A talent system

[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.

[Nezia]

A couple of points:

1) The inability of players to come up with solid design and balance suggestions should not be seen as making balance impossible. If you play Legion endgame content right now, many classes have great examples of a talent system which offers true choice in playstyle. Will there always be an optimal setup for a given fight? Absolutely. But that's a strawman argument, especially when right now every class is the spitting image of every other player in the same class.

Let me explain the illusion of choice right now in Legion, It's true that now there are players of the same spec picking different talents and pulling simillar numbers, but players are not actually choosing these talents on their own free will:


Let's say there is trinket A and trinket B, trinket A synergizes better with talent X and is usually the better option, trinket B synergizes better with trinket Y and is usually a worse option. That is assuming that both A and B are on the same ilvl but thanks to the rng fieast that wow has become it is possible for someone to have a trinket B 40 or 50 ilvls higher than trinket A, and thanks to that the player will end up performing better with the (B,Y) build than the otherwise better (A,X).

But ffxiv has very poor itemization, items are just flat out dmg increase at the end of the day, so we probably would end up with talents that are better 100% of the time or like happened in MoP/WoD and still happens to some degree in legion "pick this talent for single target, this other one for aoe, and this last one for cleave". In ffxiv the only way the talent system could be balanced would be if each talent had a completely different objective(which is what Blizzard was aiming for when they first anounced the new talent tree), for example: put Vercure and Impact on the same tier of talents for RDM, the healers are struggling to keep people alive during certain mechanics? Take Vercure. Heal is not a problem? Take Impact for the extra damage.

On another note, I will say that a big issue if the class design right now is that they are trying sooooo hard to make every classes have a similar number of buttons to press to the point that it is hurting the game. Like... There are many skills that look like they are there simply because they needed something to remove in 5.0(looking at you heavy trust and hot shot), I think they should not worry about the number of spells as long as it does not go beyond the range of 10 buttons from one class to another, in which point they should take a look at the class to see if it needs some tweeks here and there.

[Remedi]

Tbh you could say that the job system is the talent system of FF

[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.

[loreleidiangelo]

Tbh you could say that the job system is the talent system of FF

I think jobs in FFXIV are more like specializations in WoW myself. But I still say the two games have too many differentiating factors for a talent tree to be needed or wanted here.

Gear set bonuses, on the other hand, I think wouldn't be too hard of a starting point, and IIRC Yoshi P himself even said they were rethinking their original "no" position on them.

[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.

[Remedi]

I think jobs in FFXIV are more like specializations in WoW myself. But I still say the two games have too many differentiating factors for a talent tree to be needed or wanted here.

Gear set bonuses, on the other hand, I think wouldn't be too hard of a starting point, and IIRC Yoshi P himself even said they were rethinking their original "no" position on them.

I suppose it'll sound a bit unpopular but I wouldn't mind for savage weapons to have some sort of bonus effect on them, I think it would make savage a bit more enticing and who knows making so that savage weapons won't be replaced asap by a crafted weapon in the next tier

[Shurrikhan]

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.

If it's not about being excluded by others, then just what is it about? Self-exclusion? Feeling bad that your 1% dps differential by your own talent choice might require that you crit a few more times not to be seen evenly on the dps charts? Because if it's harassment from other players, then apparently we've just seen very different sides of:

• 10 years' (active time) of playing WoW, through party, raid, and guild chat, across every expansion and talent system
• The WoW official forums
• WoW reddit threads
• Reddit threads from those who have swapped from WoW to other MMOs, often even citing the latest talent system shifts as their reason.

I have never been harassed over a talent choice. Admittedly, I didn't pick single-target talents to enter a 20+ mob fight, or the like as to actively and obviously hamper my own performance, which WOULD be a red troll flag that people SHOULD harass you in return for, but even in heroic/mythic raiding, wherein raid leaders regularly check the gear, achievements, and would sometimes seemingly like to micromanage the talents of every player they admit, I have never been told to change a talent except to specifically mesh with (other) healers (not doubling up on a passive or to cover burst, etc.), i.e. where of a real and vital concern. At most I have been advised that add spawn timings mesh better with one talent, or are frequent enough to allow a rarely viable AoE talent to pull ahead, etc. I have been advised to grow accustomed to less lenient but potentially higher performing talents. Apart from that, there are two concerns only: output performance and mechanical performance. While I rarely have exactly any recommended spec, the last time my talent choices were joked about was back in Cataclysm, and Wrath before that, and only among close friends of the same class competing with me for top DPS per gear weight.

This may be anecdotal evidence vs. anecdotal evidence, but I have not seen any of this harassment "because your choices led to 1% less DPS", ever.

20%? Sure. That's a point of blatant neglect, wherein you did unnecessarily bad and should feel bad accordingly. But unless that choice is actively screwing others over, such as by neglecting an AoE when mass-pulling as a tank, and causing DPS to get when charging up mid-run, the first comment isn't going to be your talents. It'll be your parse. If the talents, as with to rotations or CD pacing, are mentioned afterwards, it's more than a mere dismissal; it's approaching advice. Even if rudely.

So yes, at least in my experience, that

people tell you that you can't experience the game because your choices led to 1% less DPS or the like

seems like hyperbole.

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.

1. It wasn't even "built" to allow jobs, if you're looking at the extant original structure of the game. So just what do you mean by "built for"?
2. The "original" purpose of the armory system was to create your own job. Yoshida has already removed this. And by now there is no longer even any advantage to having multiple gear types on one character apart from not having to trudge through MSQ. Opportunity-wise, there are only disadvantages for placing all on one character. The armory system's sole contribution at this point is a restriction, limiting each class to one general weapon-type, and each weapon-type to one class. No more, no less.
3. I believe I just said as much in multiple forms in the post you just quoted?...
4. As long as you mean literally as in figuratively, sure. Otherwise two different things cannot literally be the same.
5. Why would that be a guarantee? There's no reason that because something is tentatively labelled a "spec" that it couldn't have attached exp, any more than only separate jobs cannot. They're both design decisions, not necessities.

Let me just get this straight, though. The purpose of your responses have since been to declare any and all forms of customization other than new jobs, as an absolute rule, nonviable? Not that new jobs are the most sensible, which I have already agreed to, but absolutely the only form of customization viable? If so we're just going to have to agree to disagree at that particular degree.

[Kazrah]

This may be anecdotal evidence vs. anecdotal evidence, but I have not seen any of this harassment "because your choices led to 1% less DPS", ever.

See, now in my WoW days, I have. Granted, this was back in much earlier expansions where people were ridiculed for picking talents (or even specs) that were considered "wrong" because they felt more comfortable playing them rather than going for what was deemed the most optimal. The last couple of expansions though, it doesn't seem like players there have the time or effort to harass you and just kick you instead without any warning. Playing a mage in WoW, I was blocked from joining some raid groups for preferring to play a spec that was never the most optimal at that time (by like 5-10%) just because I couldn't stand playing a spec that was deemed the absolute best.

You're also not factoring in the labor involved since there's about as much detail to any job in FFXIV as one spec of one class in WoW. When you think WoW is trying to balance classes, what they're really doing is trying to balance every talent (21 per spec) of every spec (36 in total) of every class (all 12 of them). Given how hard it is to balance 15 jobs in this game, do you REALLY think we need that much more that would require balancing?

[Shurrikhan]

See, now in my WoW days, I have. Granted, this was back in much earlier expansions where people were ridiculed for picking talents (or even specs) that were considered "wrong" because they felt more comfortable playing them rather than going for what was deemed the most optimal. The last couple of expansions though, it doesn't seem like players there have the time or effort to harass you and just kick you instead without any warning. Playing a mage in WoW, I was blocked from joining some raid groups for preferring to play a spec that was never the most optimal at that time (by like 5-10%) just because I couldn't stand playing a spec that was deemed the absolute best.

You're also not factoring in the labor involved since there's about as much detail to any job in FFXIV as one spec of one class in WoW. When you think WoW is trying to balance classes, what they're really doing is trying to balance every talent (21 per spec) of every spec (36 in total) of every class (all 12 of them). Given how hard it is to balance 15 jobs in this game, do you REALLY think we need that much more that would require balancing?

I mean, that was the case for "specs" in Cataclysm, not since. Were that the only example of specs, or more importantly the only way they could ever be designed, I too would have to say "gods no". But it isn't, luckily, the only example and certainly not the only possibility. Cataclysm was like the bastard child of a confused liminal era. Mists has since been the basis of the latter three iterations, and drastically different (though not universally better by any means). And there have been varying renditions and "fits" therein even since that major shift (to the 10x3 grid, or a mere 30 choices per class, which is still more than necessary).

If I recall correctly, Cataclysm went something like Fire for trash, Arcane for bosses, and then Fire eventually eclipsing Arcane around 4.3? It's been a while and I was only really maintaining a few different classes at that time, though almost all were leveled. In my era it was lolcane or bust, but I still managed to make the few people who'd ask "Fire?" or "Frost?" eat their question marks. Even if I fell the few percent behind, it was never enough to get harassed.

Nonetheless, I'm sorry that was the case for you, and respect your decision to play what you like! If our top theorycrafters were likewise persistent, and all the gameplay-driven players more vocal, I feel like the speed of balance increases regardless of MMOs. The core, though, of potential variance is always people who like what they like and play what they like. On behalf whichever mage specs were shafted at that time, I thank you.

Again, though, let's move away from the idea of "spec" as being necessarily proportionate to (in the above case one expansion of) iterations in one other MMO. Heck, I'd argue that none of the designs of specs in WoW have been particularly efficient. Wrath lay at the end of a older generation of design, similar to the "build-a-job" concept prior to 1.2. Cataclysm was a mixed message. Legion while great for some classes is for many others mere UI bloat, similar to Reprisal vs. Low Blow, Protect, and typically Esuna are in our Role Skills here, requiring constant swapping (and at cost to-boot). That doesn't, however, mean that they have to be. The whole concept of making adjustments to existing frameworks in order to maximize the attraction of those frameworks is a frequently explored but still mostly uncharted territory. We understand that it has use as an analog to the RPG components of an MMO, to discovery, experimentation, and self-improvement. We understand that these entire wings of the game, essentially the whole "game" before "end-game" are usually soon sublimated by the spreedsheet-style optimization that is end-game. And we know that people will often still refuse to play what they don't enjoy, shockingly enough, and that what causes a given class not to attract them can vary from general aesthetic or lore (which no "spec" even loosely speaking can typically solve), to dynamics (more directly influenced by in-class customization), to small snaggly details (as have sometimes been fixed in WoW, for example, with mere glyphs).

Now, personally, I relished the promises of pre-1.2, to be able to design one's own job. I actually think their failure to take it far enough is what doomed the idea. But, that's a bygone era. Similarly, though, I actually feel like Role Skills aren't just a particularly poor idea in execution, but in concept: whatever their name, they are the movement of 5 skills out of the hands of jobs to include in a better integrated manner. As a replacement for cross-class skills their only change has been to increase the number of mandatory abilities per minute and often a decrease of free personal survivability tools (replaced by more effective rotational raid skills). In this instance, I actually think we'd be better off without Role Skills. If then SE feels that a new method of customization is required, I hope that it can be more than customization in name alone, and I feel like a certain blend of concepts for "spec", "adaptations", or whatever one wishes to name it, would be a good fit. Now, my preferred method of customization is actually simply just multiple ways, rotationally, to play the exact same build and gear loadout of the same class/job. But at present, that will rarely feel distinct. Simple skill adjustments next expansion may be enough to make it so, or it might come in pairing with few but effective choices through a new, more-than-nominal customization system, but I hope that those two concepts can be sufficient enough to maximize the attractiveness of each job. For the rest—for attempting to establish something truly new—I do think new jobs are best. I just wish they'd be better integrated with the world story of whatever new areas, cultures, and lore sources they're released with.