantly, thats fine, but if stuck with that choice forever, thats going to suck. Whos to say the game wont change, and yull be stuck with a worthless element, or if all the end game mobs are weak to mostly thunder/blizz *cough* and nothing else?

What if monsters also have elemental customizations? They said monsters will be solo or in parties just like players, and in the eorzeapedia article they said something about wanting to make monster's skills/usage smiliar to players. Imagine coming up to 4 crabs and dropping a thunder4 and only killing 1 while 2 got buffed up because thems was some smart crabs and checked the interweb before specializing...

[Nirokun!]

Conjurer! I don't have to pick between whm and blm this time I'm having a serious nerdgasm right now, my whole body feels lighter and shit, so excited!

I'm wondering if the mages in this game will be strong enough to have decent soloing and good, coordinated mage-only group fights

Conjurer definitely looks yummy enough to hold me over until they release the smn-type job

Group of conjurer's using Profound, then nuking a monster all at once ;D (I always loved 1-job-only group tactics :D) I can't wait till we get to hear more :DDD

[niwaar]

Does this sound as bad to anyone else as it does me? People already hated having to rest forever to recover hp and mp, not it seems when you rest you don't get mp back, so can only get mp from using job abilities and items. Someone please tell me thats not what this says.

It will really depend on mechanics. Not only did they say there would be "abilities to regain mana" they also indicated that there would be several "mana controllers" in terms of party makeup. I doubt this will just be a refresh type mechanic or even if it will be exactly that. Probably more likely a short term burst of mana every few minutes akin to the way other game uses Mana recovery. But, it will probably also include class abilities that will "Conserve MP" for a group member or the entire party.

Plus, you have to remember that not all abilities are going to be MP based. They already indicated that abilities will have a TP, MP or TP&MP cost to use. This tells me, that some abilities will be pure TP.

One other note, we do not know a few things.

1) Does TP start at zero and go upwards?
2) Does TP remain after combat has ended? For a short time or until used?
3) How much MP we will have to begin with? An "always" small pool that we need to conserve or a Larger pool that we have the option to burn quickly or keep sustained over long periods of time.

Additionally, the part about being very strong against one element or decently strong against several, all I see is hnm ls in 14 having a tank who has capped resistance to an element for different encounters. Either that, or whatever is the hardest current content tanks will choose the most important main element for that. I also am starting to get the idea that you can skill up and change these, so people will be possibly doing "merit" skill up parties to change things for new encounters.

This is the only really negative thing in my mind so far. If specializing in an element gets us to become useless in some endgame encounters and overpowered in others. This happened early on in some other MMOs forcing the "respec" you speak of. I wouldnt mind being slightly more powerful in one place and weaker in others, but not OP or Useless.

Not sure if im happy about the having to select a specific element of choice.
If you can change your element by quests or something, but not instantly, thats fine, but if stuck with that choice forever, thats going to suck. Whos to say the game wont change, and yull be stuck with a worthless element, or if all the end game mobs are weak to mostly thunder/blizz *cough* and nothing else?

What if monsters also have elemental customizations? They said monsters will be solo or in parties just like players, and in the eorzeapedia article they said something about wanting to make monster's skills/usage smiliar to players. Imagine coming up to 4 crabs and dropping a thunder4 and only killing 1 while 2 got buffed up because thems was some smart crabs and checked the interweb before specializing...

This is the kicker, I highly doubt we will see crabs in the same "group" speced differently. But allowing this underlying system it lets them recreate many classic aspects of older FF monsters very easily.

Think Bombs, Flan and Oozes, they will obviously be them in the game. Now they can easily manipulate the game without having to create a new monster from scratch.

[Warudo Ecksu]

holy wall o text niwaar, every time u post i have to find my reading glasses

[LD]

http://gameavatar.org/wordpress/wp-c...re-247x300.jpg

Blood for the Blood God, skulls for his throne!

I expect to see that one show up in no time in macros...

Tzeentch > Khorne. Guess who knew I'd say that? I really hope one of the caster classes can develop a series of movement delaying and damaging trap spells or spell adjusting abilities like Scholar. If I can't stroke my chin, narrow my eyes, smirk and whisper "Just as Planned..." I don't think being a caster would be worth it for me.

[SilverBreeze]

I don't think specializing in an element will really be a bad thing. I mean 99% of the Mages in FFXI went Blizzard and Thunder, then you go up against a mob like Ouryu or Kirin. Are all the BLMs useless then? No. Are they doing less damage than usual? Yes, but that's because Aero is inherently weaker than Blizzard and Thunder because of the way the game was designed.

I think being able to specialize will be kind of cool, but that's just speculating from what we know. I think it'll be cool to be able to be the same class as other players, yet different.

[Eaglestrike]

I don't think specializing in an element will really be a bad thing. I mean 99% of the Mages in FFXI went Blizzard and Thunder, then you go up against a mob like Ouryu or Kirin. Are all the BLMs useless then? No. Are they doing less damage than usual? Yes, but that's because Aero is inherently weaker than Blizzard and Thunder because of the way the game was designed.

I think being able to specialize will be kind of cool, but that's just speculating from what we know. I think it'll be cool to be able to be the same class as other players, yet different.

It could be neat.

It could also be disastrous because the community might only accept certain FotM element spec'd classes depending on what the latest boss is, forcing people to respec every patch to get a new element. Hopefully the bosses where element affinity will have a large effect won't be extremely difficult forcing people to min/max around that stat. If that bit can be avoided I very much look forward to the concept.

[Kaylia]

I don't think specializing in an element will really be a bad thing. I mean 99% of the Mages in FFXI went Blizzard and Thunder, then you go up against a mob like Ouryu or Kirin. Are all the BLMs useless then? No. Are they doing less damage than usual? Yes, but that's because Aero is inherently weaker than Blizzard and Thunder because of the way the game was designed.

I think being able to specialize will be kind of cool, but that's just speculating from what we know. I think it'll be cool to be able to be the same class as other players, yet different.

Make that "99%" 100%. I havent heard of a blm not meriting ice or thunder. When 100% of the population specialize in the same thing, what's the purpose of letting them specialize? The choice is just an illusion.


If specialization allow the same classes to fill 2 differents roles, it mights works (wow's spec is a good example), but if it's for a dmg boost, it will be really hard to balance.


Of course, it also depend how easy it is to change your spec. It might not be an issue if everyone has access to everything one way or the other.

[LD]

Odds are the elemental alignment thing will more about play style than totally excluding the use of other spells.

Actually, scratch that. Even if that's what it means, lowering elemental resists might actually be common and relevant now. So if you go down a lightning path, you'll have a lighting resist lowering ability....maybe.

At any rate, I'm really pumped over Pugilist (sorry :[ ). The fact that it already has short range attacks, a long range attack, and a healing ability means it might be as flexible as MNK was in the FFT games. Actually, what surprises me the most is that it looks like it could be shaping up to be an evasion tank.

Whistle: Gain the attention of the enemy
Chakra: Use TP to regain HP
Feather Step: Increase evasion by a large amount for one shot
Jarring Strike: If used after a missed enemy attack, your next attack will hit and bind the enemy but also anger them
Haymaker: If used after a missed enemy attack, you can do heavy damage to the enemy

It isn't much of a stretch to see these abilities add up to something defensive. How for it'll go is anyone's guess, but it is interesting.

[Uzor]

it really seems that way.
It really looks like you can take a Conjurer in any number of ways depending on how you choose to develop elemental affinity (for BLM style) and theres probably something else if you choose to go WHM style. And I think the chant moves are a shift towards BRD style enhancing.

I'm pretty sure the line-up of classes is still not complete but so far it looks like Conjurer and Thaumaturge already cover all the bases in terms of classic mage types.

I'm quite intrigued by the whole positioning thing and its a really visible element in XIV as far as we can tell. Even in that battle pic vs the Peiste, it seems to matter that the Peiste is attacking the guy from behind cos it specifically shows up in the log that way.

Just because they seem to cover the bases of magery, doesn't mean they can't invent entirely new classes unlike anything we've ever seen before. They're doing a pretty good job so far of making the classes unique, while still including old things from FFXI. But there's nothing that stops them from inventing an entirely new class containing nothing from FFXI.

[Yoli]

I'm more worried about the tendancy of people to parse things. By which I guess I mean their ability (and desire) to look at numbers and spot trends they couldn't identify without a parser.

I'm sure SE won't make a respec necesary on a regular basis to handle things. If a "properly" set up tank was 2% more efficient (no clue how we're rating efficiencey... 2% less damage taken maybe, or something noticable but marginal like that) I worry people would get all obsessed over trying to min/max everything "just cause".

It's kind of a thin line I guess. I'm all for trying to perform as best you can. But I think some things should just be dropped.

This is sort of an aside, but some Japanese shells on my ffxi server used few equipment swap macros compared to the NA shells I was around. They performed at least as well though, when it came time to kill Tiamat or whatever. Getting that extra 5 resist on your bara by swapping in the right enhancing torques etc was great, but it didn't make or break the fight by a long shot. Add up bara merits, + resist gear on the tank, and those few points were just a small bit of the big picture.

So as long as this is all done within reason (tiny buffs, not huge buffs), I think the only /real/ problem that could come with it with it is one that could originate with us.

[Lucavi]

I'm more worried about the tendancy of people to parse things. By which I guess I mean their ability (and desire) to look at numbers and spot trends they couldn't identify without a parser.

I'm sure SE won't make a respec necesary on a regular basis to handle things. If a "properly" set up tank was 2% more efficient (no clue how we're rating efficiencey... 2% less damage taken maybe, or something noticable but marginal like that) I worry people would get all obsessed over trying to min/max everything "just cause".

It's kind of a thin line I guess. I'm all for trying to perform as best you can. But I think some things should just be dropped.

This is sort of an aside, but some Japanese shells on my ffxi server used few equipment swap macros compared to the NA shells I was around. They performed at least as well though, when it came time to kill Tiamat or whatever. Getting that extra 5 resist on your bara by swapping in the right enhancing torques etc was great, but it didn't make or break the fight by a long shot. Add up bara merits, + resist gear on the tank, and those few points were just a small bit of the big picture.

So as long as this is all done within reason (tiny buffs, not huge buffs), I think the only /real/ problem that could come with it with it is one that could originate with us.

That's just the human (or western) nature of wanting to be the best, and that spilling over into only wanting to associate with the best. Be it through parsers, gearscore, or whatever, people will always find a way to judge and to segregate.

[LD]

Now that I think of it, that might be what Conjurer's Purge ability does.

Purge: You can balance off the elemental status of you and the enemy (translation note: I really don’t know what they mean by that)

Obviously, Elmer knows better than I what it says verbatim, but this could be the elemental equalizer that makes the alignment system easier to deal with. The problem is that the other classes don't seem to have anything like it...yet.

[Vuitton]

It seems like the elemental attributes and the poles are going to determine the evolution of your class. Unless I am mistaking how these attributes work.

Conjurer with an affinity for the spirit pole might be the "WHM". Conjurer with the star pole might be the "BLM". Then the elemental attributes help you further focus your class.

[Corrderio]

I'm hoping this is more simple than it sounds xD

[Elmer the Pointy]

OK, Dengeki magazine came out today with a surprising amount of extra details.

Dengeki Class and Beta Q&A

They go over some details on the alpha/beta testing and general gameplay stuff regarding classes and battles. Like Famitsu, they also went class-by-class and got developer comments on each one.

[Guitarman]

you deserve every ounce of praise you get elmer, thank you.

The weaponskill Fracture makes an enemy weaponskill unusable. Is this a continuous effect or is it more like Stun?

A: It's a continuous effect.

ok, definitely going marauder now.

[Kaylia]

OK, Dengeki magazine came out today with a surprising amount of extra details.

Dengeki Class and Beta Q&A

They go over some details on the alpha/beta testing and general gameplay stuff regarding classes and battles. Like Famitsu, they also went class-by-class and got developer comments on each one.

The higher level armor look freaking good.

- You say a Miner can bring "additional income" to the party. Does this mean a single Miner will benefit all members?

A: Yes, that's right. It will add to the treasure pool, and we are still discussing this, but we want to make it so more Miners increases the benefits. However, the trade-off is that battles will be more difficult.

This line is extremely scary. Bring a job that is useless for the fight only to increase reward...I've seen that somewhere.


Reward people for doing thefight with less, don't reward them for bringing useless job.

[Rocl]

If all that's necessary is the ability to use DirectX9 I'm good yussssss, I don't have 512VRAM :<