Differentiate me from other players with same class!

So I have been playing the game for a week now and just hit level 30. It is a fantastic game! However, I was wondering what really differentiates my White Mage from other White Mages? Or any other class for that matter.

Other than attribute points, armor options and player habits, is there any other system in place to make me different from others of the same class? I ask this because there are quite a few games out there have some other system in place to personalize your character, in addition to the above mentioned. I do know that when systems like this are present, class imbalances may arise, but I was just wondering. Maybe I missed something.

Thanks!

Nope. The personalization is in the Glamour System that you can unlock at lvl50. Pretty much all jobs get a list of must-have cross-class abilities with only one or two you can leeway. All mages are pretty much "required" to have swiftcast, etc

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Originally Posted by Rykken

Other than attribute points, armor options and player habits, is there any other system in place to make me different from others of the same class?

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You're going to have the same abilities as any other white mage. The main difference between you and other players are the decisions you make in combat, and to a lesser degree the choices you make with gear.

In theory the cross class system allows some customization, but in practice you'll wind up with the same skills as everyone else. And this is the problem with selectable skills in any MMO system. People will find the most practical setup and that will become the cookie-cutter build. There might be the appearance of choice, but you are only weakening yourself by being different. The development team also has to look at this build and balance the class/job around it, not alternative builds, because everyone will be using it. By leaving everyone the same they cut away the illusion of choice and can balance around a standard template, which is much easier, which in turn makes the player experience more reliably solid, which makes for a better game.

My point in summary is that offering such choices only really serves to weaken, not strengthen, the quality of an MMO. Players still have a great amount of ability to stand out via their actions. You still see a wide range in how well players perform at their roles and it really stands out given you know they all have the same basic tools to work with.

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Originally Posted by Rykken

Thanks!

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As far as I have seen in endgame. Sadly, diversity won't be how the dev wants us to play the game.

Personally, I am with you on personalizing our play, but hard truth hit me and just accepted it.

All players of their respective jobs will eventually aim for the gear with the highest numbers, then play in a certain pattern or rotation. We will all end up with the same cookie cutter playstyle and build. Deviations from that will not be favorable as you will end up much weaker than most.

Well, the benefits of that is as the guy above me had stated: optimization. It would be easy for the players and the devs to balance out and work on a certain narrow expectation: dps deal damage, healers heal and tanks tank. At the end of the day that d be all that matters, and all progressions will cater to those expectations.

The only other remaining way to personalize yourself is by glamour, that's it.

In my experience, Guild Wars 2 is a good example of a game that allows diverse playstyle. All jobs can play any style they want... warriors can be healers, or mages can be meaty soldiers (no tanking in the game, but still you can be very tough). There are also many ways to deal dps for each job, be it direct damage, DoTs or pets. Granted there are "optimal" builds for max deeps enforced by elitist speedrunners, otherwise every other build you can think of is acceptable and playable.

GW2 is a solid game. Traits, individual skill leveling, the ability to combine weapons; dual pistols, knife and pistol, etc. Very cool stuff!

Thanks for your opinions. I've played SWG, CoH, CoV, GW1, GW2, EQ2, AoC, DCU, PS and and about 20 more throughout the last 20 years. I'm sure I'm not the only vet. I am no stranger to the imbalances, I even mentioned them in my first post. However, I simply like to have more choices. I don't think it weakens a game if it's done correctly. The problem is, how many development teams have ever got it right? lol.. Not many...

Thank you for your feedback!

Well, FFXIV is a pretty solid game too. Despite its many shortcomings that is, but no game is perfect. :)

This game does have 2 concepts that would have introduced potential diversity: classes and elementals. Elements are kinda obvious, which one is your strength and weakness, and the like. Classes give us more cross class skills and is thus more versatile playstyle, and is designed to branch into potentially multiple jobs adding their own flavors to their respective base class.

Sadly, as far as I am seeing, they are neglecting these two systems in order to provide a more solid and optimized gameplay. Many find it great, and I do find its benefits, but I personally dont like it. With the release of HW, they further made this obvious. Only jobs get new skills, nothing in their base class, even though some of the skills added to the jobs make less sense in terms of the jobs theme and lore. More damage skills for the White Mage?? No new pet actions for the Summoner??

a While back ago i read from a article maybe it was on reddit not sure. but there was some talk of having jobs with duel roles how would they implement that? i mean that's the only way that i could think of. Was the class system made for this? for example lets take conjurer and let it branch out to two classes healer WHM or Dps Geo. Was that the purpose from the beginning having the class with the same core skills but play diff by having diff jobs.

Well the potential of class versatility is there, and actually implemented by the arcanist class. With that, people (like me too) are hoping other classes will follow suit.

I dont know if they actually intended it, but at the moment they seem to be steering away from it.

I'm still kinda bitter they put Stone 3 and Aero 3 in WHM. -_-

FYI, the class system is more of an artifact from 1.0. It is a design they're phasing out, especially with the expansion only introducing new jobs and the crafter specialist system. Both make sense in my opinion with how the current game works. I just don't think an all-rounder class who can draw abilities from all jobs is that desirable for the current system and party-centered brand of FF mmos.

As for the reddit post, there was some speculation early in 2.0 that other jobs would branch from other classes like SCH (healer) did for SMN (mage dps) on arcanist. The expansion suggests this is not going to be the case.

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On topic, the dev team was playing around with some ideas to improve the materia system, a largely ignored aspect of the game at endgame.

The basic idea was to allow materia to improve and provide unique effects to existing skills. For example, a materia that dramatically improved a Dragoon's Jump damage at the cost of a shorter CD. That way, individual players would be able to customize their playstyle and equipment.

The problem they had was balancing it for all possible variations and classes in player testing. So, this is a subject S-E is aware of and they want to improve on. It's just not at the level where they can go in to detail about it.

Keep up threads like this and tell them what you want. It's going to take an awful lot of noise to persuade Japan's top-down management, but we know they're invested in making the game great. Just remember how much they put in to push 1.0 to 2.0.

I would love to see some sort of talent trees similar to what WoW and kotor use to have. It made it feel like it was your character, not just another warrior or healer. Without talents, aside from what the characters look like, there is no difference between them. You can say that skills and how the person fights makes a difference but it really doesn't when there is a set rotation that the skills are supposed to be used in. Talents give players more freedom to play and do it however they find the most fun.

ok so what if they got rid of the cross class skills and added sub class or a talent system were u can equip a talent or sub class and gain 5 skills that coresponde to that talent. For example let's take machinist and give it two talents Marksmen(more Dps skills)and Gadgeteer( more suportive skills) so u can equip the marksmen talent for 5 extra Dps focus skills or you can equip Gadgeteer and gain some suportive skills. So in theory the job will play the same core wise but u will have extra abilities that will synergise with yours.

The only way stand out is to play better. But be assured they will recognize it. The gap is huge in FF14. Dress your self extravagant add some rare Color and they might even remember you. Altough that rather happens to bad Players with funny names.

Differentiate me from others of the same class. Hemmm, FFXIV is more based on role (Tank, DPS, Healer) and you do that (differentiate) by which job you choose. One thing cool about FF is that they are always adding new jobs.

I don't know what's the issue, I'm the only Monk that has one Ilm Punch as part of her core rotation!

Well of course it's less efficient than doing it like everyone else, but hey, special!

I'm joking of course, but I hope you see the veiled point. Neither your rotation nor skill usage is "set". You can choose to use your skills suboptimally. As such, you cannot complain about a set rotation and then assume talents or other ways to differentiate yourself from others would be any different. Just as with the rotation, people would only do the optimal builds, except for a few "scrubs" that "need to learn how to play", to put it in the common tongue.

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Originally Posted by ZodiacBrave

I'm still kinda bitter they put Stone 3 and Aero 3 in WHM. -_-

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I can understand being upset about stone III. It's literally just a buffed stone II. Atleast stone I still had a use with gravity.

But aero III works nothing like other aeros as it's AOE. And can stack with the other 2.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

people would only do the optimal builds, except for a few "scrubs" that "need to learn how to play", to put it in the common tongue.

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This will forever be a silly argument. I hate when people say this sort of stuff. While it is true, this never stopped me, or anyone else in other games from doing the "fun builds" rather than the optimal.


I know a lot of people around these boards hate World of Warcraft, and dislike is less when anyone brings it up. But personally, I'd rather see us go in that games direction of classes. Give us a few talent trees to pick from and let people decided how they want to build their character. An example of this is (Sorry wow example again), Paladins. they had 3 talent trees, 1 for tanking, 1 for healing and 1 for dps. This gives variation to what people can play as, under a certain class, as well as giving you more options to do something different and be a little bit unique. I feel like the only reason SE hasn't done this yet, is they just don't have the man-power. Everything takes time, and honestly, Yoshi has gone on record saying he would like to make 3 versions of each raid as they are released, but they don't have the time or man power to do it, and I think this is whats holding the game back from making any kind of major changes.

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Originally Posted by Nyghtmarerobu

This will forever be a silly argument. I hate when people say this sort of stuff. While it is true, this never stopped me, or anyone else in other games from doing the "fun builds" rather than the optimal.

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Oh, I never said it would stop people. I got to know a great many people who, erm...choose to play rather suboptimally in my daily roulettes. I've even seen a Marauder in my Expert Roulette. No, not Warrior. Marauder. Because cross class skills. Like I said, these people will simply be labeled "scrubs".

As for WoW, interesting read on the talent thing, though a tad dated by now: http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/11/w...e-full-circle/

Curious what their next iteration of the talent system will look like. As you can see, it is a horrible mess to implement and even worse to maintain, going through constant radical shifts. Seeing as I no longer play, I have no idea how it currently looks like, nor what will change with the "next" expansion. But honestly, I'd rather have more inventory space and then new jobs. Worst case, they'll play like a talent modded version of what we already have. Best case, it'll offer entirely new gameplay.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

As for WoW, interesting read on the talent thing, though a tad dated by now: http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/11/w...e-full-circle/

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Yeesh.. Talk about dumbed down. I hate when stuff like this happens. Game Devs like to think were idiots, and it just boggles my mind. I would like to assume everyone that plays games can read and comprehend things that are being shown to them. Why dumb things down so much? I just don't get it...

There is no diversity in this or any other MMO. There will always be an ideal build. SE took the guesswork out of it for you.

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Originally Posted by Immut

There is no diversity in this or any other MMO. There will always be an ideal build. SE took the guesswork out of it for you.

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Originally Posted by Nyghtmarerobu

This will forever be a silly argument. I hate when people say this sort of stuff. While it is true, this never stopped me, or anyone else in other games from doing the "fun builds" rather than the optimal.

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Welp............

The 'fun' builds are only 'fun' if they're at least semi-effective. Otherwise they're the 'bad' builds.

on topic: Be good. That sets you apart.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

The 'fun' builds are only 'fun' if they're at least semi-effective. Otherwise they're the 'bad' builds.

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If this is what you believe. Just remember, that there are people out there who don't care about being on the top of the charts.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

on topic: Be good. That sets you apart.

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While, yes, this will set you apart from other "bad" players, but at the end of the day, if everyone is playing the class optimally (yeah it will never happen), then theres nothing that sets you apart from anybody else playing the same job as you. Sorry but I don't agree with your comment. More can be done to give players a more personal flare to their character besides playing dress-up.

Arcanist gets summoner and scholar.

I'm sure someday there will be similar variants for a single class.

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Originally Posted by Nyghtmarerobu

While, yes, this will set you apart from other "bad" players, but at the end of the day, if everyone is playing the class optimally (yeah it will never happen), then theres nothing that sets you apart from anybody else playing the same job as you.

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In that case, you can just play bad and stand out again! Besides, if everyone is using "your" build, there's nothing that sets you apart from anybody else either. Hypothetical scenarios are hypothetical.

On that note: Why aren't you using your base class to spice up your gameplay with the cross class freedom? You can go as far as heal as rogue, or play an Arcanist that's skull sundering things with his book. That differentiates you quite a lot.

Don't tell me "because it sucks" now. You are arguing that this doesn't matter all the time, so that can't be it.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

In that case, you can just play bad and stand out again! Besides, if everyone is using "your" build, there's nothing that sets you apart from anybody else either. Hypothetical scenarios are hypothetical.

On that note: Why aren't you using your base class to spice up your gameplay with the cross class freedom? You can go as far as heal as rogue, or play an Arcanist that's skull sundering things with his book. That differentiates you quite a lot.

Don't tell me "because it sucks" now. You are arguing that this doesn't matter all the time, so that can't be it.

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Don't bring logic into this.

You're breaking the rules-that-don't-exist-because-snowflakes.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Don't bring logic into this.

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She didn't.