Although it's only been a few months in since Akihiko Matsui took over as producter of Final Fantasy XI following Hiromichi Tanaka's departure from the game, he's already been making great strides towards changing and improving Square Enix's first mmorpg. Today, Matsui released a comprehensive look at several planned changes towards XI's battle system, including overhauls to elemental magic, adjusting the potency of the recently added merit weaponskills, upcoming changes for several battlefields such as Legion and Voidwatch, and much, much more!

Let us know what you think of Matsui's planned changes, or what you think still needs worked on, over on the ZAM forums!

From the official Final Fantasy XI forums:

Hello.

Thank you for the vast amount of feedback regarding battle.

We’ve received a variety of different adjustment suggestions and amongst them a suggestion for enfeebling. However, instead of thinking about this in terms of individual points, I’ve been reading over everything from the viewpoint of battle overall.

Towards the end of last year I made a series of posts about the plans we have; however, this raised the issue of requests for more specific, concrete details, which in turn made it difficult for all of you to hold discussions. With that said, from an overall battle system perspective, I would like to share a couple of ideas the development team is currently thinking about.

Please note that all of these ideas have not been finalized. Also, please know that the below is not the entirety of the overall battle adjustments.
We’d appreciate it greatly if you took the content listed here to not represent the cure-all solution, and see it more as things we will be doing while working to solve the issues.

Balance between two-handed and single-handed weapons

This is a topic that has been discussed in several threads, particularly one about making adjustments to single-handed weapons, and we would like to perform adjustments.

As has been mentioned, food and other choices are quite limited due to the fact that status modifiers are far greater for two-handed weapons and there is a higher need for accuracy when using single-handed weapons.

For example, we are currently looking into the possibility of adding some form of merit that would enhance the modifiers for the single-handed weapon main weapon slot.

Regarding Dark Knight

This is a topic that has been discussed in several threads, particularly one about dark knight being too powerful. As was commented during VanaFest, we feel dark knight is becoming powerful, and at the same time decided to put off the adjustments we had looked into at that time. I believe there are many who remember this.
We are currently looking to adjust Desperate Blows and Last Resort.

Currently, the haste cap for equipment and magic is the same for all jobs, but haste from abilities is a separate category outside of this cap, and Desperate Blows is the ability with the highest value of haste.

However, simply reducing the value of Desperate Blows would only cause dark knight to become weaker, so we are considering giving a portion of the total haste effect granted from Desperate Blows to Last Resort, and giving the remaining amount back to Desperate Blows.

Current

Desperate Blows +25%


Post-adjustment

Desperate Blows +10% (*Value with 5 merit points)
Last Resort +15%

Simply put, this adjustment will allow you to gain this effect in the case you use dark knight as your support job.

While currently, it might be difficult to imagine the situations where a front-line job would select dark knight for their support job, we would like to look into this based on this possibility.

Regarding Defense

This is a topic that we have received feedback on asking to increase the boons of defense. Due to the attack/defense ratio, the meaning behind adding defense past a certain value starts to become pointless, and we would like to make it have meaning.

As a merit, for example, the more you increase your defense, the lower the damage taken will be and the boons for Defender would become large.
On the other hand, while under the effects of abilities that decrease defense such as Berserk or Last Resort, the damage you take would become higher than what it is currently.

Merit Point Weapon Skills

This is a topic we have seen in threads asking to increase the cap on the merit point weapon skill category.
Instead of adjusting the cap value, we are currently looking into adjusting the modifier values so that these weapon skills can be used with a single merit point.

We are envisioning to make it so 1 merit point will yield a 65% status modifier, and each point afterwards will grant an addition 5% for a maximum of 85% (no changes to the max value).

Elemental Magic

We have received a variety of feedback on elemental magic.
The first thing I’m thinking of doing is making adjustments to the damage calculations.

Here’s my current image of how elemental magic is going to work:
The damage output on earth element spells will initially be lower compared to the rest of the elements, but have the best cost performance overall. Also, INT will have an even larger impact on the damage output. As a result, players will basically try to raise their INT and magic attack to get closer to the damage output done by lightning element spells.

Breakdown by element

MP Efficiency: Earth > Water > Wind > Fire > Ice > Lightning
INT Offset: Earth > Water > Wind > Fire > Ice > Lightning
Initial Damage Output: Lightning > Ice > Fire > Wind > Water > Earth
Maximum Damage Output: Lightning > Ice > Fire > Wind > Water > Earth

Breakdown by spell tier

MP Efficiency: I > II > III > IV > V
INT Offset: V > IV > III > II > I
Initial Damage Output: V > IV > III > II > I
Maximum Damage Output: V > IV > III > II > I

The charts below explain my idea in detail.
* The magic attack does not include any offsets.
* “INT+0” and “INT+100” represents the INT difference between the caster and the target.

As far as casting time and recast time goes, here’s my current idea:
- Tier I~V spells will all have same casting time / recast time.
For example, Tier I spells will have a casting time of 0.5 seconds and recast time of 2 seconds. Therefore, both Thunder I and Stone I will have the casting time of 0.5 seconds and recast time of 2 seconds.

The charts below explain my idea in detail.

Please note that we will be making additional adjustments on elemental magic using this change as the foundation.

Regarding Content

To start off, we are looking into adjustments for new Nyzul, Legion, Odin's Chamber II, Voidwatch (up to Provenance Watcher), Salvage, and in the event there is further necessity, new Salvage as well.

Below is what we are looking into for adjustments.

New Nyzul

Adjustments to the warp range of floors

Legion

- Adjustments to monster levels
- Adjustments to attack power and defense

Odin's Chamber II

Adjustments to monster levels

Voidwatch

Expand the usage range of the void clusters to Provenance (Provenance Watcher)

Salvage

- Re-examine the drop rate of level 35 equipment
- Make a change so that monsters other than the NMs that spawn from ramparts in Bhaflau Remnants drop the same equipment

Walk of Echoes

- Adjustments to monster levels
- Remove EX status from each type of coin
- Add sacks that contain multiple Trick Dice and Liminal Residue


Past this, we will continue to make adjustments as necessary, and we will be making it so strategy and play style variations can be developed instead of having to win with a huge amount of fire power in a short amount of time.

While I am repeating myself, the above are by no means finalized. There are many other topics we are looking into at the moment (enmity, TP given to enemies, etc.), so I would appreciate it if you could read over all of this on the basis that there is a possibility that the implementation order and adjustment method changes.

Thank you very much.