The Illusion of Choice

[Critical-Limit]

because they've already started homogenizing jobs for the purpose of balance.



new jobs are cosmetic. skill trees are not.

That's working out well for them eh? BRD > MCH
DRG > MNK when paired with BRD, and DRK.
WAR handles any situation. PLD is only wanted on physical damage, DRK for DPS as main tank or magical damage taken.

This is imbalance. Yet your not making a thread to stop new jobs so people don't have to worry about their job being unwanted. The point is to buff/nerf to where they are respectfully close enough, and all content can be cleared by every job.

Otherwise in your ideal world, fighting games should only have one character with the same exact options.

Did we forget what FUN is?

And no it's not cosmetic. Jobs ARE the skill trees in FFXIV as it stands. You want to change your style of play? Changing skills is synonymous with changing jobs to a great extent.

[Alahra]

It's understood that customization inherently will introduce a certain amount of imbalance. But the amount of imbalance that is introduce can be controlled for—things don't need to be perfect so long as all the options are functional enough to be valid. Yes, at the highest levels of play, people are probably going to demand specific options, but that doesn't make other choices invalid outside of that environment.

Here are five off-the-cuff examples for NIN that I've been tossing around in my head, loosely inspired by the general structure of Merit Points in FFXI. Imagine that you would be able to choose three of the five.

• Death Blossom: Increase the Potency of Death Blossom by 10% (to 110). This is relatively straightforward and makes NIN somewhat more effective in dungeon environments, which have a variety of AoE situations. Their overall AoE is the lowest of all the DPS classes, so this shouldn't cause any particular imbalance.
• Huton: Increase the duration of Huton by 5 (or perhaps 10) seconds. This is less straightforward—what it mainly does is provide a little more breathing room for the opener. I've not mapped out the rotation precisely, but this would at most allow for an extra Aeolian Edge in the first minute of an encounter, as well as in any phase preceded by an unavailable boss in which you Mudra-refresh Huton. This would be a slight DPS increase over time, as you would occasionally get in an extra Aeolian Edge before needing to refresh with Armor Crush, but not a large one, as you'd just need another Armor Crush in your next minute that you didn't need before.
• Hide Increase movement speed while under the effects of Hide by 50%. This would primarily be a PvP option, for sure, one that's not likely to have any major use in high end content.
• Goad: Goad can now be self-targeted. This would likely be a common choice, but not an imbalanced one in the long run: NIN's TP management is one of the best among the melees, and in raid situations, you're probably still better off using it on another party member. The flexibility is nice, though, especially for dungeons.
• Kiss of the Spider: Apply spider venom to your weapon, increasing physical damage dealt by 20 %. Changes the additional effect for Jugulate to 30% (or some other number) Heavy. Shares a recast timer with Kiss of the Wasp and Kiss of the Viper, and cannot be used simultaneously with any other weapon poisons. Effect ends upon reuse. Duration: 10s. This is a PvP-centered talent again, but it might also have utility in certain sorts of raid encounters where Heavy is useful.

High end raiders would most likely choose the Huton extension and the Goad modification, and then have one "free" choice that might vary depending on the encounter (depending on how difficult it is to swap out your choices). PvP players would obviously want the Hide speed increase and Kiss of the Spider, and frequent dungeon-goers would love the Death Blossom choice. Since the choices are often most effective for a particular type of content, players could then decide which ones were most useful for them.

Personally, I think these sorts of things should be somewhat difficult to change, as Merit Points were in FFXI, which allowed you to change the points but required you to earn enough XP to spend the points in the new talent, but that's not necessarily required. I also think it's important to keep the choices from having a huge impact on raid performance in general, as this allows for a more careful approach to balance in that arena, which is pretty important.

Obviously, I'm no developer, and these are off the top of my head, so I'm not expecting them to be perfectly balanced or anything of that sort. They're just meant to serve as an example of the sort of customization I think they could add to this game without causing undue imbalances.

[Seraphix2407]

For PLD, I'm really not sure if "1 WD, 3 STR and 3 Deter" makes up for "49 Crit" between Hauteclaire and Sword Of The Heavens...because who cares about the 51 parry

It does, it wipes out the parry and the crit. Crit is RNG. Weapon dmg isnt.

[Kaurie]

For PLD, I'm really not sure if "1 WD, 3 STR and 3 Deter" makes up for "49 Crit" between Hauteclaire and Sword Of The Heavens...because who cares about the 51 parry

Generally speaking, WD is anywhere from 50-100x more important than any secondary stat, and the main stat is anywhere from 5-10x more important. In this case at the very least, 1 WD and 3 STR = 65 and is as high as 130 CRIT. So yes, "1 WD, 3 STR and 3 Deter" makes up for "49 Crit".

PLD I imagine would have higher weights for STR/WD than CRIT solely because CRIT doesn't give them anything special (such as 2x adlo shielding on SCH or bloodletter procs on BRD).

EDIT: I also wanted to add that though the first is superior, the difference is negligible. I upgraded my SMN book from 200 to 210, raising 3 WD levels among other things. I put out an awesome 10 DPS More from 1333 to 1343. If you set everything to their individual stat weights, then we are all sitting in the mid 3000's of the main stat (roughly, I am 3445 or so). So upping 1 WD 3 STR would up that a total of ~13-15 of your main stat or give you a 0.4% increase to your damage. To put 0.4% in perspective, if you do 800 DPS on your PLD, then it will up to 803.

[Ibi]

My issue was more in regards to abilities like Barrage and early-gear Ravager, especially near release, where there were each optimal if meeting even a single condition: whether there are multiple enemies worth killing (though this would at least depend also on their positioning in the case of Barrage), and whether you'd be able to hit for at least half the duration of your lingering ground AoE (early Ravager). (Of course, by now these have been improved in balance.)

Yeah, fair enough, if there's a clearly superior option then that's not really a choice. As you say though, they've iterated on a lot of those kind of talents since their initial introduction to try to make sure that there really are at least two of the three options worth consideration for most situations.

I guess it just seems to me that combating or submitting to or dealing with an alleged 'illusion of choice' was never the aim of these changes; on the player end it was best described as taking the fat out of the burger (for better or worse), and on the development end, reducing costs. Further, many of the new talents seem more interested in adding class flavor than actual spec choice. (Not a bad thing; just not consequent to the ideology that people seem to attribute them to.)

I don't know about that though. There's a blue post from Zarhym here from Cataclym's development where he indicates that removing the illusion of choice (he even uses that exact phrase earlier in the thread) was their main goal for the changes.

I do agree that balancing specs would be a ton of work, and that's a valid reason not to put them in. But Yoshi-P trying to say "We can't do specs because one of them will be stronger so no one will ever use anything else" is either disingenuous or an indication that they just don't understand how to go about it, especially when that imbalance already exists between jobs and doesn't lead to that conclusion.

[KaitlanKela]

crit life = best life

I'm a schola.

[SendohJin]

That's working out well for them eh? BRD > MCH
DRG > MNK when paired with BRD, and DRK.
WAR handles any situation. PLD is only wanted on physical damage, DRK for DPS as main tank or magical damage taken.

besides PLD, the other comparisons are not huge problems. you would never kick a MNK/MCH with a good schedule/personality/skill to take a chance on random BRD/DRGs.

This is imbalance. Yet your not making a thread to stop new jobs so people don't have to worry about their job being unwanted.

look up my character if you want. why would i make that thread when i have all jobs at 60. i'm not a "jobbist", i don't worry about jobs. if a job has a truly down period like PLD, i switch over to another.

The point is to buff/nerf to where they are respectfully close enough, and all content can be cleared by every job.

they are respectfully close enough and all content can currently be cleared by every job. so i guess that is working out well for them.

And no it's not cosmetic. Jobs ARE the skill trees in FFXIV as it stands. You want to change your style of play? Changing skills is synonymous with changing jobs to a great extent.

i think my original statement should more properly state, new jobs also add new cosmetics, skill trees do not.

[SendohJin]

I guess I view things differently than yourself. There are a lot more different things between jobs than cosmeitc. For example, a SMN mechanically has to manage a pet.

in very few fights do SMN have to manage their pet. i main SCH but i play SMN quite a bit when i have to DPS. i'm just fine never doing anything more than Contagion and having Garuda following me around for Expert/Diadem/Void Ark/Hunts/Maps. and there's really 0 reason why Contagion has to be a pet ability. FFXIV SMN is a really poor excuse for a pet job.

Further, a SMN is much stronger at AoE and a BLM is much stronger single target. They play very differently mechanically and excel in different things.

this was completely opposite before 3.0 before they nerfed Flare and took off the 4 target cap on Bane.

and isn't that the point of skill trees to make the same job play differently?

i can make the SMN rotation a BLM Skill Tree in like 30 minutes. and it would even make sense Thunder 3 = Miasma 2, Thunder 2 = Miasma 1, Thunder 1 = Bio, Scathe = Ruin, Blizzard II acts like Bane spreads all the electricity around, Blizzard III acts like Fester and drops a big damage attack, Freeze puts an AOE ice cloud that ends up acting like Shadow Flare, etc, etc.

[Kaurie]

besides PLD, the other comparisons are not huge problems. you would never kick a MNK/MCH with a good schedule/personality/skill to take a chance on random BRD/DRGs.

People would and have kicked certain jobs from content, due to them being underpowered. This is much more prevalent at the beginning of a tier cycle when those differences matter much more, than at the end of one (such as now).

look up my character if you want. why would i make that thread when i have all jobs at 60. i'm not a "jobbist", i don't worry about jobs. if a job has a truly down period like PLD, i switch over to another.

This would be great if we could gear multiple jobs more easily. As it is, your secondary job will generally be 10-30 ilvls below your main until very late in the tier cycle. That puts a major handicap on being able to use a secondary effectively (or swapping roles / jobs).

they are respectfully close enough and all content can currently be cleared by every job. so i guess that is working out well for them.

Indeed, they are OK (not great) at balance, so I don't understand why it's thought that they would not be able to balance specs?

i think my original statement should more properly state, new jobs also add new cosmetics, skill trees do not.

This is definitely not correct though. Just look at DRK owning the MT role over PLD due to their differences. MCH and BRD are identical, which is lame and often complained about (not good).

in very few fights do SMN have to manage their pet. i main SCH but i play SMN quite a bit when i have to DPS. i'm just fine never doing anything more than Contagion and having Garuda following me around for Expert/Diadem/Void Ark/Hunts/Maps. and there's really 0 reason why Contagion has to be a pet ability. FFXIV SMN is a really poor excuse for a pet job.

I agree, I have mained SMN and am swapping to SCH for my static now. That said, it plays significantly differently than a BLM. I use Ifrit on Sic mostly, but positioning is important.

this was completely opposite before 3.0 before they nerfed Flare and took off the 4 target cap on Bane.

Indeed.

and isn't that the point of skill trees to make the same job play differently?

Yes, but I think the difference is scaling.

i can make the SMN rotation a BLM Skill Tree in like 30 minutes. and it would even make sense Thunder 3 = Miasma 2, Thunder 2 = Miasma 1, Thunder 1 = Bio, Scathe = Ruin, Blizzard II acts like Bane spreads all the electricity around, Blizzard III acts like Fester and drops a big damage attack, Freeze puts an AOE ice cloud that ends up acting like Shadow Flare, etc, etc.

If you massively change every skill. Again, this is like saying a NIN is like a PLD, because they both have physical damage.

I mean all the jobs are effectively the same, because they all do damage and all have HP - if we go to the lowest common demoninator. However, BLM and SMN play completely differently. They aren't similar with minor job differences (like how a skill tree/trait/spec system would work).

Here are a few ways in which they vary, which results in vastly different play styles and grievances. SMN has damage over time, has many low damage skills that contribute to damage, has a pet they need to consider (whether that is micro-managing, keeping alive or positioning), high mobility and low DPS impact if they miss something. BLM has weak damage over time, few high damage skills to contribute to damage, extremely low mobility and high punishment for missing a spell.

[Kaurie]

The difference between crafting and having builds is if you don't like crafting you don't have to craft. If you don't like having to mess around with builds you still have to mess around with builds. Screwing around with builds really annoys me. I like to be about to play something without relying on a spread sheet and a calculator to figure out what works. If I need to rely on third party sites to figure out the build I need then that is worse. In my view if the game build system is complicated enough that you cant intuitively figure out what you need for a reliable build in the game itself without having to resort to google then the game is broken.

Hey, I liked your response, as it is a perfect argument to my note on crafting. How would you feel if they added customization, but also added a default automatic build? This would allow people to customize if they wish, or they could hit a tickbox that automatically fills in the traits as they level for a build chosen by the development team?

Alternatively, the default build could be crowd-sourced. As in, it defaults to what the majority of players are using. So if people discovered a good build, shared it online, most people copied it - then new players would automatically get that build if they opted for the default.