Ability Points, Skill Trees & Talents being considered to replace leveling. Thoughts?

[hunter2]

I think the gameplay and the meta sorely need a shakeup, so I'm in favour of it. The ShB-EW-DT design has its positives but change is healthy. I actually hope they do some kind of skill tree system with the lost actions in Shade's Triangle, since that content is a good place to explore ideas and have wacky builds without derailing core combat content.

[Frodnoxx]

Here's a thought experiment. Think of a game (any game) where customizability worked really well - it made you different than your peers, it let you play differently, and still let you excel in the content. What was it about that game that let that happen and why could it not happen in this game?

Weirdly enough for me, I look at some FPS games (specifically Deep Rock Galactic if anyone can relate). There a lot of different guns you can bring with their own features, strengths and weaknesses. The key here is that the enemies present such a wide variety of things to play against. For example there are big meat shield enemies, flying enemies, swarming enemies, armored enemies, etc etc and they each present a challenge that while any gun can deal with decently, some guns excel in.

Bringing it back to MMOs and FF14. I don't think there is anywhere near enough avenues of different challenges for a customization system to work. Every single boss encounter in the game presents: figure out where to stand and either do single target DPS or party wide healing. There are no other niches that players could potentially fill through customization because the options that do not lend themselves to single target dps are invariably worse than ones that do. And so the strict meta forms.

The most heavy-handed way to account for this is to do something like element/attack type weaknesses, but that's not interesting nor fun and has been attempted and failed time immemorial. But that's the basic idea that just needs some elegance injected into it. It's more difficult to come up with varying challenges for an MMO than an action game. But here are some examples:

- Having significant phases of the boss not be purely single target so that AoE, cleave, funnel, etc damage types can excel
- Having mechanics that emphasize different types of healing: clumped up, spread out, pressure on a non-tank, spot healing, etc.
- Having mechanics that emphasize a non-tank's self-mitigation or mobility

In conclusion. For a system that lets players change their strengths and weaknesses to work, the content needs to present different areas to be strong and weak in. And currently the game has a very narrow playing field. So unless this expansion's "Enhanced Combat Design" opens it up, I don't think a customization system in 8.0 will work.

[TaleraRistain]

I am completlyfor somekind of system that allows us to not all be the same. In the past i thought of split classes into two routes depening on there theme, White would have a Nature Path and a Light Path. Machinist a Gunplay and a Machinery etc.
Heck Scholar could be split in Seraph-Scholar and Battle Tacitician.

But i also wouldnt take Blue Mage as example as its by its very nature more a fun whack class.

EverQuest II did that and had options you could pick as you leveled plus alternate advancement abilities later on. And it was nice for a bit but it devolved into picking the "right" options or not getting to participate in things. And you were locked to a single class on a character so you may as wel hang that character up if you chose wrong or respec what you could.

And it's not so much negativity as "Been there, seen that". Even with this game, it used to have cross-class skills where you could level another class and get certain abilities from that class to use on your main class. But that turned into having the "right" cross-class skills or you would be harassed by the rest of the playerbase for not having them. Like healers who weren't interested in thaumaturge still had to level it to 26 to get swiftcast, which was considered essential and you were griefing groups if you didn't have it. It all becomes an illusion of choice instead of true flexibility.

[PercibelTheren]

I really like the idea of them but I'm afraid it would only lead to what everyone else is saying - the community deciding one way is better because it does 0.5% more DPS or something stupid like that. We already see this when people lock certain jobs out of PF because they perform ever so slightly worse, despite being perfectly viable. Unless we can somehow make people stop doing it, I don't see a way it would work.

[Graveyardprincess]

People seem to assume that there will only be 1 right option with skill trees, but that is 100% false yes there will be some that by pure numbers seem better which become the meta for stupid people who aren't smart enough to plan around themselves with the job/class etc. I mean Really just becauce the vast majoirty are drones following the single set mindlessly doesnt make it the only one possible nor does it even make it the best option. in fact in alot of cases with trees there ae 100x better options than what everyone else does when you take into account how you play exacly, and you design around that...

I mean in diablo 2 enchanter sorceress/ frogger barbarins poison necros were by the far the least used by the majority but could destory all the metas if done correctly. The same goes for martial artist assassin...

Just because their is a meta and a prime build all the little sheep follow doesnt mean there is only 1 good one, or that one is even good at all tbh

[knaveofcups]

i’m not inherently against this but i think they’d need to grow their combat dev team a lot to make it work. replacing what we currently have entirely with ability points and trees might be too much, as opposed to say, allowing us to pick from some specializations that retain the job core but change gameplay enough to be interesting

[Rekh]

The more customization the better. I just hope this doesn't mean that they'll keep content easy "so that people don't force others to use specific tree specs."

I support the tree if done right.

[Ayalu]

Leveling wise Level 100 would be the cap and they dont want us to increase in numerical things as those could lead to the problem that lead to the first number crunch.
So post level 100 the new system would be the new way of progression.
But something that came to mind is...if higher and higher numbers will lead to problems. Would that mean our gear would also stop progressiing for the most part?
Would new gear mostly be new glam options?

[Raikai]

Truth be told, they will have to do something.

If they really intend that 8.0 will me a job revision across the board to address identity, that's actually the perfect cue to either do a major level squish or a secondary leveling system post 100.

I think just a level squish is merely a band-aid, because level inflation will catch up again. Anyway, whatever they do, it must be somewhat future-proofed for at least 4-5 expansions.

[Aidorouge]

I say no thanks.

I have played several games who used skill points/talent trees. In the end you always end up with exactly ONE viable build that everyone has to use. No thanks.

This, it *always* comes down to this. The idea of "freedom of choice" just ends up "illusion of choice" with systems like this in MMO settings because you either end up with options that don't matter to make sure groups can function, or everyone gets forced into a meta or else.