A talent system

[Draxxion]

I don't think a talent system is needed. It is just another convoluted system to provide fake customization to your character that is a balancing nightmare for the design team. When I say "fake" customization I mean that there would end up being a single optimal spec for each class/job and if some one doesn't follow it they would end up ridiculed for it as it isn't "optimal" and then Square is going to struggle trying to balance talents and create the headache that is World of Warcraft. Lets face it as there will be a false sense of choice if they implemented a talents system that in the end will just be a nightmare.

[eschaton]

Noooooooo… Please let’s not fall back onto a 10++ years old leveling system, invest vast resources to change everything we have now into something ancient, because you feel 1-50 and/or 50-70 is slow before you get 'all skills'.

It isn’t! It isn’t slow at all and that wow stuff is old, please not again, pretty please noooo. Leveling 1-50 is really fast. What -is- slow is the MSQ.

Next expansion it might be time to make the 1-50 MSQ completely optional for brand new players. (Yes we have the MSQ skip potion already, maybe just make it very cheap or optional in-game or something, heck give some away for free with the expansion.)

Leveling 50-70 is bloody fast as well. If you take it slow you are looking at just a few days tops. And if you want to rush it, it can be crazy fast. Again what -is- slow is the MSQ line! Next expansion it might be time to make the HW part optional as well. (Still be able to do it at level 70... or 80 by then)

Nothing is wrong with the current system as you play through it so fast on any character that isn’t doing the MSQ. The MSQ is the -only- thing which makes leveling slow and gates your skills in the way it does. And it's only for your *first* character! After that you level to 70 with ease and you'll have all your skills, with ease.

Asking for an age old wow system to ‘fix’ this is beyond my ability to rationalize. Holy moly. Crazy haha. And really, if you wanted to to change *this all* with a dedicated team of Yoshi, at least let them think of something new! But again, DoW/DoM leveling isn't slow - at all. At all! Only the MSQ is, and that's only once!

[Age_of_Oblivion]

Having the grind to max level be quick is not a justification for it to be a poor experience, especially in an MMO. The process of levelling is the core gameplay that everything else revolves around or emulates. If grinding out levels in an MMO feels bad, then there is a crippling problem in design.

Many arguments against a talent system that I see here consist of "too difficult to balance" or "false progression". Setting aside whether or not these things are true at the moment, what kind of a system would you rather see in place to get around the button bloat/level cap dilemma? I've not seen a single alternative suggestion yet.

[Kazrah]

what kind of a system would you rather see in place to get around the button bloat/level cap dilemma? I've not seen a single alternative suggestion yet.

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.

You're welcome. Also, how about devs keep doing what they've been doing with certain spells by having them upgrade as you level?

[Mirch]

Soon this game will be moba. Oh wait. It already is. rofl

[s3ystic]

There are a handful of other games I play that have "builds" and "talents" those games are guided by a meta even more stringent than this game.If you do not build according to the best build, you are ridiculed right out of raid content. Here, I don't have to worry about it as much, leveling is pretty much on rails now and the meta is (generally) about what class preforms better versus another. The other thing is that with a system where one character can switch between all the classes at once, it becomes a nightmare to manage "builds" for them all on top of that. Most talent systems center around once class and what that class can do, not all classes at once. Now I get many people have a "main" or three and will focus primarily on those, but I still would be a bit annoyed having to spreadsheet my classes to get my performance numbers in line.

As for a suggestion, which you were asking for, and I by NO MEANS expect them to do this ... It is just a dream:

The PvP action bar has less bloat. I'm serious! How FF14 handles its actions in PvP should be how the PvE side of things should work; of course with PvE differences (I am by no means saying the two should merge.) You have your combos guided by one button. Special abilities on quite of few classes have alternate toggles, or modes to them, etc. I would like to see them move towards this. After condensing combos to a button press (let me clarify, 1 button tapped 3 times, does the 3 hit combo) I would also reduce the amount of action buttons available to 10 but allow players the ability to swap skills in between encounters on the fly as you need them (games i have seen do this have nice little drop down widows to do so.) You still have a bit of "crunch" and "build" because people will then argue what skills you need to have on your bar in whatever encounter, but you also start moving away from the need to hit all of your buttons at once during an encounter.

Again, I don't ever expect them to do this, I just like streamlined interfaces is all. The games that have used these minimalist UI I have enjoyed a lot for their own reasons; TSW (the old one, not the new garbage) and GW2 being examples. In a game like this "builds" should (in my opinion, not fact) be more about what skills to prioritize in a given encounter, when you reduce how many buttons can be on the screen at any given time, people have to get more creative with their priorities and skill choices, thus "builds." FF14 lets you do all your stuff at once, which is again nice for the fact you don't have to THINK about building, you just have to focus on rotations. There are pros and cons to both.

[BubblyBoar]

The problem with a talent system in this game is that if you create an alternate route of skills for a different build, you are essentially making a new job and naming it the same as one that already exists. Might as well just keep it a new job.

[Shurrikhan]

The problem with a talent system in this game is that if you create an alternate route of skills for a different build, you are essentially making a new job and naming it the same as one that already exists. Might as well just keep it a new job.

Why, though? What difference does it make how many top-of-the-umbrella job names we have, as compared to... job names and suffixes? There is truly no difference.

You're either going to have different shades of the same mechanics via a greater number of jobs, or you'll have different shades of the same mechanics across different specs of fewer jobs. If the latter idea is so misguided, then similarly why have new jobs, even? Customization is customization. How closely it clusters to prior motifs or mechanics, or how packaged the differences are in order to prevent perfect choice (the paradoxical enemy of balanced spread of choices), makes far more of a difference than whether the additions are called "specs" or "aspects" or "mutations" or "sub-classes" or simple "new jobs".

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.

I've played with some very, very toxic and elitist people over the years on WoW, but 1% has never been enough of a difference to be called out on, especially if the higher parsing choice is more vulnerable to lost potential. At some point, insistence will occur, be it at 3 or 5 or 10, but let's cut back on the hyperbole here.

[Belhi]

Couldn't we say the same thing about AST, but with a different name.

I mean really, you're going to have different shades of the same mechanics via a greater number of jobs, or you have different shades of the same mechanics across different specs of fewer jobs. If the latter idea is so misguided, then similarly why have new jobs, even? Customization is customization. How closely it clusters to prior motifs or mechanics, or how packaged the differences are in order to prevent perfect choice (the paradoxical enemy of balanced spread of choices), makes far more of a difference than whether the additions are called "specs" or "aspects" or "mutations" or "sub-classes" or simple "new jobs".

While WHM and AST and for that matter BRD and MCH played quite similarly they are quite different Jobs now. Infact the comparison is pretty apt. In both cases, while both sets of jobs hold similarities due to holding similar roles but their gameplay is quite different.

Yoshi P shot down specs because the time it takes to add, adjust and balance additional specs is such that it makes more sense just to add more Jobs. At least in the case of Jobs its far easier to provide distinct themes and Job mechanics since you don't have overlap. After all, just look at the issues with SMN/SCH. That is the closest we have to a class with specs and people want the two separated.

[Shurrikhan]

While WHM and AST and for that matter BRD and MCH played quite similarly they are quite different Jobs now. Infact the comparison is pretty apt. In both cases, while both sets of jobs hold similarities due to holding similar roles but their gameplay is quite different.

Yoshi P shot down specs because the time it takes to add, adjust and balance additional specs is such that it makes more sense just to add more Jobs. At least in the case of Jobs its far easier to provide distinct themes and Job mechanics since you don't have overlap. After all, just look at the issues with SMN/SCH. That is the closest we have to a class with specs and people want the two separated.

I'll agree with all but that example parading as anecdotal evidence. Pointing at SMN/SCH as a reason why specs don't work is about as apt as saying a wallet won't work because it doesn't hold money when you don't put it in the pocket. There was no need to link their experience, no reason they couldn't add job traits to differentiate how the skills work between the two jobs, no reason they couldn't give separate bonus stat allotments. Every single thing that was complained about the SMN/SCH duality wasn't due to their simply having stemmed from a shared 1-30 experience. It was all of the most basic of basic decisions thereafter.

Let's go ahead and look at some other shared class ideas others, albeit not as numerous as the "split SCH/SMN" outcry that followed the pitiful excuses to particular balancing concerns and the consumptive need for Tomes of the Keeper, e.g. Thief or Assassin from Rogue. Some considered Mug too tangential and underdeveloped to feel appropriate on NIN. Their response: move it to a new job and build around it in order to create a new synergist/saboteur in the form of Thief. The same was often said of poisons, which amounted to no more than Job Action I and II traits. Rather than suggesting they be removed outright, others suggested they become a core concept for a new Assassin. Daggers and the core skills would still be appropriate for all three, but now you manage to flesh out and center previously tacked-on components.

Or let's take another idea: adaptations, wherein just a few core skills can be modified in order to change up the way rotations and very particular mechanics work for a job. No huge aesthetic effect, but you potentially take something that may have previously turned them off to the job and changed it instead into a raison de jouer. The time (or really, understanding) necessary for balance is an understandable concern there, but I'd find it hard to see how enlarging the strike zone in such a manner would be inherently less efficient than making an entirely new job, all its animation, lore, and quests, from scratch, or could even that it could be obviously replaced by that procedure.