Almost every complaint about the ShB job changes could be solved with talents

[IchiExorz]

Honestly I would love something like talents to have some diversity in the same class.
Kinda like how role actions were... but then unique to your class so not every class can take them.

Not a huge fan of the ideas listed but i'd see it more as slight alterations like some talents increasing aoe damage (but not doing much for single targete) others increasing more single target damage, others maybe giving you a bit more mobility.

Either way I think a system like that would be hard to implement in this game.
Make the talents change playstyles too much and you're gnna have huge balance issues in the same role. If they're too minor, it will be uninteresting & boring anyway.

If anything i'd prefer to see some sort of specializations. Not just for different playstyles but something that changes the role of your class.
Like WAR & DRK could get a DPS spec that changes their rotation a bit, lose aggro abilities but gaining more offensive abilities.
PLD could have a healing spec. RDM could have a healing based spec or a melee spec. SAM could have a tank spec. Ninja could have a ranged physical dps spec.
In a way like how SCH & SMN are but AFAIK SE said they didn't want anything like that anymore

But this is just my wishful thinking. It would take too much work from SE, balancing would be a lot harder too & honestly I don't ever see this happening.
I do have this desire of diversity but I can see why SE wouldn't want to do anything like that.

[Jikillia]

While those are some good examples, lets concentrate on the MMO simply because the single player experience makes player agency a bit different. Which is why i asked for MMOs, while there is much to be drawn from them by that same token i could say SMT nocturne, Persona (1-5), FFX, FFIX,FFXIII, ME, DDS, Hollow knight, paper mario, dead cells, The Tales Series in general....etc, and in those games the talent tree is vastly different in nocturne you have to choose what skills to take kind of like pokemon, just without the ability to ever see them again, in HK the amulet interaction is great and can make the shade night immortal, however MMOs have to handle a lot more because of the nature of the type of game.

So ragnarok i do rember palying that game and being a mnk (shockingly so), but the game is kind of build for that creativity, if we were to apply some form of it in ff14, i guess you could end up with eureka which is not fun, at least in its current iteration, other than that is just that this game doesnt have types of enemies, damage so that on its own limits what can be done, either be a dmg skill or a utility skill. Or so it sems to me.

Well, there is GW2, an MMO with a talent tree that provides build diversities. However I would also mention that GW2 is fundamentally different game in its core design, having no solid trinity system that makes one class fill one specific role like FF14 but instead allow every class to fill that trinity system to certain level. Also I should point out that GW2 does hae a specific meta builds and if you are not running those builds, you are subjected to abuse from toxic players. Of course they are not the bulk of the game's population but it is there. If you are playing open-world contents, which GW2 is extremely good at, your build could be anything. I do mean this literally. However if you start to get into PvP, WvW(Large scale PvP) or raiding, you were forced to run meta builds. No one forced you to, but you will find in PvP or WvW you will not be doing much contribution before being slaughtered(making the game feels unfun) or in raiding you either get kicked out immediately or slow the teammates down forcing others to pick up the 'slack'.

Overall I do agree that FF14 is too rigid in its design but you get to choose which class you play. This I believe is the extent of diversity that we can get without too much noise or complications. Another thing that I should mention is that "build diversity" can also intimidate players who are not familiar with this genre. While if you spend time you will learn quickly, but now everyone wants to deal with the level of complexity that "build diversity" can bring, where as in FF14 you can just stick with whatever job or jobs you want and worry little other than learning your class.

[MerlinCross]

Given how everyone dropped VIT to take up STR accessories, left WHM in the bin for 2 expansions, and almost always included DRG for a good while;

Talents math gets cracked, the meta develops, everything is balanced AROUND the Meta rather than trying to shake it up, people not going with the meta get shunned, insulted, called bad cause the mob took one more GCD to die than expected so you bad, and thus the Damage talents will just sit at the top. Or really any talent that increases DPS for any reason what so ever.

Talents could be interesting. I wouldn't mind seeing how other people talent up WAR or SAM. However how do you make it so the community, stuck in it's DPS first headlong race, doesn't just go DPS first on talents and make it more an expected solved answer than a series of choices?

Possibly change the game so it's not as rigid but I don't think that's going to matter. Show me a game with Talents and then show me a community that doesn't break it down to only a couple viable builds.

[Magnedeus]

For a long time, one of the biggest turnoffs for me about this game has been the lack of job customization. I loved having the cross-class skills in the base game, even though every job pretty much had a standard setup for endgame, because it let me play the job the way I wanted to play to a small degree.

Now those are gone, but I think jobs would benefit greatly from some kind of customization. Let's walk through some examples:

NIN
Complaint: Job is too gimped on damage because of Trick Attack utility
Solution: Give us a choice between TA for group content or a new ability that increases our personal DPS when soloing

BRD
Complaint: Identity of the job was lost when the songs lost their group utility
Solution: Give us a choice between songs that provide utility and songs that provide personal damage

MCH
Complaint: High ping means the job is unplayable in certain regions
Solution: Make Overheat a talent and let players choose a different ability with less ping dependence

SCH
Complaint: SCH's identity as a more damage-focused healer has been lost
Solution: Allow players to spec into more damage-based abilities if they want to

SMN
Complaint: Egis feel useless now
Solution: Allow players to spec out of egis if they want to or allow them to spec into new spells that take more advantage of the egis if they like the egis

MNK
Complaint: Abilities like Tornado Kick, the new Six-Sided Star, and Riddle of Fire are unpopular with some players because they are situational or slow down the rotation
Solution: Make these abilities talents and let players opt in if they like them or choose a different style if they don't

They are many other examples.

Sure, high-end raiders will probably need to spec into the optimal talents, but for the rest of us, some job customization could solve just about every complaint that players have about jobs right now. The main problem with jobs (and I think most of them play just fine, but there's always room for improvement right?) is that we can't tweak them in any way to suit personal preference. This feels so weird to me in an MMO that we can't. It's been a staple of role-playing games, let alone MMOs, since their inception.

We shouldn't have to switch a job entirely because of ping depedence or some other controversial aspect. We should be able to tailor the job we love to suit our personal preference. I know this would take a lot of work for Square Enix to pull this off. My suggestion is to only make a new healer job for the next expansion and use the rest of the dev time to implement a basic talent system.

That's basically the same thing they do in wow. And wow is in the absolute state worst it's ever been in. You trying to kill this game too?

[SaberMaxwell]

If i understood correctly the main point is that customization, will either make the game better (or more interesting) or fix some issues, both of those notions are deluded, however the mian point that i was trying to make is that customization simply doesnt work well on this game for the reasons you are stating.

Saying that someone is deluded is attacking the person, not the argument..

When did notions become people?

English works the way it does for a reason. He very clearly said the notions are deluded. Don't pretend you can just call a logical fallacy and it stands because you said it does.

Yes, by the way, this is a criticism of the argumentative style you put forth, not your argument. I found it very dishonest.

[Nerfworthy]

No thanks, I like not having talents. They're just an illusion of choice anyway, there's always going to be an optimal cookie cutter selection. This isn't WoW.

[MerlinCross]

No thanks, I like not having talents. They're just an illusion of choice anyway, there's always going to be an optimal cookie cutter selection. This isn't WoW.

Depends on the game in question. Some games can let you get away with not having the optimal min max build. Might be a little harder in some spots but still doable or can overcome that in other ways(Level, Gear, skill, ability combos).

But as I said before with the community being "DPS first", I'm pretty sure I know how the talent system would end up looking like. And the game is too rigid to make up for a poor talent selection, espically after the Devs end up adjusting the fights to be based around the DPS meta talent set ups.

Would I like to see Talents in FF14? In an ideal setting, sure. In theory yeah probably. In reality, no because I can already see the "Take this or you suffer a 5% damage loss" comments coming.

[Trensharo]

If people want to take optimal talents even though they don't find them fun, that's their business. This game is not tuned in a way that you would need the optimal build for 95% of content. WoW is a very different game with a far more toxic and judgmental community.

Feel free to believe that. Lol...

[Trensharo]

Well, there is GW2, an MMO with a talent tree that provides build diversities. However I would also mention that GW2 is fundamentally different game in its core design, having no solid trinity system that makes one class fill one specific role like FF14 but instead allow every class to fill that trinity system to certain level. Also I should point out that GW2 does hae a specific meta builds and if you are not running those builds, you are subjected to abuse from toxic players. Of course they are not the bulk of the game's population but it is there. If you are playing open-world contents, which GW2 is extremely good at, your build could be anything. I do mean this literally. However if you start to get into PvP, WvW(Large scale PvP) or raiding, you were forced to run meta builds. No one forced you to, but you will find in PvP or WvW you will not be doing much contribution before being slaughtered(making the game feels unfun) or in raiding you either get kicked out immediately or slow the teammates down forcing others to pick up the 'slack'.

Overall I do agree that FF14 is too rigid in its design but you get to choose which class you play. This I believe is the extent of diversity that we can get without too much noise or complications. Another thing that I should mention is that "build diversity" can also intimidate players who are not familiar with this genre. While if you spend time you will learn quickly, but now everyone wants to deal with the level of complexity that "build diversity" can bring, where as in FF14 you can just stick with whatever job or jobs you want and worry little other than learning your class.

Then you can use ESO as an example, since it has a Trinity System, but still has a system similar to GW2 (Champion Points, and the ability to witch builds (and even roles) based on Weapon/Armor/Skill Allocation).

The rigidity of FFXIV is the biggest issue, IMO. The encounter design is not flexible enough to accommodate this kind of change. They'd have to rebalance everything, and the developers don't strike me as being up for that job.

Not to mention, nothing is stopping them from completely mucking that up, anyway. If they can't even balance the base classes, what makes you think they will be able to properly balance base classes with a myriad of build possibilities?

It will be a complete train wreck. Just leave it as it is.

[Xyr]

I don't know why people are bashing this thread, a talent system giving more diversity to the players would be great. I loved wow's talent system because it allowed me to switch between tank, melee dps, or ranged dps all on one class. Think death knights are cool and you want to play but don't want to tank? Go frost or unholy. Want to play a warlock and be a summoner? Play demonology. Already content with the spec currently in game? Stay in the same spec.