Linearity among classes makes new classes/jobs boring.

What is a trait? A miserable pile of secrets?
No, but a 0.42 second google search will tell you that it is "a distinguishing quality or characteristic, typically one belonging to a person."

Many games have their little own variants of the trait system, to further differentiate player characters from one another. Specifically, the same class. And, well, it works. A thief that would prefer to smack you down, with an agile barrage of one-two's to the gut, should be different than the sadist thief who would prefer to watch you slowly die from poisons. The magician who prefers hydromancy is obviously very different from the pyromaniac pyromancer.

But how is this at all the case in our game? We have traits, but they aren't exactly distinguishable at all. As you reach a certain level, you will receive an upgrade to a stat, or an upgrade to a skill, and this repeats itself until you hit the level cap, which begs the question: what is the point of traits at all?

Would it not make more sense to already have these upgrades from the beginning, if they were intended to function a certain way with these traits? And how at all as there distinguishable? My marauder/warrior is no different from anyone else's, in terms of class, but we have features named "traits," and stat allocation.

Why not just allocate my stats for me? It's very clear to me that I am intended to tank, so just stuff it in vit, str, and maybe one in dex. ...Please don't actually do this, by the way. This is not at all the solution to the linearity, but giving the illusion of freedom isn't the solution either.

Our classes are reserved to one role, and one role only, despite there being a marginal difference of role ratios in this game, and the implementation of common sense. You mean to tell me this person with a lute that can somehow restore vigor in me can't also restore my health?

I'm not opposed to it, but I doubt we will get any kind of "configurability", it makes balancing for raids more difficult.

It's very likely there to present an illusion of achievement and keep players playing through the levels (and playing longer) so it's not just gaining skills every few levels but having something in between as filler. And as Bishop pointed out, it's also for balancing purposes.

The problem with this game being less linear is that the endgame content is clearly very tailored to a specific set of abilities. Endgame trails aren't tailored to 8 players, they're tailored to 2 Tanks, 2 Healers, and 4 DPS. That makes non-linear classes very hard to do.

The thing is, unless we're able to do things like have DPS keep themselves alive or Healers act as pseudo-tanks during trials, then allowing non-linear progression is nothing more than an elaborate illusion, and just makes shit harder for everyone.

I like the idea behind what you are saying, but I completely disagree.

When you give everyone that much free choice, the game becomes a homogenized mess (I'm looking at you Guild Wars 2). Now, I'd be cool with minor differences, but only if they keep our REAL ROLES completely in tact. Everyone being able to do everything removes choice just as much as shoehorning us into roles. Like I said, GW2 tried this, wanna know the result? I played that game for some time. Almost every single end-game "raid" became "hey everyone, stack up in a corner and spam your skills". Know what happened when that didn't work? No such thing as a main tank, Kite it! Everyone kite like mad!

I'm cool with being able to alter our skills specifically a bit more, I'd love that. Just not to a huge degree.


Oh also, this is final fantasy. The classes do what they've always done.

In FF14 there's no need for class specializations because you can freely change to other jobs that do other things. You can sword and board on a paladin, then switch to using a two-handed weapon on dragoon, or to two weapon styles on monk or ninja, all while keeping an overall "I like playing physical melee roles" theme on your character, if that's how you prefer to play it.

Traits partially serve as filler, but they balance abilities at certain levels, and manage crossclass abilities. For example they allow multiple jobs to use the Cure I spell, but only white mages can make use of the trait that enhances it.

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Originally Posted by SakiKojiro

(I'm looking at you Guild Wars 2)

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gw2 is far from the good way interpret his idea, he wants to be able to have a unique playstyle, ie if hes tanking and likes shield skills more then the playstyle around shield functionality(blocking) would have more use than the counter/stun, possibly even a bouncing aoe shield lob, procced shield hate aoe, or even a minuscule heal triggering, or maybe even a combo emphasizing the shield(low proc stun or slow for funsies)

edit 1:rift by a small margin would be a better pick for customization but the gameplay style of rift is even worse on the use your CDs system

edit 2:gw2s gameplay aspect of controlling most of the battle with mid/high cd skills, and traiting to your preferred sub-playstyle is not a wrong concept... including the game's trinity free system in an argument is however bad form

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Originally Posted by Viviza

In FF14 there's no need for class specializations because you can freely change to other jobs that do other things.

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he's wanting to see a difference in class a(drg) and class b(drg), sub specializations is not a bad concept, as long as the difference between a and b is not ruining raidability/fun factor

I also like customization within my class. The problem is that you end up with WoW. Is that so bad? Well, Rogue in WoW is a good example of this. All three trees were DPS right? Okay so how many of them were viable? How far could you really deviate within a tree? The truth is not that far. Mace rogue? Don't make me laugh, swords or bust. Sword rogue? Only if you aren't a n00b who doesn't appreciate daggers. In the end the "Min-Max"ers that make up the hardcore end game raiding crowd will find the "perfect setup" and everyone will eventually fall into line. It happens that way with EVERY MMO I have ever heard of.

Its a nice thought and dream but in order for it to be successful the Dev team would have to be really on top of it or it might as well not even be there and that's not the Dev team's fault, its the player bases fault.

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Originally Posted by roninoftagrm

he's wanting to see a difference in class a(drg) and class b(drg), sub specializations is not a bad concept, as long as the difference between a and b is not ruining raidability/fun factor

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I know. I'm saying that there's no point with the job system as it is. Instead of designing Dragoon-A and Dragoon-B, why not just have a separate job for each playstyle? If you want to be different than the other guy, play a different job than him. It'll get easier with the more jobs added in.

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Originally Posted by Viviza

I know. I'm saying that there's no point with the job system as it is. Instead of designing Dragoon-A and Dragoon-B, why not just have a separate job for each playstyle? If you want to be different than the other guy, play a different job than him. It'll get easier with the more jobs added in.

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and thats the problem, the class(weapon) is not the "playstyle" its how you play it, but as of right now ff14 has no such thing, hence again why the desire for more than one playstyle with a class would be desired, maybe my suggestion will have to be posted in the next few days that supports the OP's desires

This wouldn't be as much of a problem if the leveling process wasn't so boring and the individual jobs themselves didn't play so similarly. Also, if the game had more jobs in general but it's still relatively new so we can't fault it for that. That way if you were bored with the way a job felt you could just try out another.