Thread: 4.0 abilities

The question of 4.0 abilities is an interesting query. Currently, even my Disciples of the Land (ignoring Fisherman) have mostly full hotbars (I use 3). Additionally, we have the issue of cross hotbars, which are much more limited how you can expect even the best players to handle more skills. While messing around on Dark Knight, I found myself with two full cross hotbars, which currently, is the most you can swiftly switch between. Adding more abilities seems like an impossibility at this point if you want to keep the controller players content.

Now that we have the technical part down, the question of where Yoshida's team can go with the Jobs comes up. While yes, there are possibilities for some of them, I am divided as to how Yoshida's team, they could easily just toss more abilities to us with little foresight as to how we would handle them. However, I don't believe Yoshida's team will walk down that path, we've seen what skill bloat does to other MMORPGs in FFXIV's sub-genre, and it isn't pretty. This basically leaves Yoshida's team with two options, the first is to take a card from FFXI and not increase level cap, but offer us a different way to increase our relative power; the second, which I think is more likely, is to increase the level cap to 70, but also reduce the amount of abilities we possess, either through consolidating things like the weaponskill chains, or removing "needless" bloat by combining spells, abilities, or weaponskills. Examples of the second are things like making spells like Bio II replace Bio, while obviously increasing Bio II's power to compensate, and combining the Pugilist abilities Twin Snakes and True Strike.

The second method would clear up hotbar real estate to allow for newer, more interesting abilities. Additionally, many of the new core mechanics for Jobs introduced in Heavensward, require some further tinkering, there are many players who still dislike abilities like Enochian, Blood of the Dragon, and the Wanderer's Minuet. This would also give Yoshida's team the opportunity to rearrange certain skills, the spells Sword Oath and Shield Oath from Paladin comes to mind. Paladin has for a long time now has suffered while the other tanks excel in that ten level range. Additionally around level 30, most players should be getting introduced to core mechanics that they may not have yet seen, such as Enochian, Blood of the Dragon, Mudras, Gauss Barrel, the Wanderer's Minuet, Astrologian cards, tank stances, and whatever else they feel like adding to those that have yet to have this sort of defining Job mechanics.

Finally, those of us that have played games earlier in the series, see certain abilities that are strangely absent, such as a Black Mage's osmose, or Paladin's Esuna. By rearranging the current skill sets, Yoshida's team would have the room to add in abilities like those, as well as add in any unique skills they have created, but did not have the room for or simply couldn't find the room for.

My final point is simply to state, that I am highly anxious to see what Yoshida's team's answer will be, especially since Yoshida has proven to us already that he as a producer is very good at finding unique answers to hazardous situations.