Idea to fix the lack of Char Customization and Horizontal Progression: Action Glamour

Action Glamours? What are you talking about?

Action Glamours. Like the discussed egi-glamours for Summoner, only for each class.

There are several repeat complaints I see on the forums, in game, and in this subreddit. There is no method of character customization, such as a skill tree of sorts, there is no real end horizontal progression, such as variations on gear and the such, and there is no real rewarding reason to do some of the old content other than seals/tomes. And we all know that glamour is the one true endgame. So why not make it so you can get action based glamours?

You've said Action Glamours more than enough times now, care to actually say what you are suggesting?

So, as 1.0 players know, there used to be a significant number more animations (as each race/class had a unique stances per combination), and spells for Thaumaturge and Conjurer used to be much different. What I am proposing is make those achievable through content, allow those players to earn glamours to the basic actions they have, to change the effect and animations. And to add more animation and effects for player usage, even if just pulling animation/effects from current monsters.

For example:

After meeting the conditions, you earn a scroll that allow you to glamour over Conjurer's Stone spell with Fire.

Now this could be meet in various ways that could make old content rewarding again and give more reason to do them for older players.

Here are some conditions I thought of:

• Defeat Ifrit (Extreme) synced 30 times to get an item to trade for the scroll.
• Defeat Ifrit (Extreme) and each time a fire over-aspected crystal drops for you as a token, which you can trade in for the scroll. This crystal can drop from other fire based encounters as well so you can collect them from various content to trade in.
• Complete a time challenge for Ifrit (Extreme) and each time this challenge is completed the token mentioned above drops

This reward would be something permanent instead of something that would be instantly replaced a month or so down the line. You can then start collecting these glamours and customizing your character a bit (which allows the dev goal of not having a skill tree, but still allow players to be different from someone of the same class)

And I think it could be taken one step further as well. A lot of people have no desire to complete certain tasks, the anima weapon comes to mind due to all the controversy the arose when it was released. Well, make it so not only that you get the weapon, but a action glamour as well. For paladin this could be that using hallowed ground has angelic wings burst from the back, Warrior gets a primal beast roar when using berserk and the eye glow a bright red during it's uptime, etc etc.

So how would this work?

First, there needs to be an option to disable glamours on the local client, so instead of showing everyone's glamoured actions, you just see the normal actions, normal text.

Second, it should be in the same menu as actions, and above traits. You go through the list, select the action, select the glamour. I feel it should get the same glamour icon as gear, with the base icon still the normal action to avoid confusion. (I.E. even though Stone was glamoured to be Fire, it is still a stone icon with the plus on the corner.)

Third, the text should read in a way that people can tell it's a glamoured action, but the base action is still in text. (Again, example: You cast fire (stone). or You cast a glamoured stone. Something among those lines)

So, effectively, the action would look different, but everything is still the same, no balance changes needed, no new locks, nothing. To go with my example, the stone spell would still work like stone, but look like fire instead.

And what is it you are looking to resolve with this?

Something permanent to earn that will last and be used despite future patches, something that can show off hard work and make your character feel more your character without changing any of the numbers or the actions. or needing a skill tree. Making old content something worth doing without just being more tomes or something forced to be done to get done for some questline, making it truly optional.

Not only that, instead of it just being titles, the truly hard and difficult content can give rewards like this as well, allowing players who work hard to pass, say, SA4 something they will have forever to use that isn't just a weapon drop that will be replaced. An example I can think of this is if you are a Black Mage and defeat Bahamut Prime, you would get a scroll to glamour your Flare as Flare Star. Summoner getting to summon a bahamut egi. Dragonkick showing a bahamuts head when you use it as a monk.

Oh, I think I get it, can you give more examples for glamour ideas?

• Banish, Dark (which used to be scourge in 1.0) can be regained and used for those players who enjoyed the spells they had as a thaumaturge in 1.0.
• Meeting conditions for defeating Ravana in some way could provide an alternate combat stance for sword users, Paladins getting more a phalanx stance, or Dark knight getting a 'soldier stance scroll' that turns the weapon pose into one similar to Cloud's from FFVII instead of Cecil's dark knight pose.
• Monk's getting a more boxing based stance.
• Egi glamours for each primal for summoner.
• Conjurers/White mages getting use the elements like they did in 1.0 (examples given throughout this page on such, fire replacing stone).
• Same for Black Mages, getting to choose what element to use and replace for glamour purposes (instead of feeling awkward using fire against Ifrit, ice against Shiva, and lightning against Ramuh).
• Dragoons getting for stabs instead of heavy swings, getting to pick the style of attacks they wish for, after say defeating gilgamesh's conditions, potentially a gunlance style.
• Machinist getting the more 'musketeer' like stances and actions we see in some cutscenes for taking on leviathan and finishing those conditions.

I think that shows off my suggestion to help fix the game, and because these would stay on the character to be used, it would feel better achieving these alternation stances, spells and actions because you know they aren't going to be immediately replaced.

In Conclusion...

Yoshi, plz.

You can get past the character limit by editing your post.

Thank you!

While I am not against the idea of action glamours, it is not the solution to lack of traits, build customization or horizontal progression that I have been seeking.

It won't stop people from compaining, I can assure you of that lol.

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

While I am not against the idea of action glamours, it is not the solution to lack of traits, build customization or horizontal progression that I have been seeking.

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For the most part in mmos build customization is an illusion of choice. Awhile back ago in WoW they had huge talent trees where people could put like 80 points into their talents in 3 different trees. But for every class and spec min maxers came out and said this 1 build does the best dps if you aren't using it you are wrong. So they did away with the huge talent tress because having an illusion of choice was just bad game design.

SE has a similar problem with FFXIV but on a smaller scale with every class they have 1 stat they stack, playing a nin, bard, or mch if you didn't put all your points in dex you are doing it wrong. Playing a monk or drg not putting all your points in str you are doing it wrong.

Personally I would like to see them get rid of stat allocations and do something else.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zumi

For the most part in mmos build customization is an illusion of choice. Awhile back ago in WoW they had huge talent trees where people could put like 80 points into their talents in 3 different trees. But for every class and spec min maxers came out and said this 1 build does the best dps if you aren't using it you are wrong. So they did away with the huge talent tress because having an illusion of choice was just bad game design.

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IMO this argument is horrible. If we don't want to have an illusion of choice, they should just give us 1 button that executes our rotation - because choosing which order to press buttons is also an illusion of choice. Why even have secondary stats or primary ones for that matter. There should be 0 stats, and no gear - just an ilvl that you can obtain. 1 ilvl, 1 skill, because having more is just an illusion anyway.

Having 0 choice in your build is horrible game design in an RPG, and no other RPG does this. All of the great RPGs (MMO and single alike) give you customization. Regardless, I realize it's not coming here and I'll ultimately quit this game because of it.

That doesn't negate the fact that the OP suggestion doesn't tackle the request at all.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

IMO this argument is horrible. If we don't want to have an illusion of choice, they should just give us 1 button that executes our rotation - because choosing which order to press buttons is also an illusion of choice. Why even have secondary stats or primary ones for that matter. There should be 0 stats, and no gear - just an ilvl that you can obtain. 1 ilvl, 1 skill, because having more is just an illusion anyway.

Having 0 choice in your build is horrible game design in an RPG, and no other RPG does this. All of the great RPGs (MMO and single alike) give you customization. Regardless, I realize it's not coming here and I'll ultimately quit this game because of it.

That doesn't negate the fact that the OP suggestion doesn't tackle the request at all.

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I mean professional game designers have spoken on the matter several years ago. Which is why most mmos today don't use the huge build design anymore where you pick a bunch of talents/abilities. They didn't want people to handicap themselves by making the incorrect choices. It was like well they have other options to pick but they were all bad once the math has been figured out, and thus picking them leads people into a trap of being ineffective or handicapped cause they didn't pick the talent build which has already been mathematically proven to be the optimal best.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zumi

I mean professional game designers have spoken on the matter several years ago. Which is why most mmos today don't use the huge build design anymore where you pick a bunch of talents/abilities. They didn't want people to handicap themselves by making the incorrect choices. It was like well they have other options to pick but they were all bad once the math has been figured out, and thus picking them leads people into a trap of being ineffective or handicapped cause they didn't pick the talent build which has already been mathematically proven to be the optimal best.

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Which other modern MMO has done away with all build design? Every single one I play has some.

Guild Wars 2
has trait paths you can do with major traits that affect the way your skills work - as well as having gear builds, and customized skill sets (you can choose to bring a limited number of utility and have a wide selection. It has a bit more, but point made there I think.

World of Warcraft
still has trait paths that you can choose, specializations that you can choose, interesting stats that you can pick and choose from and has glyphs as well as crafting stuff that augments how you play (like enchanting).

Wildstar
has customized action bar sets where you choose which skills you want and can add limited action points to skills to change how they operate as well as AMPs which unlock certain abilities or change how your abilities may work.

Blade and Soul
has a pie chart thing - I only played briefly in Closed Beta, but there was some customization there. There was also a trait/skill tree to unlock your desired path.

Tera
has a system, i think called glyphs, but it's been awhile. You can purchase these to unlock them and then apply a limited number of points to each skill to modify how they work.

Onto a couple of successful recent single player RPGs.

Fallout 4
has multiple paths, where you can choose to buff up your strength or focus on things like lockpicking, persuasion or toughness.

Witcher 3
has skills that you unlock via investing in as you level up and then a system to modify them via Mutagens

The closest thing this game has is the system where you can change jobs on one class. While cool, it's not really the same thing.
Despite all of this, I personally found Vanilla WoWs the most fun system. It's too bad they scrapped it.

While I've wanted action glamours for a long time, they won't really satisfy the itch for customization that most players seeking it want. Customization in RPGs is ultimately about mechanical consequence and significance, something ability glamours would lack entirely.

Great idea in my opinion but you forget one thing.

According to SE people cannot tell the difference between classes unless they look like the classes should (never mind the actual class symbol with matching background color) which is the reason mages cannot glamour metal armor etc.

If a White mage suddenly starts shooting fire then all them poor players will not be able to tell hes a healer and its the same problem all over.

I honestly don't remotely want anything that switches our animations out with others. I have no intention of Full Thrusting on my Monk or Aeroing on my BLM. I see no benefit whatsoever, only really messed up battlefield tells. Augment them, perhaps, but then we might as well actually have differing abilities to go with the modified or new animations.

I wouldn't mind some additional stance choices though. Though I may be one of the few people to find DRK's Fenestra guard fairly practical (aside from the part where it doesn't actually thereby perform any counterattacks), Cloud's stance would be a nice touch, especially if I were to say, swap into it only when in Grit or only when out of Grit, either way.

5 unique disciplines branch out to 24 individual roles. How is that not variety, again?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

Which other modern MMO has done away with all build design? Every single one I play has some.

Guild Wars 2
has trait paths you can do with major traits that affect the way your skills work - as well as having gear builds, and customized skill sets (you can choose to bring a limited number of utility and have a wide selection. It has a bit more, but point made there I think.

World of Warcraft
still has trait paths that you can choose, specializations that you can choose, interesting stats that you can pick and choose from and has glyphs as well as crafting stuff that augments how you play (like enchanting).

Wildstar
has customized action bar sets where you choose which skills you want and can add limited action points to skills to change how they operate as well as AMPs which unlock certain abilities or change how your abilities may work.

Blade and Soul
has a pie chart thing - I only played briefly in Closed Beta, but there was some customization there. There was also a trait/skill tree to unlock your desired path.

Tera
has a system, i think called glyphs, but it's been awhile. You can purchase these to unlock them and then apply a limited number of points to each skill to modify how they work.

Onto a couple of successful recent single player RPGs.

Fallout 4
has multiple paths, where you can choose to buff up your strength or focus on things like lockpicking, persuasion or toughness.

Witcher 3
has skills that you unlock via investing in as you level up and then a system to modify them via Mutagens

The closest thing this game has is the system where you can change jobs on one class. While cool, it's not really the same thing.
Despite all of this, I personally found Vanilla WoWs the most fun system. It's too bad they scrapped it.

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Don't forget "The Secret World": You have a so called "Skill Wheel" with 512 different skills. You had to build your "deck" with 7 active and 7 passive skills, fitting to your choice of primary and secondary weapon. This was a nice method of customizing your playstyle.

Don't take away my monk animation! It gets the ladies boobs bouncing and thats all that matters <.<

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Originally Posted by YGSLlew

Don't forget "The Secret World": You have a so called "Skill Wheel" with 512 different skills. You had to build your "deck" with 7 active and 7 passive skills, fitting to your choice of primary and secondary weapon. This was a nice method of customizing your playstyle.

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Ah I wasn't forgetting Secret World, I was just listing games that I've played :P I've never really played Secret World (I think I briefly played a beta or something a long time ago)

I feel if this was to become a thing instead of glamouring using already existing spells ( like your fire - stone example) they should be 100% new animations altogether. I just feel that it would be better that way than say seeing a healer using essentially blm spells

Solution to lack of character customization:
Add more customization.

Solution to memory limitations:
Add more memory...

OP Trust me when I tell you this.

This would not satisfy the vast majority of people complaining about lack of horizontal progression or customization. IT will make the people wanting their character to look different happy, but that is not the majority of complaints on this matter.

Overall most people do not care about glamour, or titles, or achievements, or minions, or mounts. Yes there are some who focus on these things, but most just get them when they get them.

We already can run older content for glamour gear, most people do not. A new pose is no different then gear. We want meaningful horizontal progression where things are situational and the game is not a strait shot to the top. AKA we do not want each patch to increases the item level and have gear that is the exact same with +2 stats on it. Yoshida has stated in a recent interview he has no intention of deviating from the pure linear game design. So there is no making the people who want customization and horizontal progression happy with FFXIV. It is why alot of people are leaving the game.

With the current model the devs are struggling to release content fast enough. Aka they are releasing 1/4th the amount of content needed in a vertical progression game. Them taking dev time to develop this and add it to old content is a waste of their time. They need to focus on adding more dungeons, more raids, more primal, and more fluff content. (Since the content usually last 1-2 months tops). Unless they hire new people to specifically work on this I feel it would not be a good use of their man power.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zumi

For the most part in mmos build customization is an illusion of choice. Awhile back ago in WoW they had huge talent trees where people could put like 80 points into their talents in 3 different trees. But for every class and spec min maxers came out and said this 1 build does the best dps if you aren't using it you are wrong. So they did away with the huge talent tress because having an illusion of choice was just bad game design.

SE has a similar problem with FFXIV but on a smaller scale with every class they have 1 stat they stack, playing a nin, bard, or mch if you didn't put all your points in dex you are doing it wrong. Playing a monk or drg not putting all your points in str you are doing it wrong.

Personally I would like to see them get rid of stat allocations and do something else.

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first even illusion of choice is still choice. not everyone will try to be optimized and time to time new idea will pop out and new way to play will be found.

now about the stats point actually it's SE fault this system is too much wrong. do we really have the choice? no, outside the tank, all the other jobs will probably never invest point in other stats, because from the start, the primary wasn't the one we was needing to.... customize.

if you want to add customization, you can, if you really try. the trouble there is not in the game, but in the dev mentality to only think the game throught the hardcore and the raid. when we have a whole game unused and barely developed like it can be... because all them effort are turned to make the raid only revelant content. and since they want to balance the content for hardcore player, they need to be sure people will have the same stats and such for match them test team.

we can say, they have added casual content, but it's not the most important part of the content for them... the best example is the last live letter, where every concern of the dev was to make sure that the raid will be done.... they have loose of sights that a mmorpg is not only about raiding... that why we don't have customization, that why we only have one type of endgame content.... that why each patch look a like soo much... that because the dev are trying too hard to make everyone do raid. when a mmorpg is not only played by raider. (and less by hardcore)

ps: for make simple for make a choice exist, you need to offer decent option....