The Armory System and What It Could Have Been

[Kabooa]

So, I like talking game design with my friends, and regarding FF14 we continually come back to the Armory system; What it does, what the purpose is, and what it does right. In addition, we often talk about where it falls short.

The armory system allows us to cross class and sort of build a character how we want within its limitations. However, as many of you might notice, many of these choices are essentially boring. They're cool downs, particularly cool downs that are just a passive increase to X, with few being really interesting.

So, for fun, I'm just going to share some of the frameworks my friend and I have talked about. For funzies. This will focus primarily on the Disciple of Magic aspect of the Armory system, as the magic system in general could use a huge improvement, but these concepts can easily apply to Disciples of War as well. Arguably crafter/gathers too.
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Classes, Jobs, and the Armory System
Just a quick blurb; The armory system starts by being versatile but then narrows in scope to hyper focus Jobs. I don't see a reason to change this, though I do find it fairly questionable to have the class/job distinction in the first place. The framework changes pretty much ignore the existence of "Classes", because frankly, Jobs replace Classes, and past 30 the 'classes' only exist to serve as piggy back levels for the Jobs.
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Reimagining the Magic System
The catalyst for our armory discussion began with the magic system and, frankly, how limited and boring it is. Now, I'm against bar clutter as much as the next guy, but elemental / status weaknesses and immunities add a dimension to combat when it's done well, rather than having "Fireball" and "Fireball that does less damage but slows".

In addition, a proper elemental/status system adds the potential for chaining abilities off each other. As a swift disclaimer, I did not play FF11. I have only heard of skill chains, though Final Fantasy in general has long had this sort of synergy in the series.

Therefore, the magic system would see a huge overhaul which would then bring the value and opportunity cost of the Armory System to play.

Please note that the three Magic classes would need a fair bit of retooling to fully utilize the magic changes.

Magic is divided into the four basic archetypes that have prevailed through the FF series
-Black Magic (Damage based, destruction magic.)
-White Magic (Curative magic, some 'holy' based damage)
-Gray Magic (Non-damage based buffs, debuffs. "Support" stuff, like Time magic.)
-Summons (Self explanatory.)

Each of these archetypes have sub-types in them, representing schools within each category of magic. For example;

Black Magic
-Elemental (Fire, Ice/Water, Wind, Earth, Lightning)
-Poison
-'Normal' (Traditionally Flare, Ruin, and other 'unaspected' spells. Yes, flare used to be non-elemental, damnit!)

Therefore, the three (and luckily, expanding to more than that) magic classes have their 20/40 traits reworked / added on to. Referred to as 'mastery', these traits increase the ceiling for the magic you are granted access to. A Black Mage would be the specialist, having full Black Magic mastery, but only access to lower grade White/Gray/Summoning magic.

Black Magic Mastery 2 grants access to more spells, and Black Magic Mastery 3 does the same, opening the ceiling of these spell schools and granting access to greater spells. A player would still need to go to other classes, level them to unlock the specific spells, but once unlocked, those spells are available to cross class.

Now, that's the basic framework. Specifics are not had at this time, but that more or less explains the idea. This concept can work with the Disciples of War as well; Weapon mastery determining what skills a Lancer could cross into, for example.
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The Armory System and Its Purpose
As noted before, the armory system starts with a wide scope but narrows when specializing. The above changes essentially provide a wide variety of spells but limited slots to cross class into.

I would like to preserve that versatility vs specialization that the game currently has, but without the arbitrary "You have a job now. No more Venomous Bite on your Paladin."

Therefore, we reduce the armory system to a max of 5 (as normal for Jobs) regardless of class/job identification, but we have a distinct change.

-A 'subtype' such as Fire Magic, Curative Magic, Sword Skills, or Shield Skills, takes up one armory slot. Your current class determines your mastery, while all applicable classes determine what in those lines you have access to.
-A 'cool down' such as Swiftcast, Rampart, Raging Strikes, or Internal release takes up one armory slot. This is because cool downs are often focused around your role and specialization.

The opportunity cost is clear; Versatility through an entire line of spells or abilities, or specialization through cool downs. That being said, especially in the Black Mage/Arcanist's case, their cool downs would need to be better dispersed between the 3 magic classes.

For example
-Thaumaturge gets Swiftcast and Virus.
-Arcanist gets Surecast and Eye for an Eye
-Conjuror gets a new meta magic "All Cast" (Next single target has increased cost or reduced potency, but affects all targets within X range) and Sleep. (Repose removed for redundancy, and Sleep is a rather peaceful spell. Fits Conj better.)

While this is more a skeleton of a framework, the idea is sound. Balance concerns are an issue, but this sort of system should create a situation where, while there are obvious and 'best' choices, a player is granted the freedom the armory system was envisioned to have in the first place.

[Nakiamiie]

I agree with you 500%.

But, it is not toddler-player friendly, so the devs will vote against it.
It's sad that it needs to fit in the spoon feeding of casuals to make it into the game.

Let's hope this insanity ends and we can get more fully fleshed out systems one day.

[Duelle]

The Armory System and What It Could Have Been

Log on to The Secret World. Their growth system is the closest thing to 1.0's armoury system you will ever see.

[Mardel]

I did my suggestions in a letter format. I touch mainly on the class system. I will touch on magic next, but I'm not going to tell them to revamp it completely. Elemental based magic is a relic of old MMO and doesn't serve much purpose in mainstream MMO where magic is just damage with a fancy animation.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ess-not-Classy

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

From the short time I've peeked at the Secret World, it appears to be one of the closest executions to a balanced Armoury System and would have very much liked to see FFXIV have polished the system in a similar vein instead of the 1.18 and 2.0 overhauls.

E.g. Learning abilities and traits from any and all weapons, then mixing and matching them together within the limit (FFXIV was AP cost I think), then gearing up to suit your load out.

Perhaps in a paralell universe, the Armoury System got to see a greater life in Hydaelyn.

[Duelle]

From the short time I've peeked at the Secret World, it appears to be one of the closest executions to a balanced Armoury System and would have very much liked to see FFXIV have polished the system in a similar vein instead of the 1.18 and 2.0 overhauls.

The problem with TSW's system was that even though Decks (what they were probably going to implement as jobs in 1.0) exits, they are far outclassed by custom builds with specific abilities. This means that if you wanted to play a witch hunter, the game and the playerbase literally laughed at you for choosing it by making your performance inferior to that of characters that had no Decks set. That's not a risk I would have been willing to take (it's sitting up there next to my hatred of staves and how they managed to perma-glue themselves to paladins and red mages in FFXI pre-shield buff).