Ability Points, Skill Trees & Talents being considered to replace leveling. Thoughts?

Ability Points, Skill Trees or Talents being considered to replace leveling. Thoughts?

https://youtu.be/6PIxQPKBf0E?t=1012

I'm sure the developers will be interested to know what players think about these things before they do them.

I say no thanks.

I have played several games who used skill points/talent trees. In the end you always end up with exactly ONE viable build that everyone has to use. No thanks.

We can't have a unique stat/attribute system.. you can't sell me the idea that we can have a skill tree system that is actually balanced.

Well if you think about it, we have a proof of concept in Blue Mage.

If they can do a temporary one for an expansion to test it out them im all for it, I do think going past 100 in levels becomes a turn off for new players but since FFXIV is very much a story based game as well as an MMO they can't just level squash without reworking the exp gain from old expansions.
So yeah experiment with it for an expansion to see if they can actually do it good first, then we go from there.

I'm for it, and I'm even fine if theres a "meta". Meta parse centric players are always miserable, will always be miserable, and frankly deserve to be miserable, dont make the game suck for them.

As long as its easy to redistribute points, save loadouts, and its not the same meta for every single piece of content, sure why not. I'd love jobs to be more flexible.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Well if you think about it, we have a proof of concept in Blue Mage.

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That's why it is a limited job.

they have to do huge rework to battle system add at least 6 to 7 unique stats than can be benefited from skill tree / gear / buffs / other factor

The question is always going to be whether it can stand to the test of actually being meaningful and not just something that gets diluted by there ultimately being an optimal build.

Even bringing up the Blue Mage example of that being a system to 'strive for' - It still has a pretty rigid rotation that you follow.

I sincerely doubt they can create such a system and not just have an "objectively better option,"

current substats already work that way with crit being objectively better than everything else outside niche meme spell-speed BLM builds that just make crit secondary.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

The question is always going to be whether it can stand to the test of actually being meaningful and not just something that gets diluted by there ultimately being an optimal build.

Even bringing up the Blue Mage example of that being a system to 'strive for' - It still has a pretty rigid rotation that you follow.

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Somewhat but its still pretty free form, its mostly the creeping 2 minute CDs coming into BLU and the lack of support spells. Still you can be a DoT mage or a caster mage if you want in BLU and still be pretty viable.

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Originally Posted by WeakestZenosEnjoyer

I sincerely doubt they can create such a system and not just have an "objectively better option,"

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If the different options were only visual or aesthetic in nature, it may still achieve their goal of creating a sense of progression. Not saying they will only be aesthetic in nature, but it's possible ie. replace Garuda with Ramuh on summoner.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

If the different options were only visual or aesthetic in nature, it may still achieve their goal of creating a sense of progression. Not saying they will only be aesthetic in nature, but it's possible ie. replace Garuda with Ramuh on summoner.

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I think this kind of system will not work.. I know visuals are important but not changing the playstyle will kill the whole system.. I prefer the current system rather than just changing animation and 50 potency increase

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Originally Posted by Myrany

I say no thanks.

I have played several games who used skill points/talent trees. In the end you always end up with exactly ONE viable build that everyone has to use. No thanks.

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I would have to add my no as well.

we already have too much log shaming, with this there would be build shaming, and you wouldnt even have to go to a third party site to do it, since I imagine it would be visible in game.

Other games have had countless iterations of their talent tree and has worked with lots of feedback. Post ShB FFXIV scorched earth'ed the job design so it is going to take a long long time before a good talent system can be cultivated from the ground up.

It will be especially bad if they don't do any kind of pre-exposure of what they are thinking of doing in this expansion. They have a habit of keeping new features tightly under wraps until near the day of release which has its pros and cons but for something like a talent system the con of not getting early feedback is tremendous.

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Originally Posted by Frodnoxx

Other games have had countless iterations of their talent tree and has worked with lots of feedback. Post ShB FFXIV scorched earth'ed the job design so it is going to take a long long time before a good talent system can be cultivated from the ground up.

It will be especially bad if they don't do any kind of pre-exposure of what they are thinking of doing in this expansion. They have a habit of keeping new features tightly under wraps until near the day of release which has its pros and cons but for something like a talent system the con of not getting early feedback is tremendous.

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What I hope not to see is grinding 50 fate for 1 talent point that will increase potency by 100 and new animation

Anything that is too "customizable" is bound to be a nightmare. (see skill trees with divergences like vanilla wow).

I like the idea of an alternate leveling system (like Eureka or Bozja).
I also like the idea of powering up skills.

No, just no. In the end, you're going to be forced to play a certain build. This creates toxicity - just look at wow. If you don't play the wanted build, you're not wanted for groups. The whole thing with everyone have the exact same skills is what sold me to ffxiv.

This is my one pet peeve in wow, the illusion of choice for talents is insane and really kills the system for me in general. Although I still raid there and get early Cutting Edge clears so w/e.

Some talent trees are so poorly designed that you have next to no free talent points to pickup utility that you might need when you're already forced to invest into specific damage nodes.

FFXIV's levels unlocking abilities/traits is honestly so refreshing, having your whole class kit from the get go without losing out on over half your utility is a much better scenario. It's one of the main reasons I keep coming back to FF over the years too.

FFXIV should have somekind of D&D Job design mixed with FF style one job one tree but playing other job feels like playing another game

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Originally Posted by Myrany

I say no thanks.

I have played several games who used skill points/talent trees. In the end you always end up with exactly ONE viable build that everyone has to use. No thanks.

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Is TRUE! Mao has same experience in GW2 and WoW. In theory is should works buts in practice is never implementeds well enoughs to makes more than one build FOTMs.

Talent trees would be a great way to reduce button bloat without deleting skills people like. This would also give room to introduce more mechanically interesting new abilities instead of finishers on top of finishers that replace a button on the hotbar. I don't think we need specializations, just a way to phase out skills to make sure that jobs don't become too powerful.

Leveling, however, should stay as it is: a gateway to playing a job at endgame. Unlocking the job/role quests and grinding the meta achievement are very enjoyable parts of the game.

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Originally Posted by Myrany

I say no thanks.

I have played several games who used skill points/talent trees. In the end you always end up with exactly ONE viable build that everyone has to use. No thanks.

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Pretty much this. We even saw it here with cross-class skills.

Some games can start out with some flexibility. I played a ranger back in EverQuest II and there were some choices to make along the way and there was some variability that didn't completely lock you out of certain content. But even that eventually degraded down into the one true build.

I think it will be very challenging for them to have true balance and not make this something that is only superficial or cosmetic.

I don't think replacing leveling is a viable option, unless they'd be rebuilding the whole game or something. Maybe they could add talents or ability points as a replacement for getting new skills, but I don't see how it would replace leveling without them inventing a whole new type of sync and potentially ruining aspects of the game.

No thanks. Talents only create the illusion of choice at the cost of making balancing a nightmare. You also can't design class abilities from talents to have the same interconnected synergy abilities often do in this game because you don't know what talents each player has. WoW classes are very dull to play for this reason.

Personally I would just do a level squish and continue as they have up to this point.

There is only 1 way to taggle talent system currectly:
If they one way will change how job has been played completely

Example ninja can have another spect that focus more to manage poisoning enemy but if we have a system like that.
We will have to do much effort of adding another job

Damn so much negativity.

I look foreward to what ever they cooked up the more it breaks thre streamlined design the better!!
Break the shackles that bound us, unleash creativity!

Anyway its long known that they dont want to go over level 100 and i think its good that they dont consider sudo level ups.
Something i saw in a other game which could be nice is that you can select a few abilities and determin it to be your specialisation.
Those abilties had there own talent tree in diverse direction....given the rather flat design that exist in FF14 at the moment...i dont know how "diverse" it actualy could be but that would finally allow some customise gameplay.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Ability Points, Skill Trees or Talents being considered to replace leveling. Thoughts?

https://youtu.be/6PIxQPKBf0E?t=1012

I'm sure the developers will be interested to know what players think about these things before they do them.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Well if you think about it, we have a proof of concept in Blue Mage.

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That would just lead to power creep in the same way it breaks other games.

What happens in other games is that if you use the "Ability point" system to decide what you want, that means nobody EVER does anything because they want the skill, only because it lets them make bigger booms. So nobody will ever Tank or Heal. Everyone will just make themselves glass cannons.

Like to give an example from one other game, nobody, ever, heals. It's too expensive in MP to do it. It's more cost effective to spam 100 pots than it is to have one person heal, and you can't heal yourself because you have to switch to a healing wand that does single digit damage if you fight with it.

No the Armory system in FFXIV is mutually incompatible with an Ability point system. Unless they seriously are going to break apart the system so that you can do everything with every weapon, and mix and match skills from every job, and then the consequences will be that players will will not tank or heal in parties. Players will be berated for trying to heal when they should DPS like ... ooh what's been happening ever since launch.

The end result is everyone plays exactly the same meta, and essentially instead of having a dozen jobs, you have exactly one, the glass-cannon.

I am completlyfor somekind of system that allows us to not all be the same. In the past i thought of split classes into two routes depening on there theme, White would have a Nature Path and a Light Path. Machinist a Gunplay and a Machinery etc.
Heck Scholar could be split in Seraph-Scholar and Battle Tacitician.

But i also wouldnt take Blue Mage as example as its by its very nature more a fun whack class.

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

I don't think replacing leveling is a viable option, unless they'd be rebuilding the whole game or something. Maybe they could add talents or ability points as a replacement for getting new skills, but I don't see how it would replace leveling without them inventing a whole new type of sync and potentially ruining aspects of the game.

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It might be too difficult to undo the previous 100 levels, but I think they want to stop progressing beyond level 100 as well.

However, I think there are ways they can remove the 100 levels. The value of levels isn't so much the level itself as much as the internal variables associated with it which dilute the stats (for example, 1000 crit means less at level 90 than it does at level 70), which they could still sync in the content (or just rebalance all the content somehow). For quests, they could just remove level from them entirely and remove level from players the same way they do in PvP.

For gear, I'm not sure. Item level could still exist but it might cause problems if the stat dilution doesn't happen every so often. They could condense the item level of old gear, or just make it all item level 5 gear since it's all glamour now anyway.

That would make you wonder what creates the concept of progression at all. There could just be ways to gain ability points and then an overall cap on them per expansion. Or if dungeons need a level still, the level could be the level of the MSQ quest rather than of the class/job, and ability points could be given based on MSQ progress.

This concept could make it possible to hand out some extra ability appoints for doing raids, or something like that.

Its long known that they didnt want to progress past level 100 so if they didnt paddle back and from the looks of it they dont it was bound to happen that the progression post level 100 will be very different.
As we alll know no leveling is a big thing in FF14 but im sure its doable but it will break with what is established.

I think the gameplay and the meta sorely need a shakeup, so I'm in favour of it. The ShB-EW-DT design has its positives but change is healthy. I actually hope they do some kind of skill tree system with the lost actions in Shade's Triangle, since that content is a good place to explore ideas and have wacky builds without derailing core combat content.

Here's a thought experiment. Think of a game (any game) where customizability worked really well - it made you different than your peers, it let you play differently, and still let you excel in the content. What was it about that game that let that happen and why could it not happen in this game?

Weirdly enough for me, I look at some FPS games (specifically Deep Rock Galactic if anyone can relate). There a lot of different guns you can bring with their own features, strengths and weaknesses. The key here is that the enemies present such a wide variety of things to play against. For example there are big meat shield enemies, flying enemies, swarming enemies, armored enemies, etc etc and they each present a challenge that while any gun can deal with decently, some guns excel in.

Bringing it back to MMOs and FF14. I don't think there is anywhere near enough avenues of different challenges for a customization system to work. Every single boss encounter in the game presents: figure out where to stand and either do single target DPS or party wide healing. There are no other niches that players could potentially fill through customization because the options that do not lend themselves to single target dps are invariably worse than ones that do. And so the strict meta forms.

The most heavy-handed way to account for this is to do something like element/attack type weaknesses, but that's not interesting nor fun and has been attempted and failed time immemorial. But that's the basic idea that just needs some elegance injected into it. It's more difficult to come up with varying challenges for an MMO than an action game. But here are some examples:

- Having significant phases of the boss not be purely single target so that AoE, cleave, funnel, etc damage types can excel
- Having mechanics that emphasize different types of healing: clumped up, spread out, pressure on a non-tank, spot healing, etc.
- Having mechanics that emphasize a non-tank's self-mitigation or mobility

In conclusion. For a system that lets players change their strengths and weaknesses to work, the content needs to present different areas to be strong and weak in. And currently the game has a very narrow playing field. So unless this expansion's "Enhanced Combat Design" opens it up, I don't think a customization system in 8.0 will work.

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Originally Posted by Ayalu

I am completlyfor somekind of system that allows us to not all be the same. In the past i thought of split classes into two routes depening on there theme, White would have a Nature Path and a Light Path. Machinist a Gunplay and a Machinery etc.
Heck Scholar could be split in Seraph-Scholar and Battle Tacitician.

But i also wouldnt take Blue Mage as example as its by its very nature more a fun whack class.

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EverQuest II did that and had options you could pick as you leveled plus alternate advancement abilities later on. And it was nice for a bit but it devolved into picking the "right" options or not getting to participate in things. And you were locked to a single class on a character so you may as wel hang that character up if you chose wrong or respec what you could.

And it's not so much negativity as "Been there, seen that". Even with this game, it used to have cross-class skills where you could level another class and get certain abilities from that class to use on your main class. But that turned into having the "right" cross-class skills or you would be harassed by the rest of the playerbase for not having them. Like healers who weren't interested in thaumaturge still had to level it to 26 to get swiftcast, which was considered essential and you were griefing groups if you didn't have it. It all becomes an illusion of choice instead of true flexibility.

I really like the idea of them but I'm afraid it would only lead to what everyone else is saying - the community deciding one way is better because it does 0.5% more DPS or something stupid like that. We already see this when people lock certain jobs out of PF because they perform ever so slightly worse, despite being perfectly viable. Unless we can somehow make people stop doing it, I don't see a way it would work.

People seem to assume that there will only be 1 right option with skill trees, but that is 100% false yes there will be some that by pure numbers seem better which become the meta for stupid people who aren't smart enough to plan around themselves with the job/class etc. I mean Really just becauce the vast majoirty are drones following the single set mindlessly doesnt make it the only one possible nor does it even make it the best option. in fact in alot of cases with trees there ae 100x better options than what everyone else does when you take into account how you play exacly, and you design around that...

I mean in diablo 2 enchanter sorceress/ frogger barbarins poison necros were by the far the least used by the majority but could destory all the metas if done correctly. The same goes for martial artist assassin...

Just because their is a meta and a prime build all the little sheep follow doesnt mean there is only 1 good one, or that one is even good at all tbh

i’m not inherently against this but i think they’d need to grow their combat dev team a lot to make it work. replacing what we currently have entirely with ability points and trees might be too much, as opposed to say, allowing us to pick from some specializations that retain the job core but change gameplay enough to be interesting

The more customization the better. I just hope this doesn't mean that they'll keep content easy "so that people don't force others to use specific tree specs."

I support the tree if done right.

Leveling wise Level 100 would be the cap and they dont want us to increase in numerical things as those could lead to the problem that lead to the first number crunch.
So post level 100 the new system would be the new way of progression.
But something that came to mind is...if higher and higher numbers will lead to problems. Would that mean our gear would also stop progressiing for the most part?
Would new gear mostly be new glam options?

Truth be told, they will have to do something.

If they really intend that 8.0 will me a job revision across the board to address identity, that's actually the perfect cue to either do a major level squish or a secondary leveling system post 100.

I think just a level squish is merely a band-aid, because level inflation will catch up again. Anyway, whatever they do, it must be somewhat future-proofed for at least 4-5 expansions.

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Originally Posted by Myrany

I say no thanks.

I have played several games who used skill points/talent trees. In the end you always end up with exactly ONE viable build that everyone has to use. No thanks.

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This, it *always* comes down to this. The idea of "freedom of choice" just ends up "illusion of choice" with systems like this in MMO settings because you either end up with options that don't matter to make sure groups can function, or everyone gets forced into a meta or else.