Unknown Soldier
Member
Teknoman said:
Dead when you have time to take screenshots! :lol
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Final Fantasy XIV |OT| ARR: Alpha Closed. Beta mid-Feb
- Thread starter demosthenes
- Start date
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Dead when you have time to take screenshots! :lol
Dreamwriter
Member
Just got done with a night of partying with my static. Damn this game got a lot better. The balance in the Leves is way better - used to be we'd pick the stars based on the enemy we were fighting, as the difficulty was quite different from Leve to Leve, but tonight we quickly discovered that now we have to just leave it at 2 stars at our current Rank, the only truly easy creatures were bees. And the targeting system works better, there was no lag though there obviously were a ton of people online, and we all of course ranked up at close to the same rate.
Unfortunately, we occasionally ran into two annoying bugs. One, sometimes all the actions on the action bar are greyed out, and you can't do anything. To solve, you have to exit combat stance and then go back to combat stance. Worse, the game crashes occasionally now. And an odd thing, half the time two of us would crash at exactly the same time, meaning it wasn't something about our local system setup or our internet provider.
Unfortunately, we occasionally ran into two annoying bugs. One, sometimes all the actions on the action bar are greyed out, and you can't do anything. To solve, you have to exit combat stance and then go back to combat stance. Worse, the game crashes occasionally now. And an odd thing, half the time two of us would crash at exactly the same time, meaning it wasn't something about our local system setup or our internet provider.
I dunno about at your level, but THM Stygian Spikes works great for me, as long as I'm getting hit.DrDogg said:
Teknoman said:
While I'm alive and well... :lol
Dreamwriter said:
My THM is 15 and my CON is 21. But even with Stygian Spikes, that only works if you're soloing, which I've already stated is super boring. Not to mention I don't have a problem managing MP while soloing. I rarely even use spells outside of Cure.
Also, when I solo leves, I start at 5-stars and usually have no problem until the last mob runs away to get tougher enemies. That was doing r10 leves on my THM (which was 14 at the time). Thus far, it seems as though leves have gotten easier, but I haven't done many since the patch.
I did run into the greyed out action bar issue. It got me killed on a leve. It happened to me after I readied my shield and didn't go away until I readied it again, then went back to passive mode (after dying).
I have not had any crashes since the patch...
Dreamwriter
Member
Yeah, when I was soloing rank 10 leves back in the day, I did start at 5 star and for the most part had no problem. But rank 20 leves are tough (admittedly, we started doing them when they first showed up at the guilds long before we were rank 20). Stygian Spikes works for me in my party of 4, because as a debuffer/damage dealer, I get hate once in a while (they made healing almost hate-free with this patch, but debuffs gather LOTS of hate, especially when you AOE a group with them).
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
Degaaaaaaaa
Now I'll have to let dirty strangers touch my pretty axes.
Now I'll have to let dirty strangers touch my pretty axes.
pancakesandsex
Member
Emenis said:Hey guys,
Some stuff has come up for me that I have to take care of so I'm gonna be gone for awhile =\. Sorry for not saying much sooner..
At least I'm not just leaving and not saying anything.._. lol
It's good stuff though so no worries! o.ob
Good luck with whatever you have going on man.
SuperLurker
Member
I think I'm going to end up waiting until more patches hit before I decide if I'm going to spend more time with this. I'll try and log on some time this week and I'll drop my SoD and Gunsmith Cats pearls so I'm not taking up space. I'll give away most of my stuff as well, just going to keep enough gear to fight with in case I come back.
Finally was able to get on and play with the new update. On the whole, I'm pretty encouraged by it.
The SP stuff needs work, but the game's overall implementation is technically competent all of a sudden. The UI and everything has improved far more than I really thought possible.
I'm also really surprised to see them give up on the random SP thing so quickly, just on a purely conceptual level. My feeling now is that this team is far more open-minded than the XI team, because that's not an insignificant thing to change. They seem more decisive and less wishy-washy and arrogant to me, at the moment.
The SP stuff needs work, but the game's overall implementation is technically competent all of a sudden. The UI and everything has improved far more than I really thought possible.
I'm also really surprised to see them give up on the random SP thing so quickly, just on a purely conceptual level. My feeling now is that this team is far more open-minded than the XI team, because that's not an insignificant thing to change. They seem more decisive and less wishy-washy and arrogant to me, at the moment.
For anyone who may have missed it, YG have an auto updater program, it scans and updates YG in realtime as you search retainers.
Download is here http://ffxiv.yg.com/yg-updater
It also records drops and items you get from gathering.
Download is here http://ffxiv.yg.com/yg-updater
It also records drops and items you get from gathering.
Dreamwriter
Member
Looks like we're getting a bugfix patch tomorrow - they put up a small list of known issues and scheduled a maintenance for tomorrow afternoon.
Lodestone said:
Dreamwriter
Member
Dunno, I haven't seen much else broken in the patch except for the occasional crash. And we know they are holding the other big fixes and balancing for the December patch.Teknoman said:
Dreamwriter
Member
Well, enemy difficulty definitely has an effect on the party SP me and my friends were getting last night in our Leves. If we turned down the difficulty, enemies changed color, and we got less SP per kill.Teknoman said:
Pai Pai Master
Banned
Dreamwriter said:
Isn't the issue that it doesn't make much of a difference outside of leves, though?
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
It makes a small difference during leves, and an even less difference for normal mobs.Pai Pai Master said:
As it is now, you can fight any given mob and it'll give you say, 100 SP. Yet, if you fight a mob that is relatively 2x harder, you'll only get 120 SP for your trouble.
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
And what's also dumb is that at lower ranks, you can do a leve and get upwards of 800SP per kill.
The consistency in that regard needs to be smoothed out.
The consistency in that regard needs to be smoothed out.
Dreamwriter
Member
What are you fighting at what rank with how many people? It sounds to me like you just are choosing to fight things that are too weak for your party.DrDogg said:
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
More often than not now, that is the best way to get the most SP/hour. You do not have a variety of equally good options to best suit your party size/playstyle.Dreamwriter said:
We exchanged one narrow gameplan (efts/raptors) for another (easy mob genocide), but overall, it's an improvement.
Two steps forward, one step backwards.
Dreamwriter said:
Even if the party system was designed to make you fight difficult mobs, the DoM classes are simply boring.
What do you do as CON? Cast Cure. Once every 3-5 fights cast Protect, Shell, Shock Spikes and maybe Stoneskin. Repeat.
I don't have to pay any attention to what the mob is doing, what the other party members are doing, or even worry about targeting (which is still terrible for DoM classes in a party). I just lock on to the tank and cast Cure when his HP starts to drop.
Dreamwriter
Member
I play a THM, I have fun, and definitely have to think about what I'm doing. Same with our CON; heck, unless we're fighting some really wimpy things (bees!), he has to cast Shock Spikes and StoneSkin *every* fight. And he has to Cure more than just the tank, because as a THM I grab hate pretty easily (debuffs get more hate with this patch, and of course my AOE spells give me all the enemies that aren't being attacked by the other folks), and our puller starts out with all the hate until the tank manages to get it. If we don't play like that, people die. If you don't have to worry about all that, then you are either fighting something too wimpy, or in a party too big (which has the same effect).DrDogg said:
Unknown Soldier
Member
Rentahamster said:
So far it's been more like 2 steps backwards, 1 step forward. But keep on trying, Squenix! You might get it someday! :lol
There's still nothing to write about regarding the combat. Instead of being easy enough to complete while my back is fully turned away and watching TV, I now have to glance back more frequently because the mob's dead faster.
The only strategy I've seen comes from some of the leves, but the normal mobs are nothing. It's still fairly monotonous and extremely boring.
The only strategy I've seen comes from some of the leves, but the normal mobs are nothing. It's still fairly monotonous and extremely boring.
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
I was including some of the universally praised additions in my assesment, such as the UI adjustments and crafting balancing.Unknown Soldier said:
However, speaking strictly about battle mechanics, this new system is better than the old system mainly because it does away with the unfairness of action based SP gain that makes party members compete against one another. The randomness is gone, and at least there is some consistency now.
It's true that there are cases where SP gain under the new system isn't as good under the old system, but the reverse can also be said as well (that there are cases where SP gain under the old system isn't as good under the new system).
There are problems with the new system that I have elaborated on before, but overall it's a step in the right direction. Basically the main problem with the new system is proper rewards for high risk/ high level mobs, and suitable gains for medium to large parties. Not that bad.
I can't stand behind a gameplay system that actively encourages you to gimp yourself in order to maximize your SP.
There were more numerous, much more severe problems under the old system, which is why I have to say it's a net positive.
Future tweaks and adjustments should do the trick.
"should". I hope.
Unknown Soldier
Member
Rentahamster said:
Squenix is running out of chances, even the hardest of the hardcore JP players are talking about mass-quitting at this point. Gou Zaburou is saying he's going to quit if they don't fix that shit soon, and that guy is the only guy on Lindblum who has 3 battle jobs at 40+. I still can't believe that they fucked around for 2 months before they completely revamped the SP gain system and issued us something even more broken than the old system. Does Squenix know that they are giving the gameplay away for free and everyone has quit anyways? If people don't even want to play your for-pay game FOR FREE you have issues beyond the nightmares of most MMOG publishers. The JP players have been the most loyal, grinding away even as almost all of North America and Europe have quit. A lot of NA/EU people reappeared after the patch over the weekend, saw how pretty the new interface was, then tried to play the game but realized it was as broken as before but in a different way, and resumed being quit. If the loyal JP players start quitting FFXIV really is finished, and the PS3 version still hasn't even launched yet. :lol
DrDogg said:
You do ?
I cast elemental spells and heal inbetween.
If you are so bothered by being bored healing all the time then perhaps you shouldn't have picked conjurer, or maybe you need to learn to play it like a blackmage.
@ Unknown Soldier I don't agree with you that the SP is worse, as Renta says step in the right direction, they just need to add better party bonus and perhaps SP chains and it will be pretty much perfect.
I can gain sp much better now than I could before the patch, granted most of it is solo, behest offer pretty good sp, maybe you need to starting doing more of those.
Unknown Soldier
Member
Jinko said:
I can tell you that if Squenix fucks around another 2 months before they fix our SP, this game is as good as dead. Nobody above rank 40 with the exception of Rentahamster is happy about the SP system. Nobody. I understand what Squenix was trying to accomplish, but they need to stop fucking around and make an SP system that works instead of jumping from one broken system to another. I don't care if they shut all the servers down for 24 hours to do emergency maintenance and fix all the bugs the patch introduced, like non-working Shell. They need to fix our SP now, not in another 2 months. There's a maintenance scheduled to fix some annoying bugs like the skills all gray on bar but can't do anything bug, but they haven't said a word about how Shell doesn't work anymore or how the SP is completely fucked now.
Before, I was unable to find a party to play with because I was too low for the hardcore grinders who all passed me up and the +5/-5 party bonus thing screwed me. Otherwise I have grinded at least to 45+ if not 50. Now, they changed the party SP bonus to +5/-10, but I can't find anybody who actually wants to grind with me, I have to practically blackmail people to come play with me because everyone's so pissed about the SP that many of them have just quit leveling their Rank 40+ jobs. I've been Rank 40 since the day of the patch and I have no fucking idea what I'm supposed to do to keep ranking myself up, I don't want to solo Coblyns and Sordes for 60 SP a kill for 56,000 SP to next rank. If I wanted to play Lineage 2 and spend hours and hours soloing for 1% of XP to next level, I would go play fucking Lineage 2. :lol
Unknown Soldier said:
I agree with you that it does need to be fixed, SE can't ignore it if you look at any of the top FF14 sites everyone is complaining about broken party SP.
Personally I think the SP was a last minute change, because they said one thing on the lodestone and then a day later changed it completely, I am guessing they have to rework the base SP values of all the mobs.
I'm still not sure if Shell is intentional and now based on caster level potency, i haven'tr tested it enough, out of curiousity does the shell animation play when you get hit with a spell ?
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
I didn't say I was happy about it, I said it fixes more problems than it creates.Unknown Soldier said:
For every high rank player damning SE for the change, there is another low rank player praising them. Once a nice equilibrium is found, things should settle down.
Edit: That is to say, I'm happy about some things, and not happy about others. I'm happy with the direction it's heading, but I would be unhappy were it to stay as it currently is with no further changes.
Jinko said:
I don't like BLM. BLM and SCH were the only two mage jobs I did not get to 75 in FFXI. My BLM stopped at 40 because I was bored just nuking. Even when I played BLM as back up healer, it was still boring compared to WHM, RDM or SMN.
Even if I found nuking to be fun, your MP pool doesn't last long enough and the damage from nukes isn't worth it. I could even add SpiritBind to my play style and it still wouldn't help negate the MP burn.
If I'm forced to play CON/THM like BLM, then I'll end up quitting the game. The only other class I have any interest in playing is GLA, but since I don't want to waste hours re-specing, that's not an option.
Dreamwriter said:
No offense, but every Cure spell is AoE. There's absolutely no reason to cast a single target Cure spell. If your CON has to target more than just the tank, either your tank is bad, your party has bad positioning, or as an alternative, your CON is standing in the wrong place (even in a party with bad positioning, I can stand in the middle and AoE Cure everyone).
How long do your fights last? Shockspikes is not something you need to cast every fight. Stoneskin either. Unless you have a terrible tank or you're fighting mobs with AoE attacks (why?), the other party members shouldn't be getting hit that often. And it's a waste of MP to give the tank Stoneskin every battle because it usually only lasts one hit.
My THM is 15, so I have some debuff spells. I can count the number of times I've gotten hate in a party on one hand. No offense, but if you're getting hate from your debuffs, you're managing your enmity very poorly (unless higher rank debuffs generate significantly more enmity). And why are you casting AoE spells that are hitting other mobs? Seriously...?!
Maybe I'm just spoiled by FFXI where I had to actually think, but CON and THM are ridiculously easy to play in this game. The amount of stuff I have to worry about now is nothing compared to how I had to play FFXI as WHM, RDM and SMN.
DrDogg said:
This is my biggest problem with the game. Its been like this since launch, its still like it today and no SP changes are going to fix it. Theres a severe lack of any thinking behind what your doing.
As many complaints as there were about XIs job system, it at least had thought behind it. Some of that thinking was stupid and some it left left other jobs out in the cold but at least every job in that game - whether in a party or desperately trying to solo - had some kind of role...some kind of point behind it. Some players even were known by how good or how bad they were at learning their job and and using its mechanics the right (or wrong) way.
In XIV, its pretty much the total opposite from what Im seeing. The job of every DD is to just wail on a mob and stay in range of the mages cures. Use a hate grabbing ability if the mage is ever attacked. Rinse and repeat...over and over and over again. Theres no worry, no threat, no real skill, and no thinking. Its all mindless...like a ridiculously slow and clunky hack and slash.
Unknown Soldier said:
I think FFXIV is pretty much done in the west at this point. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is launching next week. They might have some small presence here but nowhere near what it could have been or even should have been. That ship has sailed I think and I don't expect them to get another chance.
Playing as a Gladiator, you do have to put some thought into what you do and when...so theres that. I know some enemies are weak against certain types of attacks, and debilitation should require some thought.
I think the problem is, you dont really get into real strategy until you get improved weapon skills, and even then we havent had any real bosses to fight, or challenging enemies. That and I havent seen any lancers or other jobs use positional attack skills when fighting.
There is strategy in the game, just that people arent really taking advantage of it...or havent had the need to.
EDIT: I dunno about the game being done, but it was never going to have as big a presence as anything involved with WoW. The launch really hurt the game, and S-E really seems to be trying to improve the game with a decent speed...however they really need to pack the content patch mid December, and adjust the whole difficulty bonus aspect.
Harder/larger enemies seem to require more strategy, at least to kill them faster than just doing normal attacks all day, but without a decent reward for doing so, people arent going to use debilitation skills/positioning or battle regimens.
I think the problem is, you dont really get into real strategy until you get improved weapon skills, and even then we havent had any real bosses to fight, or challenging enemies. That and I havent seen any lancers or other jobs use positional attack skills when fighting.
There is strategy in the game, just that people arent really taking advantage of it...or havent had the need to.
EDIT: I dunno about the game being done, but it was never going to have as big a presence as anything involved with WoW. The launch really hurt the game, and S-E really seems to be trying to improve the game with a decent speed...however they really need to pack the content patch mid December, and adjust the whole difficulty bonus aspect.
Harder/larger enemies seem to require more strategy, at least to kill them faster than just doing normal attacks all day, but without a decent reward for doing so, people arent going to use debilitation skills/positioning or battle regimens.
Dreamwriter
Member
You're right, I wasn't thinking. If all you ever want to do is be a cure spammer and nothing else, then you don't ever have to think. Which is probably why Square setup CON to be more than just Cure'sDrDogg said:
I'm pretty sure higher rank debuffs do generate more enmity. I also think that creatures that are a lot higher level than you "have more hate to give", though that could be just superstition.DrDogg said:
...because our party is fighting other mobs maybe? If we are being attacked by 4 creatures, then it is very beneficial to lower those 4 creatures' attack power and defense, make their stamina bar fill slowly, and maybe use a gravity so I can kite them around until our damage dealers can take the hate away from me. Since 90% of what we do are high-star Leves, we are almost always being attacked by multiple creatures at once.DrDogg said:
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