A talent system

[Age_of_Oblivion]

Right now, FFXIV has encountered a serious design flaw in character progression. In order to avoid increasing button bloat (thank you), SE trimmed back a lot of skills and stretched the power curve for levelling.While this has honestly had good results at level 70, the process of actually getting there has become increasingly painful. Many jobs are simply crippled by the lack of certain abilities early on, which make their playstyles mind-numbingly simple - especially sub 50. Dark Knight is an egregious example of this: the class only becomes complete at 70, when you acquire The Blackest Night (arguably it gets much better at 68 as well). Machinist suffers from a dearth of skills while levelling, and has a particularly bad stretch from 40 - 50 where they basically get nothing. Summoners have a similar problem to Dark Knight, in that they fail to live up to their class fantasy until they have unlocked Demi-Bahamut.

These issues will only get worse with additional increases to level cap.

Within the current progression system, SE is forced to choose between button bloat and a decent levelling system. While I appreciate that FFXIV is it's own game and does a lot of things right, it can very much stand to learn a lesson from World of Warcraft in this particular instance. In WoW, characters learn all of their skills about midway through the levelling process. They then can refine their playstyle through selection of (for the most part) passive abilities which drastically alter how certain actions function. This lends a sense of progression and development to each class archetype, while avoiding the problem of overwhelming players with buttons to press.

Obviously this would require a major overhaul of every class, and is thus not viable for the Stormblood expansion. However, I strongly feel that a system comparable to this should be implemented in the next expansion, and that now is the time to make that point.

[Zaene]

I agree completely.

It is obvious that SE re-balanced everything to point to level 70, which causes everything to essentially be build-up, which is nice, but I think the systems need to be better articulated. What the OP suggests is one branch, getting the class mechanics early and being able to tweak them with talents (which, admittedly, is crazy difficult to even think about balancing) I think another option is to make the classes more dynamic and add mechanics at different levels, for instance, for most all classes the gauge is introduced at 50 or 60, perhaps add it in earlier and just change the sorts of things you can do with it, such things becoming more epic as you reach 70 wherein you unlock your uber skill or whatnot.

I think the effect of such a change would be to make leveling unique and fun even at low levels, because right now all you can see is the skeleton of whatever you're going to be at 70 and that's really depressing.

[Kazrah]

Problem with this is that this usually results in cookie cutter builds, where players are going to want to know the absolute best options and then completely forgo the rest of them. If WoW can't even perfect this system to prevent that issue (after having many years to do that), why bother implementing it here? Not to mention the issue of maintenance and constantly having to tweak them so that they're equally viable, and the only reason WoW still does it is because of how their class system works since it's nothing like the job system of this game.

That being said though, the reason why this is an issue is because jobs are ONLY tested at 70 and not really tested for any point in the leveling process just because it would be far too time-consuming for testers at this point. it seems more like the issue could be addressed for now simply by rearranging when specific abilities are learned based on a priority system revolving around what abilities are used most often. Switch Blackest Night with a somewhat-powerful low-level ability that's not used as often (or just nerf it into oblivion because no single ability should completely make or break a job). Rearrange MCH skills so Cooldown comes earlier and the Heat resource system would make a bit more sense earlier in leveling.

In the MUCH longer run though, I could see something like this happening in the form of predominantly traits for skills and abilities that don't have them currently and then one final, powerful action at the end level of an expansion.

[Rymm]

Problem with this is that this usually results in cookie cutter builds, where players are going to want to know the absolute best options and then completely forgo the rest of them.

The OP makes a pretty good argument, I'll give him that, but Kazrah pretty much hit the nail on the head with this entire post as to why I wouldn't support such a system.
+1 for him

Talents, like the attribute points that recently went the way of the dinosaurs, are largely nothing more than the illusion of choice. The vast majority of players will simply google the "best" build and copy and paste that onto their character. Anything else and you are hindering yourself for the sake of being different and, by extension, hindering whatever party you join for group content. I'm perfectly aware that not every player (myself included) plays 100% optimally 100% of the time and I would never expect them to but, depending on how more or less balanced talents are, picking a sub-optimal option is shooting yourself in the foot before you even step into a dungeon or trial. Like not melding your gear or bothering to invest in food or potions- sure you can probably still succeed without it, but it would certainly be easier and increase your chances for success to do so with.

It also opens up the door to the type of elitism where people who use the "best" builds exclude (or worse, harass) those who do not. This is attitude is already pretty rampant in the game already in regards toward optimal classes in each role and which gear and melds they use. I would like to think that we as a playerbase could rise above it, but my above examples have already proven that patently false. A "This is why we can't have nice things." kind of argument.

In a perfect world, where they actually manage to perfectly balance all of the talents across all of the jobs, I would be less opposed to a talent system. Sadly, I have never once seen that happen in any of the various MMOs I have played over the years. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'm not going to hold my breath, either. Often times, when devs have managed to bring them within a reasonable margin of each other, the end product talents are either so homogeneous or have so little influence over actual play that there really is no point to them when all is said and done.

In the end, I would rather the devs work trying to achieve better balance between the jobs as they are now and smooth out the leveling process for them than throw the whole system into chaos by trying to overhaul it (again) with the addition of talents. People are citing WoW as an example of a good talent system (which as an old WoW player, is actually pretty hilarious to me) but it took Blizz years of reworking and polishing their system to approach anything even resembling balance. I shudder to imagine the hot mess that FF14 would be if they tried to shoe-horn talents onto our jobs at this stage in the game.

TL;DR-
I don't think talents are inherently bad but I have absolutely no faith whatsoever in the devs being able to make meaningful talent choices that are perfectly (or even reasonably) balanced across all the jobs and therefore can't support taking resources from other aspects of development or throwing the game into disarray for however many years of developing, reworking, and polishing it may take them to get it even decent, let alone "right."

[thegreatonemal]

snip

They are tested below as well you are just looking at it from the perspective of what the class lost at 60 what is irrelevant to balance the classes are different now what you played for two years no longer exists. Look at what each of the jobs roles are at 60 and compare them among each other not to what you used to know but to what they are now.

[Nerfworthy]

Might be an unpopular opinion but that's actually one of the things I like about this game is that I don't have talents. Everyone's just on the same playing field and you don't have to deal with cookie cutter crap all the time. The closest thing we have is cross role abilities now, which are quite enough for me thank you.

[Elfidan]

Might be an unpopular opinion but that's actually one of the things I like about this game is that I don't have talents. Everyone's just on the same playing field and you don't have to deal with cookie cutter crap all the time. The closest thing we have is cross role abilities now, which are quite enough for me thank you.

You hit the nail on the head. I remember people looking down there nose at players who didn't pick the "correct" Skill Tree, Talents, or AA depending which game it was. You don't know what misery is until people tell you that you can't experience the game because your choices led to 1% less DPS or the like.

[Eli85]

Nope, no thank you. At the end of the day, MMOs are about output and to a lesser extent, survivability. All talent systems and alternate progression systems do is allow players to make sub-optimal choices. Namely because there is always ONE and ONE ALONE optimal talent choice per boss. If you're smart enough to figure it out, it just becomes tedium by changing talents for optimal output. And the downside? Well, if you run into players who can't figure it out, these under-performers get worse.

edit: We already have seen the negatives of a talent system with Cross Role. I.e., the healers who need to take esuna for a fight but don't. It's frustrating. I'd rather not deal with that and low output DPS, for example, because they don't take the talent that increases DPS substantively.

[Umbeliel]

Horizontal progression please. +1 OP

snip

A strawman that winds up also being an actual common failing of games. Just because it's often poorly implemented doesn't mean it has no potential.
Beyond that we'd get the argument that there's always one "best" way to play- this is most likely true and in reality, is perfectly fine. The meta will always be the meta and there's nothing actually wrong with that. Those of us NOT in the meta are not affected (directly) by playing the game in non-meta ways, as long as it remains not as a hindrance to our parties.

That being said, I'd actually be happier if they did botha spec system of some sort and reduced button bloat in a more... logical way.

There never was, isn't, and never will be any good reason for basic combo actions(Heavy Swing -> Skull Sunder -> Butcher's Block) to be learned separately and have three different buttons. Branching combos can work just fine, as shown with the pvp changes. Many CDs are completely superfluous(why does Bulwark even exist? It serves the same purpose as Sheltron except it's unreliable.) and could pretty easily be made completely irrelevant with buffed versions of other skills that already exist. There's really no good reason why we don't have our entire basic kit being learned by like, 50(looking at you drk) and everything after that being utility or spec points or something.

[Eli85]

Snip.

The problem is we have seen talent-like systems emerge in almost every game over the history of the genre. In every single instance it is: if you don't choose X then you are doing less output (and output is essentially the only thing that matters). The only time it doesn't matter is when an entire line is say, survivability or utility, but that always comes down to "this gives you the most survivbility so take it" or "for this fight this utility is better so take it." It's so bland and boring.

As for the meta? I think all players should care about it. I PUG a lot. My problem, I know. It's because of my schedule. Anyway, I rather take the choice OUT of the individual players hand if they conform to the meta or not. Just want them in the meta anyway. Gives a greater chance of more successful groups and less trolling / griefing (lol nub you aren't picking the best talent choices, /kick).