Hear me out: Should 14 have talent trees?

[Liam_Harper]

no.

absolutely not. all that happens is people start kicking other people from raids for not having what people have decided are the optimal talents.

square already struggles with balancing issues.

Rubbish.

People don't kick you from Savage PF even if you're a 0 dps healer, 70% uptime DNC, playing the job with the lowest dps or not using mitigation as a tank. I'm honestly a little tired of how the ff14 community always stifles literally any suggestion of QoL or more interesting gameplay with nonsense scaremongering. With the exception of the handful of speed runs for logs and occasional bad apples, ff14 players just don't care about meta.

I'm not sure talent trees are the answer, but ff14 classes and gear is terribly bland and boring and could do with something to spice it a little.

Square struggles with balancing issues because they push out more classes than they can handle and QA test them with a small team of unqualified staff members.

[LisSquid]

Rubbish.

People don't kick you from Savage PF even if you're a 0 dps healer, 70% uptime DNC, playing the job with the lowest dps or not using mitigation as a tank. I'm honestly a little tired of how the ff14 community always stifles literally any suggestion of QoL or more interesting gameplay with nonsense scaremongering. With the exception of the handful of speed runs for logs and occasional bad apples, ff14 players just don't care about meta.

Square struggles with balancing issues because they push out more classes than they can handle and QA test them with a small team of unqualified staff members.

I can count on one hand the amount of times I've been kicked from a party in 20 years because of talent choices. People look at your gear, your logs, and you achieves.


I'm against talents in 14 strictly because I don't believe SE can balance it. If they could pull it off I'd honestly love it, but they give me little faith.

[GrizzlyTank]

Talent trees are ultimately the illusion of choice. In the end there will be a handful of optimal builds that everyone are expected to follow by the community.

Only "talent tree" in WoW that somewhat avoided this was the artifact system because in the end you got all of the talents, save for 3 minor ones tied to loot.

[Illmaeran]

Well, it's just a me thing, call it ocd and/or taking rp too seriously, but I didn't like that I had to unlock a class I wasn't interested in, aesthetically or mechanically, and leave it there unleveled, pestering me every time I see it in my roster. That and the Amaro mount are the only reason I leveled all jobs, but if it were up to me, I'd only have 6, and only 2 of them are the vanilla jobs /shrug

That's fair enough, we all have different tastes. I do sympathize with the only leveling a couple jobs; I was DRG/BRD/DoH/DoL only for the vast majority of my time in the game. There was a time back in late ARR where I thought it would be be a good idea to get all classes to 30 just to have them at an equal point to satisfy my need for uniformity, but I think I stopped at about 75% done. It's only been in the past few months that I've started branching out into WHM, RDM, and PLD to round out all five different roles (and unlock the glamours).

[Kacho_Nacho]

So lately there’s been a bunch of talk about people being really unhappy about job changes and general direction. The devs clearly want to keep the skill gap as small as possible and most of us hate their current approach. I think there may be a solution: talent trees.

I don’t mean anything as in depth as other games. Just maybe a few talents per job that slightly change how a few skills operate. For example, warrior has a talent that changes overpower from a circle to a cone. Sage has a talent that changes physis from a regen to a shield. Dark knight could have a talent that makes plunge deal no damage but applies soul survivor. Samurai has a talent choice where A: you lose kaiten but midare, kaeshi, and tsubame are guaranteed crits or B: you have hissatsu kaiten but the related skills deal less damage.
I didn’t completely think out the numbers or functionality, these are just examples.

In other words, those of us who preferred the gameplay of previous patches/expacs can have our cake and eat it and players who like the direction of job design can have and eat their cake. Would this happen? Probably not. But it could be fun to think about.

I see where you are coming from; but, talent trees wouldn't work with FFXIV's class/job design. As opposed to WoW, the classes/jobs are designed for specific roles. As such, you can't finagle with the abilities without throwing game balance out the window.

Furthermore, player groupthink would decide which talents would be required. Individuals who choose different talents would be judged and excluded even if their talent build works well.

So, no. Not in this game. However, it could work in a future S.E. MMORPG when the classes/jobs are designed from the ground up to accommodate talent trees and various talent builds.

[NanaWiloh]

Talent trees have no business being in a MMO simple as that. They are fine in a single player rpgs where role/class balance is not as important.

[Droxybrobotnik]

Trees are useless since they all result in meta cookie cutter builds anyways, and you'd get kicked out of hardcore content for not following them.

[EagleDynamics]

So lately there’s been a bunch of talk about people being really unhappy about job changes and general direction. The devs clearly want to keep the skill gap as small as possible and most of us hate their current approach. I think there may be a solution: talent trees.

I don’t mean anything as in depth as other games. Just maybe a few talents per job that slightly change how a few skills operate. For example, warrior has a talent that changes overpower from a circle to a cone. Sage has a talent that changes physis from a regen to a shield. Dark knight could have a talent that makes plunge deal no damage but applies soul survivor. Samurai has a talent choice where A: you lose kaiten but midare, kaeshi, and tsubame are guaranteed crits or B: you have hissatsu kaiten but the related skills deal less damage.
I didn’t completely think out the numbers or functionality, these are just examples.

In other words, those of us who preferred the gameplay of previous patches/expacs can have our cake and eat it and players who like the direction of job design can have and eat their cake. Would this happen? Probably not. But it could be fun to think about.

no man. people will always choose the meta anyway. its a lot of effort for something that isnt very useful.