Missing Gameplay Infused Roleplay (& Comparing FFXIV Gameplay Roleplay to Other MMOs)

[Payadopa]

I'd like to see mini games themed around jobs. Like jumping puzzles for DRG like what playing music is to BRD or collecting spells for BLU. Basically, give jobs their own (limited) version to inject some much needed variety. Personally, I also love NIN's faster run speed or fall damage reduction. We need way, way more of that stuff.

[Shougun]

I recently started playing wow, both retail and HC classic, and I agree, especially "I wish these features could be in XIV because I would enjoy it more here". I think this is one of the problems that adds to XIV feeling more and more dull. As someone who started in Stormblood, I saw the gradual culling of these gimmicky utility skills of ARR/HW, to the streamlined SHB/EW where there's only damage and damage reduction skills. These utility skills made up a big part of the class fantasy and distinctiveness. Since I started as a healer, skills such as fluid aura, time dilation, and even the act of casting protect gave me a warm feeling as a healer lol. The act of casting buffs like protect and power word fortitude still add to the class fantasy imo.

In wow I thought it was cool how there's many different kinds of interactions you can have with raid bosses that aren't just dmg/dmg reduc. Like a raid boss named Painsmith sending rolling boulders of death down the arena, but people came up with the strat to glide off the arena and glide back to dodge them. Actual non dmg interactions like more interrupts, CCs mattering. Mechanics that give the players more control like tank boss positioning rather than scripted movements, WoW-style player placed perma puddles, and HP triggers rather than scripted time triggers (that aren't just tied to phase enrages).

Yes, sometimes I feel like I'm just playing the same job with different skill skins when I switch to other jobs in the same role.

Itemization has been reduced down so much that it's just the illusion of choice. Crit>DH>Det with minor 1% dps variations and mp economy. Complete reset each raid tier that even your ultimate and relic weapons don't matter on the same tier they're on let alone the next one. Each new raid tier just feels like I'm stepping on a roller coaster ride where everything's decided for me rather than playing an rpg with the fun of picking items/stats/attributes. I hope Yoship takes a cue from WoW with the plentiful choices of pre-raid gear from various sources, gear from the previous tier being bis in many cases, and set bonuses.

Jobs should have skills that create their class fantasy, whether it's a gimmicky utility skill or combat skill. It's ok for jobs to be different from each other. It's ok that some jobs do better in certain situations than others. Especially in 14 where you can switch to any job at any time and not have to level an alt, imo it should give them even more reason to build raids around different job variations.

Yeah I having played since.. uh.. the beginning.. *old man voice* I have seen a lot of things taken away for the sake of smoothness, and I don't even always disagree, but it seems to never be replaced or recovered.. just one long lasting slide down into a pit of similarity, meanwhile the originating spot wasn't even as roleplaying as other games.. So you went from 'eh kind of', to 'no not really'. That's unfortunate.

Though PvP does seem to be a bastion for some neat ideas. It's probably partially my fault but a long while ago I had asked for MCH to be more PEW PEW PEW and Bard to have more 'Ranger' like elements by having a 'drawing' (casting) bar.. I did HOWEVER also suggest that if you cancel your movement the attack still launches which is what PvP has.. now.. Not sure what people think of that, comparatively, but things like that I feel is where PvP is full of ideas that are pretty unique. Stuff that make it so you feel both on the giving and receiving end of 'stuff that makes you feel special' and such that you know a job is 'that' job and not just 'the green job, the blue job, the red job'.

There are somethings (as mentioned), but a major point of the thread wasn't just "it doesn't exist at all" but that it doesn't really feel enough, in a personal level, but also "comparatively it feels our 'roleplay' of the roleplaying game is weaker". I don't have to compare, naturally, but I feel it's easier to say "it's possible" than just come up with entirely new thing that has never happened before and try to get people's buy in. Which is like what happened when I suggested mount characteristics many many years ago, people were generally against it as it didn't make sense to them.. but now we can see it in both GW2 and WoW and it is regularly seen as 'more fun' when you have the movement gamified rather than hold W till you arrive at your destination. Now that it exists I point at them, but honestly it wasn't because of them that I wanted it. Though its funny that someone on the first page still thought to accuse me of it. If you have an original idea, be damned, if you have something you appreciate from another game of an extremely similar architype.. damn you still lol.

I like the visuals of our fights and I do like telegraphed markers to be honest lol (kind of wish we had more animated / thematic UI markers.. though that is it's own challenge), but I do agree that the fights are consistently so scripted that you can mentally play out the fights in your head before they even happen once you know your group. It's not a personal point of contention though, so I'd rather allow others to speak on that more (I could make more opinions but unless it was my job I think people who find that content a high priority should pay more opinion to it- unless I hear something I know I'd dislike I'll be more quiet on that element).

Itemization is certainly really... Zzzzzz. In 1.0 we had some Hunts (NMs) that you could earn unique items from, there were some special effects on them.. they were removed in the transition to 2.0 . I honestly, at this point, care so little about stats that you could just give me item level and nothing else and I might just prefer that rather than pretend stats xD. Though I would greatly prefer having some neat items instead.

I've said it in a few places but just worth repeating in case it appears otherwise, I don't envy balancing given that you are dancing on a knife edge.. on a good day you'll only have a few people upset with you. *weak sad cat thumbs up.jpg*

Agreed that given you can switch jobs easily here that it seems like a BETTER reason to have strong roleplay, not to have less. In my mind, it would make sense if FFXIV hit roleplay harder than WoW even- given the consequence is minimal vs in WoW where until Warbands are released is fairly substantial.

I’d be ok with more unique abilities personally. Though it’s definitely a tightrope with balance . One of the reasons for example the races don’t have anything special to each was for balance and the team does tend to let balance be the number one thing over experimentation.

So I wouldn’t necessarily mind if they added more unique skills in a general sense ,however I am against them adding abilities to the itemization. One of the major things that really bothered me when playing wow was how a piece of armor would change an entire ability or even give an entire ability. Which meant I would only get to enjoy that while I used it.

I’m sure some people like this but this was one of the factors that made me not really enjoy gearing up in wow. Gaining crit isn’t exactly interesting, but losing abilities every tier or expansion is just saddening.

While I’m sure something could be done to make itemization more interesting I definitely don’t want to see my armor changing my skills or adding any. Keep that done via leveling , I’d even be ok with a skill tree or something.

Tightrope with a thousand sharks, certainly lol. But it was that way always, like even now. They have excellent balance, mathematically, right now- and look-- it's still a riot! lol. A person gave some cool race racial examples here and I like the creativity, but if I was proverbially 'king at the wheel' (like "if I was president of US" type pipe dream nonsense) I probably would avoid racials just because I don't want people to feel like they need to restart their entire game because they chose wrong (however I have no qualm making a job feel special because if you want that... just play that job! ).

I appreciate you voicing your concerns about itemization. I'm not sure I'd entirely agree, and probably would still want to see items with neat effects.. but I respect your voice on the matter (and feel it's worth voicing so people can see all the perspectives). Particularly I appreciate when people are articulating their reasons .

Gosh, I never even thought about this but yeah I love how World of Warcraft has those extra class specific abilities that do things out of combat.

The only job ability we have in FFXIV that has that function is the Bard's performance ability and all of the physical ranger jobs having Peloton that increase party movement.

This game has a serious problem with making jobs feel satisfying to play so I would love if they implemented some extra stuff like for example, an Astrologian having the ability to fortune tell any player granting them a variety of minor buffs or debuffs effects (once per day) or Dragoons being able to double jump or high jump.

Stuff like this would help solve some (and I emphasize on SOME) of the homogenized feel of the jobs if every job had at least some unique function to them that doesnt necessarily have to always be combat related.

Man.. it haunts me. Constantly.. XD. I am actually impressed with the reception because I've been banging my drum of "make roleplay better" for a while, and some people agree, but it's never been fairly consistently so many people wanting roleplay in general improved. Perhaps its a perfect apex right now, given that jobs have become less and less roleplay-feeling than more. Although I don't think I've taken this approach before to explaining why I feel the way I do..

I think bard is a great example, and one that I'd like to actually see expand a bit (I'll detail some ideas). BUT FIRST a tangent lol- When we were just getting limited jobs I had started the idea of advanced jobs, where think of Hunter in WoW where you just.. get pets cause it's fun and those pets can have different gimmicks. So my thought was like rather than shun a job for being different lets expand that, and Bard was an example of that. Repeating a thought in an above quote but given it's so easy to multi-job in FFXIV.. this is /the game to it in/ if we are talking about extreme roleplay anyways. In one of those threads I had exampled Dancer could get choreography, where like Bard makes music the dancer could get different steps and make interesting dances.

Coming back around- not only does bard get music mechanic but that music could actually buff their allies. Like how sitting at a campfire in WoW could give you a buff, listening to your bard buddy might be like 5% exp and 5% movement speed buff for 30 minutes. You might intentionally stop by a Bard to get that buff. Or like they add certain unlockable rolls to your bard that you actually get to play those songs when you use certain combat musical abilities- so you can customize the music you play (combat customizations). Like how we had that guitar hero mini-game, there could be some locations where you get to play for NPCs in taverns and unlock new instruments, rolls, and even visual note styles (little note effects that appear while playing, some could be poppy and floaty while others might vanish into smoke). Not sure about allowing custom music while performing combat mechanics just cause it could lead to some absolutely terrifying parties but.. it can be a discussion lol.

A comparable example so this doesn't just sound 'out of left field' is in WoW you have say all the beasts for Hunter, different demons for Warlock, customization of spells like different polymorph unlocks for Mage or different transformation appearances for Druid.

Astrologian fortune telling is a great example. Might even be able to set up a little booth where your character gets marked with an icon so players can approach. May make a mini-game out of the decisions such that better decisions lead to a better reward for the Astrologian. This may in turn unlock new card backs and visuals, such that you could customize your cards a little (in combat visual customization). Each fortune telling might grant like 5% exp, and as you rank up your fortune telling you can tell more fortunes before tiring (up to a max). Add some NPCs in the world that unlock special cards and effects, that also count to your rank, that you can repeat visit (just incase you either hate players or you're unlucky and no one wants to help you). Naturally a buff for the person getting their fortune too!

For a long while I focused on non-combat and argued similarly to what you said-- it would help some, but I feel we are getting to a point that I am also arguing we should have some combat distinctions too cause it's getting more and more similar.

So more job related passives that anyone can gain such as Ninja run speed/Jump animation? Yeah I'm all for that dude thanks for clarifying.

Of course! Even if I ultimately say something you're not a huge fan of I appreciate you articulating your concerns and I hope to be able to repay anyone else similarly in why I think something should or shouldn't be a certain way.

They could take another page from FF6 with how they have magicite as well as relics that are either for all characters/jobs or just specific ones.

Like for example the dragoon boots relic in FF6 changed the characters attack command to jump, they could do a similar thing here but adapted for XIV's mechanics. Maybe the double jump thing, and have it be a thing only dragoon can use.

Or for something more tangible, take the magicite mechanic and turn it into equippable gems for summoner that change its summons into bismarck/leviathan/shiva/etc etc other summons

I think both of those to be honest would be a neat feature to include as the new exploratory zone's logos/lost actions mechanic (assuming it has one)

Interesting ideas

Some sort of pilgrimage for Summoner could be quite fun. May take notes from both FFX and FFXI. For example in FFXI you had to earn the primal's respect in a solo fight, could have cool pilgrimages that culminate in fun solo battles. I had some ideas in other threads to get SMN to the classic elemental primals as actual combat relevant.. but if any primal can NEVER be combat relevant I'm all for their 'skin' to become an opportunity for SMN to pilgrimage!

Totally agree with the post. While reading it I instantly started thinking what they could do with XIV and... yeah, not everything has to be amazing, just needs to contribute to the feel of being certain class/job, so I would be more than happy to get new things to play with in XIV

Some of the ideas I brainstormed:

Racial examples:

Keepers of the Moon/Sun: Movement speed buff when its night/day time respectively. The /dance emote changes to a more intricate dance along the buff

Plainsfolk: Increased GP regen while not mounted
Dunesfolk: Chance to save Crystals and clusters while crafting in one of the main cities

Seawolf/Hellsguard: While on the Sea/Desert respectively, massively increase health regeneration. Seawolf get a Sea-shanty singing action, and Hellsguard can lay down to stargaze on the sands

Class examples:

Scholar - Tape and Pencil: With the help of your fairy/carbie you can extend a measuring tape between you two, to measure distances (visible by party members). In instances, you can draw on the floor while out of combat (and it gets erased when combat is engaged). Ideally this would be used to explain things in scholarly fashion, but I would accept goofy drawings too

Warrior - Beast Roar: De-aggro and make overworld enemies run away from you

Paladin - Out of combat raise/first aid : ^)

I would keep going but I think I have seen posts before where people listed similar concepts. As for the Toy box, I would go as far as to pay for it ;_; I genuinely love so much the effects you describe, my favorite ones were the Chef hat and the shrinking potion. Pls give

While I was straying away from racials just to avoid people being like "aw damn that race has way better effect than me" I think your suggestions are interesting! (And it's not just 'my ideas' so I encourage everyone to suggest what they think would be cool, that makes me really happy to read people coming up with ideas).

I think your Scholar example could be a fun example of where a job might get a freebie version of show and tell but then there is some sort of alchemist 'toy' that players can also make, naturally Scholars would also have a fae theme.

Beast Roar, nice example of something unique- potentially handy, and self balanced by not working in instanced content (although FFXIV 'could' go that unique, but I would agree with everyone and myself, lol, that FFXIV is not really there yet and it doesn't have to go that deep to be interesting enough to add flavor to the job).

Paladin raise, excellent idea- I think here I would want to add an example where we can keep ease of use too (stating that things don't have to be obtuse). For example the skill is granted to you at level 30 (that's when you become Paladin...) as "Lay on hands" which will heal or raise an out of combat target. At level 58 it will change to Clemency, increasing the heal potency and allowing the heal component to work IN combat. If you target a dead player while in combat it will act as if you targeted yourself (so you don't accidentally do nothing). Essentially you've gained an entire roleplay element without even having to add a new ability, "it just works".

Did you know that WoW is finally adding a Trust system to dungeons now?

Which you can gear and level . . . Not sure if they will ever be as good as our squadrons, but I miss how 'worth' leveling the squadrons were (in FFXIV). They started as dumb as chocobo turds but they were so potent at max rank. It was awesome. One thing, and I'm sorry if it's changed and I just didn't know, but I REALLY disliked how trusts would be balanced around how well I was doing.. they would intentionally do more or less damage to aim for a estimate duration to complete the content (this was said by FFXIV early on for trusts).

Trusts are still helpful for a few reasons, but generally I don't think as fondly of them as I did my max tier squadron members. I've wishes and ideas for those systems too, but not really the point of this thread lol.

This would be cool if XIV had half as many systems and mechanics as WoW to make this kind of stuff relevant or impactful.

Definitely I appreciate the many levels of roleplay that WoW has, and am even more impressed by it that they are now going to add Warbands which will give them a very similar vibe to our own in terms of ease of use (some huge pro and some cons still).

True, game needs a bit of a gameplay revamp. Combat, skills, netcode, everything.

I included navigation and better dynamic open world content into the post because I felt it was close enough to roleplay, so those might lead to the general concept of revamp. I was trying to be specific though because I didn't want to have a nebulous vibe, as I always try to be particular in what I'd like to see AND why I'd like to see it. Not saying a dev will agree with me but I hope to not leave one confused either lol. I also, imo, feel that they have either listened to feedback I've listed, quite a few times (more than 10), ooorrr I have a Nostradamus-like knack at this point given that most of my posts are feedback oriented and have had some lucky line up to content that has been added.. but it has left me with the feeling that they do listen (even though they wont communicate it) and that it is worth trying to leave as best as feedback as possible so there isn't confusion or an appearance of 'crying just to cry'.

I'd like to see mini games themed around jobs. Like jumping puzzles for DRG like what playing music is to BRD or collecting spells for BLU. Basically, give jobs their own (limited) version to inject some much needed variety. Personally, I also love NIN's faster run speed or fall damage reduction. We need way, way more of that stuff.

Yeee . Do you have any mini-game suggestions for other jobs? Pushing on DRG and jumping puzzles, would there be new jumping puzzles dedicated to them? I've some thoughts on that but was curious what you were picturing.



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I think I'll add some suggested/potential ideas later, but I appreciate all the ideas people added and feedback so far. It was more positive and constructive than I thought it would be. Normally more humbug and or just "I aint reading that" lol.