Lack of lore behind new job skills

So a lot of the older skills, either through flavour text on the effect (combustion for AST, TBN for DRK), in the skill's tooltip (Hide for NIN, Ley Lines for BLM) or through the relating job quest have some amount of explanation as to what exactly the skill does in the lore.
This is increasingly rare in the newer expansions as job quests aren't a thing anymore and a lot of flavour text got reduced into generic versions. (i.e. AST's "the proximity of a theoretical star deals damage over time" to simply "sustaining damage over time" in the upgraded version of the skill).
While this makes skills more straightforward and the textboxes less bloated, it also makes skills feel more random and incoherent, on top of harming job fantasy and identity.
Healers used to have seperate Esuna-like skills a long time ago, as each healer in the lore would use different *methods* to get rid of ailments, but achieve the same effect. The same is still true for Phys Ranged's Shield Samba/Tactician/Troubadour, which are different in name, and more importantly flavour, only. Why did we keep one, but not the other? If the intent was to have Esuna available at any level sync due to how role actions work it could have simply been a level 4-5 skill, or even 15, the earliest you can enter a dungeon to begin with.
I understand that readability of effects and gameplay information is important, but I don't think that it should come at the cost of explaining what exactly a Dark Knight is doing when they cast Oblation or Shadowbringer, as all we can do is guess based on existing lore and the animation. Similarly we have little idea what methods a Black Mage uses to cast Paradox, something that could have been elaborated on in a job quest, even one that is optional and a yellow quest.

All this is to say that I enjoy job flavour and fantasy, and little blurbs in debuff/buff text or the skill tooltip itself can go a long way in absence of proper job quests giving us exposition, and I'm sad that they seem to be on the way out too.

XIV's too msq'd now, you rarely get any world building flavor outside of msq. While eorzea encyclopedia's ok they barely scratch the type of world lore you'd see in other games. Even Souls games have descriptions for all their items and gear pieces. I honestly learned nothing about thavnair or sharlayan except "food."

This ship sailed a long time ago, really at the start of SHB.

In SHB job quests were no longer a thing, and as a result, every new skill we got had no explanation for it beyond the tooltip, along with jobs like MCH getting entire reworks with the completely new skills being completely unexplained.

The shift towards this did actually start in Stormblood. I suppose to keep with the analogy you could say Stormblood was making ready for the ship to sail. With the introduction of role actions, every job lost a lot of flavor, both directly by having to suddenly share actions that used to be unique, and then indirectly by no longer, "drawing on similar arts" via cross class skills.

Stormblood was also the first time that not every skill required the job quests in order for you to have the skills. Iirc, they only made you quest for the 70 skill, and you could actually skip your level 60 skills that were acquired through job quests alone at the time, and then still learn your 62~68 skills just by leveling.

And they've even retconned job actions to the point nowadays where there are less of them at lower levels, and you get them in entirely different orders, AND you can learn the 52~58 ones without questing them, only requiring plateau level quests (60/70) to get those skills.

This not only harmed the older jobs, but the newer ones as well, which have most of their skills exposition dumped in a tutorial segment quest... Though this generally amounts to form, "USE THIS, NOT THAT, FOR MULTIPLE ENEMIES!"

I suppose it makes the dev's jobs easier, since this gives them carte blanche to rearrange skills however they feel like balances each job the best at each level range, but it has completely neutered any sense of skill progression, job feel, and the sense that you're going from someone who needed a mentor to being the mentor etc.

And we can't even get comfortable with the role actions either, as they have already shown they are entirely comfortable with deleting skills wholesale and rearranging the game's systems for the new content as a result. (Example: Monsters used to critical hit, and they still do in areas Stormblood and older. There was a tank mitigation skill called Awareness that was OG cross classed from Gladiator, then a role action come StB. It stopped enemies from being able to critical, and they even made bosses have critical hit tank busters in StB occasionally, which you could get a hefty mitigation from this skill by itself on said TBs. They discarded it and critical hits from new monsters come SHB, and as a result, going and doing old content and getting critical hit on by old monsters feels really strange)

Personally my headcanon is more or less that starting with SB/ShB as you stopped getting skills from quests, the WoL more or less started creating their own skills and spells rather than being taught new things by someone else.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

Personally my headcanon is more or less that starting with SB/ShB as you stopped getting skills from quests, the WoL more or less started creating their own skills and spells rather than being taught new things by someone else.

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This was the go to thought that a ton of people had come SHB, but it doesn't really track very well when you think about it for things like the MCH rework.

The WoL is not an innovator. That's why characters like Cid, Nero, and others are important. Machinist is all about new technology, and it's a class that was created by Stephanivien in Ishgard. His original questlines all revolve around his innovations, and they have diegetic explanations as to how they function. But with the SHB rework, MCH gains completely new things like Drill as early as the 50s. Which had original skills that have been replaced.

Another common line of thought people used to espouse was stuff like, "Oh the WoL gained all these light aspected attacks because of the overwhelming amount of Light they were trying to hold in SHB." Of course, that only really tracks for White Mage. And it still kinda stomps the Black Shroud Padjali origin of the job in the nuts.

Sadly XIV became less about a cool unique fantasy world and more about fulfilling real life political agendas since Shadowbringers

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

This was the go to thought that a ton of people had come SHB, but it doesn't really track very well when you think about it for things like the MCH rework.

The WoL is not an innovator. That's why characters like Cid, Nero, and others are important. Machinist is all about new technology, and it's a class that was created by Stephanivien in Ishgard. His original questlines all revolve around his innovations, and they have diegetic explanations as to how they function. But with the SHB rework, MCH gains completely new things like Drill as early as the 50s. Which had original skills that have been replaced.

Another common line of thought people used to espouse was stuff like, "Oh the WoL gained all these light aspected attacks because of the overwhelming amount of Light they were trying to hold in SHB." Of course, that only really tracks for White Mage. And it still kinda stomps the Black Shroud Padjali origin of the job in the nuts.

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MCH is most definitely the big outlier in it, as it would have to imply that the WoL was the one who made the Bioblaster, Air Anchor, Automaton Queen and Chainsaw.

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Originally Posted by Don_Kiwi

So a lot of the older skills, either through flavour text on the effect (combustion for AST, TBN for DRK), in the skill's tooltip (Hide for NIN, Ley Lines for BLM) or through the relating job quest have some amount of explanation as to what exactly the skill does in the lore.

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They do, but the developers said it is extremely taxing trying to design a compelling story while simoultaneously explainining why you were learning each action. I think the Dragoon story did it extremely well, for example, but I can see how much effort it must have been to try and figure those actions into a story.

And for what? Most people don't do the job quests until max level, apparently. So they were wasting their time having job quests except at max level and pacing the job story with the MSQ progression.

So this led to the point where we are at now, where we don't have job quests except for new jobs.

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Healers used to have seperate Esuna-like skills a long time ago, as each healer in the lore would use different *methods* to get rid of ailments, but achieve the same effect. The same is still true for Phys Ranged's Shield Samba/Tactician/Troubadour, which are different in name, and more importantly flavour, only. Why did we keep one, but not the other?

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This is a great point, but there are more examples.

Why do tanks have a role action for their 20% mit, but not their 30% mit? Why do tanks have a role action for Provoke, but not Shield Lob/Lightning Shot/Tomahawk/Unmend? Why do tanks not have a role action for their AoE combo and their gap closer? Why is Cure/Physic/Benefic/Diagnosis not a role action? We could go on!!!

It's almost random which are role actions and which are not. Personally, it would be better to just get rid of most Role Actions so they can all be given flavor and job fantasy animations, such as Low Blow being Shield Bash for PLD.

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Similarly we have little idea what methods a Black Mage uses to cast Paradox, something that could have been elaborated on in a job quest, even one that is optional and a yellow quest.

All this is to say that I enjoy job flavour and fantasy, and little blurbs in debuff/buff text or the skill tooltip itself can go a long way in absence of proper job quests giving us exposition, and I'm sad that they seem to be on the way out too.

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It would be good if these could be explained somewhere at least.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It's almost random which are role actions and which are not. Personally, it would be better to just get rid of most Role Actions so they can all be given flavor and job fantasy animations, such as Low Blow being Shield Bash for PLD.

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Well Shield Bash and Low Blow do serve slightly different purposes, as Shield Bash is GCD and Low Blow is OGCD. And Low Blow was a DRK skill back in HW... WAR also had their own unique stun skill...
Additionally, while Shield Lob, Tomahawk and Lightning Shot are identical, DRK's Unmend is classified as a spell and does Magic damage rather than physical.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

Well Shield Bash and Low Blow do serve slightly different purposes, as Shield Bash is GCD and Low Blow is OGCD.

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Yes, and my point is nobody uses Shield Bash. I think the last time I used it was probably in Heavensward or ARR, when I wasn't being healed in an ARR dungeon and I survived by stunning all the enemies endlessly.

Arguably, people hardly use Low Blow, but they do occasionally and it is definitely useful on trash packs as a form of interrupt, or even potentially in a place like Eureka or POTD.

Shield Bash has remained because of the job fantasy, so they could make us actually use it by just changing Low Blow into a normal action each job has, but restore the job flavor.

• WAR: Brutal Swing
• DRK: Low Blow
• PLD: Shield Bash
• GNB: No idea

A lot of the old skills were lacking in lore beyond level 50/60 anyway. Or only one of the new skills had any solid lore in some of the jobs.

Lore for skills doesn't really work anymore since the devs yeet and remake skills at any given time nowadays. This is unfortunately the road we're on. But also the team finds job fantasy to be a hindrance to balance.

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Originally Posted by Don_Kiwi

While this makes skills more straightforward and the textboxes less bloated

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They can just dedicate the bottom part of the tooltip for flavor text, in a different font and "".

I find really bad that jobs are nowhere as lore rich anymore. I understand why they wanted to discontinue job quests, there are some valid reasons, but that left out with a void. If only the Encylopaedia Eorzea could elaborate further, but alas it's pretty selective on what it (briefly) further explains about a job.

As someone who plays DNC a lot, it was really frustrating to see the lack of lore information available in the EE3, or in game at all. We get to travel to their home nation and the only sprinkles of Dancer are:
- A temple in the middle of Thavnair, without anything else;
- 2 Dancers performing at the pub;
- The Xaela girl NPC that mentions wanting to take up on DNC arts after her quest chain;
- Random Radiant Host NPCs may have chakrams equipped;
- We get a cameo glimpse of Nashmeira during the MSQ, but it's so fast you may even miss it - and it's not even in Thavnair.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

They do, but the developers said it is extremely taxing trying to design a compelling story while simoultaneously explainining why you were learning each action. I think the Dragoon story did it extremely well, for example, but I can see how much effort it must have been to try and figure those actions into a story.

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Scratch the story then, id take even just talking to our relevant trainers and them giving a speech or demonstration or whatever.

xiv's world building has always had all the depth of a puddle in drought conditions at the best of times anyway.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

Personally my headcanon is more or less that starting with SB/ShB as you stopped getting skills from quests, the WoL more or less started creating their own skills and spells rather than being taught new things by someone else.

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I like that approach, but I'd still like an explanation on what exactly these techniques are.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Yes, and my point is nobody uses Shield Bash. I think the last time I used it was probably in Heavensward or ARR, when I wasn't being healed in an ARR dungeon and I survived by stunning all the enemies endlessly.

Arguably, people hardly use Low Blow, but they do occasionally and it is definitely useful on trash packs as a form of interrupt, or even potentially in a place like Eureka or POTD.

Shield Bash has remained because of the job fantasy, so they could make us actually use it by just changing Low Blow into a normal action each job has, but restore the job flavor.

• WAR: Brutal Swing
• DRK: Low Blow
• PLD: Shield Bash
• GNB: No idea

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GNB could have something called "Flashbang" or "Stun Round" to keep with the gun/bullet theme of the job.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

They can just dedicate the bottom part of the tooltip for flavor text, in a different font and "".

I find really bad that jobs are nowhere as lore rich anymore. I understand why they wanted to discontinue job quests, there are some valid reasons, but that left out with a void. If only the Encylopaedia Eorzea could elaborate further, but alas it's pretty selective on what it (briefly) further explains about a job.

As someone who plays DNC a lot, it was really frustrating to see the lack of lore information available in the EE3, or in game at all. We get to travel to their home nation and the only sprinkles of Dancer are:
- A temple in the middle of Thavnair, without anything else;
- 2 Dancers performing at the pub;
- The Xaela girl NPC that mentions wanting to take up on DNC arts after her quest chain;
- Random Radiant Host NPCs may have chakrams equipped;
- We get a cameo glimpse of Nashmeira during the MSQ, but it's so fast you may even miss it - and it's not even in Thavnair.

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the lack of dancer lore is criminal, for sure. The Job quest itself barely even gives you lore about Radz-at-han while most other jobs (NIN, MNK, DRG, etc.) give you a good chunk of lore about ther origin nations, long before we actually go there.

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Originally Posted by Mecia

Scratch the story then, id take even just talking to our relevant trainers and them giving a speech or demonstration or whatever.

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This is why I said that they should do yellow quests, like the level 80 one, for each job. One every time you'd learn a skill, or one bigger one at the level cap were you tell your former mentor about these new techniques/demonstrate them in a sparring match. It doesn't even have to be a long quest...

Definitely agree with the original post of the thread. There's a lot of skills on jobs where it would be nice to get some lore explanation for them

and then others where the very existence of the skill could REALLY use some explanation. For example, Summoner: if our egi limit is 3 and we had to Dreadwyrm Trance to get around that, what is that secret knowledge we get at level 70 that lets us summon Demi-Bahamut? Is it because a demi is different than an egi? How? Why are we able to get Demi-Phoenix at 80? The level 90 summons seem much closer to demis than egis, but they're not called by either name, just "[Gem] [Primal]"...

Not every job is on that level, but it would be really nice to actually have some lore somewhere. I've seen some people say that the devs have commented on not tying lore to job skills because of reworks changing things, and that then causing discrepancies between in-game text and the actual job - but I'd even take it being outside of the game on the Lodestone somewhere, if needing to rewrite in-game stuff is such an issue that they don't want to put anything in-game.

100%

it is sad to see flavor and lore go by the wayside when it comes to skills...

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

I suppose it makes the dev's jobs easier, since this gives them carte blanche to rearrange skills however they feel like balances each job the best at each level range, but it has completely neutered any sense of skill progression, job feel, and the sense that you're going from someone who needed a mentor to being the mentor etc.

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Sounds like laziness to me. The devs can spend more time on delivering half-assed content (yes, I am satly about a lot of stuff in Endwalker) and less time on actually enriching the world's lore. Isn't there a middle ground where you can keep the job skill progression sense through lore without dumping everything?

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

They discarded it and critical hits from new monsters come SHB, and as a result, going and doing old content and getting critical hit on by old monsters feels really strange)

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Oh, I love seeing Diabolos Hollow smashing tanks with guaranteed crits after his fight begins. For once, tank actully have to rotate your defensives and even use invulnerability. And, the horror, relying on the healers or actually tank swap if the dps is not high enough!

Perhaps, the best unintended interaction in Alliance raids so far.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

They can just dedicate the bottom part of the tooltip for flavor text, in a different font and "".

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Nailed it. A toggle-able additional note below the action description with some flavour. At the very least, give us this.

At the very least, they should have something for the base concepts of each class.
Then they can give explanations on this without going into each skill and could avoid the issue when they prune skills in the future.

Something like this.
SMN: Egis, trance and demis.
DNC: The concept around the steps and when the dances draw on.
RPR: The avatar and enshroud.
DRG: Jumps and Life of the Dragon.
NIN: Mudras and ninjutsu.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

Personally my headcanon is more or less that starting with SB/ShB as you stopped getting skills from quests, the WoL more or less started creating their own skills and spells rather than being taught new things by someone else.

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Yeah i went with that too, it makes sense and you can also assume the more were "tuned" with the job, the more use we make out of the Jobcrystals information...

Yet i miss the days when there was some lore behind stuff, it feels so empty now and contributes on making all jobs just feel the same.

This just kind of comes with losing job quests. It made sense from a story point of view in Shadowbringers, since we were on another world, but I'm disappointed they seem to be gone for good (Endwalker didn't even give us the 1 quick quest like we got in Shadowbringers). They'd have to go back to job quests if they wanted to properly introduce lore for new abilities.

I do think they could probably work them into role quests, just having some varying dialogue depending on the job.

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Originally Posted by DrForester

They'd have to go back to job quests if they wanted to properly introduce lore for new abilities.

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There's been various suggestions throughout the thread of ways they could add lore for new abilities that wouldn't require going back to job quests, though. Putting it into tooltips, putting it onto the Lodestone... or (while more similar to job quests) it could be something much more like the level 80 "job quests" where it's a simple yellow quest with minimal reward that just gives lore on the abilities we learned.

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Originally Posted by Jade_Tyrant

There's been various suggestions throughout the thread of ways they could add lore for new abilities that wouldn't require going back to job quests, though. Putting it into tooltips, putting it onto the Lodestone... or (while more similar to job quests) it could be something much more like the level 80 "job quests" where it's a simple yellow quest with minimal reward that just gives lore on the abilities we learned.

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Honestly, a great way to keep up with job lore is to take advantage of the optional yellow quests that are actually a chain (the ones slightly more elaborate), and add them when it's relevant.

For example, Endwalker was a huge missed opportunity for Dancers to have the Totentanz lore expanded as to be revealed that it was actually a dynamis manifestation because it literally fits like a glove. I'm not sure if when they thought about the Dancer lore in Shadowbringers they already had that EW idea fleshed out, but that's a valid way to expand on something that could be perceived wrong before from 'unreliable narrators'. It's even baffling because the first time we hear about dynamis is actually from Nidhana and it's a Thavnairian concept 'Akasha'.

A quest like this could be taken by any job, of course, but Dancers would get special dialogue lines from it - which is something that is constantly used everywhere else.