Of course, it's not just the video preview that's interesting in the producer's letter. The preview is nice, don't get me wrong, and it gives a good idea of what sort of things we can expect to see when 1.18 launches... but we also have more specific information given on exactly what players can expect from the system changes. And there are some pretty big ones mixed in there, either stated or implied by the video, which ties into the state of Final Fantasy XIV at the moment and where it's going to be in the future.
The death of resourcesOne of the more obvious and explicit changes is that stamina is being banished to the land of wind and ghosts. I'll admit to shedding a single tear for the sake of nostalgia, but by and large I'm happy to see it go. Stamina as a mechanic never did work quite the way the designers wanted because as a limiting mechanic it just regenerated too fast and got worn away too quickly to quite work.
The idea, I honestly believe, was that stamina could create tension in play by forcing you to use your actions as a resource. At launch, the game already had two resources for players to manage, and stamina added a third universal one to keep everyone alert and attentive. Would you spam out abilities and run down quickly? Hold back until an enemy was close to death? It's not a bad idea in theory, but in practice that wasn't what happened.
In practice, from my own experience and (I believe) everyone else's, Stamina limited you only after you had unleashed a massive alpha strike with all the attacks and specials you could muster. The tensions it was meant to embody never quite worked out, due largely to the fact that nobody likes choosing between using class abilities and being able to attack again. It was a fine idea, but the actual execution left a lot to be desired.
Obviously, this requires a rework of certain abilities, and it looks like some battle actions other than spells are even getting a cast time accordingly. This is both cool and welcome, and it means that there will no longer be the same sort of awkwardness when mixing spells and melee combat. It was an interesting idea, but it didn't work, and I'm glad to see the design team getting rid of it now.
Look at me now!It's funny how a little change on a UI can make such a big difference. The only thing that's really changed with icons is that the recharging abilities now have a small animation to track recharge... and that alone looks like it makes a big difference in the pace and flow of combat, just because it's easier to see at a glance that something is halfway to recharged and filling fast.
I know there are a lot of people who don't like the way the multiple action bars are laid out; the distribution would be pretty annoying for me if I didn't have a Naga to make page-switching much easier. That being said, the auto-attack alone frees up the player to make more use of alternate pages without paging away from basic attacks. The addition of timers makes it easier to stick a handful of long cooldowns on the third bar or something similar, click over to see how the charges are coming, and then snap back to your "main" lineup of weapon skills. The fact that it also includes an exact time is just another layer, to my mind.
I can't explain exactly why the recharge animation resonates with me so much; it just looks clean, I suppose, especially because it doesn't remove from the icon, but adds to it, drawing a little more attention to the circular design that ties the bars together. (City of Heroes has a similar button style, but the recharge animation of a slowly refilling circle strikes me as harder to read at a glance. I suppose the cluttered icon-text-refill backdrop is going to irk some people just as much, but I can speak for myself alone.)
And the downswingOf course, all of this comes with a notable caveat -- the patch is going to be late, moving into early July if we're lucky. That is... well, it's a long stretch of nothing new for the game, especially compared to the rapid pace that Yoshida had set up until now. And considering the game's extensively long radio silence, the natives are getting more than just a little restless. For a patch slated to include a lot of really big updates and improvements, the delay is hardly unwarranted. But it's still the sort of thing that bears close attention, and if I were Naoki Yoshida, I'd be breaking my back to try to get this patch ready before the predicted release.
At the same time... this is a big update. It has a lot of heavily anticipated features, and it's going to define the game in the eyes of a lot of players. It looks to be the proof of concept patch, the update in which the team shows off whether or not all of the earlier promises can be fulfilled. So maybe it's best to hold it back for another week or two, just to ensure that it delivers. But the pressure does mount each week that it isn't here, and there's a delicate balance to be struck.
At any rate, those are my disconnected ramblings for the week, with feedback welcome as always at eliot@massively.com or in the comment field. Next week, I think, I'm going to go into the offbeat territory I had originally planned for this installment... unless another announcement drops mid-week, of course.
From Eorzea to Vana'diel, there is a constant: the moogles. And for analysis and opinions about the online portions of the Final Fantasy series, there is also a constant: The Mog Log. Longtime series fan Eliot Lefebvre serves up a new installment of the log every Saturday, covering almost anything related to Square-Enix's vibrant online worlds.
