More Options for Character Growth

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Originally Posted by Elexia

You should actually check, because new people are joining XI every day and when you're done butthumping Blizzard and WoW you'd know WoW is actually on the decline and has been for awhile, even Blizzard admits it's going downhill a bit, especially with their focus on Diablo III.

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I play both games. Do you? WOW is in decline no shit, yes it went down from 15 mil to 10 mill as of nov 2011. That's about 100 times or more the player base of XI. But regardless i only mentioned WOW for its talent tree as it is an example everyone will know. So the only person sucking up to a CIE here is you sucking up to S-E because you have a hard time admiting XI is dead and would like to revive it in 14. Grow up seriously and research before saying things that make you look like a fool.

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Originally Posted by Phobos

Merits didnt just add skills... a lot of them boosted existing ones or stats. I wasn't saying "do merits the same way they were from XI" I was simply saying it worked to a degree, but would need changes.

The job system removed some variety between players by restricting cross class skills. Something like this would just add that variety back in. You can use the argument " Having some awesome skill and being a terrible player may make you unique, but it wont make you any better." about any of the skills in this game...

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I personally don't like the idea of merit points to boost skills. I don't want extra grind added to the game that takes away from actually having fun. I would be more in favor of an advanced type job that you can only pick one of that gives you enhanced traits and stats to that job.

If they added merit points for skills I wouldn't mind that much, I just don't see the need to add more grind to the game.

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Originally Posted by Yves

It wasn't always this way. Pre-80 ACP had two options: RNG heavy or SMN heavy. Sure, some people used the SAM/MNK 2HR zerg but that didn't work enough to make the tower climb when it had a 40% failrate (investing 3hrs into each battle gets old.)

XI was actually the primary game (in my eyes) that perpetuated the cookie cutter concept. Everyone remember "SAM of gtfo" and "loldrk/loldrg/lolpup." Or that RDM became the standard healer because of refresh and convert. This isn't a totally bad thing - it forced me to level every job all the way up and that gave me a great deal of enjoyment and misery at once.

The point is that the OP is looking for ways to avoid this and also trying to be helpful in a creative process. He isn't necessarily looking for concepts that lock people into different play-styles - he just wants to see some flexibility and variation and I can't see anything wrong with that.

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You are actually the only person so far who understood what i wrote. Maybe because you read the whole thing and didn't do what some other pple here did and just picked up the word WOW and went into defensive rage mode.

Thanks, i appreciate it. :)

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Originally Posted by Onidemon

I play both games. Do you? WOW is in decline no shit.

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Yes I do. You're basically stating one game is dead while the other is untouched and hasn't declined at all in its 7-8 year run. WoW has "millions of subs", you know how many people I count actually playing on my server? No where near a million I can assure you. You know how many I've done dungeons with? No where near a million or 10 million, I've run into the same group of people numerous times.

People are caught up on big numbers that mean absolutely nothing in your game play experience. Guess what other game has more subs than WoW? Cityville/Farmville, guess how many people you're likely to play with? Everyone on your facebook flist who actually plays.

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Grow up seriously and research before saying things that make you look like a fool.

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Take your own advice, because I'm quite sure my server is still peaking 3k+ as of today on FFXI.

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Originally Posted by Elexia

When it comes to XI people forget a lot of things because it's an older MMO. Merit points ended up the same way as talent tree type systems ends up...there's always the "Expected" path that you'll have to take. No matter how much customization or choice you're given in an MMO, there's always an optimal or preferred build that people will expect you to do. This is true in every MMO I've played including the much touted WoW.

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Yes it is true but the difference is that in WOW for example, your warrior can be a better Tank them mine due to the trees and mine can be better at DPS. In XIV your War will be the same as mine and i have to change jobs or classes to do something different. Also i am not implying by any means that White mage should be able to tank as that makes 0 sense, only things that do make sense.

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Originally Posted by Onidemon

Yes it is true but the difference is that in WOW for example, your warrior can be a better Tank them mine due to the trees and mine can be better at DPS. In XIV your War will be the same as mine and i have to change jobs or classes to do something different. Also i am not implying by any means that White mage should be able to tank as that makes 0 sense, only things that do make sense.

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you can improve dps and enmity +or - with materia.

Individuality is really important in an MMO. Even if it's just via appearance. That's why so many games have dyes for gear and such.

I agree that FFXIV needs a little more individuality and customization. That was one thing that was good about being able to use abilities from other classes. Unfortunately that system, the way they did it, went a little too far and resulted in everyone kind of being whitewashed. But the idea was good.

It would be nice if there could be a system where there were multiple paths of customization that didn't result in 1 being the clear winner. That's what always seems to happen with talent trees, so I wouldn't say they are the solution. At least the way they're typically done. Another problem that you run into is that the more classes there are, the less opportunity there is for customization. You could give Conjurer a DOT focused path, but then maybe that means there's no point in a class that focuses on DOT's.

Really it just comes down to balance. If the devs provide 10 paths of customization, but 9 of them clearly suck compared to the 1 good one, then all that available customization is pointless. The options have to be balanced, and that's the difficult part.

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Originally Posted by Elexia

Yes I do. You're basically stating one game is dead while the other is untouched and hasn't declined at all in its 7-8 year run. WoW has "millions of subs", you know how many people I count actually playing on my server? No where near a million I can assure you. You know how many I've done dungeons with? No where near a million or 10 million, I've run into the same group of people numerous times.

People are caught up on big numbers that mean absolutely nothing in your game play experience. Guess what other game has more subs than WoW? Cityville/Farmville, guess how many people you're likely to play with? Everyone on your facebook flist who actually plays.



Take your own advice, because I'm quite sure my server is still peaking 3k+ as of today on FFXI.

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Please stop before embarrassing yourself even more. Again you talk without even knowing what you are saying. 10 million subscribers, world wide that is. With server grouped by area, NA, Europe and latin America. Then these regions are split into servers and there is a lot of them. Some servers with low pop and some with high and if you are expecting to see 1mill or 10 mill into a single server at a single time then my friend you should rethink the whole thing before writing. The average pop is 4-5K per servers in any given mmo.

Farmville? Really? You are comparing that to wow and XIV? How about street fighter or need for speed while we are at it?

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Originally Posted by Onidemon

Please stop before embarrassing yourself even more.

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I'll quote your own post:

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Originally Posted by Onidemon

Grow up seriously and research before saying things that make you look like a fool.

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You're the only person here who needs to grow up, as you're the only one basically insulting somebody here.

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Originally Posted by syntaxlies

you can improve dps and enmity +or - with materia.

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That's the same as having better gear then mine. You War does not play differently then mine. Gear will always make a difference it is not customization. I want skills that make my War a better tank or DPS then yours because that is what i would prefer to do.