[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[KrayZ33]

Are they? This is what the tooltip for the Astrologians Collective Unconcious looks like;
-snip-

I disagree, thats just your opinion.
The tooltips are designed in a way that you can find everything immediatly.
I have never seen that tooltip and know exactly what it does after I read through it once. The potencies, duration and effects are highlighted the way they are highlighted for all skills and are thus easy to understand.

The way you describe these skills are not and can not be consistent and thus suffer from the same problem card game card description would suffer. Even worse, they are hardly shorter (83 words vs 110 words and if I remove the buff name and the last sentence from the description, which yours doesn't mention, I'm basically on equal amount of words) and missing information such as buff/debuff names. The sentences that actually describe the skill are pretty much the same. You just removed the parts that show the potencies, durations and buff names and only included these potencies and durations into the sentence.

This is however by design and there is a reason behind this, as stated above, it's to format the whole thing in a way that is identical to all other skills in the game.

It's just silly to have this as a priority when the whole things works just fine and hardly needs any improvement.
It's not like you read through the whole thing whenever you press it anyway. The more information you get, the better.

[Granyala]

I disagree, thats just your opinion.
The tooltips are designed in a way that you can find everything immediatly.

Honestly: I think I don't need to know that the star creates 2 short term debuffs and what their name is, nor do I need to know the name of the explosion spell.
That is completely irrelevant information. I also don't need them to spell out that it heals/damages all people in it's range. It has a radius, that in itself is enough information. Esp once you see the thing in action. They could just write:

[Earthly Star]
Range: 30y
Radius: 8y
Maximum Duration 20s
Damage Potency 100
Heal Potency 200

After 10 Seconds
Damage Potency 200
Heal Potency 400

Can be manually detonated at any time.

As for the collective unconscious tooltip: considering that the healer needs to know what the buffs/debuffs do and that it's dependent on Nocturnal/Diurnal stance, I don't think this can be worded more efficiently.

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By the time you get to the end of the tooltip you've probably not understood half of what it does and need to re-read it multiple times until you do. That is a problem!

Then maybe, people should shut down their computers and grab a book or two.
What a ridiculous statement. o_O

BTW: you don't have to understand the spell JUST from the tooltip. You know, you could also use the spell a few times in addition to the tooltip to see what it does. In combination, everything should be clear within 10 seconds.
Come on, this is a VIDEO GAME not rocket science.

[StrawberryZebra]

Even worse, they are hardly shorter (83 words vs 110 words

You do realise that means that the current FF14 tooltips contain 37.5% more words than the ones I mocked up, right? That's significant, statistically speaking.

There's also the formatting issue I briefly touched on. Tooltips aren't laid out in a way that's user friendly and are just one continuous wall of text. Some white space in there to break up important parts of information would go a long way to make them more readable.

It's just silly to have this as a priority when the whole things works just fine and hardly needs any improvement.

There's so much they could do to improve them.

They could change them to offer contextual information, so for things like Limit Break rather than having the full description for every role it could just show you what's relevant to your role.

The formatting of them is attrocious. There's a garish mess of colours and text in one continuous block, and the readability of them suffers because of it. Having the colouring on pretty much everything to make it stand out has the opposite effect - It blends in with all the other text.

Particularly for jobs like the Black Mage, where they have two distinct Fire and Ice mechanics, adding some colour coding as to which spell interacts with each mechanic would make them far more readable.

Where things are a passage of text, they're often worded poorly or strangely. I suspect this is because they may have been translated directly from the Japanese. Things like "Upon next HP recovery by the next healing spell cast by self or allied party member..." It's a very long winded way of saying "The next time you are healed"

Then there are lots of inconsistencies in descriptions too. Ramparts description is "Reduces damage taken by 20%". Intervention says "Reduces target party members damage taken by 10%". Yet Passage of Arms and Sacred Soil word it as "Creates an area in which party members will only suffer 85% of all damage inflicted". It's not resticted just to group cooldowns either, Temperance says "Reduces damage taken by self and all party members".

As for the collective unconscious tooltip: considering that the healer needs to know what the buffs/debuffs do and that it's dependent on Nocturnal/Diurnal stance, I don't think this can be worded more efficiently.

Yeah, it's quite a subtle skill in general. It isn't helped by the fact that it has very similar effects in both sects, and the difference is simply in how those effects are applied to players.

Then maybe, people should shut down their computers and grab a book or two.
What a ridiculous statement. o_O

While I do encourage people to read more, I'm also aware that English isn't everyones first language. Not everyone has the best reading comprehension skills either. Younger players, those with dyslexia or other reading difficulties might not be able to follow along as easilly as you can.

Using the spell is good and well, but for something like Collective Unconcious for example, you could easilly miss the nuance in the skill using it in combat. The initial description would lead you to believe it has almost the same effects in both sects. You need to be paying very close attention to spot the difference in actual game play.

People are just going to stack in the bubble anyway out of habit and those differences don't really seem to matter. Which almost completely invalidates any differences based on your sect, as well as the giant tooltip :P.

[KrayZ33]

You do realise that means that the current FF14 tooltips contain 37.5% more words than the ones I mocked up, right? That's significant, statistically speaking.

There's also the formatting issue I briefly touched on. Tooltips aren't laid out in a way that's user friendly and are just one continuous wall of text. Some white space in there to break up important parts of information would go a long way to make them more readable.

That's exactly where you are wrong, the format is worse in yours. It's great in the tooltip given by the game.

And actually, your mocked up version has less information, if you use the same amount of information given, it's - as I pointed out already - 83 vs 89 words. If I remove the part about it canceling auto attacks and that even facing a different direction, which isn't even movement strictly speaking (because behold, I can turn around while doing casts normally), will cancel the spell, the FFXIV version uses even fewer words.
But the format in yours is worse as it doesn't follow any coherent rule. You just try to word the values into the sentence. FFXIV tries to word what the skill does and then adds the values below that description as a "cheat-sheat". They are *the opposite* of a wall of text.

It's almost insultingly stupid to even discuss this.

As for them being unreadable or a "mess" or anything like that, as mention before: "That's just your opinion man".
If there is a messed up tooltip, it's an outlier, but for sure not the general problem

[Granyala]

People are just going to stack in the bubble anyway out of habit and those differences don't really seem to matter.

Oh yes.. that would be nice. Very nice indeed.
Yet you and I know that there will always be at least one ranged DPS thinking "Imma no need bubbles, Imma stand as far away as possible!!".

BTW: the difference is not as subtle as you think. It's actually pretty obvious. The AST bubble gives 2 buffs:
1 buff for as long as the caster stands still.
1 buff with a fixed duration.
You get the buff with a fixed duration according to your sect: Diurnal: Regen, Nocturnal: damage reduction.
You get the opposite buff for standing still: Diurnal: Damage reduction, Nocturnal: Regen.

That's why you often see AST only tap the bubble for a second, because they currently do not need the "standing still" effect.

I still see no way to word that more efficiently and more clearly.

[The Oblivion]

I'm trying this game again. I went with "human" marauder, so basically warrior. Using a melee class really makes you feel the slow GCD, but the world is vibrant and alive. It makes other MMO worlds look artificial.

LMAO dude, you wanna feel slow. go try black mage from level 1. HOLY SHIT. its the worst. I have almost every job leveled now, but leveling as black mage, it needs an overhaul BADLY. the slowest job by a huge margin at low levels.

[Granyala]

LMAO dude, you wanna feel slow. go try black mage from level 1. HOLY SHIT. its the worst. I have almost every job leveled now, but leveling as black mage, it needs an overhaul BADLY. the slowest job by a huge margin at low levels.

Hmm yup, BLM need a lot of haste. But long ass slow casts and very little to weave is basically the "shtick" of the class, so I do not see an overhaul as necessary.
SMN feels much more busy and RDM feels very nimble by comparison.

[The Oblivion]

Hmm yup, BLM need a lot of haste. But long ass slow casts and very little to weave is basically the "shtick" of the class, so I do not see an overhaul as necessary.
SMN feels much more busy and RDM feels very nimble by comparison.

the class doesnt need an overhaul, the leveling of it does. its real bad compared to all others currently. pre level 40 or so, it made me want to stop playing. the first job to ever do that to me.

[StrawberryZebra]

That's exactly where you are wrong, the format is worse in yours. It's great in the tooltip given by the game.

And actually, your mocked up version has less information, if you use the same amount of information given, it's - as I pointed out already - 83 vs 89 words. If I remove the part about it canceling auto attacks and that even facing a different direction, which isn't even movement strictly speaking (because behold, I can turn around while doing casts normally), will cancel the spell, the FFXIV version uses even fewer words.
But the format in yours is worse as it doesn't follow any coherent rule. You just try to word the values into the sentence. FFXIV tries to word what the skill does and then adds the values below that description as a "cheat-sheat". They are *the opposite* of a wall of text.

It's almost insultingly stupid to even discuss this.

As for them being unreadable or a "mess" or anything like that, as mention before: "That's just your opinion man".
If there is a messed up tooltip, it's an outlier, but for sure not the general problem

I used the numbers you provided. It's more than a little disengenuous to change them after the fact.

I would argue that mine has more information - The current one doesn't include the maximum duration you can channel for and makes it seem as though the duration is infinate until you take another action. Unless it does, and the 20 second duration at the bottom is for the overall spell, in which case it's missing the duration of the Wheel of Fortune buff. Given how it actually functions, it's omitted the fact that you only recieve the Wheel of Fortune buff while in the sphere and don't have the full 18/20 second duration it claims. It's missing something no matter how you look at it.

Which is the reason I chose that tooltip. There's a lack of clarity despite it's word count.

It should also be noted that in almost all of FF14 damaging skills the base damage is listed as part of the sentence structure too. The combo bonuses and additional effects are listed seperate, but base damage is almost exclusively as part of the main description.

Still, people like yourself are why I tend to avoid the FF14 community at large. I highlighted what I consider to be problems and voulenteered some solutions. Rather than address any of the criticism or putting forward points of your own, you've latched on to a single criticism, word count, then branded the whole of the issue to be "insultingly stupid" in an attempt to shut down the discussion.

It's just silly to have this as a priority when the whole things works just fine and hardly needs any improvement.

And I've found this kind of attitude to be shockingly common. For whatever reason players just seem to have this belief that FF14 is perfect in every way and anyone daring to voice any kind of criticism should be attacked.

Oh yes.. that would be nice. Very nice indeed.
Yet you and I know that there will always be at least one ranged DPS thinking "Imma no need bubbles, Imma stand as far away as possible!!".

Oddly enough, it's always a Red Mage for some reason. They've overtaken Dragoons as the Job most likely to hit the self destruct button and get themselves killed in easilly avoidable and stupid ways.

But that's what Rescue is for. I'm going to force them to get in the damn safe zone if they like it or not!

It's the same reason I don't often trust others to tank Dungeons. I always make sure that AoE cones are pointed into walls or over edges to make absolutely sure that DPS aren't going to get themselves killed in stupid ways. It's impossible for them to screw it up without physically being a part of the game terrain.

On reflection, it seems I have a low opinion of DPS players in general .

LMAO dude, you wanna feel slow. go try black mage from level 1. HOLY SHIT. its the worst. I have almost every job leveled now, but leveling as black mage, it needs an overhaul BADLY. the slowest job by a huge margin at low levels.

As much as it gets better at higher levels, all that goes out of the window when you queue for a roulette and get Tam-Tara or Copperbell Mines. Black Mages get it worse than most because they've got to improvise a rotation on the fly every time their level gets adjusted.

I agree it could use looking into. Opening up some of the key skills earlier on would go a long way to smoothing out it's leveling gameplay.

[KrayZ33]

I used the numbers you provided. It's more than a little disengenuous to change them after the fact.

You didn't, you specifically ignored the part where I explained why your tooltip has less words.

I would argue that mine has more information - The current one doesn't include the maximum duration you can channel for and makes it seem as though the duration is infinate until you take another action. Unless it does, and the 20 second duration at the bottom is for the overall spell, in which case it's missing the duration of the Wheel of Fortune buff. Given how it actually functions, it's omitted the fact that you only recieve the Wheel of Fortune buff while in the sphere and don't have the full 18/20 second duration it claims. It's missing something no matter how you look at it.

None of that is true, the tooltip explains it completely.
The wheel of fortune buff duration for each sect is different.
You only have to tip your toe into the bubble to recieve the wheel of fortune buff, you can actually get 30s++ worth of it when the AST keeps channeling and you re-enter the bubble at the last second (or most likely, "last server tick" due to how the game works) when wheel of fortune ran out, or when you delete the rest of the buff-duration to get a fresh one.
The channel duration of the skill itself is 18s.



Creates a celestial ring around the caster.
Diurnal Sect Effect: Reduces damage taken by 10% and applies Wheel of Fortune to self and any party members who enter
Duration: 18s

Wheel of Fortune Effect (Diurnal): Regen
Cure Potency: 100
Duration: 15s
-------------------------------------------------------------------------


Nocturnal Sect Effect: Grants healing over time and applies Wheel of Fortune to self and any party members who enter
Cure Potency: 100
Duration: 18s

Wheel of Fortune Effect (Nocturnal): Reduces damage taken by 10%
Duration: 20s
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Effect ends upon using another action or moving (including facing a different direction).
Cancels auto-attack upon execution.
Can only be executed while under the effect of Diurnal Sect or Nocturnal Sect.

And I've found this kind of attitude to be shockingly common. For whatever reason players just seem to have this belief that FF14 is perfect in every way and anyone daring to voice any kind of criticism should be attacked.

No.. that's not what happened.
You want to fix something that doesn't need fixing, and making it a "priority" is just silly. Not only are there far more serious matters, this one is actually unnecessary because it's fine as it is. There is nothing or only *very* little to improve. It's a tooltip you have to read once (or for F-sake, maybe twice if you are really brain-farting) to understand it and then never again. It's an outlier too, all my SAM tooltips are perfectly fine and well organized.
I don't play AST, I've never seen that tooltip outside of this thread, and I understand the skill better than you from words alone.
I do know now that it is the bubble ASTs can cast though (the one where they float slightly above ground, arms and hands stretched to the side while holding up the "forcefield"), because it would fit the skill-description perfectly.

I'm suggesting it's a "you" problem.
It's also funny that you assume I don't want anything to change in FFXIV just because I believe the tooltips are fine.

Rather than address any of the criticism or putting forward points of your own, you've latched on to a single criticism, word count, then branded the whole of the issue to be "insultingly stupid" in an attempt to shut down the discussion.

> implying I didn't adress it stating that the format of the tooltips are coherent and always the same, thus easy to understand and to identify the main points of a skill, while your version will completely destroy that.
But let's blame the guy who doesn't want something good to turn bad, or just because he doesn't agree with you.

[Granyala]

the class doesnt need an overhaul, the leveling of it does. its real bad compared to all others currently. pre level 40 or so, it made me want to stop playing. the first job to ever do that to me.

Yup, but that goes for all classes. All Classes are braindead until at least level 60.

You generally have the feeling of playing a broken mess until max, which is why I friggin hate being low level in any MMO/RPG.

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Oddly enough, it's always a Red Mage for some reason. They've overtaken Dragoons as the Job most likely to hit the self destruct button and get themselves killed in easilly avoidable and stupid ways.

But that's what Rescue is for. I'm going to force them to get in the damn safe zone if they like it or not!

It's the same reason I don't often trust others to tank Dungeons. I always make sure that AoE cones are pointed into walls or over edges to make absolutely sure that DPS aren't going to get themselves killed in stupid ways. It's impossible for them to screw it up without physically being a part of the game terrain.

On reflection, it seems I have a low opinion of DPS players in general

*chuckles*
Yeah I don't like random tanks and I don't like random healers.
Come to think of it, having ACT run also makes me dislike random DPS. If they do lower DPS than me (who close to never plays DPS classes and is pretty crappy at it) then I always wonder WTH these players are actually doing and thinking.

Ditto on making sure cone attacks are pointed away from the group. The moth boss at Lv 50(?) was a prime example. All that effort for DPS to just go "herp-a-derp" and blanket the entire area.

[The Oblivion]

Yup, but that goes for all classes. All Classes are braindead until at least level 60.

You generally have the feeling of playing a broken mess until max, which is why I friggin hate being low level in any MMO/RPG.

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*chuckles*
Yeah I don't like random tanks and I don't like random healers.
Come to think of it, having ACT run also makes me dislike random DPS. If they do lower DPS than me (who close to never plays DPS classes and is pretty crappy at it) then I always wonder WTH these players are actually doing and thinking.

Ditto on making sure cone attacks are pointed away from the group. The moth boss at Lv 50(?) was a prime example. All that effort for DPS to just go "herp-a-derp" and blanket the entire area.

you should go on a new server and just play all jobs. BLM is so much worse its insane. we are talking 3-4x slower then a healer or tank.

[Granyala]

you should go on a new server and just play all jobs. BLM is so much worse its insane. we are talking 3-4x slower then a healer or tank.

Why would I do that?
I don't give a shit about the leveling experience, I have all jobs leveled (thank God) and got the annoying part over with.

As far as memory served, ALL classes royally sucked till Lv 40+ and sucked a little less until you got your Heavensward skills.
Hell my DRG spent like 20 levels mashing 1 button because that was higher DPET than doing the actual combo lol.

If you are killing mobs slower than a healer or a tank, you're doing sth. very wrong.

[StrawberryZebra]

No.. that's not what happened.

What's happened is I've put forwards some proposals on how I would go about improving tooltips. I've clearly stated from the outset I'd remove almost all of the buff names to strip out the irrelevent information and change the format they were presented in.

I've put forwards other possible improvements like contextual tooltips - Something the Astrologian would greatly benefit from - and rewriting tooltips where effects are worded inconsitently or read badly.

You have rejected all criticism because;

Just no, tooltips are fine, short, simple and tell you exactly what you need. Not sure how that can be in your top 3. There is literally nothing to even improve upon it.

They're not good, certainly not great. Nothing that could ever be improved upon, I'm sure.

It's almost insultingly stupid to even discuss this.

It appears so. As much as I hate to call people out over the internet, I don't think you ever had any intention of discussing this in good faith.

Come to think of it, having ACT run also makes me dislike random DPS. If they do lower DPS than me (who close to never plays DPS classes and is pretty crappy at it) then I always wonder WTH these players are actually doing and thinking.

The difference between good DPS and bad is night and day. I've been doing Dungeons as a Scholar and it astounds me the number of DPS who'll be below me on DPS. The number of people who'll spend long periods of time in combat doing nothing is absurd. I know Dungeons aren't exactly hard content, but at least push some buttons.

Good DPS will smash through an Expert in under 10 minutes. The longest run I've seen has been close to 45 minutes with no wipes. That's a huge performance difference.

The only DPS job I have at max level is Summoner, and then only because it came along with Scholar. I've been putting the work into it though to get some acceptable gear. I did come back with the intention to do some raiding, and at this stage it's probably easier to watch and learn the mechanics as a ranged DPS before doing them as a healer. Especially since I'll be pugging them and a healer who keeps screwing up the mechanics is more of a hinderance than a dead DPS.

[The Oblivion]

Why would I do that?
I don't give a shit about the leveling experience, I have all jobs leveled (thank God) and got the annoying part over with.

As far as memory served, ALL classes royally sucked till Lv 40+ and sucked a little less until you got your Heavensward skills.
Hell my DRG spent like 20 levels mashing 1 button because that was higher DPET than doing the actual combo lol.

If you are killing mobs slower than a healer or a tank, you're doing sth. very wrong.

and you would be wrong, BLM is the slowest initial leveling of all jobs. tanks and healers included.

[KrayZ33]

What's happened is I've put forwards some proposals on how I would go about improving tooltips. I've clearly stated from the outset I'd remove almost all of the buff names to strip out the irrelevent information and change the format they were presented in.

I've put forwards other possible improvements like contextual tooltips - Something the Astrologian would greatly benefit from - and rewriting tooltips where effects are worded inconsitently or read badly.

You have rejected all criticism because;

Why the heck do you think buff names are irrelevant?
Especially since it puts emphasis on the fact that the skill in question applies 2 things.
The tooltip portrays exactly how the skill functions. You can't have "too much" information on a flipping tooltip, because it's meant to explain the skill properly and to the exact point, after you understood that, you can turn them off (if you really want, yet there is no reason).
This is your personal preference and hardly anything the community overall could agree on. And we are discussing outliers anyway and not a "general problem"

and you would be wrong, BLM is the slowest initial leveling of all jobs. tanks and healers included.

It's most certainly the fastest alongside SAM to kill mobs. Especially up to lvl 50. (my first job was BLM).
You shouldn't play BLM as an Icemage.

[The Oblivion]

Why the heck do you think buff names are irrelevant?
Especially since it puts emphasis on the fact that the skill in question applies 2 things.
The tooltip portrays exactly how the skill functions. You can't have "too much" information on a flipping tooltip, because it's meant to explain the skill properly and to the exact point, after you understood that, you can turn them off (if you really want, yet there is no reason).
This is your personal preference and hardly anything the community overall could agree on. And we are discussing outliers anyway and not a "general problem"



It's most certainly the fastest alongside SAM to kill mobs. Especially up to lvl 50. (my first job was BLM).
You shouldn't play BLM as an Icemage.

it is the slowest by a HUGE margin while leveling. combat ttk is irrelevant. you just have a lack of experience if you think blm is the fastest low levelingjob

[Nasuuna]

Why the heck do you think buff names are irrelevant?
Especially since it puts emphasis on the fact that the skill in question applies 2 things.
The tooltip portrays exactly how the skill functions. You can't have "too much" information on a flipping tooltip, because it's meant to explain the skill properly and to the exact point, after you understood that, you can turn them off (if you really want, yet there is no reason).
This is your personal preference and hardly anything the community overall could agree on. And we are discussing outliers anyway and not a "general problem"



It's most certainly the fastest alongside SAM to kill mobs. Especially up to lvl 50. (my first job was BLM).
You shouldn't play BLM as an Icemage.

so i leveled blm not long ago

It legit is miserable how slow it is, it makes cnj look fast

[Granyala]

it is the slowest by a HUGE margin while leveling. combat ttk is irrelevant.

My dear, time to kill is pretty much all that is relevant when questing.

Yes, I get it YOU don't like how BLM plays with it's long casts and having to be stationary. Guess what: that is a "you" problem not a "game" problem.
Even at max level, the feel of speed for BLm does not change that much. Long casts and the need for tactical knowledge about when to move and when not to are the point of the class.

/case closed

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It legit is miserable how slow it is, it makes cnj look fast

Of course, our casts are much shorter. You will be spending a lot more casts per mob though.

[The Oblivion]

My dear, time to kill is pretty much all that is relevant when questing.

Yes, I get it YOU don't like how BLM plays with it's long casts and having to be stationary. Guess what: that is a "you" problem not a "game" problem.
Even at max level, the feel of speed for BLm does not change that much. Long casts and the need for tactical knowledge about when to move and when not to are the point of the class.

/case closed

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Of course, our casts are much shorter. You will be spending a lot more casts per mob though.

ttk is from when your first cast hits to the mob dying, that is not a relevant stat for what i am saying. my point is, from 1-30, blm is the slowest job to level. that is it. not the play style. not that it cant kill mobs. that it is the slowest. i main caster dps, i play blm. i like the play style.

if you set a timer, that doesnt stop from job level 1 until 30, you will find BLM lagging behind all other jobs.