A different approach to ALL jobs

I wonder if instead of the current approach to jobs that we have we could change it to the following:

All starting jobs in the game (Not added at a later expansion) progress as they currently have, except that the full kit of their abilities gets acquired by level 50. This would essentially create dynamic and rich job kits that would enrich new players experience throughout the early game.

When new expansions release and the jobs get changed you can simply get a quest at the beginning of the expansion that plays like Hall of the novice where they teach you your new abilities and what they do. This way you get to enjoy your new kit and practice it all the way to the end of the expansion.

New jobs on the expansion do not get unlocked until you reach the end of the expansion. In EW this would mean getting Reaper and Sage at level 90. And once they become unlocked the quest takes you through unlocking the entirety of their ability sets, this could be the base set and each quests grants your a new ability. This would actually create a bit more content since you'd have something to do after beating the MSQ whereas now you can do both simultaneously. The reason for this comes next.

Once you have the job and all abilities unlocked they sync down with you. Meaning even in Sastasha, you'd have your entire level 90 ability kit. (Ideally the devs can balance it out somewhat with the newbies) But lets not pretend they are balanced right now either, an max ilvl synced 90 player will outperform ANY noob with MSQ progression gear regardless of whether they have their full kit or not.

Because of the ability density of the base jobs (ARR) would increase rapidly, and finish at 50 (Before there is any active raid or endgame content) I don't think veteran players or new players would mind teaming up with lvl 90 players sporting full kits. After all even new players would have a pretty decent kit by level 30 instead of the two buttons they have now all the way into level 50.

A large portion of the player base also finishes the MSQ, maybe some side content and unsubs as well, so therefore it would stand to reason they would enjoy their new rotations and abilities at THE BEGINNING of the expansion, and not the end, where they no longer have anything to do with them since they don't engage in hardcore/endgame content, meaning as soon as they hit 90 and do some normal raids their content is levelling up other jobs or doing other things.

I think the only thing they might do here is maybe push back the job unlock. It makes some sense to learn about these after you've seen them in action.

The other stuff is a lot of extra work that just isn't going to happen. Skill progression is there for a reason. It's better to deal with fewer skills and learn how they all work and add along the way.
Syncing down with a full kit of spells is excessive. (It sounds impossible given how they work. Note that all BLU skills are level 1.) I get missing AOE skills below a certain level, but mobs are super easy to kill.

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

I think the only thing they might do here is maybe push back the job unlock. It makes some sense to learn about these after you've seen them in action.

The other stuff is a lot of extra work that just isn't going to happen. Skill progression is there for a reason. It's better to deal with fewer skills and learn how they all work and add along the way.
Syncing down with a full kit of spells is excessive. (It sounds impossible given how they work. Note that all BLU skills are level 1.) I get missing AOE skills below a certain level, but mobs are super easy to kill.

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Yeah it’s a lot of work. I think it’s mainly to keep new players from getting bored and quitting early when the game gets much better. When ARR launched we all learned our full skill tree by level 50, we had to since that was endgame and I don’t think people found it overwhelming. The current level 50 job kits are a bit of an insult.

As far as skill progression goes I don’t think I ever enjoyed having my blm at lvl 54 and getting Ice IV but not Fire IV haha. For early on That makes sense because you are learning everything, but I’d much rather go through the MSQ with a complete kit after the base game than a really awkward progression tree and jobs feeling really incomplete the whole way.

Since we are 6 expansions in the game and you only get to enjoy your jobs actual potential in the endgame of 6.0 you basically spend 16% of the entire game actually enjoying your full job, and “dealing” with an incomplete version of it for 84% of the game. And like I said, if you are a casual once you get your job to 90 you maybe have 6 instances you can do with your new skills…. And that’s it… you maybe get a couple new instances every 4 months for 2 years.

And every expansion we have it will keep getting worse. Hence I think this would solve a great deal of the problem, I also recognize it’s not a perfect solution.

Low-Level bloodwhetting? you're just forcing me to pull the whole dungeon and make the sprout healer cry.

but sadly even if you add a quest that teaches them the basics a lot of people don't even read their tooltips let alone a whole class guide and at least with the current system they get time to learn the job 1 skill at a time so they can learn by doing and not feel overwhelmed.

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Originally Posted by Mosha

Low-Level bloodwhetting? you're just forcing me to pull the whole dungeon and make the sprout healer cry.

but sadly even if you add a quest that teaches them the basics a lot of people don't even read their tooltips let alone a whole class guide and at least with the current system they get time to learn the job 1 skill at a time so they can learn by doing and not feel overwhelmed.

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=| I’ve pulled all of Sastasha without it and first time healers and we still make it. You are one cure 1 from being full health all the time. But if we wipe you just slow down. NBD.

But the overwhelming part I think has been addressed, I think the first fifty levels and all of ARR would prevent people from being overwhelmed. As far as new jobs and unlocking all skills besides base line through a well thought out quest line it should be fine since you already have a sense of skill trees from your initial job choice.

It certainly won’t be any worse than level jumpers (buyers) not knowing anything at near max level.

The problem with getting all of your abilities by level 50, is that level 50 content was not designed for the abilities we have at level 90. The difficulty of some content relies on not having things like gap closers or lots of aoe and has already been made easier by battle system changes. A great example is Ultima's Bane, which at 50 minimum item level is very difficult but the unreal version is easy at level 90 with all the abilities we have.

These suggestions would be unfortunate for people who want to do the content minimum item level as close to how it was originally as possible. Jobs have changed a lot at lower levels, but the essence of them has remained. PLD always spammed the Rage of Halone combo in ARR and it still does for people who want to go back in time.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

The problem with getting all of your abilities by level 50, is that level 50 content was not designed for the abilities we have at level 90. The difficulty of some content relies on not having things like gap closers or lots of aoe and has already been made easier enough by battle system changes. A great example is Ultima's Bane, which at 50 minimum item level is very difficult but it's easy at level 90 with all the abilities we have.

It would be unfortunate for people who want to do the content minimum item level as close to how it was originally as possible. Jobs have changed a lot at lower levels, but the essence of them has remained. PLD always spammed the Rage of Halone combo in ARR and it still does for people who want to go back in time.

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No but it can be rebalanced, unreal has been fun rebalanced fights for extreme, so we have proof. MSQ is significantly easier so the balancing wouldn’t need to be harsh, but things can be fine tuned.

So, what new content are you willing to give up or put off in order to have the old content reworked? The manpower has to come from somewhere.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

No but it can be rebalanced, unreal has been fun rebalanced fights for extreme, so we have proof. MSQ is significantly easier so the balancing wouldn’t need to be harsh, but things can be fine tuned.

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The fact it takes so much work just to rebalance one fight suggests to me that they would not do it for all of the previous content.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

So, what new content are you willing to give up or put off in order to have the old content reworked? The manpower has to come from somewhere.

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Hmm whichever the devs deem necessary. Sometimes it’s better to invest in the bones of the house than getting that shiny new appliance. I’m sure we lost something because of the graphics update that’s coming in 7.0 but it was badly needed. I would’ve thrown anything away to see that done but I can’t see we lost all that much.

Im also sure we’re losing something because they redid praetorium and the msq dungeons + some older dungeons but honestly they are making the game a more consistent experience. I’m not sure I agree with what they did with the older dungeons but I can appreciate them trying to create a more consistent experience.

We haven't lost anything from the trust reveamp. They've clearly got more people to handle things now, but going back and changing something core to the game like the skill progression in synced content is way too much.

Unreals are updated about every major patch. We also get a new dungeon with every major patch. These (along with the other tiered content) achieve the proposed goal and satisfy that desire to use a full kit in content. Solo experiences aside, the old dungeons are fine as they are.

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

We haven't lost anything from the trust reveamp. They've clearly got more people to handle things now, but going back and changing something core to the game like the skill progression in synced content is way too much.

Unreals are updated about every major patch. We also get a new dungeon with every major patch. These (along with the other tiered content) achieve the proposed goal and satisfy that desire to use a full kit in content. Solo experiences aside, the old dungeons are fine as they are.

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Do you have any evidence this would be as much work as people are saying it will be? Or is all this speculation?

Let me tell you rebalancing the unreal fight could be anything as simple as taking an average max DPS of each job and multiplying a bosses hit point pool by an according amount and then multiplying the bosses abilities damage factor according to peoples HP now a days and calling it a day. It could also be a tangled mess back there, but we don't know.

I think rather than focusing on guessing the work for the devs we should discuss whether the idea is better as a concept than what we have now. If they like it and want to implement it they will, otherwise they don't have to bother.

TBH it would be kind of weird for me to walk into work and see a bunch of people in an online feedback forum telling me it would be too hard to do X feature when they don't have any idea how the system behind it works or how the company departments are set up to tackle these sort of things. For some reason XIV users love doing this, and they were all wrong when guessing at the issues behind the housing lottery number issues.

To me its clear that job ability progression has become an issue in the game, and using the current model will keep getting worse as they have to thin out and spread these abilities across ever more levels so you dont end with 100 buttons at max level. So we would benefit from discussing what things could potentially help.

I'm just curious if "new flashy thing in new levels" is not a marketing requirement. SMN, while mostly giving you the bones early on, is criticized because it takes until Endwalker content to feel complete, for example. Not to mention how strange the conversation around Expedient was, compared to now.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

The fact it takes so much work just to rebalance one fight suggests to me that they would not do it for all of the previous content.

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That doesn't make it any less worthwhile. Past-expansion content, after all, makes up more than 85% of our total content. Now, that will mean actually finding systematic means of doing this, rather than simply trying to rebuild those past fights for the potency-per-minute of a given level cap, but to spend even an expansion's worth of content time on that now would still increase endgame-relevant content by 5 times as much.

That's not to say that we should accept further massive content slows; content pacing has been slowing as is. But it absolutely a lucrative investment.

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Originally Posted by Irenia

I'm just curious if "new flashy thing in new levels" is not a marketing requirement. SMN, while mostly giving you the bones early on, is criticized because it takes until Endwalker content to feel complete, for example. Not to mention how strange the conversation around Expedient was, compared to now.

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To be fair, it doesn't feel "complete" at 90, either. It just takes until then to feel even like a barebone proof of content.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

Do you have any evidence this would be as much work as people are saying it will be? Or is all this speculation?

Let me tell you rebalancing the unreal fight could be anything as simple as taking an average max DPS of each job and multiplying a bosses hit point pool by an according amount and then multiplying the bosses abilities damage factor according to peoples HP now a days and calling it a day. It could also be a tangled mess back there, but we don't know.

I think rather than focusing on guessing the work for the devs we should discuss whether the idea is better as a concept than what we have now. If they like it and want to implement it they will, otherwise they don't have to bother.

TBH it would be kind of weird for me to walk into work and see a bunch of people in an online feedback forum telling me it would be too hard to do X feature when they don't have any idea how the system behind it works or how the company departments are set up to tackle these sort of things. For some reason XIV users love doing this, and they were all wrong when guessing at the issues behind the housing lottery number issues.

To me its clear that job ability progression has become an issue in the game, and using the current model will keep getting worse as they have to thin out and spread these abilities across ever more levels so you dont end with 100 buttons at max level. So we would benefit from discussing what things could potentially help.

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I feel like the evidence is right in front of us in what's given to us on a regular basis. Rebalancing one fight is one thing. Rebalancing whole dungeons is likely to be a whole other thing. The whole duty support thing is quite the extra effort they're making and I think they'll be inclined not to revisit any of this content again. What you're suggesting will involve them going back and redoing more balancing as the cap gets higher and higher.

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Originally Posted by Irenia

I'm just curious if "new flashy thing in new levels" is not a marketing requirement. SMN, while mostly giving you the bones early on, is criticized because it takes until Endwalker content to feel complete, for example. Not to mention how strange the conversation around Expedient was, compared to now.

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It's nothing to do with marketing and everything to do with the poor condition the summoner job was in. By comparison. SCH was in such a good spot that they didn't see the need to add very much.

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

I feel like the evidence is right in front of us in what's given to us on a regular basis. Rebalancing one fight is one thing. Rebalancing whole dungeons is likely to be a whole other thing. The whole duty support thing is quite the extra effort they're making and I think they'll be inclined not to revisit any of this content again. What you're suggesting will involve them going back and redoing more balancing as the cap gets higher and higher.


It's nothing to do with marketing and everything to do with the poor condition the summoner job was in. By comparison. SCH was in such a good spot that they didn't see the need to add very much.

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The evidence I’m looking at shows they are going back and fixing fundamental issues with the game.
1. Outdated dungeons
2. Outdated textures
3. Outdated MSQ quests that dragged on forever
4. Future proofing early content by adding trusts

So it would stand to reason they should address outdated ability progression. No one enjoys pressing three to five buttons for a whole expansion(ARR). It’s not a good experience for new players, or anyone.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

The evidence I’m looking at shows they are going back and fixing fundamental issues with the game.
1. Outdated dungeons
2. Outdated textures
3. Outdated MSQ quests that dragged on forever
4. Future proofing early content by adding trusts

So it would stand to reason they should address outdated ability progression. No one enjoys pressing three to five buttons for a whole expansion(ARR). It’s not a good experience for new players, or anyone.

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I don't know what you're looking at that suggests dungeons are outdated. They're only being tweaked for duty support compatibility. Duty support is NOT for future proofing. It's to entice those that avoid this FF because of its multiplayer nature. Everything else is mostly cosmetic. ARR was ridiculously long and needed to be trimmed down. They did so. MSQ roulette was the final piece of that.

Take a good look at what it is you're asking for. You want everyone to have all skills all the time in all content, not just dungeons, but fates and raids etc. Even deep dungeons, where they are purposely capped and balanced for those skillsets. Go count how many pieces of content that is and come back to me with a a solid reason for them to engage in this process which (as I noted) will need to be repeated every cap raise. The last thing any developer ever wants to do is keep going back to update things regularly. The goal is to have something that can be left alone and remain in use. They've achieved that.

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

I don't know what you're looking at that suggests dungeons are outdated. They're only being tweaked for duty support compatibility. Duty support is NOT for future proofing. It's to entice those that avoid this FF because of its multiplayer nature. Everything else is mostly cosmetic. ARR was ridiculously long and needed to be trimmed down. They did so. MSQ roulette was the final piece of that.

Take a good look at what it is you're asking for. You want everyone to have all skills all the time in all content, not just dungeons, but fates and raids etc. Even deep dungeons, where they are purposely capped and balanced for those skillsets. Go count how many pieces of content that is and come back to me with a a solid reason for them to engage in this process which (as I noted) will need to be repeated every cap raise. The last thing any developer ever wants to do is keep going back to update things regularly. The goal is to have something that can be left alone and remain in use. They've achieved that.

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I don’t think they have achieved that at all. And most of the early content is so unbalanced it’s a wasteland many abilities and complex mecanisms that were there to keep things interesting are no longer there such as TP and different stances, PLDs had raise, BLMs had abilities that allowed them to dodge physical attacks, etc etc…. All while potency increases and new jobs whose early game is an after though introduce power creep that trivializes everything. Also older dungeons were not tweaked, they were vastly transformed. I think you may be belittling their effort in order to suit your narrative here.

But yeah what I expect is for them to maintain and balance an ever increasing amount of content that gets neglected over time since they still expect people to pay subs and buy the game to play said areas. It seems like they are doing that, so I do aim to keep providing feedback on an area I feel they haven’t touched yet.

I do realize what I’m asking. I’m asking for them to keep working on the game as a whole, not just the new shiny bit.

I think saying that se cares about low-level balance at all for anything other than ultimate is foolish they don't and will continue not to care. I really like this idea though I wonder if it would be possible to add passives every 10 levels or so that just increase your potencies like in endwalker then all they need to do is adjust the passive instead of rebalancing everything. I also don't think the too many skills argument is valid because sprouts aren't going to read their buttons anyway I have seen many a lv 50/60 white mage not using holy not to mention the fact that the new skills usually just replace the old skills for alot of stuff especially on something like warrior why do I get a button just to get it replaced by fell cleave like 10 levels later.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

I don’t think they have achieved that at all. And most of the early content is so unbalanced it’s a wasteland many abilities and complex mecanisms that were there to keep things interesting are no longer there such as TP and different stances, PLDs had raise, BLMs had abilities that allowed them to dodge physical attacks, etc etc…. All while potency increases and new jobs whose early game is an after though introduce power creep that trivializes everything. Also older dungeons were not tweaked, they were vastly transformed. I think you may be belittling their effort in order to suit your narrative here.

But yeah what I expect is for them to maintain and balance an ever increasing amount of content that gets neglected over time since they still expect people to pay subs and buy the game to play said areas. It seems like they are doing that, so I do aim to keep providing feedback on an area I feel they haven’t touched yet.

I do realize what I’m asking. I’m asking for them to keep working on the game as a whole, not just the new shiny bit.

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I'm not belittling anything. They streamlined them. Nothing was rebalanced.

If you're gonna start talking about TP and such like it was a good thing, then I'm out and wish you the best on your future endeavors. o/

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

I'm not belittling anything. They streamlined them. Nothing was rebalanced.

If you're gonna start talking about TP and such like it was a good thing, then I'm out and wish you the best on your future endeavors. o/

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Hope you got your gotcha moment. I said it was meant to make things complex so the game wouldn’t feel so bare bones. And it did. It got removed because it wasn’t the greatest system of all time.

It’s good to know what you were after though. Maybe next time you suggest or add to the conversation in a meaningful way that perhaps gives an idea for a better system or improves on others.