[dev1033] Ideas for a Two-Tier Class System: Jobs on Top of Weapon Specializations

[Shura]

Being able to sculpt classes is good and all but pointless combination's are in the end just that.. Pointless... Even in FFXI with its limited customization, you don't see people running around as DRK/BST for hnms, or WHM/DRG just because u get to call a pet. Everyone wants this freedom of customization but they don't realize that its the cause of the problem, This doesn't apply to everyone, the smart few will use that freedom of customization to create a effective combination, the other 70% will just abuse it for stupid reasons. Perfect example would be the freedom in gear that currently exists in ffxiv, the smart few understand the benefit of wearing gear the same lv as rank but the other 70% wear gear because it looks cool. Skills need to be limited and classes need to be limited imo;

even now in the game, some customization is just ridiculous... for example take Archer's skill Wide Volley - "Launch a wide-ranged assault, increasing attack power and dealing projectile damage to the target and nearby enemies." This skill can be used on any class, someone explain to me how a MRD,GLD,PUG can do a wide-ranged assault dealing projectile damage with an axe,sword,fist? Or how an Archer can do slashing dmg with skull sunder.

[OmegaNovaios]

Personally I'd rather have a few people running around on a pointless setup if most people can make a fun, unique, and useful setup that is a defined role at the same time and as you said you don't see people running around as DRK/BST then probably you won't see people running around as DRK/pet class in FFXIV. So would you have SE remove sub jobs from FFXI so people can't have choices like PLD/WAR to PLD/BLU or RDM/WHM to RDM/SCH just to eliminate the possibility that someone could go DRK/BST. If not then why deny adding practically the same thing to FFXIV. IMO more customization = more fun, however it is harder to balance, but if it can be balanced, roles can be defined, and uniqueness is present then in turn it WILL be more fun.

As for gear yes that needs rank/class requirements and as for using wide volley with an axe I don't know what to you other, but either way this thread's proposal doesn't make this worse.

[Carpe]

That's arguably the first thing they need to touch. The armoury in essence is the weak link in any proposal to fix things. It's inherent idea of flexibly is flaws beyond a few patches.

This is how it currently works:
"OK who wants to tank?"
"I do" equips proper skill combination -tanks monster
everyone else /sit

Ok who wants to DD? 10 spots
-people equip skil combos BR spots
/sit

Whether you're a arc or a glad or anything doesn't matter, because it takes 3 seconds to leave the party and become that role. Everyone is the exact same you are sitting in the side lines or doing something anyone else can do.

Arguably the only real role that is unique at this point is the healer, since only DoM can AoE. and Arc only because of AoE range.

It's basically a clone wars. Just because you have roles doesn't make you any more special. /leave party /join party is all that seperate everyone.

The armory system breeds clones basically. You are role outsourced at the drop of a dime, because anyone can be anything simply leaving a party.

A system combination on top of another combinations only makes that 3 second /leave party into 10 seconds /leave party.

Let me try and clear this up by clarifying the idea of what I'm going to call Compounded Penalties.

Spells and Abilities will now favor a WEAPON CLASS (the weapon that taught you the spell/ability) and ONE or MORE TITLES in addition to being optimized for a given RANK.

To use CURE as an example again:

CURE
Conjury Optimal Rank: 4
Favors: WHM, PLD, etc.

This gives me three different variables/affinities that I have to meet for fully optimizing this ability: weapon class, title, and rank.

(Assuming All Optimal Rank)

WHM/CON
Weapon Class:Since you are using CON as your weapon class you meet this affinity.
Title: Since Cure favors WHM, you meet this affinity.
Rank: Since you are r4+, you meet this affinity.
3/3 = 100% effective

PLD/GLA
Weapon Class:Since you are using GLA you DO NOT meet this affinity
Title: Since Cure favors PLD, you do meet this affinity.
Rank: you meet this affinity.
2/3 let's say is 75% effective.

DRK/MRD
Weapon Class: Since you are using MRD, don't meet affinity
Title: Since Cure doesn't favor DRK, you don't meet this affinity
Rank: you are r4+ you meet this affinity
1/3 let's say is 50% effective.

Additionally,

WHM/THM
Weapon Class: do not meet this affinity, since it is base CON
Title: you do meet this affinity
Rank: you meet this affinity
2/3 = 75% effective

While your Cure is less effective with base THM than with base CON, you still have now a 100% effective sacrifice to make up for it. Also, your WHM title is going to give you healing bonus, so let's say arbitrarily you get +20% healing then your WHM/THM is cure=95%, and sacrifice=120%.

This doesn't have to cut off by 25% each time, these are just arbitrary numbers to illustrate an abstract concept. If your rank drops below the optimal rank your effectiveness for that spell is further affected by a greater compounded penalty.

Let's look at the effect of this when choosing to act out a role like "tank":

PLD/GLA
Rampart (+GLA, +PLD) = 100
Phalanx (+GLA, +PLD) = 100
Sentinel (+GLA, +PLD) = 100
Provoke (+GLA, +PLD) = 100
Defender (-GLA, +PLD) = 75
Foresight (-GLA, +PLD) = 75
Featherfoot (-GLA, -PLD) = 50
Defensive Bonus (PLD) = 100
Shield Mastery (PLD) = 100
Fealty (PLD) = 100

BLM/GLA
Rampart (+GLA, -BLM) = 75
Phalanx (+GLA, -BLM) = 75
Sentinel (+GLA, -BLM) = 75
Provoke (+GLA, -BLM) = 75
Defender (-GLA, -BLM) = 50
Foresight (-GLA, -BLM) = 50
Featherfoot (-GLA, -BLM) = 50
Elemental Seal (BLM) = 100
Magic Attack Bonus (BLM) = 100
Conserve MP (BLM) = 100

Do you think that the BLM/GLA will be able to tank nearly as effectively as the PLD/GLA? No. And it shouldn't because BLM shouldn't be able to steal the role of tank that is associated with a PLD. However that doesn't mean that sometimes, for a very particular situation, I might want to use a title with a weapon class that doesn't usually have that much synergy. Like I might decide to use BLM/MRD to level up solo because I decided that I wanted to balance out my use of TP and MP for a particular solo session.

This system leaves options open to you but encourages/discourages certain choices, especially those that are at extreme opposites of what you would expect.

[Carpe]

Your right there is a big difference between WHM/CON and DRK/LNC but that difference already exists between CON and LNC. If you feel that there does not need to be a defining role difference between WHM/CON and WHM/THM then my question to you is why even add this system, CON and THM are similar as it is and if you just want the skills from WHM Job title, then just add those skills to CON or/and THM and the other can just equip it, the way the system is now; why go through the trouble of adding a new system.

The whole idea of adding titles is that it gives you something to map the hodgepodge of different role related abilities that you learn from weapon classes on to something that helps you define yourself, like a job.

Adding the WHM abilities to CON or THM doesn't help I think it just makes a bigger mess than we already had to begin with.

People don't want to just say "hey I'm a healer" than want to identify with a particular class/role in a deeper sense. When you play a final fantasy game, you don't want to be some bland weapons expert or some bland/flavorless a little-bit-of-everything like CON and THM you want to be a traditional FF job something that has a history of lore behind it with characters and story that resonate with your personality.

I know there is little difference between WHM/THM and WHM/CON but I really don't think it matters as long as there is a difference between WHM and BLM. The differences between WHM/THM and WHM/CON in this system are just a matter of affinity. WHM/THM is going to be more optimized for THM skills and a WHM/CON is going to be more optimized for CON skills.

I do think they should do something to differentiate the weapon classes a bit more which is something I suggested before. Having each weapon class focus on different themes related to that weapon style. Like Sword might have more accuracy/consistent damage and AXE might have more Critical/Random Damage. This could be done literally by imposing these kinds of traits on the weapons themselves, or more figuratively by designing the spells and abilities you learn from these weapons around those recognized themes.

[kukurumei]

Still sounds like a complicated mess that doesn't solve the underlying problems.

People will simple choose the best skills that doesn't involve percentages, or where percentages don't matter.

It's make a never ending struggle to balancing something that shouldn't need to be balanced every single patch.

The goal here has always been to stop fighting the multi-headed hydra. All you're proposing is to one head breath fire and one head breath ice.

As from another poster, if you're trying to tip-toe around the issues and try to satisfy everyone, then it's doomed before it began.

The only feasible way such a proposal will work is to axe the armoury system, and send it to the moogles. Static skills, static traits, ala FF11.

The tree system might be a somewhat better choice in the greater scheme of things. Make it so that a path can not be back tracked. If you have cure3 you must equip cure 1 and cure 2.

[Cairdeas]

Still sounds like a complicated mess that doesn't solve the underlying problems.

People will simple choose the best skills that doesn't involve percentages, or where percentages don't matter.

It's make a never ending struggle to balancing something that shouldn't need to be balanced every single patch.

The goal here has always been to stop fighting the multi-headed hydra. All you're proposing is to one head breath fire and one head breath ice.

As from another poster, if you're trying to tip-toe around the issues and try to satisfy everyone, then it's doomed before it began.

The only feasible way such a proposal will work is to axe the armoury system, and send it to the moogles. Static skills, static traits, ala FF11.

I'd just like to point out that this system basically mimics the Blue Mage system from XI and they never need to re-balance it every week like you are afraid of.

[kukurumei]

I'd just like to point out that this system basically mimics the Blue Mage system from XI and they never need to re-balance it every week like you are afraid of.

They did. The great rebalancing of skills. Where almost every skill was audited and changed. And a good bit of blue mage skills were changed as well in that.

[Cairdeas]

Once? One time? Not a big deal. Hell if they did it once every 2 years it wouldn't be that big of a deal. WoW rebalances their entire skill trees just about every 8-12 months.

[kukurumei]

Once? One time? Not a big deal. Hell if they did it once every 2 years it wouldn't be that big of a deal. WoW rebalances their entire skill trees just about every 8-12 months.

Well another one is coming up, and almost every patch has to play with the problem of Blue and that's just one class.

Imagine 6 classes, and forget about it if they start adding classes.

And WoW rebalances but at least they have the manpower too. FF14 is so backlogged they can't even rebalance the existing broken skill sets. I don't think even WoW's manpower could do it if every skill can cross into every class. They at least have the luxury of only needing to work within the same tree.

Look at their 2010 patches. The best they could do was 4 skills, when about two dozen of them WS do nothing.

If you want 70% of your patches be rebalancing, the current system is fine, don't even have to touch it at all, the fact that they couldn't put the manpower in it is what makes this system broken.

They could have put every WS into "weapon only" and put every single good cross skills into double or triple SP requirement. Play with it long enough and the problem will go away at colossal effort.

But the moment you introduce a new skill, it's colossal effort +1.

[Carpe]

It's make a never ending struggle to balancing something that shouldn't need to be balanced every single patch..

What game has ever been made that had any significant degree of complexity that didn't need to be balanced? Tic Tac Toe?

MMOs are complex games and there isn't an MMO out there where there isn't some person on some forum posting every minute about how this class/this ability/yadayada is "completely" imbalanced.

Balancing an MMO is something that never ends. This system let's you tackle balancing issues globally (tweaking how compounded penalties work) and locally (looking at the effects of particular spells/traits/and abilities).

In FFXIV right now a lot of people have brought up that THM is imbalanced because it's been proven that it can be used to solo NMs even Dodore.

Does that mean that the system is inherently imbalanced? No.

You have to see exactly how the THM-Dodore solo is possible to see what is causing the imbalance. The main reason that's it's even possible is that Emulate doesn't seem to have a cap on the resistances it can take on and because it can target NMs like Dodore. Once you fix that single spell, soloing dodore basically become impossible. That's a simple local fix.

Once you start playtesting/people start complaining on the forums you start to uncover other imbalances and start to try and fix them.

I don't think there is anything inherent to this system that makes it imbalanced, in fact, I've thrown in some ideas to try and prevent these Master-of-Everything imbalances that some are suggesting.

Edit: Just wanted to add a link to Kaeko Leta's blog: http://kanican.livejournal.com/ where he talks about this THM/CON Dodore Solo and generally discusses balance issues in FFXIV.