More Options for Character Growth

[Onidemon]

I feel that we don't have enough options available to make our characters stand out from the rest or to customize them to fit our personal style. Let's say you have a L50 BLM. It won't be any different or play any different from any L50 BLM out there. It will be an exact copy minus the equipped gear.

Even when equipping spells from other classes, you are pretty much forced to chose the best spells to fit your job. So in the end you still end up with the same setup as everyone else and as things will go on, it will be like XI where you need a specific combination to play with others or they won't invite you.

Other MMOs out there have come up with systems that let's you tailor your character to your linking and still make it that you are just as useful in a group then other players from the same Class but with a different setup.


We have been asking for such a system from the beginning, there is tons of threads on the subject and Yoshi-P's answer was the job system. But that is hardly what we asked for, it is just an advanced job/class system a la Ragnarok Online or the advanced jobs in XI. Yes you keep the skills from your previous job but that is the only difference.


WOW for example has the talent tree, you can chose from 3 different play style for each job. A single job can then fit different roles in a group, from Tank to healer to DPS. It's your choice. This approach makes it that you have more options available to you when searching for team mates. If PLD and WAR for example are the only tanks and are not too popular, then you will have a hard time forming a group. Same thing for healers, if only one class is a suitable healer then it will be much harder to find one.


There are many different systems out there in other MMOs and i think that it is time for XIV to have it's own. Take ideas from existing systems or make one from scratch but i believe we need one if we are to have diversity and prevent the game from becoming like XI where you need the perfect combination to even play.

[Yves]

OMG I saw this and was hoping this was a request to add breast implants!

No, but totally serious - I 100% agree that more options is great. I don't like the idea of permanent effects like talent trees (this will block some people from some content) but I can think of ideas like the ACP body, the Promy ring, etc.

More variety never hurt anyone - it can't be missionary all the time.

[nasomi]

Know what's neat about ffxiv? It's not wow.

Your character is not a clone of the next 50blm, unless you're a clone of the person controlling that other 50blm. This is where the importance of a neat little concept called "player skill" comes in. Look at life, the best racecar drivers don't win because one drives backwards, another drives sideways, and two do barrel rolls. They win because everyone drives forward, around a track, but someone does it a little better. Even among the best the difference in skill is minimal, because of the practice. Then there's the idiot bringing up the tail end of the pack because he has no idea what he's doing, probably because he went out and had all his jobs PL'd to 50. He's not THAT much worse than the other drivers, but there is an undeniable difference between how fast they switch from nukes to enfeebling, and don't randomly cast the wrong spell or mis-negotiate a turn.

And then there's the "but it's a game, it's not THAT hard". No, and neither is starcraft, yet your ass gets zerg rushed everything so you ragequit. Experience(irl) makes a difference.

[Onidemon]

Know what's neat about ffxiv? It's not wow.

Your character is not a clone of the next 50blm, unless you're a clone of the person controlling that other 50blm. This is where the importance of a neat little concept called "player skill" comes in. Look at life, the best racecar drivers don't win because one drives backwards, another drives sideways, and two do barrel rolls. They win because everyone drives forward, around a track, but someone does it a little better. Even among the best the difference in skill is minimal, because of the practice. Then there's the idiot bringing up the tail end of the pack because he has no idea what he's doing, probably because he went out and had all his jobs PL'd to 50. He's not THAT much worse than the other drivers, but there is an undeniable difference between how fast they switch from nukes to enfeebling, and don't randomly cast the wrong spell or mis-negotiate a turn.

And then there's the "but it's a game, it's not THAT hard". No, and neither is starcraft, yet your ass gets zerg rushed everything so you ragequit. Experience(irl) makes a difference.

I don't mean to be rude, i really don't, but you are not very good with examples or metaphors or wtv you tried to do there. You are besides the point here. How good of a player you are and character customization have nothing to do with one another. I'm talking about personal play style and personal taste not how experianced you are with your class.

Your approach is exactly what i am trying to avoid. A game where you need to play a certain way and have certain skills/job if not you are called a noob or not experianced or a bad driver if you wish. I don't want my White Mage to be able to DPS as well as BLM or WAR just for the sake of saying im a better player but only because i would like my class to play the way i want it to. Actually it doesn't even need to be that drastic as healers being good at DPS but i'd like to be able to add my own flavor in there that's all im saying.

[elreed]

I don't mean to be rude, i really don't, but you are not very good with examples or metaphors or wtv you tried to do there. You are besides the point here. How good of a player you are and character customization have nothing to do with one another. I'm talking about personal play style and personal taste not how experianced you are with your class.

Your approach is exactly what i am trying to avoid. A game where you need to play a certain way and have certain skills/job if not you are called a noob or not experianced or a bad driver if you wish. I don't want my White Mage to be able to DPS as well as BLM or WAR just for the sake of saying im a better player but only because i would like my class to play the way i want it to. Actually it doesn't even need to be that drastic as healers being good at DPS but i'd like to be able to add my own flavor in there that's all im saying.

Please dont tell me that WoW had that freedom? i played that game for 3 years and had several classes at max, yeah it had talent trees and you could choose a few skills from each tree if you liked, but at the end you had to customize your character in some way to be able to do your role, like the DK blood tank before cataclysm, you had to put certain things from the frost tree and the rest from the blood tree to be at least a decent tank, im not gonna make any metaphors, so what happened at the end? you would customize your class same as others (same as we have now) i think the armory system that SE realeased was way better than what WoW had, you still have it and i dont think this will be the end of what we can add to the jobs is just the first touches.

As you saw we had a real freedom far more than WoW talent tree and didnt worked, becaused people screwed the roles of each class you couldnt tell the difference between lancers and marauders, thaumaturges were healers and so conjurers too, everyone could use everything.

Restrictions are not always bad, those give a standard to do your role you put your part when playing, not everyone do the same stuff in the same order (one thing that you even had to memorize in WoW to better your DPS was the skill order, remember rotations?) i saw videos of thaumaturges killing the Dodore without trouble and i couldnt even lower it to 50% soloing.

So please keep those WoW ideas away from me, there are a few things that i liked in that game especially PvP, but most of those are worthless for FFXIV especially the dumb quest system WoW has (go kill 5 lambs ehhh...... because i dont like'em and i'll give you 100k exp and 1 million gold) 3 mins later you were done and leveled up 3 lvls

[Onidemon]

Please dont tell me that WoW had that freedom? i played that game for 3 years and had several classes at max, yeah it had talent trees and you could choose a few skills from each tree if you liked, but at the end you had to customize your character in some way to be able to do your role, like the DK blood tank before cataclysm, you had to put certain things from the frost tree and the rest from the blood tree to be at least a decent tank, im not gonna make any metaphors, so what happened at the end? you would customize your class same as others (same as we have now) i think the armory system that SE realeased was way better than what WoW had, you still have it and i dont think this will be the end of what we can add to the jobs is just the first touches.

As you saw we had a real freedom far more than WoW talent tree and didnt worked, becaused people screwed the roles of each class you couldnt tell the difference between lancers and marauders, thaumaturges were healers and so conjurers too, everyone could use everything.

Restrictions are not always bad, those give a standard to do your role you put your part when playing, not everyone do the same stuff in the same order (one thing that you even had to memorize in WoW to better your DPS was the skill order, remember rotations?) i saw videos of thaumaturges killing the Dodore without trouble and i couldnt even lower it to 50% soloing.

So please keep those WoW ideas away from me, there are a few things that i liked in that game especially PvP, but most of those are worthless for FFXIV especially the dumb quest system WoW has (go kill 5 lambs ehhh...... because i dont like'em and i'll give you 100k exp and 1 million gold) 3 mins later you were done and leveled up 3 lvls

Well my point was that in WOW your DK can be a tank yes but can also be a DPS without being any good at tanking. It's your choice. It doesnt make your DK do anything out of the ordinary or changes him into something that is not even a DK anymore. Yes if you want to tank with a DK then you need a specific tree setup to do it the right way. But if you dont want to tank then you can also do that and concentrate on DPS. In XIV your PLD will always be a tank no matter what you do. If you want good DPS then you are forced to go with a different class/job. In WOW PLD can be just as good at tanking than DPS.

True that at the beggining of XIV the armory system was too open and ended up making classes that heal or tank who shouldnt be able to. So yes we do need restriction but customization, in a controlled way is very good. Cookie cutter gets old fast.

[Majidah]

Know what's neat about ffxiv? It's not wow.

Your character is not a clone of the next 50blm, unless you're a clone of the person controlling that other 50blm. This is where the importance of a neat little concept called "player skill" comes in. Look at life, the best racecar drivers don't win because one drives backwards, another drives sideways, and two do barrel rolls. They win because everyone drives forward, around a track, but someone does it a little better. Even among the best the difference in skill is minimal, because of the practice. Then there's the idiot bringing up the tail end of the pack because he has no idea what he's doing, probably because he went out and had all his jobs PL'd to 50. He's not THAT much worse than the other drivers, but there is an undeniable difference between how fast they switch from nukes to enfeebling, and don't randomly cast the wrong spell or mis-negotiate a turn.

And then there's the "but it's a game, it's not THAT hard". No, and neither is starcraft, yet your ass gets zerg rushed everything so you ragequit. Experience(irl) makes a difference.

ffxiv requires skill. right.

[Onidemon]

OMG I saw this and was hoping this was a request to add breast implants!

No, but totally serious - I 100% agree that more options is great. I don't like the idea of permanent effects like talent trees (this will block some people from some content) but I can think of ideas like the ACP body, the Promy ring, etc.

More variety never hurt anyone - it can't be missionary all the time.

Yeah the talent tree was just an example of what another game does for character growth. I would much rather see them come up with their own system then to see yet another game rip off the talent tree....

[fusional]

i typed up a novel only to realize at the last minute that it would be completely futile. instead i'll sum it up with this:

games that go over the top with combat customization fail for a reason.

[Onidemon]

i typed up a novel only to realize at the last minute that it would be completely futile. instead i'll sum it up with this:

games that go over the top with combat customization fail for a reason.

Examples please? Cuz i could just as easily say games without enough combat customization fail for a reason.