Linear, linear, linear

[Shurrikhan]

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.

So, if you started with X and then added the tree atop it, then sure, customization systems like Talent Trees will appear "additive".

But, what does the tree actually do? It tells you to pick X of Y, with which to then populate your bar. The alternative, was to have all of Y, and then to just use what you see fit to use (akin to Monk and Dragoon, too, having a greater number of and integration with significant non-DPS tools).

Those are ultimately the two choices decided between through taking either out-of-combat skill selection (pick outside of combat so you don't feel 'bloated' with as many in-combat decisions) or in-combat skill selection (greater number of actions, not all of which every player is expected to make great use of).

If there's limited button-count and button-efficiency, then customization trades breadth for depth. If there's no such hard limit, though, it's just pushing portions of would-be breadth out of sight and out of mind (like nearly all matters of gameplay outside of one's role, all while --if affecting capacities-- pigeonholing builds towards this encounter or that one).


:: Whether some means of providing actions is additive or not will depend on your frame of reference. If you compare it against simply not having that means of actions, then yeah, it'll look additive; but if you compare it against what could have taken its place, or against not having any such limitations (not forced to give up A and B to take C but can instead take all three), then it won't.

[kpxmanifesto]

So, if you started with X and then added the tree atop it, then sure, customization systems like Talent Trees will appear "additive".

But, what does the tree actually do? It tells you to pick X of Y, with which to then populate your bar. The alternative, was to have all of Y, and then to just use what you see fit to use (akin to Monk and Dragoon, too, having a greater number of and integration with significant non-DPS tools).

Those are ultimately the two choices decided between through taking either out-of-combat skill selection (pick outside of combat so you don't feel 'bloated' with as many in-combat decisions) or in-combat skill selection (greater number of actions, not all of which every player is expected to make great use of).

If there's limited button-count and button-efficiency, then customization trades breadth for depth. If there's no such hard limit, though, it's just pushing portions of would-be breadth out of sight and out of mind (like nearly all matters of gameplay outside of one's role, all while --if affecting capacities-- pigeonholing builds towards this encounter or that one).


:: Whether some means of providing actions is additive or not will depend on your frame of reference. If you compare it against simply not having that means of actions, then yeah, it'll look additive; but if you compare it against what could have taken its place, or against not having any such limitations (not forced to give up A and B to take C but can instead take all three), then it won't.

If SE came out with a BLM talent tree tomorrow that had several passive skills and two active skills that we had to choose from while leaving all other BLM skills unchanged, would that... not be additive? I'm a little confused with what you're trying to say here.

[Shurrikhan]

If SE came out with a BLM talent tree tomorrow that had several passive skills and two active skills that we had to choose from while leaving all other BLM skills unchanged, would that... not be additive? I'm a little confused with what you're trying to say here.

Again...

:: Whether some means of providing actions is additive or not will depend on your frame of reference. If you compare it against simply not having that means of actions, then yeah, it'll look additive; but if you compare it against what could have taken its place, or against not having any such limitations (not forced to give up A and B to take C but can instead take all three), then it won't.

If you added it to what we have now, yeah, it'd be "additive". The choice is between 5 skills (no customization), or "Pick 2 of 5 skills".

One (no "Customization") gives BLM 5 skills, the other ("Customization") 2 skills chosen from among 5. Which is the more "additive"?

It's similar to the question of "Assuming balanced effort-per-reward, so that players aren't obliged to simply swap to the highest output for what amount of effort they're willing to put in... Should SMN have a higher skill ceiling?"

One approach says that every job should have a pretty high skill ceiling, and people should be free to optimize as much or as little as they like (just give them everything). The other says that each job should have a different skill ceiling, but have their output ceiling vary accordingly, so that whatever they're not interested in dealing with is out of sight and out of mind (customize their gameplay to just their preferred slice). [The third choice is just to have intentional imbalance, as would affect the largest group of players, rather than just the occasional far easier job being less than ideal for speedrun parses.]

Here, too, you have the choice between customization allowing for varying amounts of complexity (which then, if balanced, affects output ceilings), or simply different types of complexity. But regardless, you're still saying, relative to everything that would seem fitting for, say, a BLM to have access to, you're taking only a part of those remaining prospects. More is designed than can be used at any given time. [This is much like how we can't use the kit of every job at once; jobs are, themselves, customization, after all. But here you're now taking a segment of a segment of available gameplay -- an increasingly narrow part.]

[kpxmanifesto]

One (no "Customization") gives BLM 5 skills

I mean, that would do away with the whole personal expression and customization bit again which is one of the major draws of being able to choose your talents. I would opt for the "pick 2 of 5 skills." It would still be additive and would give the player the option to customize their playstyle. Plus, depending on how SE balances it, being given all 5 skills could result in power creep.

[kpxmanifesto]

Again, I'm fine with either one as long as the "pick 2 of 5" doesn't over-specialize jobs in our current context.

I just slightly prefer greater job versatility over that, in part because it's sort of a direct rebuttal to tendencies to simplify jobs to a mere thin spread of gimmicks atop a basic role template.

Oh, I'm well aware of what your preferences were, lol. Thanks for weighing in.

[Atelier-Bagur]

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)

Ugh dont get me started on how annoying it was doing the HW tribal quests. Yeah good idea to spread the aetherytes as inconvenient as we can and having one of its zones aetheryte-less forcing you to warp to Idyllshire and having yourself walk out to the zone.

Sorry fam but HW zones takes the cake for having the worst zone designs, even if the set dressing is nice like Sea of Clouds and Azys Lla

[CelestiCer]

Y-you know w-what made the game more linear for me? ... the removal of " Kaiten " !! big nods!!

[Bunnycake]

Y-you know w-what made the game more linear for me? ... the removal of " Kaiten " !! big nods!!

On Discord every time I use that emoji it makes me think of you and Kaiten u3u

[Atelier-Bagur]

On Discord every time I use that emoji it makes me think of you and Kaiten u3u

This person is fighting the good fight. We gotta keep that copium alive that one day it'll return.

[PercibelTheren]

I think a step in the right direction towards making players spend more time in the open world of XIV would be to allow the gathering node detecting skills to be on no matter the job. I was used to this being the case in Rift way back when I played that and I still miss it immensely. Traveling from point A to point B felt a lot less like wasting my time when I could gather a plant for my potions here and mine some ore for weapons there. It felt rewarding to walk places instead of teleporting because there was always stuff to find along the way. I have been playing some Genshin Impact and I feel like the same applies there as well. There are a few select things you can only gather if you have a specific element/weapon character active, but you can still SEE that the thing is there. In XIV, unless you constantly have a gathering node map open or you have memorized the gathering spots, you have no clue.

The gathering nodes aren't exactly obvious, either. Sure, you gather wood from trees (mostly), but they look the exact same as all the other trees in the area. You can't look at the area and go "Oh hey! These are the flowers I need for X potion, let me pick them up!" because that one bush has 5 different gathering drops and you have no way of knowing unless your Botanist is active. Unfortunately, it's too late to ask them to change this because they would have to overhaul the entire game, but one can dream, right?