Thoughts on removing role actions?

[Zairava]

I didn't come up with this idea, but what are your thoughts on the removal of role actions?

I'm in agreement it would open up space for more unique actions across all of the jobs. Even if an action or two would wind up being functionally similar or the same.

For examples, in the sense of abilities being functionally similar or identical, yet unique in animation at the very least, we already see this across the tanks:

• Dark Missionary and Heart of Light
• TBN,Heart of Stone/Heart of Corundum, Raw intution/Bloodwhetting and Sheltron/Holy Sheltron
• Shadow Wall, Nebula, Vengeance and Sentinel
• Living Dead, Superbolide, Holmgang and Hallowed Ground
• Delirium and Inner Release (I really this one in particular changes to not be so similar. At least Requiescat on Paladin feels unique to the job)

All in all, I believe the removal may help job design overall, since balancing with the role actions in mind no longer need to be accounted for, they may focus on the jobs themselves. As stated, it could provide all jobs with unique abilities and effects that provide to their own identity.

[Canadane]

This is how it was before.
Classes would learn similar but different actions. While I miss some of the flavour, I don't expect them to go back.

RIP leeches.

[Shurrikhan]

what are your thoughts on the removal of role actions?

Remove em all. Lucid Dreaming is bloat, the effect over time of which should be baseline, and Rampart, Swiftcast, and Provoke are the only other ones remotely necessary.


Provoke:

• GLD->PLD: Provoke -> Guardian's Vow (Provoke target or all enemies currently near to or at active threat against target ally.)
• MRD->WAR: Taunt -> Challenge (Provoke target and all enemies in a wide line to and extending a bit behind the target.)
• DRK: Call of the Void (Provoke target and enemies within 5 yalms of target to self or, second to any Shadow-Self between you and the target.)
• GNB: Shock and Awe (Provoke. For 4 seconds thereafter, your Enmity is massively increased and you degrade enemy Accuracy based on your % increase to Enmity relative to when you first casts S&A.)

Rampart:

• PLD: "Bulwark" or "Entrench"
• WAR: Clash
• DRK: Shadowskin
• GNB: Flash of Steel

I'll leave those to your imagination. Let's just not let them all be 20% miti for 15 seconds per 90s.

Swiftcast:

• WHM: Give it something to do with its (white) wind spells, and maybe something cumulatively charged up and granularly depleted by any healing GCDs, including Lily heals.
• SGE: Allow SGE to simply assign a nouliths to the Rez, completing the spell independently while you continue on at 75% ST-GCD output. Faster raise than most healers.
• SCH: Allow the Fairy to cast the Raise instead, and cause Emergency Tactics to consume an Aetherflow but make the next spell cast, say, 75% more quickly and heal for an extra 200 potency ST or 100 AoE (that bonus heal would go off after the rez is accepted and completed).
• AST: .<Idk. Something with sigularities, perhaps benefiting from the number of DoTs or HoTs you have active, as per the old "theoretical sun" flavor text on HW Combust.>
• SMN: Something, something, Garuda and, separately, Phoenix. (Garuda buff does doesn't need to be capable of a full instant rez. Phoenix could get a re-Raise for all I care, since it'd be so timing sensitive. And also fitting and awesome.)
• RDM: Acceleration tie-in. (Don't make Dual-cast able to completely negate a rez's time. Just have it trim 3.5 seconds such that Veraero, etc., are still made instant.)
• BLM: Change Triple Cast back into old THM Dark Seal, instead consuming a more granular resource (bankable up to 4) to make your next n casts instant, and make it a toggle (animation lock to activate, but none to turn off). Voila, you could use just one, or a whole four (as per old Swift+Triple). You generate one stack per 15s.

[Zairava]

I can't comment on the ranged since I don't play them much, although I have been enjoying the hell out of black mage.. That said, if it helps them jobs feel better, I'm all for it.

As for tanks I am definitely for those for the tanks. Not only do I wish we still had ultimatum, but lord I'm tired of Rampart. It does it's job, but I would much rather get bulwark of convalescence back for Paladin. The rest sound good to me too.

perhaps Shadowskin could decrease enemy damage by 15% and heal for 200 potency everytime you get hit?

Flash of Steel could function as what Blind did for Paladin, just gives all mobs around you blind.

Clash...I'm actually not sure. I'll let others speculate for that

[Seraphor]

One good thing about role actions is they ignore level sync. Whether that outweighs the benefits of having unique actions I'm not sure, but neither are particularly detrimental as they are.
There's benefits to having some consistency in skills such as Reprisal, Feint and Addle, so that its easier to track debuffs, and it's nice to have some 'basics' that don't change between jobs that you can fall back on in low level content, like Second Wind and Peloton.

You could go the other way and add in high level role actions to take advantage of this further.
For example; Troubadour, Tactician and Shield Samba all do the same thing, and while it's nice that each job has it's own version and animation, nothing would be lost if they were all turned into a role action, which you learned at level 60 but could be used in lower level duties.

Perhaps instead they could make it so that all Class abilities ignored level sync. This would mean that once you reach level 30, that's the minimum kit you'll ever take back into level synced content, and then throw in a few odd class abilities above level 30. The issue here of course is jobs that don't have base classes. So I guess that's why we're still relying on job actions.

[Shurrikhan]

One good thing about role actions is they ignore level sync. Whether that outweighs the benefits of having unique actions I'm not sure, but neither are particularly detrimental as they are.

This feels like an oversight that shouldn't push our determination one way or the other. Role Actions ought to be treated the same way as any other action.

It just becomes a question of whether we want (the option) to retain our kits (with commensurate decrease to output so that, yes, we have to work harder for barely increased effect, if we so choose) as we're synced down.



Likewise...

For example; Troubadour, Tactician and Shield Samba all do the same thing, and while it's nice that each job has it's own version and animation, nothing would be lost if they were all turned into a role action, which you learned at level 60 but could be used in lower level duties.

This just seems so random and gimmicky. Either it's worth having those skills under level 60, or it's not. They don't need a wonky oversight to excuse their presence at those levels.

[Seraphor]

This feels like an oversight that shouldn't push our determination one way or the other. Role Actions ought to be treated the same way as any other action.

It just becomes a question of whether we want (the option) to retain our kits (with commensurate decrease to output so that, yes, we have to work harder for barely increased effect, if we so choose) as we're synced down.



Likewise...

This just seems so random and gimmicky. Either it's worth having those skills under level 60, or it's not. They don't need a wonky oversight to excuse their presence at those levels.

While kinda a seperate issue, low level skill shortage is a big issue. As our level cap increases but we maintain the same number of skills, low level duties will get increasingly more boring, which we're already feeling.
Retaining all of our kit is a huge no, not only for the insurmountable balance issues this would create, but also because having to focus on your endgame rotation to match the dps output of a sprout spamming their level 1 skill would be a miserable experience for daily roulettes.

It is not an all-or-nothing scenario.
One way of partially mitigating this is having skills that 'level up', like Healers dps spells, and many of our melee combo skills now too.
Having some skills that ignore level sync, especially utility skills that don't drastically effect game balance, is another way of mitigating this to some degree.

So yes, there's certainly merit in having role skills ignore level sync.
As i said, if there were a way of selecting which skills ignore level sync as the class/job system allows, but for all jobs, that would be great, but instead, we have role skills. I think giving all jobs a base class at this late stage is a tad less likely than simply retaining role actions.

"Role Actions ought to be treated the same way as any other action."
Why? This seems like an incredibly arbitrary stance to take, when having role actions be treated differently to other actions can provide a form of depth to the skill system, as they in fact do already, just not in an incredibly noticeable way.

I don't think it is a "wonky oversight" to have skills that ignore level sync, it provides some sense of progression to the levelling experience, learning skills that you retain when synced make it feel like those levels you gained were worth something. When you're perpetually level synced for 90% of your content until you actually make it to endgame, you lose that sense of progression and it all feels completely arbitrary.

[Shurrikhan]

While kinda a seperate issue, low level skill shortage is a big issue. As our level cap increases but we maintain the same number of skills, low level duties will get increasingly more boring, which we're already feeling.

Then... why not let players choose to keep their kits?

Retaining all of our kit is a huge no, not only for the insurmountable balance issues this would create, but also because having to focus on your endgame rotation to match the dps output of a sprout spamming their level 1 skill would be a miserable experience for daily roulettes.

Why? Why is it a problem to offer that option? I would gladly toggle on an option to let me use my full kit, regardless of needing to put in more effort for (nearly) the same result, to make low level content less boring. That's a far less miserable experience, to me (and likely many others), than only being able to spam one button.

Why? This seems like an incredibly arbitrary stance to take.

And "these 5 skills should be randomly retained across level sync despite likewise having fixed acquisition levels" isn't a wholly arbitrary stance?

Every new action that is not merely an upgrade "provides a form of depth to the skill system," not just Role Actions. So why prevent even the option of using them in lower-level content?

I don't think it is a "wonky oversight" to have skills that ignore level sync

Ngl, advantages born of arbitrary or unintended exceptions to an otherwise universal rule seems a whole lot like an oversight.

it provides some sense of progression to the levelling experience, learning skills that you retain when synced make it feel like those levels you gained were worth something.

But they only feel that way specifically because "you retain [them] when synced." Why would that not apply, then, to any other skill if we just let players choose to retain them while synced (at more effort required for their throughput)?

[Seraphor]

"Then... why not let players choose to keep their kits?"

Already been debated to death on these forums so I'm not sure why it needs repeating, but the balancing issues for this would be immense.
You're balancing level 50 kit at levels 15-50, all of which need different adjustments. (a level 50 kit at level 15 might need a -25% damage modifier, while a level 50 kit at level 30 might need a -10% damage modifier, etc.)
A level 60 kit at levels 15-60.
A level 70 kit at levels 15-70.
A level 80 kit at levels 15-80.
A level 90 kit at levels 15-80.
Ensuring that at each level differential, you're outputting the same amount of dps.
None of that is easy when you have compounding effects of GCD potency increases, additional oGCD's increasing APM, and stacking 5%/10%/15% damage buffs, all at different level ranges for different jobs. So you're doing this on a per-job basis.
That's the manpower of several stat squishes at once, and they took an entire expansion cycle to pull that off, which cost us an Ultimate.

Without putting that work in, a level 90 kit would deal nearly 4 times the dps output of a level 18 in sastasha, or nearly 3 times a level 50 player, give or take depending on the job. Ensuring that all newbies are dead weight in any content they play, and ultimately fostering a culture of kicking newbies.

[Shurrikhan]

Already been debated to death on these forums so I'm not sure why it needs repeating,

And it has yet to be debated convincingly. We've already seen this work well in other MMOs.

The "but our devs are especially incompetent" excuse only goes so far in debating the merits of an option (or, in continuing to refuse players that option).

Typical healer gameplay, for instance, is pretty damn dull. Should we just accept its boredom, too, just because the devs would "take too long" to fix it?

You're balancing...

We're balancing relative ppm as constrained in practice across varying fight lengths. That's not terribly difficult to sim to rough parity.
And it is totally fine for it to end up slightly under (it'd be an option, by which to avoid mind-numbing boredom) or over (it requires far more effort, and the nature of the dungeon selections and first-time completion rewards atop the ease of the content regardless more than offsets any such advantage).

ultimately fostering a culture of kicking newbies.

So let's see:

You can only get the given dungeon because of said newbie who queued it in the first place before you filled out their party via the roulette, you are doing the given roulette over the at least as exp efficient current dungeon largely because of tomes, and the newbie's first time bonus roughly doubles your tome rewards. Yet, people are going to suddenly kick their remove their double-meal tickets, reducing their reward efficiency, just because they had chosen an option by which to go out of their way to put in more effort as to be less bored?