4.0 Ideas

[Xenosan]

Giving trinity-breaking role diversity to RDM would leave other jobs in the same role asking for the same. Until they are given the same balance you'd have issues like in pre-Aht Urgan FFXI where certain RDM and WAR builds were game-breakingly beyond other classes and the standard tank/healer/refresher/DD structure.

SE could never (or more they simply chose not to) fix that imbalance without destroying the original party structure. Which is what ended that game's prominence, imo. FFXI was competing with WoW up until then and provided a "more true" (only way I can describe it) MMO experience (imo, obviously).

So I'm hesitant on the idea of RDM breaking trinity barriers beyond an certain extent, just from that history.

New, innovative, and game-changing are descriptions not (entirely) synonymous with format-breaking.

There's still plenty of room for diversity within the current design, I don't think there's reason to tear down those walls just yet.
(And that potential is what makes Wander's Minuet / Gauss Barrel &&& Rampart / Shadowskin SO much more frustrating to me)

[ADVSS]

well theyd just have to work on more utilities, im amazed that monk ddnt get build up as a part of forbidden chakra, or 'chakra' for instance, that skill alone would give them utility, all in all i am fine with some diversity aimed to give some relief to healers or tanks, like ninjas enmity control, a combat raise, like smn has, maybe even just a clemency like heal with great risk to mp etc. The idea i dont think is to make the other roles less necessary, its to aid them if theyre struggling or to work together to clear content. I mean, who doesnt love clutch kills? Originally i always wondered why paladin didnt at least get a battle raise, so many oppurunities to save a wipe, etc. But again here is a guy who likes to do silly things like 4 dps dungeon runs, just to shake it up a little bit and see how far you can go without following the rigid strict rules of this role, 2 this role, 1 this role. and i swear if you ever get the chance to do an 8 scholar titan hard mode, youll probably cry laughing so hard it is pretty hillarious

[Khalithar]

Giving trinity-breaking role diversity to RDM would leave other jobs in the same role asking for the same.

It's fine if they deviate a little bit. I mean Paladin has a pretty potent healing spell, but it's balanced by the cast time and the high mp cost. If they gave rdm some defensive utility (a self heal, some sort of defensive cd, etc.) it wouldn't be that big of a deal.

[Iracy]

No idea bout new skills/classes, but here's some ideas for existing PLD skills, talking trait wise. Yes I'm a PLD Fanboy.


Skill: Flash
Trait: Flash of Light[Lv.53]

Effect: Flash now causes AoE damage with a potency of 150.

---

Skill: Divine Veil
Trait: Divine Blessing[Lv.56]

Effect: On successful activation of Divine Veil through healing, the amount of initial healing will be cast as Regen effect over 10secs(1tick/sec) in addition, for the entire party.

---

Skill: Sword Oath/Shield Oath
Trait: Oathkeeper[Lv.59]

Effect:
Sword Oath - Additional attack potency increased to 70 from 50. During Sword Oath, all damaging skills gain a potency of 20(initial hit only, not DoTs). During Sword Oath, whenever Royal Authority is used in combo, cooldown of Circle of Scorn/Spirits Within is reduced by 2 seconds.

Shield Oath - Attacks generate even further enmity. Damage dealt is reduced by 10% while damage taken is decreased by 20%. Blockrate is increased by 15%. During Shield Oath, Defensive skill effects are increased by 5%.

[Caitlyn]

4.0 Ideas? Here they come:

• New playable Race: Viera (because everyone asked for it)
• New areas: Xelphatol, Gyn Abania, Ala Mhigo
• New classes: Samurai, Dancer and Red Mage
• New Raid: Doomtrain
• New Primals: Anima, Omega-Weapon
• Features: Rework for 2.0-areas (flying enabled, larger areas)
• Features: Swimming and Diving
• Max Level: 70
• New traits for all jobs, no additional skills
• Skills can be upgraded
• Classes removed, Cross Skills enhanced
• Personal Limit Break
• Open World PvP (Warriors of Light vs. Warriors of Darkness)

[ADVSS]

Alot of this makes sense esp if the ala migho thing happens, doom train giving resources into garlemald would be a great raid scenario(though how the hell we get off it?) I dont know about cross class skills dying just yet but id be okay if the other skills are modifiable

[Shurrikhan]

Giving trinity-breaking role diversity to RDM would leave other jobs in the same role asking for the same. Until they are given the same balance you'd have issues like in pre-Aht Urgan FFXI where certain RDM and WAR builds were game-breakingly beyond other classes and the standard tank/healer/refresher/DD structure.

SE could never (or more they simply chose not to) fix that imbalance without destroying the original party structure. Which is what ended that game's prominence, imo. FFXI was competing with WoW up until then and provided a "more true" (only way I can describe it) MMO experience (imo, obviously).

I see no issue with letting other jobs also move out of the rigid trinity somewhat, as long as design moves more or less as one, rather than leaving obvious favorites for these new ventures.

You've mentioned the true issue itself. They chose to ignore glaring imbalance issues. That's generally pretty bad. However, I don't think movement from the original party structure would otherwise have had much to do with FFXI's downturn, if at all. WoW itself turned further away from hybrids with every single expansion, often to criticism. FFXI having some diversity by no means broke its competitive banking against WoW. But any negligence in implementation certainly can, and likely did.

[Xenosan]

However, I don't think movement from the original party structure would otherwise have had much to do with FFXI's downturn, if at all.

Where would you place the divide, then? I'm just wondering, (Chains of Promanthia? Off topic about FFXI:

For me it was Aht Urgan. The TP Burn party was such a petty hand-out that betrayed what the game was, and did nothing to address job balance - just gave jobs other than WAR/RDM/NIN/MNK(?) a way to get carried (but were still inferior in performance anyway). And it was pandering to WoW players,

I think they should have stuck to their guns. CoP, for all it's criticism, kept a prominent line in the sand distinguishing FFXI from the 'casual mmorpg' WoW, and that was good, imo. Once they started pandering to that crowd though, they just threw a wrench in their own clockwork.

)

I'm mostly just worried that if they made RDM a utility focus DPS, (especially if it's off-healing utility), it will end being implemented poorly because that doesn't really fit the model for what FFXIV raid/dungeon DPSers want. If it was an off-healer that could help push away SCH's monopoly on that role, that'd be different. But can you imagine RDM as primarily a healer?

Other than the new jobs,
I think the best approach to simultaneous adjustments for current Jobs is replacing cross-class skills.

As for how it's implemented, I can imagine:

A new job quest-line going back to the characters of the original class-quest storylines. The end of which every job gets a new soulstone. "Soulstone of the Scholar" <HQ symbol>, for example.

We keep the old Soulstones too, and the cross-class restrictions on those old ones are removed (if you wear the old Soulstone, can cross-class whatever you want), but the new soulstones have no cross-class skills, and instead offer 5 new job abilities. 'Current' content requires the new soulstone, but old soulstones can be used in Unsync'd, open world, and older content.

Swiftcast, Cleric Stance, Protect, Blood for Blood, Foresight/Bloodbath/Convalescence/MercyStroke, Blizzard 2, Raging Strikes, E4E, Virus..

There are a lot of cross-class skills - if replaced with new versions which offer their own nuances that cater specifically to their respective job - could redefine jobs, enhance their playstyles, their utility, etc etc. There's a lot of flexibility and design freedom if this were to happen.

Continuing to build 'on top' of this antiquated cross-class system just isn't wise, imo. No amount of DPS spells for WHM/AST will change their practical DPS when they're gated behind Cleric, which will remain best only for SCH (unless they give WHM/AST their own faeries). That's just one example; personally, I'm ready for a change.

So I'm hoping SE is considering an adjustment like this^, if not for 4.0 but sometime in the future. A suitable alternative to a lvlcap increase for 1 patch cycle imo.

[Shurrikhan]

Where would you place the divide, then? I'm just wondering, (Chains of Promanthia? Off topic about FFXI:

I'm honestly not sure. It's not something I've really thought deeply about from the XI perspective.

I'm mostly just worried that if they made RDM a utility focus DPS, (especially if it's off-healing utility), it will end being implemented poorly because that doesn't really fit the model for what FFXIV raid/dungeon DPSers want. If it was an off-healer that could help push away SCH's monopoly on that role, that'd be different. But can you imagine RDM as primarily a healer?

In short, no I cannot imagine it as primarily a healer. But I do pretty well imagine it exactly as a DPS with a versatile, largely utility-focused DPS. That's partly because that's the only thing I can imagine warrant even calling it a RDM, and partly due to personal wants.

To put those wants concisely, I really like having extra options and tend to enjoy burden of knowledge aspects. I like close combo play between different players, methodologies, and/or classes. I tend to dislike anything that standardizes or flattens choices that could otherwise bring out those aspects. I love undermechanics, and tend to dislike redundancy or lacking identity/distinction (as between two abilities identical except in name, etc).

What I ultimately hope RDM will do is bring some consideration back into matters of composition, especially for sort of "midcore" content (essentially, casual contents being played by try-hards, if you will), and introduce a bit more synergy and broadened view of responsibilities and opportunities into the otherwise rigid role system. I'm tired of so rarely having to think of anything outside of damage-dealing as a DPS. Dealing the most I can over a mechanics-heavy fight is fun, no doubt about that, but it lacks a lot of the satisfaction of doing that while kiting around a giant who likes to one-shot people. Honestly though, the best examples go much further back...

I'll just put it this way. When leveling in ARR, it was often faster for me not to take a tank at all for certain dungeons if a had a CNJ or post-sleepga THM. I've commonly Bard tanked them without taking any melee damage, even while holding enmity just fine. My all-time fastest dungeon spams were as BLM and 3 SMNs. One Titan, two Garudas. Sleepga, focus, Bane, melt. If heals were necessary, Physic was still 400 potency to Ruin's 80, so until MND was split from INT, it really was a better use of output for a SMN to heal than for a SCH to waste pet dps. Granted, especially prior to the AoE damage taken, this meant certain vulnerabilities as well. Various dungeons had different ideal combinations back then. But then for whatever reason development decided to make most dungeon mobs immune to not just sleep, not just binds, but just about everything but stuns, limiting such options. The dungeon-running conventions we have now are often a result of that in combination with the comparatively massive healer burst output available in XIV, wherein a tank will doubtlessly be needed anyways—well, technically not; I've tanked every HW dungeon as DRG and MNK each, and healers can probably technically solo most—and the bigger pull, the better because what control can you really lose out on that would matter? I that this exclusion of fine control and alternatives would exist in raid settings, but consider: it's actually fairly new for that to be the universal rule. Heavies and binds were still of massive use in certain parts of Coil, and it's only after level 50 that sleep immunity went ubiquitous in dungeons.

Altogether, I'd just want to see almost anything that could shake up that setup, and provide some thought and alternatives. Granted, it'd currently be hugely difficult to implement in a DF setting, where you do need a minimal level of mitigation, healing, and DPS between all party members, and can't typically rely on hybrid capacities or components with the community as it is right now—even if a party of DPS did, between them, have all the factors necessary to run a particular dungeon, between burst healing, sustainable healing, mitigation, utility, or just the eHP enough for large pulls or tankbusters, most DPS aren't used to thinking outside of their own role that much. But that's the optionality I've love to see down the line. Jobs as toolkits, not just split roles. Even if RDM could only just barely introduce that mindset right now, with certain balancing or instance design changes or additions to come much later, I'd love it for that. I want broadened responsibilities, more interaction, more coordination, more synergy, more use of my full toolkit... and in some cases a slightly larger or better toolkit may be needed to allow any of that seemingly extra stuff to come in handy at all.

Other than the new jobs,
I think the best approach to simultaneous adjustments for current Jobs is replacing cross-class skills.

......

There are a lot of cross-class skills - if replaced with new versions which offer their own nuances that cater specifically to their respective job - could redefine jobs, enhance their playstyles, their utility, etc etc. There's a lot of flexibility and design freedom if this were to happen.

Continuing to build 'on top' of this antiquated cross-class system just isn't wise, imo.

I feel kind of conflicted on this subject. For one, I like what 1.0 seemed to be going for originally, when you were creating your own job and hero simultaneously through various learning paths. I find it sad that cross-class skills are all that remains of that, and am therefore hesitant to wish them gone—especially being the very last thing going for the all-classes-on-one-character selling point of the game or pushing for players to even experience more than one class, where in fact putting all on one character disadvantages alt-gearing where using separate characters would not—but it often has all the attractiveness of refuse. It feels immensely awkward to have 80% of your SCH or AST's dps gated almost arbitrarily behind a level 6 CNJ ability, GLD 22 just to participate in raid tanking, or LNC 34 just to get the most out of your Machinist. That said, I'm not sure I'd like to see entirely seperate near-equivalents either. I'd probably prefer that Warriors have Challenge, Dark Knights have Beckon, and Gladiators have Provoke, for instance, but can choose to swap out their native ability for another's or even take both. To me the big issues are simply identity, engagement, and intuitiveness of acquisition. There are plenty of other changes that can better secure identity or engagement than trading out all cross-class skills for class-specific versions. Nor do class-specific version necessarily mean, or are the only means to, better integration with class gameplay for the function that cross-class or newly native skill covers.

Ideally, I'd like for classes to be revised to carry more significant, gameplay-affecting or undermechanics-creating traits, many of which can be cross-classed. But what do I know? I still want physical level back so that the whole leveling experience across or including multiple classes actually feels cohesive.

[Mattelot]

I too would like more Abilities, but not as many, maybe a Mix of Traits and Abilities?

Blizzard did this with World of Warcraft. After so many expansions, there were just too many abilities. Many got mixed together. Some mixing seemed "OP" but the game was adjusted to compensate.