New Classes & RaceFollow

Stepping back in conversation a step.

We just barely got Ninja, and it came with the class Rogue. The base Classes we have currently are very intrinsic to the story-lines of the game, so I don't think these classes as we see are going anywhere. Could be wrong, willing to be wrong. But I don't see it.

http://youtu.be/mm78w8szkbQ?t=43m19s

What confuses me is that they talk about classes/jobs covering two roles, which, honestly does not currently happen with our current class/job system. A gladiator/paladin is a tank, a Lancer/Dragoon is DPS, they really don't deviate away from these roles enough to consider it meeting the goals they're listing out. So, how would a straight-job system fit this bill?

There's still room for the base Classes having secondary jobs like Arcanist. Whether they reneg on that, keep Arcanist as unique in and of itself, or provide secondary Jobs for each of the current class system, all are matters still left to be seen. But I don't feel like the base classes that currently exist are going away. There's no point in retconning all the story that's been provided by them.

There are some lightly visible scales along the neck, jawline, and shoulders, if you look closely. I imagine they're hiding in more places once you get them into small clothes.

I'd rather have qiqirn.

A tall humanoid race depicted with horns, "off" skin tones like red/gray, that determined look on their faces and yet still perfectly groomed and styled hair options. I can't get over how much the new race reminds me of Tera's Castanic.

The horned demonic looking humanoid is hardly new. Almost every fantasy IP has them.

Someone named "reptiletim" wants a more lizard like race? Didn't see that coming!

Probably not many. Since Tera's been brought up, I never really saw many male Castanics. Male power fantasy tends to evoke more the image of the hulking brute, and that certainly gets manifested often enough in other forms of gaming or even more directly here with the Roe. I imagine females would be more likely to play the Au Ra, though much for the same reason guys flock to the female Mi'qote and such. Sex sells, even if I wouldn't be so quick to say SE is overt about it.

Unfortunately, that translates to more beastly or "ugly" races being less likely to see the light of day. And from the dev manpower end, it probably isn't seen as cost efficient to spend so many resources on something less than 5% of the player base may utilize, even if we may more keenly identify them as clones of another race with slight skeletal/texture mods. Things like this also extend into unique animations. Using Tera again, I can't ever recall seeing a female Baraka PC. Or if I did, I confused it for a male. x.x

I understand that most of the games take place from the human point of view with mostly human party members, but I don't get how that applies to a MMO where the whole point is you kind of deciding who the hero gets to be this time. We've given you a bunch of spikey haired teenagers but now you can be a little bobblehead Tarutaru hero if you want.

in regards to your second part basically saying "but this way was easier", well.. They shouldn't have advertised or added a new race then.

and not the current team's fault but like I said, the Galka -> Roegadyn, Tarutaru -> Lalafell, Mithra -> Miqote transitions already made them much more human. Pretty much every race in FFXIV could very reasonably just be a human in costume (Lalafell being little toddlers) so it just sucks that they're adding another race that's just another human but with different ears.

and obviously I don't know anything about making games and I know that FFXIV is on a totally different level graphically, but aside from WoW, there is cheap Chinese and Korean free MMORPGs which add beast races. Here's a random MMORPG which has bears and mouse and lizard and frog races. http://img5.178.com/chinagame/201203/126470502710/126470954713.jpg

Edited, Dec 27th 2014 4:27pm by lass5

Didn't say beast races were unusual. Between moogles, werewolves, espers, and half the ensemble cast of FF9, there are plenty of beast races present in FF games. I was talking about playable characters, which I thought I'd made pretty clear.



Yeah it's pretty obvious you didn't understand what I was talking about. Actually if you look at my earlier post, you'll see that I think the Au Ra could have been made MORE (not less) beastly since most of the races already look like humans in costume.

The point of documenting playable non-humans from main series FF games was to show how unusual that is though. The MMOs lean a little more towards racial diversity, but not by a ton.

I'll just be honest about it - It's "negative" because I won't gush about it or say only positive things about it, especially when I can see the fact while Yoshida decided to "play it safe" and pander to people who never even touched MMOs (he does kind of say it a lot) so while he wanted to stick to the standard, it's easy to see where his direction fails in terms of design. Is it a success? Sure, all MMOs that "followed in WoW's footsteps" are a success because it's familiar. However a lot of borrowed features and concepts weren't even done properly, so I definitely won't sit and pretend they did "amazing" in terms of general design.

In contrast to 1.x? Sure, it's a huge step forward in some areas and large steps backwards in others, which again, he stated he did so in order to "not confuse new players." I don't look at it in contrast to 1.x or even XI when it comes to certain things, especially from a lore standpoint because they use the excuse of "because lore!" then proceed to pull a 180 on it and do it anyway. Considering I liked 1.x far more, the only reason I stick with this game aside friends and FC is because some things he says, which will probably end up false or switched as usual, seem they'll move back towards their "own" design eventually and only truly wanted to play it safe for 2.x. (Since it's a relaunch that's understandable.)



I don't hold grudges, specially against a game - I just won't sing its praises when quite honestly, other games do certain features better. That's why I reference PSO2 a lot, while GW2 "pushed" the "FATE" system, PSO2's Emergency quests (that aren't scheduled) are truly what "FATEs" should have been, rather than something to replace overworld grinding with an awkward stepchild version of overworld grinding, it's more of an actual Event that, while sometimes repeats, are truly random and sometimes completely change how you go about an instance. I asked this question before and a lot of people gave the same answer: Would you TRULY enjoy ARR, as a game itself, if all of your friends and FC members left? Would it still be as enjoyable? Is the game design enough to keep you invested even though other MMOs did the same features better? A lot of people basically said they'd quit because the game honestly is pretty dull in design because it tried too much to play it safe to the point they no longer wanted to take risks, which is what this genre was always about and still should be about, which is why TERA got the praise it did even though 99% of it was **** and "standard", it at least took a risk with archetypes and the battle system..tried something different. People say: "1.0 was a risk and look at that!"

1.0 was never realized. Period. The same logic is like saying "Well, I played the demo of this game and it's unfinished, so it's crappy!" Yeah, it's funny how unfinished games being pushed out can end up terrible. It's also funny how a lot of things ARR get praised for were purely because it already existed due to 1.0-1.23, a lot of which up until 1.20/1.21 were concepts Tanaka started and had planned out. The main issue were being on an engine that didn't support MMOs, when SE already knew better because they had to create their own engine for XI as they didn't license a 3rd party one.



Like many, friends I play with. Since I already was playing from 1.0 through 1.23, it was actually something different in the flood of ****** MMOs that "tried to bank on WoW", SE has the talent to do so much more which is why 2.0 was looking amazingly like a better version of 1.23, what we technically were promised. We got a "better" version...by scaling back, playing it safe and resembling as little of a unique MMO as possible. Considering I have to translate and keep up with info for friends, I take an interest in how Yoshida says overhauls of some kind are coming which interest me because it seems like they're going to try to move more towards actually putting some creativity into what they're doing. Which is why I praise XI, because despite the hate for it or the fact it's "old school", you can't deny you can tell a lot of creativity went into the design of the game, especially during its peak when almost no other MMO were doing certain style of content or even story progression like it was. It felt like they took a FF game and gave it online elements using EQ as a base. XIV/1.x felt exactly the same even with its problems. ARR just felt...for the lack of a better word, shat out to appease the masses, which is fine, it worked for them.



No one truly knows my likes/dislikes unless someone actually knows me - This is why people can say I'm "negative" or make their assumptions all they want, fine by me. I'm not one to stay silent or beat around the bush. I won't flatout assault someone, but I also won't kid myself and find something "good" or "great" or "amazing" when it truly isn't. This is why I never say XI is a perfect game, every game has faults, but I can see far more good that they did with it and wanted to do with it than I can see the "fails" whereas on the flipside, I see far more fails with ARR than I do the positives because what they wanted to do with it (after throwing out 1.x completely aside assets) they didn't even fully do a good job at it because the MMOs they pulled from..still does it better..hell even recent updates they do it even better than before, so it still feels like ARR has catching up to do to even get on that basic level. The systems are there..but it feels shallow. Some content is like, they did their best for it..but did certain changes for the sake of...just..changing it. Like making the overworld useless, which they seem to be changing for the expansion.

So I'm neither for nor against anything, however I'll be straight up honest and people will disagree, which is no skin off my back, people can say I'm "wrong" and try to force me to concede, cool, do your thing - Not going to change that I don't see the creativity that I KNOW square is capable of being shown in ARR yet. Music/Graphics..cool, Square is known for that..they're also known for not simply "doing the norm" or else most of their games wouldn't have gotten the praises they did.

Like this race subject (classes I won't even go into because it's a far cry from what they could truly do.) Those disappointed with the lack of full bestial race, too bad so sad honestly, when you think of the lore..it truly doesn't make sense, it would be nice..but considering all the changes they did simply for the sake of "ease of development", lore aside...it won't work simply because they scaled models down and gave us "universal bones" based around Hyur Male for easier development and to implemenet Male Miqote and Female Roegadyn. They removed belts for "better designs" when some armors are more pixilated up close than even some XI ones, so it's not that I'm "negative" about it, it's simply...they already gave us plenty of excuses during alpha/beta and early 2.0 as to why they did what they did, going against it now would seem like they did it for no reason in the end. This is why my clipping comment is what it is, XI nor many other recent MMOs have anywhere near as much clipping in some regards, it's to the point it feels like they simply don't care because when they turned us all into "ghosts", is when it truly started. Sure it helps with performance, but at the same time..it leads to more worrisome thoughts about the future than: "Oh look something new and pretty!", yeah..well what about the clipping?

So no..no grudges, I just can't look at away or past the faults, even when it comes to XI, but as said, while I praise XI, I already know all of its faults, some of which people just personally disliked and truly wasn't a fault with the core system compared to XIV where a lot of faults are simply due to design decisions to keep the MMO "kid friendly" for a lack of better term.

While that's probably true for other forums, it actually isn't really for Zam. People here tend to be a lot more open-minded about things, and we try to have civilized discussions.

That being said, this is a FAN site. So you should reasonably expect the prevailing opinion on any given game to be a favorable one, and should approach with that in mind.