A talent system

[BubblyBoar]

The problem with a talent system in this game is that if you create an alternate route of skills for a different build, you are essentially making a new job and naming it the same as one that already exists. Might as well just keep it a new job.

[Shurrikhan]

The problem with a talent system in this game is that if you create an alternate route of skills for a different build, you are essentially making a new job and naming it the same as one that already exists. Might as well just keep it a new job.

Why, though? What difference does it make how many top-of-the-umbrella job names we have, as compared to... job names and suffixes? There is truly no difference.

You're either going to have different shades of the same mechanics via a greater number of jobs, or you'll have different shades of the same mechanics across different specs of fewer jobs. If the latter idea is so misguided, then similarly why have new jobs, even? Customization is customization. How closely it clusters to prior motifs or mechanics, or how packaged the differences are in order to prevent perfect choice (the paradoxical enemy of balanced spread of choices), makes far more of a difference than whether the additions are called "specs" or "aspects" or "mutations" or "sub-classes" or simple "new jobs".

You hit the nail on the head. I remember people looking down there nose at players who didn't pick the "correct" Skill Tree, Talents, or AA depending which game it was. You don't know what misery is until people tell you that you can't experience the game because your choices led to 1% less DPS or the like.

I've played with some very, very toxic and elitist people over the years on WoW, but 1% has never been enough of a difference to be called out on, especially if the higher parsing choice is more vulnerable to lost potential. At some point, insistence will occur, be it at 3 or 5 or 10, but let's cut back on the hyperbole here.

[Belhi]

Couldn't we say the same thing about AST, but with a different name.

I mean really, you're going to have different shades of the same mechanics via a greater number of jobs, or you have different shades of the same mechanics across different specs of fewer jobs. If the latter idea is so misguided, then similarly why have new jobs, even? Customization is customization. How closely it clusters to prior motifs or mechanics, or how packaged the differences are in order to prevent perfect choice (the paradoxical enemy of balanced spread of choices), makes far more of a difference than whether the additions are called "specs" or "aspects" or "mutations" or "sub-classes" or simple "new jobs".

While WHM and AST and for that matter BRD and MCH played quite similarly they are quite different Jobs now. Infact the comparison is pretty apt. In both cases, while both sets of jobs hold similarities due to holding similar roles but their gameplay is quite different.

Yoshi P shot down specs because the time it takes to add, adjust and balance additional specs is such that it makes more sense just to add more Jobs. At least in the case of Jobs its far easier to provide distinct themes and Job mechanics since you don't have overlap. After all, just look at the issues with SMN/SCH. That is the closest we have to a class with specs and people want the two separated.

[Shurrikhan]

While WHM and AST and for that matter BRD and MCH played quite similarly they are quite different Jobs now. Infact the comparison is pretty apt. In both cases, while both sets of jobs hold similarities due to holding similar roles but their gameplay is quite different.

Yoshi P shot down specs because the time it takes to add, adjust and balance additional specs is such that it makes more sense just to add more Jobs. At least in the case of Jobs its far easier to provide distinct themes and Job mechanics since you don't have overlap. After all, just look at the issues with SMN/SCH. That is the closest we have to a class with specs and people want the two separated.

I'll agree with all but that example parading as anecdotal evidence. Pointing at SMN/SCH as a reason why specs don't work is about as apt as saying a wallet won't work because it doesn't hold money when you don't put it in the pocket. There was no need to link their experience, no reason they couldn't add job traits to differentiate how the skills work between the two jobs, no reason they couldn't give separate bonus stat allotments. Every single thing that was complained about the SMN/SCH duality wasn't due to their simply having stemmed from a shared 1-30 experience. It was all of the most basic of basic decisions thereafter.

Let's go ahead and look at some other shared class ideas others, albeit not as numerous as the "split SCH/SMN" outcry that followed the pitiful excuses to particular balancing concerns and the consumptive need for Tomes of the Keeper, e.g. Thief or Assassin from Rogue. Some considered Mug too tangential and underdeveloped to feel appropriate on NIN. Their response: move it to a new job and build around it in order to create a new synergist/saboteur in the form of Thief. The same was often said of poisons, which amounted to no more than Job Action I and II traits. Rather than suggesting they be removed outright, others suggested they become a core concept for a new Assassin. Daggers and the core skills would still be appropriate for all three, but now you manage to flesh out and center previously tacked-on components.

Or let's take another idea: adaptations, wherein just a few core skills can be modified in order to change up the way rotations and very particular mechanics work for a job. No huge aesthetic effect, but you potentially take something that may have previously turned them off to the job and changed it instead into a raison de jouer. The time (or really, understanding) necessary for balance is an understandable concern there, but I'd find it hard to see how enlarging the strike zone in such a manner would be inherently less efficient than making an entirely new job, all its animation, lore, and quests, from scratch, or could even that it could be obviously replaced by that procedure.

[BubblyBoar]

Why, though? What difference does it make how many top-of-the-umbrella job names we have, as compared to... job names and suffixes? There is truly no difference.

You're either going to have different shades of the same mechanics via a greater number of jobs, or you'll have different shades of the same mechanics across different specs of fewer jobs. If the latter idea is so misguided, then similarly why have new jobs, even? Customization is customization. How closely it clusters to prior motifs or mechanics, or how packaged the differences are in order to prevent perfect choice (the paradoxical enemy of balanced spread of choices), makes far more of a difference than whether the additions are called "specs" or "aspects" or "mutations" or "sub-classes" or simple "new jobs".

It's because jobs are thematic. PLD and WAR are not the same job. Sure, they could have had PLD with 2 specs. One spec that was defensive heavy and focused on blocking and some magic or a spec that was offensive heavy that built up a gauge for offensive attacks. And then come HW, they could have a PLD that ate up MP to buff their attacks and abilities. Then we'd have 1 tank, PLD, but 3 different specs,a ll the customization you'd want right? But you'd also only have 1 tank. What if that person doesn't like swords and shields? What if they don't like PLD's aesthetic? I guess they are SoL cause there's only 1 tank in the game, just pick a build you feel like using right?

OR, each one of those specs could be a job itself and boom, 3 choices for you to use, more that aren't the sword and shield you don't really like. In this game, jobs are essentially your specs while roles are your job. You have the tanks, with 3 choices from there. You want to be a different style tank their your PLD friend? Play WAR or DRK.

The point is, if you are going to make specs so different as to mean something, even if a different spec could use a different weapon, you might as well make a new job. FF has a long list of famous jobs and there is no need to take away what could be more jobs for the sake of specs. There is literally no need for that kind of customization other for the sake of it. Imagine the number of people that would be upset, that a game that is a love letter the the whole franchise made one of it's most iconic jobs a sword spec of BLM.

If it makes no difference to have it be a spec or a new job, then what exactly is wrong with the system we have now? The only difference is that you'd have to level that spec specifically. And I don't think this is a subtle "let me level all tanks at the same time" topic.

[Shurrikhan]

snip

I'm not saying that creating new jobs are somehow always inferior to other means of customization. I'm just saying that if customization via new specs is always doomed to fail, not just by execution but by some underlying principal, so too are new jobs.

Or, again, that—

How closely it clusters to prior motifs or mechanics, or how packaged the differences are in order to prevent perfect choice (the paradoxical enemy of balanced spread of choices), makes far more of a difference than whether the additions are called "specs" or "aspects" or "mutations" or "sub-classes" or simple "new jobs".

[BubblyBoar]

I never said specs were always doomed to fail, I said that they don't make sense in this game. As I said previously, New jobs are present over a spec system in FFXIV because the FF franchise has so many job that people want to see. Please read my whole post.

[Shurrikhan]

I never said specs were always doomed to fail, I said that they don't make sense in this game. As I said previously, New jobs are present over a spec system in FFXIV because the FF franchise has so many job that people want to see.
Please read my whole post.

I simply took the extreme of the warrant to which I was originally responding in order to clarify my previously stated position, little of which had to do with your reply as I've never argued against its contents in the first place. Restatement, not argument.

Yes, I have closely read:

It's because jobs are thematic. PLD and WAR are not the same job. Sure, they could have had PLD with 2 specs. One spec that was defensive heavy and focused on blocking and some magic or a spec that was offensive heavy that built up a gauge for offensive attacks. And then come HW, they could have a PLD that ate up MP to buff their attacks and abilities. Then we'd have 1 tank, PLD, but 3 different specs,a ll the customization you'd want right? But you'd also only have 1 tank. What if that person doesn't like swords and shields? What if they don't like PLD's aesthetic? I guess they are SoL cause there's only 1 tank in the game, just pick a build you feel like using right?

OR, each one of those specs could be a job itself and boom, 3 choices for you to use, more that aren't the sword and shield you don't really like. In this game, jobs are essentially your specs while roles are your job. You have the tanks, with 3 choices from there. You want to be a different style tank their your PLD friend? Play WAR or DRK.

And

The point is, if you are going to make specs so different as to mean something, even if a different spec could use a different weapon, you might as well make a new job. FF has a long list of famous jobs and there is no need to take away what could be more jobs for the sake of specs. There is literally no need for that kind of customization other for the sake of it. Imagine the number of people that would be upset, that a game that is a love letter the the whole franchise made one of it's most iconic jobs a sword spec of BLM.

And every part you've posted. That I did not requote them does not mean I did not read them. It means that it was irrelevant to what followed—a mere restatement.

To be clear:
Over this thread I have only stated consistently that customization has little to do with its title, systems, or level of complexity, and that its only actual take-away will be the amount of increased appeal to gameplay it can provide. Consequently, yes, why people would be predisposed to solely one mode of customization is beyond me. I have never said jobs aren't a totally reasonable way to go about adding customization. I simply said (to Belhi) that making a new job can be many steps more than was necessary to increase appeal through customization, and to others that the same issues that would cripple choices in, say, specs, due to performance differences in current content, also and already cripple jobs almost identically in XIV (after all, you can change jobs just as easily here as a spec elsewhere). All I have said to you is that the best means of delivering customization depend on how close the intended result and source resources fall, and how much separate control you want to give players over their adjustment, or, for a third time—

[that] how closely [the intended extent of customization] clusters to prior motifs or mechanics, or how packaged the differences are in order to prevent perfect choice (the paradoxical enemy of balanced spread of choices), makes far more of a difference than whether the additions are called "specs" or "aspects" or "mutations" or "sub-classes" or simple "new jobs".

—(i.e.) to "pick the right tool", where that won't always be one answer over an entire MMO.

I wholly agree that that will typically be a new job. I disagree that it will always be a new job. And I heartily disagree that at the point at which surrounding design, thematics, etc., allows developers to effect significant increase to the gameplay possible for a given job at very little asset cost that they "might as well make a new job". That idea assumes that you're spending preset amounts of development time under preset goals, regardless of how much "fun" you can actually create and how efficiently.

[BubblyBoar]

...

The problem here is that you assume putting a system for specs in place is somehow less work than working on a new job. FFXIV just isn't built for that kind of system, as I said before. Not only this, but it circumvents the original purpose of said system with its armory system. Things like builds and customization is that way because in most, not all, games, you are limited to the single class you pick at the start of the game. In FFXIV, you instead have access to them all. This is them "picking the right tool" and it IS their answer for this MMO. And again, adding customization for the sake o customization is not satisfactory, aside from appealing to the very few fringe players. The appeal in gameplay isn't really there when it is literally the same thing as adding a new job. All that is really changing is that you don't have to level that "spec" up like you would have to do jobs now.

[Elfidan]

I've played with some very, very toxic and elitist people over the years on WoW, but 1% has never been enough of a difference to be called out on, especially if the higher parsing choice is more vulnerable to lost potential. At some point, insistence will occur, be it at 3 or 5 or 10, but let's cut back on the hyperbole here.

It isn't about being called out Shurri. It's about not being taken to begin with ,or outright excluded for choosing the "wrong" spec, talent , merit, or alternate advancement. It literally isn't hyperbole which you seem to enjoy using often. Hyperbole would be to say people checked you in town and began a lynching in shout concerning your choices, when in fact that all happened in other chat channels such as guild or party.