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

[SilverSkyway]

You, sir, are exactly the kind of player that makes me think we should have job kit customization via a preference system akin to talents (but nothing like talents seen in most games).

Using bard as an example, would you prefer to have 2 dots, or just 1? If you were to pick just 1, would you pick it even if it meant doing a little lower dps overall?

If you had the option between the 45s dots as they are, or dots that lasted forever so you never had to refresh them, which would you pick? If you'd pick never having to refresh them, would you pick that even if it meant doing a little lower dps overall?

Letting players customize their kits to their preferences in a way that easy is available but hard is rewarding would let players who want easy have easy and players who want challenging have challenging (and be rewarded for it).

It would also allow players to ramp from easy to challenging at whatever rate they're comfortable with (or not at all, for some players).

But more importantly, it would let the devs design and balance in a way that can appease the entire easy-to-challenging spectrum instead of having to find a happy medium - let the players find their own happy medium by adding as much or as little complexity as they want.

I do like talents if done right. Rift online or old WoW. But what you thinking, I might know?

I would go for 1 dot but Bard does have iron jaw but to the 2nd part I want to last still last the same as it is. Apply dot 'iron jaw' before a song switch helps with my flow. Just reapply the dots I can forget espelly if I'm running from death. Truthfully, remove of Iron and one dot to be replace with some sort of hard hitting spell would be better I would think but Bard kit need though crit dots. Bard need a rework if that happens.
In other games I've talent different non-meta stuff as it was passive and/or flow better for me.

I thought about what if we had talents/preference system. Get two options on few abilities. About the same damage (balance) give or take what they do.
Let use RDM scorch. Option one put a dot on main target or option 2 small increase damage to target and aoe. As a example.

I agree. Maybe in the future. That idea could help with button bloat. Even not.
I don't hate FF14 or the bloat. I like easy doesn't mean I'll stop playing. I at first hate bard but now it my main and that not because its meta. I just like ish bow/archer classes in game. lol

[tearagion]

They don't need to spend a ton of development time making talent trees or anything, they just need to implement a better skill ceiling gradient in the current jobs. 99% of humans are entirely capable of learning and maximizing BLM for example, just 98% don't want to whether they're too lazy, or don't like casting, or whatever other reason. For example complaints like this:

I don't like that statement just as blunt. It sucks if you really LOVE a job's aesthetics and fantasy but can't play because the skill floor is too high, let alone the ceiling.

In the ideal world (in my opinion), every job's skill floor should be accessible, with the full potential under a medium to high skill ceiling, and the final rdps being (mostly) dictated by that... Makes sense that a very high skill ceiling is rewarded with better dps, and that's why I like BLM. The actual job is quite simplistic, however I feel that BLM is the hardest job to play because you basically have a separate high skill ceiling for every fight, since your performance is ultimately dependent on knowing when is what.

This individual does a good job pointing out BLM as an ideal floor-ceiling gap for a complex-leaning job. However..."can't" play a job because its skill floor is too high? What job has ever been prohibitively difficult for a normally functioning human being? I could accept "I like this job fantasy, but don't want to put in the effort to learn it because it's too hard" because then at least the complaint is honest. Of course my response could easily be: are you playing EX or above? No? Congratulations your performance literally doesn't matter (for dps/tanks, it matters essentially only for healers and the collective party these days).

Even if reaching the ceiling is important to casual players, why should they get to dictate it universally? Why should players who want a job they can put a lot of time into improving be cast aside entirely? The obvious answer is they shouldn't. More jobs should just be designed better. Unfortunately only BLM seems to get this privilege.

[cjbeagle]

Now we're talking. That choice makes sense. Its extensive and impactful enough to feel complete and doesn't outright sacrifice functionality.

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

[ExcogEnjoyer]

I don't like that statement just as blunt. It sucks if you really LOVE a job's aesthetics and fantasy but can't play because the skill floor is too high, let alone the ceiling.

I love black mage's aesthetic. I love its animations, how its relics look, and how it flows through battle. But I can't play it because I'm not good enough. You know what my response is? "Oh well, maybe I'll practice it some day." I don't ask on the forums for it to be made easier, I don't beg yoshida to chop its knees off for my sake. The response to someone complaining about the barrier to entry for a job being too high should be a universal "Kick rocks or git gud."

[Dzian]

In fact, who asks for free space on their hotbar? As far as I know there's 1 controller player out of 20 who's complaining about not having enough space.

The issue with controllers isn't so much space it's more layout. Where to put a skill on the xhb that actually makes sense and flows without requiring a bucket ton of trigger juggling.. one skill can add 4 button presses if you have to release a trigger tap r1 to swap sets. Press the trigger again. And then press r1 again to swap back after activating the skill.

Some jobs feel very well designed around this. Smn for example you can set up the xhb in such a way that you basically never have to let go of r2 or change sets in a fight. Blm at max level can be the same. Though blm is weird in that it's rotation changes a dozen times at various levels. Warrior at 80 was another haven't gotten it to 90.

But then you have jobs like ninja. Where you have things like the raiju skills and nowhere to put them that makes sense. And 1 skill ends up adding several button presses and feeling clunky because it interrupts the flow of combat..

[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.