A talent system

[BubblyBoar]

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".

It's because jobs are thematic. PLD and WAR are not the same job. Sure, they could have had PLD with 2 specs. One spec that was defensive heavy and focused on blocking and some magic or a spec that was offensive heavy that built up a gauge for offensive attacks. And then come HW, they could have a PLD that ate up MP to buff their attacks and abilities. Then we'd have 1 tank, PLD, but 3 different specs,a ll the customization you'd want right? But you'd also only have 1 tank. What if that person doesn't like swords and shields? What if they don't like PLD's aesthetic? I guess they are SoL cause there's only 1 tank in the game, just pick a build you feel like using right?

OR, each one of those specs could be a job itself and boom, 3 choices for you to use, more that aren't the sword and shield you don't really like. In this game, jobs are essentially your specs while roles are your job. You have the tanks, with 3 choices from there. You want to be a different style tank their your PLD friend? Play WAR or DRK.

The point is, if you are going to make specs so different as to mean something, even if a different spec could use a different weapon, you might as well make a new job. FF has a long list of famous jobs and there is no need to take away what could be more jobs for the sake of specs. There is literally no need for that kind of customization other for the sake of it. Imagine the number of people that would be upset, that a game that is a love letter the the whole franchise made one of it's most iconic jobs a sword spec of BLM.

If it makes no difference to have it be a spec or a new job, then what exactly is wrong with the system we have now? The only difference is that you'd have to level that spec specifically. And I don't think this is a subtle "let me level all tanks at the same time" topic.

[Shurrikhan]

snip

I'm not saying that creating new jobs are somehow always inferior to other means of customization. I'm just saying that if customization via new specs is always doomed to fail, not just by execution but by some underlying principal, so too are new jobs.

Or, again, that—

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".

[BubblyBoar]

I never said specs were always doomed to fail, I said that they don't make sense in this game. As I said previously, New jobs are present over a spec system in FFXIV because the FF franchise has so many job that people want to see. Please read my whole post.

[Elfidan]

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.

It isn't about being called out Shurri. It's about not being taken to begin with ,or outright excluded for choosing the "wrong" spec, talent , merit, or alternate advancement. It literally isn't hyperbole which you seem to enjoy using often. Hyperbole would be to say people checked you in town and began a lynching in shout concerning your choices, when in fact that all happened in other chat channels such as guild or party.

[Shurrikhan]

It isn't about being called out Shurri. It's about not being taken to begin with, or outright excluded for choosing the "wrong" spec, talent , merit, or alternate advancement. It literally isn't hyperbole which you seem to enjoy using often. Hyperbole would be to say people checked you in town and began a lynching in shout concerning your choices, when in fact that all happened in other chat channels such as guild or party.

If it's not about being excluded by others, then just what is it about? Self-exclusion? Feeling bad that your 1% dps differential by your own talent choice might require that you crit a few more times not to be seen evenly on the dps charts? Because if it's harassment from other players, then apparently we've just seen very different sides of:

• 10 years' (active time) of playing WoW, through party, raid, and guild chat, across every expansion and talent system
• The WoW official forums
• WoW reddit threads
• Reddit threads from those who have swapped from WoW to other MMOs, often even citing the latest talent system shifts as their reason.

I have never been harassed over a talent choice. Admittedly, I didn't pick single-target talents to enter a 20+ mob fight, or the like as to actively and obviously hamper my own performance, which WOULD be a red troll flag that people SHOULD harass you in return for, but even in heroic/mythic raiding, wherein raid leaders regularly check the gear, achievements, and would sometimes seemingly like to micromanage the talents of every player they admit, I have never been told to change a talent except to specifically mesh with (other) healers (not doubling up on a passive or to cover burst, etc.), i.e. where of a real and vital concern. At most I have been advised that add spawn timings mesh better with one talent, or are frequent enough to allow a rarely viable AoE talent to pull ahead, etc. I have been advised to grow accustomed to less lenient but potentially higher performing talents. Apart from that, there are two concerns only: output performance and mechanical performance. While I rarely have exactly any recommended spec, the last time my talent choices were joked about was back in Cataclysm, and Wrath before that, and only among close friends of the same class competing with me for top DPS per gear weight.

This may be anecdotal evidence vs. anecdotal evidence, but I have not seen any of this harassment "because your choices led to 1% less DPS", ever.

20%? Sure. That's a point of blatant neglect, wherein you did unnecessarily bad and should feel bad accordingly. But unless that choice is actively screwing others over, such as by neglecting an AoE when mass-pulling as a tank, and causing DPS to get when charging up mid-run, the first comment isn't going to be your talents. It'll be your parse. If the talents, as with to rotations or CD pacing, are mentioned afterwards, it's more than a mere dismissal; it's approaching advice. Even if rudely.

So yes, at least in my experience, that

people tell you that you can't experience the game because your choices led to 1% less DPS or the like

seems like hyperbole.

The problem here is that you assume putting a system for specs in place is somehow less work than working on a new job. FFXIV just isn't built for that kind of system, as I said before. Not only this, but it circumvents the original purpose of said system with its armory system. Things like builds and customization is that way because in most, not all, games, you are limited to the single class you pick at the start of the game. In FFXIV, you instead have access to them all. This is them "picking the right tool" and it IS their answer for this MMO. And again, adding customization for the sake o customization is not satisfactory, aside from appealing to the very few fringe players. The appeal in gameplay isn't really there when it is literally the same thing as adding a new job. All that is really changing is that you don't have to level that "spec" up like you would have to do jobs now.

1. It wasn't even "built" to allow jobs, if you're looking at the extant original structure of the game. So just what do you mean by "built for"?
2. The "original" purpose of the armory system was to create your own job. Yoshida has already removed this. And by now there is no longer even any advantage to having multiple gear types on one character apart from not having to trudge through MSQ. Opportunity-wise, there are only disadvantages for placing all on one character. The armory system's sole contribution at this point is a restriction, limiting each class to one general weapon-type, and each weapon-type to one class. No more, no less.
3. I believe I just said as much in multiple forms in the post you just quoted?...
4. As long as you mean literally as in figuratively, sure. Otherwise two different things cannot literally be the same.
5. Why would that be a guarantee? There's no reason that because something is tentatively labelled a "spec" that it couldn't have attached exp, any more than only separate jobs cannot. They're both design decisions, not necessities.

Let me just get this straight, though. The purpose of your responses have since been to declare any and all forms of customization other than new jobs, as an absolute rule, nonviable? Not that new jobs are the most sensible, which I have already agreed to, but absolutely the only form of customization viable? If so we're just going to have to agree to disagree at that particular degree.

[Kazrah]

This may be anecdotal evidence vs. anecdotal evidence, but I have not seen any of this harassment "because your choices led to 1% less DPS", ever.

See, now in my WoW days, I have. Granted, this was back in much earlier expansions where people were ridiculed for picking talents (or even specs) that were considered "wrong" because they felt more comfortable playing them rather than going for what was deemed the most optimal. The last couple of expansions though, it doesn't seem like players there have the time or effort to harass you and just kick you instead without any warning. Playing a mage in WoW, I was blocked from joining some raid groups for preferring to play a spec that was never the most optimal at that time (by like 5-10%) just because I couldn't stand playing a spec that was deemed the absolute best.

You're also not factoring in the labor involved since there's about as much detail to any job in FFXIV as one spec of one class in WoW. When you think WoW is trying to balance classes, what they're really doing is trying to balance every talent (21 per spec) of every spec (36 in total) of every class (all 12 of them). Given how hard it is to balance 15 jobs in this game, do you REALLY think we need that much more that would require balancing?

[Aerilon]

Playing characters under max level at this point is a terrible game play experience. It really is awful and huge complaint of mine for the game. If they could just scale better or figure out a way to make it less boring it would make the whole experience so much better.

[Belhi]

I wouldn't use WoW as an example. WoW has a habit of completely overhauling its progression system and job design every expansion. I am not sure that is a model I want to see FF14 emulate.

[Remedi]

Tbh you could say that the job system is the talent system of FF

[loreleidiangelo]

Tbh you could say that the job system is the talent system of FF

I think jobs in FFXIV are more like specializations in WoW myself. But I still say the two games have too many differentiating factors for a talent tree to be needed or wanted here.

Gear set bonuses, on the other hand, I think wouldn't be too hard of a starting point, and IIRC Yoshi P himself even said they were rethinking their original "no" position on them.