A Skillbook for all Jobs (idea)

[HyoMinPark]

This sort of design would not work in FFXIV, and it would lead to people locking players out of groups because they don’t have key skills for each job. Especially for some of the utility jobs like physical ranged or AST. Why would you want a DNC that doesn’t have Standard Step or Technical Step in their kit? What else are they bringing to the group? Very little, if we were to look at the job as it stands now. DNC’s value comes from it buffing the party—without those buffs, it’s a very gimped DPS. Its personal damage is certainly not high enough currently to warrant bringing a DNC that doesn’t have keystone abilities. Why would you bring an AST if it doesn’t have its cards? Just bring a WHM. Granted, AST’s healing toolkit is more versatile (assuming the AST in this system bothered to unlock all of its healing toolkit abilities), but the WHM would technically bring more as it has higher personal damage than an AST. This really goes for all jobs. Why bring a BLM that doesn’t have Fire IV? A SMN without Summon Bahamut (or even egi summons period)? Or a DRG that only has it’s most basic 1-2-3?

This game is also not designed with branching rotations or branching builds in mind. For the jobs in this game, it’s not an option to have X skill, but not have Y skill or Z skill when it comes to max-level play (leveling is, obviously, very different given how skills unlock—to a point; it is still expected of you to keep job quests up-to-date with your current level to ensure you have all the skills you’re supposed to have). The jobs’ kits are so intricately designed with each piece in mind, that it would feel incomplete to be missing skills—a good example of this is BRD pre-level 52 where they only have 2 songs in their rotation. There’s a 20-second gap where you don’t have a song active, and the rotation is incomplete. And feels incomplete. Imagine that at level 80. It would compound the feeling of incompleteness even more so. And it would lead back to my first point: why would groups take a BRD with only 2/3 songs unlocked versus one with all 3 unlocked?

You actually saw shadows of this in Heavensward when DRK was released. Back then, Provoke was a cross-class skill that you had to level GLA to level 22 to obtain. It was very common to run into DRKs that had not leveled their GLAs, so they didn’t have Provoke to take bosses or mobs off of party members. And they were, rightly, criticized for not having that skill. It’s too core to a tank to not have. To a lesser extent, you could see this with healers and Swiftcast, which required level 26 THM. You honestly saw this with crafters as well until the developers streamlined everything. Why was it recommended to level all your crafters in ARR and HW? Because you had to cross-class skills from other crafters to do high-end rotations.

BLU is a different example where it was designed to sort of have all these different options for skills and rotations and “builds”. Mathematically, I am sure there is still a “most optimal” rotation for each kind of BLU (tank BLU, healer BLU, DPS BLU, etc.), though. But since BLU is basically a gimmick job that cannot participate in battle content normally like all other jobs in FFXIV, it gets away with this design. If BLU could participate in content like the other jobs, you would absolutely see people saying “You don’t have X-Y-Z skills? Why don’t you have them? Go get them.”. Especially at high levels of play. I think it’s less elitism and more so the fact that, by playing a job with only half a rotation, you’re griefing the rest of your party and basically forcing them to carry you.

FFXIV as a whole was not designed for all jobs to have BLU-esque “skill books”, and I don’t think it would be healthy for the game to switch to this. Not when the current battle system is this deeply established—this game isn’t exactly young.

[ItMe]

snip

Yo your post is excellent and lovely and makes me realize something I'd been struggling to put into words: There's nothing wrong with the idea... in a game without rotations.
If the game were about using your buttons as you need them, this idea would be great.

[Anhra]

I updated the original Post with a in-detail explaination how exactly i meant the entire Skillbook idea. Hope that helps to clarify some things.

[Recon1o6]

If I'm understanding this correctly, then what your proposal is

A job has a number of core skills and some slots.
A job then gets optional ones to slot in as they do things in the game.


Guess what? Fun>balance always. I support this. I miss cross class, but I also miss the many skills gutted over the years just as much. Despite what other people in this thread have said, ff14 IS a game about pressing the right buttons as you need because that's literally the point. If savage balance is an issue then just stop it from working in savage as an additional challenge aspect.

Unlocking these additional skills would incentivise running otherwise dead content and give horizontal progression that the playerbase keeps grumbling about.

Its not a stretch to make core skills include essentials like provoke then allow the custom slots to be filled with what the player desires their jobs to play like.

[Brightamethyst]

Guess what? Fun>balance always.

Ina single player game, yes. In a multi-player game, especially a massively multi-player game, no.

In a multi-player setting it can't just be fun. It has to be fun for everyone at the same time. Balance is king.

[Anhra]

Ina single player game, yes. In a multi-player game, especially a massively multi-player game, no.

In a multi-player setting it can't just be fun. It has to be fun for everyone at the same time. Balance is king.

We have balance oozing out of every corner of Eorzea, we desperately need some fun mechanics outside of Blue Mage.

[DrWho2010]

We have balance oozing out of every corner of Eorzea, we desperately need some fun mechanics outside of Blue Mage.

Lost Actions in Bozja/Delubrum?

[Anhra]

Lost Actions in Bozja/Delubrum?

Only avaiable in Bozja Content, same goes for Eureka Logos Spells which are exclusive to Eureka.

Some of those Skills could also be a good addition to the Skillbook system i mentioned, but knowing you, you probably just try to derail the thread once again, do keep in mind that this can be punished.

[HyoMinPark]

Guess what? Fun>balance always. I support this. I miss cross class, but I also miss the many skills gutted over the years just as much. Despite what other people in this thread have said, ff14 IS a game about pressing the right buttons as you need because that's literally the point. If savage balance is an issue then just stop it from working in savage as an additional challenge aspect.

The issue with the cross-class system was that key skills were locked behind it. Like Provoke and leveling GLA to level 22. Or Swiftcast behind level 26 THM. SCH having to cross-class Protect and Stoneskin from CNJ/WHM, etc.. There is absolutely no reason to have skills that are essential to your role locked behind leveling up another class—perhaps one that you may not even be interested in. So while they may have been fun, it wasn’t fun for the players in content that got DRKs or WARs that hadn’t leveled their GLA to 22 for that skill. That’s why it was revamped into the role actions.

However, there were a lot of skills in said role actions that were never optional under any means: Provoke, Rampart, Reprisal, Shirk, Protect, Lucid Dreaming, Swiftcast, Esuna (to a lesser extent in high-end since you can’t cleanse debuffs in there usually, but in other content, it’s good to have), Largesse, Refresh, Tactician, Palisade, Diversion. None of these skills were optional for jobs to have—and this could very well be a problem in the proposed system. Even with your core skills, if there are “optional” ones that are deemed necessary to your job/role, then they are no longer “optional” to have when it comes to group content. Failure to have them would lead to people being removed from parties because the rest of the group doesn’t want to deal with a player who is only bringing the absolute bare minimum to the group. That wouldn’t bring any fun to the game.

As I said before, had FFXIV been designed this way from the ground up, perhaps it would have worked. But this has never been the way combat has worked in this game. Any attempts at “optional” skills have backfired. Revamping combat into this would not help the game in any way, in my opinion.

We have balance oozing out of every corner of Eorzea, we desperately need some fun mechanics outside of Blue Mage.

There’s actually plenty of things in this game that could still stand to be balanced. Have you seen the physical ranged?

[DrWho2010]

Only avaiable in Bozja Content, same goes for Eureka Logos Spells which are exclusive to Eureka.

Some of those Skills could also be a good addition to the Skillbook system i mentioned, but knowing you, you probably just try to derail the thread once again, do keep in mind that this can be punished.

Are you threatening me? I gave a valid alternative. If you aren't satisfied no need to personally attack me.