Linear, linear, linear

[Atelier-Bagur]

Copperbell is probably one of the few examples where I would agree that the changes, at least to bosses, are justified. I personally dislike the removal of the already limited interactions with the environment however.

It still falls under baby's first dungeon and while I never had an issue with the add fights (I still remember when they didn't die in a single hit) it is understandable that they were replaced with an introduction to what boss mechanics are going to look like.

The fact that modern fights can be boiled down to stack, spread, dodge the cleave, is a different discussion entirely.

Funny how Toto-Rak was also one of the most bleh dungeons to run through before the change.

Granted its still bleh with the recent change but at least you dont have to deal with photocells or slowdown goo or getting grumpy if the group doesnt take the optimal path.

I wish they set dressed the instance a little bit more interesting though. Its such a shame they didnt take the opportunity to put more cool looking Gelmorran structures to make the linearity at least more interesting visually.

[TheMightyMollusk]

The first boss was waves of dull slow-spawning trash ending with one slightly stronger gigas. The second boss was a lot of standing around waiting for that bloody lever to turn back on. I don't miss either.

[Atelier-Bagur]

The first boss was waves of dull slow-spawning trash ending with one slightly stronger gigas. The second boss was a lot of standing around waiting for that bloody lever to turn back on. I don't miss either.

NOW GRANTED, if CBU3 actually kept with the unique boss encounter design where later boss fights were more than just tank and spank then yeah those old boss designs would've made sense to keep as tutorials even if they were were lame and boring.

Lets face it, the linearity didnt start with EW. Its started as soon as the game went to Heveansward as dungeons and bosses became more and more streamlined as the expansions rolled by. Is this a good thing? weeeelll part of me enjoys the consistency in content being simple and familiar to the point you dont need to whip out a wiki or dungeon guide to come prepared for every single dungeon and encounter in the game. That would get frustrating and old real fast, but I do wish they at least dabble in just a few twists here and there that still keep the encounters simple but give them something unique to it.

One notable example is the 2nd boss in Bardam's Mettle. I like the idea that the whole thing is just dodging its AoEs. Not every boss needs to be that subversive like that but its stuff like that I wish the team would explore at least for dungeon content

[R041]

Lets face it, the linearity didnt start with EW. Its started as soon as the game went to Heveansward

I'M GONNA SAY IT.. Heavensward sucked

*braces for impact*

Okay, not because it's a bad story. But because I think it being an expac garnered general attention and praise as the community itself grew, so CBU:III took that as the expac design being good. Then we kept boiling everything down as sub-versions of Heavensward. This is kinda also where they went "How can we be more different from WoW?" and it almost seemed like they were changing shit just to change shit regardless of it being good or bad.

Basically Heavensward is to ARR as ARR was to 1.0. We can argue the specifics, but we know that's basically true.

It has a lot of pros to me, but that came with a ton of cons too. :/

[kpxmanifesto]

I'M GONNA SAY IT.. Heavensward sucked

*braces for impact*

Okay, not because it's a bad story. But because I think it being an expac garnered general attention and praise as the community itself grew, so CBU:III took that as the expac design being good. Then we kept boiling everything down as sub-versions of Heavensward. This is kinda also where they went "How can we be more different from WoW?" and it almost seemed like they were changing shit just to change shit regardless of it being good or bad.

Basically Heavensward is to ARR as ARR was to 1.0. We can argue the specifics, but we know that's basically true.

It has a lot of pros to me, but that came with a ton of cons too. :/

Wow that's a bold opinion. I felt that a lot of the changes that came with HW were good ones and that the expac was a huge step up from ARR overall.

[R041]

Wow that's a bold opinion. I felt that a lot of the changes that came with HW were good ones and that the expac was a huge step up from ARR overall.

It's been pretty divisive I think.. It has a lot of good things, but also made a lot of sweeping changes to core systems and completely gutted a lot of personal expression in favor of streamlining everything. When you compare Heavensward to Endwalker, they're night and day of personal expression and RPG elements. But the same can be said for ARR to Heavensward.

I personally think they should have stayed on the path that ARR was heading, and they could have made the QoL changes we wanted in doing so. It was their own fault for locking critical abilities behind other secondary classes, so instead of balancing things out or making that experience easier - They opted to just destroy systems and put nothing in their place. This was the start of culling player self-expression, build capabilities, and RPG systems.

We say those things were bad, but they were only bad because CBU:III didn't balance them correctly. That kinda goes along with a lot of stuff they do. And we often conflate bad systems with it actually just being bad balance, and bad engagement.

Also the flying everywhere is absolutely egregious. You go from walking everywhere, and sometimes it takes a long time. To flying everywhere and it literally taking LONGER than it ever did walking in ARR. Because the maps are way too large.

Edit: Also, if anyone tries to say ARR content was bad while only experiencing it using classes and systems from HW+, that's because for the past 7 years or so we've been basically playing Checkers on a Chess board with half chess pieces and the car from Monopoly. So of course it's going to feel bad.

[thevanguard]

Wow that's a bold opinion. I felt that a lot of the changes that came with HW were good ones and that the expac was a huge step up from ARR overall.

HW started the trend of horrible open world design and has probably the worst open world maps in this game. Azys Lla, half of Sea of Clouds, half of Dravanian Forelands, basically the entire Coerthan West; they all are incredibly empty and pointless, and many are just huge squares.

HW maps are practically just ARR maps except you stretch the points of interest far apart and color the void with AI-generated terrain paint. All the subsequent expansions are no different. I would say it's the worst open world maps I've ever played but that would be a lie because there's Assassin's Creed Valhalla.

There is literally more lore, ambient NPCs, points of interest packed in an ARR map vs. HW despite the HW one being like four times larger or something. ARR maps feel like places people lived in and engaged with (like hot springs, empty huts, cerulean pipe lines). HW maps feel like going to Antarctica and being disappointed it's literally just a blank void.

If they can't fill the open world with enough points of interest just make the map smaller and denser and spend more resources on making interesting terrain (like Eureka Pagos)

[kpxmanifesto]

That said, I don't think a Talent system (unless you're imagining it rather differently from the likes of WoW, GW2, Rift, etc.) would be a remotely efficient investment. I would suspect instead that a "All Jobs on One Character" game ought to leverage that for its customization, rather than creating a ton of sub-jobs (via those different builds) in isolation from each other.

It doesn't have to be a talent system, necessarily. It could be anything that lets the player play their class differently from someone else of the same class.

Take wow for example. Around 2005-2011 I played a warlock and I could choose from three different specializations: destruction, affliction, and demonology. All three specs had somewhat different means of dealing damage. Destro was direct damage, affliction was damage over time, and demo's damage was heavily augmented by summoned demons. Yes, there are optimal specs to choose that deal the most damage, but choosing the current meta spec/build matters little when playing in a non-competitive guild or a casual pick-up group.

Once again, it doesn't have to be a full-on talent system like wow's, but it would be cool if FFXIV had some sort of way of giving the player a choice in how they can play their class. In FFXIV, the way I play my class, BLM, is pretty much the same as any other BLM minus small differences in rotation.

[Shurrikhan]

It doesn't have to be a talent system, necessarily. It could be anything that lets the player play their class differently from someone else of the same class.

Right, but to clarify the earlier two points:



First, being able to play X differently from others doesn't necessarily require a talent system, and therefore the talent system itself would usually be a choice made specifically to not give as many buttons or as much versatility to jobs, replacing potential gameplay with menuplay (usually to avoid 'overloading' the player with simultaneously actionable choices).

For a very, very minor example of this already in game, consider our different rotations on what few jobs have them to any meaningful degree: Optimal Drift Monk, for instance, plays a fair bit differently from Standard Rotation or Double-Solar, and while there is a 'best' choice, it's also the more susceptible to failure (more 'difficult').

Moreover, we easily could have multiple different-feeling macrorotations play out quite competitively over a given fight. Imagine, for instance, if Fists of Earth/Wind/Fire had been made actually decent mechanics (rather than just being one norm and two modest situational buffs outside of unlocking rotational skills) instead of being outright pruned to make room for the likes of Anatman? You could easily have it so that those stances feel quite distinct from each other and that while, yes, there may be one particular intricate rotation between all three stances that'd perform some 0.2% above the next best, you have a decent amount of choice there.

That proposed larger number of in-combat options --taken or left, though the buttons would usually still serve a purpose regardless-- would be essentially a gameplay (choices made in combat) means of differentiation, as compared to a menuplay (choices made outside of combat).

Personally, that's my preference, especially if we ever take a turn towards designing for jobs, rather than designing for role templates+gimmick (which we then call "jobs"). Granted, it can coexist with certain systems of menuplay customization, too.



Second, there's simply a matter of how to source those sub-builds, between either...

1. ...splitting up [some additional] part of the job aesthetic X ways (to follow with the Monk examples... Light Chakra Monk, Dark Chakra Monk, or Hybrid Monk... or, say, Fire/Lotus Monk, Wind/Gale Monk, Earth/Adamantine Monk, etc.), or...

2. ...adding to/atop an aesthetic via something from outside that job (such as per XI's sub-jobs, or by adding to Dragoon the Flowing Strikes trait from Monk [allowing it to more freely combo and to increasingly ramp up in speed], Avatar trait from Reaper [allowing it to go all Ran'jit], Evocation from Black Mage [allowing it to build and spend BotD duration more granularly on Geirskogul], or Blindsider from Ninja [causes Jump instead to just jump up high, instead augmenting your next GCD skill as if used from stealth], etc.

Both work. I just feel that a "All Jobs on One Character" schtick like XIV has definitely lends itself better to the latter. It otherwise comes off as a Chekov's Gun left unfired.

[kpxmanifesto]

therefore the talent system itself would usually be a choice made specifically to not give as many buttons or as much versatility to jobs, replacing potential gameplay with menuplay (usually to avoid 'overloading' the player with simultaneously actionable choices).

I'll be honest with you. I've never heard of this before. From what I've seen in other games, the addition of a talent system usually results in quite the opposite. It's to add more buttons and to add versatility and utility to a set of skills that a class already has. Allocating talent points in wow usually led to more active and passive skills being added to the player’s repertoire.

Do you happen to have a link to a source like a news article or blog that talks about talent trees actually replacing potential gameplay instead of increasing it?

The idea that a talent system would be a choice made to not give as many buttons or as much versatility to jobs is strange to me. I think most people would see that talent trees would add to that and not take away from it.