by Kerreth » Mon Nov 11, 2013 3:11 pm
Okay, even more stuff done in this game, so now it's time to focus on some of the downsides.
1. If talents trees or skill customization is a big thing for you, then you're gonna have a bad time because this game has none of that. I did say how you can cross-class skills from pretty much any class to any class, but that's true only for the first 30 levels. Once you unlock your job (the upgraded classes; i.e. Arcanist is a class. Summoner is a job) you're only allowed to cross-class from specific classes (Summoner can borrow from Thaumaturge and Archer only). And for the most part, those skills are either useless or mandatory-ish, and require lots of time sunk into leveling those other classes. For example, Summoners have access to these skills from the other classes:
Thunder (extra damage spell, mandatory but you'll always have it because you have to level THM to get SMN anyway)
Surecast (next spell cast cannot be interrupted, situational, just like Thunder, SMN will always have it)
Swiftcast (next spell cast is instant, near mandatory because SMN can insta-battle-rez with it, have to level THM to 26)
Raging Strikes (DPS cooldown, mandatory, but thankfully you can level ARC to 4 in a few minutes)
Hawk's Eye (Increases dexterity, useless)
Quelling Stirkes (threat reduction cooldown, mandatory-ish because AoE threat is hard to maintain by tanks, requires ARC to level to 34!)
2. Quest design is... well... bad. The main story is actually kinda neat, but there's a lot (and I mean a LOT) of filler nonsense in between that has nothing to do with the story even when those quests are story quests! For example, around level 30, you'll get to a place where the main story quests involve hunting for a never-before-seen monster that has been brutally mauling people to death (which already has little to do with the main storyline of beast tribes summoning primals and the Garleans invading) and one of the side quest chains involved:
-Dusting an innkeeper's paintings
-Delivering food from the innkeeper to some miners
-Capturing a bomb for those miners so the can light lanterns
-Setting up the miners' ladders for them
I STOPPED THE WORLD FROM BEING MIND CONTROLLED BY IFRIT, YOU ASSHOLES. DO YOUR JOBS.
3. Professions. Well, this will definitely vary depending on who you ask, but I'm not entirely a fan. Professions are in every shape classes of their own (complete with their own gear sets!) and is much more involved then clicking "craft" with enough stuff in your bag and waiting for your guy to make 30 bolts of cloth (which is actually unlockable later, but still). Probably the suckiest part about the gathering professions is that you can't level them while you're adventuring with your regular fighting class. "Oh, I'm killing monsters and there's a mining node here, click!" No, that doesn't happen. You have to switch into that class and gear and run around specifically for the purpose of mining, which I never really liked doing. While it is a nice timekiller during dungeon queues, I don't like running around hacking at trees collecting 200 crow feathers to go up 3 levels. And then the crafting professions, well, they're confusing. Classes on their own with gear AND SKILLS that you use to actually make the stuff. The simplest way I can explain it is that there's a button that increases "progress" which is how you make the thing, and a button that increases "quality" which increases the chance that the thing you make is a shiny high-quality item. Then there's buttons that help with those things, like one that increases the success rate of your actions, one that makes quality gains higher if you get a lot of successful touches in a row, one that repairs the thing you're working on, etc. As you do any action, the durability of the item goes down, and if it hits 0 before you finish, it breaks and you lose the mats. It's not hard if you're paying attention, just EXTREMELY tedious and time consuming and takes away from what I think is the good part of the game, y'know, the fighting and stuff.
That all said, I'm still enjoying the game. Especially the group stuff which, even before level 50, is really tricky. You can't slack off in dungeons once you reach around level 30. I do also kind of like that each class has one specific role (Gladiators are always tanks, Conjurers are always healers, etc), because there's less to remember about your fellow classes, and I *hope* that makes balancing them easier, since there's 9 jobs and really only 9 jobs, whereas WoW had 11 classes, but they really had 33 because talents. It's also still really pretty if you have a good graphics card.
