Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

When this goes live, are we sticking with Malboro?

Sean_sl said:

It's probably meaningless at this point and probably too early to tell, but has there been any indication of class distribution during P3? There was a conversation in IRC yesterday and it came up that there was an extreme overabundance of Dragoons and Dark Knights in FF11, iirc.

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The best way I've found to do this is to search each class on a few different servers with all the Grand Companies checked off as sorted. Unfortunately, the numbers meant more last weekend since there weren't as many at the cap who had switched to alts, crafting classes, etc.

In my anecdotal research I have found Conjurer to be the most populous class but the overall distribution is pretty even otherwise.

Obviously this could change a lot at release. Maybe searching the legacy servers would be more useful for that?

Beef Supreme_sl said:

When this goes live, are we sticking with Malboro?

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The thread title will be updated if we change it, but I really don't see a reason why not to stay with Malboro at this point.

Flight_sl said:

I could be wrong about this because my years in FFXI were on and off, but I think the abundance of classes changed over time - Dragoons was due to them being the most viable soloers at end game for a while for example. I don't think it will be as big an issue in FFXIV.

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Dragoons were crazy popular because people wanted to be Cecil the Dragoon, thought their armor looked cool, and IIRC they got one of the first multi-hit WS's, Pentathrust. After other classes got their multi-hit WS's there was basically 0 reason to have a Dragoon in a party. They had no utility, had lower attack power, couldn't wear a lot of the gear (haubergeon, hauberk) and basically were the butt of every single joke. You literally did not see dragoons. They couldn't solo anything, although maybe that changed. DRK's were also very popular because of how they looked and how hard they hit, but again a way overabundance of them caused a problem. Melees had a lot of trouble early on in FFXI, they just outnumbered every other class by a lot.

I would imagine there are gonna be a shit ton of bards this go around. Bards were money in FFXI, so now everyone will want to be one.

tower_sl said:

In my anecdotal research I have found Conjurer to be the most populous class but the overall distribution is pretty even otherwise.

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Whatever server you're on drastically differed from Marlboro then. By far the most common LFM call was asking for a healer before a group could start. There were times in the camp drybone area where /shout would be filled with LFM healer requests for Ifrit.

Adam12_sl said:

The thread title will be updated if we change it, but I really don't see a reason why not to stay with Malboro at this point.

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We all gonna try to adhese to the same guild/clan/linkshell/whatever the fuck Square is calling it?

Just adding, it was Kain the Dragoon and Cecil the Dark Knight. You know, for posterity. And yeah, most groups that wanted damage done did it with multiple Black Mages in FFXI for most of the game, until much later in the lifecycle when the melee cleave groups became popular or samurai TP bursting. I mean DKs did end up with the hilariously funny kracken club NM rape with Soul Eater stuff (seeing 5-6 identically armed DKs using the same skills at the same time = lawlz) but that was after my time and I am sure that stuff got nerfed hard.

Melee had a hard time simply because of all the random AE shit that was always going off from mobs and then stuff moving around the field before a pally/ninja could pop provoke. Moving things in FFXI had a tendency to really mess up skill chains and what not.

ZProtoss_sl said:

Whatever server you're on drastically differed from Marlboro then. By far the most common LFM call was asking for a healer before a group could start. There were times in the camp drybone area where /shout would be filled with LFM healer requests for Ifrit.

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Nah, there's only one healing class and 4 slots per group so there will always be a shortage. If every fight required Lancer for some reason it would be just as bad.

Using Malboro with the same search requirements I see 155 Conjurers, 121 Glads, 79 Pugilist (wow), 77 Marauder (wow again), 99 Lancer, 82 Archer and 105 THM

That distribution seems fairly normal (Glads always seem to be #2) but the % is a bit more pronounced than normal with CNJ doubling two classes.

Rezz_sl said:

Just adding, it was Kain the Dragoon and Cecil the Dark Knight. You know, for posterity. And yeah, most groups that wanted damage done did it with multiple Black Mages in FFXI for most of the game, until much later in the lifecycle when the melee cleave groups became popular or samurai TP bursting. I mean DKs did end up with the hilariously funny kracken club NM rape with Soul Eater stuff (seeing 5-6 identically armed DKs using the same skills at the same time = lawlz) but that was after my time and I am sure that stuff got nerfed hard.

Melee had a hard time simply because of all the random AE shit that was always going off from mobs and then stuff moving around the field before a pally/ninja could pop provoke. Moving things in FFXI had a tendency to really mess up skill chains and what not.

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I'll just pretend I was trying to be comical when I said Cecil the dragoon.

Eh, there's only 4 people per group, is that right? Healer tank bard + every dps class fighting over the last slot? Groups should have a minimum of 6 slots, I thought the world had learned that by now.

Also, playing a bard seems lame if playing a song drains your own TP. But I've read very little about the game and most of that was outdated and wrong.

Kreugen_sl said:

Eh, there's only 4 people per group, is that right? Healer tank bard + every dps class fighting over the last slot? Groups should have a minimum of 6 slots, I thought the world had learned that by now.

Also, playing a bard seems lame if playing a song drains your own TP. But I've read very little about the game and most of that was outdated and wrong.

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Songs drain your MP, not TP.

There's 4 man 8 man and 24 man raid content

Pyros_sl said:

Class distribution changes with the weekends though, I think P4 with the continuous play and the lack of wipe will show better figures than the current ones where people might play a different class each weekend to test them out and shit like that.

Also the lack of scholar atm might make the numbers skewed. Atm if anyone wants to heal, they play a CNJ, there's no other choice. That means that even assuming normal mmo distribution, you'd have as many CNJ as GLD and MRD combined or so. Then you'd have 3-5times more of all the other classes added up. Because there's a lot of DPS classes and only one healer though, it makes sense that the healer numbers would appear fairly high.

There's probably gonna be a shitton of summoners though.

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I wonder if Summoner will suck until near max level like in FFXI.. worst design decision ever

Kreugen_sl said:

Eh, there's only 4 people per group, is that right? Healer tank bard + every dps class fighting over the last slot? Groups should have a minimum of 6 slots, I thought the world had learned that by now.

Also, playing a bard seems lame if playing a song drains your own TP. But I've read very little about the game and most of that was outdated and wrong.

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Well word is standard end game content will be 8 man but who knows how that will work til we get there.

I just know they fucked up in 11 pretty bad by having a million DPS classes. They need to add more healers and probably another tank before they add a "Ranger" or whatever else.

So why can't every DPS bro lvl CNJ high enough to get cure, etc and heal themselves?

Because they have jack for Mind and MP, and even Cure I takes 2 seconds to cast. If you try it while something is beating on you as a dps, you'll lose a lot more hp than you heal, and probably get interrupted anyway. It's only useful for out of combat healing unless you are a THM. That said, it only takes CNJ 2 to get it, so you might as well grab it just in case.

There's a 15% heal at PUG 8 on a 2 minute cooldown which is much more useful for physical dps.

The game to me is a more "traditional" western style of MMO, with good graphics. Level 1 - 50 main story line quest with side quests, dungeons along the way with a dungeon finder then 2 end game raid instances with a couple of primal events, think Onyxia style encounters but with Ifrit etc. The unique selling points are, I guess, a detailed crafting system and a more flexible / advanced approach to classes (jobs).

I'd say if you like vanilla WoW's approach to MMO's with a couple of the newer features (dungeon finder etc) and want an MMO to play you'd like FF14.

bayr_sl said:

There's 4 man 8 man and 24 man raid content

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That's just.. what the fuck? Why make the tank/healer bottleneck problem worse? I'm guessing since LFD isn't in the game yet we don't know if you can select multiple roles to help with that, but still. I get that FF11/14 development sort of lives in its own universe where other MMO's don't exist to take lessons from, but both have been around long enough that you'd think they'd know that 4 man parties are a really bad idea.