Things you want XIV to have in the future.

[Lucavi]

My biggest gripe right now is the lack of auto-attack. The purpose of an MMO is to get together with friends, meet people, and have adventures together. The lack of auto-attack means that if you want to talk to somebody while fighting ("nice WS!", "throw up a Taunt so I can attack from a different angle", etc), you literally have to halt your damage output by 100%. Auto-attacking to get TP was one of the best times to talk to people... granted, it would be concise, to-the-point talking since you'd have to interact pretty often, but that was part of the charm.

Thinking of this in endgame terms - if I didn't have auto-attack while I was running a salvage LS in XI, I wouldn't have been able to call cells/paths/etc without completely stopping my TP gain, which, in the long-term, would cost probably 5+ minutes over the course of a run. Vent is not an option for everybody, and some people (like myself) find it difficult to focus on the game while physically speaking/listening to people. SE shouldn't build a game that has to rely on 3rd party software like Vent to allow basic communication without completely stopping your damage output, anyway.

I know this won't get changed since it's the very core of XIV's battle system, but at the very least it'd be nice if they added something like a "repeat last action until I say otherwise" button for combat.

For all I know it already exists in the game, but with the complete lack of tutorials/etc I haven't been able to find it.

Sorry for the stupidly long post about a single issue, but I felt I needed to justify my position rather than just say "add auto-attack", which just makes me sound like I wanna be an AFK figher D:

Use vent.

I feel what you're saying, but there are other MMOs that don't have auto-attacks that have thriving end-games. I know a lot of FFXIers are all about typing and not actually talking to people (so they don't have to hear the whiny, stuffy 13-year-old voice of their pimpily-faced botting LS leader), but I've had plenty of great experiences in other MMOs using vent for end-game activities. If I was a tank in WoW and had a heavy rotation, I had to speak quickly or find spots to talk. It was the same as with any DPS job - you talk to long and your rotation suffers, so your DPS suffers, but you get used to it and eventually you're rolling through like a well-oiled machine. The auto-attack is one of my least-concerned issues. If I'd whine about anything in the battle system, it'd be how clunky raising your shield feels, especially when the delay of every ability sometimes overlaps commands that are supposed to be tight and responsive.

At some point I'll probably just make a shield macro similar to my holy shield macro with WoW, and it'll feel a lot more natural, but for now, when manually selecting it, it feels... eh.

Edit: Nerdrage on, but this is pissing me off:

Less fancy vocabulary words for basic systems and concepts. I take, for example, behest. Behest follows a long line of fancy SE words that they looked up in the dictionary of old-world terms, and for what? A miniature glorified semi-public leve that doesn't even allow people to help other people with mobs unless they're in the same party. Behest simply translates into run here, kill these, kill boss, collect reward. Why put such a fancy-sounding name for such a simplistic system?

Battle regimens. Why make it sound all fancy when it essentially boils down to standing still while waiting for someone to fumble with their commands, watch your tank or healer get rocked in the process, watch the regimen fail, and the group wipes. Or, you pull one off, but by then, the mob has run away to another party member, and one of the people in the group is now out of range to do their part because their character is locked.

SE needs to stop focusing so much on boisterous, fancy names and actually come up with some advanced in-game concepts. Besieged. Behest. Besaid village - I'm tired of it. Make quality systems, THEN throw a cool name behind it. Skillchains are/were a thousand times better than this tripe, and it didn't have some middle-english name to go along with it.

[Rivian]

I know this won't get changed since it's the very core of XIV's battle system, but at the very least it'd be nice if they added something like a "repeat last action until I say otherwise" button for combat.

This. Need something to alleviate the constant button mashing, i agree.

[Lucavi]

They had it in XIII, I don't see why they can't have it here. FFS, just rip shit from your other games, SE. Its not hard.

[Elcura]

SE needs to stop focusing so much on boisterous, fancy names and actually come up with some advanced in-game concepts. Besieged. Behest. Besaid village - I'm tired of it. Make quality systems, THEN throw a cool name behind it. Skillchains are/were a thousand times better than this tripe, and it didn't have some middle-english name to go along with it.

I doubt their making of names got in the way of any real (or lack of) design. You're right, it's a total nerd rage.

[Lucavi]

Hey, I warned you! It just gets to me after awhile. Focus on your gameplay first, and names second.

[Kaisha]

This. Need something to alleviate the constant button mashing, i agree.

I wouldn't mind a proper action-queue system, but the stamina bar system pretty much makes an 'auto-attack' worthless, unless you want to be dead on stamina when you might be needing to use a stronger ability to quicken the pace.

Auto-hop would be glorious.


On a side note, I know some people won't like the idea, but I want NPCs that have specific purposes to have a relevant icon besides their name.

For instance:
Weapons Salesman - Sword
Armor Salesman - Shield
Quest-giver - Speech balloon
Random assortment of goods - Bazaar icon


Also on the quest giver subject, as much as taking a cue from WoW it is, I'd like knowing if I'm close to a level where an NPC would offer me a quest so I can keep it in mind while I go out and XP for a bit.

[Celeras]

Everything I want has already been covered mostly, but I'd also like the conning system to be done on an individual basis instead of how it is currently. Tired of the guesswork involved after my partys tank has been one shot by a blue, or having zero issues fighting a group of reds solo. They should stop scaling it on quantity and giving the same readout for the entire group, and just read out normally.

And to be perfectly honest I don't understand why they don't just put a level # instead of these idiotic colored shield. It's way simpler, and works better.

[miokomioko]

I would like it so it's possible to craft and talk at the same time.

And while I like the idea of push-to-smash in combat, auto-attack was really nice for, you know, talkin'.

Expanding on this a little, I would like maybe a Regime option for solo so you can slap in a bunch of commands to execute in order by yourself. Every time I solo on PGL, I end up doing Featherfoot > Heavy Strike > Heavy Strike > Concussive Blow > etc. anyways. A solo regime would let me do that while talking at least. And if a TP/MP costing abilities does have the TP/MP it needs, skip.

[KoRnpedo]

For me I hate how running away from mobs is so freaking easy, I hate the count down till disengage, I rather have the mob chasing me till it kills me or someone helps me.. the game is so easy as it is now..

[miokomioko]

For me I hate how running away from mobs is so freaking easy, I hate the count down till disengage, I rather have the mob chasing me till it kills me or someone helps me.. the game is so easy as it is now..

You must not have made a character in Gridania or read much of these threads.

[Whaleporn]

Save my action bar by job. Switching weapons and having to reprogram it is lame as hell.
Add a UI path to fast-equip jop weapons you own. A bar by the map maybe. You switch for everything.

Add jumping, even if it does nothing it's nice to mash jump walking between places.

[miokomioko]

Save my action bar by job. Switching weapons and having to reprogram it is lame as hell.
Add a UI path to fast-equip jop weapons you own. A bar by the map maybe. You switch for everything.

Add jumping, even if it does nothing it's nice to mash jump walking between places.

Besides Jumping being completely mind-numbingly retarded and discussed to death... are you aware there are macros for not only switching weapons/tools (classes) and equipment, but also actions/traits?

[plue]

Add jumping, even if it does nothing it's nice to mash jump walking between places.

For this very reason I hope they don't add it. There's nothing more annoying than seeing a bunch of people jumping everywhere you turn.

[Whaleporn]

"Are you aware, whaleporn-san, that you can help square enix by coding basic game functions that FFXI had such as equipment memory on job switch? Just giving you a head up, baka gajin."


Macros shouldn't be needed for handling a game function that you do as often as once every 45 seconds. Also I can't think of a situation where you'd use a macro if it remembered for you, especially since you have three active bars to play with.

[miokomioko]

You switch classes every 45 seconds? Odd.

[Sign]

While I agree that action bar saving should be in the game (not a high priority because macros can cover it for now), what the hell are you doing that requires a class change every 45s?

[Whaleporn]

Trolling aside:

This game does some very big things right (even to a cynical old vet) but has so many small details where they could fix things/shore up design elements to get you to the FUN of exploring the world. The biggest things would be getting system clutter out of the way of making game decisions: Filling your bar or making a macro to do so isn't a game decision: it has no bearing on your success in any given challenge since you can't do it in combat.

Streamlining things like repairing gear via craft would be important too: if I have the skill + equipment + mats to repair something, why not let me hit one button to do it?

I'm pretty sure they'll add some npcs who can tell you what time your guildleves will refresh, but right now that's a major issue.

Have anima recharge be the reward for helping people do quests/missions that you've already completed, assuming they add cool CoP style mission lines. Or have some other in-game way of restoring it faster: it's one of the best things they've improved from FF11: teleport from the get-go.

Once you receive camp mats for guildleves, It'd be cool to have a quest synth prompt.

Map markers for in town guildleves, or make sure quest descriptions get you there.

Name market districts after item types: Crystal ward, weapon ward, repair ward, alchemy ward... ect. Ten seconds to do this, fixes lots of issues with bazaars.

Mouse over text on signs: it's a simple thing from WoW that helps players figure out which food stand ect... they want (spices and sweets vs gardener's grove, ect). Also it seems that square wants a big epic world with some serious backstory from the start (go take a look at ishtar. If you don't do this you wasted your beta imo.)

Some of the bugs/lag will get dealt with, and they've already made some balance changes (like fixing eq by NPC). I'd be fine with EXP reduction if they didn't set a 0 point, and made it clear that you're getting a bonus for casual play rather then punished otherwise.

Add enough mob variety that you can get craft fodder in the area near town without having to fight level 30 monsters. I'm constantly teleporting to skull valley to restock on puck shards. There's enough room in the game that this can be part of the benefit of exploring: as it stands you find a lot of monsters that ranged attack you down with one shot.

I was going to say jumping is a joke but your reaction suggests that you have a grudge against elements of a game that let people express personality in how they travel.

Add Galka spinning like blood elves when they jump.

[Whaleporn]

Typical run out of town to gather materials to break: Kill marmot (because it's there) see harvesting point. Switch to harvest gear, grab some straw, switch back to sword to kill cobbler, notice mining point, switch to mining gear. Forget that when you switched back to sword you didn't set anything. Put sword away, run from monster that cons green.

Skipping harvesting points that are relevant to my craft because of the hassle of switching gear is sort of counterproductive to the point of scattering them around the world in the first place imo.

edit: also, when you are going through your gear to repair everything for skill ups.

[Sign]

Ok, I have thought of another thing that I haven't seen mentioned here but I mentioned in the Random thread.

Let us set the minimap to rotate. I hate having it stationary with your icon rotating, it always fucks me up for some reason.

[Kurokikaze]

This is what I don't understand. Using ws's in a certain order should produce the battle regime results. Why you need to activate a condition that prevents you from atking makes no sense. In other words, port XI's SC system into XIV and call it battle regimes.

I thought the exact same thing. SCs would be going off all the time though if that were possible. Right now, BR and this Battle system don't work together at all. The entire system needs to be scrapped since its modeled after the old battle system.

Posted in the Random thread but its gonna get lost lol: http://insixide.com/archives/104