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.

[Aerilon]

Playing characters under max level at this point is a terrible game play experience. It really is awful and huge complaint of mine for the game. If they could just scale better or figure out a way to make it less boring it would make the whole experience so much better.

[Belhi]

I wouldn't use WoW as an example. WoW has a habit of completely overhauling its progression system and job design every expansion. I am not sure that is a model I want to see FF14 emulate.

[Elfidan]

Might be an unpopular opinion but that's actually one of the things I like about this game is that I don't have talents. Everyone's just on the same playing field and you don't have to deal with cookie cutter crap all the time. The closest thing we have is cross role abilities now, which are quite enough for me thank you.

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.

[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.