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.

[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.

[Caitlyn]

I dont like skill trees.

Better use that pvp-skill-upgrade-system for pve-skills and everything is fine : )

[Ashelia_Ferron]

Doesn't matter. Community wouldn't accept it.

Theory crafters would calculate the "optimal" build for each class. Then all PFs would be like "Farm party, need WHM with X build" etc.


So no, you wouldn't be able to play how you want unless you were doing casual content.

[MerleSirlos]

Skill trees can be good, but on the right conditions, and I don't think FFXIV offers the right conditions for it.

There are, in my opinion, two important points that we need to consider when dealing with a skill tree system:

1) Do we have separate role oriented skill trees or not? If yes, can we make a build that allows us to mix them or not?
-If we have well defined skill trees and cannot mix them, then it ends up the same as having 3 different jobs that can use the same weapon. So just make new jobs and no need for skill trees with the system we have. However the current system defines the jobs by the weapons used. An option would be to base jobs only on job stones like SMN/SCH does.
-If we have one big skill tree with offensive, defensive and healing skills or well defined skill trees that we are free to pick from to mix like we want, then we need to take into consideration optimization and out of the norm builds. In a game where there is a good balance of PvP and PvE, having something different from the masses can be good, the element of surprise might help win a fight and have the flexibility to quickly react to surprise elements coming from the other players. In a heavily PvE game like FFXIV, this will not work. If you are not optimized for the role you are taking in the party, you are pretty much giving up your place to someone who can do better just because he has the better build. FFXIV has some PvP, but we have extra PvP abilities that act like a skill tree.

2) Are we allowed to change freely our skill tree build or not?
-If we cannot change our choices or need an item to change it, having separate jobs sounds like a better option for me (and it's back to first part of point 1: different jobs sharing the same weapon).
-If we can freely change, we will surely need to save them to be able to switch easily (like we do for gear sets). Problem is, that creates a lot of extra data. Our characters are already heavily loaded with data (classes level and attributes distribution, gear sets, hotbars setup, inventory and so on). It's not impossible but will require to give up on other type of data or wait for a more optimized system (since the dev. team said they were looking at optimizing item data to be able to increase inventory space)

So yeah, although skill trees can be fun, I highly doubt they will be useful in a game like FFXIV.

[Radacci]

I dont like skill trees.

Better use that pvp-skill-upgrade-system for pve-skills and everything is fine : )

that's kind of a simplified skill tree, but yah, that could work well.

Doesn't matter. Community wouldn't accept it.

Theory crafters would calculate the "optimal" build for each class. Then all PFs would be like "Farm party, need WHM with X build" etc.


So no, you wouldn't be able to play how you want unless you were doing casual content.

Each class/job has combos, with certain potency etc, and each role has their role to play. BRD isn't less valuable, just because they have less DPS than MNK. A dps PLD would obviously not que as tank, and their DPS would be balanced to be equal to other DPS (or they bring some other utility and get a little lower dps - as with BRD) so i don't see any issues arising.
Skill trees would just enable you to DPS or heal, as PLD, or heal/tank as MNK, etc - so instead of having 3 tanks to choose from, you get 10 - instead of ppl being upset about there being 3 tanks and 6 dps, it's equal, each job having their own flavor.