Nataraja you seemed to overestimate greatly the MP need for a party.
Somewhere on the net there is a chart that shows the exp requirement as a percentage to the overall requirement for level 75. By the time you are 65 you are 50 percent into the exp requirement to reach the end. The first 30 levels can be breezed through in a few weeks, farming time included. This is the time when jobs are just struggling along to reach their respective "Holy Grail". By level 55, most of these abilities have been realized. Nin look forward to utsu II, redmage to refresh/convert, bard to ballad II and melee to their respective Uber weaponskills.
By that time, Exp flow, battle tactics, party formation will remain the same for the rest of your FFXI life. No longer can you survive with a single warrior tank or even having two whitemages in the same party. Party set up will revert to the way it was intended. Tank/DD/Healer/Support. With the exclustion of one being the opportunity cost for the other. And for roughly 75 percents of your leveling life, this is the way its gonna be to get good exp.
1. My Arguments regarding raising addition of level cap was that it made some jobs obsolete, mainly support like redmages and bards. Refresh-ga instead of refresh for whitemages? You still won't look at past additions for guidance on how spells and abilities are implemented, they've been following the same set up for years, even with a new expansion, the basics remained the same. How does it make sense that a whitemage subbing a redmage would gain a whole new ability out of the blue that the original job didn't have?
You said those suport jobs certainly won't die since they can have these new toys like refresh II or ballad III (i presume that's what you meant) After all, ballad III planned for the game, just type /ma "Mage's Ballad III" <me> at a prompt near you. It was taken out because of balancing problems. IN beta there was a harp that gives you Ballad +2, that was taken out also because of balancing problems. There IS such thing as too much mp.
You still don't realized that people won't be inviting support just for those abilities that added more mp than needed when they can have another DD to kill quicker. Have you ever been in a chain 5 party that seem to keep going and going without stops? Most parties with the right set up : support, sufficient DD, healer and tank, when placed in an environment with plenty of mobs of right level range WILL be able to pull chain 5's repeatedly with little MP problems.
You overestimated the need for MP. At low levels, without alot of abilities and gears that help quicken downtime, MP seemed to be what everyone's raging about. You get too many healers and not enough DD, mob die slow and you can't chain. You get too many DD but only 1 healer, he will run out of mp. Yet at later levels, When DD get their uber damage toy. The party formation will revert to the classic DD/Tank/Support/Healer. MP wont' be the biggest problem affecting slow exp. At later levels, slow exp will be first and foremost affected by mobs availability and difficulty level of mobs to party level. At lower level slow exp are attributed more to party formation + mp management before the other factors. Having mages refresh themselves + ballad II and III will be redundant. People will opted to get rid of the support for a DD instead.
If I was a party leader, and my mages can take care of their MP regen needs already, I won't be inviting another support to do something redundant like stacking refresh II on a full MP bar. True you are taking the time away from your healer to cast refresh on his/her self, but with the addition of another DD, the match will end quicker.
Another argument was that by the time mages can sub redmage they will already stopped exp. It would only affect high levels. But didn't you want jobs to go to level 120? Subbing Redm endgame, would be for mages to be a little more self sufficient. It's the same as saying, darkknight subbing ninja and go solo NM for fun since he don't have to level anymore. Ok what about Endgame HNM scene? How will we as support be able to participate? Why waste a spot on a bard when you can get another blmg/redm or whm/redm? No matter what the scenario, we have no place to go
I guessed I feel very strongly about this because
1. I enjoyed my job, I enjoyed being support, being in the background, to help speed exp up. Supports's abilities are transparent. We dont' show up on log with Uber sidewinder or burst damage, nor that huge Curaga IV that saved everyone. Partying is what we bards do best, and to some extent, redmages. Redmages soloing wont' be efficient until 74, so for a majority of the time, they are in a similar circumstance as bards. We are here to support, with MP management being our greatest assests. Why make us obsolete?
2. With the proposed changes to caps, it would kill off the need for my job, no matter how much you can add to a bard to compensate. If the MP end is already taken care of, and the damage end can be compensate with the addition of another DD, where does support go? Would my madrigal really help increase overall damage as much as having another DD? Would a redmage's enfeebling overall help the mob die quicker as much as another DD?
I understand you're trying to maybe introduced different strategies involving partying. Diversify the game from its cookie cutter creation. But this is not the same as said: Picking a ranger over a blmg or vice versa and fight a bit differently. This is the fact that Every mages will now be able to self support. That means no need for support regardless of what the party set up is. You're talking about the elmination of whole line of jobs . Redmages, bless their soul are able to be self reliance at high levels, and also summoners. For bards if we don't party, what do we have? This is why proposing raising of level cap is a bad idea. Especially since your idea of improving the resulting imbalanced don't seem feasible, and here is why:
2. My Argument: Any changes are usually made to work within the existing system. Its very posisble to change coding of-course, but, if you look back at the last 2 year's track record, they generally followed the same path. Did you know that Refresh wasn't available at the beginning of the game and was added for redmages in a patch? That was another spell that changed their role completely. There was a reason why it was added, redmages were finding themselves without parties. Why couldn't they get it at a lower level? I mean bards and summoner (auto refresh JA) get their first MP regen at level 25, why wait until 41? Job balanced, that is why.
Yes it seemed like I've reduced redmages to nothing more than MP whores, I'm not trying to, I have great respect for the job. But in a partying capacity, the redmages's mp flow ability is still its greatest asset.
Yet when you look at any addition to a job, the same pattern was kept. Weapon skills are job and/or weapon level based, abilities and spells are free for all. Erase, gravity, escape were all job specifics spells that can be gotten just by subbing, and they are not gimped either, unless its directed towards an enemy. In this case, magic abilities and levels play a factor. Over the course of the past 2 years many spells and abilities have been added, all of them stay true to this form. You are right that coding are man made and can be made to change, but from their track record, they certainly don't seem to be eager to change. This inability to actually nerfed the newly gained abilities by subbing redmages at level 82 will kill support jobs.
You seemed to be picking at my examples like ninja addition in regard to changing job dynamics and it caused both of us to go offtracked so I would put a stop to that here. Yes it might be another topic for discussion somewhere down the line.
Overall You keep making these suggestions without providing me in game examples. The most you can offer is throw redmages and bard new MP spells. You haven't touched on any party dynamics discussion, a support's role in a party. What will change by this new level cap addition, etc. You kept saying if Squeenix want, they can change things around to implement your ideas, yet you failed to looked at the past updates history where things only go a certain ways. Addition of anything is possible, yet if the addition is bad to begin with, why bother adding more things to fix the result?
Adding new jobs, raising caps significantly alter the game. For some of us, this game is done, for some its not. This game will be three years old soon. That's very respectable for MMORPG. The changes you seem to want would essentially make this into another game. It took me over a year to get this far, clocking in almost 200 gaming days. For some, the journey have been half or twice as much. This existing system was here from day one, its the way the game was designed. There is little chance that they will alter it significantly like you proposed.
Endgame for any game could only be enjoyed for so long before it gets old. Raising jobs, changing structural dynamics of the games is not the way to extend the game's life. The best SE can do now is to maybe take care of the little comforts complaints such as mog house and delivery box and try to make things easier for existing players like hiring better Gms. Its been a good ride for 3 years. For me the game is not over. For some it hadn't even begin. I just think that the existing dynamics is good. Wanting to add more diversity and additions won't hurt. But there's no reason to implement changes that shut out a large portion of the game. I don't think there's anymore I can say that will express my thoughts on this matter.
