Linear, linear, linear

[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.

[Shurrikhan]

Yeah I wouldn't say Heavensward destroyed classes exactly - It mostly added abilities for the individual classes, but then ignored the possibility of expanding the cross-class system itself. They kinda just stopped working on it altogether. It was the start of the formfactor we have today.

So Heavensward changed the environment, exploration systems, and dungeons mostly, then Stormblood finished it off with the class adjustments and cross-class destruction.

It was like a 1, 2 punch. lol

Ahhh. Okay. Just because I didn't consider "leaving it to fizzle" as quite a change in itself, that didn't quite register for me. I get yah now.

I feel like even if they wanted to salvage those systems, though, it would likely have felt to them too late to do anything particularly well, as they had already removed Character Levels (where class/job Ranks were instead horizontal progression) and never mapped out any sort of criteria for proficiency growth (where XP in playing DRK might bleed slightly into experience also with other Tanks, other sword-users, etc.).

I'd still have loved to see it given a further shot that capitalized on the "All Jobs on One Character" aspect, though, yeah, by perhaps lowering the grind walls and increasing casual/midcore content engagement and longevity in their place.

[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.

[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.

[Shurrikhan]

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.

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.

Well, and I like for different fights (and, up to an equal degree, compositions) to influence how I play a job therein -- rather than just swapping my talents around, putting the new actions in the old's place, and playing more similarly between fights (in terms of button-flow and strategy) than I would if not for those load-outs / constraints existing.

And, if we actually changed that context so that it was expected that everyone multi-jobbed anyways, and that grind-barrier (and perhaps gear-lockout barrier) to multi-jobbing was reduced, I wouldn't even mind some jobs having a pretty hefty utility advantage in this or that fight. I just don't want to see any advantage in terms of basic category of capacity (this job is the AoE god, that job the best at ST [in a raidbuff-packed party], etc.).

Edit:
As for power creep, if those skills are ones that would normally be split up across different "specs" or parts of a "pick X of Y" selection, they're generally going to be at least somewhat anti-synergetic, much likes stances and spenders. You can do A or B, not both. Which is (unless the choice is always obvious, though then those actions couldn't possibly have been in competing builds).... customization, to the same degree that choosing build A or build B (where in a particular context [skill, composition, coordination], one build may be superior).

[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.