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Terminally Online
This is Terminally Online: PC Gamer’s very personal MMO column. Every different week, I’ll be sharing my ideas on the style, interviewing fellow MMO-heads like me, taking a deep-dive into mechanics we have all taken with no consideration, and, sometimes, bringing in visitor writers to speak about their MMO of alternative.
I’ve had just a little time to muck round with Final Fantasy 14’s new Beastmaster restricted job—for the uninitiated, a restricted job is form of like a minigame. Not an precise class you’ll be able to take into present raids or dungeons, however a side-activity that makes use of the sport’s fight system to create one thing new.
The Beastmaster can tame and use creatures in fight. And for the primary 30 ranges, I used to be principally simply filling out my little e book of monsters in a nice haze. I just like the job’s core fight mechanics, which contain pairing up axe strikes with particular monster talents to type combos, however grinding within the overworld does not do a lot to point out that off.
Where the Beastmaster actually shines is within the Crucible of the Unbroken, the restricted job’s roguelike mode.
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I used to be principally anticipating an easy checklist of bosses to push over through FF14 enjoyable, however played-out fight mechanics, and there may be a few of that demand. But it is blended with an overarching minigame of technique and talent utilization that has me watering on the mouth for no matter unusual, eldritch issues Evercold is cooking up.
For example, the Paladin gets defensive abilities they can essentially “parry” with, unlocking huge punishes if they time them moments before a powerful blow lands. The Dragoon will get an ultimate jump ability and, while it is still being deliberated, the developers have teased the idea of giving the Dragoon a 90% damage resistance buff while they’re up in the air. The Dragoon is a DPS job. This’d be unprecedented.
But it’s hard to tell, with any development studio, where the hype ends and the overpromising begins. Will Square Enix be brave enough to commit? The Crucible of the Unbroken tells me they very much might.
Granted, this is an isolated bit of content off the beaten path, but it’s clear that Square’s been using it to experiment with job design that’s more reactive to the encounter at hand, rather than just hitting the same buttons every two minutes.
You get given 10 of your collected pets to bring with you into your run—while you can bring three into a battle at a time. Each of these critters have a “Trick” ability, which hits a certain elemental damage type (and enables your Axe combos), a “Tempered Release” ability, which is unique to that creature, and a “Borrow” ability, which is unique to that creature’s type.
(Image credit: Square Enix)
Doing well in crucible battles isn’t about memorising your rotation by rote—or even by memorising mechanics, really, although the Crucible is punishing if you mess anything up, as any good roguelike should be. It’s about bringing specific beasties to specific encounters and using them in specific phases.
For example, one boss I fought had a mid-fight phase in which four flames steadily advanced to the centre, slapping me with a debuff if I didn’t kill them in time. They’re weak to water, so I brought out my favourite crab bro, borrowed his “you can spam water attacks now” ability, and melted them down.
This extends to a lot of other mechanics, too. If you want to interrupt a cast, you need a specific critter for that. If you want to endure a massive tankbuster, you’ll need to borrow a defensive ability from one of your animal friends.
You aren’t just deciding which scissor, paper, or rock to use—the crucible forces you to be deliberate in a few ways. Firstly, these bosses constantly output damage. You can choose to have the boss either attack you or your pet, but health loss is permanent and can only be restored by items or campfires.
You don’t want to die, because then you fail the run, but you also might want your pet to live for a future battle—or conversely, you might have a (literal) sacrificial lamb. Furthermore, swapping between pets has a long cooldown, so you’re going to have a beastie out for a while. It’s a little like the game’s already-existing Bard job, wherein you have three songs that last for 45 minutes a pop.
It’s extremely compelling, and I’ve legitimately felt like I’m putting together custom strategies for each fight—all the while juggling my own rotation and dancing between AoE danger zones. And it gives me hope that Evercold’s new evolved jobs will be super weird, too.
Maybe not just as weird. Obviously, Beastmaster’s occupancy as a limited job gives it a lot more room to experiment—but the Crucible does feel like a testing ground for concepts in future raids and fights. I can easily see a world in which a specific set of jobs are able to simply skip entire mechanics because of their unique abilities.
I don’t want a puzzle for every old casual dungeon boss, mind—but I do want those same eureka moments where you realise you’ve got the perfect answer to a mechanic on your action bar, rather than just memorised as ‘this particle effect means we stack up, this one means we spread’. If “evolved” combat design is half as experimental as Beastmaster, then Final Fantasy 14 will have finally shaked off the dust.
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