Yoshi-P on Character Growth

[Kaurie]

Let me rephrase what I said. I think character growth does not work in FFXI's formula. It could with WoW's, but would come with it's own hardships. It's artifact system is brilliant, but can work against the armory system because WoW has a one class per character rule, FFXIV doesn't. It's world quests and clever quest level sync system would work great for FFXIV if built from the ground up right in an expansion.

Yeah, I completely agree. I think FFXIV needs to design systems that work with what they have now. The issue is, it sounds like Yoshi is saying that they are not going to design systems to work with what they have, because systems that don't work with what they have won't work.

Not meaningless. Easy. The two are synonymous,

You immediately contradicted yourself, saying it's not meaningless, but it's a word synonymous with meaningless? Either way, easy is not synonymous with meaningless.

What I'm saying is skill tress aren't going to have a significant impact when a bear bones rotation will clear it no problem. A system needs weight; a sense you're accomplishing something. If I can spec Dragoon fifty different ways yet nothing changes due to the content not posing enough of a threat to warrant that versatility, it lacks impact.

This makes the presumption that clearing content is more important than enjoying the experience. While I agree clearing content is important, it lacks all importance if the experience is not fun.

but that people will gravitate towards what is deemed best.

This is very true, look at Icy-veins on WoW. That said, I made an example how I use a sub-optimal talent set up on my mage, so that I enjoy the game more. When I got my mage to 110, I used icy veins build to make it the best. I hated it and stopped playing it. I then went back, re-did my talents, and am loving the job. My DPS is still adequate and I'm often top DPS in my Mythic Dungeon runs etc. I may not be Mythic Raid ready, but I am having fun while I play, and that is what is important.

Jobs differ because they play differently. A Ninja and Dragoon will have two different roles, and will play differently as a result. Skill trees aren't going to change Dragoon into a support DPS or tank. If they did, we might as well remove jobs entirely and just have skill tree define what people play. FFXIV just isn't designed to be that type of game.

The thing is, small changes to skills can make the class play more fluidly for you. For example, I want to play a Black Mage, I had a lot of fun with it in 2.x. However, I hate enochian and ley lines. I could talent away into something that plays a little bit more fun, so that I can enjoy BLM. It won't be my raid job (SMN), but I could play it in expert roulette and extreme primals for fun.

As for secondary stats. I, honestly, pay little attention to them except to make the Crit-det joke.

I am not sure what joke you mean? That said, how can you be so adamant that everything must be fine tuned to min-max or it is meaningless, and then not pay attention to secondary stats?

In theory. Except if that same skill tree offered a straight damage buff as a potential path. They're right back where they started because the better players chose the direct buff and outpace them all over again.Furthermore, if they do want to attempt harder content, they will gradually need to learn a proper rotation as FFXIV is designed around that philosophy. I suspect this is why Yoshi wants to simplify rotations. Blade & Soul has a skill tree system and people mostly followed the same few builds once the top tier players ironed out guides. There were some variations along the way, but not many.

That is the point though, there are a few things here. First, the better players will master the optimal set up, but that set up may be too much for some who just want to run expert or be out in the open world. This could improve their performance and enjoyability of the game. Second, providing a more fluid gameplay can be like training wheels. That is, that black mage could learn their rotation without leylines, and then talent in ley lines in later - and can master that while already being comfortable with everything else.

[Velhart]

Yeah, I completely agree. I think FFXIV needs to design systems that work with what they have now. The issue is, it sounds like Yoshi is saying that they are not going to design systems to work with what they have, because systems that don't work with what they have won't work.

In FFXIV's case, I would guess it is a resources issue in terms of going all out on new features. Blizzard has the funds and manpower to do a lot of wheel changing.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Let me rephrase what I said. I think character growth does not work in FFXI's formula. It could with WoW's, but would come with it's own hardships. It's artifact system is brilliant, but can work against the armory system because WoW has a one class per character rule, FFXIV doesn't. It's world quests and clever quest level sync system would work great for FFXIV if built from the ground up right in an expansion.

One idea I had along those lines would be to allow players to choose the difficulty of content in premade groups. Instead of having to reequip old gear to attempt fights at their relevant ilvl, you could adjust a slider to properly scale you down (none of this 240 still being massively better than 210). The devs could then build achievements around clearing content at a more challenging level or even have the Primal mounts' drop rate be influenced by your ilvl.

[Kaurie]

In FFXIV's case, I would guess it is a resources issue in terms of going all out on new features. Blizzard has the funds and manpower to do a lot of wheel changing.

And to be honest, I would have preferred that answer. Instead of making up some exaggerated example, he could have said,

"You know, we'd love to explore something like this. That said, we have a small development team and we are at our limits to keep what we are putting out balanced and fun. We are not confident we could invent or implement such a new system with the resources available."

That said, I think that they have systems in place and resources available to address this. They keep on making overly-complicated systems for things like Aquariums (just make a basic aquarium, the amount of extra junk that went into something so trivial is insane). Move those resources into something like this, and then use the features already in the game to do it (Cross class skills, Classes to Jobs, Materia etc.).

[Velhart]

And to be honest, I would have preferred that answer. Instead of making up some exaggerated example, he could have said,

"You know, we'd love to explore something like this. That said, we have a small development team and we are at our limits to keep what we are putting out balanced and fun. We are not confident we could invent or implement such a new system with the resources available."

That said, I think that they have systems in place and resources available to address this. They keep on making overly-complicated systems for things like Aquariums (just make a basic aquarium, the amount of extra junk that went into something so trivial is insane). Move those resources into something like this, and then use the features already in the game to do it (Cross class skills, Classes to Jobs, Materia etc.).

You have to be careful on how you word that. Because you don't want to throw your own company under the bus publicly.

They have a tendency to over exaggerate things like the aquarium and double cross bar. Seriously, 10-15 minutes of the presentation was about double cross bar. Can't even remember the last time they answered player questions.

But yes I did not think they would go overboard in the aquarium. I imagine people would of been fine with a generic one with set fish in there. SE just needs to step up in their challenging content and reward scheme. Right now 95% of the game is drool on your keyboard easy and the only real challenging content in the game constantly gets tampered with and not ever really balanced for Heavensward at least. We need gear/rewards in raids that will make people jump in. People wanted Coil gear in 2.0, some were willing to step up their game to get it. Then 3.0 comes and basically gives away that gear's aesthetic over time like candy. Also no, simply being able to dye it is not the solution.

Character growth does form around sense of accomplishment. I think simply stepping up the difficulty in some content would do wonders with that. Relic does not have to be just a literal grind(go back to Chimera/Hydra fights), dungeons can be taken on at the same levels of Amdapor Keep and Wanderer's Palace before they were nerfed. These challenges were not hard, but they were not insultingly easy like content we have been getting this expansion. The once meals now have just become unsatisfying junk food that quickly gets devoured with no sense of accomplishment. It just feels like SE caters to bad players, not casuals necessarily. I usually viewed casual as a person who cannot devote an amount of time that a midcore/hardcore can. I don't believe it means "dumb it down." You can make a casual player feel like they are progressing by giving a curve on challenging content, step by step.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

You immediately contradicted yourself, saying it's not meaningless, but it's a word synonymous with meaningless? Either way, easy is not synonymous with meaningless.

Evidently, I need another cup of coffee. I meant to say aren't synonymous. lol

This makes the presumption that clearing content is more important than enjoying the experience. While I agree clearing content is important, it lacks all importance if the experience is not fun.

Not necessarily. You also presume people will have more fun adjust their character builds. And that this novelty will not inevitably wear thin when content itself doesn't provide an impact. If I adjust my character to play a certain way, I want to notice those changes. Dungeons and whatnot wouldn't allow for that because they lack any demand. To give a recent example. I swapped a piece of gear while running Nidhogg EX and immediately noticed my DPS jump up. Skill trees need an equivalent feeling or what purpose to they serve? Okay, it might fun to mess around with silly combinations. But the developers can't build a system around a potential novelty.

For what it's worth, I actually find dungeons fun, even if they are easy. I just really wish they would drop Expert Roulette. Two dungeons gets boring after a while.

This is very true, look at Icy-veins on WoW. That said, I made an example how I use a sub-optimal talent set up on my mage, so that I enjoy the game more. When I got my mage to 110, I used icy veins build to make it the best. I hated it and stopped playing it. I then went back, re-did my talents, and am loving the job. My DPS is still adequate and I'm often top DPS in my Mythic Dungeon runs etc. I may not be Mythic Raid ready, but I am having fun while I play, and that is what is important.

I don't know WoW enough to compare in detail, but Mythic Dungeons are considered challenging, yes? This is where I feel FFXIV could improve on. That immediate impact is likely why you loved it. Unfortunately, you generally wouldn't notice that change outside of raid in XIV due to its ease. Velhart also made a good point in that WoW only allows for one class per character. FFXIV attempts flexibility by encouraging you to play a different class entirely if you've not happy with how one progresses.

But I suspect Yoshi is hesitant of skill trees because of people's tendency to follow the leader, so to speak.

The thing is, small changes to skills can make the class play more fluidly for you. For example, I want to play a Black Mage, I had a lot of fun with it in 2.x. However, I hate enochian and ley lines. I could talent away into something that plays a little bit more fun, so that I can enjoy BLM. It won't be my raid job (SMN), but I could play it in expert roulette and extreme primals for fun.

Fair enough. Blood of the Dragoon annoys me to no end at times. That being said, from a developer perspective, they have to weigh in whether a system like that would impact the game enough to be worthwhile. I'm not so certain it would be. Personally? I would like them to focus more on the content itself; expanding the raids; making more dungeons like Weeping City, because I think once the novelty wears off, people who were bored before will still be bored again.

I am not sure what joke you mean? That said, how can you be so adamant that everything must be fine tuned to min-max or it is meaningless, and then not pay attention to secondary stats?

Because Crit and Det are basically the go to melds for most jobs, MrHappy started saying to anyone who asked what they should meld if they "checked their Crit-det Report." I am not adamant about it, personally. I'm just acknowledging what people usually do. And I was just being facetious since secondary stats pretty much boil down to Crit over Det with some occasional ACC.

That is the point though, there are a few things here. First, the better players will master the optimal set up, but that set up may be too much for some who just want to run expert or be out in the open world. This could improve their performance and enjoyability of the game. Second, providing a more fluid gameplay can be like training wheels. That is, that black mage could learn their rotation without leylines, and then talent in ley lines in later - and can master that while already being comfortable with everything else.

But that setup isn't remotely required in expert or open world content. That has been my whole point. You don't need to follow any rotation outside progression, hence why I don't see a skill tree system having any impact. You could queue into Hullbreaker Hard, never once touch Enochian and do just fine. Once you did want to learn the Black Mage rotation, you'd be largely starting over because of how FFXIV's current abilities are designed. I just don't see it being as helpful as you're making it out to be.

And to be honest, I would have preferred that answer. Instead of making up some exaggerated example, he could have said,

"You know, we'd love to explore something like this. That said, we have a small development team and we are at our limits to keep what we are putting out balanced and fun. We are not confident we could invent or implement such a new system with the resources available."

That said, I think that they have systems in place and resources available to address this. They keep on making overly-complicated systems for things like Aquariums (just make a basic aquarium, the amount of extra junk that went into something so trivial is insane). Move those resources into something like this, and then use the features already in the game to do it (Cross class skills, Classes to Jobs, Materia etc.).

In Yoshi's defense, I imagine Square Enix wouldn't be overly keen about him being that direct. After all, it's basically him saying they're too cheap.

I do kind of agree with you here though. They do like making overly elaborate fluff content (we're all looking at you Lord of Verminion.)

[Kaurie]

Evidently, I need another cup of coffee. I meant to say aren't synonymous. lol

oh, lol

Not necessarily. You also presume people will have more fun adjust their character builds. And that this novelty will not inevitably wear thin when content itself doesn't provide an impact. If I adjust my character to play a certain way, I want to notice those changes. Dungeons and whatnot wouldn't allow for that because they lack any demand. To give a recent example. I swapped a piece of gear while running Nidhogg and immediately noticed my DPS jump up. Skill trees need an equivalent feeling or what purpose to they serve? Okay, it might fun to mess around with silly combinations. But the developers can't build a system around a potential novelty.

You're misunderstanding my presumption, and that may be because I personally would have fun adjusting character builds. I am not saying the act of finding a character build is fun, what I am saying is that one may find a character build that suits their playstyle more - so that they can have fun while engaging in their rotation. This may be a build that is more involved, or one that is more passive - depending on the playstyle of the player. So it's less about the absolute end result (Yay I got 1600 DPS vs 1400 or whatever) and more the actual action of implementing your rotation.

For what it's worth, I actually find dungeons fun, even if they are easy. I just really wish they would drop Expert Roulette. Two dungeons gets boring after a while.

I too find dungeons fun, but not so much in Heavensward. I wish they'd make them less linear, for starters.

I don't know WoW enough to compare in detail, but Mythic Dungeons are considered challenging, yes? This is where I feel FFXIV could improve on. That immediate impact is likely why you loved it. Unfortunately, you generally wouldn't notice that change outside of raid in XIV due to its ease. Velhart also made a good point in that WoW only allows for one class per character. FFXIV attempts flexibility by encouraging you to play a different class entirely if you've not happy with how one progresses.

But I suspect Yoshi is hesitant of skill trees because of people's tendency to follow the leader, so to speak.

Yes, Mythic Dungeons are somewhat challenging (more than regular dungeons here). In WoW, there are 3 levels of dungeon difficulty, normal, heroic and mythic. All legion dungeons scale, so the normal is more for leveling, heroic is the easy-mode max level difficulty and mythic is where you actually need to pay attention (i.e. interrupts, avoid aoes etc.) I'd say FFXIV places there dungeons between heroic and mythic difficulty. Legion also introduced Mythic+ which adds extra difficulties per tier (up to like Mythic +10).

I agree, FFXIV has a different system than WoW and would naturally need to model a talent system that worked with what they have. I think this could be done with Cross Classing and having more jobs branch off classes. Unfortunately, I am unhappy with how almost all the jobs in Heavensward progress. I only like the derivatives of Arcanist (Scholar/Summoner). I think that may be why I really like the class->job split, as I feel that they did a good job with SMN/SCH.

I understand Yoshi's stance, I just disagree with it.

Fair enough. Blood of the Dragoon annoys me to no end at times. That being said, from a developer perspective, they have to weigh in whether a system like that would impact the game enough to be worthwhile. I'm not so certain it would be. Personally? I would like them to focus more on the content itself; expanding the raids; making more dungeons like Weeping City, because I think once the novelty wears off, people who were bored before will still be bored again.

I agree, I think they need to focus on making content more engaging and lasting. I do think that making ones combat actions more enjoyable would help with this. I could get different experiences running expert if I ran in with different jobs. The thing is, as I just said previously, I hate all non-arcanist derived jobs. I used to love almost all jobs in 2.x, but in 3.x, I just don't find them fun. That said, I'd be very happy if they focused more on these things. It is really shocking to me how much of the patch notes are on content like Aquariums, Wondrous Tails, Squadrons etc vs actual combat content.

Because Crit and Det are basically the go to melds for most jobs, MrHappy started saying to anyone who asked what they should meld if they "checked their Crit-det Report." I am not adamant about it, personally. I'm just acknowledging what people usually do. And I was just being facetious since secondary stats pretty much boil down to Crit over Det with some occasional ACC.

Each class does have it's own stat weights, and for most that is CRIT -> DET. However, sometimes SKS or SPS supercedes DET or CRIT (at least SPS, it's been awhile since I looked at anything other than SMN, BLM and healer stat weights). Also, notably, the weights make a difference for DET vs SKS if you are using Tier IV material. Where 6 DET is still better than 9 SKS for NIN, but not so for DRG (IIRC).

But that setup isn't remotely required in expert or open world content. That has been my whole point. You don't need to follow any rotation outside progression, hence why I don't see a skill tree system having any impact. You could queue into Hullbreaker Hard, never once touch Enochian and do just fine. Once you did want to learn the Black Mage rotation, you'd be largely starting over because of how FFXIV's current abilities are designed. I just don't see it being as helpful as you're making it out to be.

Not required, but more enjoyable. Just because I am running expert, doesn't mean I am ok doing 500 DPS. Note that I am making a comparison of Mage in WoW to Black mage in FFXIV where they have basically an identical spell (ley lines and rune of power). In WoW, I've talented away from that, but have now mastered my rotation well enough, that if I start to raid, I am comfortable bring Rune of Power back in. I also find the alternate talent is more useful for open world activities, where I am constantly moving.


Ultimately, I think it boils down to this for me. I have no problem making myself optimal, and the only thing I do in this game is optimize my stats and rotation and raid 5 hours per week. That said, with every week that has passed since June of last year, I have become less and less interested in this game. I want them to focus on making things more enjoyable, as my enjoyment has been lacking.

[MomomiMomi]

To give a recent example. I swapped a piece of gear while running Nidhogg EX and immediately noticed my DPS jump up. Skill trees need an equivalent feeling or what purpose to they serve? Okay, it might fun to mess around with silly combinations. But the developers can't build a system around a potential novelty.

It seems that the only impact that matters to you is to see your performance improve. I think that's why you understand why people want changes. People who want more options aren't saying that they want them for performance reasons. They want them for fun.

Here you're using an example of "my DPS went up, so I can feel the impact of the change." For me, no matter how much my DPS goes up, if the way I'm playing has not changed, I don't feel the impact of my gear. It has to change how I play for it to have an impact. If my spells are going off faster, if one spell is improved over the others, if my DoTs are improved over my other spells. These are changes in how I play the game. These are changes I can feel. I don't feel my DPS going up in the current system, I can only see it.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Impact on performance is the only thing that matters. If you're not doing your role better, why take a sub par skill? It's like asking a MCH to tank while a PLD spams GB.

[MomomiMomi]

Impact on performance is the only thing that matters to me. If you're not doing your role better, why take a sub par skill? It's like asking a MCH to tank while a PLD spams GB.

Fixed that for you.