Random Complaint Thread. No white knighting allowed.

[Sephiroth]

People wanted a fast battle system, when you increase speed you remove strategy. The battle regiment system probably would have worked fine if people didn't whine about the battle speed in the alpha. People just want everything now in games, it's the same with the SP system. The old system was fine but people whined about the inconsistency not giving them enough SP. Now we get consistency with worse SP per hour. SE just can't win unless they give everyone rank 50 characters for nothing.

[jPuff]

Even when battle speed was increased to about where it is now people were still saying they wanted it faster (LOL) so that right there should tell you that those people are fucking retarded. The best part is the people that whined about "slow" battles in alpha have probably long since quit.

And now if S-E reduces battle speed to make combat remotely strategic people will fucking whine that S-E took something from them. Awesome.

[Blasta]

People wanted a fast battle system, when you increase speed you remove strategy. The battle regiment system probably would have worked fine if people didn't whine about the battle speed in the alpha. People just want everything now in games, it's the same with the SP system. The old system was fine but people whined about the inconsistency not giving them enough SP. Now we get consistency with worse SP per hour. SE just can't win unless they give everyone rank 50 characters for nothing.

I always remember this picture from an old thread...

http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/1913/lolguy.png

While I do agree with you on some level, your post still indicates that it's somehow the players fault that the game sucks. It's not surprising that after FF11, players wanted to express their opinions and share their ideas. People are going to post stupid shit like the above, but in the end it's still SE's job to choose where they want to take this game.

I guess this is complicated though, because SE has been shot down for not listening their customers. That makes me wonder if the pendulum is now going to swing on the other side in 1 go, and SE does everything we want...

P.S, Aren't most of FF MMO players in their 20s or something, so it's not like most of us are 14 like in WoW.

[Sephiroth]

Sometimes it's the players fault, but it's mostly SE. When they get a lot of negative feedback on something like the battle speed or the SP system SE feel they have no choice but to cater to player demands.

How can they make a fast battle speed more strategic? I guess we should be focussing on suggestions to improve it rather than go back and make an equal number hate it due to the slowness. Does BG even have a suggestions forum/thread that SE can read?

I think someone mentioned giving mobs more HP and more SP as a result somewhere. That only solves the length of battles issue, you've still got actions being spammed. Battle regimens could be queued up in a different bar so that you can still spam normal attacks until everyone has set their action. Or is that how they work already? Make status effects and elemental weaknesses/strengths matter more to give mages more to do.

[Blasta]

That's the question I started wondering aswell, how to create strategies. I think SC system is out of the question obviously, because as you also said, WS's can be spammed. What if the TP gain was a lot more less, so that the meleeing feels faster but you wouldn't be able to spam WS's.

But yea that's really tricky one, I can't come up with strats so quickly, but it's a fantasy world. The possibilities are unlimited.

P.S, If the game has march/haste, oh lord we are going to hit fast ^^

[Sephiroth]

I like the fast TP, it gets boring spamming standard attack.

I am now done with battle classes until they fix the SP system. I thought I'd try the coblyn grind everyone goes on about. I went to Nanawa, found that there's not enough mobs because there's two others killing them. They were giving me 90-100 SP per mob until I died and found myself in Longroot. Sure I could have set my home point but in reality it's just not worth the effort.

I am now done with goldsmithing because I have ran out of mats to skill up on and I can't get enough mats to grind more than half an hour a day even if I could.

That leaves other crafting classes and DoL. I'm so tempted to give this game a break until they fix it because even the second december patch is looking like a huge disappointment.

[sruon]

That's the question I started wondering aswell, how to create strategies. I think SC system is out of the question obviously, because as you also said, WS's can be spammed. What if the TP gain was a lot more less, so that the meleeing feels faster but you wouldn't be able to spam WS's.

But yea that's really tricky one, I can't come up with strats so quickly, but it's a fantasy world. The possibilities are unlimited.

P.S, If the game has march/haste, oh lord we are going to hit fast ^^

Haste status effect is in the .dats

[Lucavi]

People wanted a fast battle system, when you increase speed you remove strategy. The battle regiment system probably would have worked fine if people didn't whine about the battle speed in the alpha. People just want everything now in games, it's the same with the SP system. The old system was fine but people whined about the inconsistency not giving them enough SP. Now we get consistency with worse SP per hour. SE just can't win unless they give everyone rank 50 characters for nothing.

You want to go back to the days of having to wait 3-5 seconds between 2-handed swings? The days of everyone wielding a 2-hander being forced to sit on the bench because SE can't balance between slow, strong strikes and fast, light strikes?

I don't. I'll take faster combat for all classes over slow combat for 2-handers while war/nins do equal damage per swing. I'll take a system where it's not all about how much haste gear you stack, and a system where your job's potential isn't based on how much damage you can avoid while pumping out due to broken mechanics.

The battle regiment system doesn't work because its a shitty system, not because of speed. The system was terrible in Alpha, even with the slower combat. You're trying to coordinate these micro-commands that lock out your character while they take effect, and for pretty paltry rewards unless you stack a bunch of them. If it wasn't so clunky (and it would still be clunky with slower stamina regen) and so restrictive while it activates, it might have worked.

The old SP system sucked because SE was essentially making the entire game RNG. You really think leveling up on a class should be on a random chance? Seriously?

Its too bad SE started making these changes, Sepiroth. I'd have enjoyed seeing you as the only one still playing this game if they had kept things going the way they were.

Jpuff: The problem isn't the speed, its the damage to health ratio of the mobs. Its a tuning issue, not a speed issue. Battle speed means nothing if the mobs are tuned to hit like bricks yet have a low amount of health, like they currently are. Other games that get praised for their combat systems have fast combat, but to offeset the speed, the mobs you fight have a lot of health in order to draw out the fight. They also have interesting mechanics throughout the fight, often at percentages. It also means that when you work together, everyone gets to play whack-a-mole for a goodly bit of time, while if you solo, you can still kill the mob, it'll just take awhile.

XIV does neither. When you raise the rank of a leve, it simply jacks up the mob's damage dealt, while barely raising its hp. It doesn't draw the fight out longer, save for its slightly higher defense and/or evasion; it merely kills you faster. Its still a cluster-fuck of rape when you have 5-10 people on a mob, because the HP is barely enough to satisfy 2 people duoing the target.

[Blasta]

Any suggestions then how to update the battle/strat content? It would be interesting to see what solutions people could come up with. Someone make a thread, I'm too... sick to make the 2 clicks

[Siatdiat]

I don't care what they do as long as its not clunky and has some incentive. The fast paced gameplay is an improvement, as long as it doesn't become a WoW like rotation for "max dps".

At this pace I may actually feel moved to log in around summer.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

Increasing mob hp so you don't burn everything so quickly is probably best. The whole leve difficulty increase bit is totally true. I remember doing some leves with a group of 10 on 4 star which was too easy, then going on 5 star and half of us getting raped but we still took down mobs just as easy. There's no balance. They just hit way harder and are still too easy to kill. Even just having 'certain' mob types have a lot more hp than others making them 'harder' to kill would be ideal for party play. In such a situation they should be worth more SP and obviously party play would net more SP/hr off these types of mobs than something a person could get solo. It would be tricky to balance but it could be done. Something like fly swarms(generally weak hits/low hp) being easy and good for solo vs efts or crabs being much harder(hit a bit harder/more hp/more sp) and ideal for party play.

Battle regimes SHOULD que up and allow you to still fight. The battle system is too fast paced for you to sit there idle as you wait to launch a chain of attacks. Once the BR has started you should be locked out of commands until the BR is complete. Really not a hard concept that should have been implemented ages ago, just like increasing mob hp.

Fast paced battle can still require some strategy. Take WAR for example. The hardest dungeon in the game for instance puts you up against bosses with a LOT of hp and either use moves that require you to get the hell away before you die, spawn minions that you need to kill, some sort of channeling attack that you need to take turns stunning in order to fight past, or something else. Bosses can enrage if you take too long or don't kill enough minions yet only take 10 mins to kill tops. I assume they plan to do endgame content like this; just having bosses with a LOT of hp and some kind of attacks that require players to respond quickly by either gtfo, stunning, or something else. I haven't personally tried any of the new NMs, but they need to adopt something like what they did with fafnir back in XI, if you have too many melee beating on the NM he'll spam tp moves and wipe your face. When I hear from a friend that all you do is get two healers and two tanks, load up on melee, and zerg it down it makes me want to play all that much less.

[Siatdiat]

Increasing mob hp so you don't burn everything so quickly is probably best. The whole leve difficulty increase bit is totally true. I remember doing some leves with a group of 10 on 4 star which was too easy, then going on 5 star and half of us getting raped but we still took down mobs just as easy. There's no balance. They just hit way harder and are still too easy to kill. Even just having 'certain' mob types have a lot more hp than others making them 'harder' to kill would be ideal for party play. In such a situation they should be worth more SP and obviously party play would net more SP/hr off these types of mobs than something a person could get solo. It would be tricky to balance but it could be done. Something like fly swarms(generally weak hits/low hp) being easy and good for solo vs efts or crabs being much harder(hit a bit harder/more hp/more sp) and ideal for party play.

Battle regimes SHOULD que up and allow you to still fight. The battle system is too fast paced for you to sit there idle as you wait to launch a chain of attacks. Once the BR has started you should be locked out of commands until the BR is complete. Really not a hard concept that should have been implemented ages ago, just like increasing mob hp.

Fast paced battle can still require some strategy. Take WAR for example. The hardest dungeon in the game for instance puts you up against bosses with a LOT of hp and either use moves that require you to get the hell away before you die, spawn minions that you need to kill, some sort of channeling attack that you need to take turns stunning in order to fight past, or something else. Bosses can enrage if you take too long or don't kill enough minions yet only take 10 mins to kill tops. I assume they plan to do endgame content like this; just having bosses with a LOT of hp and some kind of attacks that require players to respond quickly by either gtfo, stunning, or something else. I haven't personally tried any of the new NMs, but they need to adopt something like what they did with fafnir back in XI, if you have too many melee beating on the NM he'll spam tp moves and wipe your face. When I hear from a friend that all you do is get two healers and two tanks, load up on melee, and zerg it down it makes me want to play all that much less.

When I examine closely it all comes back to crafting. They put a big emphasis on crafting, so they can't make good gear be from doing content requiring grouping at low levels. If increasing difficulty of leves increased drop values, as in better quality gear, or had some low level NM that had a loot pool instead of a single drop that required differing amounts of people (3-15) then it would reward group play. This also assumes they will get rid of the limit on leves. Guardian favor is limited, that is fine, but leves shouldn't be, especially considering outside leves it is just a grind. People would feel the need to play together and in this effort learn grouping mechanics as they level up. But they have to make sure crafting stays oh so important, so its just silly. Who thought first thing when 14 was announced "OH MY GOD I CAN'T WAIT TO CRAFT SHIT!!!!".

So that leaves sp gain as an emphasis to make party play better. Which, if it isn't extremely good, people won't bother. Am I the only one who sees so many easy fixes for making this game into a game rather than an online fantasy chat room for cybering cat women?

[Lucavi]

I don't care what they do as long as its not clunky and has some incentive. The fast paced gameplay is an improvement, as long as it doesn't become a WoW like rotation for "max dps".

At this pace I may actually feel moved to log in around summer.

Technically there "are" rotations in this game. As a conj, I rotate between fire >> thunder for every mob while solo. When fighting in a group its fire >> thunder >> cure >> slow >> fire, and when I'm simply healing its cure >> random buff >> cure.

In beta on my lancer it was speed surge >> melee >> feint (when ready) >> skewer 2 >> melee.
On glad it was raise shield >> melee >> melee >> melee >> WS >> raise shield >> melee >> WS >> melee

Rotations exist when the enemy is doing nothing to interrupt your attacks or to force you to change your tactics, which unfortunately consists of the entirety of XIV right now. The only thing stopping me from my conj rotation is hate/threat, which exists in any other game, even the "dreaded WoW, and when soughspeak is up, not even that will stop the rotation. Likewise, the only thing stopping my rotation on lancer is/was AOE moves, like fluid discharge and other painful tricks.

I don't know why people view rotations as such a bad thing. You had a rotation in every old FF around. Fight >> fight >> fight >> heal or Nuke >> Nuke >> heal >> collect XP. XI had things like the elemental wheel, which was a rotation, paladin tanking methods which were largely rotations (when not using /nin), summoners rotating between targets with a single cure spell with a BP every minute, warriors rotating between auto-battle and auto-battle, with the occasional WS thrown in.

I mean, what was so "dynamic" about XI's combat system (besides the absurdly slow pace for 2-handers) that somehow excluded it from the "rotation" chart? Rotations exist simply because the best abilities are often on cooldown, hence you pick 3-4 of the best and cycle through them.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

The emphasis on crafting and always needing repairs is the issue. If the wear of items was toned WAY down to a rate of only needing repairs once a week if you actually played all week, then the system would balance out and there wouldn't be such a huge need for crafting. Right now I'd like to play my conj and thaum, but I have so much gear in my inv from lancer and my crafting classes that I just don't have the room. This tied to the thought of having even MORE gear that I'd have to repair on a daily basis makes me want to pick up another game rather than log in. The new dev team hasn't had time to really do anything yet, but I'm hoping they'll step in next month and say "new party mechanic here, gear durability wear drastically reduced here, d box here, better search function here, more to come soon". If they don't I probably won't bother with the game until maybe ps3 launch. It's just not fun to log in knowing that after this 1-2 hours I'll play I need to fork out a ton of gil to a repair npc or hunt down a crafter to repair my shit so I can do it all over again.

[Fawkes]

I never liked crafting in FFXI, so I was pretty disappointed to find out it's the main feature of FFXIV, and the whole "battling monsters" thing is almost the secondary activity. It might be fine for the SWG nerds that actually want an MMO where you just sit around cobbling shoes all day, but for me it's just hampering any enjoyment I might have had.

[Alderaan]

Is it even possible to have a casual MMO when you have a player run economy with such an emphasis on crafting?

That route obviously works great for sandbox MMO's, but i don't believe it works for what SE was intending XIV to be. Although i suppose they really didn't exactly succeed in that endeavor either.

[miokomioko]

I'm not quite understanding how people are accusing crafting of being so utterly important/prioritized in XIV. How is it any more important in this game than others? How else is basic equipment made? Is it just because equipment doesn't drop from any mobs yet? Now that rank 1~25ish weapons and armor can be purchased from NPCs and there's even some content that rewards full pieces of gear, as well as the physical exp fix... I don't see how people can still say that battling takes a back seat to crafting outside of the crappy DoW/M skill point gains that are currently just turning people to crafting out of boredom.

I'm guessing it's the whole item repairs things... but with the value of gil right now, I'm not sure if NPC repairs are all that unrealistic to rely on once they fix the fucking absurd rate of condition wear (which would also take some importance away from crafting). A full day of playing, exping, farming, etc. should bring my weapon down to 30% maybe. Repairs should be a daily thing, not an hourly thing, so you could just throw your weapons up in your bazaar for repairs when you go to sleep and have them repaired and able to last through the next day's activities.

[Lucavi]

I'm not quite understanding how people are accusing crafting of being so utterly important/prioritized in XIV. How is it any more important in this game than others? How else is basic equipment made? Is it just because equipment doesn't drop from any mobs yet? Now that rank 1~25ish weapons and armor can be purchased from NPCs and there's even some content that rewards full pieces of gear, as well as the physical exp fix... I don't see how people can still say that battling takes a back seat to crafting outside of the crappy DoW/M skill point gains that are currently just turning people to crafting out of boredom.

I'm guessing it's the whole item repairs things... but with the value of gil right now, I'm not sure if NPC repairs are all that unrealistic to rely on once they fix the fucking absurd rate of condition wear (which would also take some importance away from crafting). A full day of playing, exping, farming, etc. should bring my weapon down to 30% maybe. Repairs should be a daily thing, not an hourly thing, so you could just throw your weapons up in your bazaar for repairs when you go to sleep and have them repaired and able to last through the next day's activities.

1) Item repairs / self item repairs
2) Ease of switching classes means you'll eventually try everything out and will want gear for everything
3) Actually storyline / quest lines for craft classes means a lorewhore will do them for completionist's sake
4) Convenience factor. Since it takes so fucking long to go to X to buy Y or to go to ask A to make B, its better to do it your damned self to "save time", even if you actually aren't because you have to grind levels to make it.


I'm sure there's more, but that's what I'm thinking about right now. The repair shit has to go, though. I've never heard of a game where a weapon needs repairs in less than an hour, WITHOUT the user dying repeatedly.

[Sign]

I have always wondered if there is an added durability penalty for death. If there isn't I would gladly take a hit to durability on death in exchange for reduced item wear through usage. It would help reduce the need to repair every 30 minutes and actually start to give people a reason to fear dying rather than just zombie-ing everything.

As for crafting being important, even SE themselves are pushing for crafting to be more important by making it a full-fledged class rather than a time killer you do on the side. Combine that with all the reasons Lucavi mentioned and DoH quickly becomes a very important Discipline and with no real end-game or even mid-game activities to participate in you could say DoH (and DoL by extension) is the only real Discipline to have a use in the game at the moment. The only "need" for DoW/M classes is just for grinding for the sake of grinding.

[Riposte]

Rather than dumb the system down like that, just think it out naturally. If crafters can heal items, why can't they protect items? Give the crafting classes a Protectra(in the FFXI sense) ability which slows down item degradation. That way they are not cut out of the equation.

Then again, people fearing death is cool too. However, that is at least covered in leves by timelimits.