How do you feel about Role Actions?

[dragonseth07]

They should do what they do for crafters. At level X, all tanks learn Rampart. At level X all DPS learn Low Blow. There's no equipping them, they're just shared skills.

That's basically what the current system is! The only difference is you have to click a check-box for no good reason.

All Tanks learn Rampart at level 8.

[Raikai]

Role actions honestly feel like a feature that had a good premise, but it turned out to be an extremely bland aspect of the jobs.

What I think it would be good, it is a comeback of the cross class system, in a way similar to FF Tactics, where you can specialize in niche roles.

Like... For example, you'd be able to equip one whole "set" of skills and a couple of traits, by choosing from any class you'd have at level 30. The idea would be not to influence with your main role... (A MNK picking the LNC set wouldn't be as benefical to it as going for a CNJ set for example) but to give you utility options for situational cases, or even to make soloing more interesting.

The few really vital Role Actions we have now, like Protect, could just be baked in the basic job's actions.

[Shurrikhan]

Role Actions are like cutting off one person's leg, another's hand, a third's left glute, and then asking each if they'd like a peg leg, hook, or a cushion.

Well, most are hardly significant, so it's more nearly just a small toe, a pinky, and an eye (Lucid Dreaming, Diversion, Provoke), but still... there's not a single advantage to it compared to just letting each job have their own form of each (where they can't afford to be unique in capacity, as Eye for an Eye or Reprisal, etc., probably deserve to be).

[dragonseth07]

Role Actions are like cutting off one person's leg, another's hand, a third's left glute, and then asking each if they'd like a peg leg, hook, or a cushion.

Well, most are hardly significant, so it's more nearly just a small toe, a pinky, and an eye (Lucid Dreaming, Diversion, Provoke), but still... there's not a single advantage to it compared to just letting each job have their own form of each (where they can't afford to be unique in capacity, as Eye for an Eye or Reprisal, etc., probably deserve to be).

I disagree. There is a huge advantage in consistency, for new and/or low-skill players.

Having 3 versions of Provoke is pointless. If I need to coach a DRK into tank swapping the first time in his life, it should just be called Provoke. Giving it 3 different names serves no purpose.

When someone who heals on WHM tries out AST, and they're looking for Esuna to clear off a Doom, it's the same icon and everything. There's no point in having one called Leeches when they are all the same, and there's no point in making them different.

It may be cool, and ultimately no harm for us, to have every ability of every job different. But, the playerbase sucks at this game. Having those core things be the same helps keep the bar just a little higher than it otherwise would be.

[Shurrikhan]

I disagree. There is a huge advantage in consistency, for new and/or low-skill players.

Having 3 versions of Provoke is pointless. If I need to coach a DRK into tank swapping the first time in his life, it should just be called Provoke. Giving it 3 different names serves no purpose.

When someone who heals on WHM tries out AST, and they're looking for Esuna to clear off a Doom, it's the same icon and everything. There's no point in having one called Leeches when they are all the same, and there's no point in making them different.

It may be cool, and ultimately no harm for us, to have every ability of every job different. But, the playerbase sucks at this game. Having those core things be the same helps keep the bar just a little higher than it otherwise would be.

Then you call it by the effect.

The Call (DRK) - 25 yalms. Provokes the enemy, forcing them to attack you for three seconds and increasing your enmity to the highest among those engaged with it.
Champion (PLD) - 20 yalms. Provokes enemies attacking the target ally, forcing them to attack you for three seconds and increasing your enmity against them to that of the target ally.
Challenge (WAR) - 15 yalms. Provokes the target and enemies between you and it, locking them into combat with you for three seconds and increasing your enmity to the highest among those engaged with it.

Esuna (WHM) - Cleanses one status effect from self or target ally. Using Esuna while already casting another spell will consume a Lily to cast it without triggering the global cooldown.
Leeches (SCH) - Cleanses one status effect from self or target ally, adding the cleansed effect to your Aetherpool.
Exalted Dignity (AST) - Cleanses one status effect from self or target ally. The effect cleansed augments your current Starsign.

You can even have very differently functioning skills while still referring to the part that matters by the same name.

[Sandpark]

Though flawed in execution (poor of damage type synergies, too few underlying systemic depth -- much like now -- and skill imbalance among highly similar flavors of a given geometry, i.e. melee circular AoE), in 1.0, you only had one true level, your own. Classes existed only to learn skills from and improve weapon proficiencies, and the vast majority those skills were then available on any weapon. The idea was that you create your own job from the vast toolkit your experiences provide, whatever their source.

The concept was apologized out of existence when Yoshida took the reins.

One true level or no levels.
Hate that you have to slog through mountains of content to play with friends?
Worried older content and zones become outdated?
Dislike the rigidity of a job only system?
Can't play with a friend starting later because you are too high level?

No levels would cure that, sure a global level sync could work like in Elder Scrolls Online or Guild Wars 2 but it adds more work and still leaves a wide gap between noobie and veteran.

FFXI had a strict job system but subjobs opened up customization though somewhat limited. ESO allows customization in that you can equip any weapon to learn skills. ESO then allows Champion Points to strengthen global attributes, but by nature it separates noobie and vet and had to get a CP cap.

XIV 1.0 had a good though misunderstood foundation. Players did not like having to level multiple classes and wanted more identity enter jobs. Well now some players don't like the rigidity or dislike that the customization we have is bare bones.

I believe the foundation was to start off really open to learning skills. Then at a later time, advanced jobs and traits would come in at a later expansion to add identity if it had more time to cook in the oven.

But those days are gone, we have what we have.

[dragonseth07]

Like it or not, customization has very little place in a modern MMO. Back in the early days when everyone sucked, and the genre was new, customization was great. It meant you got to have your own build, and it feels awesome. But nowadays, we are better. We are more informed. We would like our allies to be GOOD, not just present. Customization is a trap because it competes with optimization.

It would be very cool to have a customized PLD. But, I would NEVER want a customized WHM healing me anymore. My ability to feel special is worth less than the knowledge my allies can't be actively screwing theirs up.

I have very grim memories of DRK's showing up without Provoke back in HW, and frantically Power Slashing to try and tank swap. We, collectively, can't handle the responsibility of customization.

[Shurrikhan]

Like it or not, customization has very little place in a modern MMO. Back in the early days when everyone sucked, and the genre was new, customization was great. It meant you got to have your own build, and it feels awesome. But nowadays, we are better. We are more informed. We would like our allies to be GOOD, not just present. Customization is a trap because it competes with optimization.

It would be very cool to have a customized PLD. But, I would NEVER want a customized WHM healing me anymore. My ability to feel special is worth less than the knowledge my allies can't be actively screwing theirs up.

I have very grim memories of DRK's showing up without Provoke back in HW, and frantically Power Slashing to try and tank swap. We, collectively, can't handle the responsibility of customization.

Customization has little place, I'll agree, but many systems are misunderstood as customization alone when their emphasis is elsewhere. Pre-streamlined WoW's (i.e. WotLK) talents represented customization far less than simply progression. They gave something to look forward to, level by level, and changed your approach to varying content, as the choices made could not simply be swapped out for every fight. It mattered a whole lot less than not every configuration was viable than that ever level offered something to leveling -- an altogether different context. In that light, the system worked well. It could have been better even then, but it offered a lot to character and world attachment and sense of progress.

Stupidity and negligence, on the other hand, is not something for which you can directly blame customization. And I'd rather not be included in your "we" the people who cannot even manage to look swap to the other tanks at least once at level 1 to read through the coming auto-acquired skills for something useful and cross-class-able. I suspect most others would rather not be assumed as so stupid or negligent either. DRKs showing up without Provoke was the minority, not the norm. And even that could have been greatly and easily mitigated by the devs simply adding the same greyed out actions one would find in their respective sources' Actions list to the Additional Actions sub-menu along with a recommendation to fill your Additional Actions when another slot is opened to you.

That's not to say that I liked the cross-class system -- in that implementation, I certainly didn't. Nor do I necessarily think customization has much of a place in MMOs -- I don't. But you're caricaturing an entire playerbase over issues the devs could have very, very easily mitigated if not wholly solved, or could have even done away with without limiting customization. Extent of Customization and Extent/Chance of Non-optimal Choice are not actually directly proportional. Good design will offer far more variance in gameplay than in performance, still keeping the emphasis on how well you play, just as poor design offers more variance in performance than in gameplay, emphasizing sub-menu interactions over actual gameplay. What you are describing, or at least making inference from, is middling to poor design.

[Jollyy5]

I think role actions are a good place to start ability pruning for Shadowbringers...

[Kaiserdrache]

The current Role Skill system in my view is an outdated and boring part of this game, which leads under its current design to abslutely no build diversity.

Role Skills shouldnt just be for each role per classjob exactly the same.

A Role Skill should be per Role for each Class/Job DIFFERENT, so that each individual Class/Job feels more unique while playing it, and has something that can give you more build diversity.
The number of skills in this game has to increase significantly, so that there can exist more build diversity, so that not everyone is aside of the chosen materias in their gear exactly the same. This stiff outdated combat system needs to broaden up. Holy Trinity of only DPS, Tank and Healer was yesterday

This game needs more roles, minimum 4, maximum 5, so that players aren#t anymore permanently so permanently dependent on tanks and healers, so that group finding becomes faster and smoother. Having to wait on the game for over like 30 minutes, until the game puts people together for a roulette content is RIDICULOUS and that happens only, because the game design of FF14 is way too much reliant everywhere on tanks and healers, while there exists a massive over saturation of dps!!!
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Role Skills:

For the start, should SE change the role skill system to the point, that each class per role should have its very own unique 10 Role Skills. Role Skills should come with their very own seperate Skill Slots in the UI that is limited in having maximum 4 of the 10 Skills with you.

Then would people have to choose, what they take with them and not have simply everythign with them always, leadign to better balancing game content and reducing power creep for all classes.
Skills can then be anyways exchanged out whenever you want outside of combats.
Means

A Paladin should have 10 completely different Tank Skills as its Role, than for example a Dark Knight.
Classes also should be able to change their Roles and gain this way different Role SKills.
get away with this ultra stiff class design that Class X has to be always ever only Role Y

A Paladin should be able to change its role from Tank to either DPS, Healer, or my suggested new roles as Supporter or Preventer (Debuffer) and accordign to changign your Role with your Class woudl change the unique Role Skills of your Class you get access to. But this change would further increase build diversity in this game, helping in it, that not every single paladin in this game is exacly the very same, like your own character.

Such changes would not only change the role skills, but thie change of the role should also affect the class skills and their traits, changign the playstyle of your class significantly, so that playing a DPS paladin should feel to the player completely different, than playing the classical tank Paladin everybody knows, shoudl kompletely feel different, than playing a Healer paladi,n than a Supporter paladin ect. pp

Thats the way to go for SE, if they want to give their game the needed depth, that this games combat system is completely missing, compared to games like Guild Wars 2, WoW, Tera, B&S , BD and so on, which are in regard of this all much more modern and not so stiff, like FF14 is

Weapon Skills and Class Identity

A very important point that needs to happen as well too is to give all classes more build diversity and class identity by adding more different Weapon types to all classes, instead of letting them have all only 1 weapon type, where changign a weapon lets you change your class.
Thats so extremely outdated gameplay design and unmodern.
Each class in FF14 shiould have at least 3 different weapon sets, and it shouldnt be the Weapon you equiped, which decides the class, it should be the Head Gear.
Weapons should get then automatically unequipped if you change via Head Gear your Class.
This way woudl receive all classes in FF14 significantly more build diversity.

Then you could see for example a Bard running around either with a Bow (Harps), an Axe (Guitars) or with Spears (Flutes) for example ... (Shining Resonance being the Inspiration) with each weapon providing different skilsl for the Bard, each weapon givign you a different playstyle with the Bard, especially also if you can change your Role from DPS to an other role, to gain other unique Role Skills, which in return also affect your traits and weapon skilsl then a bit.
FF14 mustcchange from such a stiff class design to a much more flexible one, if we want to get rid of the problem, that you are in games with holy trinity always reliant too much on just tanks and healers to get the content done, cause DPS alone can't do anything