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

[Kupo]

1 hit breaks it in my experience, and all the mobs I've faced have regular attacks that can hit you from a range. Also the max distance for Archer to attack (as of now) is very short. So basically if I can hit them they can hit me, even when bound.

Thank you very much for the reply. Its interesting that Archer is turning out to be a poor soloer since I clearly remember some early Dev interview acting like Archer would be the best soloer.

On that topic, since this is the speculation thread... I am starting to wonder if Marauder will actually be the best soloer since they get more and more powerful the longer they stand still. And if you are soloing, it seems like you could/would stand still the entire battle.

[Jinko]

Hmm I was planning on being an Archer, if Gladiator turns out to be a decent DD I may go with that, the option of tanking is always a good one I suppose.

[Loaar]

I know the topic has moved on since then, but I was just reading over my notes from the last test and remembered something about the guildleves I thought could be fun later on in the game.

Someone a while back commented that they hoped the leves get more complicated than just "kill X mobs", then "kill X harder mobs" etc.

One of the very first leves, (think its the doorbeetle one) is different from the others.

Most of the leves have you running around to a few different "spawn" points to kill your quest mobs, but the beetle leve only has 1 location, and as soon as the first mob dies you get a message saying "the next mob has spawned" or something like that and it runs up and starts attacking. This continues until all the mobs for the leve are dead, effectively forcing you to keep fighting once you start with no downtime.

I can see that mechanic being used in a "Last Stand" style leve later on in the game. Get a party together, pick the leve that requires you to kill 40 mobs, and once you fight the first group they continue to spawn and attack you in waves til your either die or kill all 40 mobs. Kind of like the blitzkrieg assault for those that played FFXI.

[Hyan]

Sounds awesome, thanks for the info. That's exactly what I was hoping to hear.

I'm sure they'll get even more interesting as you guys level up to 20. Hopefully they won't delete the characters before that though!

[supercoco]

is just me , or the ranger the closer to the mob it was, the less dmg it did ( and a few misses, but this could be random ).

[Spira]

Leveling to 20 isnt even a hard task at all. as is, all you really need to do is be patient and grind at chigoe camp till then. am hoping to find a better higher level camp tho.

am already at lv 14 and i see people at lv 16.. if no ones already at 20, they should well be by the next session.

btw
stat points
Lv
12 -100
13 - 110
14 - 110
15 - ???
16 - 120

[Hyan]

Leveling to 20 isnt even a hard task at all. as is, all you really need to do is be patient and grind at chigoe camp till then. am hoping to find a better higher level camp tho.

am already at lv 14 and i see people at lv 16.. if no ones already at 20, they should well be by the next session.

Hopefully that "alternate advancement speed" they're talking about means slower progress, heh.

I don't want to end up being bored after few months just because leveling is too fast.

[Blabj]

On the flipside, a lot of people quit FFXI because leveling was too slow and inaccessible to people who can't play 12 hours a day. (exaggeration...)

[Jinko]

Yup too fast and people get bored, too slow and people get bored.

We don't know what path SE plan to go, it seems pretty obvious that you will require several jobs leveled to get the most out of the armoury system.

It doesn't take that long to level to 20 in FF11 if you know what you are doing, so I think its a bit too soon to say leveling seems to fast, bare in mind that much of the leveling in FF11 made slower because you are waiting for party invites and AFK players also.

[Hyan]

It obviously depends on the quality of content at said level. If all you can do is grind on one mob type for 5 hours to get to next level, it'll suck.

But on the other hand, if you can speed through the game without experiencing all the content it has to offer at lower levels would suck too.

I think it would be in SE's best interests to flesh out the low-midgame and make the leveling process as slow as possible at the same time... but I'll just have to hope they know what they're doing.

[Spira]

given the speed of the current leveling system.. i'm inclined to believe they want players to level a whole bunch of different classes at once.

and at end-game, it simply won't be enough to just level 1 class to max rank.

the way i see it now, is that players will want to build the best character for any particular role, and while there will always be a class that specializes in 1 thing, the various abilities that benefit it will be split amongst other classes too.

and so you'd look to leveling those 'sub classes' enough to just get those abilities.

As an example, and I've been thinking about this lol, someone who want to make a FFXI style PLD will want to main Gladiator, but also level Conjurer to 4 for cure (which is nerfed when 'subbed' btw), but probably also Pugilist until that class gets Mocking Provoke for another hate tool, and possibly Bloodbath from Marauder for a means of keeping yourself alive.

And you'll need to fit that within the 20 action cost limitation, and spend stats accordingly.

with alpha's cap at 20, this won't be hard.. but the cap will rise and eventually people will wanna level the classes that they think will benefit them first.
Some abilities are also class-specific but very useful (Tranquility for Conjurer for eg), so it weighs in on how you build your character.

In other words, any singular class is probably meant to be a base point from which you build your characters abilities. It gets a lot more complicated from there.

[Loaar]

I was thinking the same thing Spira.

It seems SE plans to make leveling fairly easy, but getting your character "complete" by getting the abilities you want from all the different jobs will be the hard part.

I'm really looking forward to seeing it all in action at higher levels.

[Malumultimus]

Hopefully, all escorts are fast and cute, as opposed to XI's epidemic of autistic Humes that needed escorting.

Watching the cutscenes, it definitely feels like FF, as I have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on.

Also, anyone catch that Roegadyn in Ghost's Roseling video? Nice name...

with alpha's cap at 20, this won't be hard.. but the cap will rise and eventually people will wanna level the classes that they think will benefit them first.
Some abilities are also class-specific but very useful (Tranquility for Conjurer for eg), so it weighs in on how you build your character.

That's why I dislike the idea of classes sharing abilities. I absolutely loathe the idea of people leveling ten classes to cap, all for one or two classes that they main. In XI, it wasn't a big deal, since it capped at 37 and that was only half of the abilities and required 20% of the dedication.

Putting time into other classes should be part of the game's longevity, not its base goal.

[Jinko]

I sure hope there will be that amount of customisation, thinking about it there could potentially be 100's of different builds, the first year is going to be quite interesting to see what people can come up with.

A marauder style dark knight will be a popular one no doubt. , add some black and purple plate armour.

[Zeno]

Should be noted that the amount of exp given to both physical and job classes are bound to change. This is just one type of "growth pattern" SE has planned for Alpha/Beta Testing. So, I wouldn't get too attached on those big numbers for EXP gain. Then again, maybe during final build, levels will go up to 200+ lol. Who knows at this point.

[Hyan]

If it's like Spira said...

Perhaps you get physical levels at a much much slower rate than Skill Ranks.

Assuming that Physical levels do stay the same regardless of class, which is the case right now.

You'd get fast progress via different skills and spells, and slower progress to your stats. I think it'd make sense since physical levels don't restart, so once your physical level is capped it stays there regardless of what you do.

For Alpha testers, do the 2 systems raise at around the same rate currently? My guess is that with the alternative growth pattern SE is looking at how the leveling works if your phys level raises at a different rate than skill ranks. We'll see soon enough.

[Loaar]

Physical levels are a fair bit slower.

I've leveled my PUG to almost 9, my CON to almost 5, archer to almost 4 and my physical level is almost 8.

Of course, its possible my physical level is going slowly because I have tried out a few things and was still fighting lower level mobs and getting less exp?

[Spira]

That's why I dislike the idea of classes sharing abilities. I absolutely loathe the idea of people leveling ten classes to cap, all for one or two classes that they main. In XI, it wasn't a big deal, since it capped at 37 and that was only half of the abilities and required 20% of the dedication.

Putting time into other classes should be part of the game's longevity, not its base goal.

any system will naturally have its strengths and weaknesses. I'm beginning to think this idea isn't so bad in that you will have many options and styles for which you want to customize your character. It's effectively 1 main job, and abilities borrowed from multiple subjobs, at your own choice.

At the same time, it also means that class balancing will be trickier, but also makes it easier to appeal to everyone, since most abilities are shared. So when classes do get balanced and abilities are added, its effectively new moves for every class that qualifies to use it, unless its a class specific ability. Given the way the game is now, theres are very few of those too.

The thing that SE will really need to know how to balance is the rate at which classes rank up.

And this brings me to what I think is the possible 2nd pattern they're looking at.

As is, classes and physical levels increase at almost the same rate, which seems peculiar.. since if you go all the way, you'll only have to run EXP levels once, and class ranks multiple times... meaning to say most people will stop gaining EXP very quickly.

It's possible that they might slow exp rates compared to class rank, so that EXP will still be relevant to the character building process. then again, stat points don't seem to do very much for a character.. or maybe its not very obvious.

edit: differing EXP and skill rates may be due to the fact that EXP seems to be gained in a linear fashion. like a mob at a certain level drops a fixed amount of EXP, regardless of how many PT members you have, or what level you are.
Skill points however differ with each player, and I wonder if the difference between your class rank and the mob's 'level' affects this like the FFXI exp system.

[Hyan]

If you get skill points only after killing the monster, have you checked if using a different amount of skills or spells result in less points gained?

Like a hidden count which calculates your skill usage during the fight and once it ends, you are rewarded with some amount of points.. Of course it might just be the mob level that affects it, but I dunno.

[Spira]

its something worth taking time to check i guess.

will probably try that next session.

skill points gained after battle are usually pretty low.. like 100-300 on blue/green mobs..
when I duoed and did yellow mobs i got around 700 skill points, at least according to 1 screen i got.
and i also remember being in a duo pt, the conjurer was soloing a red slug using the deaggro range exploit and got like 1k+ skill points once the battle was done.

since it was never when I was really paying attention not gonna assume this is conclusive, but mob check seems to affect skill points gained. exp is totally unaffected.