Wishlist of Changes To the Game

[Shurrikhan]

Whoops, where did the time go? Oh, down there.

• Glamour System revised. Just add the item to your Mirage Prism storage (permanent and basically limitless, much like a series of 1-point achievements) with a given item. Perhaps use a second, likely cheaper and universal, item to open up the slot or gear piece to then be glamoured to anything in your Mirage Prism. Maybe someway to store multiple glamours or glamour sets at once for instant and free swapping.
• Cloth physics have been drastically improved.
• Clipping has been drastically improved.
• Most hairstyles now have multiple sub-versions (such as tied up, to the side, bangs clasped back, etc.) that can be swapped between freely. This may sometimes be done by default to avoid clipping.
• More face styles have been added. Details previously linked to face style are now available separately (e.g. scales/horns).
• More sliders have been added, such as for leanness, musculature (on races previously missing that slider), and the butt.
• The player can now create "expression sets" for his or her character, which package different default animations, reactions, and emotes of the character. New and adjusted animations have been added, and certain racial animations are now multi-race.
  
  
• An in-game battle parser has been added, complete with optional advanced logging. Defaults to "relative potency", where critical strike chance and basic damage variance are normalized, and the ostensible effect of primary (power) stats are reduced. Everything you could see on FF logs, and more, with plenty of options to balance level of detail against processing weight.
• The "Manual" (replacing "Actions & Traits") has been greatly improved, and newly includes:

• Renderings of the selected skills in use, along with expanded explanations, tips, and personal notes.
• A new tab — Regimen: Includes a large series of active help tips, tactics, strategies, and associated renderings, to review anywhere from the basics (the "big idea" to clearing a pack of mobs as quickly as possible, to freeing up tank/healer damage, to conserving CDs, "pay-offs" and other breakpoints, etc.) to obscure tricks (timing Jump to ignore a knockback). Many of these mirror certain new scaling/specialty challenges and lessons available through the Training Hall.
• A new tab — Kata*: Allows for the creation and simulation of various rotations, exploration of windows, and the revealing of various breakpoints.
• You may assign a given glamour set to the render, on your own character or the one preset for the particular job or tactic.
• These three tabs, Skills, Regimen, and Kata*, are shown vertically across the left or right edge, while the class and job tabs themselves are shown horizontally across the top or bottom.
• The base UI for the "Manual" is more condensed by default; the section that includes the renderings and/or additional notes is on a fly-out portion of the pane, expandable/contractible. The overall look should be slimmer, more efficient, and more aesthetically pleasing.

• New undermechanics have diversified weapon skills and weapon types and have paved the way for systems of suppression (Stagger), comboing (alike to skill-chains, but better), 'field' and 'drawn' effects, and a revised elemental wheel (that gives more than just a rotary of superiority/inferiority).
• Enemy AI has been vastly improved.
• Enmity systems have been revised. A tank is now more about "thwarting" enemy offensive attempts than merely "meat-shielding", and enmity is a much more enemy-dependent metric. In reality, it has been replaced by the concept of enemy "focus".
• Accuracy and RNG-mitigation (dodge, block, and parry) systems have been revised. Percentile hits (e.g. 'glancing blows') are now possible. Virtually any combination of and dependency on flat and percentile mitigation is now possible.
• Status effects have been overhauled. No enemy is ever fully "immune" to a given status effect, unless that status effect is an "absolute" (e.g. Death, or Doom). Additionally, the effectiveness of most status effects is now proportionate to the stats and resistances of the affected enemy. In effect, their effectiveness has been leveled somewhat; a Blind on a weaker enemy may mitigate less per miss caused, due to the lower damage possible anyways, but as a rule of thumb the amount of misses caused will be higher, creating a more dynamic %mitigation, but a flatter total mitigation over the effect between varying strengths of afflicted enemies. Diminishing returns have similarly been overhauled according to "Stagger" formulas (above). This should allow us to create spammable status effects in the future that can nonetheless remain balanced.
  
  
• Secondary stats on gear have been partly trimmed but the total number of secondary stat effects have been increased. A portion of the primary stat or combinations thereof may now be allocated to various secondary-stat-like purposes (e.g. Agility+Intelligence > Alacrity, Vitality + Spirit (replacing Piety) > Tenacity). Will (Determination), Speed (Skill and Spell Speed combined), and Break (Critical Strike) remain the primary offensive stats.
• The "Optomize" function in the character pane has been revised, and allows the setting of certain break-points (manually and/or duplicated from your Kata* page of the Manual) and calculated or manually set weights. By default, it asks you simply to pick a desired gameplay form (e.g. based on rotational breakpoints), among choices sorted by expectation of overall output. This can automatically combine primary stats for the appropriate secondaries.
• Gear (weapons and armor) now have weight, which can reduce certain outputs unless of sufficient Strength. This is now the only thing to stop a given class from carrying multiple weapons and higher armor classes, should they desire.
• All classes and jobs make use of all primary stats to some degree. Few if any gear is locked out by class, though artifact armor is still a thing, and now has new means of empowerment, making it more than just an arbitrarily placed ilvl step.

  If you want to play as a Support-heavy Monk, through increased use of Chakra, you can. If you want to play as a bursty elemental Monk, you can. If you want to play as a speedy, lean, elusive Dragoon with a Freya coat and over-the-top geirskogul potencies with a primarily Agi/Int/sub-Piety build, you can. That said, you may have trouble making use of, say, a Strength build on a gunner, once you've already found the biggest gun and have no use for yet another bomb or heavy armor (remember, these have weight).

• Gathering and crafting no longer require gear of their own. Rather, they make high use of certain primary stats, and gear that was traditionally there's is now gatherer- or crafter- optimal, giving higher effect efficiency per stat point. Gatherer gear, especially, tends to carry a higher amount of physical combat class stats, and crafter gear tends to carry caster class stats, roughly proportionate to how similar they may look to those gears respectively (e.g. they're both jerkins/doublets), while carrying a high amount of what might be called "open world" stats — HP/MP recovery, etc.
• Classes can now carry multiple weapon types, should they desire, and split their skill pool between the respective jobs as they like. Certain redundancies (e.g. basic combos - True Thrust, Vorpal Thrust, Full Thrust vs. Spinning Edge, Gust Slash, Aeolian Edge) cost no slots to duplicate, and are instead swapped automatically as the weapon is swapped. Gathering and Crafting do not consume combat skill slots. Skills that cannot be cross-classed but can be multi-classed will still require the correct weapon.
• Classes now carry much more extensive, integral, and gameplay-affecting traits. Some of these can be cross-classed and most can be multi-classed. Their synergy internally and with other classes has been highly improved.
• Certain job skills, such as Goring Blade, have been moved to the class.
• Numerous other skills have been moved to psuedo-tiers that better reach acquisition at a time where the skill would actually be useful and noticeable. (E.g. Rampart is no longer given at level 2, where you do not even have an AoE by which to make use of it.)
  
  
• The mechanics of most jobs have been similarly revised in order to maximize the ratio of control, identity, and enjoyable playstyle to buttons required to execute said choices and playstyle.

• Combo systems have been largely revised, in order to give situational use to abilities previously useless without their sequential prerequisites. These "combos" still have heavy impacts, but are now broader and less restrictive, and may now vary mechanically from class to class, e.g. Lancer's "Drive" vs. Marauder's "Storm".

• Certain core themes have been made ubiquitous components of their respective jobs playstyles, rather than being limited to certain abilities. E.g.

• Rogues can now re-enter Stealth in combat when out of enemies' focus, with bonus damage and/or effects given to any and all attacks when done from stealth, while Ninja's Huton now generates wind resource, of which added attack speed is just a (main) part, and may generate further wind resource through certain attacks, while also able to use Smoke Bomb and Suiton (and, slightly, Huton, Katon, and its Shades) to more easily re-enter stealth. Trick Attack and Sneak Attack have been removed. Its rotation, and use of Stealth, has become more situational and opportunistic, and a bit less rotational.
• Dragoon's Jump, Spineshatter Dive, Dragonfire Dive, and Elusive Jump, for instance, have all been bundled into a "Jump" mechanic which can be used in any of those ways.
• The Pugilist and Monk's "Fists of <Element>" skills have been overhauled and now apply impactful situational and rotational bonuses, in addition to their niches. Pugilist gameplay now revolves more heavily around internal energy, and has greater dynamics in speed and force, while Monk evolves that into control of Chakra (revised), complete with more support and burst functions.

• Certain previously flavor portions of jobs have now become much more involved. Dragon-hunting (such as through additional class quests and their Bestiary; see below) is a bigger deal for Dragoons, lore and songs for Bards, and engineering (probably the best example) for Machinists. Machinists are actually the one exception to the all-traits/skills-at-cap rule (see below); they have excess skill choices available by way of creating their own attachments, bombs, and turrets.

• "AP", a new metric used for "gearing" in a sense, has been added, and is generated through certain challenges (such as those that would normally increase one's ilvl), and can be used to allocate additional stats into each class and job (up to an amount capped by exp in the given job), but in turn the stats gained from gear itself has been slightly decreased leading up to level cap and significantly especially thereafter. The overall effect is almost identical, apart from a smaller dependence on RNG, and that this new system is far, far more alt-supportive. May eventually be used for systems similar to "merit points", but nothing of that sort is currently planned.
• Tomes have been replaced with "legend" in PvE and "prestige" in PvP—these gear-pools are pretty well cross-usable—which are built both on a job-by-job basis and generally, with certain time-gated caps, such as by week or by server event (say, if community participation is necessary to unlock a new raid or make progress in a "war effort"), but any amount of either missed during a given window will roll over into the next, increasing its maximum. (This does not apply to windows enclosed entirely in a period in which the player was not subscribed.) In effect, combined with the AP changes, this makes it so you can fully gear up all alt jobs/classes, given enough time, even when on the same character. Rather than new generations of currency, "legend" and "prestige" more smoothly come to require increasingly more difficult / higher level content to raise as one gains their currencies.
• "Experience" and skill/trait acquisition has been revamped. Classes and jobs no longer keep to a linear path of development and skill acquisition. They are multi-faceted and multi-root, with related tasks boosting experience in related directions, while general experience can be alloted manually. Much of that experience will carry over into other jobs. The combination of this revamped "XP" and the above "AP" should smooth and incentivize alt-leveling, as would have ideally been the case with Physical Level before. After having saved the world and slain countless demi-gods as a Dragoon, you do not suddenly then become a cripple who can be murdered by a squirrel when you start training as a Rogue. You should see a longer, fuller progression of zero-to-hero, rather than several disparate lines thereof. All traits and skills will be learned by maximum rank. (See below.)
• Class and job experience progression is now given in "ranks". Only the character him- or herself has "levels". The higher the player level, the more experience gained. The further the progress into a particular class, the higher the experience costs increase. Rank increases with progress into the skills and traits of the given class or job. Rank cannot exceed player level. Leveling a single job to 60 will take longer than previously, but leveling multiple will now be quicker.
• Numerous class quests and storylines have been added. There is now more than one trainer per class, potentially, and certain skills or traits may be learned from trainers of classes different from your own; not all are limited to the associated class, though they will primarily grant that class their experience instead.
• Many of these class quests interlink, and may even make mention of needing something new out of you.
• Your class and job quests' section of your Journals make note of your decisions in these quests, and will always end with information on where to go for your next quest, should one be ready for you. The most recently page is loaded by default upon tabbing to the class or job's section, and a "most recent" shortcut has been added, making it easy to find where to go next, and what to expect.
• Jobs are now a simple matter of opening up a new, advanced path of development at cost of multi-classing and several cross-class opportunities.
• Where multiple jobs link to a single class (e.g. Scholar and Summoner to Arcanist, or Thief, Assassin, and Ninja to Rogue*), all AP and any Exp generated beyond the original class are allotted separately.
• Classes themselves are now viable in a much larger proportion of content.
• Classes have been added to certain previously job-only jobs, e.g. Gunner to Machinist, while the cross-class lucrativeness of other classes (such as Rogue) have been improved.

• The Gunner class is now an *optional* La Noscean class. It can be acquired automatically upon acquiring the Machinist job, automatically granting 30 ranks, granting access to so many traits and abilities of your choosing. Any experience gained in or allocated to the job prior to that will be added atop those 30. To put it another way, if you were r16 when you picked up Machinist, that experience from 1-16 would be worth, say, 31-36, so you'd have simply been boosted, effectively, 20 ranks.

• A far greater selection of gear can now be upgraded, but these upgrades require use of the same content that the usual upgrade would have come from (e.g. improving the i90 DRG artifact armor via Second Coil).
• Crafting has been vastly revamped. Though many conveniences have been added in turn, crafting itself tends to take realistically more steps, with more task-related activities within the crafting process, rather than the same ball-of-light, CP-Durability-&-Quality mini-game for every craft.
• The complexity that can be involved in crafting products has been vastly increased. Each material now has undermechanics, or "properties" of its own, which can partly be learned intrinsically (e.g. from online sources and adaptation) and partly through "mastery" (in-game metric advancement), as can the "techniques" involved. Combinations and the ingredients attachable and the techniques used to create a product are technically limitless, though reasonable guidelines are given inside the Trade Book and optional UI components in the crafting process itself, mostly to match the limitations necessary for simplification enough for the game. That means a tremendous amount of custom armor and weaponry, but within (renderable) reason, and according to a quality scalar within the viewing player's options menu.
• As with certain materials, certain "techniques" can only be acquired through raid content.
• Crafting experience and skill acquisition has also been revamped; specific materials, products, and techniques can now be mastered, while linear gating of crafts has been vastly reduced. The acquisition and study of others' (e.g. looted) items and the use of one's own now also produced experience in the related crafts. Crafting should be more natural, intuitive, and attractive to develop alongside your combat and gathering classes. Certain techniques and materials may overlap into other classes' experience, sourcing or being sourced by them.
• Gathering may now take place virtually anywhere, and is more about "finding" nodes than hammering away at them. Or to put it another way, there are no nodes; only an every changing flow of materials harvestable from the terrain, across various possible areas in varying quantities and tables.
• The "Field Guide" (replacing the Gathering Log, for starters) has been enlarged to include your various tests and dig histories complete with locations, lore tidbits, and even theories on how the land might affect monsters in the area — sourcing and overlapping a bit with the Bestiary below. Yes, it (and your Trade Book) may include combat tips, in certain cases. E.g. How do you demolish a seemingly indestructible adamantite golem? Your Field Guide and Trade Book may, by study of adamantite properties and that of the surrounding land, shed some light on the answer.
• A "Bestiary" (replacing the hunting log, for starters) has been added to the game, taking mention of lore tidbits, assigning bonus exp potential, and recording monsters slain, their properties, and so forth. Additional content types may be later linked to this feature, and certain other functions may be moved or duplicated into it.
• Your Journal now includes sections for "Lore" (including story generalizations, tidbits picked up from NPCs, FATEs, Hunts, etc.), and a player "Diary"*. *The Diary itself will probably be titular subsection called "Journal", while the previous Journal form as a summary of Quest Logs will be a tab within the larger Journal called "Quests".

Oooooh, just one... Well, that's just impossible.