Action Trees for Customization

[Orenji-kun]

Part of what makes this game function so well is it's adherence to the holy trinity, separating players into DPSs, tanks, and healers, but at a certain point that gets really boring. It sacrifices horizontal progression for consistent and well defined combat roles. I'm perfectly fine with keeping people to one of these three roles, but I think that a lot can be gained from giving people secondary roles, including but not necessarily limited to these three.
First off, this can lead to people neglecting their main roles, even in times of need, so I think that these roles should be dependent on performance in your main one. For example, if a healer can excel at healing their party, a stacking buff might be accumulated via healing to be used for their secondary role's actions, and if they want to run solo, they might be able to summon an aggroing dummy for them to heal to accumulate said buff and to use as a weak, pseudo tank.

[Orenji-kun]

Secondly, this provides an opportunity to enable versatility at lower levels. Rather than having to trudge through low levels with only a few core actions, the horizontal progression this provides would make combat more interesting without simply being a boost to your main role performance.
Thirdly, customization of your character's play style would improve the game in many ways. Characters would feel more personal beyond their appearance and invested time, especially if the actions stand out visually or affect the flow of combat. There would be more to team dynamics than classes and levels. While you could still expect the healer to keep your hp up and the tank to aggro, there would be more to optimizing the battle than having everyone perform their duties well; for example, two secondary supporters might collaborate to buff and debuff just in time for the dps's limit break.

[Orenji-kun]

Lastly, a great way to implement this would be in a branching line of quests. Just like with class specific quests in their respective guilds, these quests would provide an action, and possibly also a trait, upon completion and unlock the following quests while locking alternative quests. These quests wouldn't need to have a particularly detailed storyline, especially since it would branch apart, but I would expect a decent level of difficulty and exploration, although it should involve a decent amount of lower level quests for previously mentioned reasons.

Does anybody have any thoughts or opinions on this?

[roninoftagrm]

*claps*

my suggestion(s) have yet to be sent to drawing board for correctness, your idea... is mostly sound, but why do quests for new actions when there can be a new exp bar specific to this, like a mastery or proficiency system.

masteries: attack, defense, support, healing

edit:just realized that in 14 it would be called an action log, like hunt and challenge but with repeated use of skills, crit counts(global), damage with your buffs, damage taken with your buffs as well as parry/block/evade, run distance, etc

[VanilleFang]

I don't really like this idea. I'm not a huge fan of supposed "customization" in MMOs because of the plain fact that everyone expects everyone to be the "best", so as to optimize the customization in some way. What I mean is that everyone would end up being the same as everyone else who is the same job as them because there is always some combination of the "custom" attributes that max out your character's effectiveness.

An example is like in Rift. Yes you have three separate skill trees, that you can choose which you would even like to have, and then you can choose how you would like to spend your points in said trees. Sounds wonderful, and full of personal customization. But the fact of the matter is is that this isn't true. You may want to make your character spend points equally in all three skill trees, but this is seen as useless and incredibly weak. The community has decided that to be the "best" you must really only build your skill trees in very rigid, and specific, ways. So though it may appear to allow customization at first, the community will end up pretty much trying to force people to build a specific way. if you don't build yourself up to be the strongest you can you can't possibly hope to be fully accepted in the hardest of content.

I pesonally love customizing my own character, but not in MMOs.

[roninoftagrm]

then have the new skills open world only, with a autoswap to the linear set upon entering the dungeon

rift is a terrible analogy, they designed the whole tri soul system wrong, because of the snake 8bit thing with skills, instead of straight lines(the bottom half), *points to gw2* traits overthere work, you can customize without being ostracized(yes yes its a different system but still applies in 90% of the situations for 14)

the idea is for the possibilities to change something in both the devs and players, and see something new come out of it...

edit:you/they can also add a check mark for dungeons/roulettes to allow/block the players using custom builds with these new skills so things can stay as cookie cutter as they have been

[Garlyle]

I think something that's very important to note is that it's not just the trinity system that allows them to do the very careful tuning they've been doing for coils and onwards and present the very carefully designed challenges they have been. It's also because having purely static classes (or very close to purely static) gives them fewer variables to be attributing for in balance. XIV's class balance is actually very solid, and adjustments throughout the game's lifespan have generally been very minor so far, precisely because they aren't having to balance "haste ninjas vs shuriken ninjas vs katana ninjas vs tank ninjas" etc.

then have the new skills open world only, with a autoswap to the linear set upon entering the dungeon

Two things:
1. Like it or not, players do get practice with their skills out in the open world; having it suddenly swap your moves in party content is somewhat jarring and confusing for a lot (see adjusting to PvP actions)
2. You can already do that kind of. You can just run around in your Class in the overworld and have a lot more customizability, you know. (Hell, I'm regularly in Trial Roulette as a Marauder...)

[roninoftagrm]

"haste ninjas vs shuriken ninjas vs katana ninjas vs tank ninjas" etc.

Two things:
1. Like it or not, players do get practice with their skills out in the open world; having it suddenly swap your moves in party content is somewhat jarring and confusing for a lot (see adjusting to PvP actions)
2. You can already do that kind of. You can just run around in your Class in the overworld and have a lot more customizability, you know. (Hell, I'm regularly in Trial Roulette as a Marauder...)

i meant auto swap the way i use it, on my gld, i use riot combo exclusively, but have another bar with halone combo at the ready, something similar can be done, primary with gear set(it worked that way when i last did a GS/crystal swap)

the ninjas part:this would only happen if they added multiple roles to a class, and it was only possible in 11 through subbing a warrior, samurai, black mage/dark knight, etc

[Sibyll]

snip

Given that the cross class skills for each class are more or less illusion of choice, I think it's safe to say they'd do no better here than Rift did.

Also in GW2 most of the traits had little impact and were there mostly for flavor, at least when I played. Some of the skills there were outright garbage. GW2 also didn't have real end game.

I really liked Rifts class system and the skill trees, but the "customization was basically in the last 15 points after you'd capped a tree.

[Orenji-kun]

...why do quests for new actions when there can be a new exp bar specific to this, like a mastery or proficiency system...

There are a number of reasons for doing this system as a nonlinear series of quests. First, it would create a tree of options while using all of the mechanics already present in the game, which is really easy for devs to implement and test. Second, it would keep it down to simple choices of which quest and subsequent reward you want at the moment, and even if you check online as most do, new skills and quests can be added at any part of the tree so devs can adjust it as time goes on.