Final Fantasy XI: Winds of change

After the “third-party program” fracas, Square Enix updated a couple of jobs in Final Fantasy XI. There’s a lot of additional skills and changes to the existing Samurai, Summoner, Dark Knight, and Dragoon lines. Let’s take a look at what the major changes will be:

Samurai: They’ve modified this to be more support-friendly to the main jobs that uses two-handed weapons. This will encourage players to move on to other higher appointments.

Summoner: No more simultaneous Attack and Healing magic. Blood Pact has been split into 2 commands to allow other gamers to fit the correct tactic at the right time.

Dark Knight: TP absorbable amount is decreased so that players will be able to time the spell well.

Dragoon: This job will have faster recast Jump times (from five to three minutes) and able to apply Stoneskin to their Wyverns. We pity the monsters going up against characters with this job, a Dragoon that Jumps faster, riding on a well-armored steed.

Seeing the change list, it seems the company is improving, rather than limiting, the game to encourage real gamers (instead of bots) to take FFXI gaming seriously. It might take a bit of adjusting, but gamers are a flexible lot and will be able to create new and interesting ways to use (or abuse) the new abilities.

After the “third-party program” fracas, Square Enix updated a couple of jobs in Final Fantasy XI. There’s a lot of additional skills and changes to the existing Samurai, Summoner, Dark Knight, and Dragoon lines. Let’s take a look at what the major changes will be:

Samurai: They’ve modified this to be more support-friendly to the main jobs that uses two-handed weapons. This will encourage players to move on to other higher appointments.

Summoner: No more simultaneous Attack and Healing magic. Blood Pact has been split into 2 commands to allow other gamers to fit the correct tactic at the right time.

Dark Knight: TP absorbable amount is decreased so that players will be able to time the spell well.

Dragoon: This job will have faster recast Jump times (from five to three minutes) and able to apply Stoneskin to their Wyverns. We pity the monsters going up against characters with this job, a Dragoon that Jumps faster, riding on a well-armored steed.

Seeing the change list, it seems the company is improving, rather than limiting, the game to encourage real gamers (instead of bots) to take FFXI gaming seriously. It might take a bit of adjusting, but gamers are a flexible lot and will be able to create new and interesting ways to use (or abuse) the new abilities.