Let's Get Rid of Cross Class Ability Restrictions

[Chiramu]

I would love to play around with cross-class abilities on my WHM. Having Mantra on WHM would be awesome, so much theory-craft if they did something like this . Also would mean I could spec a "cleric" healer, I mean the clerics that have heavy armour, shield and mace .

Please do this SE :O!

[Shurrikhan]

The problem is customization is an illusion in MMOs. Sure they could unlock everything, but it would only take two days for the metagame to boil it down and we will have the 5 best in slot for each job. And if you don't have the 5, then you'll get booted. Why bother? What's the difference from square choosing for us and high end players choosing?

I understand your sentiment, but at the end of the day MMO's are just number generators with a fancy user interface. Whether you agree or not, there will always be a de facto best build to use, hell we have something like that already where dps classes only have one optimal rotation and order to use their abilities with no option to play "differently." The only role that you could argue doesn't have a set rotation are healers since they have to react appropriately to different situations as they pop up. Besides the fact, if they did lift the restrictions pretty much everyone will use the same abilities anyway. Every physical dps (and probably the tanks to) will take blood for blood, raging strikes, internal release, and invigorate. Lifting the restrictions will make the "best" build even more obvious.

That said, balancing such as to bring multiple options within some 1% of each other generally or within 3% for a given fight is not impossible to come by. The "illusion of choice" only partly boils down to constraints of the medium. The rest comes down to flawed execution.

The latter just tends to excuse itself by masking it as a wholly guaranteed outcome when developers no longer desire to spend so much time and money on balancing, often for oversights that they may later readily admit they should have seen coming.

I agree completely though that "freedom" in selection rarely correlates with multiplicity of options. It's because we're stuck with a few evenly crap options that we still have any real choices.

The cross-class system could use a lot of work to make it something engaging, but simply opening it up will only do the opposite.

[ErikMynhier]

ErikMynhier is right, whether it's a paranoid opinion or not. Eventually there would be a couple of specific abilities for each class causing players to only be hindering themselves if they didn't use them. I can see your thought process but it's not such a good idea in the long run.

I wouldn't call my opinion paranoid, that denotes undo stress. If you want to see what an open system looks like, go look at ESO. Almost all skills open and only a few are used.

[TankHunter678]

For example, a rogue with Blizzard II.

Which would be utterly useless since Rogues do not stack INT. Nor do they have much of an MP pool to begin with.

It would be a case of a false choice that does more to hinder your class then it would enhance the gameplay of the class. Like with any class and cross-classing savage blade for instance.

[RLofOBFL]

That would make PLD, DRK, WAR, WHM, AST, MNK, DRG, & NIN's damage shoot up & make ranged much much more useless & insanely more outdamaged by most classes. Raging Strikes, Straight shot & BFB during Berserk? What is that like 14K Fell Cleave crits in 240? It would be terribly unbalanced. The only thing that makes ranged damage strong is Raging Strikes/B4B/HawkEye, without that unique trait they'd be weaker than WAR. So by freeing cross class you're essentially destroying ranged viability(except mp regen) & begging dpsing tanks to equip B4B(let's face it all WARs Mt or Ot). & That's just the top of it.




The reason they let you select those specific skills is bc the game would be broken & unbalanced if you could choose anything.

[Ametrine]

This kind of cross-class freedom was literally one of the first things that went after Yoshi-P and his team took over 1.0, because it was an unbalanced mess and completely ignored established Final Fantasy iconography.

That said, I COULD imagine crazy amounts of cross-class skills being the schtick of Red Mage as it was always intended as a jack of all trades, master of none role.

(Except apparently in XI, where it was a DoT heavy DPS, which is half of the Arcanist's damaging moveset, so we likely won't even see that version in FFXIV.)

[Alaltus]

This kind of cross-class freedom was literally one of the first things that went after Yoshi-P and his team took over 1.0, because it was an unbalanced mess and completely ignored established Final Fantasy iconography.

They went overboard on both accounts; the original system was too open and now it's so restrictive it destroys the point of having it. They need to find the middleground however that should take form.

[Violyre]

I'm going to cross-class Provoke, Flash, Invigorate, Quelling Strikes, and Bloodbath on my WHM. Screw the norms! It's my money every month, I'm going to play how I want!

In fact, forget the current cross-class! Let me choose any ability I want from any class or job! I want to summon Titan to tank for my WAR! I want to cast Physick on BLM sitting in Cleric's Stance! Bring back NIN tanking!

[Melorie]

The things that people suggest for an illusion of customization are amazing, seriously. Definetly don't want that.

[Lone-wolfe-02]

No. /10char