Thread: On the topic of Role Actions in 5.0 and beyond

I'll be honest, I don't see how these choices wouldn't quickly become just as predefined for us as when we were limited to 5 Role Actions from 10, if not worse. I would much rather see Role Actions removed completely, with each job having their own unique means of access to the necessary functions Role Actions would have provided.

And, frankly, we don't need to need -- not a typo -- things like Invigorate or Lucid Dreaming or even Diversion. The contexts for those skills can be shifted to render each redundant without any loss to gameplay; hitting a button every couple minutes as if by an auto-clicker didn't exactly provide any gameplay to begin with. Provide the effective MP per minute via base mana generation instead, with a faint bump to on-rez MP. At present they're just design bloat. With sensible changes to design, they'd be bloat in every possible way.

That's not to say that customization isn't possible, however. While, as I've mentioned to you before, I see it either (1) as a last resort by which to widen the base of players a given class, job, or spec may attract or (2) as a feature solely of character progression and world-building, it can still work. But, it needs more hand-crafted (so to speak) packages of effects within its choices. It musn't be nit-picked for direct gains in X or Y output; it needs to be based around broadly usable, but integrally thematic utilities. Choose <Advanced Turrets> or <Advanced Armaments> or whatnot for MCH, with some umpteen effects therein that can be balanced by combination into a real fight setting -- with mostly the same capacity but in a very different form -- rather than merely this bit of extra mitigation or that bit of extra damage (since that would almost always exclude all but the damage choice).

Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

What's the point of having Actions on each class list that do the exact same thing then? It's arbitrary from both perspectives at a first glance, but the difference between having the same exact button in the Role Action list as a Mandatory Action is it saves 2-6 buttons that all need individual icons and reference points in macros and the translator chat function. I've already explained to you that you need to justify splitting the actions into each class and gone through the nuances to justify what works and what doesn't. You have to justify adding them into each class as individual skills if you want to discard the system. And if they're similar enough people will just use what they find most convenient to describe them anyways.

What difference does it make to button bloat if a cleanse is called Esuna on one list, Leeches on another, and Exalted Detriment on a third? For all other issues, the solutions are still simple:
1. Make this game's macro system actually decent, including the ability to use
2. Function-calls, such as "Cleanse" (for all abilities which Cleanse).

The latter issue is already present. I don't need to be Esuna'd, per se. I need someone to get the DoT off me. I do not care if that happens via The Warden's Paeon, Erase, Esuna, or Leeches or ED. I need it {Cleanse}d.

And as for the individual icons, I would honestly rather time spent on my Shadowskin name, icon, and animation than have to use the completely aesthetically incongruous Rampart on a Dark Knight. "Saving" that kind of time is not a ingenious decision, no matter how badly design elsewhere resorts to copy-pasta in the actual effects of those skills; it's just shorting a class's aesthetic. The next step for that is to literally just make fewer job skills in general as long as one such skill exists anywhere in the role. I find it really hard to believe that anyone would be okay with all getting the same new skill in an expansion among healers, tanks, or dps, which is why it still confuses me that people somehow thought it was worth the development time necessary to undo the development time of separate icons, names, and animations for shared effects.

The old cross-class skill system was interesting because it gave you a reason to level other classes and you had to actually put some effort into getting the skills. Heck, back when I started playing a month before Stormblood I still had to level ACN to Lv15 in order to access WHM and I found that to be an interesting mechanic. Sadly I don't see the game moving back in that direction.

Originally Posted by tdb

The old cross-class skill system was interesting because it gave you a reason to level other classes and you had to actually put some effort into getting the skills. Heck, back when I started playing a month before Stormblood I still had to level ACN to Lv15 in order to access WHM and I found that to be an interesting mechanic. Sadly I don't see the game moving back in that direction.

Except it wasn't actually interesting at all. You HAD to do that to be effective, there was nothing interesting about it.

Leveling ACN to 15 to unlock WHM is fine, but the people that had to level DRG to 34 for Blood for Blood (or Invigorate, can't remember which it was) or PLD to 46 for Awareness certainly sucked.

If you want an interesting cross class system, I'm all for that. But the original system created absurd secondary requirements to playing the jobs people wanted to play.

Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

Call me jaded but given the Dev team's track record I expect nothing to happen regarding macros at all in the next 5 years.

I don't think the game can afford not to see improvements to its macros unless it provides similar quality of life improvements to all that a good macro system could. The haphazardness of the game's underlying designs will only get more apparent with time while the benefits for such improvements only get larger.

Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

It saves making three separate macro slots for the exact same button. See Raise Macros. Individual button count per class hotbars isn't affected, but it's still bloat. And Warden's Paean can save the need for all three anyways. I literally did that so our SCH could take Protect in that slot and still handle the ghost in O5S prog. And it at least warrants a different treatment because it's functionally different from the other 'Cleanse' effects, even if the mechanical output is the same.

Honestly, Macro usability should be VERY VERY low in button design. The game doesn't require macros, so they should always be a secondary thought. I would guess you are in a small minority that wants all class skills/names/buttons to be the same for macroing.

Note - I'm not saying your wrong, but your proposed changes would take alot of the flavor from jobs which affects everyone to make macroing easier for a few.

I prefer synergistic mechanical flavour to flashy animations. SE already has the latter on lockdown, they don’t need to convince me that they can go full Micheal Bay. It’s the former they’re lacking, in spades. If they’re not going to actually make their systems interesting I don’t see the point in wasting the space on buttons that could be spent on distinct abilities elsewhere.

Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

I prefer synergistic mechanical flavour to flashy animations. SE already has the latter on lockdown, they don’t need to convince me that they can go full Micheal Bay. It’s the former they’re lacking, in spades. If they’re not going to actually make their systems interesting I don’t see the point in wasting the space on buttons that could be spent on distinct abilities elsewhere.

But what does that mean to you? Plenty of jobs have abilities that synergize with each other and with other jobs. So you must mean something different from what's currently there?

Originally Posted by Callinon

But what does that mean to you? Plenty of jobs have abilities that synergize with each other and with other jobs. So you must mean something different from what's currently there?

To be fair, what's there amounts to very little, gameplay-wise. We occasionally choose who applies a debuff first, and very rarely delay skills that could potentially waste uses per fight from their normal CDs in order to fit to raid debuff. Because we can always just push for more damage or fewer healing GCDs, few supportive (curative or mitigative) CDs are ever redundant or need to be rotated between the two providers, commonly lack the impact to meet new breakpoints if used alone, yet sync too haphazardly to be paired consistently.

We have synergy by numbers, but little that actually allows us new opportunities as to be visible in the gameplay itself.

Compare that to any MOBA or even a class-based shooter. Most good games in either genre have far more impactful synergies available. There's something to be said for feeling overly dependent on another class/hero, but there's at least for more interesting stuff in that direction.

Sadly, most of the difference probably comes down partly to bloat/perceived-impact but mostly to undermechanics.