Skill Branching: "Everyone Wins" Concept

The healer forums has been in a perpetual state of conflict on the design philosophy of healers for multiple years now, and it seems clear that will likely never change. So I have come up with a solution that just may satisfy both camps.

Ability trees is a concept that's been name dropped several times by a few select players from time-to-time, and investing in skill trees to the full extent that I believe those players have in mind--something akin to World of Warcraft, is very unlikely to ever happen. Having said that, I do wonder if a smaller selection of modest branching options may be more plausible in an environment like FFXIV.

The general gist is that most of a jobs action list and trait list is linear as it is currently, however, there will also be a few specific pairs of actions or traits where a player must choose one or the other and can freely swap between them from the action menu outside of combat. By creating this limited branching system, I believe we can foster an environment where those who want to see more engagement and kit interactivity have a branch that supports their mindset, while the other branch supports the "leave it alone" camp.

To showcase how this could work, I have a proof of concept breakdown of White Mage to share. Please note that this concept exclusively displays what the DPS side of White Mage could look like at level 50 and does not include every action entirely. This is designed specifically to communicate the idea. You can download a pdf of the concept to see it in tooltip format.

Here is a brief explanation of the concept in text:

Standard Actions
Stone - Single target attack.
Aero - Single target damage over time attack.
Water - AoE attack.

Branching Traits
Secret of the Lily OR Power of the Lily
- Secret of the Lily increases the potency of Stone and enables the automatic generation of lilies (now referred to as "white lilies") every 40 seconds (this would later get reduced at higher level thresholds until eventually they generate every 20 seconds as they do currently).

- Power of the Lily generates aqua lilies instead of white lilies every 40 seconds. Aqua lilies empower your Water spell, tripling the potency. When casting Water, the aqua lily is then converted into a white lily.

Potent Gale OR Churning Gale
- Potent Gale simply adds potency to the initial damage of Aero and the damage over time.

- Churning Gale creates a Thundercloud proc system for Aero (and later Dia)

Actions Impacted by Branching Traits
Holy
- If Potent Gale is taken, Holy is effectively current Phlegma. It offers burst damage every 40 seconds on the GCD and has 2 charges.

- If Churning Gale is taken, Holy instead has no cooldown, but a high cast time and high MP cost. When Churning Gale procs, casting Holy will cause it to have no cast time nor MP cost. It is slightly less damage than spending the proc on Aero, but can be used to spend procs generated very early in Aero's duration. It also is a DPS gain in both single target and AoE situations even with its long cast time, creating some decision-making opportunities for White Mage players to take risks.

Afflatus Misery
- The potency of Afflatus Misery changes based on whether you took Secret of the Lily or Power of the Lily to reflect the potency of your Stone spells.

With this system, one path stays in line with how current White Mage plays and feels. It offers more consistent, dependable damage that is easier to maintain. The other path has the potential to be stronger, but is subject to some amount of RNG with Churning Gale procs and is more difficult to perform optimally, and may not always perform as strong as the first path depending on the player's skill level and luck. The potencies listed in the PDF would create an environment where, on average, the two paths would be very close together in total performance.

So I pose the question to you all, do you think a concept like this could work? Would it satisfy both sides of this never-ending conflict?

It's an interesting concept to explore, but it would probably be a nightmare to balance. A job having 2 playstyles would solve a lot of the issues people are having though.

DNC too proc-focused? Have a branch that has no procs.
RPR too rigid? Have a more flexible branch.
Want more damage options on AST? Have a branch that increases personal damage while reducing buff usage.

It could be a very good thing if done well and if the playstyles don't have a difference big enough to render one branch worthless.

I love the idea of skill trees in ffxiv, but they’re about as likely to add them as they are to redesign the entire game to be first-person POV.

The developers absolutely will not abide anything that may cause variation between players. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they remove substats and melding so there’s even less variation between players lol

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Originally Posted by Connor

I love the idea of skill trees in ffxiv, but they’re about as likely to add them as they are to redesign the entire game to be first-person POV.

The developers absolutely will not abide anything that may cause variation between players. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they remove substats and melding so there’s even less variation between players lol

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This.

Ability tries (basically Talent Trees, I think? Even if a slimmed down version of it...) would require a redesign of the entire game at this point. We're more likely to get more frequent smaller spikes of damage in encounters/encounter redesigns before we'd get branching ability trees, I think.

At this point, the Devs seem to treat the different Jobs within a role as functional ability trees in the sense of picking the one you like the playstyle of best. (*hint hint*4 healers...)

I don't think it's a bad idea, but I don't think it's something you're likely to get out of the Devs. We DEBATABLY had something like this with Diurnal/Nocturnal, and look where that went.

EDIT:

To be extra fair to you, they COULD do something like this using something like the old Role Action initial incarnation in 4.0 where you could select from a list of spells and picked 5 options out of the available 10. Not sure how that would work with traits and gauge modification, but they could maybe shoehorn something in that way.

...but the counterpoint to that is...they removed that system because they thought choice was bad and/or illusion of choice and/or there were always "right answers/builds" and everything else was wrong anyway.

As I said, a full talent tree I cannot foresee.

But I want to state that during Heavensward, I never in a million years would've believed they'd rework every job to include gauge mechanics with unique visual UI. Expansions are an opportunity for change. I don't think any sort of branching is a particularly likely candidate for a new element to the combat system, giving each job a couple different passive routes to choose from isn't something that I think is that outrageous if it's just a choice between 2 or 3 passives.

But that also wasn't really the point of this thread. No discussed suggestions we've ever gone over have been things that are likely because no one idea is likely to be exactly what we get. It was more the idea of, would this satisfy you? Is this the suggestion that would placate you?

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

As I said, a full talent tree I cannot foresee.

But I want to state that during Heavensward, I never in a million years would've believed they'd rework every job to include gauge mechanics with unique visual UI. Expansions are an opportunity for change. I don't think any sort of branching is a particularly likely candidate for a new element to the combat system, giving each job a couple different passive routes to choose from isn't something that I think is that outrageous if it's just a choice between 2 or 3 passives.

But that also wasn't really the point of this thread. No discussed suggestions we've ever gone over have been things that are likely because no one idea is likely to be exactly what we get. It was more the idea of, would this satisfy you? Is this the suggestion that would placate you?

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I mean, if they actually did decide to do some big change and make skill trees a thing in ffxiv, I think it would be pretty well received overall. Especially since it allows people to put to rest conflicts with ‘job identity’. Like a Summon or DoT focused path for Summoner, or an Archery / Music one for Bard

When you think about it, the original cross-classing was probably the closest thing we’ve had in ffxiv to skill trees, or at least it did to begin with when it was an actual choice (mostly lol). I don’t see why they couldn’t have just balanced it more, like making certain cross-class skills automatically available upon unlocking a job so you don’t need to level literally everything. Then again that’s way more work than just some tweaks here and there. I always felt like it was nice classic ‘ff’ thing, since whenever I think of ‘classic ff jobs’ I think of the subclass/cross-classing stuff from V, Tactics, XI, etc. So it’s sad to see that bit of flavour lost, even though I get why it had to go.

It’s funny watching that original ARR trailer where the Bard jumps in and casts Protect on the Midlander, then looking at the jobs now and it literally doesn’t even exist anymore, nor does Bards using magic lol. I’d be happy if skill trees were added and gave some of that flavour back in some way

Fair point - to a point - about things not being likely. Though I'll note some are far more likely than others. Things that don't require new additions, coding, new mechanics, etc are much more likely too happen than those that do. It's why I think a 4 Healers Model that left WHM and SGE as they are and reverted (partially) SCH and AST to SB forms is most likely since it wouldn't require a single new thing to be done other than whatever art assets for the upgraded spells were going to happen anyway in DT.

As for if I'd find it agreeable;

It would depend on the specifics of how it was done. For example, while it seemed you were trying to make it kinda like current WHM, the Holy change isn't. The first one would need to make Holy just what it is now, not turn it into Plegma, for example. But if one of the lines of choices allowed someone to have EW WHM by choosing those and it was balanced against the other to where they both did comparable damage and healing, then it would probably be fine in that case. Though I do wonder at how intuitive the system would be for new players and how the leveling process would work in cases of some stuff (getting Holy at level 45 has been iconic for 10 years), but it's not like that stopped the Devs before (RIP Stoneskin...)

EDIT:

I do have to reiterate, though, that this is VERY unlikely - they wouldn't JUST do it with Healers, they'd need to do it with every Job in the game. WoW is often said not to have a dozen or so classes, but 3x that when you consider that specs are essentially separate classes in all but name.

SE wouldn't JUST do this with healers. They'd need to also do it with tanks and with DPS. We'd go from effectively 19 classes to effectively 42 (factoring in the two new Jobs and them each getting two trees). And that's if the trees were "pick one or the other". If we factor in all those branches as individual choices, then you have all those interactions and the age old debate of "illusion of choice cookiercutter" or not.

EDIT:

Probably close to post limit...

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Water takes the place of Holy, and Holy just becomes an additional burst. You've stated before that you don't like how Holy is relegated to an AoE spam button that's useless most of the time because it offers no single target value, and have proposed making Water the starting AoE spam spell instead. It's not literally current White Mage 1:1, but doesn't seem like something you'd oppose to seeing as how you are fine with having a semi-occasional burst button in Phlegma. If you'd rather change it to something else, by all means you can shift its use to something else, but the triple Glare > Holy combo idea may be too much for the left path takers.

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Right, but...

1) That doesn't help, because then we just have another useless in boss fights AOE button that we never touch in 90% of content, so that's no better, and,
2) That doesn't satisfy the "leave it alone" side since it's still trying to change things even while saying it's leaving it alone.

The point in having two paths seems to be that one would preserve the status quo while the other would be the changed version.

It would make sense for, at that point, Water to straight upgrade into Holy. If that's the objective here.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Fair point - to a point - about things not being likely. Though I'll note some are far more likely than others. Things that don't require new additions, coding, new mechanics, etc are much more likely too happen than those that do. It's why I think a 4 Healers Model that left WHM and SGE as they are and reverted (partially) SCH and AST to SB forms is most likely since it wouldn't require a single new thing to be done other than whatever art assets for the upgraded spells were going to happen anyway in DT.

As for if I'd find it agreeable;

It would depend on the specifics of how it was done. For example, while it seemed you were trying to make it kinda like current WHM, the Holy change isn't. The first one would need to make Holy just what it is now, not turn it into Plegma, for example. But if one of the lines of choices allowed someone to have EW WHM by choosing those and it was balanced against the other to where they both did comparable damage and healing, then it would probably be fine in that case. Though I do wonder at how intuitive the system would be for new players and how the leveling process would work in cases of some stuff (getting Holy at level 45 has been iconic for 10 years), but it's not like that stopped the Devs before (RIP Stoneskin...)

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Water takes the place of Holy, and Holy just becomes an additional burst. You've stated before that you don't like how Holy is relegated to an AoE spam button that's useless most of the time because it offers no single target value, and have proposed making Water the starting AoE spam spell instead. It's not literally current White Mage 1:1, but doesn't seem like something you'd oppose to seeing as how you are fine with having a semi-occasional burst button in Phlegma. If you'd rather change it to something else, by all means you can shift its use to something else, but the triple Glare > Holy combo idea may be too much for the left path takers.

I hate that a legitimate response to your suggestion is some variation of "this sounds great, but it would take work and thus the developers won't do it". How did we get here?

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Originally Posted by Tetsujin

I hate that a legitimate response to your suggestion is some variation of "this sounds great, but it would take work and thus the developers won't do it". How did we get here?

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We got here because the devs insist that changing how a job plays beyond fiddling with potency tweaks is 'something that can only really be done for expansions'. Unless it's PLD not fitting the 2min meta, then that gets to have a speedy adjustment

On the other side of the MMO pond, classes are getting big reworks in X.1 patches just fine. Ret Paladin got reworked into a mid-range fighter, able to keep uptime (And mitigate it's lack of mobility' because it's main moves can all be talented to have 15-20m range. Mage finally got it's dependency on not-Ley-Lines removed after several years of it being 'the locked talent slot' because it was just too good.

6.5 would be the best time to try an experimental 'different direction', because there's no stakes. No new Savage tier. No new Ultimate worldfirst race to worry about. Instead, we have to wait for 7.0, and when it hits, we have to just hope that the design is good, or at the very least, 'salvageable with potency tweaks'. Because if it's not, we're stuck with it for 2 years.

Even then, there's ways to design 'updates to job gameplay' that take comparatively less devtime to implement. The issue is that SE doesn't want 'less devtime' solutions, they want 'as close to zero as possible' solutions. If they could get away with just adding nothing to the jobs for next expansion (instead just adding a trait that says 'everything is now 10 potency stronger but looks the same') they would. And there's plenty of people who would probably make excuses why the multi-yen company didn't add anything to their class. 'it plays perfectly as it is, any additions would just make it play worse' and the like

Fundamentally, what an a&& backwards approach - I don't think it's a good idea to limit what you would like to change by trying to estimate the impact on the development team.

Instead, customers should express what they don't like, including why they don't like it. If possible - they should express what they would rather have and why, with examples.

If I was on the development team , that would give me something to work with, I could possibly come up with a few workable solutions that fix the issues that customers identify , keep the customers happy, keep costs down, etc.

I'd give the OP's proposal a try.

It's also the sort of post players should be making. Speaking as a software developer: It's my job to balance priorities. It's my job to fill in details to make a suggestion workable. It's my job to decide how much change is necessary. And these are all tasks that are made more difficult when you (users/customers) hold back and don't say what's really on your mind.

It'd be interesting to know from SE where this aversion to reworks mid expansion came from (Assuming it's not simply a case of the already small battle system design team being allocated onto other projects outside of Expansion crunch).

Absolutely agreed that the x.5 patch is the best time to go wild and start throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, best case it keeps players engaged at a point where pre expansion blues are at their worst, worst case it's a flop but it's not really going to cause any long term damage since fewer people will really care at that stage.

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Originally Posted by Tetsujin

I hate that a legitimate response to your suggestion is some variation of "this sounds great, but it would take work and thus the developers won't do it". How did we get here?

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Not really. This has always been true of MMOs or any live service thing. If something requires major reworks of across the board systems, it's rarely done. It took WoW around a decade before they remade the Vanilla maps...and another before they made Classic (and, apparently, the rumormill saying they may get ready to do it again). It took FFXIV completely collapsing in 1.X for them to do it there.

While this is a SMALLER change, it's still a significant one. Not to mention they got flack every time they made big changes like this in the past, which may have led to them being gunshy. The answer to "How did we get here?" is "Because of the playerbase.", but also that "Here is where most companies and most MMOs are, so it's not unique; it's more unique it's taken FFXIV this long to reach the status quo."

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

It'd be interesting to know from SE where this aversion to reworks mid expansion came from

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It seemed to be pretty clearly the SAM Kaiten thing. They were planning AST and DRG reworks for 6.1-3 ish timeframe. Between the SMN pushback from the total rework AND the SAM pushback on Kaiten, both were suspended. The only reason PLD got one (they were probably planning it as well) was because of how far it was falling behind the other Tanks by not fitting into the 2 min meta.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

6.5 would be the best time to try an experimental 'different direction', because there's no stakes.

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I disagree that "there's no stakes" - there are always stakes, and a bad rework's stakes are quite high, especially if it's a universal change which means this would affect all Jobs at once - but I also agree that 7.0 would be the best time to do it since the game is trying to have a reset and direction change and a bunch of other things. A rework of game systems OF THIS LEVEL - introducing effectively talent trees, even if super simplistic - is a major rework, so not something you'd do in a last patch of an expansion, especially since the Dev resources right now are probably already largely going to 7.0 at this point in the development cycle and that 6.5 is coming out in just a couple weeks.

But 7.0 has a narrative reset and so a more broad mechanics reset accompanying it (e.g. encounter design shakeup to require more healing...) would be the time to do it.

I'll be *wildly* surprised if 7.0 brings any serious kind of combat gameplay changes at this stage TBH. I'm fully expecting Dawntrail to effectively be patch 5.12 with AST being brought more in line with WHM rather than it being a proper rework into a truely new and unique job. I'm thinking GCD cards that are akin to Lilys with 2% buffs attached and neutral stance getting neutered.

Hopefully SE's team proves me wrong on this one, but until this game sees a substantial exodus and Yoshida moves on, I just can't see it happening. He has zero interest in healers, nor is he seemingly willing to invest enough into the battle system team to get people on board that do.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

I disagree that "there's no stakes" - there are always stakes, and a bad rework's stakes are quite high, especially if it's a universal change which means this would affect all Jobs at once - but I also agree that 7.0 would be the best time to do it since the game is trying to have a reset and direction change and a bunch of other things. A rework of game systems OF THIS LEVEL - introducing effectively talent trees, even if super simplistic - is a major rework, so not something you'd do in a last patch of an expansion, especially since the Dev resources right now are probably already largely going to 7.0 at this point in the development cycle and that 6.5 is coming out in just a couple weeks.

But 7.0 has a narrative reset and so a more broad mechanics reset accompanying it (e.g. encounter design shakeup to require more healing...) would be the time to do it.

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If they took the approach of making more experimental changes in the final major patch, there are stakes, but they're not massive stakes. This is assuming the team would actually be receptive to feedback, but if you launch some more risky decisions, you get to see what players think about those changes and use that to make any last minute adjustments to more significant changes in the expansion around the corner. The worst case scenario is that the job is in a bad state for a few months. Sure that may suck, but it sucks a lot less than it being in that state for 2.5 years for the entire expansion. But you would expect that they would receive that negative feedback and, in turn, offer greater security that the official direction taken come 7.0 would be a lot better.

However, the smarter decision is something Roe said a long time ago. Why isn't there a public test server? There's no reason why they couldn't have uploaded Dragoon and Astrologian to a public testing environment in 6.3, and even if we couldn't see those changes until 7.0, at least they would have a year's worth of feedback from public testers.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

However, the smarter decision is something Roe said a long time ago. Why isn't there a public test server? There's no reason why they couldn't have uploaded Dragoon and Astrologian to a public testing environment in 6.3, and even if we couldn't see those changes until 7.0, at least they would have a year's worth of feedback from public testers.

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That would require them to be receptive towards feedback even when it is sometimes justifiably negative.

The fact that they won't even post potencies etc in early previews and patch notes anymore is telling of how much faith they have in their own work. The backlash that caused this was entirely warranted and correct. My best guess at this point is that Yoshida is fed up of the the repeated egg on face look.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

That would require them to be receptive towards feedback even when it is sometimes justifiably negative.

The fact that they won't even post potencies etc in early previews and patch notes anymore is telling of how much faith they have in their own work. The backlash that caused this was entirely warranted and correct. My best guess at this point is that Yoshida is fed up of the the repeated egg on face look.

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I'm pretty sure the huge pushback against SB lilies was the last straw for them. Now they take the "I know what's best for you" route. It's quite stupid to refuse to take feedback at all because you're scared of criticism, but that's where the dev team is currently.

Ty: Thing is, we don't know they're not listening to feedback. Apparently, the JP folks tell them they want more healing, not more damage buttons, so we got P5-8S, which drove people away from raiding because of it. Further, you don't make changes like this in a content patch. There's more or less zero chance of a final expansion patch - when they're shipping it then basically go into a semi-maintenance mode for the next 6-8 months while they finish working on the Expansion - being when they completely upend the battle system. I do remember WoW released new expansion changes a week or two before the expansion, but that was part of the pre-expansion patch and events, not the content patch 6-8 months earlier.

As for no PTR: They don't want data mining. Straight up. We've seen WoW release new raid tiers where people went into the PTR and basically worked out all the strats, which completely changes both the world first race and the expectation for how much all players know when tier/expansion hits. PARTICULARLY in regards to expansions, they play those very very close to the chest. They don't even release ability potency changes anymore because the playerbase gave them so much flak over that.

When I say we're where we are due to the playerbase, I'm serious.

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Sebazy: That's unfair. They don't post them because people tend to go ballistic on them for it, even when it's totally uncalled for. When people get their hands on things, they tend to see that most things work better than their initial numbers assessments. And again, if the backlash - "warranted" or not - was not so vicious, they wouldn't do it. It's a case of "this is why we can't have nice things".

Re public test servers: If we restrict this to job design, all SE needs is a toggle somewhere on/in the character select screen: "Try Bizarro Job Design for your next login? [y/n]" Let players try the new job design in existing content. There's no need to include new MSQ, new dungeons, new raids, etc. anywhere in the client -- only the job, and only up through the current level cap, is required.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Apparently, the JP folks tell them they want more healing, not more damage buttons, so we got P5-8S, which drove people away from raiding because of it.

Further, you don't make changes like this in a content patch. There's more or less zero chance of a final expansion patch - when they're shipping it then basically go into a semi-maintenance mode for the next 6-8 months while they finish working on the Expansion - being when they completely upend the battle system. I do remember WoW released new expansion changes a week or two before the expansion, but that was part of the pre-expansion patch and events, not the content patch 6-8 months earlier.

As for no PTR: They don't want data mining. Straight up. We've seen WoW release new raid tiers where people went into the PTR and basically worked out all the strats

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1: Then that's an issue of them taking feedback but getting the implementation wrong. Barb EX was quite well received and was also 'more healing' but in a different style (faster, not harder), so the question is if they try another direction of approaching 'more healing' or just give up on the whole thing because their first attempt failed. I'd like to hope it's the latter considering how many times they tried to get Diadem to be accepted, but I don't have much optimism left to spend

2: You absolutely 'can', SE 'doesn't', that's the difference. Again, WOW did a fairly largescale rework to Ret Paladin (which had some extra knock-on effects to Prot and Holy, which later got fully polished out in the patch after), and to Mage, in 10.1 and 10.1.5. Just because SE doesn't want to, or hasn't in the past, doesn't mean they can't, it just means they don't want to. And I don't expect that to change, nice as it would be. I'm also not sure what is meant by 'completely upend the battle system', I'd reserve that term for things like adding Interruptions as a mechanic, or Shield Check mechanics (with an actual UI element), not 'SCH got two of it's DOTs returned'

3: We get datamining anyway. WOW PTR is not datamining, the mythic phase of the last boss is always hidden because that's the main 'viewership draw' of the race. Even if we could see every mechanic's debuff via datamining before the servers went up in FFXIV, it would tell us almost nothing. The descriptions on the A/B debuffs in P12S literally say 'Marked to be the target of a specific attack.' That doesn't tell us anything about what the 'specific attack' is, how much damage it does, how long this A/B debuff lasts, all we can derive from it would be that A does something, B does something else, and that much is obvious from literally one pull getting there

The playerbase being daft about potency changes is not a reason to withhold all changes until the expansion. Leaving it out of Preliminary Notes, sure whatever I don't care, but holding off on changing AST which has been said to be in 'such a state that it needs a big rework, big enough that it can only be done with an expansion', sounds like it should be given at least SOMEthing in the meantime??? 'Yeh, it needs so many changes, we can't do them in one patch, so we are going to leave it exactly as it is for a year longer than we originally planned.' Not even a small QOL like giving Lightspeed a second charge to at least tide the poor bastards who main the job over till 7.0? Really?

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

Re public test servers: If we restrict this to job design, all SE needs is a toggle somewhere on/in the character select screen: "Try Bizarro Job Design for your next login? [y/n]" Let players try the new job design in existing content. There's no need to include new MSQ, new dungeons, new raids, etc. anywhere in the client -- only the job, and only up through the current level cap, is required.

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I'd do even smaller: I'd just have a client that has the server built-in, and it connects to 'localhost: portnumber' instead of an actual server. Then, just have it preloaded with one character's data on the server: John Midlander, max level everything. And loading into the game puts you in one map, with all exits disabled: Middle La Noscea. Your home point is Summerford Farms where the dummies are, you have zero gil so you cannot TP, and the zone transition lines are blocked off. Or a special, empty room with dummies set up in formations of like, one, three, five and ten, to test various ST/AOE scenarios. All you do on the client is test whatever thing SE's put on there for people to test. People can infer most (like 90%+) of the gameplay from combat with dummies.

They have that benchmark program, after all, so it's not like 'standalone download that doesn't access SE servers during runtime' is alien to them. Make a PTR download that runs a 'server' on the client's PC for just that client to access, throw whatever gameplay changes to test onto there, asking 'hey we were wondering if people would be interested in WHM having a Water spell as part of their rotation, give us feedback on site where you downloaded this from', and see if people say 'its good' or 'its bad' or 'I like the idea but the MP cost/CD/gauge cost/etc is too short/long'

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Barb EX was quite well received and was also 'more healing' but in a different style (faster, not harder), so the question is if they try another direction of approaching 'more healing' or just give up on the whole thing because their first attempt failed. I'd like to hope it's the latter considering how many times they tried to get Diadem to be accepted, but I don't have much optimism left to spend

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Part of me hopes that them implementing both Barb EX and Abyssos in the same patch was them trying 2 forms of increased healing and seeing which one is received better.

.....It's also possible that the reception to Abyssos scared them so much that they'll never raise healing requirements again.

It seems like an easy way for them to implement Ty's proposal would be to use the old cross class, eventually 'role action' system which at present doesn't allow for 'selection' of actions the way it did until 5.0.

Pvp also used this feature until 6.1, and BLU still does.

It may be a problem of scale after a certain point, but I'm sure they have at least the 5 actions worth of space per job they removed when they trimmed down role actions.

So, you'd just let players select from that pool or make several pools with one action required in each, which is how the pvp ones worked. If that's not enough in some cases they could also tie certain action cooldowns together the way BLU does or certain job actions do when you swap between jobs still today.

I personally would embrace this direction of they went down it, and at the very least I've been complaining that they should do something like this to allow for player choice among certain actions like Salted Earth and Freeze.

I'd like to be able to choose to use ground targeted versions of spells if they exist, whether they implement that with aui option or just a separate, nearly identical version of an action I don't care.

Player choice should be a consideration in more than just glamour; as others have said it feels like they think they know best and are forcing that to too great a degree in a lot of places.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

So I pose the question to you all, do you think a concept like this could work? Would it satisfy both sides of this never-ending conflict?

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I think it'd be more a QoL alternative to what other hoops players would otherwise go through to simplify/automate their gameplay than any felt increase in choice.

In your sample, the options are essentially between greater and lesser complexity -- greater control (with more button expenditure/"bloat") vs. slightly greater constraints (being limited to just the use-cases that get automatically baked in). The only difference between that and, say, just un-neutering the macro system, though, is probably just that you can reduce the cost of not engaging with a given kit mechanic.

But that has its own downsides: How do you balance that more complex or less fool-proofed option against the other? And even if you give it a faintly higher ceiling commensurate with what optimizations even a skilled player may end up missing out on by busying themselves from not automating/removing/fool-proofing that mechanic... you still have the issue of the more complex option being inferior until it's (almost) perfectly optimized, which then makes time spent within the harder choice feel cumbersome during the time spent learning it... which then makes fewer willing to learn it. By contrast, everyone having that same option and just being free to go as far along it towards optimization as they like --as per now-- feels far less deliberate or "locked-in".

For my part, just keeping each additional bit of complexity's ppm contribution reasonable (i.e., tapering off / diminishing, especially where less intended minutia are involved, which is usually a natural consequence of just keeping the vast majority of the kit largely accessible and intuitive) seems like it already provides most of the benefits of these choices as given example here.

(Granted, I'm one of those who thinks Summoner has too much output for how little it demands -- though I'd therefore increase the amount of engagement available to it, rather than just nerfing it -- so...)


All in all? It's probably(?) an improvement, though likely only a slight one. I doubt it'd quite be worth its costs.


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Now, if this were intended as a more expansion customization system, rather than just set of a simplification(-undoing) bimodal option, I would likely be more excited, though I would want that to come in a much more XIV-ish manner, such as through just breaking the traits into Major and Minor Traits and letting each class/job have more Major Trait slots than it automatically fills. Those traits would affect different jobs in different ways while providing a consistent theme to each kit they're slotted into. (MNK's Flowing Strikes on WHM would function quite differently than on DRG or MCH, but would ultimately bring each job towards a similar niche and/or similar capacities.)

But... that would be even more of a design nightmare, as it'd effectively increase the number of jobs to be balanced to at least <[number of jobs] * ([number of jobs] - 1)>. In terms of build choices per development hour spent, it'd be hugely more efficient, but in terms of pizzazz/sale-power per development hour? It'd be quite the hard sell as a project/addition to the game.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Now, if this were intended as a more expansion customization system, rather than just set of a simplification(-undoing) bimodal option, I would likely be more excited, though I would want that to come in a much more XIV-ish manner, such as through just breaking the traits into Major and Minor Traits and letting each class/job have more Major Trait slots than it automatically fills. Those traits would affect different jobs in different ways while providing a consistent theme to each kit they're slotted into. (MNK's Flowing Strikes on WHM would function quite differently than on DRG or MCH, but would ultimately bring each job towards a similar niche and/or similar capacities.)

But... that would be even more of a design nightmare, as it'd effectively increase the number of jobs to be balanced to at least <[number of jobs] * ([number of jobs] - 1)>. In terms of build choices per development hour spent, it'd be hugely more efficient, but in terms of pizzazz/sale-power per development hour? It'd be quite the hard sell as a project/addition to the game.

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I've seen the idea of minor traits to change the gameplay of a job being pitched before, I think it was being pitched as a materia option that you can only slot into weapons. Could do some pretty interesting things by changing what abilities do depending on options picked.

Honestly though, they might eventually look into a system similar to this. You can't really stretch 30-ish buttons over more and more levels without making the levelling process worse, they have to seek alternative means of advancing jobs eventually.

Specifically on Barb Ex:

As I've pointed out before, the reason they didn't carry that on was too much movement along with healing. They obviously took the wrong lesson from it "let's have less healing and more movement" instead of the right one "let's keep the healing but have less movement so the healers can actually use their GCD tools to aid with those phases".

Barb was well received by the high end playerbase, but I suspect that casuals didn't like it much.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

They obviously took the wrong lesson from it "let's have less healing and more movement" instead of the right one "let's keep the healing but have less movement so the healers can actually use their GCD tools to aid with those phases".

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I disagree with this because of the dev team's workflow. Anabaseios and GolbezEX were very likely in development when Abyssos and BarbEX came out, so what they learned in 6.2 will likely not have been applied then. If they learned any lessons at all from Abyssos/BarbEX, it may show up in the 6.5 trial or maybe only show up in 7.0 onwards.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I've seen the idea of minor traits to change the gameplay of a job being pitched before, I think it was being pitched as a materia option that you can only slot into weapons. Could do some pretty interesting things by changing what abilities do depending on options picked.

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Might have been one of mine, if so, glad my ideas are trash/good enough to be memorable. When I posted my take on it, I had only two things in mind. One, create a 'low-impact' system, one that that would not be 'completely gamechanging' in terms of players 'making the right vs wrong choice', (ie choice A vs choice B having a difference in DPS on the scale of some WOW talent choice rows from previous expansions), just the beginnings of 'player choice' to test the waters and see if people could handle the idea of someone in their group using 'the suboptimal choice' or if they'd whine and complain. To do this, I would keep all the effects as being strictly non-damage related. Boost Mantra's effectiveness, make Warden's Esuna effect into an AOE, make Lilybell have halved CD at the cost of it going down to 3 stacks instead of 5, etc

And two, make materia actually interesting for once. If things go as we expect them to, we'll get Grade 11 and Grade 12 materia in 7.0, and there's going to be nothing new about them. They'll just be Grade 7/9, and Grade 8/10 again, with a new icon, a new item level restriction, and a slightly higher substat amount given. I want to see something new, something that changes up how we look at materia as a system

Who am I kidding everyone and their mum's gonna go on IcyVeins and ask 'what is best HighMateria Reaper K3S Savage Ultimate Savage 2024' and what little 'player choice' will be instantly removed by optimizers, and by people who parrot about the meta things but don't actually know why something is meta

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Specifically on Barb Ex:

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Specifically on Barb EX, it's very much like the Red Chocobo of Bozjan infamy. It looks like a nightmare, but it actually asks for fairly little movement, all things considered. Once you know the fight, and what movement it's going to ask of you, you realize 'oh thats not so bad actually'. Which is one of those 'well obviously' kind of statements, but that's how it be. If you want an EX with a lot of movement, Golbez borders on the ridiculous

The perceived problem with Barb EX and 'having trouble finding opportunity for GCD healing' is not an issue with Barb EX, imo. It's an issue of that 'cast time, GCD healing style' of healers (or more accurately, one in particular) being incompatible with the fight design. Barb EX is not the only fight where those cast time GCD heals feel like they don't mesh well. Lily heals feel fine there, I feel. SGE's shielding feels fine there. This, I think, is because they're a more modern design. They are snappy and responsive like the fight design of current year asks for. But sitting around to hardcast a Medica 2 or a Succor can often feel 'off' because it's a design from like 8 years ago. I am not suggesting that every healer just have everything be converted to instantcasts, but I do think that they need to consider that casual players are a lot more likely to fall back on the cast time, spammable heals, than the Lily heals.

Which is to say, I think that they should do Barb EX more, and to compensate for the issue you have raised, Medica 2's 2s cast time should be lowered to 1.5s so slidecasting it is easier

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I've seen the idea of minor traits to change the gameplay of a job being pitched before, I think it was being pitched as a materia option that you can only slot into weapons. Could do some pretty interesting things by changing what abilities do depending on options picked.

Honestly though, they might eventually look into a system similar to this. You can't really stretch 30-ish buttons over more and more levels without making the levelling process worse, they have to seek alternative means of advancing jobs eventually.

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Aye. I've suggested as much myself from time to time.

I still think the best first improvement we could make for Customization purposes, though, is just to streamline and amplify what choices we have now in a way that removes the bloat of current Materia while offering more direct and reliable control over our GCD speed and crit rate. Ideally, we'd also give more classes more crit procs and scale their stat growths individually to make each stat about equally worthwhile for every job without needing every job to have identical portions of ability, periodic damage, and output based upon crit procs.

From there, though... we could add on whatever we want, be that dynamic Cross-Class Traits, job specific bonus traits via Materia, universal effects via Materia, new actions via Materia or skill selection... whatever it may be. I'd just really like to see, first, the fundamentals made into something decent instead of their current shitshow.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Who am I kidding everyone and their mum's gonna go on IcyVeins and ask 'what is best HighMateria Reaper K3S Savage Ultimate Savage 2024' and what little 'player choice' will be instantly removed by optimizers, and by people who parrot about the meta things but don't actually know why something is meta

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Honestly, I don't think "There will always be a meta" is justification for balancing the fun out of the game. So what if some jobs are bad in a fight? Maybe they excel in another. Like your proposed materia, sure, they're unlikely to all be useful, but there could be cases where a niche choice excels for once, that alone, to me, is a good enough reason for having interesting niche choices.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

Honestly, I don't think "There will always be a meta" is justification for balancing the fun out of the game. So what if some jobs are bad in a fight? Maybe they excel in another. Like your proposed materia, sure, they're unlikely to all be useful, but there could be cases where a niche choice excels for once, that alone, to me, is a good enough reason for having interesting niche choices.

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Would be cool to have materia on your main weapon apply a skill buff but considering how often SE changes skills and introduce more jobs I'm sure while it's doable, it's probably a lot more resource intensive to replace old skills. I can see at most skills like sprint duration/cd or role skills like Bloodbath/Second Wind get a buff, but then materia can be applied to every gear rather than just the weapon and modify the skills in different ways. In that case, we have a decent breadth of selection on what kind of effect the materia can provide other than substats itself. I figure a lot of these are either applicable to most battle content or will be designed for specific exploratory content / solo mode.

Sprint - cd reduced / duration in combat increased
Bloodbath - maximum heal percentage increased / duration increased / cooldown reduced
Second Wind - Max potency increased / Cooldown reduced / 2 charges / Apply heal over time effect / Damage taken reduced for x Duration
True North - Duration increased / Cooldown reduced / 3 charges
Esuna - Effective Radius (increasing AOE effect) increased
Rescue - Cooldown Reduced / 2 Charges / Apply invuln when pulling target until reaching destination
Lucid Dreaming - Potency increased / 2 charges / Duration increased
Surecast - Duration increased / cooldown decreased / 2 charges
Swiftcast - Cooldown decreased / 2 charges
Arms Length - Duration increased / cooldown decreased / 2 charges
Rampart - Duration increased / cooldown decreased
Reprisal - Duration increased / 2 charges

Leg Graze - Effect increased / Duration increased
Foot Graze - Duration increased / Cooldown decreased
Peloton - Greatly increase out of combat movement speed
Repose - Effect Duration increase / Effective Radius (increasing AOE effect) increased
Sleep - Effect Duration increase / Reduced cast time

That being said, I'd honestly prefer more RPG elements that puts less emphasis on parsing and more emphasis on individuality considering this is a RPG, but I guess people will try to find meta in everything even though all choices can be really good when designed well enough.

Out of curiosity, what are anyone's thoughts on the right side path concept?

Without considering anything else yet, you'd have a "Diacloud" trait that has been talked about here and there, you'd have a new AoE spell in Tempest (an upgrade to Water at the same time as Glare and Dia are obtained) which is now a ranged cased similar to Gravity and can be cast at triple the potency based on your lilies, and the reworked Holy.

When I was looking at that really early iteration of Holy that was initially stronger than Stone II at having a higher cast, it gave me the idea of dialing that concept up to 11 as something meant to be more than just your AoE spam. Because it has a higher cast time and MP cost, there's a lot more to think about regarding when you want to try and use it. There are a lot of ways you would approach it. Do you hardcast it because it's still a small damage gain because you think you're fine to stand still for 6 seconds? Do you spend Swiftcast on it for the damage because you're not concerned about needing Raise? And since you can also spend your Diacloud procs on it, do you chance spending that proc on Holy because you still have 24 seconds left on your DoT and you think you might get another proc before the duration ends?

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Who am I kidding everyone and their mum's gonna go on IcyVeins and ask 'what is best HighMateria Reaper K3S Savage Ultimate Savage 2024' and what little 'player choice' will be instantly removed by optimizers, and by people who parrot about the meta things but don't actually know why something is meta.

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Aye. True. But...

People already play jobs that aren't necessarily the best in role, sometimes with GCD speeds that don't have the theoretical best output just because they prefer how the job plays at that other speed. That's 2 out of the 2 forms of gameplay-affecting customization we have now, with both seeing actual choice.

Yes, the actual portion of players the "best" option tends to possess decreases with however many other options are competitive*, so ensuring that the choices we have already aren't fundamentally hamstrung or the like (see Skill Speed outside of SAM or especially MNK, and Spell Speed outside of BLM) is definitely worthwhile, but that there is a best means nothing; it's the portion of all else that's near enough to it that matters.

* (Increasingly tightly, with the content's stringency... not that even Ultimate is really enough to sacrifice a player not getting bored and whiffing a mechanic over a that player doing 2% more DPS, since a single extra death would outweigh it even if it doesn't cascade into a wipe.)

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Would be cool to have materia on your main weapon apply a skill buff but considering how often SE changes skills and introduce more jobs I'm sure while it's doable, it's probably a lot more resource intensive to replace old skills. I can see at most skills like sprint duration/cd or role skills like Bloodbath/Second Wind get a buff, but then materia can be applied to every gear rather than just the weapon and modify the skills in different ways. In that case, we have a decent breadth of selection on what kind of effect the materia can provide other than substats itself. I figure a lot of these are either applicable to most battle content or will be designed for specific exploratory content / solo mode.

<Examples of buffs to Role Actions>

That being said, I'd honestly prefer more RPG elements that puts less emphasis on parsing and more emphasis on individuality considering this is a RPG, but I guess people will try to find meta in everything even though all choices can be really good when designed well enough.

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I'm not sure that buffing a skill causes it to be replaced. I could have sworn the old pre-traited version of actions (e.g., 9s Venomous Bite) shared a skill ID with their later traited versions (e.g., 18s Venomous Bite).

All that being said, I am not a big fan of having a ton of minutial options over just having fewer, more impactful, and more thematic ones. I'd much rather just have, say, 1 or 2 slots that, when filled, provide dynamic changes/additions to one's kit.

And I wouldn't want a single one of those options to lack a tangeable gameplay effect (and perhaps utility without a direct impact on rDPS). If it's just bonus damage and/or a visual rehaul, that should just come from item level or skill/aura glamours, respectively.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Would be cool to have materia on your main weapon apply a skill buff but considering how often SE changes skills and introduce more jobs I'm sure while it's doable, it's probably a lot more resource intensive to replace old skills. I can see at most skills like sprint duration/cd or role skills like Bloodbath/Second Wind get a buff, but then materia can be applied to every gear rather than just the weapon and modify the skills in different ways.

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IDK how others have it, but I'd limit it to 'these High Materia (name wip) can only be melded to weapons, and only one can be melded per job' for two reasons. One, so you have to choose which effect you want instead of just having several/all of them, and two, to force the materia to be used only on the job it's intended for, to avoid the 'remeld gear' issue that WAR used to face due to it's non-participation in the DHit meld loadout that the other tanks used. Alternatively, melding it to the Soul Crystal itself, or creating a new menu that lets you choose from the different effects that is attached to the Soul Crystal. Idk how the job-rock works though, if it's possible to give it a materia slot or anything

Role actions are a good idea too. Like, I'd make Peloton get 'you can use it in combat, and it lasts 10s, but now has a 3min CD'. This doesn't stamp on SCH's toes, because SCH has that effect natively, it doesn't have to sacrifice it's 'High Materia' slot to get it. But a BRD using that effect would have to make the decision to use that, over other effects like, idk, 'Warden's Esuna effect is now AOE' or 'Minne now heals upon application for 300p', or 'Troubadour now applies a barrier upon application equal to 250p' or whatever. Maybe the speed is good for safety getting to positions faster, maybe you'd prefer to have the AOE Esuna for P12S P2 to save some healer GCDs, maybe you'd rather have the extra defensiveness of the Troubadour because the damage from Caloric being cast kinda hurts

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

And I wouldn't want a single one of those options to lack a tangeable gameplay effect (and perhaps utility without a direct impact on rDPS). If it's just bonus damage and/or a visual rehaul, that should just come from item level or skill/aura glamours, respectively.

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I wouldn't be entirely against it if it were a VFX change and effect change combined. Like, for DRK, an effect that says 'Rampart is upgraded to Shadowskin, increasing it's mitigation to 25%, and also applying a barrier upon use equal to 10% of the DRK's maximum HP'. Just changing the animation would be bleh, but changing it while also making it look different feels a bit more justified

Choosing a 'skill set' from the Soul Crystal by melding a special materia to it could be a way to implement 'skill glamour sets' I guess. Like, melding a 'Umbral-tainted Materia' allows DRK to have all it's skills be recolored to be umbral/holy looking, all whites and light blues instead of blacks and reds

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

If you want an EX with a lot of movement, Golbez borders on the ridiculous

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lol, this I very much agree with.

Though I'll note Red Choco isn't an Ex and is generally hated. If Red Choctober was an Ex, it would be the most hated/feared in the game's history, lol

I disagree on GCD healing style, though. The point of Casters is to have to Cast. This is what people say all the time is the problem with SMN (and to a much lesser extent, RDM; which is ironic since BLM is more mobile than RDM is...). Healers are an extension of that until such time as they make a Ranged or Melee healer, which is...unlikely with this Dev team. SGE (lasers) or Chemist (which was apparently one of the options they were mulling for EW instead) would have been excellent options if they were going for a more MCH type gameplay.

I will say yet again, "the fight design of current year" is the problem, not cast times on heals. The fight design is what has significantly changed, married with an overabundance of oGCDs, since the ARR/HW days that everyone praises (in retrospect). I don't think Slidecasting - which is an artifact of a bad game engine, not good game design, which players have merely learned to work around in the "mastering clunk" sort of way - is something that should be enshrined even more than it is now. Though I DO agree that if they want to keep the "current year" fight design, they do need to reduce all cast times to 1.5 sec or less at this point.

I just don't think that's the real way we should be going.

We talk all the time about how "the dance" as a design is bad.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

I disagree on GCD healing style, though. The point of Casters is to have to Cast. This is what people say all the time is the problem with SMN (and to a much lesser extent, RDM; which is ironic since BLM is more mobile than RDM is...). Healers are an extension of that until such time as they make a Ranged or Melee healer, which is...unlikely with this Dev team. SGE (lasers) or Chemist (which was apparently one of the options they were mulling for EW instead) would have been excellent options if they were going for a more MCH type gameplay.

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So, something that's been bugging me, especially after looking at threads heavy on comments about SMN...

In the English version of this game, there is no "Caster" role. What we actually have are "Healer" and "Magical Ranged DPS." Maybe someone doesn't think that SGE is a Caster or that SMN is a Caster, but they are most definitely a Healer and a Magical Ranged DPS, respectively.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

I wouldn't be entirely against it if it were a VFX change and effect change combined. Like, for DRK, an effect that says 'Rampart is upgraded to Shadowskin, increasing it's mitigation to 25%, and also applying a barrier upon use equal to 10% of the DRK's maximum HP'. Just changing the animation would be bleh, but changing it while also making it look different feels a bit more justified

Choosing a 'skill set' from the Soul Crystal by melding a special materia to it could be a way to implement 'skill glamour sets' I guess. Like, melding a 'Umbral-tainted Materia' allows DRK to have all it's skills be recolored to be umbral/holy looking, all whites and light blues instead of blacks and reds

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Again, emphasis on "just" being a visual overhaul or "just" damage. Honestly, I think visual rehauls/modifiers should be their own thing if extending across multiple (sorts of) actions, but the biggest thing is that I just don't want an option without any sort of favorable gameplay impact to noticeably outperform the options with such.

A Shadowskin buff, though (rehaul Rampart and buff it)? Sure. Would probably give it some retributive (e.g., via resource-generating) power so it could more broadly compete with the likes of Shadowbringer or Living Shadow augmentations, but sounds good.