How do you feel about Role Actions?

[dragonseth07]

They are necessary. Every tank needs Provoke, every Healer needs Esuna, etc. Giving every class access to its utility this way is important.

They also make it easier to adapt across classes: I don't need to learn 3 different abilities that all give 20% DR because it's just Rampart on every tank. Obviously, this is a new player thing, but it shouldn't be understated.

Thinking about them in terms of gain and loss is a bad way to look at it. Look at the balance as it stands now, because the past is irrelevant.

[NDubbaYa]

Each job needs a bare minimum set of common skills so that no matter the party composition they can do their job. Every tank should have a provoke. Each DPS a hate shredder. Healers with esuna or whatever you get the point. Limiting them before in the past just made juggling between skills convoluted and weird. Freeing them up was the way to go. I wish it was expanded on to a just pick 10 system. Let every job have access to every cross class skill and just let players pick 10 of what they want. You'll have enough to get the bare minimum of what you need while also having room to experiment. I mostly want bloodbath back on WAR lol

[Seraphor]

There are very few that are actually needed. As already mentioned, just Provoke, Esuna and an aggro dump, one for each role.

The rest just serve to strip identity from classes, like rampart which should be an iconic paladin skill, and protect should be reworked into a WHM exclusive shield.

The three necessary skills could just be the innate skill every class starts with.

[Jandor]

Honestly making essential skills into role actions and leaving weird niche skills that might be used once every other fight as core kit seems like a really weird decision.

A provoke and a 20% DR should be built in to all tanks, things like knock back immunity and a gap closer are better candidates for the role action treatment.

[Brightamethyst]

Some of the issues may stem from the SCH/SMN split. Can't make everything class skills because they don't want to give Esuna to SMNs and whatnot, but making things job skills forces them to be higher level (e.g. SCHs not getting Leeches til 40.) There's no easy fix for that without reworking the whole system.

[Canadane]

I'm still of the opinion 1.0 had it right and we should be able to do ANYTHING.

[DRKoftheAzure]

I'm still of the opinion 1.0 had it right and we should be able to do ANYTHING.

You're a 1.0 player...? What was the cross class system like in 1.0?

[Shurrikhan]

You're a 1.0 player...? What was the cross class system like in 1.0?

Though flawed in execution (poor of damage type synergies, too few underlying systemic depth -- much like now -- and skill imbalance among highly similar flavors of a given geometry, i.e. melee circular AoE), in 1.0, you only had one true level, your own. Classes existed only to learn skills from and improve weapon proficiencies, and the vast majority those skills were then available on any weapon. The idea was that you create your own job from the vast toolkit your experiences provide, whatever their source.

The concept was apologized out of existence when Yoshida took the reins.

[Kabooa]

The concept was apologized out of existence when Yoshida took the reins.

Open Skill systems are notoriously hard to balance, and without hitting the unicorn mark for diversity, strength, and limitation, cause more problems than they're worth most of the time.

While they are my favorite sort of system as they allow for incredible build diversity, "Build Diversity" is often just a label for "wrong choice", and it's no surprise we see even the more streamlined versions of these systems fade away with time. (Talent Trees are the most contemporary comparison.)

[Shurrikhan]

Open Skill systems are notoriously hard to balance, and without hitting the unicorn mark for diversity, strength, and limitation, cause more problems than they're worth most of the time.

While they are my favorite sort of system as they allow for incredible build diversity, "Build Diversity" is often just a label for "wrong choice", and it's no surprise we see even the more streamlined versions of these systems fade away with time. (Talent Trees are the most contemporary comparison.)

If referring to WoW, specifically, rather than Rift or the like, I feel I should point out that the combination of 71 different talent tree point allotments, into 3-6 mostly optimal builds per spec, back in Wrath was usually more tightly balanced within each spec (especially until insane ArP, Crit, or Haste percentiles) than Mists-and-beyond talent grids.

Which should probably be expected. Talent grids didn't shrink down on potential combinations as formed by their significant differences: they allowed for more of them. They stood primarily as a way to readjust base vs. optional toolkits, and the result was reduced control of capacity (where less gameplay significant) more so than flavor (where even directing button count and button-flow).

That's not a choice-reduction form of streamlining. That's merely taking firmer control over the unique capacities of each spec in the interest of spec diversity. As of Mists, one could not play a Warrior. They could play Arms, Fury, or Protection. The sum of their experiences alone, and only if playing all specs, would then be a Warrior. But since then it hasn't been a thing you actually play or tailor a toolkit from; you play its derivatives only.

What changed as a result, ultimately, is the view of what customization should be. In Vanilla, talents were sold as interactions and exploration. By BC, they were already being seen by players (anyone who interacted with raiders or serious PvPers, themselves, raided or PvPed) almost solely as capacity adjustments. On the first side the purpose is primarily role-play. On the other, it's derivative performance: I can outperform you because I better understand this menu system that's not itself part of combat, but influences combat, sometimes more even than our in-combat decisions.

You can probably glean from my tone that I don't have a particularly high opinion of customization as a gameplay-deriving system. I detest having to swap talents between pulls just as surely as I detest gear swaps. I detest the information scarcity that often occurs with such a system, at best due to their intricacies of tuning among competing choices (procs per minute or rolling normalizations), but often for reasons... less warranting sympathy. I detest the "standard" or "fight-specific" choices.

And yet even then, I would have to disagree that build diversity necessarily equates to obligatory choice-swapping (my trigger word) or "wrong choice" (the standard buzz word), simply because there have actually been talent grid rows and talent tree builds that haven't run into any of those issues. They've performed incredibly closely, providing new optimal means of play without one new playflow outperforming another, or demanding a little less from the player, but also giving only a little less. It HAS worked. It's just damn hard. It dies in execution, not concept or as a fatalistic rule of thumb.

Nonetheless, I would have to argue that there's little sense in employing an open skill system except in incredibly rare environments. In my opinion, the game with the ideal fit for an open skill system shouldn't even involve sub-menus in its use, and likely no cap to level or stats or any of that. It would require a different way to taper off power growth, and beyond that -- may the equilibrium of most skilled/intelligent and dogged player win. It's fine in such a game to have a Guts-esque character who everyone knows because he or she is just that damn powerful, or a relative rookie who slaughters hardcore players because he's just that good. Short of that, I wouldn't personally prefer that kind of system. But it's not something dead on arrival any more than any other system would be. To sustain anything, it has to be built strongly, fleshed out, and polished well. It's a bigger task with an open skill system than a MOBA-esque or classes-only as per current XIV, but it's not fundamentally impossible.