Regardless of whether or not you're in the "It's fucked" or "It'll get fixed" parties (or anywhere between), you have to admit, it's a little spooky that they're trying to sort out core mechanics for a job less than two weeks before the game drops.
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Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward |OT3| Keniki Gauge Cost: 20,000
- Thread starter Ken
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Pretty sure the Vanu/Vath tribes aren't only 10k?
The HW Vanu and Vath Beast Tribes are the ones to hold specifically, as they give 103,680 EXP per quest at level 59 if you maxed them out. I highly doubt they'll scale in EXP beyond that, but that's an easy 622k EXP.
Anoregon
The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
I was just checking some vids for the two new classes. I'm definitely sold on Red Mage and am going to be trying it ASAP, but I feel like I can't really get a feel for Samurai from watching videos. I generally like 2hand melee so between dragoon changes and Samurai I'm not sure which I want to focus on for my melee fix.
It is still a system under development however. Adjusting tooltips will not fix what we've seen, but further changes could be in the works. Lily procs may be added to other abilities, confession stacks may come from other abilities, holding lillies may give other benefits. The issue is just that we don't know because we have incomplete and incorrect information. Until we launch the game, hit 70 and put everything into practice, we're doing nothing but speculating with little info.
If 4.0 launches and it really is no different from what we've seen, then yes we should complain and offer feedback and push for it to be reworked and revamped. That's all I'm saying, yknow?
UtterlyPerplexed
Member
Then they had better get cracking and quickly, because White Mages will very likely be given no quarter a month after launch when the first part of Omega Savage is released and party/raid finders will only be asking for ASTs and SCHs. Plus you'll need the time to communicate the radical changes else the stigma will not subside.
Anoregon
The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
It looks like it's mostly pew pew, and the melee abilities include a leap forward and a leap back in their small rotation so there' isn't a lot of manual re-positioning.
Stone Ocean
Member
You'll have to melee but mostly as a finisher to your rotation and you'll have OGCDs to get you in and get you out
Red Mage has two oGCD abilities that are movement based and on relatively short cooldowns. Additionally, because of dualcast, you'll sometimes want to be saving that proc for when you need to move out of AOE damage. (much like BLMs now save Firestarter/Thundercloud procs for when they need to move)
fluffydelusions
Member
Anyone want to buy me heavensward (NA non steam) it is ~$17 at gmg and I'll gift them something on steam of equal value?
Unfortunately true. Our own WHM is going AST in reaction to this. As a SCH, I've nothing to lament save my murdered AOE if it launches with the kneecapped bane we've seen.
No, actually it sounds pretty standard now for the team.
Told you guys balance would be fucked at launch. Some class has gotten the short straw since 2.0 each time without fail now.
Kwansu Dudes
Member
I really like the creature design in this game and the attention to detail is amazing. Also, everyone I've met so far has been incredibly helpful and nice. Can't wait for my Fat Moogle.
rdm is probably only going to melee range to spend his black/white mana for the 3 melee combos then jump back with displacement into finisher (verholy/flare)
Whether or not it's standard for the SE team doesn't really make it any less spooky.
The WHM info we have, though, is exactly how they chose to present the job to us. They for whatever reason don't want to actually communicate their design goals with the masses and instead funnel through a media preview. Stopping the overwhelming concern would take, like, two lines from Yoshida or somebody on the team indicating that he understands the specific concerns and they are adjusting the system away from that. We're not talking about super preliminary leaks, we're talking about what they chose to show us. They clearly know there's concern in general, and the only subsequent information they chose to relay was something that is a solution to something that isn't even the problem.
I'm not sweating potencies. Most of the tank ???? stuff at this point are things that they'd understandably still be evolving. I think it's silly that SE didn't take steps to make sure the incorrect Overheat tooltip shown in the media preview was explained, but it's not a big deal. But the WHM problems are fundamental, as in "lilies making it out of round one discussion, let alone into a spring build ofnthe game, in the form they chose to show everyone are antithetical to how the game works." The response is predictable, and the only response from Yoshida misses the point.
It's not the end of the world, but discussion and raising the concern now is incredibly valid. You don't generally see people running through discussions of people hyped by the media preview going "Don't be so happy about this looking cool! They could change it!" It only comes up in context of trying to squash critical discussion, but the dev team could immediately put everyone at ease by indicating they understand the actual problem formed on what they chose to have everyone see. They haven't, and given the massive disconnect between the dev team and the playerbase there's no reason to stop pushing the issue until they acknowledge the real problems.
Like, I get that the dev team generally gets a free pass for being bad at MMO stuff because FF first, but this sort of thing is insane. The last time I had somebody tell me to stop whining before the expansion came out and I could get my hands on the job was Bowmage. That went great.
Have we EVER REALLY gotten a good design philosophy behind certain classes though? I feel like the best we've gotten is rough ideas of how they want to portray the class and less of how they want people to actually play the class. I can't recall a time where YoshiP and the team ever really sat down and ran through the specific goals they had in mind for classes by the set of skills and how they expected to synergize with other skills/classes.
Everything always seems to be left so open ended with regards to how they design classes, they get dropped in, we get shown some skill effects and it's up to the community to place them without any real regard for what the aim was. The whole MCH issue way back when was like the most obvious moment of the team going one way with expectations and the community going the complete opposite and having to try and correct themselves. I don't want classes to be pigeonholed by the team, but at the same time, like a run through of a class when introduced discussing each skill would be nice I guess idk.
Everything always seems to be left so open ended with regards to how they design classes, they get dropped in, we get shown some skill effects and it's up to the community to place them without any real regard for what the aim was. The whole MCH issue way back when was like the most obvious moment of the team going one way with expectations and the community going the complete opposite and having to try and correct themselves. I don't want classes to be pigeonholed by the team, but at the same time, like a run through of a class when introduced discussing each skill would be nice I guess idk.
Closest I've seen them come in my short time with the game has been with red mage.In the live letter he laid out how they wanted it to be a class about constantly trying to balance your two mana types and that does seem to be how it plays. It's not a direct complete design doc, but it's more than just lore philosophy.
Outside of the WHM, I'm personally pretty happy with the SB balance so far.There are some slight tweaks to be made, especially on the tank end, but nothing that feels just completely out of whack.
This is accurate and, really, it's kind of a problem. We're four years into the game and they don't seem to have really gotten better at running an MMO. They got a pass for the most part in ARR because Yoshida Saved Everything. They kind of got a pass again in HW because first expansion, they're new at this!
But now? Eh. Secrecy to protect the story or the market is fine, but HW destroyed any chance they had at blind faith that they'd balance things. And frankly if the complaining motivates them to be more communicative it will benefit the playerbase as a whole. And if it doesn't then at least it got people talking about how the game in general and healing in specific work, so it was maybe educational.
How they had a four hour liveletter without doing a brief overview of each job baffles me. Like, make the job action video a little longer and just talk over it for a brief overview. Give people information so they can put your giant outdated info dump media thing in better context. How was that four hours long and leaving so many jobs totally in the dark, I don't know.
Man, making this connection when they first showed it off, complete with the goddamn Flamespitter, is what made the whole Overheat situation fishy from the start. "So it's Rumble Heat but capping is outright bad and then it shuts you down after, the fuck is this?"
Like, it's seriously close enough to 1:1 his kit that I'm surprised Machinists didn't get Scrap Shield.
I am now petitioning for Machinist Sprint to shield them
The sheer irony of this is that the goal of the introduced HUD elements was to kind of do this? To give some guidelines and helping hands to the expected playstyles of the jobs and how they imagine them operating. It's a large part of why the Lily (and Confession) mechanics feel so awkward; WHM has never wanted to heal the way that this is promoting and, even if it's the expected gameplay switch due to designs, it still yields a cumbersome-at-best reward in single-shot Spear.
But yeah, that's still a rather shallow level of design depth info for the jobs. I'd still like to know how they rationalized Disembowel for so long.
Discussion is absolutely warranted and should be encouraged of course, it's just the rampant negativity and hyperbole surrounding WHM is far greater than any other class. My thoughts are that people should ease off the "whm is dead, go ast" types of replies. Those types of responses don't encourage discussion. Granted, most of the hyperbolic reacting has been on the subreddit and that place is its own kind of special.
I wouldn't consider your comments thus far to be whining as they actually seem constructive, so don't think of me as telling you to stop whining. I too hate bowmage to this day. I just think we need a little more ammo before we start firing off at the dev team.
My thoughts on their silence and spookiness revolve around them favoring the JP community in the past over NA and EU. I don't think they were prepared for such a vocal backlash from both communities and just have been sticking to their ways. I am curious how the JP community is reacting to it.
Perhaps I'm playing it too safe and coming off as an apologist.
Like at some level I want to say they get such a pass because so many XI vets are probably still playing XIV and that relationship between dev/player was like talking to a stone wall. They're definitely more open about the development in comparison to XI and are generally open about a lot but on the job design front, it's always a fucking mystery grab bag of shit we don't know about till it hits us square in the face at launch.
WHM isn't dead. It'll certainly be a perfectly viable class to clear content with, it just doesn't feel ideal for anything which makes it hard to justify spending so much time getting working and learning.
I think the reason there's so much negativity around specifically WHM is that it's the odd man out. Even if the balance isn't spot on in the other roles, you at least pretty quickly get an understanding with what they're going for and even if say, Monk is significantly less useful than Dragoon, the difference between the most useful and least useful jobs isn't nearly as wide as it is with the healers. Not only does it feel pointless to run WHM over anything else, it's vexing as to why they made the choices they did in the first place.
I think the reason there's so much negativity around specifically WHM is that it's the odd man out. Even if the balance isn't spot on in the other roles, you at least pretty quickly get an understanding with what they're going for and even if say, Monk is significantly less useful than Dragoon, the difference between the most useful and least useful jobs isn't nearly as wide as it is with the healers. Not only does it feel pointless to run WHM over anything else, it's vexing as to why they made the choices they did in the first place.
I'd chalk some of it up to Japanese game design and development being a different beast with different philosophies. It doesn't excuse it but may shine light on such oddities and head scratchers.
fluffydelusions
Member
So if I'm coming from ARR (lvl 50) and just looking to get through whatever ARR stuff I missed and heavensward as fast as possible to be ready for stormblood should I just stick to story quests?
You slog through the rest of the ARR patches and then you have an amazing ride for HW.
Relaxed Muscle
Member
Maybe bowmage wasn't the best solution, but the imbalance between melee and ranged, BRD specifically, had to be adressed.
It always looked like a bandaid until a proper rework of the job, and general melee systems was in place.
WHM sounds like they don't know what to do with the job...
It always looked like a bandaid until a proper rework of the job, and general melee systems was in place.
WHM sounds like they don't know what to do with the job...
I'd look up the patch note archives to get an idea of what was added and tackle that. I'd link it but currently on mobile. I did link it yesterday a page or two back.
It's a hard situation because the other healers kind of do too much already. You have a pet job with good shields and then you have a buff healer with decent regens and decent shields. 'Better regens' really can't be a selling point because then they'd have to design content that required WM to clear and no one wants that. If they tried to give WM buffs, they'd just end up in a scenario where either AST or WHM was the clear winner and the other left in the cold. They could do something insane like make WHM a DPS healer, but then everyone at the high end would leave behind the other classes for faster clears. They really need to come up with a whole new mechanical niche for WHM to occupy and I have no clue what that could even be.
Xion_Stellar
People should stop referencing data that makes me feel uncomfortable because games get ported to platforms I don't like
You can do that but you're eventually going to hit iLv walls because story quests don't provide you with enough gear to be able to enter dungeons that need to be cleared in order to proceed with the story.
My nephew and his girlfriend who recently came back from a 13 month hiatus hit an iLv wall around 3.2 until I decide to get them some crafted iLv 250 gear set so they can proceed with the story without hassle but now they hit another iLv Wall for the last dungeon of Heavensward and they don't meet the iLv 230 requirement to enter it so now they must start doing content other than Main Story Quests in order to obtain better gear.
fluffydelusions
Member
Ooh I think I ran into that problem in ARR and a fellow gaf guildy hooked me up with some gear
You won't hit an iLevel wall until the very very tail end of the HW patches. By that point, SB will be out and you can probably find gear to push you over on the market for a reasonable price.
Cast times as a solution for ranged vs melee was a failure of creativity, and Minuet was a failure of function. Gauss Barrel was fantastic because it was a well designed system. Minuet sucked because it felt more like they were desperately trying to figure out how to balance Bard and MCH. Also with grown up weapon damage, no cast times, and no more needing to face the boss to shoot, physical ranged is just going to be silly now. I'm expecting nerfs.
This I totally get, and I'm probably equally influenced by spending the past couple of days running around having this same argument on the subreddit. But the negativity around WHM tends to escalate because it's the only job that got slapped with a mechanic that makes no sense. Any other job that's worried can be shifted within the context of their combat revamp without touching the core mechanic, but the way they went with lilies is worrying largely because they've previously stated a reluctance to make truly major job changes mid-expansion and that kind of sets WHM up to be buffed to be 'less bad' as opposed to good over the course of the expansion.
And the whole dropping job X for FotM Y is generally awkward--I would not suggest any new player looking to start raiding go WHM; not because it's not going to be capable of raiding but entirely because you give yourself a handicap breaking in to raiding. But for non-raiders WHM is The Best because it's going to own dungeons. That's even the situation most likely to benefit from lilies.
I'm probably whining at least a little, but I'm unsure how we get actual communication from the devs without making A Thing out of it. If the community understanding of the mechanic is wrong, they should be able to shut it down super quickly by just saying they changed the very basic basics. But instead we get the cure II thing which worried me more because it was a post-media-build fix that skipped the problem.
And it's part of why I favor the early vocal pushback--Ideally they learn that interacting with the playerbase is ultimately good for all involved. Taking a step back and looking at the overall trend of how we're getting info, it doesn't seem like the best path for anyone involved. Dev team has to face expectations formed without their input, playerbase is left with a hodgepodge of information.
And my understanding from the couple of other posts I've seen is that there's a vocally unhappy contingent on the JP side. Not sure how it compares size-wise. But then my understanding is that while Japan tends to get more information than we do, they still tend to have the same problem with not a lot of direct dev communication about stuff like this. Like, if they'd explain to Japan the rest of us could get translations and then maybe everyone wins.
This I totally get, and I'm probably equally influenced by spending the past couple of days running around having this same argument on the subreddit. But the negativity around WHM tends to escalate because it's the only job that got slapped with a mechanic that makes no sense. Any other job that's worried can be shifted within the context of their combat revamp without touching the core mechanic, but the way they went with lilies is worrying largely because they've previously stated a reluctance to make truly major job changes mid-expansion and that kind of sets WHM up to be buffed to be 'less bad' as opposed to good over the course of the expansion.
And the whole dropping job X for FotM Y is generally awkward--I would not suggest any new player looking to start raiding go WHM; not because it's not going to be capable of raiding but entirely because you give yourself a handicap breaking in to raiding. But for non-raiders WHM is The Best because it's going to own dungeons. That's even the situation most likely to benefit from lilies.
I'm probably whining at least a little, but I'm unsure how we get actual communication from the devs without making A Thing out of it. If the community understanding of the mechanic is wrong, they should be able to shut it down super quickly by just saying they changed the very basic basics. But instead we get the cure II thing which worried me more because it was a post-media-build fix that skipped the problem.
And it's part of why I favor the early vocal pushback--Ideally they learn that interacting with the playerbase is ultimately good for all involved. Taking a step back and looking at the overall trend of how we're getting info, it doesn't seem like the best path for anyone involved. Dev team has to face expectations formed without their input, playerbase is left with a hodgepodge of information.
And my understanding from the couple of other posts I've seen is that there's a vocally unhappy contingent on the JP side. Not sure how it compares size-wise. But then my understanding is that while Japan tends to get more information than we do, they still tend to have the same problem with not a lot of direct dev communication about stuff like this. Like, if they'd explain to Japan the rest of us could get translations and then maybe everyone wins.
SynthFetish
Member
Rewatching preview videos this morning and I'm kinda excited for those changes to NIN. Reducing the amount of skills seems great, although I'd rather have an entire Mudra based system rather then the 1,2,3 attacks w/Mudras weaved in.
It all comes down to too much on my screen and I forget to use all of my skills. :/
It all comes down to too much on my screen and I forget to use all of my skills. :/
Anoregon
The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
I haven't looked at much ninja stuff in particular, but cutting down on ability bloat is usually a pretty worthwhile endeavor for an MMO expansion. I almost held off on resubbing for a couple of weeks just because I know I'll enjoy playing my summoner more once it's streamlined a bit with the DoT consolidation/pruning.
I know people can feel like it's "dumbing down" to remove skills, but the truth is a lot of people just don't want to deal with needing a shit load of keybinds to perform at a decent level.
Stone Ocean
Member
The negativity regarding WHM comes from the fact that people expected bigger changes to WHM in order to make them fit with the other healers better and they got basically nothing.
Maybe tying shit to Cure I/II will make sense in the context of Stormblood's fight design but beyond me finding that very hard to believe that's probably something we need to be told instead of watching them add systems to some of the least useful abilities on WHM's repertoire.
Maybe tying shit to Cure I/II will make sense in the context of Stormblood's fight design but beyond me finding that very hard to believe that's probably something we need to be told instead of watching them add systems to some of the least useful abilities on WHM's repertoire.
Relaxed Muscle
Member
This is how I feel about the DRG changes. I know a good number of high level DRG players are upset with them removing the BOTD timer decrease from Geki and moving us to a more 'straight' rotation because it takes 'skill' from the job, but it's not like DRG didn't operate on a set rotation before. Timer based Gekis just meant having to learn 3 slightly altered versions of the basic 2 combo rotation for timings instead of 1. It wasn't like there was a huge variety of where you threw in the gekis, you just had to have the presence of mind to do it. Only thing you could really alter was holding them for movement phases. We still have a good chunk of that with LOTD and Nastrond. All this does is make the basic idea of how to play a raid dragoon less of a pain and removing a few less places where my butterfingers can totally screw me.
Squall ASF
Member
Holy crap did the amount of xp require to level up just take a massive leap! I didn't expect it to jump so greatly until level thirty but after getting to level 21 or even 22 pretty quickly from story quests, getting to 23 is hitting a new threshold. Maybe there will be a bunch of 'just talk to this person for quests' to rapidly get xp because the amount of xp you get per story quest is not much more than before and doesn't come anywhere close to compensating for the leap in xp necessary. So much for hitting level 35 before SB, especially since this extra xp ring won't work past level 30 ha
I got to fight my first Primal last night! I have to say Ifrit is pretty scrawny in this game though and didn't look too imposing despite the evil art for him. He's a low level trial so I imagine others that come later will be more imposing. I know you can go back and do trials on higher difficulties later though. It's kind of cool experiencing this trial after playing the FFXIV trials in FFBE. Now I see what exactly they were inspired by. I think I read somewhere that the Titan trial is a neat battle so I'm looking forward to that.
I had to choose my Grand Company last night and was struggling to make a decision. I kind of wanted to choose U'ldah for the convenience of the Scion HQ being there and it's where my character started but I've played the majority of the story there so I figured I should experience one of the other city-states more. I think I like the leader of the forest best and wanted to choose there but then I remembered the GAF FC house is in the pirate area so ultimately I decided to go with that for the convenience of having my GC and FC together and I left my home crystal in U'ldah for when I need to get to Scion HQ. The Maelstrom is the coolest name and has possibly the coolest outfit of the three anyway. I laughed when right after joining, I immediately ditched the region and military to do a Scion story mission...quicker than I expected though I know I'll go back and forth. I have to say it feels weird having to join a GC when I'm a member of the Scions. None of the other Scions have to, why should I not have a choice? The Scion work benefits all three GCs so it's not like I wouldn't be helping the realms and two of the GC areas get ignored by committing to just one. Lucky for them you still do Scion work. Is the GC stuff just going to be a story arc? Or will I always be a member and just not have to deal with story missions concerning them eventually?
Speaking of Scion HQ, please for the love of god tell me there's a quicker way to get there. I can't believe the oversight of not having a crystal in the little outpost it's located at. It's a pain in the ass having to run over there every time I need to report and you have to do so often.
The equipment repair was indeed dirt cheap, thanks again to the gaffers who told me where to do it. At what point should I bother fusing materia into my gear? I figure I don't really need it until the end game content for ARR. At this point, I'm swapping gear too often. Although I do know you can talk to the goblin guy to have him remove materia from a piece of equipment so I imagine I can keep reusing it.
Tonight I'll find out if other Scion team members are useful or worthless in missions ;p I trust they won't bail on me non-stop like Thancred, he was truly worthless and should feel as bad as he portrayed in a cut scene about his inadequacy following the Ifrit quest ;p
I got to fight my first Primal last night! I have to say Ifrit is pretty scrawny in this game though and didn't look too imposing despite the evil art for him. He's a low level trial so I imagine others that come later will be more imposing. I know you can go back and do trials on higher difficulties later though. It's kind of cool experiencing this trial after playing the FFXIV trials in FFBE. Now I see what exactly they were inspired by. I think I read somewhere that the Titan trial is a neat battle so I'm looking forward to that.
I had to choose my Grand Company last night and was struggling to make a decision. I kind of wanted to choose U'ldah for the convenience of the Scion HQ being there and it's where my character started but I've played the majority of the story there so I figured I should experience one of the other city-states more. I think I like the leader of the forest best and wanted to choose there but then I remembered the GAF FC house is in the pirate area so ultimately I decided to go with that for the convenience of having my GC and FC together and I left my home crystal in U'ldah for when I need to get to Scion HQ. The Maelstrom is the coolest name and has possibly the coolest outfit of the three anyway. I laughed when right after joining, I immediately ditched the region and military to do a Scion story mission...quicker than I expected though I know I'll go back and forth. I have to say it feels weird having to join a GC when I'm a member of the Scions. None of the other Scions have to, why should I not have a choice? The Scion work benefits all three GCs so it's not like I wouldn't be helping the realms and two of the GC areas get ignored by committing to just one. Lucky for them you still do Scion work. Is the GC stuff just going to be a story arc? Or will I always be a member and just not have to deal with story missions concerning them eventually?
Speaking of Scion HQ, please for the love of god tell me there's a quicker way to get there. I can't believe the oversight of not having a crystal in the little outpost it's located at. It's a pain in the ass having to run over there every time I need to report and you have to do so often.
The equipment repair was indeed dirt cheap, thanks again to the gaffers who told me where to do it. At what point should I bother fusing materia into my gear? I figure I don't really need it until the end game content for ARR. At this point, I'm swapping gear too often. Although I do know you can talk to the goblin guy to have him remove materia from a piece of equipment so I imagine I can keep reusing it.
Tonight I'll find out if other Scion team members are useful or worthless in missions ;p I trust they won't bail on me non-stop like Thancred, he was truly worthless and should feel as bad as he portrayed in a cut scene about his inadequacy following the Ifrit quest ;p
Stone Ocean
Member
I really don't understand why DRG players would want Geirskogul to shave off time from BOTD back lol
More places to screw up = More skill I guess. Also gives the illusion of DRG not being a pure rotation based class. As someone still trying to come to grips with raid dragoon, it's a real pain in the ass.
hosannainexcelsis
Member
Confession: I have never used Geirskogul because it seems like too much of a pain.
Relaxed Muscle
Member
Very Merry video on RDM:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6JjsyqDqKI
His SAM video was the more in depth about the job of all I've seen, so this should be quite good too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6JjsyqDqKI
His SAM video was the more in depth about the job of all I've seen, so this should be quite good too.
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