Just to be clear, my post was about MMOs in general and how open PvP is not a suitable solution for KSing in any game whatsoever. I wasn't talking about FFXI or FFXIV specifically; I think you could fill a 500-page book with reasons to not put unrestricted PvP into FFXI. I am not against PvP (last MMO was Aion which is billed as a PvP-centric game), I just don't think it is a positive addition to every game.

Originally posted by lovehina21

Originally posted by Hyanmen

Originally posted by lovehina21

too bad once i got max lvl there was no pvp and i hate raiding and boss killing, i know everyone LOVES to kill bosses but i enjoy pvping more than hunting down some special mob somewhere.

 i hope ff XIV wil have tons of pvp cuz with guild wars 2 and blade and soul on its way. i think im acually gonna do the impossible and try to play multiple mmo's at the same time.

It won't, but should it? Why couldn't you play GW2 for your PvP and XIV for your PvE? Considering one of them is free, it would work better that way. Or not play XIV at all, if PvE is not your thing.

I guess....  thats something i thought of too.  but  i remember getting so frustrated  in FF 11 when we got our party to a lvling spot and right as our tank or puller was going to pull.  another party would pull it and without being able to KS, all we could do was yell at them . 

God i burned with fury cuz i couldnt kill them, i couldnt KS them, i couldnt even heal the mob. just Nothing but whine.

and i remmeber thousands of players complained about this to GM's  people would simply say. quit qqing and get a better puller.

if the game had pvp , players would take matters into their own hands instead of crying to the gms about it.

Ks me ? ur ass is mine.

with an attitude like this a party that took them 2 hours to make and get there will think twice about ksing or stealing or pvping fearing the distance to travel.  and vice versa, a party already at a spot might not want to engage in pvp fearing they might lose and have to run all the way back.

You're talking about nonconsentual non-RvR open PvP as a way to detract people from KSing? Riddle me this, Batman: if you could attack other players, what's to stop the party who wants your spot from attacking you while you're fighting that mob that you pulled? Nonconsentual PvP has always, always, always, always been about attacking your target while you have the advantage over them, either because they don't know you're there, because they are low on HP or MP, because you are higher level or have greater numbers, or because you're in your PvP gear while they're in their PvE gear. The idea that people will take the ability to attack other players anytime anywhere for any reason and use it primarily as a tool for punishing antisocial behavior is a joke.

All your KS rage comes from the fact that you think you're entitled to a mob just because you saw it first... or because you saw it second but didn't see the other guy about to pull it. Is this really a reason to "take matters into your own hands"? Even if you don't realize it, what you're advocating is just another, even more frustrating form of KS: instead of the mobs going to the party with the superior puller, the mobs go to the party with the superior PvP ability (due to higher levels, better gear, OP classes, whatever).

Moot point though, because it's already set in stone that there won't be open PvP in FFXIV.

Reality check: No matter how long, how often, and on how many shards you played, you cannot guarantee that someone is wrong when they claim that they had trouble finding a good plot to put a house. That is silly.

Originally posted by svann

Originally posted by Ichigo83

SE just stated they are changing the battle system up to make it faster in beta they ust throw something together in alpha so they could start teatsing the game sooner then later but it will be faster in beta then it was in alpha so stop crying over  the battle speed being to slow cuz its gonna be hellya faster then before so people stop whining about it and let SE do there job.

 Nice spin, but what they actually said is that they are trying to speed it up based on feedback that said it's too slow.  So to the people that spoke up - good job.  Right or wrong, its better to be honest about it.

As was stated in another thread, the full text of the recent interview quotes Hiromichi Tanaka as saying: "Komoto told the testers before alpha started that the tempo of battle is something we’re looking at. When beta test starts, we will be implementing a completely different battle system, practically remade from the ground up. We weren’t planning on using the current battle system in the first place, but we didn’t want players to wait until beta, so we explained the situation and opened the test."

So it's not just spin. At this stage of testing, S-E's main concern has been server stability. From the beginning, they had no plans to balance the speed of combat during the alpha, nor did they intend to release the game using the battle system from the alpha test. The alpha testers that have given feedback to S-E using the proper, private channels are doing a good job; the non-testers who are making judgements based off conjecture or leaked info, not so much.

Used WASD for ages, then I gave ESDF a try when I started playing Aion last year. It is just so much more natural having my index finger on 'F' for both typing and character control. And then you have pinky finger access to QAZ if you want. Now I have to rebind for every new game I play because WASD just feels awful.

Another trick I use now is to rebind Mouse4 to Alt, and set a second row on the hotbar to Alt+key.

Housing isn't a big deal for me. It's a positive thing but nowhere near the top of my priorities. I liked the FFXI mog house concept, but wouldn't have missed it much if it didn't make it into FFXIV.

What I don't understand, though, is how anyone would prefer non-instanced housing. As in, here's an actual house sitting in the game world, and it was placed there by a player and belongs to them. If we say, very conservatively, that 5,000 people on my server each build a house, that means there are 4,999 locked structures that I have no way of interacting with. Doesn't that strike anyone else as terrible design? Having a game world dotted with thousands upon thousands of locked buildings that you'll never see the inside of? Hopefully someone can explain the appeal to me, because I do not get it.

Originally posted by WSIMike

Originally posted by shokero

you guys are just talking about ffxi, whose to say FFXIV will be the same? In ffxi I think people were way too mature in the game and took them selves way too sersly.  Besides if what FFXIV has been saying that its gonna be more casual then yea youre gonna see more immature people in the game. And you know what thats fine, people arn't robots have a damn funny bone. I hate people who are like "oh he has a foul mouth I have kids who play this game" uh yea you don't think your kids already know these words? I dunno were im going with this rant but yea you get the point.

So.... you're railing against people who prefer not to deal with people who act like ass-hats, and that we should be "less mature" and "have a funny bone"?

So, when some juvenile, ignorant players starts rattling off racial slurs at people they don't even know... we're supposed to find that funny and "not be so mature" about it?

When someone is being completely belligerent to everyone else around them and carrying on like a spoiled brat, we're supposed to find that funny, and "not be so mature" about it?

When someone refuses to learn, mouths off and keeps putting the rest of the group they're in in unnecessary risk - thus wasting everyone else's time, we're supposed to find that funny, and "not be so mature" about it?

 

Straw man much?

Originally posted by Nytakito

OP: tl;dr

But to answer your question, it will have no effect.  Parties should work just the way they did in XI as far as having to conserve resources (particularly MP) in order to maximize XP.  Unless XIV gets rid of XP chains, which I highly doubt.

If you played FFXI and you rested up to full mana after every mob, you never even got to XP chain #1, let alone 4 or 5.

First of all let me say that I was a huge huge fan of EXP chains. I liked the concept a whole lot, and for a specific reason. I like to say that FFXI was a game that was about downtime. There wasn't just downtime in between fights; the best parties took mana breaks at the right times and for the right amount of time. Downtime management was the difference between pretty good and great. And you couldn't reach your potential just by conserving resources all of the time... to consistently reach the highest chains, you'd conserve heavily at first, less after a few fights, then go for broke for the last fight or two. (At least that's the idea in theory.)

I haven't seen anything indicating that EXP chains will be a part of FFXIV, and I think it's probably for the best if they don't make it in. FFXIV doesn't have to be about downtime in the same way that FFXI was; I have a feeling that it will be more about efficiency: making every attack and every spell count as much as possible, making every hit you take hinder the party as little as possible. Tossing in an artificial mechanic that rewards you based on the speed with which you handle these fights with an increasingly short amount of time between them... I don't see that as a positive addition. In my opinion it wouldn't contribute anything more to the fun complexity of the combat. The combat itself should be what our attention is focused on.

In a way, you're already receiving an extra reward if you pace yourself and manage to go quickly without running out of MP: you reach each node more quickly, complete the leve faster, and are ready for the next run sooner.

Originally posted by Kyleran

I have to totally disagree with this idea.  What you are supposed to be doing while waiting for a group is interacting with the rest of the virtual world and the players in it.  Go trade some stuff in the marketplace (auction houses kind of ruin this though), work on your crafting, socialize with other players or just solo for a bit.

MMO's are not all about maximizing your progression and kill rates, that's a treadmill too many players have jumped on today and this OP is the perfect example.  They want to just jump in, run the dungeon, and log out of the game.

This does not make for a virtual world, rather just a cooperative MMO and not the sort of mechanic I favor.  (I despise WOWs dungeon finder tool regardless of the benefits it imparts)

I am also quoting this post to indicate my wholehearted agreement.

Guys, seriously, the jumping issue has nothing to do with the topic of this thread and it is disruptive to continue bringing it up. This is a discussion about MP regen and how the lack of it will affect party tactics, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to follow when the off-topic posts outnumber the on-topic posts. Drop it or take it elsewhere.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by ChaosInc

No MP regen = player needs to be conservative and smarter about his gameplay

This concept already exists in DDO.  Nothing amuses me more than playing on my wizard and watching another wiz/sorc draining themselves on the first fight of a dungeon, whine about how they're out of mana and expect everyone else to carry them to the next rest stone.  They're too used to having their MP automatically regen in other games.  I become even more amused when they get kicked after whining about how non-regening MP sucks and how is better.

The system will weed out the good players and the leechers, pure and simple.  Personally, I look forward to the time past the first few weeks of "this game sucks" and "WoW is da bestest" when the kiddies trail off and the real player community starts to build and shine.

I agree. It is also a balancing thing. Mages can do really horrible damage but not all the time. You shouldn't waste a meteor shower on junk mobs.

I could actually see the same thing be done with hitpoints. No healers, no regen, conserve it or fail. It would offer a very different gameplay but it wouldn't be bad, you would just have to be smarter.

 

A few people have stated or implied that only the mage classes (Thaumaturge and Conjurer) use MP. I haven't dredged up enough Alpha info to know for sure, but it doesn't seem like this is the case. One of the skills for Archer (Replenish) says that it consumes MP. And the following quote hints rather strongly that everyone in the party will require MP:

Sato (S): The party will all move together to where they need to go to achieve their goal, but it will be important to watch their MP. There is a class whose concept is “MP cost controller,” and that member will often be charged with helping the other party members conserve MP.

Perhaps non-mage classes won't have as many MP-consuming skills or will retain a fair amount of effectiveness after running out of MP, but I'm pretty sure all classes will have MP.

And on the topic of not regenerating hitpoints, I don't think that would work as well in an RPG. In something like Half-Life it's fine, because when you take damage it's your own fault. You're technically able to make it from start to finish without taking a single point of damage. The life meter is there to make sure you only screw up a certain number of times between here and the next health refill. But in an RPG, being hit is 100% inevitable and not due to a mistake or lack of skill. While there's some strategy to it, gear and randomness play a MUCH larger part than they do in other games. I don't think a fixed amount of HP would work unless avoiding damage was skill-based and not at all gear/luck-based but then you'd be playing an action game and not an RPG.

Originally posted by twrule

Anyway, on topic: There have already been several abilities announced that would allow classes to replenish their own mp as well as the mp of party members in combat - and there will most certainly be devices such as food and drink so that everyone can replenish them when needed.  I think it will be balanced so that regeneration is not as large a problem as the op makes it out to be - this is supposed to be a more solo-friendly game than it's predecessor, after all.

Can you link somewhere that lists MP-restoring abilities? I have only heard of Thaumaturge getting one. I think it would be really counterproductive for them to sprinkle several abilities like that over multiple classes.

They've got this unique concept that hasn't been done before and I hope they don't neuter it by handing out easy ways around it. It would be like... imagine if someone made an MMO where there were thousands of spells to learn in the game but you could only ever cast each spell ONCE and then never again. Bizarre! Different! Controversial! And then imagine they put in a 20 minute run-around-the-world fetch quest to reset your list of banned spells. Now it doesn't matter anymore.

Originally posted by DerWotan

Hopefully they are doing it like in Everquest 1: sit down and eat drink in order to regain your health mana :-) -> people can socialize during the camp "break" -> way better community building. It also encourages crafting because alchemy, cooking would be finally important again!

The more I'm reading about the game the better.

Err... but we already know for sure that MP won't regen by sitting down and resting, and that parties aren't supposed to have to sit and take breaks to recover from fights.

Additionally, unless I'm mistaken, EQ1 foods were no different than FFXI foods: you eat them to get a minor long-lasting buff. The only difference between the two is that there were many EQ1 foods that didn't give a buff at all; aside from RP purposes, their only use was to keep you from starving. I don't remember cooking being important at all in EQ1 since basic bread cost a few coppers from a vendor.

And this is a bit of a side topic but I feel like I should bring it up. I feel like there are a lot of people who are accepting of the no-MP-regen concept because they're under the impression that there will be foods and potions available to replenish MP. I don't think this will be the case and in fact I really hope it is not the case. Aside from the fact that it allows people to dodge what I think is the main benefit of a no-MP-regen system — punishing parties that can't work together to use MP in the most efficient way — there's also the money sink issue. MP-regen items wouldn't just be "available"... they'd become mandatory. How many people, upon levelling up NIN, said "Wow, this is great! Not only can I dual-wield and commit seppuku, I also have the option to carry some extra tools that let me use Suiton and Utsusemi!" No... not at all. If you were a NIN or a sub-NIN, you had to have those tools (at least Shihei, anyway). They were about as optional as arrows/bullets for a RNG. If MP-regen items are available and useful, you'll need to have them because the game will be balanced with the assumption that you're using them. That's just recreating the NIN problem where you're constantly paying just to be able to be in parties. It was enough of a drawback for me that I never did a single level of NIN.

Originally posted by Hyanmen

The developer's idea is to make groups roam from one crystal to another, not stay in one place.

If most players are going to progress by doing guildleves, this can be easily manipulated by the devs too.

I'm pretty much going on faith that they find a way to force people to branch out, as I don't know how I'd design the game to encourage that. The Sit 'n Camp method of group play is deeply engrained in old school MMO players, and you would need a pretty big stick or carrot to get them to move. Even if HP regens at the same rate whether running or sitting, maybe there's something psychological about recovering from combat by standing still?

"While few companies actually go so far as to abuse their penultimate power over their players,"

Teensy nitpick: "penultimate" doesn't mean "super-ultimate", it means next to the last. For example, Kuja is the penultimate boss of Final Fantasy IX.

Guys, there's already a Speed of Combat thread on the front page as well as several old threads filled to the brim with jumping arguments. Let's not derail; hop over into one of those if you really need to continue on that topic.

Originally posted by jackmcleod

Other than a few RTS... how many games really require you to think? Most of it is learning a rotation.

In WoW its learn a simple rotation, like a mage....  1 , 1 , 1 , 1 , 1 , 1 , 1, or pally 1 2 3 1 1 1 1 1 1

I've always liked Sid Meier's explanation that a good game is a series of interesting choices. The "rotation" phenomenon is the polar opposite of that. If pressing 1 2 3 1 1 1 1 is always the best choice out of all your possible options, you're not making an interesting choice... and therefore not really playing a game. In order to be interesting, the choice must be a choice between some options where one option is best but no option is clearly the best. A problem in MMOs is that you've got literally hundreds of thousands of eyes on exactly the same problem for hours upon hours, some of them VERY heavily invested in "solving" the combat equation, and if the system is too simple then they will find that the correct answer is simply 1 2 3 1 1 1 1 or whatever.

What I'm envisioning here is something that, while not on par with chess, is at least a radically different formula than WoW. The question of "Do I cast 4 lightning spells or a lightning resist debuff and 3 lightning spells?" isn't interesting because there is a verifiably correct answer if you're willing to do a couple trials and some arithmetic. The question of "Do I stay on the mob I'm hitting now or switch to the mob that's hitting me?" can be awesomely interesting if there are a lot of variables influencing the decision, like the HP of all the other mobs and all your groupmates, as well as which mobs are being focused on and how much TP everyone has and how far to the next node, etc. It's an informed choice... one in which a player who has more knowledge of the situation and more knowledge of the game will make the best choice more often.

Actually, on that note, is there a point when an MMO can become too strategic? A static group of veteran players on vent together is all well and good, but the game is a failure if a pick-up group of console players cannot pass along information fluidly enough for everyone to make informed choices and survive a basic guildleve. If the standard strategy for the game is to engage 6 mobs at a time and try to spread damage equally among all group members, while also counteracting mobs' special abilities, is that too much to ask of an average player?

Since it's been quite a while now since there was a new topic, I thought I'd revisit an old yet interesting topic... potentially the biggest difference separating XIV from other MMOs: the lack of MP regen.

For those who didn't know, you won't be able to rest to replenish MP, in or out of combat. You'll have to visit an aetheryte node or a town in order to fill back up. Aside from a few items and abilities to get back a little MP in the field, you're stuck without the use of spells if you run out before you reach the next node. Of course you can continue to do basic attacks, TP moves, and possibly even some spells with no MP cost. But the idea is that failing to conserve your MP will result in sharply decreased effectiveness.

The concept of not regaining MP over time is fairly unique among MMOs (AFAIK) but it quite common in console RPGs. In just about any other Final Fantasy title, the MP you spend doesn't come back on its own; you have to use items or reach a place where you can rest. This makes it important to end your fights without using much MP and without taking much damage. There is an incentive to end fights quickly and efficiently because you don't want to use up MP that is costly to recover.

But we've also been told that you will rapidly regain HP in passive mode between combats, which is unlike most console RPGs. There are a few games where you automatically start each fight at full health again, but these have been the exception rather than the rule. So, what kind of strategy can we expect to come from this?

I can't help but wonder what effect this will have on the role of healer. Healers in offline RPGs have traditionally been a little bit lame. As I said above, the idea is to get through each fight losing/using a little HP/MP as possible so as to conserve your resources over the length of the whole dungeon. Individual fights rarely put any of your characters in enough danger to require an in-combat heal... most healing gets done outside of combat so that you don't waste a combat turn. So in combat these healer-types whack away with a little staff or something and do their healing outside of combat (in most situations).

Buuuuut it may be much different in FFXIV. If what we've heard is true, you will regain HP relatively quickly just for being in passive mode (you don't have to sit and rest) and groups will be moving from fight to fight, node to node, instead of sitting in one place. If you expect to heal up to full on your own in between fights, then the need for post-combat healing is decreased. This puts healers in a rather odd role that doesn't mirror their role in console RPGs or in other MMOs. They will have to be careful about healing only as it is needed (unlike MMOs) but the healing will be done almost exclusively in combat (unlike RPGs).

This also brings up another question, an almost unthinkable divergance from the tank-heal-deeps trinity: will we be able to do without healers? Or even tanks? Think about how you solo as a non-healing class. The only thing you care about as you go into a fight is "Will I be able to kill this before it kills me?" The chance of you dying is the main thing that influences what you will and won't fight.  In theory, the same thing could be done in a group setting. Even if everyone is in bad shape when the fight ends, all that matters is that you survived — because healing up out of combat is not an issue.

This is a near impossibility in other most other MMOs for a few reasons. One, there tends to be a very large gap between the tankability (damage mitigation and hate generation) of a tank class and a non-tank class. Meaning, it's very easy and very beneficial for the tank to always be the only one getting hit. So the mobs have to hit hard enough to threaten a tank (because it is a safe assumption that they are always hitting tanks), which is enough to really splatter anyone else. Second, the speed and efficiency of your kills is the only real measure of your success as a group.  Resting between fights wastes everyone's time because recovering HP takes time. The efficiency of healing spells and the speed of MP recovery mean that it's almost never advantageous to let someone take damage and then NOT heal them. In FFXIV however, there is another measure of success, and that is the ability to complete the journey from node to node. It doesn't matter how fast you whizz through the first 6 fights if you don't have the MP to finish the last 2.

A few things make me think that this could be a direction that FFXIV leans towards. First, the existence of skills like Lancer's Invigorate and Ferocity that consume HP could be a hint that burning through most of your HP in a fight (safely and strategically, of course) will be a smart tactic. Second, the absence of any dedicated healing class. While Conjurer gets a healing spell (and it's AoE), it doesn't seem to be the whole point of the class. And many other classes appear to get self-heal abilities, which suggests that tanks are not the only people who will need healing. And finally, pushing group combat that pits you against a group of mobs while not giving any class AoE-tanking abilities (as far as we know) is a flat-out guarantee that non-tank classes will be taking hits. I think (or at least I hope) that that could mean that should be taking some hits and coming out of the fight a little bruised, as opposed to dps in a more conventional MMO who might never take a single hit in a 6 hour group.

Long story short, I think it would be great if tanks were a little less tanky and healers were a little less healery, and it seems like FFXIV could support such a system. Nobody would be able to "sleepwalk" through a series of fights the way that most DPS classes (...and the others too, really) do now. It would also be a bit easier to cobble a group together from whatever you could find rather than being stuck waiting for a tank or healer to become available.

Your thoughts? Would this be too big a change from standard MMO group combat? What other consequences might arise from having fast HP regen and no MP regen?

Above All

It fits with the theme of the game, is clever, and puts you at the top of any alphabetical list.

Originally posted by Hrayr2148

SE doesn't produce bad games with "Final Fantasy" in the title.

Originally posted by harnquist

Jaime is right on. I think she must have spent too much time in PlaneShift. The number of RPers who popped up in this thread to defend RP is about right. RPers have this thing where they all believe that they are not the RPers that cause the problems. Then you get in game with them.

And what about those of us who are not RPers but popped up in this thread to defend RP?

Originally posted by Knucklecloud

However, there indeed are a few problems this kind of design arises on the long run: When interaction has to step aside for linear gameplay, there's no dynamic content. This means that you're going to hit a brick wall at some point, because linear happens to have a beginning and an end. The beginning and the end alternate in an infinite loop, with such speed that you believe the end doesn't even exist! Genius, right? Well, sooner or later, player by player, people will realize that they're only attending a polished rat race. There's a very specific pattern you go through, which never, ever, changes. Only the cosmetics of the situation change. Now, more and more people are starting to get fed up with the pattern. However, there's nothing else on the market to hold their attention and you're not going to gain it by continuing to sew the same texture of the same pattern.

Not bad, but I think you give sandbox a little too much credit over linearity. It might help if you better defined what you mean by a sandbox game; the term can mean quite a few different things. I'm not sure that I understand how only sandbox games allow "interaction". Interaction with what, the game? Other players?