Skill Tree

[Chiapet]

we definately had this in 1.0 before the jobs were implamented and everyone whined "I want more definition." "i dont like all classes being able to do whatever they want" So they gave us jobs cause people didnt support the freedom to be anything you want. And honestly i like that in this game Se controlls what job does what. If xi taught us anything is the the bigger voices get decide how you play. And it was changing all the time too. "Oh im sorry did you start Warrior 5 years ago and liked to tank? Well to bad. [Warrior][No thanks] GO level something else now nab"

If you want to play something with a skill tree there are options for you. Go play them.
I'd rather SE control that for now.

[Jpec07]

The biggest problem with skill trees is that everyone will just fall into the default, cookie-cutter build because some theorycrafter somewhere proved that it is 0.0002% more powerful, and people will be chastised for having the "wrong" build, and will be forced to justify their decisions.

Don't get me wrong; I loved the freedom that skill and talent trees brought to WoW before MoP nuked them from orbit. I loved making a PvProt warrior who borrowed self-healing abilities from Arms and Fury, and who focused around interrupting the enemy team to make them try to kill me (when I'd built myself to be very hard to kill), distracting them from the objective. But I did not like having to justify why my build deviated from the "best" one whenever I got into a PUG.

The other problem with what you're suggesting is that it would wind up going the GW2 route: players would take hybrid builds and use the overpowered nature of them to cheese content. Instead of a party of two tanks, two healers, and four DPS, we'd get eight tanking, healing DPS players who just zerged the content. The trinity would evaporate, because there would be no way to prevent hybridization, and no way to balance content for it.

Given the headache that balancing classes can already be, I'd rather SE focus on maintaining the balance they've already established, and not try to account for different builds.

[DWolfwood]

I think this could work, but it would take an insane amount of development. What you're talking about is basically rebalancing every single job to be suited for multiple roles. It takes us back practically to scratch for balancing.

Personally, if we're going to go back this far, I would rather them remove the "armoury system" and allow jobs to wield different weapons. Warrior for instance should be able to wield nearly every weapon imaginable in my opinion.

[LeeraSorlan]

snip.

in essence, the arcanist already has this "skill tree" since you can choose to be either a scholar or a summoner, so i do not think scholar would be changing for this format.

which i believe is how the OP is suggesting roles work..gladiator could become a paladin, a holy paladin to heal or a..idk...something dpspaladin. which is similar to how arcanist branches off.

[Quor]

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.

So much this. People don't seem to realize that min/maxing will always take over and win out. This will trivialize content, which will force content to be built around the min/maxed state, until anyone who wants to succeed in that content will have to use the "cookie cutter" min/max build. Which will basically bring us back to where we are now.

[Roegadyn_Bear]

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.

This is ultimately the fate of all Skill Trees in most games these days, sadly.

"Fun" skills that don't offer a marginal increase or have any real effect other than flavor or complexity will be ignored for the ones Theorycrafters have mathematically proven to be superior under specific circumstances, in most serious groups. The gaming community has shifted into an increased focus on "efficiency" over the years that anyone not using optimal builds will be labeled as "bad" or "subpar", and in worse cases excluded from joining certain groups or removed from them because of that.

It's a shame, honestly.

[VanilleFang]

They had a hard enough time balancing AST to be at the strength of SCH and WHM. And even still SCH is easily the best of the three in end content. Just like PLD needed balancing, and yet WAR is still the best tank class. How do you expect them to handle even more diverse options?

[Dorander]

Since a single character can be every job in the game, that is in effect, the skill trees that you want.

Tank spec with lots of defensive cooldowns - Paladin.
Tank spec that's heavy on dps - Warrior.
Tank spec that's in the middle - Dark Knight.

Melee dps that just hammers and does massive damage - Monk
Melee dps with alot of utility - Ninja
Melee dps in the middle - Dragoon

Healer with strong single target heals - White Mage
Healer with shields - Scholar
Healer in between - Astrologian

See.. that's how it goes in Final Fantasy XIV. Your jobs are your specs. That's just the way this game wraps it up.

[Yhisa]

Nooooooo i strongly disagree with skill trees in mmos especiallly due to how things work these days

In the past skill tree or talent trees was awsome as it was try and error or picked the ones u like

But these days its completely oppersite .... Players will google search best skills to take as X job and just copy that without any thought

Today we live in a age where internet is easy accessible and can find anything we want to know which ultimately KILLS the use of skill trees or talents as u will pick the one that gives the most benefit cause X theorycrafter said so!

I mean in the past people always asked about cross skills and just copy others and which was better to have

So cause of this i will say NO i do not want this within the game

[BubblyBoar]

Why make a DPS tree and tank tree when you can just make 2 jobs, 1 DPS and 1 Tank? That's literally the answer Yoshi P gave when he was asked about it. Diversity for the sake of diversity isn't a good enough reason.