NDA is gone; Got questions? Answers/Opinion thread. Follow

You don't need to insult me saying I didn't know how to play, etc. It was incredibly simplistic.

Anyway, my biggest issue was the lack of any kind of micromanagement, again. Surely you can understand that complaint. I really don't like how you just get tons of TP just for starting a fight. It's bizarre and not fun (IMO, of course).

Edited, Jun 12th 2013 10:07pm by Killua125

I didn't insult you. I criticized the play approach you were supporting. Please realize the difference. Also, I did specify that the reason for your opinion was due to the ease of the monsters, not by implying that you were a simpleton or anything of the sort.

I disagree on your micromanagement issue. By 35, Lancer had a clear ideal rotation for monsters that could survive that long.

Heavy Thrust combo, into Phlembumize (Maximinzing DoT effect) Raging Strikes (For damage spike) Into True Thrust combo twice to three times depending on need for evasion. On the first True Thrust you use Life Surge before completing combo.

Afterwards you refreshed Heavy Thrust and that damn DoT skill I can't spell.

As far as the TP issue. I flatly don't agree with you. TP in FFXI is the Limit Gage in FFXIV on an individual level. It promotes very passive play and puts Melee classes deeply behind Magic Classes in terms of front-loaded damage output. Now, TP is very similar in regards to MP and needs to be managed more or less with the same regard, which in my opinion is not a bad thing.

The issue has always been enemy characteristics. You could have the most polished/balanced classes in the history of mmos. If the monsters are one trick ponies and fall over and die like ants. All that class power means diddly squat.

It's rather late in the game to rebalance every monster in the game at this point by launch. So at best we might get enemies HP and defenses boosted up for a short term fix. And hopefully, after launch they take the time to go back and work on enemy characteristics.

Are these battle easy mode comments just related to trash mobs and low level dungeons or later in the game as well?

I think the best way to make hotkey combat(similar to other mmos) feel different and require more than rotations:

1. Is to implement a skill modifier feature as I suggested before. This involves holding or tapping keys to manipulate things like potency, accuracy, criticals, mp conservation, range, AoE spread, conal spread, etc, etc. Each skill has it's own unique modifier applications and make repeatedly used skills effectiveness decay at a steady rate.

Then people can still say you push 1-2-1-3-1, whatever. But... It's not just taking which button you press but at what time you release the said buttons. It's still not twitch skill, but it creates a cerebral correlation on top of the gear and stat builds a player strives for. Am I pumping out good damage? Am I over spending my resources? How should I fine tune my modifiers to fit the appropriate need for this situation?

In a twitch based game, resources can be overcome by moving around. In a static to semi static environment, resources are what makes a game hard when your resources are vastly inferior to the enemies.

Jobs could become more party dependant to maintain resources as their description implies. Classes are more resourceful but lack that punch at the roles jobs fill. That's my two cents anyways....

So you can now buy an item directly from the ward search screen?

EDIT: Where does it go, straight to your inventory?


Edited, Jun 13th 2013 3:11am by Gnu

I think Archer would be a really enjoyable class if it were the ultimate damage dealer and SUPER squishy. Thus making the job of the tank even more important!

There's one more day of FFXIV goodness so there's a good chance of seeing something then.

We don't know yet, the "AH" system wasn't implemented in the earlier phases. I believe it's supposed to be here for phase 3 although I can't find it on the roadmap.

The market board was implemented but yea, it's still going through changes. From what I remember though, buying an item did go straight to your inventory, there just wasn't a whole lot of activity to test it much. Most of the time there was nothing up last phase.

I for one am very much looking forward to today. Should see info on SMN, SCH, and who knows what else. Hopefully around the time the live letter starts no one at work will be bothering me.

How good are the gears you get from dungeon and quests? Are they good enough to be dangerous to new crafters? From what I've read it seems you get a lot of gear from these activities and I'm afraid that crafters making new equips will be mostly for endgame melds.

The crafting question brings up another question for me, namely: In the early stages of 1.0, upgrades for weapons/armor were pretty much only from crafters, I assume this has changed? From the comments on this thread, it appears that vendors sell very basic upgrades, and then quests will give gear that's upgraded from that (similar to many mmo's on the market today), with dungeon gear being a further step up from this. Yes/No?

The items dropped in dungeons well into 2-3 categories (I can't remember the third one):

Pink/Red Gear: These looked fairly normal by appearance, but had randomly generated stats on them. Better than what you got from NPCs
Green/Blueish: These items seems to have set stat bonuses on them and their own models.

Since we couldn't socket materia, there wasn't much of a comparison to go on.

Auto attack exists, Yoshi-P has said it is your base damage before using any abilities.

The only notorious monsters so far are those that are sometimes encountered when doing Guildleves. The beta so far has only been Gridania and surrounding areas, but I'm excited based on what we've seen so far. The new client with the other cities and areas is only just under 6gb, and since the installation requires 12gb for launch I assume we're getting less than half of the game for beta. Lots to come!

What struck me particularly was the improvement in variation. The copypasta environments and camps were infamously bad. But now North Shroud is quite clearly distinct from Central Shroud and East Shroud. Central has the feeling of a fresh spring forest. East feels like a more mature green summery area. North has an autumn feel to it (largely due to the more brownish ground, I suspect.)