Skill Branching: "Everyone Wins" Concept

[ForsakenRoe]

Apparently, the JP folks tell them they want more healing, not more damage buttons, so we got P5-8S, which drove people away from raiding because of it.

Further, you don't make changes like this in a content patch. There's more or less zero chance of a final expansion patch - when they're shipping it then basically go into a semi-maintenance mode for the next 6-8 months while they finish working on the Expansion - being when they completely upend the battle system. I do remember WoW released new expansion changes a week or two before the expansion, but that was part of the pre-expansion patch and events, not the content patch 6-8 months earlier.

As for no PTR: They don't want data mining. Straight up. We've seen WoW release new raid tiers where people went into the PTR and basically worked out all the strats

1: Then that's an issue of them taking feedback but getting the implementation wrong. Barb EX was quite well received and was also 'more healing' but in a different style (faster, not harder), so the question is if they try another direction of approaching 'more healing' or just give up on the whole thing because their first attempt failed. I'd like to hope it's the latter considering how many times they tried to get Diadem to be accepted, but I don't have much optimism left to spend

2: You absolutely 'can', SE 'doesn't', that's the difference. Again, WOW did a fairly largescale rework to Ret Paladin (which had some extra knock-on effects to Prot and Holy, which later got fully polished out in the patch after), and to Mage, in 10.1 and 10.1.5. Just because SE doesn't want to, or hasn't in the past, doesn't mean they can't, it just means they don't want to. And I don't expect that to change, nice as it would be. I'm also not sure what is meant by 'completely upend the battle system', I'd reserve that term for things like adding Interruptions as a mechanic, or Shield Check mechanics (with an actual UI element), not 'SCH got two of it's DOTs returned'

3: We get datamining anyway. WOW PTR is not datamining, the mythic phase of the last boss is always hidden because that's the main 'viewership draw' of the race. Even if we could see every mechanic's debuff via datamining before the servers went up in FFXIV, it would tell us almost nothing. The descriptions on the A/B debuffs in P12S literally say 'Marked to be the target of a specific attack.' That doesn't tell us anything about what the 'specific attack' is, how much damage it does, how long this A/B debuff lasts, all we can derive from it would be that A does something, B does something else, and that much is obvious from literally one pull getting there

The playerbase being daft about potency changes is not a reason to withhold all changes until the expansion. Leaving it out of Preliminary Notes, sure whatever I don't care, but holding off on changing AST which has been said to be in 'such a state that it needs a big rework, big enough that it can only be done with an expansion', sounds like it should be given at least SOMEthing in the meantime??? 'Yeh, it needs so many changes, we can't do them in one patch, so we are going to leave it exactly as it is for a year longer than we originally planned.' Not even a small QOL like giving Lightspeed a second charge to at least tide the poor bastards who main the job over till 7.0? Really?

Re public test servers: If we restrict this to job design, all SE needs is a toggle somewhere on/in the character select screen: "Try Bizarro Job Design for your next login? [y/n]" Let players try the new job design in existing content. There's no need to include new MSQ, new dungeons, new raids, etc. anywhere in the client -- only the job, and only up through the current level cap, is required.

I'd do even smaller: I'd just have a client that has the server built-in, and it connects to 'localhost: portnumber' instead of an actual server. Then, just have it preloaded with one character's data on the server: John Midlander, max level everything. And loading into the game puts you in one map, with all exits disabled: Middle La Noscea. Your home point is Summerford Farms where the dummies are, you have zero gil so you cannot TP, and the zone transition lines are blocked off. Or a special, empty room with dummies set up in formations of like, one, three, five and ten, to test various ST/AOE scenarios. All you do on the client is test whatever thing SE's put on there for people to test. People can infer most (like 90%+) of the gameplay from combat with dummies.

They have that benchmark program, after all, so it's not like 'standalone download that doesn't access SE servers during runtime' is alien to them. Make a PTR download that runs a 'server' on the client's PC for just that client to access, throw whatever gameplay changes to test onto there, asking 'hey we were wondering if people would be interested in WHM having a Water spell as part of their rotation, give us feedback on site where you downloaded this from', and see if people say 'its good' or 'its bad' or 'I like the idea but the MP cost/CD/gauge cost/etc is too short/long'

[Aravell]

Barb EX was quite well received and was also 'more healing' but in a different style (faster, not harder), so the question is if they try another direction of approaching 'more healing' or just give up on the whole thing because their first attempt failed. I'd like to hope it's the latter considering how many times they tried to get Diadem to be accepted, but I don't have much optimism left to spend

Part of me hopes that them implementing both Barb EX and Abyssos in the same patch was them trying 2 forms of increased healing and seeing which one is received better.

.....It's also possible that the reception to Abyssos scared them so much that they'll never raise healing requirements again.

[Post]

It seems like an easy way for them to implement Ty's proposal would be to use the old cross class, eventually 'role action' system which at present doesn't allow for 'selection' of actions the way it did until 5.0.

Pvp also used this feature until 6.1, and BLU still does.

It may be a problem of scale after a certain point, but I'm sure they have at least the 5 actions worth of space per job they removed when they trimmed down role actions.

So, you'd just let players select from that pool or make several pools with one action required in each, which is how the pvp ones worked. If that's not enough in some cases they could also tie certain action cooldowns together the way BLU does or certain job actions do when you swap between jobs still today.

I personally would embrace this direction of they went down it, and at the very least I've been complaining that they should do something like this to allow for player choice among certain actions like Salted Earth and Freeze.

I'd like to be able to choose to use ground targeted versions of spells if they exist, whether they implement that with aui option or just a separate, nearly identical version of an action I don't care.

Player choice should be a consideration in more than just glamour; as others have said it feels like they think they know best and are forcing that to too great a degree in a lot of places.

[Shurrikhan]

So I pose the question to you all, do you think a concept like this could work? Would it satisfy both sides of this never-ending conflict?

I think it'd be more a QoL alternative to what other hoops players would otherwise go through to simplify/automate their gameplay than any felt increase in choice.

In your sample, the options are essentially between greater and lesser complexity -- greater control (with more button expenditure/"bloat") vs. slightly greater constraints (being limited to just the use-cases that get automatically baked in). The only difference between that and, say, just un-neutering the macro system, though, is probably just that you can reduce the cost of not engaging with a given kit mechanic.

But that has its own downsides: How do you balance that more complex or less fool-proofed option against the other? And even if you give it a faintly higher ceiling commensurate with what optimizations even a skilled player may end up missing out on by busying themselves from not automating/removing/fool-proofing that mechanic... you still have the issue of the more complex option being inferior until it's (almost) perfectly optimized, which then makes time spent within the harder choice feel cumbersome during the time spent learning it... which then makes fewer willing to learn it. By contrast, everyone having that same option and just being free to go as far along it towards optimization as they like --as per now-- feels far less deliberate or "locked-in".

For my part, just keeping each additional bit of complexity's ppm contribution reasonable (i.e., tapering off / diminishing, especially where less intended minutia are involved, which is usually a natural consequence of just keeping the vast majority of the kit largely accessible and intuitive) seems like it already provides most of the benefits of these choices as given example here.

(Granted, I'm one of those who thinks Summoner has too much output for how little it demands -- though I'd therefore increase the amount of engagement available to it, rather than just nerfing it -- so...)


All in all? It's probably(?) an improvement, though likely only a slight one. I doubt it'd quite be worth its costs.


___________


Now, if this were intended as a more expansion customization system, rather than just set of a simplification(-undoing) bimodal option, I would likely be more excited, though I would want that to come in a much more XIV-ish manner, such as through just breaking the traits into Major and Minor Traits and letting each class/job have more Major Trait slots than it automatically fills. Those traits would affect different jobs in different ways while providing a consistent theme to each kit they're slotted into. (MNK's Flowing Strikes on WHM would function quite differently than on DRG or MCH, but would ultimately bring each job towards a similar niche and/or similar capacities.)

But... that would be even more of a design nightmare, as it'd effectively increase the number of jobs to be balanced to at least <[number of jobs] * ([number of jobs] - 1)>. In terms of build choices per development hour spent, it'd be hugely more efficient, but in terms of pizzazz/sale-power per development hour? It'd be quite the hard sell as a project/addition to the game.

[Aravell]

Now, if this were intended as a more expansion customization system, rather than just set of a simplification(-undoing) bimodal option, I would likely be more excited, though I would want that to come in a much more XIV-ish manner, such as through just breaking the traits into Major and Minor Traits and letting each class/job have more Major Trait slots than it automatically fills. Those traits would affect different jobs in different ways while providing a consistent theme to each kit they're slotted into. (MNK's Flowing Strikes on WHM would function quite differently than on DRG or MCH, but would ultimately bring each job towards a similar niche and/or similar capacities.)

But... that would be even more of a design nightmare, as it'd effectively increase the number of jobs to be balanced to at least <[number of jobs] * ([number of jobs] - 1)>. In terms of build choices per development hour spent, it'd be hugely more efficient, but in terms of pizzazz/sale-power per development hour? It'd be quite the hard sell as a project/addition to the game.

I've seen the idea of minor traits to change the gameplay of a job being pitched before, I think it was being pitched as a materia option that you can only slot into weapons. Could do some pretty interesting things by changing what abilities do depending on options picked.

Honestly though, they might eventually look into a system similar to this. You can't really stretch 30-ish buttons over more and more levels without making the levelling process worse, they have to seek alternative means of advancing jobs eventually.

[Renathras]

Specifically on Barb Ex:

As I've pointed out before, the reason they didn't carry that on was too much movement along with healing. They obviously took the wrong lesson from it "let's have less healing and more movement" instead of the right one "let's keep the healing but have less movement so the healers can actually use their GCD tools to aid with those phases".

Barb was well received by the high end playerbase, but I suspect that casuals didn't like it much.

[Aravell]

They obviously took the wrong lesson from it "let's have less healing and more movement" instead of the right one "let's keep the healing but have less movement so the healers can actually use their GCD tools to aid with those phases".

I disagree with this because of the dev team's workflow. Anabaseios and GolbezEX were very likely in development when Abyssos and BarbEX came out, so what they learned in 6.2 will likely not have been applied then. If they learned any lessons at all from Abyssos/BarbEX, it may show up in the 6.5 trial or maybe only show up in 7.0 onwards.

[ForsakenRoe]

I've seen the idea of minor traits to change the gameplay of a job being pitched before, I think it was being pitched as a materia option that you can only slot into weapons. Could do some pretty interesting things by changing what abilities do depending on options picked.

Might have been one of mine, if so, glad my ideas are trash/good enough to be memorable. When I posted my take on it, I had only two things in mind. One, create a 'low-impact' system, one that that would not be 'completely gamechanging' in terms of players 'making the right vs wrong choice', (ie choice A vs choice B having a difference in DPS on the scale of some WOW talent choice rows from previous expansions), just the beginnings of 'player choice' to test the waters and see if people could handle the idea of someone in their group using 'the suboptimal choice' or if they'd whine and complain. To do this, I would keep all the effects as being strictly non-damage related. Boost Mantra's effectiveness, make Warden's Esuna effect into an AOE, make Lilybell have halved CD at the cost of it going down to 3 stacks instead of 5, etc

And two, make materia actually interesting for once. If things go as we expect them to, we'll get Grade 11 and Grade 12 materia in 7.0, and there's going to be nothing new about them. They'll just be Grade 7/9, and Grade 8/10 again, with a new icon, a new item level restriction, and a slightly higher substat amount given. I want to see something new, something that changes up how we look at materia as a system

Who am I kidding everyone and their mum's gonna go on IcyVeins and ask 'what is best HighMateria Reaper K3S Savage Ultimate Savage 2024' and what little 'player choice' will be instantly removed by optimizers, and by people who parrot about the meta things but don't actually know why something is meta

Specifically on Barb Ex:

Specifically on Barb EX, it's very much like the Red Chocobo of Bozjan infamy. It looks like a nightmare, but it actually asks for fairly little movement, all things considered. Once you know the fight, and what movement it's going to ask of you, you realize 'oh thats not so bad actually'. Which is one of those 'well obviously' kind of statements, but that's how it be. If you want an EX with a lot of movement, Golbez borders on the ridiculous

The perceived problem with Barb EX and 'having trouble finding opportunity for GCD healing' is not an issue with Barb EX, imo. It's an issue of that 'cast time, GCD healing style' of healers (or more accurately, one in particular) being incompatible with the fight design. Barb EX is not the only fight where those cast time GCD heals feel like they don't mesh well. Lily heals feel fine there, I feel. SGE's shielding feels fine there. This, I think, is because they're a more modern design. They are snappy and responsive like the fight design of current year asks for. But sitting around to hardcast a Medica 2 or a Succor can often feel 'off' because it's a design from like 8 years ago. I am not suggesting that every healer just have everything be converted to instantcasts, but I do think that they need to consider that casual players are a lot more likely to fall back on the cast time, spammable heals, than the Lily heals.

Which is to say, I think that they should do Barb EX more, and to compensate for the issue you have raised, Medica 2's 2s cast time should be lowered to 1.5s so slidecasting it is easier

[Shurrikhan]

I've seen the idea of minor traits to change the gameplay of a job being pitched before, I think it was being pitched as a materia option that you can only slot into weapons. Could do some pretty interesting things by changing what abilities do depending on options picked.

Honestly though, they might eventually look into a system similar to this. You can't really stretch 30-ish buttons over more and more levels without making the levelling process worse, they have to seek alternative means of advancing jobs eventually.

Aye. I've suggested as much myself from time to time.

I still think the best first improvement we could make for Customization purposes, though, is just to streamline and amplify what choices we have now in a way that removes the bloat of current Materia while offering more direct and reliable control over our GCD speed and crit rate. Ideally, we'd also give more classes more crit procs and scale their stat growths individually to make each stat about equally worthwhile for every job without needing every job to have identical portions of ability, periodic damage, and output based upon crit procs.

From there, though... we could add on whatever we want, be that dynamic Cross-Class Traits, job specific bonus traits via Materia, universal effects via Materia, new actions via Materia or skill selection... whatever it may be. I'd just really like to see, first, the fundamentals made into something decent instead of their current shitshow.

[Aravell]

Who am I kidding everyone and their mum's gonna go on IcyVeins and ask 'what is best HighMateria Reaper K3S Savage Ultimate Savage 2024' and what little 'player choice' will be instantly removed by optimizers, and by people who parrot about the meta things but don't actually know why something is meta

Honestly, I don't think "There will always be a meta" is justification for balancing the fun out of the game. So what if some jobs are bad in a fight? Maybe they excel in another. Like your proposed materia, sure, they're unlikely to all be useful, but there could be cases where a niche choice excels for once, that alone, to me, is a good enough reason for having interesting niche choices.