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honestly, I'd go for a revamp in the leveling experience. cut out most of the fat like the Fetch quest and quest that doesn't progress the the MSQ even thought it's level MSQ. Like, let just me just go fight Titan… don't make go do fucken chores and introduce characters that doesn't show up again.
yeah, I'm glad you called out Black Mage specifically because I legit would rather have Enochian and Fire/Blizzard IV than thunder and Thundercloud. that, or maybe turn Scathe into something you spend polyglot on for single target to keep Fire IV and Blizzard IV in the 50-60 range.
Also, Fire 2 and Blizzard 2 feel like they just need to upgrade into freeze and flare. I dunno.
Summoner needs it too, but Summoner needs a lot and at this point I'm pretty sure the dev team is trying to sort that giant mess out.
I hate playing monk below 50. Not just because not having dragon kick feels awkward, but also because monk has NO oGCDs below 50 anymore besides shoulder tackle (woohoo). We used to have steel peak and howling fist, which have basically been replaced by tornado kick and elixir field now, but not actually, so we just have to wait until 50-60 to get those skills "back." IMO they should just add steel peak and howling fist back in but have them upgrade to tornado kick and elixir field at those levels. I'd also like riddle of fire a lot earlier but I can live without it.
WHM is a trainwreck of dullness at endgame. It's a better class to play the worse the group is, and I've found watching drying paint more interesting than playing WHM when the group is playing well because it optimizes into something painful to play.
Black Mage straight up needs a retooling of the sub 60 kit, it's by far the most different job every 10-20 levels for no reason.
How about improving the healer experience, like, in general?
The second drk aoe combo skill needs to be have a lower level. Spamming the one move when pulling in a dungeon is terrible.
i dont know, i dont like the way this sounds. sounds a lot like retail wow. if you move everything up front then its gonna feel bland later. all you're doing is changing when it happens. sure some roles could use some adjusting, but beware the cookie cutter of retail, im telling you.
There are so many examples where I would like skills moved around, but the basic idea they should follow is "identity." If a skill is part of the identity of the job they shouldn't have to wait for 70 to get it.
The first example that comes to mind is dancer. The dance partner mechanic is integral to dancer's job identity, they should get it at level 50, and Technical Step at level 60. But there are more broad examples like aoe's. Dragoon doesn't get aoe until 40… and in a game where wall to wall pulls are normal, waiting this long sux (maybe this example is in the video, I'm typing as I watch lol)
Black mage just needs enochian as a passive.
Make it so that all class skills are learned before level 30. Like moving Medica II from 50 to 25 for WHM or Barrage on Bard from 38 to 20.
I think they should make sure every class has at least one AoE by Sastasha, and anything that isn't a caster should have at least one oGCD attack so classes all have something to do between the 2.5 second GCDs at the start. They can be complete trash that gets upgraded later, but they should exist earlier.
A couple things for me. First, they need to ensure that all jobs have fairly equal access to AoE skills early on and, where possible, the AoE skills don't interact weirdly with the rest of their kit at the time. For example, some classes need to keep a DoT or buff/debuff up but their AoE skills actively prevent that until later on when they get a needed trait. Second, they should revamp the syncing system to consider jobs as having full kits of skills for a certain level range. I get that they don't want a full level 80 kit Paladin in Sastasha or a FATE just outside of Gridania but how about sync them down to a complete level 20 kit at that level. Ensure that level 20 Paladin feels good and complete for that level and then use that as your syncing baseline. Not only would it make job design easier to design around "level milestones" (which is already what they basically do later on anyway) but it would also make it less jarring for the players when they sync down but end up syncing to, say, 1 level lower than when they would get a critical skill that completely changes their kit.They'd still have to mentally realign to the lower level but at least they wouldn't be stuck with a completely different job when syncing down for, say, 2 FATEs right near eachother in the same zone but with different levels or between Sastasha and Copperbell.
Synching down on a BLM keeps me from making it my main job.
why have i never thought to just make monks 'fist of-' abilities into traits? it's so obvious
Give all tanks ESPECIALLY PLD earlier gap closer, level 74 is late š
There is no way to improve low-level gameplay in this casual prioritized noob fest of a game.
I've been saying for years that it would be nice if they increased the sycn by a level or 2 for ARR stuff. But keep it capped at level 50 for the content in it.
But a solution like this might work better. Playing most job pre-level 50 feels terrible when synced. Like they just don't feel fun.
And blackmage is the worst for me. I didn't even really like playing it till HW, and even then being synced down below 50 felt awful for the job.
WHM should get medica 2 earlier. AST gets aspected Helios at 42, and SCH gets succor at 35, whereas WHM has to wait all the way until level 50
I couldnāt comment on how I think I should improve the early game experience, I would just want my whole kit right away, just have traits that increase skills potencies when you level up instead of unlocking those skills, but Iām not a new player and some new players may find that much all at once to be daunting, which is why I donāt think Iām qualified to comment on that lol.
I do think that they absolutely should do something about being scaled down and losing your kit though, something like give you all the abilities that you have unlocked so far, it could give you a āweakened soulā debuff which simply reduces your damage output relevant to how much kit you have to balance the jobs so they donāt wreck older dungeons, but also so they arenāt frustrating whenever you get synced down and the dungeons become boring because your kit sucks (im looking at you samurai your kit sucks before you get kenki mastery 2ā¦).
i wish they would just let us use our full ability kits during low level dungeons. I can't even began to say what a slog it is when I'm forced to use only the actions and abilities I have before lv30….
I think game do poor job introducing positionals especially on monk, since it can be fiirst job for a player and its positional available for the earlist Pugilist levels. And new player usually levels solo through MSQ and fight weak mobs 1-on-1. And when fighting 1-on-1 you cannot train your positionals and even tanking chocobo cannot help here, since by the time chocobo would grab emnity, target would be almost dead.
Some jobs should have their AoE gauge generators and spenders much earlier.
– WAR gets Beast gauge at lvl 30, Mythril Tempest to extend damage buff at lvl 40 via AoE, but can't generate beast gauge via AoE until lvl 74 using the same combo.
– GNB can generate and spend powder gauge via single target at lvl 30, can generate it via AoE at lvl 40, but can't spend it via AoE until lvl 72.
– DRG can't extend Disembowl's damage buff from AoE at all.
– Blizzard II still exist and it doesn't even bind anymore. Freeze is instead the real AoE Umbral Ice Generator. May as well upgrade into Freeze or make it a strong OGCD or cast GCD with a cooldown with bind back another effect.
Everyone has super reasonable suggestions, but the dev team is not gonna do them. None of them. They're just gonna keep racking in that player count, hoping players stay for the long haul or wait till new blood comes and takes the bait, rinse and repeat
While I agree that there's room for improvement… but you also have to account that FFXIV has designed their early game to be welcoming to brand new MMO players as well(not just 'new to ffxiv' players). I think a lot of advanced players tend to have… exaggerated ideas of what a brand new player will be comfortable with super early on.
I'd do a lot less than what most tend to suggest… for me, here are my big ones:
1) Every healer should have one instant heal by level 30(easy way: Move first lily and aetherflow + Lustrate to 30 – Astros already have one)
2) Every class should have an AoE by level 30.(This is a great place for your idea of 'added weak versions of abilities', in cases where the current AoE might feel too strong for 30)
3) When transitioning from class to job at 30, there should be something significant you acquire that makes you feel like you've changed. Bard and Dragoon do that with the song and jump. Some other classes, not so much.
4) Every class should have at least one longer cooldown to manage(45-120 seconds range) by level 30-40.
5) All non-caster DPS classes should have at least one frequently used ogcd by 30, and 2 by 50.
6) Every tank should have a gap closer by level 50.
100% this. I'd honestly be fine having almost no new abilities in the later game because the dungeons and trials etc fulfil that novelty in their own right.
Its weird to me they've standardised most of the rest of the features in the game, but they haven't standardised this (like always knowing what level you will always have a full single target combo, which level will always be complete aoe combo etc). Abilities too often feel randomly placed.
Lower level whitemage is pretty blargh
Yeah that's a big part of low-level play.. I'm levelling up a scholar (still arcanist) and it suuuuucks until lv20 and I'm suddenly engaged.
So yes, a change would be cool. Have a few friends who left the game pretty quick cos of slow build-up of skills..
But I also get it.
Mainly fix the power creep and rework hp boss values and Iād be inclined to add the things suggested but currently it would just make it worse adding more potent things that mainly why the combos have been murdered cause they didnāt want to rework hp values hopefully this expansion changes that I would love to see akh morn 5 or t8 or 8s 7 sequence. Sadly I havenāt been able to even when Iām min ilvl in those fights because current power compared to old hp values are vary outdated and need reworking before Iād consider any of this. For casual stuff though this is stuff I want like quick nock going to wide volley etc etc
Fun fact: Aurum Vale is more fun than all of the 80s dungeons
After you play Dragoon with the gauge syncing down to level 50 content feels pretty āmehā
The difficulty with adding in lower level moves that are intended to be replaced is that they have to make a disposable animation. BUT! for your example of Monk, why not provide Steel Peak at 30 transforming into Forbidden Chakra and Howling Fist at 35 transforming into Enlightenment? Most classes have old bad or scrapped abilities that could be low level transforming abilities, like Fire II > Flare or Mug > Dream W/Dream.
How to make low level more fun? Stop taking our damn skills every expansion. Every expansion makes me dread low level content more and more because they keep moving skills to later levels or removing them so that it's the lv80 version of a class that feels complete
1/2 your abilities by lvl 15 and all your abilities by lvl 30 and everything after that are upgrade traits in improve your abilities…. or all skills by lvl 15 for the purposes of syncing down on dungeons with traits enhancing the skills later on. Overall yes I agree with you.
Thnx Mr.Happy! That's what I was saying on channels like work to game when this topic was mentioned. Basically the same idea. We know they can empower skills so there is no reason not to give us slightly more at start.
Bonus idea is to use the pvp combo on one button system so we can actually get more skills or better ogcds without button clutter
Consistency! That's what I think they should do. Take whm for instance. Why do they have medica I and II as 2 abilities? make it a trait upgrade like Stone/Glare or Aero/Dia. same with Cure and Cure II where you can bake the chance for a free cast into it. So yea, consistency in the design of the jobs.
So I can't really speak for the "learning" DPS experience, but as someone for who FFXIV was literally her first real-time game (I mean yes, seriously, first computer game that wasn't turn based), I found White Mage to be a very good introductory pace. I'm sure for players more experienced with this style of game it would have been painfully slow – Cure 1, Stone, Aero, Cure 2… but when I was struggling with "oh no, there's so many things on the screen! How do I select enemies any party members and…", the introductory pace was honestly just about perfect. I imagine it's quite a struggle to balance – you want to make things fun for players who are familiar with the style of gameplay, but also introduce things slowly enough that genuinely new players aren't overwhelmed.
With that said, I absolutely agree that certain classes could use a rework. Black Mage in particular was extremely painful to learn – everything I knew kept getting thrown out the window. And perhaps for DPS in general, having more to do early on would be a boon. I can only comment on my own experience as the sproutiest of sprout healers, and say that the early levels and pace of new abilities was perfect for teaching me "Here's how to manage a castbar, your tank's health, and dodge AOEs at the same time."
The early game dissannance is especially crazy on BLM, where your capstone skill pretty drastically change everything you were doing before
On the nose with early version of later skills. Most jobs are not themselves until the last 10 levels and it's pretty stupid
For PLD make clemency 0.00 cast time and not break combos.
For DRG give casting/use stacks to Spine Shader dive. Reduce its dmg by half but allow players use twice per minute.
For WHM give a dmg use spell that consumes a Lilly.
For SAM give me the ultimate melee skill: for a short duration allow all weapons skill hit twice. Too op?
Love to read your thoughts.
RDM could also use some spell name clear up; ran into one in Ghimlyt the other day who thought Verthunder/Aero 2 were upgrades of Verthunder/Aero and wondered why they weren't getting procs. Sure, "hurr durr read tooltips" is an answer, but consider the single target rotation starts with Jolt 2…easy to see how it's confusing.
Big agree on introducing more job mechanics early, even if they are lower potency versions. Maybe it's something that can come to pass due to the number crunch coming in EW