Skill Tree

[Radacci]

Ok, there's always been and will always be this issue whenever new jobs arrive, as with the thread about SAM tank/DPS - the community will be divided, and however it turns out, half the community will be annoyed SAM became DPS, cause they wanted is as tank, or the other way.
Why is the class system so restricting? why can't we be allowed to just pick our favorite job, and play it with our preferred role?
Let's take GLD/PLD for example, if we had skill trees, we could stuff all the defensive buffs into defense tree, and if you want to be full DPS, you just go with DPS tree - you won't have any of those defensive buffs - this will solve the whole dilemma of PLD being way to OP, if it could be a strong DPS, while also using defensive buffs - which is why it's basically impossible to add a new DPS job to GLD; why not just fix that with skill trees?
Put shield use in def tree, and 2h stance in offense tree, so GLD uses their big 1h sword, with 2hands, like bastard sword. Maybe split offense tree into 2h path and dual wield path; The holy avenger, that smites their enemies with divine fury.

PGL has fist of earth, feather foot, mantra, second wind - can cross class keen flurry - why not give them a defensive tree? make arm of the destroyer, their aoe aggro skill. haymaker would be more useful as a tank, too.
Give them a new aggro combo with positional burst damage, so when boss randomly turns around, you can smash their back for bonus damage/aggro (situational fell cleave)
Split offensive tree into fist of wind and fire. put GL in FoW path for SS build, and FoF for a more heavy/slow hitter.
You could even give them a fist of life tree, and make them a healer - adding mantra stance, shorten second wind CD, make it AOE.
Stack chakra for higher heal - make purification into a "benediction" (loose chakra stack)

There's lots of things that could be done to add more fun play-styles, for your preferred job; not having to cap and gear up multiple jobs.

[Squigley]

I like the idea very much and I've been wanting a tree kind of thing for a long time.

However, I don't think we'll ever see one. It's too complicated for this game. Pretty much everything in FFXIV is very simple and you don't have to read any guides etc to make your char build optimal. The only(?) choice is the allocation of attribute points and nowadays there's only one correct answer to that.

I think the simplicity is one of the big selling points of this game: FFXIV is a very easy game to pick up. Trees would add complexity and the devs might not want that.

[Khalithar]

I actually agree with the concept of making all classes multi-role and I think it does have a lot of potential, Rift did something like that where they made every single class capable of tanking, melee dps, ranged dps, support healing/dps, and healing with the right build. It also opened up options for folks that might not have liked a class, I didn't like Rift's mage for example but once they added a melee dps spec and a tank spec? I love it now.

However, that does create an issue of having a lot of different builds to balance and I don't think SE would be willing to take the time to do that. Their design favors a very structured system with a single class identity and while I actually like that aspect, I can understand others might not. I can totally understand that someone wants to dps with a greatsword or play a ninja tank or heal as a paladin but that doesn't really fit with SE's vision. I think in this regard Wildstar made the right decision by making every class have two different roles they could fill from day one (dps/tank or dps/heal) and it would be more difficult for this game as it would require a lot of restructuring. Another part of it, is that with the whole armory system, the devs encourage you to find a class you like for a role, want to melee? Try mnk or drg or nin. Want to heal? Scholar or White Mage or Astrologian. Keep going until you find something you like.

That being said however, I hope SE doesn't rule out the idea entirely. I think maybe adding a secondary role to each Job and letting us switch freely between them at will isn't a bad idea, especially for solo play. For argument's sake, let's pretend everyone has a dps build and they release a new set of main story quests, I'd love to be able to put my drk in to dps mode and bring out my chocobo to speed it up before switching back to my tanking build to queue once I reach whatever the dungeon we have to complete for the main story completion.

[Edrickthorn]

I actually agree with the concept of making all classes multi-role and I think it does have a lot of potential, Rift did something like that where they made every single class capable of tanking, melee dps, ranged dps, support healing/dps, and healing with the right build. It also opened up options for folks that might not have liked a class, I didn't like Rift's mage for example but once they added a melee dps spec and a tank spec? I love it now....

This was tried already in 1.0.....and it did not work. That is one of the reasons they limited it, cause ppl were complaining that their job/class had no depth.

[Kaurie]

This was tried already in 1.0.....and it did not work. That is one of the reasons they limited it, cause ppl were complaining that their job/class had no depth.

Except it does work. In like... every other MMO.

[Jimoori]

Except it does work. In like... every other MMO.

This isn't like any other MMO though.

I actually agree with the concept of making all classes multi-role and I think it does have a lot of potential, Rift did something like that where they made every single class capable of tanking, melee dps, ranged dps, support healing/dps, and healing with the right build. It also opened up options for folks that might not have liked a class, I didn't like Rift's mage for example but once they added a melee dps spec and a tank spec? I love it now....

Thematically it doesn't make sense for a DRK to start healing everyone, or a BLM to start tanking a raid boss. The purpose of having the freedom of playing all classes on one character is so people can play whatever they want. They would have to completely redo skills, stats, and gear for every class. If they made the game with this model then people would be less inclined to play more than one job.

[Kaurie]

This isn't like any other MMO though.

Which is interesting, as most people say this game is more like WoW than any other MMO.

Thematically it doesn't make sense for a DRK to start healing everyone, or a BLM to start tanking a raid boss. The purpose of having the freedom of playing all classes on one character is so people can play whatever they want. They would have to completely redo skills, stats, and gear for every class. If they made the game with this model then people would be less inclined to play more than one job.

It doesn't have to be every job can do all 3 roles, but some jobs can do 2-3. i.e. DRK can do DPS/Tank, WAR DPS/Tank, PLD DPS/Tank/Heal, WHM Heal/DPS etc.

[Radacci]

I just think they should have done it from the beginning, while they were remaking the game, so ya now it's probably to late, and it's not likely that they will make such a big change; at least not before 4.0 expansion. But i have seen other F2P games, totally revamp the skill system, so it's not impossible.
I don't think skill trees is necessarily "complicated" you just put your points into the path of your choice - it's maybe just that to many options may be the downside - but at the same time it's less choices, cause you only need to choose 1 class/job, instead of 3 jobs (if you want to have 1/role) and instead of having gear sets (or also) you could have "tree sets" to quickly swap to another spec, just like you quickly swap to another job.
It would certainly be a lot of work to basically triple the nr of skills/builds, which in some cases may count as a new job, but it's basically the only option for adding new paths to old classes - with ACN you could get SCH/SMN, but that's because they built ACN with that in mind; they probably didn't have any plans for such a system, when they started out re-making the game.

[Rhaja]

If they gave MNK the ability to tank I swear to god I would drop every single class I have right now forever. On the flip side I've got a friend who would love to play PLD as a healer or DPS, plenty of people who would like to play BRD like a Ranger, and DRG as a tank (lol).

As much as I want this though... not counting on it beyond the Deep Dungeons =\

[Chessala]

It's what I mean when I say "let us be different".

Why do we have to play a character in a pre-assigned role without having the possibility to change that?`Why does one WHM have to be the same as the one next to it? Give us freedom to build a character the way we want to play it. You can still give a general direction but instead but we'd havethe possibility to pick skills and also stats to truly build a character.

That being said, I am sure it won't happen. The reason is simple: it would require too much thought from the players. Currently FFXIV is aimed at the "pick it up and play it without knowing anything" system. That's great for drawing people in but also ensures they will drop the game as soon as they see everything they feel is worth seeing. On FFXIV, the "different builds" is covered by being able to switch classes.

However, that is and will never be the same. If I want to use my whm staff to whack people by investing into melee dmg, I should be able to do so. That is how you achieve versatility in a game.