Skill trees and Alternate Advancement

[Meatdawg]

While I do like the idea and did enjoy this back when I played EQ, you are really opening up Pandora's box.

It won't take long before the better players find the path/skill set that is most OP and soon everyone is just another carbon copy of each other. The game is pretty well balanced as is right now, and adding new skills/spells just makes it that much harder to stay balanced.

Generally you end up with much more QQ'ing about spec A being so OP that it gets nerfed resulting in QQ'ing for respects. It is very hard to give players multiple options without one being the clear cut "best path".

I think there is a lot more for them to work on before they decide to undertake something like this.

[Holy_Dragoon]

This just oozes of bad things. The thing I love most about mmos is that there is no tree progression. 1 character, access to all jobs/skills as long as you take the time to level up.

Once you go to skill trees, you have respecing to deal with, or multiple characters. Both become pointless time sinks via gil farming or re-leveling.

Stick with the FF method, be different SE. Be a leader.

[Onisake]

I agree with Krausus to a degree.

Skill trees are relevent in other games, because your character is locked to a specific class. in XIV you can just change classes to fulfill a different purpose. sure it's more convenient in other games to be able to respec on the fly. but this is needed, because you can't switch roles on the fly like we can in XIV.

However i suspect that eventually you'll get something similar in the form of convenience when more jobs are released.

IE: glad may have pld and drk so they can either tank or DD. LNC could be similar, seeing as they have a main stat of PIE they could make another tank class based on that to resist magic damage instead of pld's primary physical resistance.

[Zezlar]

I don't want that crap in a Final Fantasy game. Sorry but I have to disagree very strongly.

[Skies]

Hrm... Aren't skill trees quest-based and called Jobs in this game?
I mean, that's what it looks like to me.

[Kyra]

Hrm... Aren't skill trees quest-based and called Jobs in this game?
I mean, that's what it looks like to me.

You would see it like that hehe. I wish I was a new player again, I would probably see it like this to, but its an illusion.

[Felis]

Hrm... Aren't skill trees quest-based and called Jobs in this game?
I mean, that's what it looks like to me.

How I see skill-tree is that you earn points during killing a enemy or level up and you buy with the points the next skill you want. You choose yourself what skill you want to learn next (as soon as you saved up enough points).
There are skill tree models where you can learn every skill if you grind enough over time:

FF Tactics


FF XII


And there are skill tree models where you can't learn every skill and have to choose which skill you want for your end build

Ragnarok online

[Judge_Xero]

FF Tactics This would be sweet


FF XII This would also be sweet, if you take out all extra stat bonuses and traits

Skill Trees are kinda limiting, but I like the idea of further progression through stat points and upgrading spells and such.

I'm excited to see what kind of system appears in 2.0.
For now, even though you can level all classes and cross class 60% of skills and yet all classes/jobs are IMO well balanced, why ruin a good thing.

Cookie cutter builds will always be the norm as long as you can just google "FFXIV Best BLM Build"

On a side note: A guy I work with is big into a certain game "OWO" Did you know you can just go to a website, type in your class and it will tell you what skills you need to have to maximize your potential?
Then when you have all your skills done you can type in your current gear setup, and it will tell you what pieces you need to change, and where and how to get them.

We barely know what the stats even do in this game, so I can understand some peoples frustrations (sarcasm )

[Skies]

Well, it certainly will be like that once they start releasing more than one job, which is the future plan as far as i'm aware. So you're certainly not going to see a Lancer that looks like another, one will be Dragoon, another will be Dark Knight, you might even see the guy rolling Lancer.

In the end, given multiple jobs per class, comparing two people in the same job would be like in RO comparing two katar assassins. There's a few minor differences based on tiny details but they're in the same path of the skill tree, so they're obviously looking alike.

[Rau]

a few concerns: SE tried this to an extent with customizing stats. it ended miserably as stats had relatively little meaning in order to prevent certain builds from being OP.


Also, didn't Rift try this? dont they have less players than we do now?

and finally, dont people just end up gravitating toward cookie cutter builds?