How do you feel about Role Actions?

[dragonseth07]

Role Actions are like cutting off one person's leg, another's hand, a third's left glute, and then asking each if they'd like a peg leg, hook, or a cushion.

Well, most are hardly significant, so it's more nearly just a small toe, a pinky, and an eye (Lucid Dreaming, Diversion, Provoke), but still... there's not a single advantage to it compared to just letting each job have their own form of each (where they can't afford to be unique in capacity, as Eye for an Eye or Reprisal, etc., probably deserve to be).

I disagree. There is a huge advantage in consistency, for new and/or low-skill players.

Having 3 versions of Provoke is pointless. If I need to coach a DRK into tank swapping the first time in his life, it should just be called Provoke. Giving it 3 different names serves no purpose.

When someone who heals on WHM tries out AST, and they're looking for Esuna to clear off a Doom, it's the same icon and everything. There's no point in having one called Leeches when they are all the same, and there's no point in making them different.

It may be cool, and ultimately no harm for us, to have every ability of every job different. But, the playerbase sucks at this game. Having those core things be the same helps keep the bar just a little higher than it otherwise would be.

[Shurrikhan]

I disagree. There is a huge advantage in consistency, for new and/or low-skill players.

Having 3 versions of Provoke is pointless. If I need to coach a DRK into tank swapping the first time in his life, it should just be called Provoke. Giving it 3 different names serves no purpose.

When someone who heals on WHM tries out AST, and they're looking for Esuna to clear off a Doom, it's the same icon and everything. There's no point in having one called Leeches when they are all the same, and there's no point in making them different.

It may be cool, and ultimately no harm for us, to have every ability of every job different. But, the playerbase sucks at this game. Having those core things be the same helps keep the bar just a little higher than it otherwise would be.

Then you call it by the effect.

The Call (DRK) - 25 yalms. Provokes the enemy, forcing them to attack you for three seconds and increasing your enmity to the highest among those engaged with it.
Champion (PLD) - 20 yalms. Provokes enemies attacking the target ally, forcing them to attack you for three seconds and increasing your enmity against them to that of the target ally.
Challenge (WAR) - 15 yalms. Provokes the target and enemies between you and it, locking them into combat with you for three seconds and increasing your enmity to the highest among those engaged with it.

Esuna (WHM) - Cleanses one status effect from self or target ally. Using Esuna while already casting another spell will consume a Lily to cast it without triggering the global cooldown.
Leeches (SCH) - Cleanses one status effect from self or target ally, adding the cleansed effect to your Aetherpool.
Exalted Dignity (AST) - Cleanses one status effect from self or target ally. The effect cleansed augments your current Starsign.

You can even have very differently functioning skills while still referring to the part that matters by the same name.

[dragonseth07]

Like it or not, customization has very little place in a modern MMO. Back in the early days when everyone sucked, and the genre was new, customization was great. It meant you got to have your own build, and it feels awesome. But nowadays, we are better. We are more informed. We would like our allies to be GOOD, not just present. Customization is a trap because it competes with optimization.

It would be very cool to have a customized PLD. But, I would NEVER want a customized WHM healing me anymore. My ability to feel special is worth less than the knowledge my allies can't be actively screwing theirs up.

I have very grim memories of DRK's showing up without Provoke back in HW, and frantically Power Slashing to try and tank swap. We, collectively, can't handle the responsibility of customization.

[Shurrikhan]

Like it or not, customization has very little place in a modern MMO. Back in the early days when everyone sucked, and the genre was new, customization was great. It meant you got to have your own build, and it feels awesome. But nowadays, we are better. We are more informed. We would like our allies to be GOOD, not just present. Customization is a trap because it competes with optimization.

It would be very cool to have a customized PLD. But, I would NEVER want a customized WHM healing me anymore. My ability to feel special is worth less than the knowledge my allies can't be actively screwing theirs up.

I have very grim memories of DRK's showing up without Provoke back in HW, and frantically Power Slashing to try and tank swap. We, collectively, can't handle the responsibility of customization.

Customization has little place, I'll agree, but many systems are misunderstood as customization alone when their emphasis is elsewhere. Pre-streamlined WoW's (i.e. WotLK) talents represented customization far less than simply progression. They gave something to look forward to, level by level, and changed your approach to varying content, as the choices made could not simply be swapped out for every fight. It mattered a whole lot less than not every configuration was viable than that ever level offered something to leveling -- an altogether different context. In that light, the system worked well. It could have been better even then, but it offered a lot to character and world attachment and sense of progress.

Stupidity and negligence, on the other hand, is not something for which you can directly blame customization. And I'd rather not be included in your "we" the people who cannot even manage to look swap to the other tanks at least once at level 1 to read through the coming auto-acquired skills for something useful and cross-class-able. I suspect most others would rather not be assumed as so stupid or negligent either. DRKs showing up without Provoke was the minority, not the norm. And even that could have been greatly and easily mitigated by the devs simply adding the same greyed out actions one would find in their respective sources' Actions list to the Additional Actions sub-menu along with a recommendation to fill your Additional Actions when another slot is opened to you.

That's not to say that I liked the cross-class system -- in that implementation, I certainly didn't. Nor do I necessarily think customization has much of a place in MMOs -- I don't. But you're caricaturing an entire playerbase over issues the devs could have very, very easily mitigated if not wholly solved, or could have even done away with without limiting customization. Extent of Customization and Extent/Chance of Non-optimal Choice are not actually directly proportional. Good design will offer far more variance in gameplay than in performance, still keeping the emphasis on how well you play, just as poor design offers more variance in performance than in gameplay, emphasizing sub-menu interactions over actual gameplay. What you are describing, or at least making inference from, is middling to poor design.

[Jollyy5]

I think role actions are a good place to start ability pruning for Shadowbringers...

[Shurrikhan]

I think role actions are a good place to start ability pruning for Shadowbringers...

Agreed. There are at least 4 skills worth of fluff among every Role, and the 6 remaining thereafter could each be better done in a job-unique way.

It really annoys me when the only direction considered for adding role identity is upward and onward while so much is left devoid of unique taste or mechanics even in the 1-50 bracket.

[Kaiserdrache]

The current Role Skill system in my view is an outdated and boring part of this game, which leads under its current design to abslutely no build diversity.

Role Skills shouldnt just be for each role per classjob exactly the same.

A Role Skill should be per Role for each Class/Job DIFFERENT, so that each individual Class/Job feels more unique while playing it, and has something that can give you more build diversity.
The number of skills in this game has to increase significantly, so that there can exist more build diversity, so that not everyone is aside of the chosen materias in their gear exactly the same. This stiff outdated combat system needs to broaden up. Holy Trinity of only DPS, Tank and Healer was yesterday

This game needs more roles, minimum 4, maximum 5, so that players aren#t anymore permanently so permanently dependent on tanks and healers, so that group finding becomes faster and smoother. Having to wait on the game for over like 30 minutes, until the game puts people together for a roulette content is RIDICULOUS and that happens only, because the game design of FF14 is way too much reliant everywhere on tanks and healers, while there exists a massive over saturation of dps!!!
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Role Skills:

For the start, should SE change the role skill system to the point, that each class per role should have its very own unique 10 Role Skills. Role Skills should come with their very own seperate Skill Slots in the UI that is limited in having maximum 4 of the 10 Skills with you.

Then would people have to choose, what they take with them and not have simply everythign with them always, leadign to better balancing game content and reducing power creep for all classes.
Skills can then be anyways exchanged out whenever you want outside of combats.
Means

A Paladin should have 10 completely different Tank Skills as its Role, than for example a Dark Knight.
Classes also should be able to change their Roles and gain this way different Role SKills.
get away with this ultra stiff class design that Class X has to be always ever only Role Y

A Paladin should be able to change its role from Tank to either DPS, Healer, or my suggested new roles as Supporter or Preventer (Debuffer) and accordign to changign your Role with your Class woudl change the unique Role Skills of your Class you get access to. But this change would further increase build diversity in this game, helping in it, that not every single paladin in this game is exacly the very same, like your own character.

Such changes would not only change the role skills, but thie change of the role should also affect the class skills and their traits, changign the playstyle of your class significantly, so that playing a DPS paladin should feel to the player completely different, than playing the classical tank Paladin everybody knows, shoudl kompletely feel different, than playing a Healer paladi,n than a Supporter paladin ect. pp

Thats the way to go for SE, if they want to give their game the needed depth, that this games combat system is completely missing, compared to games like Guild Wars 2, WoW, Tera, B&S , BD and so on, which are in regard of this all much more modern and not so stiff, like FF14 is

Weapon Skills and Class Identity

A very important point that needs to happen as well too is to give all classes more build diversity and class identity by adding more different Weapon types to all classes, instead of letting them have all only 1 weapon type, where changign a weapon lets you change your class.
Thats so extremely outdated gameplay design and unmodern.
Each class in FF14 shiould have at least 3 different weapon sets, and it shouldnt be the Weapon you equiped, which decides the class, it should be the Head Gear.
Weapons should get then automatically unequipped if you change via Head Gear your Class.
This way woudl receive all classes in FF14 significantly more build diversity.

Then you could see for example a Bard running around either with a Bow (Harps), an Axe (Guitars) or with Spears (Flutes) for example ... (Shining Resonance being the Inspiration) with each weapon providing different skilsl for the Bard, each weapon givign you a different playstyle with the Bard, especially also if you can change your Role from DPS to an other role, to gain other unique Role Skills, which in return also affect your traits and weapon skilsl then a bit.
FF14 mustcchange from such a stiff class design to a much more flexible one, if we want to get rid of the problem, that you are in games with holy trinity always reliant too much on just tanks and healers to get the content done, cause DPS alone can't do anything

[Connor]

I’d like to see role skills be redesigned so that we actually have to make decisions to about to take. It seems like a redundant system to have 10 slots but only 10 abilities. There are a load of abilities from the Logos system that could easily fit into different role skill setups

[Lyth]

The problem with initial role action system in Stormblood, as far as customisation went, is that it made you choose between actions which were completely unrelated in function. Rather than letting you choose from a pool, you should make focused decisions.

As an example, consider Low Blow and Interject. If you have a dedicated "interrupt" slot, you're now forced to choose depending on the fight. Another example is Provoke and Ultimatum. Every tank needs an enmity grab. But what if you were asked to choose between range and recast? There are situations in which each might provide an advantage.

Let's look at Protect. Right now, it exists simply because it's a classic Final Fantasy spell. But how can you make it interesting? Pyros gave us the answer: have Protect cover physical damage, and its counterpart Shell cover magical damage. If they're mutually exclusive, then you're forced to make some decisions over the course of prog based off of what you think the predominant damage type is. You could do something similar with a physical Rampart and, say, a magical Shadowskin as well, instead of keeping Rampart as a must pick that stays on your bars.

I also think that if the devs are going to retire an action from a job, it shouldn't go into the common pool. It tends to leave a bad taste, when you see a beloved ability get donated to everyone else. That's why a lot of DRKs and WHMs felt robbed this expansion. Just create something new that fills the niche you need.

[Shurrikhan]

The problem with initial role action system in Stormblood, as far as customisation went, is that it made you choose between actions which were completely unrelated in function. Rather than letting you choose from a pool, you should make focused decisions.

As an example, consider Low Blow and Interject. If you have a dedicated "interrupt" slot, you're now forced to choose depending on the fight. Another example is Provoke and Ultimatum. Every tank needs an enmity grab. But what if you were asked to choose between range and recast? There are situations in which each might provide an advantage.

Let's look at Protect. Right now, it exists simply because it's a classic Final Fantasy spell. But how can you make it interesting? Pyros gave us the answer: have Protect cover physical damage, and its counterpart Shell cover magical damage. If they're mutually exclusive, then you're forced to make some decisions over the course of prog based off of what you think the predominant damage type is. You could do something similar with a physical Rampart and, say, a magical Shadowskin as well, instead of keeping Rampart as a must pick that stays on your bars.

I'm not sure there's any advantage to this, either, though, unless one simply like playing around in menus between each pull or at the start of each new trial, etc. Is there any gameplay advantage to swapping between Provoke on ranged add or boss pulls and Ultimatum for trash, on the incredible rarity that you die in a dungeon or have two tanks in a trash fight that also somehow requires a swap? You could as easily wrap both effects in one, generating a higher recast time when affecting more mobs.

Same with Low Blow vs. Reprisal vs. Interject. Reprisal is worthless on mobs, Low Blow on bosses, and Interject except on bosses who cast. Is the gameplay somehow more compelling because for a brief moment you stopped said gameplay and played around with menus instead of simply having a degradable action that covers all three effects (Stun; else: cast Silence + damage suppression; else: full damage suppression)?

Protect vs. Shell? We'd just swap it with the related fight. In 8-mans, one would cast whichever and the other would have to hop into their menus, swap to the opposite, and cast that, all without making Protect or Shell any more compelling for the game itself.

You'd be adding additional irritants without any appreciable gameplay value.