FFXIV Random Speculation/Question thread II: Let's Speculate the Speculations

[Time]

All they need to do is have it so each class has its own stat sheet, when you switch classes the stats are reconfigured to that class.

If its a fresh class then you can allocate the points, but once you do so you will need to pay to have them reset.

this

problem solved ^_^

[Johndile]

Personally I would prefer it if you stats were locked in until you visit an NPC that allows you to re-allocate.

The reason for this is if there were an instance where certain mobs were weak to magic and others were weak to melee, you could effectively go in with X amount of people all as DoM and nuke them, then switch to DoW and melee the rest.

Only works though if these types of mobs are spread out allowing the change in discipline. This means that you can effectively eliminate a large number of enemies quickly and reduce the need for heals due to exploiting enemies weaknesses while being able to "do it all"

The other things I figured was it might cause alot of people to become useless because they do not have all these classes leveled up yet so they cannot partake in the instance. (Community enforced restrictions of course)

[arus2001]

Probably the best way to shake up the min/maxing is to introduce gear with various, otherwise uncommon, stat combinations that could compensate for not going the min/max route and maybe even offering a bit extra. On the more extreme end, certain classes might get unlocked this way, too.

[Argh]

this

problem solved ^_^

I doubt they will make it that easy, it would almost be pointless to even have a stat allocation system if it was like that. In the other hand however, they're shooting themselves in the foot if I have to go back to town and respec my stats everytime I want to switch classes, kinda negates the whole idea of seamless transition by simply changing weapons.

[Azurewrath]

I doubt they will make it that easy, it would almost be pointless to even have a stat allocation system if it was like that. In the other hand however, they're shooting themselves in the foot if I have to go back to town and respec my stats everytime I want to switch classes, kinda negates the whole idea of seamless transition by simply changing weapons.

Not negating, it makes for everyone to be unique if they want, have stats wherever they want, I dont see how thats negating it at all.

It'll either be something that easy, or it'll be so hard that everyone will have stats down the middle.

That or it'll be extremely time consuming every time you switch to the point where youd be re-plopping your stats in every time you switch

[Time]

Not negating, it makes for everyone to be unique if they want, have stats wherever they want, I dont see how thats negating it at all.

It'll either be something that easy, or it'll be so hard that everyone will have stats down the middle.

That or it'll be extremely time consuming every time you switch to the point where youd be re-plopping your stats in every time you switch

Yea, I'm worried that u can reconfigure once u switch weapons. e.g.
Player 3: "k, gonna switch to cnj" (5 min later) ok, mage stats rdy!!!! meh even as i type it, I'm sure SE thought of that and wouldn't do that....right? bleh, Half cut and my brain doesn't wanna think. both points are completely justified, TBH, when release comes I'm just gonna stick to crafting and not use any points @ all till this system is somewhat understood lol........safety 1st!!!! lol
(let everyone less figure it out >.> so wrong)
but i prolly will do that

[gugru55]

Unless they're smart and make crafting dependent or benefited by stats.

[Jinko]

Luck may have an effect on crafting.

As for the whole stat thing being easy, much of the point of switching class out in the field is to do with ease and less need to go back to town, it would seem pointless if you had to go back to town everytime you switch from DoW to DoM to redo your stats, kind of defeats the purpose.

[Brodan]

IMO, this whole stats thing defeats that purpose. Cut it to just HP, MP, weapon skill level

[BlackheartX]

IMO, this whole stats thing defeats that purpose. Cut it to just HP, MP, weapon skill level

I kinda fell this way because of min/max, makes you wonder whats the point.

[Coren]

I kinda fell this way because of min/max, makes you wonder whats the point.

Playing a healer at times, I don't want people to be able to pick more dmg over HP. That just means DDs bitch more when they die repeatedly because I can't keep them alive when they have a measly 100 hp.

[Reiryuu]

I'm a little concerned about the steep costs of HP and MP. I almost wish they were just derived stats from VIT/INT/MND/ etc.

It almost seems like one would have to split say 50% of their points leveling up to go into HP/MP and the other half into their actual stats. But as another potential healer, I am definitely worried about l33td3wd who decides he will not spend any points on HP and put them all into STR for that l33t dmg!

I'm almost tempted to say do something like this:

HP: Goes up based on STR and VIT.
MP: Goes up based on INT and MND.

This way, mages actually are encouraged to put some points into strength as it may be cheaper to raise than VIT and melee would be wise spending points in VIT.

Also, do something like this:

Raising STR, say for every 10 points... increases your resistance to fire, but weakens your resistance to water. So if someone has 100 str, and doesn't increase their MND a little bit, uberwaterboss01 might cause them some serious hurting.

[Sereal_Killer]

i think the weapon switch will only change your base stat. so if you have 200 added in str but the starting str = 4 for mages you would have 200 but when you siwtch to melee the base stat would be 8 so you could have 208 total.

maybe it will be percentages so the 4 base stat compared compared to the 8 base stat would be a 1:2 ratio so if as a melee you have 208 str but as a mage it would be defaulted to 104 unless ofcourse you respec it.

depending on how big a role base stats weapon stats and armor stats play a role maybe everything will be removed untill you respec.

im still wondering how they are gona do it.

on the other hand if you have to get stuck with the points where they are it would mean that you need to decidee to either stick to your melee/mage route or deecide to spread them out evenly so you can function as both.

[Ae Cha]

I'm a big min/max whore and I'm not even sure I like this stat thing. I am really not looking forward to having to change stats every single time I go to play a different class, and judging by the fact I get neurotic if I don't have top end gear and expensive food buffs in a fucking Dunes party there'll be no way I'll be able to group with a clear conscience if I don't.

If it's really easy to reset, i.e. as easy as changing your class is, and they fix it so the stat input isn't so slow, then maybe it will be okay. If not, though, I honestly don't know what it's going to do other than serve as an illusion of customization and, ultimately, another way to exclude players that don't sit with a spreadsheet open next to them at all times. If SE struggles to make entire classes viable, let alone job/subjob combinations, how on earth are they going to balance something as variable as stat distribution? As always, there will be one stat distribution per class that everyone uses and everyone that doesn't will be excluded and left bitter that SE gives you plenty of different play styles to choose from but no support for any of them.

[Hyan]

If it's really easy to reset, i.e. as easy as changing your class is, and they fix it so the stat input isn't so slow, then maybe it will be okay. If not, though, I honestly don't know what it's going to do other than serve as an illusion of customization and, ultimately, another way to exclude players that don't sit with a spreadsheet open next to them at all times. If SE struggles to make entire classes viable, let alone job/subjob combinations, how on earth are they going to balance something as variable as stat distribution? As always, there will be one stat distribution per class that everyone uses and everyone that doesn't will be excluded and left bitter that SE gives you plenty of different play styles to choose from but no support for any of them.

Then the question becomes, is going with a build that works perfectly for class X and worse for class Y better than going with a build that works well for both classes X and Y.

Since I would imagine that someone with two classes will be "better" than someone with just one, and that someone with two classes and balanced build would perform better than someone with a build that favors one class but makes the other very inferior.

And when you add more classes (3, 5, 10+) I don't think it will be as simple as having everyone use one best build for every class. Especially if events favor different monster types and damage resistances, where different classes excel.

I also don't think that respeccing will be easy. From what I've seen, it's just us thinking it'll be easy to do so because it's difficult for us to accept this new twist to the character progression.

So far the system sounds like it'll be quite hard to figure out the "right" min/max builds, with so many variables going on. Of course I'm probably overlooking something, but so far it could lead to many things.

[Neoscrilla]

I'm a little concerned about the steep costs of HP and MP. I almost wish they were just derived stats from VIT/INT/MND/ etc.

It almost seems like one would have to split say 50% of their points leveling up to go into HP/MP and the other half into their actual stats. But as another potential healer, I am definitely worried about l33td3wd who decides he will not spend any points on HP and put them all into STR for that l33t dmg!

I'm almost tempted to say do something like this:

HP: Goes up based on STR and VIT.
MP: Goes up based on INT and MND.

This way, mages actually are encouraged to put some points into strength as it may be cheaper to raise than VIT and melee would be wise spending points in VIT.

Also, do something like this:

Raising STR, say for every 10 points... increases your resistance to fire, but weakens your resistance to water. So if someone has 100 str, and doesn't increase their MND a little bit, uberwaterboss01 might cause them some serious hurting.

I like this idea.

[Morningstar]

Then the question becomes, is going with a build that works perfectly for class X and worse for class Y better than going with a build that works well for both classes X and Y.

Since I would imagine that someone with two classes will be "better" than someone with just one, and that someone with two classes and balanced build would perform better than someone with a build that favors one class but makes the other very inferior.

And when you add more classes (3, 5, 10+) I don't think it will be as simple as having everyone use one best build for every class. Especially if events favor different monster types and damage resistances, where different classes excel.

I also don't think that respeccing will be easy. From what I've seen, it's just us thinking it'll be easy to do so because it's difficult for us to accept this new twist to the character progression.

So far the system sounds like it'll be quite hard to figure out the "right" min/max builds, with so many variables going on. Of course I'm probably overlooking something, but so far it could lead to many things.

I agree with you that resetting stats probably won't be easy. If SE expected you to change your stats around every time you changed classes it defeat the purpose if the armory system.

If you recall the very early interviews, SE said that you would probably be able to choose to Master 1 class or you could choose to be really good at more than 1 class but you could never master them. They said they were thinking about using a seesaw effect but they were still thinking about it.

As soon as I heard about the point system in alpha, that's what I thought of. You could level Conjurer and focus on mp and mage stats but if you choose to level Gladiator later you won't be optimized for the class. You can still be a really good Gladiator, you'd even have support from your Conjurer spells, but you won't be the best Gladiator.

[Ae Cha]

Then the question becomes, is going with a build that works perfectly for class X and worse for class Y better than going with a build that works well for both classes X and Y.

Since I would imagine that someone with two classes will be "better" than someone with just one, and that someone with two classes and balanced build would perform better than someone with a build that favors one class but makes the other very inferior.

And when you add more classes (3, 5, 10+) I don't think it will be as simple as having everyone use one best build for every class. Especially if events favor different monster types and damage resistances, where different classes excel.

This will only be the case if SE purposefully tunes encounters to need job swapping. Every group leveling camp could be full of different mobs immune to magic or melee, or there could be many endgame boss mobs with phases alternately locking out mages/physical DD with time to swap in between -- but unless hybridizing is absolutely necessary? No one is going to do it. There will be leveling camps where nobody is forced to change, and there will be bosses/instances/whatever where nobody is forced to change -- and this will probably be most places considering SE's idea of endgame complexity and the fact I doubt they will want to force people to have to level multiple classes to cap in order to participate in endgame anyway -- and people will min/max to them accordingly. Anomalies in level camps will be avoided and what endgame elements do demand hybridization will be respecced for, even if it is expensive or time consuming.

So far the system sounds like it'll be quite hard to figure out the "right" min/max builds, with so many variables going on. Of course I'm probably overlooking something, but so far it could lead to many things.

It's all just a numbers game. It won't be any more difficult to figure out than gear choices, probably even less so since I assume stats won't have strange hidden properties. People will number crunch the most point-efficient distribution of stats before anybody even hits the level cap, and we'll have people doing empirical testing in endgame not long after. In the end, there will be one setup that empirically provides the most damage/healing/mp efficiency with just enough HP/Resistance to survive the highest burst damage from the encounter (and if not stopped from doing so, people will respec to min/max down to the individual encounter just like people do with gear and subjobs).

It's possible stats will be a much less significant element than I'm thinking they will be and gear will be the brunt of effectiveness, but even then that probably just means most people will min/max to their main job and leave it.

[Kirb]

Min-maxers, destroying variation since 1989


Here's to hoping there will be several acceptable builds, including a decent generalist build, which would be necessary if SE restricts stat respecs to a certain amount of times per RL day. (Hopefully.)

[Katlan]

I don't think there will be much min/maxing... it may be situation dependent. Like some fights you may want more HP, others more dmg, ect...