A talent system

[Remedi]

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.

I suppose it'll sound a bit unpopular but I wouldn't mind for savage weapons to have some sort of bonus effect on them, I think it would make savage a bit more enticing and who knows making so that savage weapons won't be replaced asap by a crafted weapon in the next tier

[Elfidan]

Shurrikhan I feel like you didn't read the reply I gave you. I also played WOW for 10 years and ffxi for 15. Do you recall when frost DK was the spec to raid with , and most groups wouldn't take an unholy because they did not pump out the same numbers? In the early vanilla days there were lots of classes that were one spec or gtfo. This actually happened , and it happened often across many of the jobs ,and classes. In final fantasy XI people wouldn't take you based on racial choices... let that one sink in for a second. I'm not sure how you missed these behaviors they were common place even back in vanilla. More than likely this is what brought about dual specialization. But I am actually happy for you to have never experienced any of this ,although I am unsure how you completely missed it.

It's ok I take no offense, I just think you missed my meaning.

[Shurrikhan]

Shurrikhan I feel like you didn't read the reply I gave you.

Give me a second. I may have confused you with another red-hatted lalafell.

Edit: No, it's there... Every word you've written on this thread until this last post has ended up inside a quote box on one of my posts as well.

As for the new:

Do you recall when frost DK was the spec to raid with , and most groups wouldn't take an unholy because they did not pump out the same numbers? In the early vanilla days there were lots of classes that were one spec or gtfo. This actually happened , and it happened often across many of the jobs ,and classes. In final fantasy XI people wouldn't take you based on racial choices... let that one sink in for a second. I'm not sure how you missed these behaviors they were common place even back in vanilla. More than likely this is what brought about dual specialization. But I am actually happy for you to have never experienced any of this ,although I am unsure how you completely missed it.

In Vanilla, balance was atrocious, though. Certain specs could actually outperform each other by a good 40%, so there was decent reason for these reactions. Class balance was a mess, too. And gear-scaling, of all things (naked rogues killing raid-gear players). Racial traits were also huge compared to now. Forget being held back by specs... ANYTHING could get you removed; lack of BossMods addon nonexempt (and probably for the best reason of them all, at least in large raids with large friendly fire potential). It's not exactly a fair situation to blame on the concept, or even the execution, of specs alone. But end-game also wasn't the point of the game back then, which is what allowed such abysmal balance at the time. If you could actually just assemble the 40-man raid, and not have over a quarter d/c, and had the majority clicking buttons, and the bomb-guy didn't blow you up (even if it meant giving him penalty corner time for the entire encounter), you cleared content. A very different time. I mean, have you seen Nefarion? There is no way the end-boss of Vanilla was intended for anything more, at core, than shits and giggles. You do not murder people with class-based irony and giraffe transformations in serious content. And yet... people will try seriously to clear it, if only to make up for those few d/cs and mechanical failures more. And kudos to them.

Also I simply missed it by coincidentally really enjoying all forms of Warrior, Combat Rogue, and Marksmanship Hunter. Lucky break.

[Zumi]

The cross role system is the FFXIV equivalent to talents.

[Ariyn]

The cross role system is the FFXIV equivalent to talents.

No it's not. It began as a way for others of the role to get things they should have had in the first place. I mean seriously how are they going to put into the game tank swap mechanics but war had no taunt/provoke? They had to lvl glad to get it when they should have had it all along. The role actions are not really choices. Each role has the same set they take which maybe 1 that is swapped based on the fight.

[Kazrah]

Personally, I feel if they are going to do talents then it needs to be more like vanilla/bs wow rather than current wow.

Even then, you still had the cookie cutter dilemma, where providing more option would ultimately lead to less option. Sure, you might find one or two builds that may break the meta, but at the end of the day, if you didn't have the absolute best build, you weren't worth bringing into content.

You also said one thing that promotes the argument against choice:

The role actions are not really choices. Each role has the same set they take which maybe 1 that is swapped based on the fight.

Although you refer to the current system, the fact that choice is an illusion in this regard just as easily applies to anything that offers choice in regards to character development, including talents.

[Shurrikhan]

Although you refer to the current system, the fact that choice is an illusion in this regard just as easily applies to anything that offers choice in regards to character development, including talents.

And jobs. Balance is crucial to all choice, not just choice-within-choice... I can think of far more times when an entire job was subtly unlisted from PF openings for their given roll in XIV (and not due to one already being present) or party members asked why I was playing a given job than, say, a different build thereof was in WoW/GW2/Rift.

The weird thing is XIV is in a place where they could actually embrace a different (more lenient) sense of balance, because people could swap to any enjoy any various job in a given role quite nearly at will due to the all-in-one structure of the game, so that jobs could perform equally on a general level, but aren't destined to be homogenized over time due to fight-specific imbalances; variance can be partly forced (by players being wholly able to swap), rather than invariance (by reduced accessibility making players entirely unwilling to swap). Unless fights are designed to someone advantage different jobs at equal efficiency despite different compositions, strategies, and gear levels, that is your spectrum for "perfect play". Variance or homogeneity forced upon players.

As it is currently implemented, calling the job system an analog to horizontal progression from a talent/spec system is foolish. Jobs are a continuation of a class, and nothing more. Cross role skills are somewhat comparable to a talent system, or could be. The problem with the cross role skills is that they are a band-aid solution to inexplicably poor design choices in base classes (i.e. Provoke).

Additionally, I am not sure how specs wound up in this discussion. Those serve a very different role in WoW from the talent system, and would frankly be better emulated by more effective use of the Class/Job system.

Sadly all the ideas as to how to make classes viable or allowing for a second job option for most classes mostly fell on deaf ears, having been allegedly covered already by the "cross-class" system. And since then classes have just been left as "jobs in diapers".

The primary argument against talent builds as a cookie-cutter is a patsy. Right now, every class is played at an identical manner at cap. A talent system would not necessarily change that (though it might, if it was done exceptionally well. I have no hope of that tbh though). What it would do is give variety and steady change during the levelling process, which nearly every class in the game desperately needs.

I feel like people forget that even in the cases where a choice set (e.g. a class, or a specialization therein) has a further level of choice forced on it at a particular gear level of a particular form of content, that's still all gear levels and class levels prior for which the customization does have at least some effect. That can't be said, however, for an entire class falling out of optimal play.

[Kazrah]

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.

No, they're not tested below max level, and even Yoshi has admitted to that. Testing all 15 jobs from the bottom up would just take too much time and effort when those testers could instead use that time to test other content in the game.

And jobs. Balance is crucial to all choice, not just choice-within-choice... I can think of far more times when an entire job was subtly unlisted from PF openings for their given roll in XIV (and not due to one already being present) or party members asked why I was playing a given job than, say, a different build thereof was in WoW/GW2/Rift.

What do you think the meta is?

[Elfidan]

The fact that you would want to add more moving parts to a system that is horribly skewed is what baffles me. Yes I remember Nefarian , but more importantly paying someone to mind control the goblin to teach me how to make the ingot, You don't see details like these nowadays... Back to the topic specializations would cause rifts for the player base because people like what they like , and sometimes it isn't the best which makes them the odd man/woman out. So yes I remain fervently opposed to the idea. #Jobpointssuckedbeforesomeoneelsebringsthosenightmaresup

[Shurrikhan]

The fact that you would want to add more moving parts to a system that is horribly skewed is what baffles me. #Jobpointssuckedbeforesomeoneelsebringsthosenightmaresup

Again, I'm not promoting MORE moving parts (unless there were just some massive obvious design opportunity where not doing so would be blatant waste, and that's just not the case right now), and certainly not for their own sake. I'm saying that I think there are some possibilities that would provide choice in more than name alone if we were to replace Roll Skills (i.e. choice in name alone) that could augment the game experience. To me the best options are either (a) merely axe Role Skills, or (b) replace Role Skills, and I personally favor (b). Simply put, I just don't think that all customization-other-than-jobs ideas are necessarily bad for XIV, as long as the customization is used efficiently (typically by NOT systemizing it to the same 51 or 21 points across 3 trees or a 10x3 grid or skills acquired at 1,2,4,8,12,18,22,26... for every job despite their extant differences).

And yes, those should have died when physical levels did. But they're gone and now we can forget.