New Missaphenchair video makes great point about the direction of job design

[Shurrikhan]

That's literally the choice that sparked this entire concept btw.

I'm aware. But that just goes to show what (or, how narrow a) range of in-class customization tends to be fruitful (not too minor, but not so large as to feel like a different class; significant to playflow, yet somehow disposable to theme).

That range sounds quite wide but, in practice, offers bloated non-decisions (talents either to be swapped thoughtlessly based on the type of content or which are irrelevant regardless of content type) more often than not, unless carefully scrutinized (which has yet to be the case among any talent system I've seen).

More simply put, making good talents and talent systems tends to be even harder than making mixed use-case kits with low floors and high ceilings.

And even then, talent systems' product, short of tremendously opening up the themes of a given class to the point they would otherwise have been multiple, separate, and likely more cohesive entities, is only ever either obfuscation --by feigning choice when only the most demanding build has the full throughput-- or barely-rewarded challenge modes --when the most demanding builds has no more throughput than the less demanding builds.


But here, some counter-examples that should mostly mind that span:

Samurai

• Kaiten or Passive Damage Buffs?
  
  
• Utility Hagakure and Passive Damage Buffs or charged, rotational Hagakure (charging up to 20 Kenki per Sen consumed by the 30s mark)?
  
  
• Tsubame-gaeshi or Passive Damage Buffs?
  
  
• Second charge on Tsubame-gaeshi or slightly greater Tsubame-Gaeshi damage?
  
  
• 2-minute Ikishoten and free Kaeshi: Namikiri or 1-minute Ikishoten and Passive Damage Buffs?

Those each constitute decent playflow-affecting choices, though they still offer compositionally-based best answers (use 2-charge TG if in a raidbuff-dense composition; else single) and so even they aren't great.


And in each of those cases, I'd still rather just expand the use cases for Kaiten, TG, Ikishoten, etc., such that anyone and everyone has access to the deepest build of the job, but using those tools only to X extent would still produce pretty decent throughput.

Think of it like the Tornado Kick rotation in Stormblood either for laggier players or if TK hadn't been quite so ridiculously buffed by the Greased Lightning bug; you still had the considerably effective option of using TK less or not at all, to the point that there were still purple parses that ignored the new tech for months.

The only thing the talents do is to remove any... guilt(?) of using only 70, 80, 90, 95, etc. percent of one's kit. But in doing so, you then force the 70% depth kit (likely more like 40% depth, if the "choice" is then used to excuse further options by which to reduce the job's ceiling in those builds) to compete tightly with the 100% depth kit, at which point you're still pushing out the 100% kit or you have the entitled-yet-uninterested up in arms of balance between builds.

If we're going to face that conflict in either case, I'd rather not try, probably in vain, to obfuscate it. Just let each kit be a whole kit, made of easy to use but hard to master parts, and people will each use what part of it they're willing to.

[cjbeagle]

Just let each kit be a whole kit, made of easy to use but hard to master parts, and people will each use what part of it they're willing to.

Sounds great in theory, but in practice they removed Kaiten. I'd rather such a change be implemented as a preference option that I can opt out of - that's the whole point.

[Shurrikhan]

Sounds great in theory, but in practice they removed Kaiten. I'd rather such a change be implemented as a preference option that I can opt out of - that's the whole point.

And soon, now that you've handed them the reins by calling it a "choice", literally anything else a given player who'd play a job "if only X were gone" might point out for removal from the shared/base kit:

Positionals? A "choice" with no reward value.

Bankables? A "choice" with no reward value.

DoTs? A "choice" with no reward value.

You cannot win that fight just by obfuscating it through "You get your desired choice A and you get your desired choice B" when one choice (if it is to meet the complaints of the given "if only" players) depends on balance despite lower demands and the other choice depends on imbalance enough to actually reward the higher demands therein.

No matter what, you're eventually going to have to sit down those players asking that they get full or nearly full performance for a small part of the effort, to the detriment of skill ceilings directly or in practice (by giving a braindead kit equal throughput)... and tell them "no."

And even then, you'll have spent this effort just to give players the ability to avoid seeing what tools they're not using, making the rest of the kit (chopped up across whatever number of build choices) that much less accessible and setting a subset of players that much more deliberately and divisively against full usage of their job's kit. That's why I don't prefer it.

The "choice" sounds great in theory, as if each could have their preferences met, but balance does not work that way. You cannot reasonably expect people to play a build as different from another as BLM is to an even-further-dumbed-down-MCH in a high-movement fight... when the two would produce nearly the same performances even when fully optimized. You cannot expect that people would feel fully free to take Kaiten, Senei, TG, and the like, if the simpler alternative, pure Shinten spam, produces the same results. They can no more be real "choices" than simply "choosing" not to utilize one's full kit as it stands already.

[cjbeagle]

And soon, now that you've handed them the reins by calling it a "choice", literally anything else a given player who'd play a job "if only X were gone".

I legitimately don't know what you're talking about here - can you clarify?

Positionals? A "choice" with no reward value.

Bankables? A "choice" with no reward value.

DoTs? A "choice" with no reward value.

Who said anything about no reward value for any of these? I specifically said the harder options should have a performance bonus.

No matter what, you're eventually going to have to sit down those players asking that they get full or nearly full performance for a small part of the effort, to the detriment of skill ceilings directly or in practice (by giving a braindead kit equal throughput)... and tell them "no."

Yep, and like I said, telling them no is perfectly fine as far as I'm concerned.

The "choice" sounds great in theory, as if each could have their preferences met, but balance does not work that way. You cannot reasonably expect people to play a build as different from another as BLM is to an even-further-dumbed-down-MCH in a high-movement fight... when the two would produce nearly the same performances even when fully optimized. You cannot expect that people would feel fully free to take Kaiten, Senei, TG, and the like, if the simpler alternative, pure Shinten spam, produces the same results. They can no more be real "choices" than simply "choosing" not to utilize one's full kit as it stands already.

Agreed - nobody said they should have comparable performance - rather, the repeated note that the more difficult choices should entail enhanced performance clearly suggests otherwise.

Again, I would prefer the "choices" of accessibility to be to simply neglect nuances of a well-designed kit, but again, the devs seem intent on lowering the skill floor to the detriment of the skill ceiling - all I'm proposing is that such changes are optional, while also granting a path to raise the ceiling without touching the floor. Your objections are consistently that this could be achieved through elegant design, and my response to that is simply that they're not doing so - they've chosen to dumb things down instead, so, since I no longer trust their decision making, I'd rather decisions of accessibility vs complexity be left to the players themselves.

If nothing else, having such options would serve as A/B testing so they could try out terrible ideas like the Kaiten removal without actually forcing it on players. Think removing Kaiten is a good idea? Cool, implement it as an "accessible" option and see how many (or few) players end up using it - but in the meantime everyone who loved the job as it was could continue playing it as it was - the addition of such an option would have absolutely no impact on them, but maybe it would appeal to hyper casuals, and undoubtedly it would provide valuable data to SE.

[Shurrikhan]

Who said anything about no reward value for any of these? I specifically said the harder options should have a performance bonus.

Right, but then it doesn't deal with the problem at hand, (the devs accommodating) those saying they want, at less effort, to reach nearer to the performance ceiling. That problem will still exist as before. It can't be a "solution" to X or really "mitigate" X, if it doesn't actually deal with or slow X, but only change its form.

You'd merely move the choice to use fewer of your skills from in-combat to out-of-combat. Rather than choosing to use only 18 of 24 skills, for instance, you'd simply choose to have only 18 of 24 skills. In which case... why bother with a choice we already had and simply need to continue to fight for, regardless?

That's all. We're going in circles at this point.

I legitimately don't know what you're talking about here - can you clarify?

That was just a distracted typo. My apologies. I had accidentally removed the words "might point out for removal from the shared/base kit" from the end when giving those examples.

[cjbeagle]

That problem will still exist as before. It can't be a "solution" to X or really "mitigate" X, if it doesn't actually deal with or slow X, but only change its form.

You're right, we're going in circles.

As I already said before, the difference is that it gives the hyper casuals "choice" to self-select into an easier kit. A lot of people would rather do something easy well than do something hard poorly, even if the ultimate outcome is identical. If you won't accept that, then we agree to disagree on a fundamental facet of this issue.

It's also worth noting that you can absolutely solve problems simply by reframing things even if there's no mechanical change. Here are my favorite 2 examples:

- From what I've heard, the concept of "rested XP" for WoW was originally designed as a way to discourage players from playing excessively. You accumulate rested XP just like you'd expect, and during that time you get full XP, but after that time you get half XP (again, to discourage people from playing excessively). As you'd expect, people hated it. Someone had the idea to treat it as "double XP" instead of normal, and when depleted, "normal XP" instead of halved, and just double the XP required to level so that nothing really changed except the optics. Everyone loved it. As a disclaimer, I've never worked for Blizzard and I don't even remember who I heard that from, so maybe it's true, maybe it isn't.

- There was this gun in an FPS that everyone hated, playtest feedback was all over the place, but in general it was just seen as "too weak" compared to other guns available. It got buffed repeatedly until it was objectively overpowered, but people still said it felt weak. The solution ended up being to change its SFX. As soon as its shots were more bass and less pewpew, nobody thought it was underpowered anymore.

This ties back to the idea that some players would rather do something easy well than something hard poorly. The types of people that are vocal about wanting jobs to be easier probably aren't parsers and may not even use ACT - they might not even know how poorly they're doing, but they can tell they're not playing their job well. They might end up doing even less dps with a simplified kit and be happier doing it just because they feel like they're playing proficiently.

[CelestiCer]

Please forgive me if some of these seem nit-picks, but many of these examples illustrate many of the pitfalls likely within customization at the fine/minute end.

Let me get this right... I present hypothetical examples of what could be fun in the form of freedom to choose, none balance breaking nor impossible to balance. Yet your choices of words were

• sacrifice range for... well, not really anything of value
• Ultimately just ends up just having a best choice
• Not really a relevant choice
• only two truly viable possibilities
• extensive and impactful enough

Your Entire PoV = Optimization

Example: I loved Tenka Goken Cone + Kaiten. Now 6.1 its Circular and no Kaiten? I hate it. I hate it so much that I have not done a singular dungeon or fate that I used to spam out of pure joy of my skills. Is Circular with Kaiten more optimal and it more optimal to press less buttons? What good is all that optimization, if it makes me stop playing.

If its 100% purely about optimization? You can justify removing everything because it can be viewed as a hindrance for performance numbers to the decimal actions per second. Then where is our fun?

• Higanbana 1 min dot removed, less restrictive
• Tsubame removed, less restrictive
• Ogi Namikiri only hits once, less restrictive
• Kenki gauge removed, less restrictive
• SAM buffs apply on Hakaze, less restrictive
• Jinpu Shifu removed, less restrictive
• Crits removed, less variences less restrictive
• Postional bonuses removed, less restrictive
• Yaten / Gyoten costs no, less restrictive
• Rebalance everything with increased potencies
• No more managing nothing
• 100% performance and optimized

You might argue " well Celesti you taking it a bit far ", am I? cause that's what that logical view point is heading towards.

• Less Buttons
• Less APM
• Less Bloat
• Less Choices
• All Streamlined
• 100% Performance
• 100% Optimized

No line to be drawn with optimization

And we can go further by focusing optimization of " accessibility of content ". Suddenly you justify homogenization of difficulty. Simplifying not just jobs but also the content. Cause why optimize 5% of the player base finishing high-end content, that isn't as optimal as having 100% finish it doesn't it? see where this is going?

You can advocate for Low Skill-floor / High Skill-Ceiling, but I don't see the logic in your Reponses. You're advocating purely optimization -> and that leads to simplification of everything.

I vouch for Balance, totally okey. But not to turn the game into how little keystrokes I need to push or how dumbed down people want to advocate to make our jobs, in support of deleting skills, streamlining everything to the point I see no difference in any job.

How about instead of that, Optimize our fun <- I think this is less difficult and not even impossible to do while maintaining game balance.

[Shurrikhan]

Let me get this right... I present hypothetical examples of what could be fun in the form of freedom to choose, none balance breaking nor impossible to balance. Yet your choices of words were...

If this cherrypicked selection is what you take away from that exchange, then, that seems neither the result nor goal.

My words, noting simply what degree of choice tends to have both palpable gameplay effect and managed to have multiple truly viable options (rather than a single real choice per content type), were all prefaced with:

Please forgive me if some of these seem nit-picks, but many of these examples illustrate many of the pitfalls likely within customization at the fine/minute end.[/B]

...which was the point of discussion in the post you quoted just before laying out those suggestions.

Example: I loved Tenka Goken Cone + Kaiten. Now 6.1 its Circular and no Kaiten?

Why not just give a skill for each, circular and conal?

We could then put the conal one on our hotbars if we want conal. Put the circular on our hotbar if we want circular. Or slot both for all anyone cares.

I'm not sure how you took away from "We could do this even now to produce a win-win, without need to visit rest areas and swap talents" solely a joke about the "benefits" of the circular AoE as if it were a jab at your suggestion specifically?

If its 100% purely about optimization? You can justify removing everything because it can be viewed as a hindrance for performance numbers to the decimal actions per second.

• Higanbana 1 min dot removed, less restrictive
• Tsubame removed, less restrictive
• Ogi Namikiri only hits once, less restrictive

You're strawmanning. I've not recommended removing restrictions. Yours is literally the first post in this thread to even use the word or its synonyms.

I only noted that if there's talent choices tend to be wasted if (A) there is a definitive best answer (as the case for having any AoE output from meditation spender or not) or (B) if neither option makes any palpable difference whatsoever (as per sacrificing Gyoten range for cooldown).

Apart from that, you are simply seconding what I already mentioned: if you allow a reduced kit as would be permitted through talents meant to give the options to remove depth from a kit to then compete with the unreduced kit, you provide significantly less reason to use the depth. And if you don't, you merely replace skill envy ("I don't yet know how to fully play this job...") with build envy ("Why does their build get to do more than mine if mine's supposed to be a legitimate choice?"), complete with further barriers to growth (as now one has to swap out of their allotted head-in-the-sand comfort zone in order to even try out the other tools available to a job).

No line to be drawn with optimization

You're really milking a twist on "Choices should be competitive (to a degree commensurate with effort)" into "We should only ever care about optimization" for all it's worth. If a DRK were to have asked for more sustain and functioning immunity in 6.0, would they likewise be "optimization-obsessed"?

You can advocate for Low Skill-floor / High Skill-Ceiling, but I don't see the logic in your Reponses. You're advocating purely optimization -> and that leads to simplification of everything.

In what possible way is "No, let's just keep jobs interesting and deep, instead of opening up job to yet new ways by which those who don't play them can demand changes" equates to "simplify everything"?

"No, let's not give players the option to nuke their kits, because the next step will inevitably be complaints of imbalance between dumbed down jobs and their real counterparts, ultimately leading to reduced reward for making use of one's full kit" =/= "Let's nuke every job's kit."

What possible part of this (below), for instance, makes it sound like I want to simplify every kit?

Such is complicated, though, so let's try to contextualize this concretely lest it remain just nebulously theoretical.

Take a skill like Shadewalker.

So long as Enmity remained just a basic table that summed a product of total damage and healing and their respective modifiers, it was almost entirely bloat; its unique affordances were limited to add grabs for which a NIN's burst damage would outpace his fellows'. In all other cases, it simply, rather directly, became tank rDPS, supplied on CD. There was, for the party as a whole, no difference between your having Shadewalker or just having, say, 10 more potency on Gust Blade.

But that is true only for a narrow span of play in which most of its value would be wasted. Imagine, instead, for instance, a situation in which it'd make sense to place Shadewalker instead on, say, a sprinting Ranged DPS, for altogether more mitigation. That, too, would ultimately end up as rDPS, of a sorts, but so long as the use cases vary noticeably in their synergy, the skill's value, too, would vary greatly, with competing uses providing risk and reward: Do I simply use it on cooldown for this simpler <Affordance A>, or hold for this later opportunity for potentially far greater <Affordance B>?

Or, imagine if Ninja had actually built around use of Shadows. Now, Shadewalker is a more noticeable buff, sacrificing some resource on your part to give some further affordance to the target ally or affordance against a target enemy (which ought to be the rarer use case, as not to make it the default). You can now switch-teleport with the Shade you leave on the target, leaving a shadowy simulacrum in your place as you teleport behind the target. When using Dream Within a Dream, you and every Shade you've left now linear-AoE gap-close to the target of Dream Within a Dream. Etc., etc.

While you'd have only ultimately added a line of text to Shadewalker --"Attach a shadow of your martial soul to the target, transferring to them the benefit of Shadeskin if allied or converting that benefit to Shadows' Eyes if an enemy"-- you've expanded its use cases tremendously. And rather than needing, out of combat, to swap between which single capacity or set thereof you'd wish to eventually use, you'd have access to all of them. It'd just be up to you to learn which you can, in the given context, leverage best, in combination with the best choices among the rest of your kit.

Optimize our fun

Allowing for optimized fun is not separate from balance, though. Yes, build for fun first, balance later. I'm not against that. I will have and will continue to advocate for that. But a "choice" which can be taken in isolation and in which one option is always better than the other is not a choice. Since you've allowed the choice, per your examples, to be made discretely --no longer bundled with anything else-- there will be no use cases for the option that is inferior within a given context (say, forgoing an AoE ability for extra ST damage or vice versa).

Moreover, the customization idea as it was presented is literally, unless you quoted the prior conversation by mistake and your post therefore had no connection to what you quoted, about the degree to which we specifically sanction players to strip away depth from their kits.

To use your earlier examples, my preference would just be to outright revert the SAM changes.

If some nebulous, barely-seen group of players who nonetheless have the devs' ears make enough of a racket about Tenka cones, you do either of two things: Ideally, you tell them the conal is here to stay because it was designed always to be conal and the kit works better when it's conal, but grant basic QoL in the form of conals (and linear AoEs) no longer requiring a target and having the player option to snap their aim to target or retain player facing. Barring that, you simply give players their choice of cone or circular Tenka via the Actions and Traits menu, rather than involving a whole new talent system, its costs, and its limitations just to manage one's preferred AoE shape.

If some nebulous, barely-seen group of players who nonetheless have the devs' ears would demand the removal of Higanbana, the devs should not find a new way to attempt to briefly reframe and thereby postpone the problem but rather just make clear that this is the kit, and they can use it fully or not.

That, more than chopping up jobs into piecemeal in the name of placation, is how you protect (or, as you put it, "optimize") fun.

[Ziggurat8]

Optimize our fun
Honestly, more of this please. I don't care about top dps or world firsts. I just want to enjoy my game.