More Options for Character Growth

That's the -horror- of it. WoW remade itself over time so every player could play any role with minimal effort and have everything they wanted faster and faster. It's gross. There's no, "my character is a healer, so I'm valued", instead it's, "oh yeah, of course my other spec is healing".

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Originally Posted by Onidemon

I fail to see how boosting stats changes a class's role..... Unless stats open up new abilities then i don't see how it can make you do anything different.

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(WHM)
Me - +100VIT of you
You - +100MND of me

My stoneskin/regen/protect are better than your... yes, i'm buffer... you healer with you high hps (this not exclude that i'll heal too)

anyway... read yoship post ^^ 2 or more job x class coming in 2.0 (Gladiator -> Dark Knight or Paladin for example.. maybe Archer -> Bard or Ranger)

Useless thread anyway ^^

At the risk of throwing my own ideas out to the wind to be taken by other people, I had a thought on this the other day.

When I played WoW, I liked the fact that my professions affected my character even in battle. A good example being that if I was an alchemist I likely had the alchemy stone that made my potions do like 15% more when I used them.

This lead me to think that FFXIV could benefit, not from our crafting classes affecting our battle classes so much, but from a type of "battle craft" system. This would work more like WoW in that a single character could only pick 1 of these crafts to have instead of all of them (or maybe only pick 1 per their battle class).

But the idea would be that these "crafts" would grant your character either a boost in, say, stats or damage, pieces of gear that would grant stats or give you abilities (such as an aether bazooka, not to sound cheesy but just an example), increase potency of your potions, increase potency of your food, etc, etc. You could broaden these bonuses and balance them to where people could pick what fit them best, such as a culinarian picking the craft that increased their foods buffs since they are likely to always have food on hand for themselves.

I would say that it would be nice for our DoH classes to provide bonuses, however that would then just "require" people to level all their DoH so that they could get all of the bonuses to be the best Warrior, etc.


But I think a system like this offering a bit of a tweak to your character, potentially unique abilities and unique looking gear pieces would allow us to stand out. After all if you have, say, a tinkerer/engineer craft on your white mage, not every other white mage will be using that same craft bonus.


I would like to state that should a player decide they made a poor choice, there should be a way for them to give up the craft they picked and pick up another one. However I think it should come at some sort of price, IE paying an amount / having to wait an amount of time, or if the craft has progress or levels you lose all of it should you ever pick that same craft up again.

Also note "craft" is just a word I use here, I'm not talking about DoH crafts that actually make stuff.

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Originally Posted by Onidemon

I only mentioned WOW as an example as everyone is familiar with it but by no means i was suggesting we use the same system. I would much rather S-E make a system unique to FFXIV. Also i'd like to correct you on something. In WOW you got something called Dual spec. You can make 2 different trees and then switch between them to change your role. You can also go see your trainer and unlearn all your points and reallocate them. So no, you don't need to change classes or re-roll a character. That's the beauty of it, you can play the class you like and have the option of multiple roles to chose from.

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You missed my point entirely on that note. I know you can Dual Spec to change roles more easily and you can re-allocate points, but that changes nothing about the point I was making. Even with those things you are still limited to the roles that your talent tree provides. There is no one class that can fill every role in the game within its talent tree. Which means that if you want to play every role you will have to create alts. FFXIV does not require you to do this, as you can change job/classes as often as you'd like on the same character.

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Originally Posted by Onidemon

I fail to see how boosting stats changes a class's role..... Unless stats open up new abilities then i don't see how it can make you do anything different.

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Well I know you trying to leave out stats, gear and materia from the original argument you were making, and I respect that but since they are closely related to the OP topic and it continues to be brought up I'll throw in my two cents.

You can have two players that are playing the same job/class yet both are filling very different roles. Both may have identical skill sets, but the way the choose to use them in correlation with their gear and stat allocation choices gives them yet another opportunity to play that job/class differently from others.

Conjurer is a great example. It has been dubbed the "Healer Class." And for good reason, as it has the best equipped skill set to excel as a Healer, however that does not mean that it cannot play as an effective DD. Making gear, materia and stat allocation choices that make you more proficient as a DD, means you have the option.

And then if you factor in cross class abilities as well, you have a ton of options to customize your role you wish to play and how you play it. That is the beauty of the Armory system, and that is FFXIV's attempt at what you are asking for.

You know im gonna have to agree. Merits might be a really nice thing for players in the game right now since so many have finished leveling. Id love to work on merits if given the option.

This general idea has been one of XIV's shortcomings, imho

I may be a bit late to the party on this post but....

you DO realize that at launch the amoury suystem was COMPLETELY CUSTOMIZABLE. You could use any skillzzzz from any class you had leveled to regardless of what level that skill was.

You could use a level 50 CNJ skill on a level 1 RNG Bar with very few penalties. Like you lost AoE for some spells and such, but all in all you could BE whatever kinda playstyle you wanted.

You know what happened to this amazing system?

PPL HATES IT???!?!?!!????!!!

Why i have no idea, I really don't. But you can go back to old threads and read about it. SOmething about ppl wanting MORE DEFINED CLASSES or some sh&^T.....

So a year later now we have cookie cutter classes and jobs for the most part.....

Awesome eh?

People hated it because it was an unbalanced messed and there was always "builds" you were expected to have anyway. If you played a Disciple of War guess what people expected you to do? They expected you to borrow skills from every other DoW, it lead to no uniquness, no definition...nothing. It was a mess of a system and even SE agreed as such.

Now, we have definition, a sense of balance (still a community problem however) and classes can take a few skills from other classes while jobs pull from a specific one that benefits in main in some way.

Now is actually a lot better than the mess we had.

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Originally Posted by Elexia

People hated it because it was an unbalanced messed and there was always "builds" you were expected to have anyway. If you played a Disciple of War guess what people expected you to do? They expected you to borrow skills from every other DoW, it lead to no uniquness, no definition...nothing. It was a mess of a system and even SE agreed as such.

Now, we have definition, a sense of balance (still a community problem however) and classes can take a few skills from other classes while jobs pull from a specific one that benefits in main in some way.

Now is actually a lot better than the mess we had.

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I agree. And this is exactly one of the points I was making, players will always find the most effective/efficient setup and expect others to use that. The type of system you are using will never change that.

I dunno, I liked FFXI more than WoW because it had no talent trees.

YOU ARE GIVEN THESE SPELLS. NO YOU CAN'T CHOOSE MORE. USE THESE. DEAL.

Although I REALLY hope FFXIV doesn't gear the 60000000000000 spells that FFXI had, I would like to see more of a variety. Especially with Bard. ALSO I WOULD LIKE TO PICK AND CHOOSE WHAT'S ON MY ACTION BAR. THAT WOULD BE NICE. I don't need the spells that I don't use bogging down my space. That said, I like how most abilities are useful, thanks to combos.

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Originally Posted by fusional

i typed up a novel only to realize at the last minute that it would be completely futile. instead i'll sum it up with this:

games that go over the top with combat customization fail for a reason.

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Because no matter how many options there are, there will always be a "right" way to build/do things, so all you end up with is a game with really shoddy mechanics that provides no depth since it wasted its resources on a bunch of options no one uses. Also it makes balancing a nightmare, so most games with over the top customization are so grossly unbalanced its not even funny, which brings it back to the former point: there is always a "right" way to build/do things.

@OP I dont think customization is the answer. Skill/play style should always be the primary things that separate players. "Gimmicks" just waste resources and prevent devs from fully developing the options they *do* have available. As they say, quality over quantity. Besides, the materia system provides enough customization in my opinion. You can decide between intelligence, mag pot, magic crit pot, or mp if you're a blm. The mp values need a bit of work but all in all there's plenty of customization already. AF adds even more, with all the skills it benefits, you can choose what pieces to keep based on what skills you use.