Dual Topics

[VictorTheed]

I been playing Dragon's Dogma while waiting for EW to come out and I wish our trust system was like their pawn system where I can create pawns, lvl em up and hire other players pawns and they can hire mine.

If u never played Dogma then best way I could describe it is imagine if you could hire other players retainers and they could hire yours and you take em in dungeons and open world content.

Also I really hope Reaper is a debuffer job, we don't have any dedicated debuffers and this would be a cool playstyle, like how RDM and DNC have a good portion of support, Reaper would have a good portion of debuffs to put on enemies.

[ItMe]

Also I really hope Reaper is a debuffer job, we don't have any dedicated debuffers and this would be a cool playstyle, like how RDM and DNC have a good portion of support, Reaper would have a good portion of debuffs to put on enemies.

Reaper has just been confirmed in the Live Letter to be almost SAM like in its "pure DPS"-ness.

[VictorTheed]

Reaper has just been confirmed in the Live Letter to be almost SAM like in its "pure DPS"-ness.

Ty for the info friend, I'll go check that out.

[Shougun]

In discussions surrounding and trusts I liked the idea that trusts became a bit more classical companion, by that thinking like a Bioware game companion and other related like games (Divinity Orinal Sin 2 perhaps). Such that they come with personal quests and unique progressions. Then there would be, perhaps having some inspiration or reusing 1.0 companion assets (we used to have a semi-create your own companion system back then), you could have a custom one. I believe, have not played, that Star Wars Online has a nice companions system to reference as well (from hearing people talk about it). Perhaps then you could have your 'pawn' (created buddy) go out and mercenary for other players. With the whole system sharing the more interesting progression system (currently you can 'level' trusts, but the point of leveling is just to unlock content again, unlike squadrons it doesn't really provide anything meaningful to the game besides a content locking system).

Squadrons being used in something far more squadron-y based (conquest, acquisition, supply lines, construction, etc- new content ideally not being a idle board where you send them out, or at least not frequently). Like one idea that could bring a whole new vibe of content, besides just going out on missions with your squadron into old dungeons that have been remixed on enemy layout (like clear out a dungeon via MSQ trusts/DF and then you come back with your squadron with monsters that are trying to reclaim the place, and your GC helps secure areas, sometimes newer branches of the dungeon, for resources), but the step potentially above that could be like a dynasty warrior like vibe. Such that it's like insane numbers of monsters as you break into strongholds and what have you, cleaving through 10 enemies at once, sieges (maybe some Middle Earth: Shadow of War inspiration vibes).

Maybe also combine the companion and trust UI, such that the info of your friends is far more quickly displayed together but a distinction is made from those you can queue in instances vs the ones you can summon in the open world (and, ideally, queue for instances- like chocobo, or your create your own companion option). The chocobo and 'pawn' having their own unique progression systems, like chocobo might be the much longer road given they've no real equipment, meanwhile the pawn can accelerate a lot of growth by equipment though both have progression concepts. I'd encourage moving away in general, speaking for trusts which is a system currently, the leveling idea and move towards more of variations of merit, perks, and unlocks. Like chocobo in some sense, but you might have license boards, sphere grids, personal quests, soul gems (that may have their own grids), etc- in this way you can make progression in a more natural format and potentially balance can be easier to maintain at the same time (you may purchase the unlock for an AoE on trust member X but they also have this really cool buff that is mutually exclusive that you could use instead, similar to how Diablo 3 companions make you choose). Squadrons also have a choice system via their tactics, using inspiration from that is also viable (to note max offense squadron makes trusts look like wet weak limp noodles lol).


On the debuff job, an idea mentioned for blue mage that I might throw in the pool for a debuff idea in general. Is the job has a special 'generic' debuff that is applied on the instance of any failed to apply debuff. So if you cast say bad breath on a boss.. you'd expect most of it to fail right? Well that's fine- it'll convert the failed ones into a stacking debuff that can interact with other spells (and maybe has a dot effect to it as well). Then you design the job to be able to interact with their dots and debuffs and in the worst case scenario the job still functions fine (like a hunt monster rather than getting 1000000000 debuffs would just get one unique stacking debuff per job, which should be within a reasonable limit). Naturally you can still have some debuffs balanced to work on bosses, reducing damage or what have you, but this would insure you could have a greater variety of debuffs that might be unfair in certain situations and not break the game. Like how white mage can stun lock most trash packs but it doesn't work on bosses (holy spam, a neat quirk of white mage).

From a dark healer thread I had an idea that also might work into the debuff concepts- one was curse healing where you could prevent a target from dealing damage to your party up to X amount. A concept that would be really nice for an offensive based healer or DD job. Casting it before a tank buster would help the tank, before raid wide helping the raid, etc. You might think of it as an offensive 'shield' mechanic. Hard to control what it will help with but potentially very powerful and also very easy to use (and so it would need cooldowns and such). Then another idea for balance but offensive support (can be used in a defense image as well) is capped buffs. For example in the dark thread I think I called it hemorrhaging spine which caused the monster to take extra % damage up X amount, and they take damage on actions / moving. Then you have this interactive debuff that also has an upper limit for balance, such that having 1 member, 2 members, 4, 8 the balance is within a tolerance you can expect. The issue with a generic "increases damage by 10%" is that the value of that skill can change quite a bit depending on people (10% on 4 player's work is lower total benefit than 8 players, but a capped buff / debuff event allows you to be far more liberal and consistent with these types of ideas since you'd not be like WWOOOW NELLY, NERF AST BUFFS lol, as you'd 'know' what's the best case scenario). A defensive example could be a job casting enfire which increases a job's melee attacks up to X potency, meaning if you slapped it on Ninja wouldn't cause a disruption vs slapping it on samurai. Just some ideas to maybe make the idea of a debuffer-like job seem less problematic.