Skill Branching: "Everyone Wins" Concept

[ty_taurus]

The healer forums has been in a perpetual state of conflict on the design philosophy of healers for multiple years now, and it seems clear that will likely never change. So I have come up with a solution that just may satisfy both camps.

Ability trees is a concept that's been name dropped several times by a few select players from time-to-time, and investing in skill trees to the full extent that I believe those players have in mind--something akin to World of Warcraft, is very unlikely to ever happen. Having said that, I do wonder if a smaller selection of modest branching options may be more plausible in an environment like FFXIV.

The general gist is that most of a jobs action list and trait list is linear as it is currently, however, there will also be a few specific pairs of actions or traits where a player must choose one or the other and can freely swap between them from the action menu outside of combat. By creating this limited branching system, I believe we can foster an environment where those who want to see more engagement and kit interactivity have a branch that supports their mindset, while the other branch supports the "leave it alone" camp.

To showcase how this could work, I have a proof of concept breakdown of White Mage to share. Please note that this concept exclusively displays what the DPS side of White Mage could look like at level 50 and does not include every action entirely. This is designed specifically to communicate the idea. You can download a pdf of the concept to see it in tooltip format.

Here is a brief explanation of the concept in text:

Standard Actions
Stone - Single target attack.
Aero - Single target damage over time attack.
Water - AoE attack.

Branching Traits
Secret of the Lily OR Power of the Lily
- Secret of the Lily increases the potency of Stone and enables the automatic generation of lilies (now referred to as "white lilies") every 40 seconds (this would later get reduced at higher level thresholds until eventually they generate every 20 seconds as they do currently).

- Power of the Lily generates aqua lilies instead of white lilies every 40 seconds. Aqua lilies empower your Water spell, tripling the potency. When casting Water, the aqua lily is then converted into a white lily.

Potent Gale OR Churning Gale
- Potent Gale simply adds potency to the initial damage of Aero and the damage over time.

- Churning Gale creates a Thundercloud proc system for Aero (and later Dia)

Actions Impacted by Branching Traits
Holy
- If Potent Gale is taken, Holy is effectively current Phlegma. It offers burst damage every 40 seconds on the GCD and has 2 charges.

- If Churning Gale is taken, Holy instead has no cooldown, but a high cast time and high MP cost. When Churning Gale procs, casting Holy will cause it to have no cast time nor MP cost. It is slightly less damage than spending the proc on Aero, but can be used to spend procs generated very early in Aero's duration. It also is a DPS gain in both single target and AoE situations even with its long cast time, creating some decision-making opportunities for White Mage players to take risks.

Afflatus Misery
- The potency of Afflatus Misery changes based on whether you took Secret of the Lily or Power of the Lily to reflect the potency of your Stone spells.

With this system, one path stays in line with how current White Mage plays and feels. It offers more consistent, dependable damage that is easier to maintain. The other path has the potential to be stronger, but is subject to some amount of RNG with Churning Gale procs and is more difficult to perform optimally, and may not always perform as strong as the first path depending on the player's skill level and luck. The potencies listed in the PDF would create an environment where, on average, the two paths would be very close together in total performance.

So I pose the question to you all, do you think a concept like this could work? Would it satisfy both sides of this never-ending conflict?

[Aravell]

It's an interesting concept to explore, but it would probably be a nightmare to balance. A job having 2 playstyles would solve a lot of the issues people are having though.

DNC too proc-focused? Have a branch that has no procs.
RPR too rigid? Have a more flexible branch.
Want more damage options on AST? Have a branch that increases personal damage while reducing buff usage.

It could be a very good thing if done well and if the playstyles don't have a difference big enough to render one branch worthless.

[Connor]

I love the idea of skill trees in ffxiv, but they’re about as likely to add them as they are to redesign the entire game to be first-person POV.

The developers absolutely will not abide anything that may cause variation between players. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they remove substats and melding so there’s even less variation between players lol

[Renathras]

I love the idea of skill trees in ffxiv, but they’re about as likely to add them as they are to redesign the entire game to be first-person POV.

The developers absolutely will not abide anything that may cause variation between players. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they remove substats and melding so there’s even less variation between players lol

This.

Ability tries (basically Talent Trees, I think? Even if a slimmed down version of it...) would require a redesign of the entire game at this point. We're more likely to get more frequent smaller spikes of damage in encounters/encounter redesigns before we'd get branching ability trees, I think.

At this point, the Devs seem to treat the different Jobs within a role as functional ability trees in the sense of picking the one you like the playstyle of best. (*hint hint*4 healers...)

I don't think it's a bad idea, but I don't think it's something you're likely to get out of the Devs. We DEBATABLY had something like this with Diurnal/Nocturnal, and look where that went.

EDIT:

To be extra fair to you, they COULD do something like this using something like the old Role Action initial incarnation in 4.0 where you could select from a list of spells and picked 5 options out of the available 10. Not sure how that would work with traits and gauge modification, but they could maybe shoehorn something in that way.

...but the counterpoint to that is...they removed that system because they thought choice was bad and/or illusion of choice and/or there were always "right answers/builds" and everything else was wrong anyway.

[ty_taurus]

As I said, a full talent tree I cannot foresee.

But I want to state that during Heavensward, I never in a million years would've believed they'd rework every job to include gauge mechanics with unique visual UI. Expansions are an opportunity for change. I don't think any sort of branching is a particularly likely candidate for a new element to the combat system, giving each job a couple different passive routes to choose from isn't something that I think is that outrageous if it's just a choice between 2 or 3 passives.

But that also wasn't really the point of this thread. No discussed suggestions we've ever gone over have been things that are likely because no one idea is likely to be exactly what we get. It was more the idea of, would this satisfy you? Is this the suggestion that would placate you?

[Connor]

As I said, a full talent tree I cannot foresee.

But I want to state that during Heavensward, I never in a million years would've believed they'd rework every job to include gauge mechanics with unique visual UI. Expansions are an opportunity for change. I don't think any sort of branching is a particularly likely candidate for a new element to the combat system, giving each job a couple different passive routes to choose from isn't something that I think is that outrageous if it's just a choice between 2 or 3 passives.

But that also wasn't really the point of this thread. No discussed suggestions we've ever gone over have been things that are likely because no one idea is likely to be exactly what we get. It was more the idea of, would this satisfy you? Is this the suggestion that would placate you?

I mean, if they actually did decide to do some big change and make skill trees a thing in ffxiv, I think it would be pretty well received overall. Especially since it allows people to put to rest conflicts with ‘job identity’. Like a Summon or DoT focused path for Summoner, or an Archery / Music one for Bard

When you think about it, the original cross-classing was probably the closest thing we’ve had in ffxiv to skill trees, or at least it did to begin with when it was an actual choice (mostly lol). I don’t see why they couldn’t have just balanced it more, like making certain cross-class skills automatically available upon unlocking a job so you don’t need to level literally everything. Then again that’s way more work than just some tweaks here and there. I always felt like it was nice classic ‘ff’ thing, since whenever I think of ‘classic ff jobs’ I think of the subclass/cross-classing stuff from V, Tactics, XI, etc. So it’s sad to see that bit of flavour lost, even though I get why it had to go.

It’s funny watching that original ARR trailer where the Bard jumps in and casts Protect on the Midlander, then looking at the jobs now and it literally doesn’t even exist anymore, nor does Bards using magic lol. I’d be happy if skill trees were added and gave some of that flavour back in some way

[Renathras]

Fair point - to a point - about things not being likely. Though I'll note some are far more likely than others. Things that don't require new additions, coding, new mechanics, etc are much more likely too happen than those that do. It's why I think a 4 Healers Model that left WHM and SGE as they are and reverted (partially) SCH and AST to SB forms is most likely since it wouldn't require a single new thing to be done other than whatever art assets for the upgraded spells were going to happen anyway in DT.

As for if I'd find it agreeable;

It would depend on the specifics of how it was done. For example, while it seemed you were trying to make it kinda like current WHM, the Holy change isn't. The first one would need to make Holy just what it is now, not turn it into Plegma, for example. But if one of the lines of choices allowed someone to have EW WHM by choosing those and it was balanced against the other to where they both did comparable damage and healing, then it would probably be fine in that case. Though I do wonder at how intuitive the system would be for new players and how the leveling process would work in cases of some stuff (getting Holy at level 45 has been iconic for 10 years), but it's not like that stopped the Devs before (RIP Stoneskin...)

EDIT:

I do have to reiterate, though, that this is VERY unlikely - they wouldn't JUST do it with Healers, they'd need to do it with every Job in the game. WoW is often said not to have a dozen or so classes, but 3x that when you consider that specs are essentially separate classes in all but name.

SE wouldn't JUST do this with healers. They'd need to also do it with tanks and with DPS. We'd go from effectively 19 classes to effectively 42 (factoring in the two new Jobs and them each getting two trees). And that's if the trees were "pick one or the other". If we factor in all those branches as individual choices, then you have all those interactions and the age old debate of "illusion of choice cookiercutter" or not.

EDIT:

Probably close to post limit...

Water takes the place of Holy, and Holy just becomes an additional burst. You've stated before that you don't like how Holy is relegated to an AoE spam button that's useless most of the time because it offers no single target value, and have proposed making Water the starting AoE spam spell instead. It's not literally current White Mage 1:1, but doesn't seem like something you'd oppose to seeing as how you are fine with having a semi-occasional burst button in Phlegma. If you'd rather change it to something else, by all means you can shift its use to something else, but the triple Glare > Holy combo idea may be too much for the left path takers.

Right, but...

1) That doesn't help, because then we just have another useless in boss fights AOE button that we never touch in 90% of content, so that's no better, and,
2) That doesn't satisfy the "leave it alone" side since it's still trying to change things even while saying it's leaving it alone.

The point in having two paths seems to be that one would preserve the status quo while the other would be the changed version.

It would make sense for, at that point, Water to straight upgrade into Holy. If that's the objective here.

[ty_taurus]

Fair point - to a point - about things not being likely. Though I'll note some are far more likely than others. Things that don't require new additions, coding, new mechanics, etc are much more likely too happen than those that do. It's why I think a 4 Healers Model that left WHM and SGE as they are and reverted (partially) SCH and AST to SB forms is most likely since it wouldn't require a single new thing to be done other than whatever art assets for the upgraded spells were going to happen anyway in DT.

As for if I'd find it agreeable;

It would depend on the specifics of how it was done. For example, while it seemed you were trying to make it kinda like current WHM, the Holy change isn't. The first one would need to make Holy just what it is now, not turn it into Plegma, for example. But if one of the lines of choices allowed someone to have EW WHM by choosing those and it was balanced against the other to where they both did comparable damage and healing, then it would probably be fine in that case. Though I do wonder at how intuitive the system would be for new players and how the leveling process would work in cases of some stuff (getting Holy at level 45 has been iconic for 10 years), but it's not like that stopped the Devs before (RIP Stoneskin...)

Water takes the place of Holy, and Holy just becomes an additional burst. You've stated before that you don't like how Holy is relegated to an AoE spam button that's useless most of the time because it offers no single target value, and have proposed making Water the starting AoE spam spell instead. It's not literally current White Mage 1:1, but doesn't seem like something you'd oppose to seeing as how you are fine with having a semi-occasional burst button in Phlegma. If you'd rather change it to something else, by all means you can shift its use to something else, but the triple Glare > Holy combo idea may be too much for the left path takers.

[Tetsujin]

I hate that a legitimate response to your suggestion is some variation of "this sounds great, but it would take work and thus the developers won't do it". How did we get here?

[ForsakenRoe]

I hate that a legitimate response to your suggestion is some variation of "this sounds great, but it would take work and thus the developers won't do it". How did we get here?

We got here because the devs insist that changing how a job plays beyond fiddling with potency tweaks is 'something that can only really be done for expansions'. Unless it's PLD not fitting the 2min meta, then that gets to have a speedy adjustment

On the other side of the MMO pond, classes are getting big reworks in X.1 patches just fine. Ret Paladin got reworked into a mid-range fighter, able to keep uptime (And mitigate it's lack of mobility' because it's main moves can all be talented to have 15-20m range. Mage finally got it's dependency on not-Ley-Lines removed after several years of it being 'the locked talent slot' because it was just too good.

6.5 would be the best time to try an experimental 'different direction', because there's no stakes. No new Savage tier. No new Ultimate worldfirst race to worry about. Instead, we have to wait for 7.0, and when it hits, we have to just hope that the design is good, or at the very least, 'salvageable with potency tweaks'. Because if it's not, we're stuck with it for 2 years.

Even then, there's ways to design 'updates to job gameplay' that take comparatively less devtime to implement. The issue is that SE doesn't want 'less devtime' solutions, they want 'as close to zero as possible' solutions. If they could get away with just adding nothing to the jobs for next expansion (instead just adding a trait that says 'everything is now 10 potency stronger but looks the same') they would. And there's plenty of people who would probably make excuses why the multi-yen company didn't add anything to their class. 'it plays perfectly as it is, any additions would just make it play worse' and the like