"Perks" would do soooo much for this game

[Delily]

A better design decision would be to let people change jobs based on a role. So if I have a level 60 warrior and drk, and I have gear for both, let me switch them in a dungeon.

[Antanias]

I would support the following two things:

1. Merit points from FFXI / Alternate Advancement from EverQuest: customize your character by giving them unique traits and abilities. You can't have everything either; you have to pick and choose.

2. Special abilities and bonuses on gear in an ability slot. Let it be ability materia with a chance to drop in any content. Make it extremely rare. Other players cannot view the ability on your gear or see the slot for it at all. This keeps the elitism in check.

To be honest, I'd rather have ff11's capacity/job point system so that everyone can aim for the same bonuses by putting in the work.

[Nalien]

Basically this? Cos I'd love this.

I'd guess SE is going to go with the Materia route though, since they'll be letting us meld raid/tomestone gear come 3.2... Can't say I'm particularly fond of that concept, I'd rather Spiritbond gear for stats with an AP system, than bleed Gil melding...

[Gunspec]

I'm a fan of "perk" systems where you continue getting some kind of xp after level cap, and invest it in tiny stat rewards that build up over time. Something like the veteran levels that were eventually added to Diablo III, ESO, Boarderlands, etc. You would have a theoretical "best" stat to invest points in, but due to diminishing returns, you would eventually benefit from putting some points into a little of everything. Things like "fire-resist" or "bonus damage at night" start looking more appealing after the basic bonuses like "+crit damage" have too many points in them.

Now, I'm not saying that FFXIV needs anything like that. It's typically something they put in buy-to-play games to increase the lifespan of the player community. But I like that system over situations where you only have a finite number of points, in which everyone has the exact same point investment. Look at our "bonus attributes" in FFXIV for an example of how well that worked.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

I would support the following two things:

1. Merit points from FFXI / Alternate Advancement from EverQuest: customize your character by giving them unique traits and abilities. You can't have everything either; you have to pick and choose.

2. Special abilities and bonuses on gear in an ability slot. Let it be ability materia with a chance to drop in any content. Make it extremely rare. Other players cannot view the ability on your gear or see the slot for it at all. This keeps the elitism in check.

EQ's AA's are a decent system. One nice thing about that system is that once you assign an AA point, that AA is gone, there is no re-spec'ing. Another is the bonus system they have implemented a while back - if you have less than a certain number of AA points assigned, then you get bonus experience, and the bonus decreases linearly as you assign AA points, until you no longer get that bonus and just get AA's at the base rate. You also cannot lock one line of AA's out by buying another; you can (and should) get everything for your class.

However, EQ has been around a LONG time. So has the AA system. There are AA's that the developers wish they had never put into the game (such as Endless Quiver). Eventually, with age, you wind up having things to spend AA's on that require a lot of AA's to buy but do not offer all that much over the previous rank. You also wind up with many abilities farmed out among the classes, just due to pressure on the devs to provide X number of AA's worth of stuff to buy, but running out of imagination to make new stuff.

The main probem I see, however, with bringing that system here, is longevity. Are the AA's class/job specific, the way that stat points are? Or are they character specific, where I earn 10 AA's as a Monk but then can choose to spend them on my Dark Knight stuff? If they are class specific, I can see a time a few years from now where a long-neglected class will be completely undesirable even in DF because that class lacks some "must have" AA. If it is for the character and not the class, I can see many little things that will provide tremendous benefit to, say, Healers but little benefit to a Warrior. Unfortunately, because I can see them not wanting to give one class' abilities to another (or we'd already have them as part of the cross class abilities) I cannot see a character-based system providing anything fun or interesting.

All in all, while I would not mind something brought here from EQ, I would not particularly care for the AA system to be brought over here. (Its off topic, but the thing I'd like to see coming here from EQ is the Buyer mode, where people want to buy stuff in that game's equivalent to the Marketboard, as opposed to being limited to simply selling stuff on the Marketboard here.)

[Derio]

But crafting does have its perks, you dont have to ask people to meld things for your and you can craft your own chocobo barding. you can also craft your own glamour prisms so you dont have to pay over 10k for a prism.

However I would like to see some kind of perk system added to the battle classes. For people who dont craft or just do 1 battle class, I can see how the game can get boring real fast.

[Airget]

A better design decision would be to let people change jobs based on a role. So if I have a level 60 warrior and drk, and I have gear for both, let me switch them in a dungeon.

Nope, that just leads to trolling, enter as tank just to switch to DD then stand around going, I didn't even wanna tank I just did it for the faster queue. That is what would happen.

[Slappah]

Nope, that just leads to trolling, enter as tank just to switch to DD then stand around going, I didn't even wanna tank I just did it for the faster queue. That is what would happen.

You might want to re-read his statement. Because what you're saying isn't anything like what he suggested.

[Jim_Berry]

*SNIP*
The nice thing about FFXIV is that it is built like a theme park - whichever ride I enjoy, I can only ride on that and still get a great experience out of it.
*SNIP*

Oh my god... Yes... Well said!

[Devils_Lawyer]

First, glamour is not the same as BiS. Second, that sort of thinking has been proven out in every game that any sort of decision regarding gear or skills. The overwhelming majority of players will go with the setup that sims the highest, regardless of what level of content they are at. WoW went from that type of model to a reduce model for that reason.

You cant put a price tag on glamour, BiS or anything else cause every player has different things that interests them, whilst someone may see BiS as a must have someone else will see the same but with glamour.

Its true in older mmos BiS was the thing on everyone's mind but ARR is different, this is a casual game where the majority of players are not looking up rotations or doing calculations to find out their max dps/healing.

But still, whats wrong with giving us options? do you really want to still be grinding tomes for that 1 gear set 2 years from now?