FFXIV's Systems Ain't That Deep, but They Could Have Been.

[Renathras]

While I agree with some parts, I don't agree with others. Secondary class to 15 was fine for flavor, but the Cross-Class system was atrocious. Not only was it never more than a worse imitation of the SubJob system from FF11/Tactics, the things you got from other Jobs were generally in one of two categories - necessary or worthless. There was almost NO in-between. It wasn't "Level THM on WHM if you want to get this nice thing, but you don't need it". It was "If you don't level THM on WHM, you won't have Swiftcast, which is mandatory. Better get to leveling this thing you now hate with a passion."

...I STILL hate THM/BLM. To this day! I disliked it then, and making me level it did NOT make me like it, it made me HATE it, and I STILL hate it because of that. What, 8 years later, and I STILL get mildly annoyed just thinking about it. (Arcanist was different since you could use Topaz/Titan to tank for you, which could be fun, but THM was just...god that class is SO AWFUL to level. Even now I hate BLM. Worst designed Job in the game; people that say otherwise are on crack or something, I swear... <_< )

And when they figured out it was a bad system and rightly replaced it, then the level 15 thing didn't make sense to keep around anymore. The lore was never developed (why does an Arcanist need to know basic Conjury in order to learn Scholar arts?), so the only reason for the system was to tie into the Cross-Class action borrowing, which no longer existed.

Classes themselves weren't even good design, they were incurred debt from 1.0, which originally did not have Jobs. If you didn't know that, you read that right; 1.0 did. Not. Have. Jobs. They were added relatively late in the "expansion's" history, which also completely changed the classes. Do some googling into it and you'll find CNJ was almost more a THM with healing spells, and THM was a weird hybrid of umbral elemental magic and some weird utility stuff and SORTA blood mage healing weirdness (that...I don't think worked well, hence the reason it was removed). There was also a class that had a shield as its weapon. And no weapon. It was entirely for learning stuff to cross-class to GLD (and THM/CNJ if they wanted to use shield bash...because that was a thing).

It's why they've never added another class after Rogue with Ninja, because it was a pretty bad design they were kind of saddled with. While I do agree that in theory they could have done something else with it, it wasn't designed to do so, and didn't work well.

And the ultimate problem with Cross-Class skills, and later the first version of Role Actions (where you had a selection and could only pick 5 at a time), is the same issue WoW has had with Talent trees for ages, leading to MULTIPLE entire reworks of the talent system over time; there's almost always "right" and "wrong" choices and cookie-cutter builds, leading to an illusion of choice where many choices are just newbie traps.

...which isn't a bad thing if you're in an old school MMO where no one knows what they're doing and no one cares in the year of our lord 2004, but a big problem in the year 2023 with parsing and DPS checks and theorycrafting and people calling other people griefers for not having the right ones selected. Or, to quote an oft presented phrase, we as gamers have "optimized the fun out of everything". So things that are lore and flavor are seldom looked at fondly if they result in a DPS loss in the sterile, overly-mechanical view of the world we now find ourselves in...sadly, because I think it's a crap way to view games and the world, yet here we are.

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I do feel like they could and should do more on the lore and RP side, push back some of the homogenization, etc. But not everything they got rid of WAS good. Many of the things they got rid of were bad, that's why they got rid of them.

[Rithy255]

Cross class and Role actions did have room for something more Interesting, obviously by nature of the design In ARR/HW is nothing really that interesting or functional. I do like how base Classes could equip skills for solo and open world stuff, I think having a weak cure would be a nice way for open world to require a bit more pressure but I think we're past the point of no return here, theirs no point adding in role actions that aren't just auto shared from role type.

What I have dreamed of is having Role actions specifically made for a Class that could fundamentally change how the role plays or even their category (aka make a Dps into a tank with certain role actions, tank into a Healer ect.) Obviously this would have been a great undertaking and would not be realistic by todays standards especially with the sheer amount of jobs we have but I would have loved this sort of freedom (I'm well aware meta would make it less of a choice for fully high end players).

[Ardeth]

the 30 stat points had 0 depth. They got put into your main stat and if your were SMN/SCH screw you you had to keep 20k GC seals on you at all times to switch if you needed to play the other job.


I don't think the resistances added more depth either. If they were significant enough to matter, you'd just stack the one element. no depth there either.

It's the same with talent trees in Wow. Everyone looks up the "best" one. There is hardly any variance when you give players a meaningful choice. There's those who follow the meta and those who don't get into groups and quit the game. That's not remotely compelling at all. So what is there meaningless choice? That's even worse.

[Kaurhz]

Cross-class abilities were dropped because they were a bad system, there's nothing more to that one, really. If people want to try a new class, they're doing that regardless of whether they do or don't have cross-class abilities. I don't think the encouragement was that great really - and most especially when you propose for them to go beyond, say, 15 or 42, let alone if they then asked you to go to 60 or 70 for a cross-ability. There doesn't have to be a reason to level a job, beyond own self-intrigue, and trying to do so in a forced nature, e.g., cross-class is how you end up with bad systems. -- I'm not saying this is exclusively the case with every system, but cross-class in particular was.

I am pretty sure shields in the cases of CNJ and THM were just remnants of 1.x, both implementations and concepts - I'm not wholly convinced they wanted this system in, in the first place, so rather than reworking it, just steadily phase it out into non-existence across the course of the game. I mean I agree in principle, with that corresponding paragraph but the point of shields just feels... Nah.

Potential with resistances could have been great, yeah.

I don't know about Materia - If it were on the chopping block, then it would have been gone already IMO.

On the note of putting in work to support systems, I do agree on this point, and I think they should make a better effort, but I don't think all systems warrant the same ongoing support, and are systems that can or should be replaced by others, e.g., role actions, replacing cross-class, or shields... Now, granted, I do think role actions would benefit from being more complex than they are.

[KenZentra]

It's the same with talent trees in Wow. Everyone looks up the "best" one. There is hardly any variance when you give players a meaningful choice. There's those who follow the meta and those who don't get into groups and quit the game. That's not remotely compelling at all. So what is there meaningless choice? That's even worse.

This is kind of true and kinda not. Yeah there is always going to be a "best" one, but choosing talents that aren't considered the "best" does not keep you out of groups. Subtlety Rouges have recorded the highest DPS in the current patch of WoW, and Assassination has the highest median DPS, but even though Outlaw is the lowest dps spec of the class, it is the most popular. I think no one really cares what spec or talents or whatever you are running unless it was a Mythic raid, so long as you pull your weight. I do not run the BiS talents as a Holy Priest and I am starting to clear Heroic Amirdrassil (current raid). A friend of mine runs Single-Minded Fury Warrior rather than Titan's Grip, which is very suboptimal, he enjoys it better and he has cleared more of the current raid than I have on Heroic.

I agree though, meaningless choices are worse than no choice, but no choice at all is worse than being allowed to make a bad choice. It's like playing DnD and wanting to choose a feat like Grappler, but the DM makes you choose Savage Attacker instead because it'd result in more consistent hits for you.

I dont remember where I've seen or heard it, but I remember something along the lines of, "If you are not allowed to be suboptimal, you are not playing an RPG."

[Ardeth]

This is kind of true and kinda not. Yeah, there is always going to be a "best" one, but choosing talents that aren't considered the "best" does not keep you out of groups. Subtlety Rouges have recorded the highest DPS in the current patch of WoW, and Assassination has the highest median DPS, but even though Outlaw is the lowest dps spec of the class, it is the most popular. I think no one really cares what spec or talents or whatever you are running unless it was a Mythic raid, so long as you pull your weight. I do not run the BiS talents as a Holy Priest, and I am starting to clear Heroic Amirdrassil (current raid). A friend of mine runs Single-Minded Fury Warrior rather than Titan's Grip, which is very suboptimal. He enjoys it better, and he has cleared more of the current raid than I have on Heroic.

I agree, though. Meaningless choices are worse than no choice, but no choice at all is worse than being allowed to make a bad choice. It's like playing DnD and wanting to choose a feat like Grappler, but the DM makes you choose Savage Attacker instead because it'd result in more consistent hits for you.

I dont remember where I've seen or heard it, but I remember something along the lines of, "If you are not allowed to be suboptimal, you are not playing an RPG."

I've been kicked in groups. Not here, though. Honestly, I've never raided in this game. Never really had the drive to. I did in 2.0, but I got lied to about getting a spot on a coils run. But that was more that FC leader being a jerk than anything.

But I have made fun suboptimal characters in DnD. I was a Bard, and I critically failed a performance roll and got hit with a mug. Spent the whole fight knocked out. Passing and failing the 2/3 con check. Somehow, I'm getting just enough high rolls to not slip into a coma, but not high enough to wake up. And years later, that event is still talked about with my DnD friends. The day those drunk ruffians failed to kill Bungo Cotton!

Basically, I made him more of a conartist than a playable character. And he always finds a way to be on top of every situation.

[Jeeqbit]

What I have dreamed of is having Role actions specifically made for a Class that could fundamentally change how the role plays or even their category (aka make a Dps into a tank with certain role actions, tank into a Healer ect.) Obviously this would have been a great undertaking and would not be realistic by todays standards especially with the sheer amount of jobs we have but I would have loved this sort of freedom (I'm well aware meta would make it less of a choice for fully high end players).

What I can say is there is a large amount of success that has happened with the Blue Mage method, Logos Actions and Lost Actions.

You would choose different Logos or Lost actions depending on what you were doing and what you thought was most useful to you personally, and it wasn't always the same for everyone. For example, a tank could pick one that absorbs health from enemies, or they could go pure damage, or pure tank if something hits really hard. You could use reflect, or death if you wanted to fight RNG.

Blue Mages can pick different actions just for the animation, or a different action depending on the strat their party wants to use in a raid. Healers can vary how many DPS actions they choose depending on the healing demands of the content; tanks likewise may need more tanky actions if everything hits hard and they can vary this depending on the content with ease. DPS can pick up some healing actions to help out, such as White Wind, if it's needed.

So SE can make something like this work, they just don't. I think they know that the majority of people don't interact with Logos Actions, Lost Actions and Blue Mage raiding, and that's why they were content to risk all this complexity that might confuse casual players.

An example of it confusing casual players: nobody using essences in DR, causing everyone to organize the runs via PF so they can filter out people who don't use them.

[kayll]

Cross-class abilities were dropped because they were a bad system, there's nothing more to that one, really.

Giving up on something because you aren't immediately good at it means you will never get better.
If they implement a system and its bad, then iterate on it until it is good.
If they just delete it instead of trying to improve it, then they must not have much of a vision for their game and are instead just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Imagine if instead of just outright deleting crossclass functionality, they built on it through all the years the games been out and what that system could have developed into?
FF14 would have had a system in it that set it apart from other MMOs.

[DPZ2]

Ah... The cross-class system where a ranged Bard had to level melee skills. Because nothing said "ranged" like sort-of mandatory lancer and pugilist skills one obtained by leveling 3 classes.

Archer to 15 for: Unlocking other classes.
Lancer to 2 for: Feint
Archer to 30 for: BRD Requirement.
Pugilist to 15 for: BRD Requirement, Internal Release.
BRD to 50 for: Maximum level.
Lancer to 34 for: Blood for Blood
Pugilist to 42 for: Mantra (All Cross-class skills obtained)

[Source: https://ffxivguild.com/ffxiv-bard-br...-skills-guide]

[Mikey_R]

Giving up on something because you aren't immediately good at it means you will never get better.
If they implement a system and its bad, then iterate on it until it is good.
If they just delete it instead of trying to improve it, then they must not have much of a vision for their game and are instead just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Imagine if instead of just outright deleting crossclass functionality, they built on it through all the years the games been out and what that system could have developed into?
FF14 would have had a system in it that set it apart from other MMOs.

How do you know they didn't try and in the end, came to the conclusion that it added nothing?

This could be the same for everything said in this thread. You could iterate and try and improve, but what if still didn't fix issues?

Going back to Cross Class, how could it be improved? Bear in mind people complained about levelling multiple classes for actions, so that is your first hurdle to go over. From there, what do you allow to be cross classed? How would this fit into your rotation? etc.

Similar questions can be asked about other aspects, in that, does it actually enhance gameplay, or is it just something that is just there for the sake of being there? Do you lose anything important by removing or changing the system? These are the questions that need to be asked when you want to talk about the changes made and I will make a bold claim that these kinds of questions were asked around the dev team, the result of which is what we have.