Jobs: unconnected and now feeling flat

[Sinh119]

I can understand the idea behind it, but from a design perspective it doesn't make much sense. There are probably quite a few players who simply don't care about the feeling of strengthening the character as a whole that you describe, and a change towards this will most assuredly feel like arbitrary busywork to new or returning players. I, for example, heavily dislike playing Black Mage and Red Mage, and yet under this system I would be obligated to level both of them to max in order to effectively participate in the majority of end game content.

Balance also enters the equation. For example, what if a WHM at 70 benefits far greater from its cross class skills than a Diurnal Sect AST does? Will this further skew the representation of jobs in higher end content? These sorts of things usually drift towards homogenization as maintaining balance while retaining uniqueness becomes more difficult, and if there's anything FFXIV doesn't need, it's more homogenization. Time is also a big issue here. We are only in our second expansion, and while we can pick out a couple of useful skills now, will that be the case 5 expansions down the line? Bloat becomes a factor very quickly. New classes also throw a wrench into things. Logistically it's a nightmare to balance, and the amount of people that would actually benefit from such a system is very low, hence why it was removed in the first place.

I want to make it clear that I didn't play during Heavensward, so I'm not that familiar with the system in question, but as an outsider looking in, it seems far more like an inconvenience than a benefit.

[Malkria]

If you are looking for some kind of rewards for leveling other jobs, perhaps you should start thinking along the lines of glamour, minions, mounts. Actually the glamour one could be something interesting since that is a thing I see creep up on the forums all the time. Thinking along the lines of Tactics support abilities like "equip _____(type of armor)". Only in this game it would be "glamour _____(job)". So you could learn traits that allowed you to glamour job-restricted gear on other jobs to make your ultimate fantasy warrior outfit...

Like I said the issue I have with the current system is that it feels lesss like I am developing a character and more like I have a paper-doll that I swap out abilities for. In this case rather literally by weapon and soul-stone. While I understand that with the abilities before Stormblood some this was necessity. Like I said, I don't like the archer and the only reason my archer is as leveled as a job as it is currently is due to having to unlock the damage boost for my black mage. I also remember having to level both the archanist and thurmaturge for abilities and to unlock my white mage. So yes, I get both the good and bad of the issue.

Giving cosmetics or unlocking glamours is nice but the meat of my issue is that by separating all the jobs completely the sense I am playing a character who is growing in power is stripped as well. If I learn how to run faster as a ninja, why can't I run faster as a WHM? Which makes even less sense when characters implicitly tell you they are TEACHING you these things, such as the BLM using ley lines.

Yes, I am aware that even if you have every class have equally tempting abilities on all ranks that there will be a meta. Yes I started with saying small bonuses, but halfway through I guess I realized what I am saying now. The best way to negate a meta is to have more viable options then opportunities to take. To get to the same point we have with jobs now, that all jobs are viable and welcome in parties unless you are doing cutting edge content in which case there is a meta to party composition. We currently have 15 jobs, which means potentially 15 traits each tier to choose from If even half of those are viable options for most jobs one way or another, I feel that the inevitable meta would be given less weight by players as a whole.

[Asiragan]

I like your ideas a lot, since one of the selling point of FFXIV is to be able to do everything with a single character, getting bonus from the class we level up would put some light on this, and I think it's great.

Now that it's said, I have 3 problems with this proposition :

• It won't fit in the game right now, because the content is not designed for it. Outside of extreme/savage/ultimate content, this will be a useless gameplay twist since most of the content outside those (dungeons, Eureka and the likes) can be done without a brain.
  
  
• The community will always seek the bonus, even if you only gain 0.1% more dps with this, they will want you to have this. Because meta. Even if they don't even properly know their rotation and how to work as a group, they will judge this ABSOLUTELY mandatory.
  
  
• To make enough "viable alternatives" to where there is no "best" option, as you said, is a developer's dream and I don't think I ever saw an online game that gave this opportunity to the players.

I would really love more use about the other classes we have leveled up, and also more personnalisation options gameplay-wise, but with the actual state of the game, I just don't see it working.

[Malkria]

I can understand the idea behind it, but from a design perspective it doesn't make much sense. There are probably quite a few players who simply don't care about the feeling of strengthening the character as a whole that you describe, and a change towards this will most assuredly feel like arbitrary busywork to new or returning players. I, for example, heavily dislike playing Black Mage and Red Mage, and yet under this system I would be obligated to level both of them to max in order to effectively participate in the majority of end game content.

Wait, I'm confused. How would having traits that all give some benifit be obligating you to play BLM or RDM? Like I said, the point is that each class would have viable options that ANY job could benifit from so as to reduce said necessity. This is different then the old system where your not leveling certain classes simply put you at a tangible disadvantage, or the current job action system where there are a handful of actually useful abilities with a few 'options' mixed in.

The whole point of my idea and suggestion is to make leveling jobs, even if only a handful, rewarding but allowing a deeper customization system. While this could be restricted between schools of thought (war and magic) the point is that the more jobs you level the more options you have for passives, as long as there are more viable and desiarable options available then you can take the less a necessity to follow a meta the system is burdened by. Furthermore to counter your issue with bloat, we don't gain new job actions past 50 so we could simply limit the traits to three per job. With each job starting at a higher level per expansion, when and where you gain traits might need to be adjusted but could still be held to three despite however many levels or jobs we gain.

As to who benefits...well everyone. I've taken a sample of various people i've done dungeons with and in my FC. Some people only have one or two, and many have between five to ten jobs maxed. I myself have leveled all my healers, my main role, and have my archanist and machinist maxed. Right there I would have five at all three levels of traits to choose from, and never mind the ones I am still leveling such as my BLM and NIN at the moment. But even if you ignored the trait system and other jobs, because people CAN have so many options for traits the hopeful goal is even if you only level one job you still wouldn't be hasseled for it and could still use your leveled job end-game.

[Paladinleeds]

Yes, I am aware that even if you have every class have equally tempting abilities on all ranks that there will be a meta. -snip- The best way to negate a meta is to have more viable options then opportunities to take.

WoW at least used to have this traits system (dunno if it still does). It's tried time and time again to adjust them to make them more balanced. But there will always be a META and most (not all) groups will very strictly enforce it (like if even one trait is wrong, they will kick you on sight and blacklist you so you can never group with them again). There'd be plenty groups that would enforce a 0.000000000000000001% performance improvement. Even now, despite WHM/SCH/AST being closely balanced (though not equally, as that is impossible without making them the same just different animations), WHM is considered not META and gets excluded from quite a lot of groups in leiu of SCH/AST.

[Emstidor]

[Legion88]

Your idea may sound fine, even if there has to be some tweaks here and there, but in the end people are not seeing it as benefitial to have the traits, they are seeing the missing of (specific) traits as detrimental.

[Vhailor]

But it doesn't have to be that. However I again strongly feel that we should have some form of interaction between various jobs correlating to our experience spent in them. That without it, it all just feels much flatter then what we had before.

It is flatter, yeah. SE over-reacted. There were a few egregiously necessary abilities (Cleric's Stance wasn't one of them; Provoke was, and arguably Swiftcast) that required other jobs be leveled, with absolutely nothing to indicate they were required, nor any in-game system pushing the player to level related jobs (beyond the not-high-enough level 15 requirement for Job quests). Rather than provide more tutorials / guidance, or rework these few abilities, SE just nuked the entire system.

That said, XIV's entire Job system always felt like a huge step backward from FFXI, and I can't say that the system ever had much depth. I'd love to see a level of connectedness (re)introduced, but I'm not holding my breath. SE seems loathe to place peripheral requirements on players, and the community will naturally ensure that any meaningful bonus effectively becomes a requirement. So... we get a flat system.

Who cares if they're perfectly balanced? Perfect balance is the enemy of variety, and variety is equally essential to any successful MMO. I mean, we already have a litany of requirements for running Savage / Ultimate content; you need a semi-optimal party setup, you need top-end gear, you need to have internet that doesn't flicker very often, you need to be able to flawlessly execute mechanics. Are you seriously suggesting that the players who sink hours and hours of effort into Savage / Ultimate, or the players who spend countless tens of hours farming Relics for that matter, would freak out if they also had to get a pair of DD to a whopping level 35 or 40?

Look at FFXI - Ninja was a required subjob for Warriors. It just was. But the game didn't suffer because of that; people learned, saw what others were doing, and went out and leveled it. Worst-case, they viewed it as a chore, and their efforts essentially donated tanks for low-level parties; best-case, they found a job they liked, that they might want to main instead. But then for other content, they still had choices; maybe they were baby-sitting a friend in a lowbie party, and subbed WHM for Raise. Maybe they were fighting an enemy that hit rapidly for lower damage, and opted for MNK so they could Counter it to death. Were these choices mainstream options for end-game content? Usually not - but choice was nevertheless present.

We shouldn't be so scared of imbalance. It'll always exist, and homogeneity is an equally dire threat to FFXIV.

[DrWho2010]

in a game where it is actively advertised that ANY job is viable for ALL content, imbalance is a dire threat to that stability.

[Malkria]

Your idea may sound fine, even if there has to be some tweaks here and there, but in the end people are not seeing it as benefitial to have the traits, they are seeing the missing of (specific) traits as detrimental.

....Wait, what? This is simply an idea at this point and either you are saying people are seeing the lack of traits being included as being detrimental or that people not having the meta will be detrimental. Like I said, I know this isn't perfect, but if you like the idea and we worked together we might make something better that Square can run with (assuming that someone there reads this).

in a game where it is actively advertised that ANY job is viable for ALL content, imbalance is a dire threat to that stability.

You can't be serious. First off if a job is viable now they still would be unless the devs specifically balanced around certain traits, which they could take the (supposedly) same route as healer damage and simply not factor them in to balance. Again, in the example I provided I specifically tied stronger traits being harder to proc. They were going off at a CHANCE off another CHANCE event because I understand that having to strong of anything to readily available makes something more reliable. The core idea is that the more reliable something is, the weaker or more random it has to be. The idea for the theoretical AST trait is perfect example. Yes you get a chance at a 5% bonus to things like damage or cast times every time you crit; but not only is the activation random along with what bonus you get, but in the version of my mind's eye it would be entirely possible to have two crits back to back that overwrote a good 'card' with a 'dunce' (like say having this on a TP class and getting MP regen).

In the end, the traits are meant to be bonuses for putting investing time into other jobs that allow a little more flexibility of customization without being outright requirements to play a role.

WoW at least used to have this traits system (dunno if it still does). It's tried time and time again to adjust them to make them more balanced. But there will always be a META and most (not all) groups will very strictly enforce it (like if even one trait is wrong, they will kick you on sight and blacklist you so you can never group with them again). There'd be plenty groups that would enforce a 0.000000000000000001% performance improvement. Even now, despite WHM/SCH/AST being closely balanced (though not equally, as that is impossible without making them the same just different animations), WHM is considered not META and gets excluded from quite a lot of groups in leiu of SCH/AST.

First off context, WoW's system was how you actually built a character and was WAY more then three. Even the new system, last I played it, obviously had certain builds in mind which again were how you built your character to begin with. A much closer analogy to what I am suggesting is actually the PvP trait system that gives small bonuses, and while sure there is a 'meta' for traits they by and large are inconsequential to the average player and nobody is going to freak on you for the most part. Also, yes what I am suggesting is much stronger then said traits but like I said the more reliable a trait such as a solid stat boost would be the ironically more of a 'requirement' it becomes. Ergo, the best way to avoid a meta for most players is to give as many viable options.

Second, those groups you mentioned if I haven't had it come across plainly yes...I don't care about those groups. To me, not only are said groups the antithesis of making a game fun but are inherently the core issue with a lot of the issues the game has in my eyes. So in short, if a person is going to require I fill out a form of my character build to play with them, pass a ping test, and have me do X with a training dummy before I can group with them? I could care less about playing with them in the first place, and will let such egotistical wankers group with others of their ilk.

Almost every time I have looked at threads asking "should I bother playing X for end-game" people have come back in droves saying play what you want. That some groups might exclude but by and large people care more about how well you play a job then what the job is end-game. I imagine traits won't be any different.

First off, WOW...never had someone go out of there way to make a meme for me. Not sure if I should roll my eyes or be flattered.

Second I never said balanced, I said VIABLE and DESIRABLE alternatives. A quick analogy is being led into a room and being told to pick between three sports-cars to take out and drive. Sure you could get snobbish and carefully weigh in the pros or handliling of each car, but most people would just go with whatever car appealed to them more. Traits I feel would be the same way, and while yes some will fall into the 'meta'...give enough variety and plenty of people will still break it. Dark souls has a meta and plenty of people still go outside it to make interesting builds or break the meta. Sometimes so badly that a NEW meta gets established.