Almost every complaint about the ShB job changes could be solved with talents

[MerlinCross]

I really don't want average players to have an additional opportunity to do everything wrong in their settup and rotations. They're already more than capable of doing so and dragging down a party.

And thus do the ffloggers, elites, and number crunchers would find another way to hold sway over the average players. Don't have this talent set up? You are bad and shouldn't be playing this game. Everyone should follow this set up because it is the meta. Anything that isn't meta get out of the party and go respec.

Yeah this is why adding Talents is a bad idea. There's no choice, there's either; do it 'right' or mess up.

[Gun-Cat]

But in the end of the day all that would really happen is what always happens I think.
Something would very clearly be meta, and everyone would go with that.

Isn't that what is already happening and why it is justified that some jobs get nerfed every other patch?

I don't see a talent tree to be very useful. But if the devs would give us the opportunity to switch playstyles around that might be cool. With the the older jobs still having classes and jobs, maybe let the player decide what to emphasis? Either go more towards Archer and have a class that is very much about personal DPS like these days or go Bard and get your Stormblood support songs back in exchange for damage. Ninja is a damage dealer with heavy mudra use while Rogue specializes in group support with TA and less latency reliance.

And yes, there would be an optimal speedkill combo, but I honestly that will always be the case. Only 8 Jobs can take part in a raid so if people really want to maximise they will always find the one meta combo.

[MerlinCross]

Isn't that what is already happening and why it is justified that some jobs get nerfed every other patch?

I don't see a talent tree to be very useful. But if the devs would give us the opportunity to switch playstyles around that might be cool. With the the older jobs still having classes and jobs, maybe let the player decide what to emphasis? Either go more towards Archer and have a class that is very much about personal DPS like these days or go Bard and get your Stormblood support songs back in exchange for damage. Ninja is a damage dealer with heavy mudra use while Rogue specializes in group support with TA and less latency reliance.

And yes, there would be an optimal speedkill combo, but I honestly that will always be the case. Only 8 Jobs can take part in a raid so if people really want to maximise they will always find the one meta combo.

While a decent idea on paper, haven't the Devs come out and said one of the more infuriating things to balance is SMN and SCH because they both break off from Arcanist? To the point they aren't going to make another one that functions like that.

[Shurrikhan]

While a decent idea on paper, haven't the Devs come out and said one of the more infuriating things to balance is SMN and SCH because they both break off from Arcanist? To the point they aren't going to make another one that functions like that.

They did. Nearly 6 years ago. Since then they've made the issue completely irrelevant by allowing retroactive changes into the shared kits. Literally the only legacy left of those issues is the fact that SMN and SCH share experience. SCH Ruin =/= SMN Ruin. And just because something existed in the ACN kit does not mean it will exist in the kits of the jobs that branch from ACN.

At this point they need only decide if they want to give out free experience in the form of split jobs or not. There is no impact on their toolkits, resources, or mechanics, and incredibly little impact on their lore.

[Shurrikhan]

And thus do the ffloggers, elites, and number crunchers would find another way to hold sway over the average players. Don't have this talent set up? You are bad and shouldn't be playing this game. Everyone should follow this set up because it is the meta. Anything that isn't meta get out of the party and go respec.

Yeah this is why adding Talents is a bad idea. There's no choice, there's either; do it 'right' or mess up.

The "elitists" you're talking about are also aware of how much impact different factors have and how long they take to correct. Your jumping off cliffs, wearing last expansions' gear, and breaking your own combos will come well before any discussion of talents.

And it's not the actual number crunchers who tend to enforce meta comps, probably because they look less at the classes and more at... the number. They don't need to oversimplify situations in the absence of numeric values; they have the values, and often enjoy the testing and experimentation that surrounds those numbers as produced by new ideas.
Number crunchers were the first to add BLM back in alongside SMN and make use of all-physical Monk parties despite the NIN/DRG/MCH/BRD meta, because when one actually paid attention to what they're doing the numbers were just as high (and eventually just barely eclipsed double-Ranged).

Who did insist on meta comps? (1) People who couldn't clear without every advantage of ease of damage, (2) people who obsessed over their pDPS numbers but had no idea what tDPS was, and (3) farm parties for whom conventional setups could at least also suggest conventional knowledge, a sort of tangential proof for you knowing what you're doing.
None of those communities were the direct result of actual number crunching.

[MerlinCross]

The "elitists" you're talking about are also aware of how much impact different factors have and how long they take to correct. Your jumping off cliffs, wearing last expansions' gear, and breaking your own combos will come well before any discussion of talents.

And it's not the actual number crunchers who tend to enforce meta comps, probably because they look less at the classes and more at... the number. They don't need to oversimplify situations in the absence of numeric values; they have the values, and often enjoy the testing and experimentation that surrounds those numbers as produced by new ideas.
Number crunchers were the first to add BLM back in alongside SMN and make use of all-physical Monk parties despite the NIN/DRG/MCH/BRD meta, because when one actually paid attention to what they're doing the numbers were just as high (and eventually just barely eclipsed double-Ranged).

Who did insist on meta comps? (1) People who couldn't clear without every advantage of ease of damage, (2) people who obsessed over their pDPS numbers but had no idea what tDPS was, and (3) farm parties for whom conventional setups could at least also suggest conventional knowledge, a sort of tangential proof for you knowing what you're doing.
None of those communities were the direct result of actual number crunching.

Given how ingrained "Know the fight" is to the game that even trying to find a good learning party is at times a slog outside of an FC(seriously who puts Duty Complete and then puts down "Learning Party" in the description?), that's a subject I didn't think to actually address. It's just assumed these days. Much like Talents are going to be assumed. The community will assume talent line up X even if you find something more fun.

I don't blame the people that full on experiment, number crunch, and keep actively trying to find that 5% extra damage or 30 second faster clear time. They have the numbers in front of them and they hopefully also have the skill to back up taking what might be a crazy risk. That's fun and interesting. Not for me but if they find it fun, go for it.

It's the people that take that data and run with it as the gospel one truth that I have a problem with. The "Copy Crunchers" as it were, those that readily accept the data and choose not to find a different way. It might not be the top player's or number crunchers FAULT but that's still going to just happen. Play the 'correct way' or be kicked. The info the crunchers put out is going to be picked up by the playerbase. It's what happened with STR accessories in Heavensward.

Talents will just be another 'solved' issue and you'll be expected follow it by the community. Heck I already can see some fights where failing the DPS check even on normal is going to have people chime in with "We failed the check, who's talents are wrong?".

I still see no reason as to why Talents will fix everything when the community is just going to accept talent set up X and everyone is expected to run it or be bad.

[RowanLauron]

Late to the party, but instead of talents, we could go the ffxi route and bring back the Merit System, but that will further compound and not fix the current issue.

[GrenGarm]

That is an incredible reach you trying for there Garm. You're really trying to win out with your argument. There's a big difference between talking about what percentage each class is played and whether to add something small and MAKING AN ENTIRE NEW SYSTEM. Do you really think those two are even comparable? You're again trying to compare something that effects few people versus something that would effect 100% of the playerbase. I don't think you're understanding that. Like it's been explained to you 100 times over this thread and you've refused to see it lmao. Adding a new job doesn't effect 100% of the playerbase, it only effects those 5% you're saying switch to it. But adding a talent system, it literally effects EVERYONE you make it seem like it's okay because those 5% want it and SE makes stuff for the 5% they don't make stuff for the 5% that effect the entire population of the game, like shit that's just simple logic. Like at this point I don't even know why I'm bothering to try and convince you that there's merits to other side of the argument. You clearly think you're 100% right and everyone who doesn't agree with you is 100% wrong. And a guildmaster? Really in WoW? Considering your comments about how not most people use optimal talents in WoW you're either lying out of your ass, or were in some weird guild and never interacted with literally anyone else in the game.

I guarantee you if you polled the player base, more than 5% of people would want job customization. You're pulling that number out of thin air and using it to justify your entire point.

Of course it would affect everyone, but according to you, people could just "opt out" of the system by taking the optimal talents and leaving it at that, if they want to. So what's the harm? It couldn't take more work than creating an entirely new job. They don't have to create that many new abilities, just shift some of the ones we have now to be talents next time they're already adding new abilities for the next expansion.

I never said most people don't use optimal talents in WoW. Most players, especially DPS, do use the optimal builds. But WoW's talents aren't really talents anymore. They don't complement a spec -- they complete it, because the specs are so bare bones without them. So I would not advocate for a system like that in FF. I gave an example later in the thread of what I had in mind for this game.

I'm just saying more people than you think don't play MMOs optimally or care about being optimal.

As a GM, I always encouraged people to optimize their classes but I never forced anyone to do so down to the level of which talents to pick, as long as their performance was good enough. We weren't going for world firsts though.

EDIT: Punctuation

[MerlinCross]

Put a different way and probably a more grounded take, here's how I can see it playing out.

Step 1 - New content. People talent up what they want, it's new stuff people don't know how it works. Defense/Healing based ones might be favored to see the entire fight.
Step 2 - Learning. People start figuring out the fight and what they can get away with. Defense talents are dropped for more damage based ones(or anything to up damage like haste or crit or whatever) to push DPS check and Enrage.
Step 3 - Farm. By now the numbers have been crunched on what is the most effective talents to use for the fight. Sure there might still be a trick or two floating around but the Meta talents have been established. Parties will more than likely expect you to know the fight, have appropriate gear/item level, and have that talent set.

And then repeat each time content comes out. This is however without changing the battle system or coming up with new systems for each fight. This is also a guess based around the idea that "Respecing" would cost nothing. If there was either grind to refund your talents or an actual pay wall, then I would guess a far more board and standard talent set up would be followed.

[Shurrikhan]

The "Copy Crunchers" as it were.

Now that I'll readily agree with. Sadly the only solution to that group seems to be better in-game information, better in-game learning systems, greater transparency, system intuitiveness, reasonable consistency (such as all AoEs snapshotting damage at precisely the end of their casts), better prepared but less circumventable learning checks, better difficulty curves, and the like -- all things which XIV could benefit from regardless, but doesn't seem to have the slightest inclination to work towards.

When skill gap can be reduced through average player understanding and engagement rather than reduced rewards for effort and learning, the Dunning–Kruger portion of the playerbase rapidly shrinks.