Thread: A plea for 3.0 and beyond: Job Customization

Originally Posted by Morningstar1337

You could also say that "horizontal" progression is also an illusion of choice, doesn't stop people from asking for it though, your point?

Horizontal Progression is not what most people on this forum think its is. It is a character driven progression system with no classes or levels. All there is in horizontal progressions is an ability tree where players can spend there skill points learning abilities in melee, tanking, healing, magic and pet categories. Horizontal Progression also involves leveling up a skill through usage. For the some players in this game it may sound fun and exciting but for SE it would be hard to balance content around.

Hey. If they the armory system, then I'll be happy.

Then maybe we'll be able to unequip our weapons, and have more than 1 type of weapon per job.

Staves, hammers, clubs, axes, etc.

It's gonna be great.

Originally Posted by Akiza

Horizontal Progression is not what most people on this forum think its is. It is a character driven progression system with no classes or levels. All there is in horizontal progressions is an ability tree where players can spend there skill points learning abilities in melee, tanking, healing, magic and pet categories. Horizontal Progression also involves leveling up a skill through usage. For the some players in this game it may sound fun and exciting but for SE it would be hard to balance content around.

I honestly have to wonder where you get your information from. That is NOT horizontal progression. You've described a classless system, similar to what's present in UO, Darkfall, and the Elder Scrolls (offline) series. Horizontal progression occurs when developers put a limit your character's ability to grow stronger by gear or some form of leveling mechanics (Paragon levels in D3, Realm abilities in DAoC). Rather, the most traditional form of it is introducing a system where players earn abilities by content. Master levels in DAoC are an example of this.

Originally Posted by Delily

I honestly have to wonder where you get your information from. That is NOT horizontal progression. You've described a classless system, similar to what's present in UO, Darkfall, and the Elder Scrolls (offline) series. Horizontal progression occurs when developers put a limit your character's ability to grow stronger by gear or some form of leveling mechanics (Paragon levels in D3, Realm abilities in DAoC). Rather, the most traditional form of it is introducing a system where players earn abilities by content. Master levels in DAoC are an example of this.

Restricting your characters ability to grow with leveling and gear mechanics is the simplest definition of Vertical Progression. Horizontal Progression is increasing the power of the player's character and it comes in two forms open and closed. An Open Horizontal Progression there is no leveling and class system there is just an ability tree where Player Characters have a large arbitrary number of skill points to spend in categories of Melee, Range, Magic, Pet, Tank and Healing to build their Job it's entirely character progressive. Closed Horizontal Progression is like WoW where the skill trees are locked behind the classes and ESO is in between the two extremes. Horizontal progression is mainly used as an alternative to the leveling system and answer the end game gear grind that plagues every mmorpg.

I was actually talking to some of my guild members today about something like this. I mentioned that I would like to see a system in this game similar to EQ's AA (alternate advancement) system. The system game players a way to improve their characters beyond just getting the best gear possible for them.

The system allowed players to gain xp to accumulate points that players could use to enhance aspects of their characters abilities. Things like giving tanks more damage mitigation, improving healing for healers, and improving damage output for dps. Something like this would also benefit the developers because they could then plan fights around a system like this.

as soon everyone have their character completed (all classes at level 50) everyone would be the same again with just different weapons.

Because you could equip nearly all relevant skills in FFXIV 1.0
Some skills were indisputably better than others, and there were enough slots to equip most of these "better skills". It was not a problem of "customisation" in itself. It could have been corrected simply by reducing the number of "slots" to equip skills, or by making more skills useful.

Don't confuse the concept with the execution.

Originally Posted by Felis

During 1.0 before jobs came ingame the cross-class skills were more open (Every skill except the ones you bought in the guilds for guildmarks. And up to 10 skills at level 50) and you could customizate your character how you wanted. Equip this skill from this class and that skill from this class and your character would be like a RDM.
People complained about it because as soon everyone would have their character completed (all classes at level 50) everyone would be the same again with just different weapons.
And so the devs created the job system for specializations.


No
The community has spoken


http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...16083b634f7678

The whole article is REALLY enlightening on a NUMBER of levels. I especially like the general "Meh-ness" displayed for PvP.

I really hope they don't add a talent tree or the like to this game. I've played in many games with them, and they honestly rarely feel like they actually add anything. The way that it's set up now allows everyone to be balanced arguably. Crossclass skills do add some variance I suppose, but there is only so much they should add.