[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[lollermittens]

Will be added at launch.

Also, I'm now 23 and the complexity of TP managing has yet to show itself. it's either waiting between attacks to regen TP, or not doing the optimal thing while you could do it. It would be complex if you had to weave in TP regen abilites or certain tresholds would change the regenrate, but that's not in.

There's a post floating in the official Beta Forums that at Level 35 (level cap for beta) and that for the Level 50 Legacy characters, TP management is a huge issue.

Right now, you only sustain a fight for (I believe) 140 seconds on a Level 50 MNK. If he uses his skill that increases his attack speed by 15%, the TP up-keep gets slashed in half at 70 seconds.

What does this mean? Well, have fun chaining mobs. It won't be possible because there are no available TP regen abilities (besides the LNC one that gives you full TP back but has a 1 minute CD) and you starve yourself out of TP if you're simply using your rotation, not even skill spamming.

This TP issue at end-game seems to be even more important than end-game content itself... What's the point of reaching end-game and investing a lot of time if TP management completely restricts the way you can play the game? This issue is critical and needs to be addressed ASAP.

Link: http://forum.square-enix.com/ARR-Tes...-Player-Agency

More hard data/ information regarding TP sustainability at level cap:

We performed more thorough analysis. With one BRD with at least 2500 base MP, a MNK can sustain combat for approximately five minutes (the BRD must use consumables and the MNK must use Invigorate). Two BRDs in the same party can increase that fight duration for far longer, or one BRD who is able to remain out-of-combat for the entire fight duration (though this appears to be impossible in dungeons and therefore, presumably, raid encounters as well). In case it wasn't clear, MNKs are being used as the baseline physical DPS class for analysis due to having the lowest possible base GCD and highest TP expenditure over time while performing a standard rotation.

However, as mentioned previously, this kind of forced party structure both emphasizes passive TP management and removes a layer of choice and dynamism when forming party compositions. If a BRD can be used in a party to allow MNKs to change their rotations in such a way as to increase DPS, that is positive incentivization to include a BRD. If a BRD must be used in a party to allow MNKs (or PLDs, WARs, DRGs, etc.) to perform actions at all past a certain duration of time, there is no element of choice. In other words, I want to be able to make the choice to include a BRD to potentially accomplish more over a period of 3, 5, or 10 minutes, whereas without a BRD, I can still actively participate in combat for 3, 5, or 10 minutes.

[WorldofWorkcraft]

I would imagine that Job abilites will cost a great deal more, Also we will have alot more abilites by level 50 to use as well. I mean currently as a pugilist I only have 5 abilites I use and that is useing them all. My TP dosent get used up that much. By level 50 when playing a monk, not only will I have those 5 abilites still but ill have lancer abilites as well, pluse all the extra abilites from a Pugilist in addition to the monk's job abilites too.

So I imagine even though alot of abilites have a small cost, the number of abilites we will be useing will make a far larger dent in total TP we use per fight.

That's true, unless certain abilities effectively replace others. But I'm guessing as we get higher, it will replace and add lots of skills. I know even at level 23, I had plenty of cooldowns as well as a 10% 10 second buff (flank attack) to keep up on myself along with the archer level 2 10% crit buff.

[Buckwald]

That's true, unless certain abilities effectively replace others. But I'm guessing as we get higher, it will replace and add lots of skills. I know even at level 23, I had plenty of cooldowns as well as a 10% 10 second buff (flank attack) to keep up on myself along with the archer level 2 10% crit buff.

Not really replaced, but there are different ones for different combos. I got on my 1.0 lvl 50 Dragoon and there's 3 different combo chains that use abilities.

[WorldofWorkcraft]

Info

If it needs to be addressed, I'd say it will be. Especially in a "bring the class" situation. However, that also depends on encounter design. The assumption is...what...a pure rotation with zero breaks regarding attacks? I feel like something is missing, as in the notion of downtime within mechanics and fights anyway. You can look at many boss mechanics from other games where there is a phase of doing something besides attacking, whether it's running to kill oozes before they reach the boss, stacking to take damage and heal, etc.

The assumptions of that post are pretty ridiculous. If the main assumption is a pure rotation with no interruption, I'd say that would just be careless design mechanics if you're just DPSing without having to stop. But maybe I'm missing something. Enlighten me if I am, because if there are any fights that require me to stand for a minute and just DPS, that's pretty damn boring. Half of the fun would be in movement, allocation of MP skills when unable to attack due to a mechanic, and other kinds of things like that. And if the battle system has such a design, then I'm expecting a lot from mechanics that don't revolve around auto-attacking and waiting for TP.

The information also stems from leveling dungeons, where they're introducing you little by little to mechanics you'll be needing. Maybe they're teaching you that a pure rotation won't always be the case. Whereas, you'll be in situations where you can't attack and have to wait; not because you have 0 TP, but because there's something else to focus on. Speculation, of course. But it's just as easily said as the post on the forums.

[Remilia]

There's a post floating in the official Beta Forums that at Level 35 (level cap for beta) and that for the Level 50 Legacy characters, TP management is a huge issue.

Right now, you only sustain a fight for (I believe) 140 seconds on a Level 50 MNK. If he uses his skill that increases his attack speed by 15%, the TP up-keep gets slashed in half at 70 seconds.

What does this mean? Well, have fun chaining mobs. It won't be possible because there are no available TP regen abilities (besides the LNC one that gives you full TP back but has a 1 minute CD) and you starve yourself out of TP if you're simply using your rotation, not even skill spamming.

This TP issue at end-game seems to be even more important than end-game content itself... What's the point of reaching end-game and investing a lot of time if TP management completely restricts the way you can play the game? This issue is critical and needs to be addressed ASAP.

Link: http://forum.square-enix.com/ARR-Tes...-Player-Agency

More hard data/ information regarding TP sustainability at level cap:

I honestly am not sure why people feel the need to mash every button / roll across the keyboard (yes exaggeration) in order to dps.

For me, there should never be a 'rotation'. There are abilities you use to gain a desired effect, but having the need to maximize it while completely gimping yourself later on is poor decision making on your end. Rotations are just a cookie cutter method of doing an activity without forethought.
Which quite honestly for me just makes the game more trivial and take less skill or thought into the gameplay.

[Buckwald]

If it needs to be addressed, I'd say it will be. Especially in a "bring the class" situation. However, that also depends on encounter design. The assumption is...what...a pure rotation with zero breaks regarding attacks? I feel like something is missing, as in the notion of downtime within mechanics and fights anyway. You can look at many boss mechanics from other games where there is a phase of doing something besides attacking, whether it's running to kill oozes before they reach the boss, stacking to take damage and heal, etc.

The assumptions of that post are pretty ridiculous. If the main assumption is a pure rotation with no interruption, I'd say that would just be careless design mechanics if you're just DPSing without having to stop. But maybe I'm missing something. Enlighten me if I am, because if there are any fights that require me to stand for a minute and just DPS, that's pretty damn boring. Half of the fun would be in movement, allocation of MP skills when unable to attack due to a mechanic, and other kinds of things like that.

BRD has a TP regen skill plus an active skill which boosts the regen skills of the BRD. I was thinking about this last night. If you have 2 BRDs in the party, 1 with TP regen and 1 with MP regen, the party should be able to maintain a fairly active boss fight. If the GCD only drops to 1.9 sec, TP regen shouldn't be an issue. Now, if you're solo changing one mob after another, then yes it's an issue. So, we'd have to see the mechanics of boss fights at lvl 50 to really figure out if the system is flawed or not. A quick fix would be to add a TP potion that restores a flat amount of TP. Or at least food or a potion that increases TP regen %.

[Lethey Alexandros]

There's a post floating in the official Beta Forums that at Level 35 (level cap for beta) and that for the Level 50 Legacy characters, TP management is a huge issue.

Right now, you only sustain a fight for (I believe) 140 seconds on a Level 50 MNK. If he uses his skill that increases his attack speed by 15%, the TP up-keep gets slashed in half at 70 seconds.

What does this mean? Well, have fun chaining mobs. It won't be possible because there are no available TP regen abilities (besides the LNC one that gives you full TP back but has a 1 minute CD) and you starve yourself out of TP if you're simply using your rotation, not even skill spamming.

This TP issue at end-game seems to be even more important than end-game content itself... What's the point of reaching end-game and investing a lot of time if TP management completely restricts the way you can play the game? This issue is critical and needs to be addressed ASAP.

Link: http://forum.square-enix.com/ARR-Tes...-Player-Agency

More hard data/ information regarding TP sustainability at level cap:

having read this post and read the linked forum post, I cant help but feel that people are missing out on the fact that this is not WoW, there are no enrage timers on bosses in this game, you dont have to beat a 6-8 minute window before they go god mode on you.

It harkens back to Vanilla wow when there was a point in time in which paladins tossed up seal of wisdom and every mana user beat on the boss to regain their mana and resume their healing/DPS rotations.

Likewise there are several rotation types in this game, On my pugilist for instance, I have 2 seperate rotations at the moment that I use, one for quick little bursts of damage and another for a long set up. Each has a different ammount of TP spent to utalize them.

[sergel02]

having read this post and read the linked forum post, I cant help but feel that people are missing out on the fact that this is not WoW, there are no enrage timers on bosses in this game, you dont have to beat a 6-8 minute window before they go god mode on you.

It harkens back to Vanilla wow when there was a point in time in which paladins tossed up seal of wisodm and every mana user beat on the boss to regain their mana and resume their healing/DPS rotations.

Likewise there are several rotation types in this game, On my pugilist for instance, I have 2 seperate rotations at the moment that I use, one for quick little bursts of damage and another for a long set up. Each has a different ammount of TP spent to utalize them.

I just hope some fights don't end up dipping into the 10-12+ minute long encounters. I think FF11 had some encounter notorious for that, since there was no enrage timer. The enrage time is a little arbitrary (tho to me it makes sense, as someone gets weaker they get more desperate to survive), but it's typically there to prevent fights from lasting too long. Tho i guess we'll see later on.

Btw any one know if there is a way to turn off tooltips on skills on your hot bar when you hover over them? As melee, I like using my keyboard to maneuver and clicking the skills, but the window popping up is pretty distracting.

[WorldofWorkcraft]

BRD has a TP regen skill plus an active skill which boosts the regen skills of the BRD. I was thinking about this last night. If you have 2 BRDs in the party, 1 with TP regen and 1 with MP regen, the party should be able to maintain a fairly active boss fight. If the GCD only drops to 1.9 sec, TP regen shouldn't be an issue. Now, if you're solo changing one mob after another, then yes it's an issue. So, we'd have to see the mechanics of boss fights at lvl 50 to really figure out if the system is flawed or not. A quick fix would be to add a TP potion that restores a flat amount of TP. Or at least food or a potion that increases TP regen %.

I get this. But this is only relevant if the idea of skill rotations is never interrupted. Any fight with zero interruptions or time to do other stuff other than straight rotate is boring. So we'll see.

[Reg]

I just hope some fights don't end up dipping into the 10-12+ minute long encounters. I think FF11 had some encounter notorious for that, since there was no enrage timer. The enrage time is a little arbitrary (tho to me it makes sense, as someone gets weaker they get more desperate to survive), but it's typically there to prevent fights from lasting too long. Tho i guess we'll see later on.

Btw any one know if there is a way to turn off tooltips on skills on your hot bar when you hover over them? As melee, I like using my keyboard to maneuver and clicking the skills, but the window popping up is pretty distracting.

Only 10-12 minutes?! My linkshell spent 18 hours on AV before we gave up lol We played in shifts.

[Lethey Alexandros]

I just hope some fights don't end up dipping into the 10-12+ minute long encounters. I think FF11 had some encounter notorious for that, since there was no enrage timer. The enrage time is a little arbitrary (tho to me it makes sense, as someone gets weaker they get more desperate to survive), but it's typically there to prevent fights from lasting too long. Tho i guess we'll see later on.

Btw any one know if there is a way to turn off tooltips on skills on your hot bar when you hover over them? As melee, I like using my keyboard to maneuver and clicking the skills, but the window popping up is pretty distracting.

FF11 pre chains of promethius had notorious boss fights thats took hours to kill, I belive there was even one if I remember right too a combined effort of 4 link shells from three different time zones a total of nearly 24hours to kill due to its health pool.

[Buckwald]

I get this. But this is only relevant if the idea of skill rotations is never interrupted. Any fight with zero interruptions or time to do other stuff other than straight rotate is boring. So we'll see.

Oh I agree. So far, every boss fight I've encountered has you moving to do something.

[Lethey Alexandros]

Oh I agree. So far, every boss fight I've encountered has you moving to do something.

Exactly this, I havent encountered a fight yet where I get nothing but DPS time on the boss.

[Catalystics]

Is there anyway to copy HUD/LAYOUT??

[Sil-Iris]

Maybe its because I only got to level 13, but I noticed a lack of gear drops from mobs. If this is the case, does that mean professions are the only means besides quests and dungeons to get gear leveling up? Is there no such thing as rare loot? I do however, like that you automatically get loot when you kill a monster.

Furthermore, is the marketboard the same thing as WoW's auction house? Is there something similar to an AH in this game?

Still have no idea how I'm going to have time to level both summoner and warrior w/ sub classes for each in a year...

[lollermittens]

If it needs to be addressed, I'd say it will be. Especially in a "bring the class" situation. However, that also depends on encounter design. The assumption is...what...a pure rotation with zero breaks regarding attacks? I feel like something is missing, as in the notion of downtime within mechanics and fights anyway. You can look at many boss mechanics from other games where there is a phase of doing something besides attacking, whether it's running to kill oozes before they reach the boss, stacking to take damage and heal, etc.

The assumptions of that post are pretty ridiculous. If the main assumption is a pure rotation with no interruption, I'd say that would just be careless design mechanics if you're just DPSing without having to stop. But maybe I'm missing something. Enlighten me if I am, because if there are any fights that require me to stand for a minute and just DPS, that's pretty damn boring. Half of the fun would be in movement, allocation of MP skills when unable to attack due to a mechanic, and other kinds of things like that. And if the battle system has such a design, then I'm expecting a lot from mechanics that don't revolve around auto-attacking and waiting for TP.

The information also stems from leveling dungeons, where they're introducing you little by little to mechanics you'll be needing. Maybe they're teaching you that a pure rotation won't always be the case. Whereas, you'll be in situations where you can't attack and have to wait; not because you have 0 TP, but because there's something else to focus on. Speculation, of course. But it's just as easily said as the post on the forums.

The posts I'm focusing on are those of folks who have reached the Level cap of 35 and those with Level 50 Legacy characters.

And this is what they're claiming: TP management at Level cap (both level caps currently) is not manageable in an efficient way. It's important to us min-max'ers. We don't want to be limited to dish-out our max DPS output because of artificial constraint centered around a badly implemented end-game TP system.

Here is a Reddit link which breaks down +Attack Speed at a granular level: http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...l_granularity/

Currently, this is what we have: an either/or system. You either maximize +Attack Speed on melee characters for the detriment of TP upkeep. Or you must sacrifice +Attack Speed for +STR/+DTR to get your maximum DPS output but at the sacrifice of a slower-paced combat.

As you can see from the link, +Attack Speed diminishing returns, well... suck. +122 Skillspeed for a reduction of 0.2 seconds on the GCD? This is a huge kick in the nuts to anyone who wanted more customization of their characters in the battle system as we're constrained to the pettiness of the TP system which seems to work at low-levels but starts to falter apart at higher levels.

The biggest mistake you can make in these types of games is have you work 2 weeks (or maybe 2 months, who knows) for Legendary Sword +11 of Bahamut of the Western Euraoza World for some marginal reward that barely even makes a difference on your character.

Those who are theorycrafting by extrapolating BiS (best-in-slot) items are basically saying you gotta put up with a trade-off no one fully understands yet.

Well, for those of us melee chars who were looking to tweak our GCD as much as possible have been shot down. I'm not liking this and there needs to be a response in terms of TP management.

On the topic of rotation... I mean, I don't even know how to respond about that. Rotation-based games aren't the ones where you /roll your face across the keyboards, those are the twitchier more reaction-based MMOs. It's pretty easy to see that this game will require you to memorize a couple of rotations (starting rotation; backstab rotation; "side-stab" rotation; limit break rotation) to maximize your character's effectiveness. Rotation-based systems (Aion comes to mind) get pretty damn boring after the umpteenth time of doing the same thing. That's where stats like +Attack Speed/+Skill Speed come into play to pepper some flavor onto an otherwise very bland system. Yeah moving out of AoE attacks and paying attention to what the boss does is paramount to the gameplay here but it has pretty much been for any serious MMO. This isn't enough (I'm not looking for anything ground-breaking either) to know that we'll have to be moving around to avoid a boss' attack. We better expect that.

Man, again, as more and more details about the end-game are revealed, the more and more games start to falter.

[Deix-EU]

I honestly am not sure why people feel the need to mash every button / roll across the keyboard (yes exaggeration) in order to dps.

For me, there should never be a 'rotation'. There are abilities you use to gain a desired effect, but having the need to maximize it while completely gimping yourself later on is poor decision making on your end. Rotations are just a cookie cutter method of doing an activity without forethought.
Which quite honestly for me just makes the game more trivial and take less skill or thought into the gameplay.

A guy answers your first questionning in the forum :

"For modern combat to be effective and satisfying, we need to be always busy and always consciously making important decisions"

This is "modern" combat style, as we got "handtouch" to replace "mouse" in the next years, people want to be busy all the time because other games and growing in general cleverness made (at least hardcore ones) gamers pretty exigent. Gamers don't want a "rotation until boss is dead" combat style but they must have things to do instead of waiting for TP.

I Played War Tank in WoW at a very high level before I finished getting bored doing rotation the best I could working out on worldoflogs how many 0.000001 sec I wasted in uptime to finish in the top TPS/DPS generator as far as Teron or Patchwerk fights were concerned. After studes and a little professional rising, I came back to play a Monk tank, well known to be the most challenging class atm. Why ? Simply because there is A LOT of things to maintain and you have to do it always ACTIVELY (even if it's imply RNG). The feeling of a gameplay like this is VERY pleasant and I'm know very convinced this is the way to go.

I started the beta today with a PGL and for now, I'm enjoying the game so I can't confirm whether it's true in end game fights but IF the problem is real (and no mean to maintain resources/buff actively), this is a real concern and when some people in this thread talk about "moving to avoid thing so you are not doing anything" : this is not a solution cause moving while pushing keys in between GCD is very easy :(.

[Deleted]

Oh god, I hope the pet-AI is way better for the actual pet classes than it is with tho chocobo. It's like the thing WANTS to be killed, not going out of AoEs, even if you put it on heal, somehow get it behind a mob - when the mob charges up his frontal attack, you step out of it, you can BET on your choc stepping INTO it...

Playing a pet class could be horrible.

[Sil-Iris]

Lollermittens...I just don't think this is the game for you. That isn't the fault of the game, its the fault that its not the game you want it to be. Obviously the game isnt designed to have a quick GCD.

"We don't want to be limited to dish-out our max DPS output because of artificial constraint centered around a badly implemented end-game TP system."
I don't think you understand...this doesn't seem to be a game for max DPS through attack speed. Its going to be based on you using the right moves at the right time. If you can't get past that, keep moving.

Besides that, you're not listening to what the forum posters are saying. You're not changing your understanding of the game, you're stuck in this one mentality that isn't going to be rewarded by XIV. Its okay that XIV isn't your game, no one is forcing you to play it.

[Buckwald]

Maybe its because I only got to level 13, but I noticed a lack of gear drops from mobs. If this is the case, does that mean professions are the only means besides quests and dungeons to get gear leveling up? Is there no such thing as rare loot? I do however, like that you automatically get loot when you kill a monster.

Monsters don't drop gear. There's 5 ways of getting gear. Quests, Dungeons, Market boards (AH), purchasing gear and crafting.

Furthermore, is the market board the same thing as WoW's auction house? Is there something similar to an AH in this game?

Yes

Still have no idea how I'm going to have time to level both summoner and warrior w/ sub classes for each in a year...

I've only really played for about 3 days focused on leveling and I'm level 21, it's not going to be as difficult as it was in 1.0 where you grind leves for 10 levels then move on to the next leve zone.