I think I want subjobs more than I want job balance.

[Penthea]

This isn't even gamers today. I remember this crap back in Diablo II when you got on Battle.net. Do whatever you want in a solo or co-op game with your friends but there were only the "right" builds out there with strangers. Same with the Talent trees in WoW. I mainly just soloed or small grouped in that game up to Pandaria because I chose the trees that were interesting for me, not what others thought I should.

This is why balance is so important. Having lots of choice can feel nice but it's meaningless if only a few choices are good. WoW's talent trees gave the illusion of choice. There were many ways to spend your points but for the most part there were only two good ways to spend them for each spec and most of the time these two ways only had minor differences. If you went against the grain and went for something totally different you were ridiculed if the result was that your character had noticeably less usefulness in combat. While some people consider that to be a meanspirited reaction to someone's choice in how they spent their talent points, by having a character that isn't well made you are forcing other people to work harder to make up for it and that's not fair. I remember healing some tanks who made some interesting choices with their talents and it wasn't a pleasant experience for me.

Having lots of combat flavour can be great, but only if all those flavours are very effective.

[linayar]

Beyond some of the harsh language and seeming pessimism, I would say that this is a problem for the wider MMORPG genre.

I think that metagaming itself is harmful for the role playing games. A genre that was about adventure and immersion that came from Dungeons and Dragons, it's important to look back to Dungeons and Dragons. This is a social game without the pressure to play well, and without a meta. Because it was about playing a role first, and your ability to play well was limited by dice rolls, and wherever the Game Master wanted to move things.

You can go for silly ideas in Dungeons and Dragons, but as long as it's lore appropriate, most of your friends are happy to put up with it.

You talk about being social and playing with friends. You can also have that in FFXIV (or any other MMORPG).

But MMORPG also has random matchmaking and/or preformed grouping with strangers. Even the concept of a static or a guild-based group could be formed on the basis of defeating difficult content.

In such a case, it's not about your friends putting up with your silly ideas because they're your friends, but otherwise complete strangers who may not feel the same way you do about the game.

So the solution is either to play with like-minded friends and/or to stick to (in the case of FFXIV) Normal/Hard contents as opposed to Extreme/Savage/Ultimate contents.

Like I said before, I've yet to see anyone getting seriously mad at not doing a range/caster LB at Nero in the Praetorium. The most common form of "metagaming" that occurs in Normal/Hard contents is probably doing large pulls in dungeon, but even then, I've seen groups doing single pulls with no issues as well (as it should be).

[Shougun]

I would pay 20 dollars, or an extra few bucks in my sub if necessary, to get access to a bunch of 'Job glams.' Different spell/ability effects, different weapon options (How rad would it be to get a NIN that is a thief that uses PLD swords and item themes for Ninjutsu?), Egi glamours, a "Red Wizard" as a SCH or WHM so we could get a Red Magic themed healer, ect. Monk with a staff named Blackbelt, anyone?

Like I get that would be a nightmare for them to maintain, but a little part of me hopes that part of the 'point' of BLU was to give them the infrastructure to create a 'Spell Glamour' mechanic that lets you change the visuals of your abilities, like rotating around what kinda Black Mage spells you use for what task.

It could be made into content, too. I can name quite a few games that had spell glamour tied to class specific quest chains. The only reward being turning your fire spells green, your arrows are now made of light, you're holy templar is now umbral themed..

I've long thought that this might be a great opportunity for a sphere grid, crystarium, license board, classic FF like merit system for each job. Here in you could do non-balance damaging adjustments to your job and give players a sense of growth after cap (as well you might sneak it very slow growth uncapped).

As you both have exampled some ideas we're head start here but to add besides the visuals like you both mentioned, so say like Dark Knight's smokey black aura effect from the Heavensward trailer, you can also add non-combat gimmicks and tools. Like for Dragoon you could unlock a toggle passive that lets you jump higher in areas that you've unlocked flying (perhaps also giving a sticky landing effect so dragoon can climb unpathable objects, spear stuck in surface standing on it like Sun Wukong or Kain might). Nidhogg / Hraesvelgr theme'd dragoon AF (and even animation effects, like leaping off with the dark magic looking effect or with a slight holy and feathers effect of Hraesvelgr). Bard could have new instruments placed in there, or a new mount that is played from their harp (playing on a bed of notes, perhaps a combination of the cloud mount and the notes with a side seating position, mount also lets them actually play music while mounted), dancer gaining new dance emotes, alchemist might gain open world bonus where potions last significantly longer. So long as you're avoiding instances you could have a lot of flavor fun. Miner with their pickaxe slapped into a rock using it like a motor on a boat with a bunch of spriggans pushing it like the Namazu (but from behind). Samurai with option to have flower petals fall from their dash attacks. Level x omnicrafter unlock a non-consumable "item" minion non-tradeable / unique (perhaps recipe, reasonably attainable materials lol) that temporarily spawns a cute mammet tinker when used, with cooldown, and acts as a repair station for all players that interact with it. Woodworker + moogle delivery rank X, moogle flute that lets you send and receive mail and purchase basic supplies (with more supplies based on your moogle rank). DoH / DoL, depending on creative limits may need to share exp pool (suppose it depends on how many cool, interesting, ideas you might be able to focus down on each role.. but might just be easier to use sphere locks for certain things in that situation).

I think having certain FATEs or other sort of content with a cleverly paced merit cost EXP curve could add a lot to the experience such you might have a grid with many items gated behind level spheres (like in FFX), early on Dragoon for example might have access to soft landing passive which reduces fall damage in half. So with a bit of time, maybe around 35 - 40 you might get your first merit (half fall damage), and then you may gain access to a few nodes as you level but they're goals not just instantly unlocked, by 50 - 60 you'd probably have the soft landing skill upgraded for 100% fall damage negation. May even introduce massively long term goals with the ability to purchase the skill out of job, so once you hit 100% fall damage reduction on dragoon (tier 2) at level 70 or 80 tier 3 unlocks and you could dump a massive amount of points into unlocking 50% fall damage reduction for all jobs. Say if a mage earned a special teleport (like Black Mage may be able to slip through cracks in the void, reaching some different locations than the standard atheryte once attuned to), similar concept if a player couldn't be bothered to just switch to that job lol. Although some things should be reserved, like in the dragoon example the tier 3 would only be 50% fall damage reduction to all jobs.

Excess points being convertible to a general category that can use in case of max / lack of care for the job itself, with general concept opportunities like once you complete Hildibrand quest your Manderville Man Run sphere unlocks and you can purchase it (although being made available at the Golden Saucer would work too lol), and ultimately / alternatively you might be able to convert excess tokens (like the feathers, venture, etc).

Adds a sort of low cost way to manipulate your character while staying in line with FF and FFXIV theme (visual can be shape and similar color to your soul crystal), cheap since they don't have to write quests for every single unique option, and also adds a bit more to exp and opportunity to place some goof / just for fun progression toys.

[StormyFae]

This isn't even gamers today. I remember this crap back in Diablo II when you got on Battle.net. Do whatever you want in a solo or co-op game with your friends but there were only the "right" builds out there with strangers. Same with the Talent trees in WoW. I mainly just soloed or small grouped in that game up to Pandaria because I chose the trees that were interesting for me, not what others thought I should.

tell that to my leaper barbarin or spear amazon that slaughtered people in pvp, i never followed "best builds" and i always pked people who used them and won with my own unique build lol or my martial art assassin

thing is "there was never a best build" there was only "good builds for stupid people who couldnt think for themself" thats what it was lol if you planned and worked at it everything could destory those best builds

hell even my enchant sorcess wasnt "best build" yet could do 100k with a mele hit with enchant lol

[Ralph2449]

Beyond some of the harsh language and seeming pessimism, I would say that this is a problem for the wider MMORPG genre.

I think that metagaming itself is harmful for the role playing games. A genre that was about adventure and immersion that came from Dungeons and Dragons, it's important to look back to Dungeons and Dragons. This is a social game without the pressure to play well, and without a meta.

It is very clearly harmful and bad but something being harmful and bad doesnt stop people from doing it(And to be clear, I mean harmful and bad to OTHER people, if someone wants to do something unhealthy to themselves like smoke privately I have no issue with that), just like people who point out bad or unhealthy or toxic behaviors are called Sjws so some people never have to change their toxic ways.


WoW classic proved that the gaming community is the problem, anyone with even a little bit of brain power knew that the vanilla experience would NEVER be recreated because the gaming community is nothing like it was in 2004 and as expected WoW classic was filled with elitist tryhards and toxicity where people demanded others play "meta" or they dont get invited, in a game where literally 10 decent people can carry 30 other players cuz the content was tuned very very low and there was like 1-2 mechanics at most.

When a game is tuned that low that lets say it requires 20 overall dps from those 40 players, and a decent person can do 100, even if your non meta spec talents was so badly tuned that it did 50 damage, that was literally DOUBLE the raid requirement but even that was not enough because elitist only accepted 98+ because god forbid the fight lasted more than a few seconds

The gaming community is simply incapable of having independent thought which is exactly why I understand Yoshi P. when it comes to not wanting to add customization.

What customization? When 90% of the playerbase is gonna blindly follow whatever a sim some dude wrote where's the """""customization""""?, 1sims that were optimized the "best" options and never even bothered to think or try to optimize for those """"bad"""" option combinations because clearly initial sims show that these combinations are dominant so why bother try to optimize a sim for this weird niche combination that initially doesnt look good. (Cough cough a certain wow priest legendary failing disastrously to write cough cough)

There is no customization, FEW PEOPLE, VERY FEW PEOPLE LIKE ME are capable of choosing the sub optimal choices and ignoring the meta, I played with sims and know how they work because I often spend hours in raidbots trying to get an estimate of all the builds i liked, but unlike the average gamer I didnt go "This number is higher so i must choose that", I liked X build options, let's see how they perform until i found a combination I liked for ALL SCENARIOS(I am not a tryhard that literally changes build for every boss and dungeon), and builds that also fitted my theme aka aff is a DOT FOCUSED CLASS, not some silly direct damage malefic grasp spec so the build I am gonna create and test via sims is gonna be one that focuses on Dots always taking into account that sims are rarely ever made with sub optimal choices coded well in mind

I play mmorpgs as they are meant to be played, the average gamer TM on the other hand plays it as a tool to feed their self esteem so they have 0 choices but be slaves to whatever meta exists because they simply cant imagine playing something that a sim or logs didnt call "the best"

[Raikai]

They've made it a point to remove anything that could possibly make someone better or worse than another playing the same job (and often same role) due to customization choice.

Except for materia, which has been simplified several times itself, they've removed:

• stat allocation points on level up
• the ability to equip accessories from other roles for different stats
• cross-class abilities
• slots for role actions letting you choose which to set

In related changes that weren't expressly the removal of customization, they've also removed:

• all stances that give any sort of stat or ability trade-off
• several different sub-stats that weren't favorable on gear
• pets actually existing in the world, needing to be controlled, affected by AoEs, etc.
• TP and its ability to be depleted
• MP as an actual stat and all abilities that affect it except for one that's shared by everyone
• Protect, Shell, and Stoneskin

I love job/ability system games, FFV is my favorite in the series, and all the Bravely Default games are fantastic. But I can plainly see this goes against everything they do in FFXIV here.

Edit: I should also mention that one of the reasons they gave for making Blue Mage a silly minigame instead of an actual job was that players might not have the spells others expect them to.

Basically this sums the whole situation.

I love the stability and balance that this "under the leashes" job design gives... But not gonna lie, the only thing I miss about WoW (more back in the day than in the recent iterations) is how the gameplay can be customizable sometimes within even the same specialization.

In XIV there's the thing about you being able to swap freely through jobs that makes it somewhat more bearable. And that's probably the reason why they always add at least 2 new jobs per expansion. Since they can't customize the gameplay of each individually, at least they offer a wide array of options.

[FawkesWyznfarr]

If everyone is overpowered, then no one will be.

[ForteNightshade]

WoW classic proved that the gaming community is the problem, anyone with even a little bit of brain power knew that the vanilla experience would NEVER be recreated because the gaming community is nothing like it was in 2004 and as expected WoW classic was filled with elitist tryhards and toxicity where people demanded others play "meta" or they dont get invited, in a game where literally 10 decent people can carry 30 other players cuz the content was tuned very very low and there was like 1-2 mechanics at most.

I do love how you completely disregard the incredibly selfish mindset this encourages. Thirty players can play however they want, even if it's entirely detrimental because they have little idea how their class functions, so long as ten people are both good and willing to carry said players through it. In other words, good players aren't allowed to have standards of their own and should they opt to enforce standards in their own parties, they're toxic and EEEEVILLL. But everyone else benefiting from their effort while contributing little of their own aren't toxic at all. They're just "having fun."

Gotta love that double standard.

[StormyFae]

If everyone is overpowered, then no one will be.

it not rlly about power though its more along the lines of not going brain dead because no matter what you do the entire game your doing the exact same combo and no room to make that combo yours, hell you cant even macro to give it flavor without destroying it. So really what's the point in long term when everyone has all the abilitys at said level and then its either you suck at it completely, your trolling or your doing the combo right. There is 0 in-between there and no boss fights and stuff like that doesn't make it okay for the classes/jobs to be brain rot game play because once you see a full pattern that boss becomes a joke after the first time lol

Modern games in general mmo or not encourages people to be stupid honestly with how modern game design is it takes little to any brain power to play lol

[TaleraRistain]

This is why balance is so important. Having lots of choice can feel nice but it's meaningless if only a few choices are good. WoW's talent trees gave the illusion of choice. There were many ways to spend your points but for the most part there were only two good ways to spend them for each spec and most of the time these two ways only had minor differences. If you went against the grain and went for something totally different you were ridiculed if the result was that your character had noticeably less usefulness in combat. While some people consider that to be a meanspirited reaction to someone's choice in how they spent their talent points, by having a character that isn't well made you are forcing other people to work harder to make up for it and that's not fair. I remember healing some tanks who made some interesting choices with their talents and it wasn't a pleasant experience for me.

Having lots of combat flavour can be great, but only if all those flavours are very effective.

WoW definitely was the illusion of choice but Diablo II had a lot of flexibility. Those "non-meta" builds were just as powerful in the hands of someone who pushed them to their full potential. But people couldn't get out of the mindset of the "right" builds so they harassed or stigmatized anyone who went outside of that mentality. We saw the same thing here in XIV when we had cross-classes. But a big fault there was game design that let any choice be weaker than another. Of course that's a really complicated situation to balance, so I can see why they simplified and streamlined.