Schadrach said:
I'd agree with everything you said about FFXIV ARR, but I wasn't fond of the gameplay as far as I took it (it might get better later, for all I know). It felt a little too...I don't know. It probably doesn't help that I quit WoW a couple of years ago and have been getting my MMO fixes from GW2, TSW, and DDO, so it may just be a clash of playstyles.
I don't know if you ever played FFXI, but it is vastly different from FFXI and definitely more like WoW. However, at least the way I played it, there's still an element of planning involved. The battle system of FFXI had a very hard learning curve, and there was a lot you never learned about except by learning from other players when they realize you're doing everything wrong. FFXIV is a little clearer about these things, but there are still specific battle patterns that make your life worlds easier. I only ever got to about level 9 when the level 3 beta ended, but as black mage I learned a very neat trick.
By level 3 or 5, you have both the spells blizzard and fire. And right around that time you learn an ability called transpose. See whenever you cast blizzard, you get a very brief effect on you called "umbral ice." Then if you cast fire, you get an effect called "astral fire." And if you cast one spell while you have the opposite effect up (like if you cast blizzard while astral fire is up) then the effect simply cancels out. Umbral ice decreases the damage of fire spells while increasing MP regen, while astral fire increases the effectiveness and the MP cost of fire spells, but decreases MP regen. So basically, casting a bunch of fire spells in a row will use up your MP quickly but gives you powerful spells, but if you keep umbral ice up then you regain your MP really fast.
That's where transpose comes in. Transpose switches out whichever effect you have for the other without having to cast a spell. So in order to switch from astral fire to umbral ice, rather than having to cast two ice spells (one to cancel fire and the other to give you the effect) you can just use transpose and get that MP regen effect going immediately. So the most efficient way to do it is spam fire until your MP is about out, use transpose to switch into umbral ice, and spam blizzard spells to keep umbral ice up until your MP is restored. The effect of ice and fire lasts less than 10 seconds, so you have to cast the spells pretty frequently in order to keep them going.
And I hear there are similar tricks for other classes, as well. It really makes you think about what you're doing, and forces you to plan ahead. For example, casting blizzard also has a chance of giving the enemy the effect of heavy, which slows them down. So before you engage a tough enemy in battle, you have to think--do you want to start with an onslaught of powerful fire spells to kill it quickly, or keep it toned down at first with ice spells and give yourself a longer amount of time before the enemy catches up with you to attack? Or perhaps a kiting strategy, where you use ice from a long distance away, transpose and switch to fire, and when it catches up with you transpose and cast ice again to keep your distance until it's dead?
I'm not sure how intuitive WoW is in this respect, and I haven't battled in a party yet so I'm not sure how those dynamics work, but I will say I'm intrigued by this particular aspect of the battle system. While the FFXI battle system was overly-complicated at times, it made for a very engaging battle system once you got the hang of it. It wasn't just hack and slash until it's dead--you had to think and use your abilities most efficiently for the situation in front of you. And I'm glad to see they kept this strategic aspect in FFXIV, while at the same time making the battle system more reasonable for new players.
