[dev1033] Class name changes -> Specialization/Talent Trees Into Classic FF Classes

[Kurokikaze]

Honestly Kuro I think we all have the same concept, just different ways to going about it. At the end of the day though, the Devs are going to read them all, get a feel of what the community wants, and develop something loosely tailored to those ideas.

I agree completely and thats all was trying to say when I posted not bash your idea if thats what you thought.

Yeah I see what you did there Shazaam and its a good point. People from XI that played DRK will want to use Scythes as well; even though it somehow doesn't fall in line with "sword" it wouldn't even be that big of a deal since it would please more players than it would hurt the game.

[JakeRoon]

I can appreciate ideas to help, and honestly it's a well thought out and discussed plan.....but....the major issue is:

What you list as your MAJOR PROBLEMS, some of us see as MAJOR AWESOMENESS!

1. I don't want a predefined role, I want to make my own character. Sorry being cookie cutter isn't fun for everyone.

2. Being a mix of what you want is fun for some players. It allows them to create their own vision of their character tailored to their own play style that they can mesh with like minded players. (and form a linkshell etc etc etc.)

MONIR:
1. Staples of the franchise - This has some merit, but again your point is subjective for several reasons.
a. Some players have not played any ff before.
b. What you call class "staples" of the franchise did not appear in many ff games (6, 7, 8, 10, 10-2, 12,13), in fact other than the tactics series, and ff 9 + 11, no ff game has featured these "staples" in 17 years. Many players are so young they might not even have ever played a ff game with said "staples". And let's not forget the BIG DOG FF7, the game credited to have "sold the PlayStation and made rpg's mainstream" [^ Final Fantasy Retrospective Part V. [GameTrailers.com feature]. GameTrailers. August 13, 2007. Retrieved July 16, 2008.^ "Final Fantasy VII Advent Children". Find Articles; originally published in 1UP.com. October 2003. Archived from the original on August 19, 2007. Retrieved August 10, 2006.^ Kraus, Alex (August 29, 2006). "'Dirge of Cerberus' defies expectations, for better and worse". USA Today. Retrieved July 16, 2008.^ GameSpot Editorial Team. "The Greatest Games of All Time". GameSpot. Retrieved July 16, 2008.] Did not have these "staples".
c. Some players are tired of the same old classes after 7 years or more.

The armory system works, folks, it ain't broken. What's broken here is the continued reflectance for the FF11 gaming community to move on to brighter, better, and newer things. To actually embrace the system and go with it. To find you can create a character that is all your own.

I know for some of you, you feel uncomfortable operating outside of a "staple class system", that's fine make a character that only heals and call it a white mage.......nothing stopping you.

My question on this topic is where do we stop? Where do we draw the line between making ff11 and 14 similar?

I certainly agree that ff11 was a great game, I played it for many years , and still like to play it.

I certainly agree it has some great features that need to be used in ff14 (targeting, auto-translate, search feature, etc.)

But where do we draw the line? I am not asking that in a snarky kinda way, i am actually asking.

SE is running a business after all, so lets examine that:

At it's peak ff11 had over 500,000 player logging in daily, and still to this day has over 300,000 doing the same....that's pretty hard core player retention!

But....

W.o.W. Recently hit a peak of 12 million......thats 6 zeros, son... 12,000,000....

If you are running a business? Are you going to make a game to try and please the 300,000 who are already pleased? or.....Are you gonna go for some of that 12,000,000 pie?

If you answered the first answer you are not going to be in business long. Simply creating a game to please the FF11 players is not going to bring in the cash. They need to gain many new subscriptions as well in order to compete in todays mmo environment.

I firmly believe they can.....but I also firmly believe that the way to do so is not to create more of the same old same old that ISN'T drawing in the players.

It's time to stop looking back and start looking to the horizon, let it go, and let's adventure into the sunset together.

I thank you all for your messages of support and for being a part of the conversation; and for making the ff14 community a vibrant one.

[Kurokikaze]

You said what Sorel said but in a less intelligent way. We won't agree and thats fine.

W.o.W. Recently hit a peak of 12 million......thats 6 zeros, son... 12,000,000....

If you are running a business? Are you going to make a game to try and please the 300,000 who are already pleased? or.....Are you gonna go for some of that 12,000,000 pie?

If you answered the first answer you are not going to be in business long. Simply creating a game to please the FF11 players is not going to bring in the cash. They need to gain many new subscriptions as well in order to compete in todays mmo environment.

I firmly believe they can.....but I also firmly believe that the way to do so is not to create more of the same old same old that ISN'T drawing in the players.

It's time to stop looking back and start looking to the horizon, let it go, and let's adventure into the sunset together.

I thank you all for your messages of support and for being a part of the conversation; and for making the ff14 community a vibrant one.

I took WoW's class/spec system and gave it the FF feel so that it attracts fans of the series and fans of WoW.

Seriously to say that my suggestion is like anything but WoW is really absolutely wrong and I think you should go and re-read it carefully. I am an FFXI/WoW/FFXIV player (in that order) - I know that FFXIV needs to cater to that audience to succeed and I make that very obvious in almost all my posts on these forums. lol

I mean really, look at the picture I used in the OP: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...alent-Tree.jpg

[Sorel]

LOL!! Why do you keep calling me Soren?? I know we don't see eye-to-eye, but I'm not a cheesy Star Trek:Generations villain.

... or am I???

[Kurokikaze]

Oops. I keep going back to your name - somehow reminding myself of that - then type it out. lol :P

[Onisake]

It's an interesting concept. but there are several things i don't like.

#1 i don't see any remedy for the guild mark system already in place. i think this should be implemented.

#2 i don't see the point of a spec tree because of #1. you could accomplish specialization of Glad within the glad-mark system and make glad unique. the way you have your system, glad will become obsolete, and you are forced to essentially become pld or drk because those skills will be 'better' it essentially makes glad worthless. i don't like that idea. maybe you buy all your pld stuff at the glad guild as a subset. you have to have used so many marks to unlock def+10% or w/e.

#3 with the armory system as it is, each class needs a unique weapon. glad can already equip sword and shield. what will paladin equip? what if i want to play glad instead of paladin for some reason? for some jobs this is easy to remedy. samurai, ninja, cannoner, drk, etc. but thief, dragoon, and paladin all use weapons already in place. i guess paladins would have to use hammers. and monk may use bo or something. it just seems too complicated if i want to switch from pld to drk. i need to unspec pld, respec drk. blah, blah. you could add in 'saved specs' but then that's just a band-aid. it makes more sense to have a 'middle ground' tank (glad) a full tank (pld) and a full DD (drk) someone can choose from. say we're doing an event similar to limbus. i want to bring my glad because it's better DD than pld, but still allows me to tank, unlike drk. but then we get to a boss, maybe i need my pld now. it helps to diversify smaller groups without the extra menus.

Keeping in mind we have a primary goal of class uniqueness, i don't see a big difference between glad and pld. we want to make them truly unique, not just a better version of the other. drk is very different from glad, that one is obvious.

but there will be some problematic classes. pug from monk. pld from glad. lancer from drg. MRD from War.

another big difference i feel, is for some classes like Samurai. for those of us that know better, the Katana is an important symbol of the samurai. but the primary martial art in Fuedal japan was not swordplay, but archery. a peasant can swing a sword. but only a real samurai could shoot a bow. If you're familiar with the Japanese bow you know what i mean by this. it's not as user-friendly as an occidental bow. you could spend decades practicing, and never really quite figure out how to hold the bow properly. not that the class needs to be historically correct. but when i think of Samurai, i think of katanas at your waist and a yumi on your back. of course every class can equip a 'sub-weapon' but it becomes complicated if SE decides to go a more accurate route and give samurai both bow and katana.

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Rather than expand into 'tech trees' and add a new element. i'd rather see an expansion of the guild mark system. it would also allow you to keep glad unique from pld and drk. keep pug unique from thief.

this would eliminate a couple of problems.

1) you don't have to respec from one job to go back to base or a second split from the base. there is no split. you just switch jobs.

2) you have a 'merit' system in guild marks. and you can gain paladin abilities by playing paladin. rather than respecing glad. and it eliminates an earlier comment about being able to spec into ninja without ever playing ninja.

3) more in-line with what's already in place and works to fix a system we have that doesn't really do anything. marks.

Do we really need to copy something else? we have somethign in place already that could work for this. no need to make it more complicated than it needs to be.
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I can appreciate ideas to help, and honestly it's a well thought out and discussed plan.....but....the major issue is:

What you list as your MAJOR PROBLEMS, some of us see as MAJOR AWESOMENESS!

1. I don't want a predefined role, I want to make my own character. Sorry being cookie cutter isn't fun for everyone.

2. Being a mix of what you want is fun for some players. It allows them to create their own vision of their character tailored to their own play style that they can mesh with like minded players. (and form a linkshell etc etc etc.)

you're in the minority. the current system encourages wide-spectrum leveling. IE if you want to be really good you can't specialize. the most powerful 'classes' are the ones that can use every ability right now. which doesn't make a lot of sense. it's not so much we want something cookie cutter, but we want something unique.

Right now, the end-all-be-all DD Class is archer. if you want to be the top DD, you need to level archer. end of story. but not all of us 1) like ranged classes 2) play with the 'lets pwn some noobs' mentality present in gaming nowadays.

even if you don't 'want a predefined role' you are filling a pre-defined role. or you're not doing much of anything at all in the party but leeching. think of RDM From FFXI. rdm could DD, burst, tank, heal, buff, enfeeble. not as good as some other classes, but it could fill any of those roles. there are glaring weaknesses in a rdm who tried to fill all those roles at the same time. specialization is needed. pre-defined roles are needed.

it's not so much about what you want, as to what the game needs. you are in the minority as far as mentality for playing a game. you need to accept that and realize what really needs to be done.

[Marious]

Well the Scythe would be a mash of sword and staff, just put a hole in the top of the staff put the sword in it, and bam you have a Scythe weapon

Anyways while I still feel the restrictions there I think the idea has merit and that it could work, I would say slack off some on the restrictions but not to much cause then we will be in the same problem.

But they are not introducing any new jobs to the game, while they want to change the names of the jobs as they stand now they are not adding any new ones. So a Gladiator might just be going Warrior and THM or Conj to White or Black. So even though your idea is good Kuroki they are not adding any classes so it would not work as you foresee.

And for Sorel take a look at the GDC GW2 video its about 30 minutes long. Reason I bring this up for those that are wondering they show how the various classes work together, like a Ranger shooting through a wall of fire from one of the other classes, the arrow gets the fire effect as it goes through the wall of fire. This is something more akin to what I was expecting from XIV if it was anything like they showed in the intro movie.

[Onisake]

Well the Scythe would be a mash of sword and staff, just put a hole in the top of the staff put the sword in it, and bam you have a Scythe weapon

there's so much fail in that statement i dont' know where to begin. so i just won't @.@

Anyways while I still feel the restrictions there I think the idea has merit and that it could work, I would say slack off some on the restrictions but not to much cause then we will be in the same problem.

But they are not introducing any new jobs to the game, while they want to change the names of the jobs as they stand now they are not adding any new ones. So a Gladiator might just be going Warrior and THM or Conj to White or Black. So even though your idea is good Kuroki they are not adding any classes so it would not work as you foresee.

where did you see a development engineer say they weren't adding classes? because i'm near positive you're blowing hot air with that statement.

i agree that it won't work as kuroki has stated. that's just not viable in FFXIV. you may need certain classes to unlock other classes (ala FFT) but once unlocked they will most likely be segregated. no spec trees.

they will at some point be introducing new classes. this won't happen next patch. and kuroki's suggestions would likely take minimum 6 months to implement. minus the glaring errors of spec trees and splitting from one class into another, which i feel won't happen for FFXIV because of the primary goal of class uniqueness. at that point we're about due for our first major expansion: new job classes, area, content, and level cap increase.

[Demacia]

Anything is viable.

They did say DRASTIC changes to the rules already set in Eorzea.

[Kurokikaze]

Let's start with a quote from Eorzapedia:
Yoshida-san is between two possible plans at this time. The first idea is that the traditional names would be introduced as “higher” or “advanced” classes. The traditional classes would thus be something of a goal for players. The second idea is that the traditional names would be more of a subset or specialization within the existing classes.

In the OP - Key words there. I'm just laying out a way that it can be done while trying to take into consideration balance. Balancing is probably something best left for them but its important enough that I feel it should be mentioned and we should discuss it.

And +1 to Demacia. I checked that for a reason as well.