[AzureDemon]

Personally one thing I HATE on this game is accuracy when hitting big big BIG mobs.

Someone please explain me how you miss hitting a JNUN with your sword?

They should make it impossible for us to miss melee attack on gigantic mobs

[Ryoii/Nonomii]

Perhaps your missing is representative of an inability to safely make it within striking distance. Picture the Jnun as a toad actively wailing its limbs while staying primarily focused on attacking only one party member.

You have to use your imagination in FFXI. I'm however not opposed to a MMORPG with realisticly displayed combat. I just don't want to have to control my every movement. Then it would be more work and less play.

[AzureDemon]

indeed but I dont think those things can move around jumping xD

[Armando]

Oh boy where do I start?

* The user interface as a whole.
* Gear swapping
* The chat log's inaccuracy (it's stupid that its timing for displaying things is based on when the animation for the action ends, instead of when the action actually occurs.)
* The way the game handles animations as a whole (it's stupid that you get rooted to the ground doing an instant ability while the animation plays out. It's even stupider that you can play better by using convoluted gear swap macros to deliberately skip the animation. It's stupider still that some things show up on the chat log at the time they actually happen, while others won't make it into the chat log at all when its animation is skipped.)
* Gear swapping.
* The utter lack of game mechanisms that allow for fighting multiple targets, in a game that insists on throwing multiple targets at you in most BC fights.
* The fact that most melee jobs were designed such that all they do is autoattack and WS. Having a job's abilities all be self-buffs = bad design.
* A completely lack of weapon-specific non-WS abilities. This could've encouraged using different weapons to suit different playstyles, but no, a WAR should always use Axe or Great Axe as things are now.
* On that topic, lack of ability customization.
* Inability to cast spells that are practically instant (e.g. Flash, Stun, Dia) while moving.
* Common mob AI being incredibly simple and picking abilities at spells at random.
* The fact that mobs get TP twice as fast when there are 10 people damaging it as opposed to when there are 5.
* Stupid defensive mechanics (the inefficiency of VIT and Def) and a general lack of more interesting tanking stats (wouldn't it be cool to have armor that gives a certain amount of Phalanx, or a decent amount of regen?)
* Gear swapping.

Could probably come up with some more, but those are the worst offenders I can think of.

[Ryoii/Nonomii]

lol, Armando. I saw you wanted an animated avatar, but I had no idea it was going to be so dizzying. Forget FFXI, there needs to be a way to turn that thing off.

I'll have to agree though that you had good points on what could use some fixing.

[Aksannyi]

I am interested in this thread. I've got plenty to add, but not the time to do it at the moment. I'll be back later, unless someone else covers it.

[Yellow Mage]

* Summoner
* Buffs to Magic comparable in power to all the tools that your average Melee player has now, particularly regarding Magic Accuracy
* For that matter, more Mage-specific status effects that aren't Refresh.
* More hybrid-oriented gears and foods. This does not mean "give this armor minor amounts of multiple stats that each has a different function, and thus make it easily overshadowed by using multiple pieces of already-existing gear," nor does it mean making it plenty powerful/passable but then sticking an epic 12M price tag on it.
* Summoner
* But while none of the above is resolved, make it so us Red Mages don't have to build our own freaking Melee armor, for pete's sake. You don't give Blue Mages that kind of treatment!
* I hear that Bard could stand to become a less autonomous job. The one benefit to auto-attack is that you don't have to hit a button over and over again to do it.
* Pretty much everything Armando said.
* Oh, and . . . Summoner.

Probably forgetting a couple of things as well; maybe I'll add them later.

[Raydeus]

Hmm, if SE could go 5 years back in time and add all the stuff they have added/fixed (very recently) then I'd go with that. But considering they can't (and proof of that is they didn't go back to change Spirit's Within marketing) then there's nothing SE could fix that would make any difference for me.

There are things they could added, but nothing realistically possible or that's worth wasting on XI when it could be done in XIV instead.


But I'll try my best to contribute anyway.

So... I'll have to go with them finally eff'ing fixing the macro/command lag.

[BurningPanther]

Originally Posted by Ryoii/Nonomii

Forget FFXI, there needs to be a way to turn that thing off.

Hey, I like his avatar. Armando, don't change a thing.


On topic:

* Fix the Cure lock that was supposed to have been fixed before but never really was.

* Just default /check notices to filter and stop the madness already.

[Firewind]

* Common mob AI being incredibly simple and picking abilities at spells at random.

To be fair it's pretty common with most RPG and with certain series it's the only break that the game will ever give you *points at the MegaTen games*

[Armando]

I know. But I also have a very low opinion of most traditional RPG conventions.

Ugh random battles. Stupidest idea ever to persist. That shit should've died after Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG showed how much funner dungeons can be when you don't get interrupted against your will constantly.

[Firewind]

If you hate random battles then don't play Suikoden. The encounter rates on those games are so high it's impossible not to be overlevelled in those games .

Though without random battles you end up with situations like in something like Elder Scrolls or Fallout where monsters will instantly detect you and chase you endlessly until one of you dies no matter how far you run (Like the Cliff Racers in Morrowind or Deathclaws in Fallout) or Neverwinter Nights where your AI party members will just charge in suicidally even if they are a Wizard trying to kill a Wyrm with a +1 dagger. I can understand fighters wanting to charge in but they can also ignore perfectly viable targets for say an archer at the back: "What? Your puny bow just hit me for 4 damage? I'll ignore this Rogue who can sneak attack attack of opporunity me for 50 damage as soon as I pass him because someone who can do over TWELVE TIMES the damage to me is hardly a threat!"

The Neverwinter Nights thing reminds me of accidentally leaving gambits on on FFXII. I've had to many party wiped causes by party members suddenly deciding to engage a non-aggressive Lv50 elemental at Lv20-something I've just stopped using them alltogether.

[Icemage]

So many things broken/annoying about this game:

- non-instanced HNMs. Whichever designer at Square-Enix thought it would be a good chuckle to have hundreds of people waiting around in one zone for hours on end to maaaaaybe challenge a monster that might - or might not - appear needs to be shot. And then shot some more. Then dunked in a barrel of tar and feathered. Then drawn and quartered. Death is too good for him. Seriously.

- Utsusemi being either 100% effective or 0% effective against any given attack. Good heaven above, this might not be the most broken mechanic in the game, but when nearly all tanking situations devolve down to "Can it be blinked? Yes? No?", there is a problem.

- Agree with Armando that gear swapping sucks horribly. Why bring only one piece of equipment when you can bring seven or eight for various occasions (Yes I mean YOU elemental staves). Square-Enix should have long since put a 1 minute timer on getting effects from gear, to keep people from cherry picking the best gear for any given instant and swapping it (meanwhile the mages are tearing their hair out trying to target these people who are madly blinking in and out of existence on their screen).

- Way too much level grinding. Way, way too much. Even with all the advancements like level sync and the much kinder/gentler XP curves, it takes an enormous investment in time to get any one job to maximum level (75)... and then there are 17 other jobs. Not to mention those jolly little detours for support jobs and limit breaks.

- Skillchains are broken and nearly useless except in specific instances. Not only are the skillchain combinations too picky (is it so very much to ask to be able to have skillchains available for any combination of weapons at any reasonable level?), but the benefits simply do not merit the effort any longer unless you're tackling things that are way higher level than you are (endgame). And don't even get me started on the absurdity of magic bursting now that hardly anyone does skillchains except at endgame. Almost all newcomers to endgame have to be given a crash course in how to do magic bursts because, instead of 75 levels of training on how to use them, they never ever see them in a standard XP party.

- The crafting economy is broken. The only parts of the economy that function even vaguely correctly are consumables (ammo, food, drinks, ninja tools) because there is a flow of demand that does not suffer diminishing returns. Armor and weapons never degrade/break, so after a while everyone has enough of what they want of a given item, and that item is almost never made again - and in the mean time crafters charge whatever the market will bear until that happens.

Does all of this mean the game is horrible? No - there are a great many awesome things about FFXI. The storylines, the vast amount of content, the encouragement for players to work together built into many of the game mechanics.

But it could do with a lot of changes still, and I can only hope Square-Enix has taken some of these lessons to heart when designing the gameplay for the upcoming FF14.


Icemage

[Takelli]

Originally Posted by Icemage

(meanwhile the mages are tearing their hair out trying to target these people who are madly blinking in and out of existence on their screen).

I never have any issue when healing people while they gear swap to do weapon skills, and so on. I don't understand why people hate having to heal people who do blink though. But yea, I do agree, do away with gear swapping. I only use the light and dark staves as a Rdm, and thats it.

Fix exp gained in campaign... I can gain tripple the amount of experiance in a baseiged at lvl 57, than in campaing. I melee for an hour, and I only gain 36 exp? WTH!?!? I heal like 50 peopel and only gain 220 exp? Again... WTH!?!?

This is more of something that I want added, than something to be fixed, but it will fix the lowr levels from having nothign to do...

Level capped events like Beseiged and campaign! Give the lower levels something to do!

[Aksannyi]

I must be the only person who loves the gear swapping thing. I like that every piece of equipment I obtain at any given time is going to (typically, there are of course some exceptions) remain useful to me. I also prefer to optimize things. If there were no gearswaps at all in this game, just try to enfeeble Tiamat without ES. Try it. While it's true that most XP mobs don't require any of that to be taken down, those cute 25k/hr parties wouldn't exist if your melees weren't putting on extra STR for their WS, and TPing in Acc/Haste. Let's not forget your mage wearing some mp/tick gear for idle, and those resting gear sets, to keep chains going strong. People take a lot for granted in this game, a lot of what we are so good at and so easily able to take down is because we gear swap. That's part of the game's design, it's unique and I absolutely love it.

Blinking should be a non-issue now. <stpt> <stal> fixed it.