Admittedly, that anticipation is likely slightly different for those of us who have more information coming later this week. But that’s a different discussion altogether.
There’s a lot to analyze and unpack from the live letter, but for reasons which I trust are immediately obvious, there are several parts of it I don’t want to talk about right now. Instead, let’s talk about PvP, choices, and pressure. Mostly PvP, because boy, that’s a large-scale rework that’s going to have some impact, isn’t it?
I think it’s safe to say at this point that PvP in FFXIV has always had some issues. That shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, of course, since PvP is a big of a dicey prospect in the setting as it stands. Yes, there’s room for some conflict between the Grand Companies, but at the end of the day Eorzea has far better things to do than fight amongst itself. We’ve gotten in-universe explanations for all of the fighting, but it always feels like it sits there a bit uneasily.
But the issues extend beyond that. PvP gear and the PvP restrictions have never quite worked out as intended. Morale, as a stat, has gone through several wild swings of design. I remember PvPing at one point with someone who had a full set of morale gear against a team without any, and it was… absurd. The rest of my team literally just stood there and died, and our White Mage in full PvP gear just stood there, functionally invulnerable, raising us one by one after doing nothing, then blowing up the enemy healer in short order.
At this point, though, it’s basically an empty stat. it improves the level your items sync to, except if you’re up at the cap it doesn’t do anything, which means it’s a confusing formula without a function that makes a whole lot of sense. Not to say that “functional immortality” was better, just that it was at least an effect you could see and predict as opposed to just shrugging in confusion.
Beyond that, the ranking/leveling system never worked terribly well, the additional abilities were unbalanced and then ubiquitous, the mechanics rewarded certain configurations over others… the list goes on. It was ripe for a redesign, really, and while the whole freelancer status did wonders to make sure that matches actually happened, it still wasn’t something you would exactly call balanced.
So now we’ve got a big redesign. And much like the previous leveling system, some of it seems like stuff that should really be getting brought over to the non-PvP side of gameplay.
The idea of having a full combo on one button inherently seems… odd, like an acknowledgement that there would be easier ways to work combos in the main game. Meanwhile, the fact that you have some optional extra actions and optional traits are the sort of thing I’d love to see in the main game, even when we already do get a bit of that with the role actions. Traits, not so much, and that seems like the sort of customization we could really use in PvE.
Of course, I think a point is being made with both the PvP actions and the role actions that these choices are only interesting when you have actual pressure between choices. From what we’ve seen of role actions, they consist of several very useful choices… perhaps not all of them will be useful in a given circumstance, but you definitely want at least 7-8 of them on your bar at any given time. Which would work out great if you weren’t limited to 5.
That’s important. It’s not that most of the jobs in FFXIV suffered from too few actual choices when looked at as an aggregate, it’s that more often than not you had a very small list of choices you actually wanted. So I’m happy to see that being changed, and I’m equally happy to see that philosophy being carried forward for the way the game’s PvP will be working.
The decision to make gear purely cosmetic, on the other hand, is an… interesting one. I think it makes sense, and it lines up with what’s actually been happening for a while now, but it also raises questions about the actual reward path for the content. As it stands, part of what has contributed to PvP’s popularity has been the simple reality of how it serves as a great way for players to catch back up with the expansion at this point. You get access to level 235 gear, which is good enough to get by in most content, and you also get tomestones to bring you up closer to par with other players.
If the gear’s purely cosmetic, you don’t have to deal with the gaps of utility for Morale and all of the problems that brings along. It also means, though, that you’ve got a different obligation to keep providing more cosmetic rewards, or you’ll wind up with players shrugging and just stepping out of PvP far faster than they otherwise would. You’ve got all of the costume parts you want, why bother with doing more?
Of course, this would also be a great way of gating things like dungeon gear you can dye or otherwise off-spec gear. There are a lot of models in the game as it stands which either have very limited numbers of eligible classes or lack color options, so there’s plenty of space to draw from there. Heck, cosmetics in general are pretty good selling points for the FFXIV population.
Add in a little experience to the mix, and PvP becomes a more rewarding and fulfilling content option for players in general. Which I think is ultimately a good thing; when the game has already done a lot of hard work to make sure that varied content is available and fun to play, adding more options just makes it better. Not to mention that more leveling content which requires more thought than FATE spam is always a good thing.
Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Keep your eyes peeled for more stuff very soon, also; you might not want to change that dial just yet. (Assuming you navigate the internet through some form of dial-based system.) Next week, I want to take the time to evaluate a few more of my predictions, make a few more, and keep getting hyped for the expansion, which is so close to release now, you guys.
The Nymian civilization hosted an immense amount of knowledge and learning, but so much of it has been lost to the people of Eorzea. That doesn’t stop Eliot Lefebvre from scrutinizing Final Fantasy XIV each week in Wisdom of Nym, hosting guides, discussion, and opinions without so much as a trace of rancor.
