Expansion Ideas: Systems, Features, and Content Types - What would you add?

[Kabooa]

The majority of the paltry repair cost is either through A) Completing dungeons or B) Wiping in raids.

Sure there -are- ways outside there for gear to degrade, but never to such an extent where it's an active concern. Removing repair would have almost no impact on the game's current economy. You already get gil in excess of the cost just by doing a daily dungeon.

Collectibles from crafting and gathering reward disproportionately more than it takes.

The point being here is that repairing is already so little a cost that you can remove it to no detriment at all, but for the sake of 'inflation' you can just cut it out of the dungeon reward. Literally just there.

If you want more gil sinks, fine, but don't pretend like repair costs are somehow holding the line against inflation in any capacity.

They are so close to being a non-factor that it would legitimately surprise me if they -were- a factor for anyone, and not just something you do on routine after coming out of a dungeon.

[Shurrikhan]

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If it's not too much trouble, could we please quote, at least in a <snip>, to whom we are responding? Just for future thread-browsers' convenience. This thread apparently gets weird surges of posts that can separate replies from the page of the one being replied to.

FATEs, Hunts, levequests (if you're still levelling or trying to fill the Challenge Log), Beast Tribe dailies, relic weapon quests... there's plenty of ways for gear to be degraded. And it should go without saying that instanced content accelerates the degradation rate, and especially if your character is KO'd (regardless if they are KO'd in instanced or open content, being KO'd degrades your gear even more, so if you're wiping over and over again, it's very easy to suddennly end up with badly worn gear.).

Marathon running instanced duties over and over again with little break will definetely also wear your gear down to almost nothing rather quickly. Getting into the habit of repairing your gear at a mender regularly can avoid that though.

And the reason for gear degredation is not just for it to be a gilsink (although that is definetely a major part of it). Gear degredation has been a part of the game since 1.0's launch, and it's main purpose was actually to provide a reason for Disciples of the Hand to exist - the idea was that SE expected you to level DotH classes to repair your own gear (and to switch to the required crafter class when you needed to do so), with npc menders being actually few and far between (and in 1.0 an npc mender would never repair it all the way to 100% condition, the best you could get was 99% - this changed in ARR though where npcs now repair all the way to 100%, but as in incentive to still repair your own gear you can double your gear's condition to 200% if you repair it yourself).

It also serves as FFXIV's equivelant 'death penalty' to FFXI's 'lose EXP on death', as a means of increasing challenge (the thinking is that you only really have to be concerned about it if you're dying a lot, if you're not then it's not really a problem, at least theoretically.). Basically, "there's no such thing as a free lunch": the 'free lunch' in this regard is doing content without some cost to the character, whether it be gil, EXP or something else, everything in life has a cost, and whether you are willing to pay it.

I think what Kabooa is emphasizing, though, is whether the element, while conventional, is effective or positive in the context of the current game. If not, and its removal would allow other elements of the game to be more effective and positive for the experience -- or just to allow more effective and positive areas of the game to be more often or deeply experienced --then it ought be removed or the context adjusted to improve it, assuming those changes, in turn, are likewise beneficial.

Personally, the only durability system I've found truly purposeful in a gameplay-changing manner is that of temporary (i.e. run-length) armor-break mechanics like that of Vindictus, where you gradually lose defense rating as parts of your body are beaten and battered into their relevant gear's destruction. However, even that tends to delay the average difficulty, which can be counter-intuitive for dungeon progression or the like. When the going is still easy, it's even easier, because (if negligent or reckless, especially) your armor is there and therefore potentially expendable. By the time you really need that armor, however, it's often broken, unless you've armor repair kits with you. While those kits can be capped, this ultimately turns into just the opposite side of potion expenditure / gold-sinking; when you abuse potions to survive, you have to further sink gold on armor repair kits, but with the addition of the time spent repairing. It is therefore just a more cumulative gold sink that helps to devalue its compliment (low-cooldown health potions).

I'd rather see the context for the durability system change than scrap it outright, but I've also long been of the opinion that crafting needs a massive revision to make it less purely vertical in its progression and more immediately accessible at relevant levels and more capable of integration with other areas of the game. I'd also welcome any and all QoL changes that would guarantee more crafter materials space or reduce inventory bloat as it currently stands. Honestly, I would have preferred that crafting materials other than just Dark Matter could be used (i.e. if you have level 56 leather pants in need of repair, you could repair that with dhamel leather), while Dark Matter itself would become more granular, and stored as currency or alike to a crystal rather than as an item, to be used when lacking the particular relevant material. At that point I'd find it appropriate and integral, rather than solely a gil sink mechanic of too little impact to make its reason for existing feel cogent.

[Ramesses]

I would say I'd like Dreadnaught class airships added so we can do epic aerial battles in the skies... like so...

[Lambdafish]

Snip

Some of your points are valid, but you completely miss the point. Dungeon gil is an incentive to run dungeons. If you remove repair and reduce dungeon gil, that doesnt feel like balance. That feels like "we are getting less Gil from dungeons. That lowers incentive and accessibility of making gil.

As for crafter's, speaking as someone who levelled crafter's just to repair in instances, I'll say that repairing is a huge incentive for crafting. Your point is moot because there are people out there such as myself that care more about that convenience than collectables and glamour.

The last thing I will say that the repair system is poor you are correct. What in advocating for is to IMPROVE the system, not remove it. Having greater detriments and benefits to how your gear is repaired, make it cost more but allow others to repair gear for you, there are many things you can do to make the feature take front stage more, and have it actually mean something as a Gil sink, and crafting mechanic, rather than allowing it to stagnate and become redundant as you so clearly illustrate

[Caitlyn]

I would like to have blood, dirt and damaged armor after a long fight. At the moment, you can fit Ifrit the whole day, your WoL still looks clean and fresh.

[AdvisorX]

The rotation are always the same for each class. I would love to see a change in the skill tree system.
It would be interesting if SE could add the role actions element into the job skills where player can only pick a certain ultimate skills into battle
so player could customize their rotation and change the play style from time to time.
You could say something like diablo 3 or maybe like Heroes of the storm where player can pick only
one of the 2 ultimate at level 10 and traits are customizable.
For example:
1. SMN: summon/Dots build
2. MCH: turrets/gun build
3. BRD: bow/support build
etc. etc.

[Shurrikhan]

The rotation are always the same for each class. I would love to see a change in the skill tree system.
It would be interesting if SE could add the role actions element into the job skills where player can only pick a certain ultimate skills into battle
so player could customize their rotation and change the play style from time to time.
You could say something like diablo 3 or maybe like Heroes of the storm where player can pick only
one of the 2 ultimate at level 10 and traits are customizable.
For example:
1. SMN: summon/Dots build
2. MCH: turrets/gun build
3. BRD: bow/support build
etc. etc.

Just playing Devil's Advocate here:

But, would you like to be forced to play a particular one of multiple different ways depending entirely on the fight, rather than merely altering your opener and near-jump CDs? Generally, that's what external and fully player-controlled customization comes down to: particular fights quite nearly require particular setups, at least once the community comes to know (or, believe) they are optimal.

[AdvisorX]

Just playing Devil's Advocate here:

But, would you like to be forced to play a particular one of multiple different ways depending entirely on the fight, rather than merely altering your opener and near-jump CDs? Generally, that's what external and fully player-controlled customization comes down to: particular fights quite nearly require particular setups, at least once the community comes to know (or, believe) they are optimal.

My idea is simply to make a class more diversify to play.
You can give the players all the skills and allow them to fully customize their openers and rotation.
But imagine in the next patch SE introduce a set of new skills for each class. I believe players will complain few things:

1. Too many skills/abilities which makes it clutter
2. Rotations will be too long and failing the rotation will be very punishing
3. Rotations will be complex and hard to master.

End of the day, SE will have to solve this problem by doing a major rework on a class by removing old skills and introducting new one. Then some players will complain that the rework is bad like how it happened to MCH.

Im not implying all the skills are selectable. Just maybe some skills which tied to a certain stance.

Maybe its something like astrologian diurnal sact and noct sact where diff stance leads to some abilities with different effects. If we apply same concept to a bard, where a bard can choose the damage stance, then the skills that the bard has some damage ultimate skills wheareas support stance will provide more buff to the parties.

So we can actually have a more diversify party composition with the same class. We can have 2 bards where one bard go for DPS and the other go for support.
Or maybe a DRK can fill the role of a DPS with the DPS stance.
Or maybe Red Mage can fill the role of a healer with the healer stance.
Or maybe Monk/DRG can fill the role of a tank with the tank stance.

[Lumadurin]

My idea is simply to make a class more diversify to play.
You can give the players all the skills and allow them to fully customize their openers and rotation.
But imagine in the next patch SE introduce a set of new skills for each class. I believe players will complain few things:

1. Too many skills/abilities which makes it clutter
2. Rotations will be too long and failing the rotation will be very punishing
3. Rotations will be complex and hard to master.

End of the day, SE will have to solve this problem by doing a major rework on a class by removing old skills and introducting new one. Then some players will complain that the rework is bad like how it happened to MCH.

So we can actually have a more diversify party composition with the same class. We can have 2 bards where one bard go for DPS and the other go for support.

I genuinely think this is the way to go. Because frankly we're at about the limit for the number of things one can be expected to manage. Even WoW stops forcing new skills upon you after level 90 or so.
Maybe Paladin could opt into stronger heals. Easing the load on the healers and freeing them to do more damage.
Maybe MCH could opt into stat-boosting darts that it could fire at teammates.
Maybe Samurai could opt into having to land frontal-positionals (high risk due to cleaves, but also high reward).

The key word here is opt. Modify/enhance existing abilities rather than just add more meat to rotations.

[Seraphor]

It is a good idea, but how could it be implemented for each class?

BLM: maybe being able to spec between Thunder, Ice and Fire, being able to increase the potencies of only one within each tier. (You actually could be an 'ice mage', your rotation probably wouldn't really change, except more of your damage would come from your blizzard spells than a 'fire mage')

WHM: similar elemental affinity, with Water increasing your HoT potencies, and the other two increasing your damaging spells potencies.

DRK: being able to invest in either yourself, or your dark side.
Dark side would increase the potency of DA effects, and improve MP regen, while investing in yourself would increase mitigation under Grit and Souleater HP regen.

NIN: choose a just a to invest in. Ten= boosted Katon/Huton, Chi= boosted Raiton/Doton, Jin= boosted Daiton/Suiton.

Just a few ideas for my main jobs.