The Mog Log: Auto-Refresh
I mentioned at the end of last week's column that there were plenty of things to like about patch 1.16, but the marquee feature (quests) was the topic of discussion and therefore was the relevant part. Having gotten more time in Final Fantasy XIV since then, I've been enjoying some of the other improvements brought about with the patch, most of which come down to quality-of-life improvements that are still welcome. (I will say that I'm still getting accustomed to switching targeting modes, but that's mostly a result of my having a too-heavy trigger finger on my Naga's buttons when my action bar isn't up.)
There was another fairly major gameplay change that crept in with the patch, however, and while it wasn't exactly kept a secret, it was almost too easy to overlook it in light of other additions. Heck, I did overlook it except for a brief mention -- your MP recovers naturally out of combat right now. It seems like a small change, but its overall impact on fighting in Final Fantasy XIV is anything but negligible. MP has gone from being a limited resource to being eternally renewable, and that has a big impact on almost every class.
At launch, as was widely griped about, there were only a handful of ways to replenish MP following its depletion. Assuming you were in the midst of a levequest and therefore didn't have the usual "smack your head on the Aetheryte" option, you were limited to the handful of MP-recovering skills from the DoM line or just learning to do without. This meant that it was sometimes a struggle to decide whether you'd rather cast the Cure spell and be out another 10 MP or just die and take the weakness penalty.
Depending on circumstances, it was sometimes better to opt for the latter. Hey, you can finish pretty much any quest well before the time limit ends. Killing two monsters out of a pack of four and then dropping could save you effort in the long run.
On the one hand, this was a good mechanic. It cleared the game of what's become a pretty ridiculous staple in recent Final Fantasy installments, one by which every fight is a race to cast your most powerful spells over and over again, either because your MP renews itself very quickly (Final Fantasy XII), you don't actually have any MP to worry about (Final Fantasy XIII), or you have such a huge pool of MP with such frequent refresh points that the odds of bottoming out without a refresh soon thereafter were pretty much nil (Final Fantasy X). It's nice to see Ultima actually get used in a fight, sure, but it's also nice to have your non-Ultima spells have some use other than filling out a list.
Leaving aside the rant on a design trend that's been going on since Final Fantasy VI, I'll concede that the system meant that spellcasting was a tactical choice, especially during levequests. Nuking things into oblivion was always an option, but it wasn't always your first option, and even the caster classes had options without an MP cost. Rather than spamming all of your skills, you hit the ones you actually needed, continuing a trend that the game had already established: fewer abilities with more meaningful impacts. That's not a bad thing.
Of course... well, do I need to spell out that choosing to die because the death penalty isn't as bad as running out of MP is ridiculous? It was a reasonable setup in theory, but in practice, the downward spiral had some pretty big drawbacks, most notably the fact that each spell you cast reduced your options for casting any further spells. The fact that you had several classes using MP for weapon skills didn't particularly help matters, either. So it's been scrapped, and now we're back to having effectively infinite MP.
That's not wholly true, obviously -- your MP doesn't regenerate in Active mode, which means that you're going to run out if you're heavily casting in a single fight. But the regeneration in Passive mode is high enough that your resources are only limited so long as you're in battle. And unless you're using a lot of magical abilities in quick succession, that's going to make some builds and stats seem just a little bit silly.
The big rank-1 MP restoration bombs for Thaumaturges and Conjurers are both now much less important. If you're solo, the odds of you casting so heavily that you're going to bomb out of mana in a single fight are virtually nil -- I can't manage to bottom out even casting my face off leveling Thaumaturge, and I haven't put all that many points into Mind. In a group, you can always drop to Passive for a moment, but even then you're not likely to be casting that heavily. Costs are still tuned to the old levels; even a group's sole healer was expected to keep everyone going for several pulls without a recovery.
Even more gutted are the weapon skills. On a Gladiator, at best, I was clawing back a tiny fraction of MP at the cost of significant damage drops when I used Damnation instead of, say, Howling Blade. It still found its way into my rotation, though, because there were times when a steady stream of single-digit gains could help ensure I had the MP for later Cures and Sacrifices. Now, however, I can pretty much leave it off my rotation. That leaves it as a skill without a place to go, a skill without any meaningful application to non-casters, and a skill with only a bit of potential use for a casting class.
On the flip side, this makes casting far more attractive to non-casters. Outside of curative spells, there was no compelling argument to put a spell on your bar if you weren't a Disciple of Magic. They cost too much and weren't reliable enough to be worth the effort. Now, however, debuffing spells are more than just marginally useful for Disciples of War. I'm thinking Pugilists and Lancers will see the largest overall benefit here, as the former has more favored pseudo-caster gear and the latter already has something of a debuff theme going.
I'm of mixed feelings on this change, because it rewrites a good chunk of the game's character building without much warning or necessity. The goal here was to give players more options about choosing to cast spells, but the result has been what amounts to a limitless battery of mystical energy. Still, I'm hard-pressed to come up with a better way to have implemented this, and the difference does make certain builds possible where they were impractical before. It's a good change, one that does force a rethink on several elements that were previously cut-and-dried.
Is it really necessary to implore anyone to leave opinions in the comments field or mail them to eliot@massively.com any longer? If so, there we go. Next week I'm going to be recovering from the whirlwind that is PAX East, so I'm thinking it's time to take things down just half a notch and smell the roses a little bit. There are some really awesome roses in the game.
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.
