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FFXI Team Working On New MMOG
Gamespot has the word that the team behind Final Fantasy XI is working on a new game in the Massive genre. From the article: "Tanaka declined to comment on whether the MMORPG in development will be a successor to FFXI or a new product. He did confirm that the technical demonstration shown for the Xbox 360 during E3 was one of the experiments his development team had created to see what kind of graphics a next-generation console could achieve."
a new S-E MMO, "a href="http://www.playonline.com/fe/">"Fantasy Earth The Ring of Dominion", has been announced and in development for some time, with release scheduled for 2005. The system itself is described as a fusion of vaguely PSO-style "action MMO" and "real-time strategy"; this seems to be in keeping with S-E's philosophy of limited PvP by faction.
With the announcement of this and the release of FMO last month, as well as the continued support of FFXI mentioned elsewhere in the interview, it seems unlikely that a FFXI sequel is pending.
My biggest complaint has always been to get a more multi-national GM force. Even when they are not trying to be dicks, the GMs come off as them because of the cultural differences between Americans and Japanese.
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Dragoons are worthless if you don't know how to use them. As a heavy DD class, they (and everything else but monks on skeletons) will lose to a well-funded ranger. However, what they lack in raw power they gain back in accuracy bonuses (of a level that most other melees are paying millions for), and the capability (especially in later levels) to sub RDM and use wyvern breath to become a fairly-effective healer. Of course, if you've got the "omgwtf must be leet" mentality that was epidemic among the Japanese at NA launch, and is still epidemic among the NA, you'll already have your NIN tank, Taru WHM/SMN, and your three RNGs, and you'll be rushing off to tear 200xp a shot kicking and screaming from IT++ mobs no matter how long or how many consumables it takes you per kill.
Red Mages being gimped bards is, again, a matter of usage. Bards can't debuff in the same ways, can't do decent elemental DoT in melee, can't burst off renkei, can't rapidly heal, and can only have two spells in effect per target at any one time. However, if you're convinced that RDM is there for Refresh and only Refresh, then...
As for melee/support balance... well... slightly over half the jobs are melee. Slightly over half the -party slots- are typically melee. The main issue with melee invites is that, barring endgame monks, the average party has a set short list of places where they're willing to play and mobs they're willing to fight, and the RNG's ability to throw gil at problems tends to be amplified through these. Nerfing TP gain from Barrage like was done to other multi-hits and changing the HQ yield on arrows from 33/66/99 to 33/33/66/99 would probably improve this...
but so would players realizing that if they can't have steak, they're at least better off with a hamburger than nothing. Sadly, there's a good half-year or year to go before this becomes common.
Finally, you're a bit confused about the concept of FFXII. The game engine itself is similar to FFXI with AI-controlled allies, which makes it not too dissimilar from a long list of decent games such as the Star Ocean series, Bioware's Infinity Engine games, and even Secret of Mana.
It's only in plot that relation to FFT-A, and Vagrant Story and FFT, are brought in---it's being developed by the creative team behind all of those games, who have thus far used the Ivalice setting for all their projects for Square and later Square-Enix.
There are a few solid technical problems, or at least unintended effects, in FFXI, such as RNG's damage supremacy on common mobs, NIN's unanticipated tanking ability, and predictable NM spawn times; however, the vast majority of "issues" that the playerbase identify are, at worst, the lesser of multiple evils.
For what it's worth, everybody is too cheap to buy potions. They're very expensive, and don't really heal you very much. If you really want to play solo, after you've hit 15, the best thing you can do is party until 18, get your sub-job, level that up to 15, get your main job up to 30, and then unlock Beastmaster, the one class that's capable of soloing the entire way.
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