Skill-Specific Gear

[Garlyle]

The text that you have entered is too long (6217 characters). Please shorten it to 1000 characters long.

goddamnit me

(A. this is done properly in plenty of other games, by other developers, and I know that XIV Dev Team can do it,

I'll say this again later on, but XIV is a very controlled game. It is not the open ended sandbox of many other MMORPGs.

(D. by your own admission, this is already occuring, so your argument against further itemization is made moot by your own reasoning,

Not really. There's still cleanup to do on XIV's system. It isn't perfectly in line with its own philosophy of design - extremely few games are. I've got another note about elemental materia below that illustrates this. This doesn't mean that those are the routes that the designers necessarily want to pursue, and evidence and the logic of Yoshida himself supports that.

(E. sating the playerbase with things to build towards / specialities to pursue and spend time upon is not only a good idea to keep their players contented, but it is in fact the way they generate income, and

If the disposal of elemental skills and the near-disposal of elemental defenses is any indication, this is not the direction the XIV team has gone, or wants to go. What we have is an absolutely minimal amount of tweaking. They want to avoid situations where a player is useless due to a false choice - having grabbed the wrong piece of equipment, being the wrong class, picking the wrong one of x identical skills for a fight, etc. It has probably been taken a little far, and feels dry and unsatisfying as a result, but you didn't need to farm up five otherwise identical weapons to fight each EX Primal with a proper elemental advantage. That's what other MMOs have done, and XIV has said no to that. XIV does not want to put that burden on their players.

(B. we are talking about skill modifications, not skill additions,
(F. people are always going to complain. Always. Does not delegitimize the argument for improved itemization.

I'm aware, and yes, apologies on my part a bit for F for the brief time it was even part of the post. Speaking of, you might want to review the post now that I've got it all down. The fear on Yoshida's part - and understandably so - is that the complaints will turn from "eh, this is a little boring" to a far more serious issue where it is wreaking havoc on the actual playability of the game.

(C. skill additions could also be done if the skills are created in the proper fashion,

That is a balancing nightmare and I don't think you even realise it. Either the skill is an improvement or a new niche, in which case an expectation grows that the players of a class will have it, and the game has to be created around that in turn, and it butts out other options - or the skill is so negligible that in practice it doesn't actually matter. We already can demonstrate this with cross-classing as it currently exists. There is content expecting that Warriors have Provoke. And there is absolutely nothing that expects a Warrior to use Savage Blade. Savage Blade is new, and shiny, but functionally useless on a Warrior, and taking up the spot of something that could be used. Start having gear give skills and this is where you are.

As a total aside, your argument, and its preface, are total non sequiturs in relation to one another. The body of the text is prefaced with "misunderstanding the meaning of choice", and then proceeds into making the argument that there is no choice at all, which, while appreciated (as it strengthens my case), does not relate to how I am misunderstanding the meaning of "choice". The post is self-contradictory on the whole.

No, it's entirely linear. I guess, lemme take another shot at this though.

Yoshida recognises false choice - and that it isn't a choice. When people ask for significant gear differences, believing that it creates choice, Yoshida recognises that when you get too significant, you don't create choice - you lock players into needing very specific gear or gtfo in practice, and thus take away the choice. That's what Yoshida doesn't want to get into. A core aspect of XIV's design to this point has been making an effort to avoid forcing people into false choice situations. There's no elemental wheel because five identical spells, only one of which is actually effective, isn't actually choice, it's a question of right or wrong. They've done their best to try not to force "must have x class or gtfo", and the opposite. They've taken, to this point, a very similar avoidance with gear*

* I'm aware we do still have elemental resistance stuff that contradicts this, especially as it was turned functionally useless. I think in this case it's largely a holdover of 1.0 that they didn't want to get rid of to have players complaining about lost goods and aren't yet sure if they want to try to make these relevant again or just find a good plan to phase them out.

This isn't to say the system's perfect (again, review the post). What Yoshida said in the letter indicates that he's fully aware he's been quite conservative in just how much variance can exist on gear, with the intent of avoiding the situation he worries about - the point at which the illusion of choice in gear becomes not a choice at all. It also indicates they're going to look into seeing if they can introduce more variables without disrupting the system, becuase that would feel better - but everything you introduce is another thing to watch. XIV is a very controlled MMORPG by design, not a character development sandbox.

Right now, we at least have the choice between whether we get our level 90 gear from Myth tomes, or Coil, or EX Primals. It may not feel great, but it's something - and it's more than the scenario he wants to avoid where we either need to get all three to be relevant to different things later, or need to get one specific one because something about it in practice obsoletes the others.

And again, I'm not against more variety in gear effects, and things like minor potency bonuses to skills may very well be the way to go. It CAN be done, and I, like you, want to see it happen. But understand where Yoshida's coming from when he says that highly significant variety - the kind players often request - could very well damage choice, and that's what he wants to avoid. His answer indicates that he's aware they've been too conservative about it and are probably going to experiment and see what they can do.

EDIT: I feel like I near-literally repeated myself like three separate times during this @_@

[Eagleheart]

No, it's entirely linear. I guess, lemme take another shot at this though.
EDIT: I feel like I near-literally repeated myself like three separate times during this @_@

And it is precisely because of the tightly-controlled environment that Dev Team is now doing a bit of backpedaling and saying "okay, so we're going to look at this."

Basically, if the Devs cannot think of a way to provide varied skill conditioning and tuning in their battle system, they are simply not spending enough time on it. Yes, I say this as an armchair general. I've played many MMOs. Balance was always difficult, and required tuning and re-tuning, and more re-tuning. Balance was never fully achieved, but neither was the attempt at diversification completely abandoned. Dev Team may be coming around on this, and I do hope so, because, at the end of the day, the stuff they have given out already simply isn't enough to keep the hardcore people at it. O.o Subs will come in waves with primary patches, and that's a danger that Yoshida has already remarked upon as well.

With regards to Coil Gear, it is largely unobtainable by the playerbase, so the illusion of choice, false or not, is even further dispelled. o_O The way Coil is structured prevents people from helping their friends along with it, unless they are part of a regular crew going once per week. The entry limitations mean that lots of people, a solid half-dozen from my own small LS, simply quit because they are weary of attempting to get through Coil with bickering, back-biting pickups. I realize that your point here is that the Coil gear is largely unimportant, because the choice is, again, minute in scope, but it is there. It's something. It is insufficient, but it is a start; a start that is screwed over by entry limitations, which is an (unrelated) social issue as well. @_@ So lacking Coil gear, having only Soldiery to do for the week, and (fairly or not) lots of people turning their nose up at Atma farming (which, honestly, I do not think is that bad - having spent many hours at it myself, make no mistake) the playerbase goes o.o "Eh. I'll be back for the next story missions, I guess" and books it.

They can't even work at spendy, high-end crafted stuff, because the crafted stuff is kept weak. o_O Also, there was not a single weapon for i90 in the "New Crafting Recipes." Yeah, thanks, Dev Team, I leveled Blacksmith so I could craft retainer bells. That is exactly what I had in mind when you showed me the shiny smithy, full of giant furnaces and smelted ingots, and spoke of crafting exquisite weapons. Unless I get to take that damn retainer bell into battle, I'm going to have to write this one down as poppycock.

...My little trip through the Valley of Embitterment aside, the situation with itemization is untenable. >.> Heavy-handed supervision is an understandable instinct, but as .38 Special once remarked, "if you cling too tightly, you're gonna lose control."

Also, the removal of the elemental wheel was the single most annoying thing Yoshida's ever done. O_o Now I must gnaw my desk in anger at the bitter memory.