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

[Xyr]

Excuse me but... the topic is "adding talent trees", not "changing of classes/jobs" nor "adding new specs like in WoW".

Because for the longest time in WoW, what talents you picked determined what spec you were, want to be a healer? Pick talents that increase healing. People use WoW for reference all the time because it is very popular.

[SpeckledBurd]

The devs have also gone on record as saying that they consider the various jobs within a given role to be the specs of that role rather than wanting to subdivide them any further, and the game supports that with the exception of weapons unless you’re a melee.

[GrumbleBeard]

I played Warcraft for a year a long time ago and I got bullied for taking lightwell as a priest.

[Tryzn]

For a long time, one of the biggest turnoffs for me about this game has been the lack of job customization. I loved having the cross-class skills in the base game, even though every job pretty much had a standard setup for endgame, because it let me play the job the way I wanted to play to a small degree.

Now those are gone, but I think jobs would benefit greatly from some kind of customization. Let's walk through some examples:

NIN
Complaint: Job is too gimped on damage because of Trick Attack utility
Solution: Give us a choice between TA for group content or a new ability that increases our personal DPS when soloing

BRD
Complaint: Identity of the job was lost when the songs lost their group utility
Solution: Give us a choice between songs that provide utility and songs that provide personal damage

MCH
Complaint: High ping means the job is unplayable in certain regions
Solution: Make Overheat a talent and let players choose a different ability with less ping dependence

SCH
Complaint: SCH's identity as a more damage-focused healer has been lost
Solution: Allow players to spec into more damage-based abilities if they want to

SMN
Complaint: Egis feel useless now
Solution: Allow players to spec out of egis if they want to or allow them to spec into new spells that take more advantage of the egis if they like the egis

MNK
Complaint: Abilities like Tornado Kick, the new Six-Sided Star, and Riddle of Fire are unpopular with some players because they are situational or slow down the rotation
Solution: Make these abilities talents and let players opt in if they like them or choose a different style if they don't

They are many other examples.

First off let me say your idea which is a good one is wrong. Jobs are already a lot to handle with melee needing to worry about attacking from the front or back, and with the rotations being what they being now you want to add In Talents to change that now? That’s too much.

Also think about this nin is a support job if you turn it into a max dmg job then no one would ever play the support job style.

Thing is people are getting to caught up in numbers, as long as you can beat content who cares if you do 10k or you do 13k.

Trust me raids are tested using under geared qa teams with. Just have fun with the game bro. Adding in talents is a very bad idea just look at wow

[Liselsia]

Yoshi since ARR has been extremely vocal that he wants player to have no customization over the jobs. The quote is something like "Players should only worry about learning how to play their job, any customization is just a distraction and needlessly complicates things for the player".

This design philosophy has stay true to this day. So if Yoshi hasn't went against his word by now, he never will.

[Samsta]

Talent trees in MMO can be implemented correctly, which means that different talents offer tools for different situations, they are not competing versus another but offer alternatives. However, this means that the game would actually need different content where different talent choices are needed. Let's say we have to choose between survivability or damage, there isn't really any content where survivability would be preferable. Although that could be done by making the survivability talent really good while offering only a minor dps boost. like let's say paladin can choose between 50% damage reduction cd or off gcd skill which deals like 200 potency every minute or so. At that point I could see both options being valid for progression groups, although the damage would still probably be preferred later.

People saying talent trees can't be balanced are not correct, even in current WoW there are some tiers which have 2 or 3 valid choices. FFXIV is just so rigid in it's content that making talents balanced would be pretty huge task that they are not gonna undertake most probably.

BTW don't take it too harshly if people strawman you or are just dicks generally, that tends to be the trend in every MMO forum; people lack basic argumental skills and jump to conclusions and present their opinions harshly while rejecting other opinions. This is still better than reddit where your thread would be dead with all the downvotes because you have a different opinion.

[GrenGarm]

OP here. I'm glad to see this discussion turning in a more constructive direction.

The way I see it, every expansion is going to bring new abilities to jobs. So you have four options:

1. Just add new ones
2. Upgrade existing ones, like Air Anchor and High Jump
3. Cut old ones to make room
4. Allow choice

Square has been doing 1, 2, and 3. Maybe they can do that forever, maybe not. 3 has caused a lot of bad feelings, like BRD losing Foe Requiem. 2 isn't very exciting in most cases. And 1 is unsustainable.

So maybe at some point they can give 4 a shot. The way I imagine it, it would be like the old cross-class UI (that is still used for crafting/gathering), except you'd only have skills from your own job.

As an example, say you have three slots to choose, but six skills. So for NIN in 6.0, you could choose three out of Trick Attack, Ten Chi Jin, Assassinate, Mesui, and a couple of new skills. It doesn't have to get more complicated than that.

That would allow players a little bit of agency in how the job feels and plays. Obviously the skills would have to be balanced within a certain percent to avoid useless "noob traps" and TA would have to be balanced to come out ahead in a group but behind when solo.

Yes, hardcore raiding groups are going to require the optimal build and that's OK. The rest of us could just use the skills we enjoy.

[ItsDevinHere]

Yes, hardcore raiding groups are going to require the optimal build and that's OK. The rest of us could just use the skills we enjoy.

(Note from ItsDevinHere) Cut this down so I could have my reply and you'd still be pinged.

I've read through the whole thread. There's a few things I've noticed, first being you either ignore a comment by not replying to it (or you don't see it, ill give you some benefit of the doubt but my point still stands), or you simply try to make an counter-argument, but end up making the same argument, but just phrasing it different like you just did again, though I will give to you that you actually added a couple different things this time, but it took you 9 pages of responses to do that. You do though repeat yourself without trying to make a different case on why it's a good idea to have talents. You keep saying it's diverse and fun in a different way over and over, you gotta have more reasons than that for an MMO and counter why the other people are wrong about it making it less fun and not toxic, this isn't a single-player game where that can be considered fine and a good idea simply because it's diverse and more fun.

Second, your strawman argument you've thrown out like 10 times, I really don't think you know what that word means. Here's the definition "A straw man is a form of argument and an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent." There was at no point in time that someone added words you didn't say. You stated that many other MMOs use talents and therefore FFXIV should be able to do it. People countered that by saying those MMOs generally do a bad job at it and it just ends up being a metapick for the best talents. You then stated that some MMOs do it correctly, then people asked you to give some examples, you then said it was a strawman argument. I don't think you meant it badly, but it just makes it sound like you don't know any MMOs that do it right, but don't want to be wrong, so you say his argument is invalid. I hope you understand where they're coming from now.

Third, and what has been reiterated about 30 times here. FFXIV is too rigid and is meant for people to easily pick up and play. Adding talents, will immediately complicate that and make it harder for new players because they now have to worry about picking talents, XIV is also just not designed in a way to allow talents, it's designed to balance the jobs, adding talents will further complicate that to where the devs would have to try to balance all these talents, and make sure that each different choice that someone can pick is the exact same viability as the other ones then on TOP of that they then have to balance that job with the other jobs, which is basically never going to happen for FFXIV, im sorry to tell you, Yoshi has said it himself as someone has stated.

Lastly, your argument that only hardcore raiders will use optimal builds and the rest of people will use the skills they will enjoy is false. One, no, not only hardcore raiders will use optimal builds, even casual raiders will use optimal builds. Literally look at basically any other MMO and you will see that even the casuals use the optimal builds. You will get kicked from a group for not having the optimal build, yes even in casual raids. But even beyond that point, I don't think you understand the affect adding skills would have on the community, if you think it's toxic now (which I completely disagree with) then you will be in for a surprise if they added skills. After a couple months of it being out, players will learn the optimal build, and now this build will be standard. Everybody will use it, anybody that doesn't use it will get either kicked from groups or yelled at, it will happen, it will not only be hardcore raiders, it happens in every MMO with talent trees that work like that. I've played a good number of MMOs in my years and even in dungeons people will get mad at you for having the wrong talents. This is just the life of talents, I think most people here want to avoid that.

I think your main issue, is that you don't want to be wrong/only your opinion is right. Everyone is just stating their opinions, and people are even conceding that the other side has some points on some things. But you consistently refuse to even acknowledge that the other side has a point, and just kept countering with the same argument, just look back at your comments to see. I think you just need to take a step back and realize what you're doing. It's okay not to win every argument you have. It seems like this thread and your comments is more of you stating your opinion as fact and everyone needs to agree with you.

[Proxanna]

This has kind of been one of my main hangups with the game is the homogenization of the jobs and gear. It does kind of make you feel "just like everyone else". But on the other hand, balancing a system like that is a nightmare and that's why you see other games like WoW and GW2 completely butcher their talent trees by giving fewer choices and making them more rigid. Even then, when it seems like they're giving you a choice in your spec they're really just giving you the illusion of choice if you want to play the class optimally. Then it just becomes a chore for the player because they have to research the best builds for their class. I mean don't get me wrong, I know there are a lot of people that actually enjoy that and I'm one of them, but this is a game designed to cater to a large casual player base who probably don't want to deal with all of that.

Because of this I don't think they'll ever add them to this game. They've already completely removed custom stat speccing and gutted the cross class skills to simplify them even more. I think the closest we'll ever come to having customizable jobs is their iteration of BLU and whatever other limited jobs they decide to add.

[Xyr]

Even then, when it seems like they're giving you a choice in your spec they're really just giving you the illusion of choice if you want to play the class optimally. Then it just becomes a chore for the player because they have to research the best builds for their class. I mean don't get me wrong, I know there are a lot of people that actually enjoy that and I'm one of them, but this is a game designed to cater to a large casual player base who probably don't want to deal with all of that.

You make it sound like we don't already do this in FFXIV. Optimization happens in every game.