Missing Gameplay Infused Roleplay (& Comparing FFXIV Gameplay Roleplay to Other MMOs)

[Shougun]

EDIT: Formatted differently, should have same content.

TL;DR:

There are few and far between elements of gameplay that seem to be specifically designed to support the idea of roleplay specific to whatever role or characterization you have. Where you might get slow fall and special teleports as a mage or hunting and taming pets across the world as an expansion of Hunter's identify in WoW, in FFXIV it'll either never exist or be a limited job, if that.. as there seems to be an aversion to adding something too unique to any specific thing. Which as a byproduct of avoiding anything too unique makes things feel more similar. Made weirder given that our game has a much easier time handling this, with our job system (meaning our system is the least consequential system to have where one job may do well in certain situations, unlike say a game where each 'job' is strictly tied to a specific character and its progression). Where an item lore, name, and visuals might scream "I'll give you knockback", and WoW would give it to you, FFXIV will give you +218 Direct Hit. Where the quests only have you fetch and kill, kill and fetch, and the world itself is more of a backdrop than an interactable entity where bouncy mushrooms or low gravity environments will never provide what your mind sees should be real. In examples I'll mostly touch upon WoW, especially as I think they do that well, but I left the title open in case someone wants to mention some other one (this isn't "BECOME" WoW either).

Or even more simpler words: The game didn't start with a lot of R in RPG (role playing game), and over time has only lost more of it. Not the E in Balmung RP .

Intro:
This thread will have talks about all types of roleplay, but a major one you might first think of is just Job based.

So the jobs feeling too homogenized would fit here, but this also applies to quests being too "kill X, grab Y" and other concepts. While I have made suggestions and generally strayed from things that could wreck savage or ultimate balance, I am not opposed to listening to it or thinking of ways we could try to have both (just mostly to avoid this being an argument on balance numbers, and just expressing desires to bring that R back in).

Until I start to get errors from the forum's system I'll try to update OP with everyone's ideas. As a reminder, for those who don't find it evident, these are suggestions, hopes, dreams, and not demands that require 1:1 implementation. As for my part, while I feel it silly to be said I sometimes see people say "don't come up with ideas cause SE can't use them now for legal reasons", so I'll just void that for my part and say any idea I suggest in these forums is free to use without credit (though I personally imagine, they would want to come up with their own spins, and also will know what wont break the system better).

I have WoW examples down at the end now, use this as 'functioning' evidence, which I have recently played again to 80, just to verify my feelings, and I stand 100% behind them that this is actually one thing WoW does quite well (at least in comparison to FFXIV). I am not saying FFXIV /becomes/ WoW, but definitely encourage them to see what can work well and not-- just like WoW has done and is currently doing to FFXIV.

(Quotes from other people, are from other people, please remember that if you want to try to thought check me on 'my' ideas lol (make sure they're mine first) - or if you want to feedback a specific concept. They may also be trimmed to their ideas, please go to their original post if you want to like or quote reply it.)


Specific:

Player Character Based Roleplay:
(Jobs, Race, Items, what shows up in your paperdoll menu basically)

Astrologian having the ability to fortune tell any player granting them a variety of minor buffs or debuffs effects (once per day) or Dragoons being able to double jump or high jump.

So more job related passives that anyone can gain such as Ninja run speed/Jump animation? Yeah I'm all for that dude thanks for clarifying.

They could take another page from FF6 with how they have magicite as well as relics that are either for all characters/jobs or just specific ones.
Like for example the dragoon boots relic in FF6 changed the characters attack command to jump, they could do a similar thing here but adapted for XIV's mechanics. Maybe the double jump thing, and have it be a thing only dragoon can use.
Or for something more tangible, take the magicite mechanic and turn it into equippable gems for summoner that change its summons into bismarck/leviathan/shiva/etc etc other summons

Racial examples:
Keepers of the Moon/Sun: Movement speed buff when its night/day time respectively. The /dance emote changes to a more intricate dance along the buff
Plainsfolk: Increased GP regen while not mounted
Dunesfolk: Chance to save Crystals and clusters while crafting in one of the main cities
Seawolf/Hellsguard: While on the Sea/Desert respectively, massively increase health regeneration. Seawolf get a Sea-shanty singing action, and Hellsguard can lay down to stargaze on the sands

Class examples:
Scholar - Tape and Pencil: With the help of your fairy/carbie you can extend a measuring tape between you two, to measure distances (visible by party members). In instances, you can draw on the floor while out of combat (and it gets erased when combat is engaged). Ideally this would be used to explain things in scholarly fashion, but I would accept goofy drawings too
Warrior - Beast Roar: De-aggro and make overworld enemies run away from you
Paladin - Out of combat raise/first aid : ^)
I would keep going but I think I have seen posts before where people listed similar concepts. As for the Toy box, I would go as far as to pay for it ;_; I genuinely love so much the effects you describe, my favorite ones were the Chef hat and the shrinking potion. Pls give

I'd like to see mini games themed around jobs. Like jumping puzzles for DRG like what playing music is to BRD or collecting spells for BLU. Basically, give jobs their own (limited) version to inject some much needed variety. Personally, I also love NIN's faster run speed or fall damage reduction. We need way, way more of that stuff.

Right so here are some suggestions I've thought of so far, they are not all inclusive or all needed. All fire starting ideas, not 'must be exactly this way' suggestions. I'll probably think of more later.. as an important reminder I don't want to see any class feel useless, and I understand if greater combat related ideas are not implemented or at least not right away, but ultimately yeah I think roleplay in just a whole sense, all systems, receiving loving would be really nice (so if you're a "no combat impact, or bust" person then that's fine, I want to see it anywhere and everywhere that we can without it causing massive problems).

First is an over arching concept to avoid damaging savage first runs or ultimate, is that these below effects perhaps only work where echo, solo, and open world content apply. This allows for better balance control. However, I am not opposed to them working in the most extreme content, so long as people realize it can and most likely will impact some metas... and you might see preferences. Naturally if jobs are pertinent at something some players will design the fun out of it, and players who live in that end game space (savage, no echo, and ultimate) should communicate those concerns if they have them. I am aware of some ultimate players who are like BRING IT ON, ILL PLAY WHAT I HAVE TO PLAY, BRING IT BOI. But I wont assume that's everyone and it's certainly not me playing in those end end game spaces.

Jobs:
Paladin-

• [Bring Back]: Shield skills, Shield types. Shield types that had different block chance vs block amount and shield skills that would give you 100% block chance or allow you to perform an attack based on blocking. Something that I recommend in general but here I'll mention too is passive actives, where a skill that sits and waits for an opportunity is set inside a skill that can be used (rather than slotting the dancer moves for example the dancer's dance changes other skills temporarily). For the purpose of itemization there would be minor horizontal progression (such that each shield type can be fairly compared, rather than having multiple types but it is irrelevant because item level trumps type). Balancing for ultimate, if we're going to avoid making things too unique then regardless of shield type it would be a direct amount blocked (based on some formula), and the shield effects activate at an expected interval rather than from chance.
• Recitation: Level 30 out of combat raise. When you gain Clemency, upgrade this skill instead into Clemency (which still heals, but out of combat can also be used on the dead). If you cast cover or intervention on a dead player it will allow you to raise them in combat (in echo-able content), intervention's buff duration is reset if the target is revived during it's duration (cover's duration would not but heals provided to the raised player will also be granted to you, at a %).
• Good Samaritan: Side quest exp is increased by 10%

Warrior:

• Infinite Grit: When rage is above 50, on a killing blow instead of dying activate a shorter version of holmgang in an AoE (10 minute cooldown separate to holmgang). [Reminder of the echo thing]
• Terrifying Bellow: Replaces reprisal. Causes enemies to cower for 5 seconds which is akin to a stun (in addition to damage dealt reduction, if enemies can ignore CC), and if tank stance is off and they don't take damage for the duration they will run away and lose aggro (took the idea from someone in this thread ). An aside note but I feel role actions could all slowly be thematically consumed, such that they do what they 'need' to do for tank kit purposes but then also may add thematic value to the tank rather than being generic. Here Bellow replaces reprisal, another example might be Shield Bash replacing Low Blow, or Shadow Skin replacing Rampart.
• Rock Breaker: Mini-game which is either a mix of the snake marbles game (Marbles Temple) or something else spherical and destructive lol. Unlocks warior specific glamours, and perhaps warrior specific ability glamours- like rage might have a fiery effect, or dragon ball z like stone effects. Think WoW glyph visual customization.
• Unstoppable Force: When warrior has rage > 50, movement CC cannot reduce warrior's movement speed below 80%

Dragoon:
Jump mechanics will use flight pathing when Dragoon has unlocked flying for the zone, and will use ground pathing when they have not. However, if it doesn't insanely break anything I honestly feel you should just unlock it all together for maximum feel. But I wanted to example how you could balance it if it was a massive concern (still consider just allowing it, and if they get somewhere funny then they get somewhere funny). Ninja would be likewise, where you can 'teleport' to vertical locations rather than being stuck on the horizontal plane.

• Light as a Dragon: You take no fall damage, might need to do this in general first (for all jobs), to improve jumping puzzle accessibility, but allow some directional input while falling (so minor input for everyone, and a bit more substantial for Dragoons).
• Plummet: If you hold spacebar while in the air, after a short delay, you will plummet to the ground and deal aoe damage in an area scaled to the height at which you fell, the effect will not take place if already in combat. Middling damage (to be fun but not so great that you feel you HAVE to enter combat like this), and will stun enemies if from a great enough height.
• Take to the skies: holding the spacebar will cause a bar to appear and charge up, based on time of charge the dragoon jumps significantly farther and with greater forward momentum. The timing will work such that a super fast tap is essentially the jump we all know, a .25 - .5 second tap will be like 50% higher jump than normal and then an exponential curve towards 2 seconds (where at 2 seconds you have a massive boost again).
• Dragon Blessings: Avatar fights (like FFXI for SMN) where you fight the avatar of major dragons, like Nidhogg, Bahamut, Hraesvelger, Vrtra, Midgardsormr. These fights add glamour options, including aura effects and special dye effects to artificat armor, and to your skills. So like you could have a Geirskogul that appears like Nidhogg's or a blue feathery effect inspired by Hraesvelger.
• Jumping Puzzles: Add more jumping puzzles to the world (but first perhaps improve movement systems), also please consider adding checkpoints (even if that checkpoint is perhaps introduced as a short term teleport device like GW2 has, something you earn). Perhaps some jump improvements, maybe via # of jumps accomplished and slots. Like slow fall plummet might make it so you greatly slow your fall and 'aim' your plummet (at a great distance even) so you could have a precision landing.
• Fresh Air: 50% exp bonus for sightseeing markers that are above ground. (post note, I added this prior to earthen dwarves, so... ME FIRST lol)
• Dragon Sight: Reveals enemies with mana through walls, hidden enemies*, and also some mechanics for dragoon**. *Hidden enemies is not really a thing in FFXIV, but that goes back to this whole thread's point. FFXIV BRING THE ROLEPLAY. WHERE ARE THE CRITTERS? lol. ** Dragoon specific mechanics might be like while in mid flight you turn on dragon sight and it shows a platform you land on while doing a dragoon jumping puzzle (and part of that puzzle might be while sight is off you jump 'through' the platform and while falling you use slow plummet and dragon sight to then land /on/ the platform). Please be sure to make dragonsight cooldown friendly in those situations, so you don't suffer for the cooldown.
• Wyvern Hunter: Increases damage to dragon type enemies by 10%. Passively reveal the location of all nearby dragonkin on the map (can be turned off via a toggle). (Could have a story specific passive change too, so after completing a certain part in the MSQ the passive changes to represent some change with your relationship with dragons)

An aside but an item that could be fun to combine with this, perhaps under the toy section of ideas, is the Sun Wukong inspired seven league boots- such that while falling if you tap space bar you can pause on a cloud for a few seconds and jump from that cloud, every 5 seconds you fall you can reactivate the effect (and as a dragoon this effectively means you can fly lol, boots only work where you can fly perhaps).

Summoner:

• Egi Glamour Pilgrimage: Avatar fights (like FFXI) where you travel to primal summon locations and can solo primals in unreal like fights, where you earn glamour options for your summons (like belias looking ifirit egi, size, etc). As an aside please allow other players, in combat options, to tone down summons like Diablo 3 / 4, and I believe even WoW, does. So you can for example have a giant bahamut because it's cool, but for me your bahamut is a bit transparent and easy to see through.
• Primal-net: May teleport to any large mass of crystals that has been given faith (mostly just the primal crystals). Cooldown, free.
• Primal-Physik: Replace with a theme'd primal support skill based on the primal last active.
• Wings of a primal: once you've unlocked Bahamut you can slow glide by pressing spacebar while falling (spacebar again cancels it), when you unlock phoenix you can choose that effect if you want. Consumes mana per second.
• Aetherialmancy: Deal 10% additional damage to primarily aetherial constructed enemies (ghosts, summons, etc). Passively reveal the location of all nearby aetherial constructed enemies on the map (can be turned off via a toggle).

Potential ideas that may need a rework of the job which I am reticent on since it has been reworked so many times:

• [Bring Back]: EGI differences, in fact enhance them lol. Keep a mechanic that encourages cycling egi though, and allow a system that you can, at a cost, ignore or manipulate the cycle. Levithan - debuffer / support, Ramuh - single target and resource management / cooldown reduction, Shiva - tank and CC, Ifrit - single target, Garuda - aoe damage, Titan - tank and support. Due to the cycle mechanic you would want to alternate out of which ever is "BEST" for the situation, but it's important to know the situation so you can still make a cascade of choices based on what is available and what is going on.
• [Bring Back]: EGI HP. Allow summoner to toggle tangible and intangible outside of combat, increased aggro. Titan wont be able to tank savage content like before, but will be pretty good again. Phase summons such that the models change but the target doesn't, so if you had titan egi out with aggro and you cast bahamut then titan explodes into bahamut without any target change on the circle itself- seamless. When you shift a summon and it is tangible give it a 50% max hp heal. Player tank stance negates the effectiveness of SMN, such that no tank is going to fight a SMN for aggro due to them working tangibly.

Here are some more spitfire examples:

Black Mage:

• Emergency Landing: Holding space bar while falling will cause you to cast a ley line directly below you (on the ground), and you will teleport to it and then it'll vanish (about 1 second hold, release casts the teleport, naturally no fall damage). 15% mana cost. You can also use between leyline teleport skill while falling (to teleport to your combat version, if it's there).
• Far Flung: When out of combat aetherial manipulation has 10x the range, but the cooldown will increase by the distance traveled (up to a 1 min cooldown, non-linear growth so traveling only slightly farther than normal is negligible). You can cast this while mounted.

Reaper:
Like Dragoon remove the Z axis clamp, such that you could rift across a gap. If there is balance issues, like dragoon, make it so it relies on unlocking flight.

• Precision Rift: Holding rift skills will increase their range and show you where they will land, using your mouse you can choose a location (not that it's relevant but will use the ingress or egress depending on the 180 direction picked). Tapping will naturally just do the action expected, as already is.
• Friends like these: Out of combat, so long as you don't return through your own rift the rift will stay open 5x longer and allies can use it. The rift, if it wasn't clear, is to you - so a friend using a rift teleports to you. Perhaps to make it easy interacting with the portal OR jumping while 'on' the portal will cause an ally to use it.
• Void Return: Return recovers 50% more quickly (while you're a reaper, return 'returns' more quickly).
• Aetherial Harvest: Enemies have a chance to leave small bits of aether, which you can stand on to gain a small heal and cooldown reduction. Additional chance to cause voidsent monsters to heal you when engaging them (just by attacking).
• Voidsent Slayer: Increase damage to voidsent. Passively reveal the location of all nearby voidsent on the map (can be turned off via a toggle).

Bard:

• Bard's get a mini-game to play orchestra music (like the music mini-games we've had before) in NPC Inns / Taverns and other locations, unlocking instruments, special effects, and musical options for their music in combat (like you could play prelude for one of your battle songs). Of course players can turn off bard sounds in settings
• Musical mount, a mount made of musical notes that also allows the bard to play music they've composed (same player settings apply, if they want to ignore your song lol).
• Playing a song in one of the taverns in game once a day gives you a 20% rested bonus to your rested exp (if you had any room, it'll up it, if it's capped.. it's capped). Or you can alternatively play for a beast tribe to earn one token of their currency and 15% exp. <- May change to once per week, especially as one token is pretty good to be honest, but then I'd make the effect greater. Like 50% rested exp at inns and 3 tribe tokens and 40% bard exp.
• Players that listen to you play gain a buff similar in mechanics to a campfire listed below (exponential duration such that listening for 1 second is like 1 second duration, listening for 1 minute is like 10 minutes), giving you a movement speed bonus and exp bonus (bonus from other buffs capping at a certain % for balance sake and reducing player's need to feel like they need to hunt down 100 different exp bonuses). ONLY while listening cooldown timers are reduced at a faster rate.
• Marching Music: Replaces Peleton with a perpetual effect out of combat.
• Adventurer's Hum: While out of combat, may pick from a list of tracking options. Activating the ability gives you a little pop up and you can pick one (including the option to disable it entirely). Options include, beast, great enemy (B, A, and S ranks), and a story (story pings sightseeing locations and quests). You can choose all of them at once. They show up on your map .
  
  May place a few NPC bards throughout the game, that offer similar purposes. Perhaps sitting near the Yoshi-P bard might count for example.

Dancer:
Like Bard's musical options, except for dancing. There will be dancing mini games, perhaps like simon says with options (WoW has a darkfaire moonfire example I'd suggest as a begining concept).

• Unlocking additional dance option animations for combat (so you might change your red, green, blue, effects, or change the sfx colors), and dance options for your performance feature.
• Performance mount akin to bard, like a magic carpet you can perform on (so it makes sense you're dancing lol).
• Performance buff, again akin to bard, with the duration and exp concepts, but instead of movement speed it would be attack speed. ONLY while watching cooldown timers are reduced at a faster rate.

Some minor profession examples, though WoW has a lot of good ones. Generically just consider new craftable toys (that do stuff), and more mounts lol.
Alchemist: all potion durations are increased by 50%, all healing potency is also increased by 25% (where echo rules apply, so echo-able content- this wouldn't impact savage, until echo works, or ultimate at all).

I would generally just focus on neat things they can make and sell, although it would be interesting, imo, if there were a few items that were both neat and self crafted. So I know I gave the example of alchemist impacting potions but my thought would be, rather than that, make sure there are a lot of neat things to craft that can be sold / shared, and then each class also gets a little self present that you can make and it can't be sold (perhaps mechanically it shares, like a magical campfire, but in the sense you can't give that item- it's special to you because you knew the tricks of the trade and profession and made it for yourself). There could also be/alternatively be bonus effects when you use an item. Like for the jumping puzzles if you wanted a position resetter / checkpoint tool, you can have one but it takes level 50 alchemist and goldsmith to make a toy bound to just you OR that you make it and can sell it, but IF you're those jobs you get a cooldown reduction on it's timer.

Items / 'Toys':

• Positional Person Plopper: On use saves your position, on reuse will put you back to that position. The buff perhaps lasts 5 minutes, and then the contraption goes on cooldown. If you use the ability it will consume the buff, teleport you, and then go on cooldown as well.
• Wander's campfire(perhaps moved to the 'toy box'): grants a buff that increases exp, hp, and mp regeneration, and lasts a non-linear amount of time spent by the fire up to 25 minutes. For example you sit by the fire for 5 seconds, you get 5 seconds practically, you sit by 30 seconds and it's like 5 minutes already. 25 minutes might be 2 minutes hanging out. ONLY while resting cooldown timers are reduced at a faster rate. S'mores as an additional item, perhaps if you have them in your inventory you can roast them or if you eat them they have like double duration (food exp buff, double duration ). Right clicking the campfire when you have seat ('toys', again move them if needed, rather than minions) allows you to organize around the fire, increasing exp gained.
• Gysal Cannon: Fires a Gysal green at target / location (if you have a target, it'll do that first). Summoning your chocobo at location with a chocobo pound (like fat chocobo). If your chocobo is already summoned it will move them there. Takes like 250 Gysals to make, and other ingredients, but has infinite charge (with a cooldown- which is reset if your chocobo is dead).
• Moogle flute: Like FFIX, allows you to check your mail, send items to your retainers, and purchase and sell minor items (imo it would be neat if it was upgraded and tied to moogle post quests and or moogle tribe).
• Firework Excelsior 3000: Or whatever name, an interactable firework pile with cooldown. Allows players to change their ability row to some fireworks.
• Ice Crystal Packed Snow Balls: Allows you to start a game of a snowball, players who join will get snowball HP with laser tag like rules. Mini game.
• Seven Leagues Boots: Sun Wukong inspired, when pressing space bar while falling (trumps other space bar activated skills), will stop you on a magical cloud platform for a few seconds (allowing you to double jump). Cannot reactivate for X seconds (perhaps either short cooldown or Dragoons have a unique interaction and it's shorter for them).
• Leaping Lizzy Boots: Allows you to mimic dragoon's jump
• Port-a-net Tent (TM, lol): Set up a small camp with an aethernet. When you use return you can choose this location (or your generic home point). Rested exp (plays classic FF tent / sleep music on logout). Can upgrade for a repair station.
• Adventurer's Compass: Follows your heart's desire, similar to Bard's tracking skill- perhaps purchased through hunt tokens and then upgraded through further hunt tokens lol. Start with B rank ping, then A, S, and sightseeing. Short cooldown, detects multiple things at once and points them out in a fuzzy radius that is made more specific the closer you are.
• Soup Kitchen: When casting it'll ask if you want to open the kitchen to everyone or your party. Allows you to craft any food item at the station that is 10 levels below your job, at 100% chance, and then share that creation with your target audience. Give it like 10 charges or something. Can be used in instanced content (bear in mind again, it's 10 levels lower- this is on the basis of ignoring crafting mechanics but also that we're essentially duplicating the recipe at the cost of 1).
• Atomic Nearly-Autonomous Repairing Automaton: A repair station that players can interact with, if you prime it with dark matter (will ask at cast), will also allow players to repair proportionally to above 100% repair (based on the level of the gear, your craft, and which type of dark matter was supplied). Other players will have to pay gil. You may use this station yourself at no cost, but to go above 100% will still require the dark matter when summoned (I assume this is a difficult to craft robot, that is either rare/ex and one of those neat crafter milestones or decently expensive). Can be used in instanced content. There is a cooldown. If a new mechanic can be suggested, right clicking dark matter highlights your cursor and then when you right click gear you activate the crafter repair window; however, if you click the automaton it will summon them with that dark matter primed.
• Bottomless Potion of Limited Perspective: Shrinks the player, you can drink it again to shrink again, and again... and again.... Each stack reduces the duration, the first two drinks you can manually cancel the debuff, the last two are perhaps forced (but quite short). So like 5 seconds of being hilariously tiny, like chigoe size lol. But if you just wanted to be quite short (1 or 2 drinks) it would last several minutes. For even more QoL friendliness, add a chug buff. So if you drink, you shrink and get like 5 minute small effect, with 10 second chug effect. If you drink again while chug is in effect you shrink again, reduce duration (2 minutes!), and reset chug debuff duration, etc, etc. Alternatively if chug falls off, rather than shrinking, you just extend the duration at the scale you are if you drink again. This concept can be applied to other things too. Just adds a layer of friendly QoL for players who are roleplaying something for whatever reason. Is it needed.. no.. but I think being thought like this adds an extra layer.

Just thought of a few for other jobs I've not listed yet.

Particularly on Dark Knight I like the suggested blood hp mechanic, as it is an example of an HP mechanic that might be used for a /tank/ job. Where it takes your hp and turns it into a shield (temporary HP, that you will lose if you didn't consume tanking).

Dark Knight:

• Blood Unto the Void - When hp is above 50% mp consuming attacks will also consume hp (at a %) and deal additional damage, consumed HP is changed into a temporary shield (meaning this idea does not create as many issues with tanking). This passive can be put on the hotbar to be toggled off (if you /really/ wanted to).
• Blood Unto the Void, From the Void Onto You (upgrade) - A portion of all damage turns into a degenerating shield instead (say if you take 1000 damage, 200 of it instead of purely vanishing turns into a shield with a timer - Darkest Urge plays into this).
• Darkest Urge - Attacks against enemies that have either less than 20% hp or more than 80% hp receive 15% more magic damage. Dark Knight will also heals 1% of their max hp on any shield created from the void passives (recuperating some of the shields back into HP).
  
• Shade Knight - Dark aspected magic deals 5% less damage to you at all times. After casting a magical ability that has an enemy target you temporarily reduce the effectiveness of CC debuffs on you (CC tick 40% faster and a maximum reduction of 70% movement speed). At night: increases resource generation and the range of all ranged abilities (including leap). Certain biomes also count like any that happen on the 13th.
  
• Rejected at the Gates - Immune to doom mechanics that can be cleansed (remember about the in echo content mentioned in OP)
  
• Corruption target / Rift Content - idea could be shared with reaper as a sort of leve like content where in the world there are rifts that need to be closed, might just be some corrupted variants of A ranks that you can solo (to reduce resource cost to make), but you can close these for good exp and glamour opportunities. Corruption might be more like a bounty board, like dark brotherhood (Bethesda game), situation but for bad.. people.. and not so much "mean flan is attacking my crops". Glamour not having to be exclusive to this idea, but could include the original Dark Knight smokey effect showed off in the heavensward trailer (instead of the fractal red that we got), and other spell effect changes (like perhaps if you wanted a more physical shackle and chain appearance to your aoe spell). Not just bounty board simply but for example you might come across an NPC that has a shadowy effect coming from them (when Dark Knight or Reaper) and if you talk to them you can find out they are possessed, glamoured fiend, or an exceptionally bad person - and then you can.. do your thing.. lol.

Monk:

Thunderclap can be held down to turn into a directional dash (tapping the skills keeps it as a target enemy dash, just as it was). When the monk has bonus movement speed the dash can cross gaps (use the same rules that Ninja and Dragoon, whether it requires aether currents or not).

• Instant Transmission (copyright? lol) - Double return cooldown, 7 second cast, teleports monk to a selected party member (works cross zones, planets, etc). Cannot be used if return is on cooldown. Will either check if you have aether currents unlocked in the zone (easy way to ensure no issues with MSQ / navigation), or check based if you have an aetheryte unlocked already (this, imo, is better, as players can already give you a car ride- but it does mean a player might teleport to a place they'll have to teleport out of too lol).
  
• Unending Will - If an attack would be fatal and the monk has chakra, consume all chakra, block chakra for the next 7 seconds, monk loses all enmity, health is set to 50% and their defense is multiplied by seven, hp continues to regenerate for an additional 50% max hp, and defense bonus degenerates each second (over 7 seconds). (1 hour cooldown)
  
• Rolling Thunder - Critical attacks have a 25% chance to reduce Dash / Thunderclap by 7 seconds. Thunderclap also grant monk a 50% movement speed boost that degenerates over 2 seconds.
  
• Lighting Sprint - Sprint out of combat is 25% faster.
  
• Speedlight Dash - (upgrade) While in open world zones casting sprint and remaining stationary charges up sprint, up to 7 seconds. Each second adds 1 second of sprint and 25% faster sprint (up to 175% /bonus/). Sprint is now indefinite in towns (until canceled, doesn't apply the insane movement speed boost though). Kind of Godbert like dash.
  
• Mind, Body, and Soul challenges - The monk will gain a series of challenges throughout the world on different concepts. Like body might use the monk's dashes and sprints to avoid obstacles, or soul where you you have to endure an ever growing onslaught of enemies (using earth reply, second wind, blood for blood, and even unending will very effectively). Mind might be more calm and almost Samurai Zen like (Ghost of Tsushima haiku poems lol). Rewards will be different qi themes, these themes can also have tiers. For example you might get +1 to earth Qi from titan, which gives you a sort of classic Super Sayian rocks losing gravity, yellow like energy, type effects. +1 meaning a level 1 earth Qi aesthetic is fairly calm and a level 7 would be full super sayian 3 lol. These Qi levels are aesthetic choices that just remix some sfx and colors (but could go beyond, especially at a max rank). You can pick a specific tier of what you unlocked (say you want tier 5 of the 7 you unlocked). Additionally mechanical differences could come from this (regardless of which visual you choose), like a Mind and body of tier 4 removes the double cooldown on Instant Transmission (so it's just regular cooldown).
  
• Feather Step - Monk can walk and run across water (using the key strokes that submerge you will cause you to sink into the water, holding or pressing them again will cause you to dive underwater where applicable).
  
• Meditate - Greatly increases out of combat hp/mp regeneration, out of instances will also reduce cooldowns (could upgrade into anataman).

Pictomancer:
(wot?! Yeah.. this was just one I suggested early on after the first reveal)

• Painter's Corner: Pictomancer through specific quests and challenges unlocks a variety of painter tools, like sparkly paint, vibrant colors, themes like ink painting (for example Byakko / classical Asian ink art), through these options the painter can customize to some extent the visuals of their painting style. Like you might complete moogle beast tribe quests to unlock different art that pops above your head on those special actions, or someone else goes and gets an image of Cloud of Darkness.. w.e lol. In that way if you want a bright a happy pictomancer, you got it- add some sparkles too mate. Yet if you wanted something a bit serious, totally do-able.
  
  This could be a physical location, which might be fun- to see the wall slots fill up with paints you've unlocked. Little bob ross space with your easel and stuff. Send that back to Bard with their musical instruments too, given a music hall where they can set up some music boxes with music they made, their best scored locations (read bard in OP / previous post if like ..? lol), and view all the instruments they've collected.

General thoughts:
(May have specific thoughts, but I didn't want to narrow the feedback to one box)

As someone who started in Stormblood, I saw the gradual culling of these gimmicky utility skills of ARR/HW, to the streamlined SHB/EW where there's only damage and damage reduction skills. These utility skills made up a big part of the class fantasy and distinctiveness. Since I started as a healer, skills such as fluid aura, time dilation, and even the act of casting protect gave me a warm feeling as a healer lol. The act of casting buffs like protect and power word fortitude still add to the class fantasy imo.
In wow I thought it was cool how there's many different kinds of interactions you can have with raid bosses that aren't just dmg/dmg reduc. Like a raid boss named Painsmith sending rolling boulders of death down the arena, but people came up with the strat to glide off the arena and glide back to dodge them. Actual non dmg interactions like more interrupts, CCs mattering. Mechanics that give the players more control like tank boss positioning rather than scripted movements, WoW-style player placed perma puddles, and HP triggers rather than scripted time triggers (that aren't just tied to phase enrages).

One of the major things that really bothered me when playing wow was how a piece of armor would change an entire ability or even give an entire ability. Which meant I would only get to enjoy that while I used it. Gaining crit isn’t exactly interesting, but losing abilities every tier or expansion is just saddening.
While I’m sure something could be done to make itemization more interesting I definitely don’t want to see my armor changing my skills or adding any. Keep that done via leveling , I’d even be ok with a skill tree or something.

Quips (not yet extended with examples, probably will be):
Short Quip on Itemization:
We could then just talk about general itemization where in FFXIV we get direct hit, critical hit, etc, where in WoW you could see wild things like double hit or entire shifts in how your abilities work and new special abilities. If someone wants I can provide examples but this post is getting insanely long anyways lol. That said I'm also trying to avoid combat talk too much, but its an example where the design style continues. Characterization, and the roleplay mattering.

So you may think that ends it, but there are many other items and content that unlocks things akin to this. The design style is pervasive.

While there are little elements here and there in FFXIV, it is hardly pervasive and when it is present is usually not that noticeable or completely featured.

Movement:
Semi-related and just one I really wanted to mention in this whole making things 'feel' right is movement. Movement for a long time in MMOs was if you hold the W do you go forward? If yes, then we've done our job and no more in design time. However, in GW2 they went above and beyond and created what is regularly regarded as one of the best mount systems in all MMOs (due to feel).

Then Blizzard added dragon riding in their most recent playable expansion in WoW, which was very well received, such that they recently announced that it will become a default for the whole game. Dragon riding for reference is essentially the best mount in GW2. A mix of gameplay and great feeling movement. In my defense, I have been asking for these prior to even GW2 asking; however, having tried both systems now I can see definitively, imo lol, that these movement systems for mounts are significantly superior to just holding W. This movement I feel really matters as when flying with characterization (either WoW or GW2) you really feel like flying, rather than using TCL in Skyrim to get somewhere (using a command to ignore collision so you just float in a direction). Which I guess if I had to summarize why I think it should be changed it would be just that "flying feels like using TCL in skyrim", and while I had imagined it before either MMO.. I now know for sure that having actual movement mechanics feels A LOT better.

Generally other movement skills also are smoother in those games, though I would say Reaper's teleport in FFXIV feels pretty good- but the Ninja blink would be an example that I think feels pretty meh (where WoW's blink, similar to FFXIV's Ninja blink, is better feeling in operation, or WoW's Demon Hunter dash being better than Dancer's).

WoW (includes Race, Class, Profession, and Item examples):

Given Blizzard's recent announcement of Warbands* I tried WoW again just for the giggles of what has changed. A while before that during a patch lul I tried GW2.

*Warbands: effectively 'job' system for WoW, with a few major QoL improvements over FFXIV in nearly account wide everything and improvements to make it even smoother to multi-character, however, it will as far as I know still have a fairly large con that you have to log out to switch jobs

Both of them have quite a few interesting things that I like and hope FFXIV could learn from, but I still left with the feeling that I'd prefer to play FFXIV. One thing in particular that wasn't a system specific idea but just a general concept that I wanted to draw more specific attention to, in context that I feel FFXIV has not done nearly as good of a job on, is gameplay related roleplay, and other systems that encourage engaging the world itself.

I emphasize gameplay as if we were going to talk about story there might be minor things to say but in general I definitely give FFXIV the cake on story telling.

I'll give a few examples, but I wanted to preface that I would like to avoid racials or other lockouts that are so bound up that you have to basically restart the whole game if you wanted to enjoy it. Interestingly WoW is getting around that by Warbands (as you can basically consider race abilities bound to your 'job' as if every time you switch a job in FFXIV you just changed characters entirely).


I will be focusing on vaguely non-combat related examples, since current balance is adverse to creating too unique situations (which has pros and cons.. but not the entire main point of this thread though certainly a potential by product).

Race based examples:

Vulpera (little foxes):
Bag of Tricks - that allows you to pull a healing vial or corrosive vial at the start. BUT you can even unlock more options via certain bosses in the game.
Make a Camp - essentially allows you to place an aetheryte where you want in a cute camp design, changing talents, giving you rested xp, and provides a cooking fire.

Nightborne (extra 'night' night elf):
Cantrips - a magical book that allows you to mail (like our moogle mail boxes you normally cant do this anywhere)

Night Elf (OG Thirst Traps):
Shadowmeld - Cloak yourself becoming difficult to be found by enemies
Wisp Spirit - Move 75% faster (25% faster than normal players) when dead

Troll (Warcraft inspired Jamicans):
Regeneration - Health regeneration rate increased by 10%. (10% of that actually continues into combat)
You think I'm joking so here is one of their combat abilities:
Da Voodoo Shuffle - Reduces the duration of all movement impairing effects by 20%. Trolls be flippin' out mon!

Undead (Ugly Is Popular?):
Cannibalize - Regenerates 7% of your max health and mana every 2 seconds for 10 seconds. You cast this on humanoid corpses!
Touch of the Grave - You can breathe underwater. (Also gains chance to drain targets and deal shadow damage).

Dark Iron Dwarf (... soot covered dwarves):
Mole Machine - Allows you to fast travel to specific points unique to this ability, further locations can be unlocked (basically a custom aetheryte network)
Dungeon Delver - move 4% faster indoors

Mechagnome (robot gnomes):
Mastercraft - Your body acts as crafting tools (lol)
Skeleton Pinkie - Open locked chests

Worgen (Secret Furries) & Dracthyr (Scalies):
Both of these have two forms, your animal and then human variant. A sample of their racial abilities:

Worgen:
Running Wild - A 'running' mount
Flayer - Skinning skill is increased by 15 and you skin faster
Dark Flight - Increase Movement Speed by 40% for 10 seconds (doesn't break stealth, can be used in combat..)

Dracthyr:
Glide - Reduces falling speed (it's a passive, so you just activate as easy as using space bar while falling, Demon Hunter has this too)
Discerning Eyes - Increases your perception and allows you to track gathering nodes at a greater distance. Increased rare material chance.
Familiar Skies - You fly faster on continents you've fully explored
Soar - Dragon riding like, kind of running wild.



Random Combat examples just so people know that exist (and I am incredibly parsing down the list):

Combat Analysis - gradually become stronger in combat (Mechagnome)
Fireblood - Removes poison, disease, curse, magic, and bleed, and increases your primary stats by each effect removed (Dark Iron Dwarf)

Most races have both combat and non-combat bonuses, so the above is narrow beam sample.

Great now lets talk about some Class (or 'Job' using our verbiage) examples (not exhaustive), again focusing on non-combat but may point out a few due to their thematic element (but will generally avoid pointing at combat).

Classes (Jobs):

Druid:
- Has the ability to shape shift instantly into travel variants (different than people who have to cast their mount), and includes water, sky, and ground. The water form can breathe water, the land and sky form can gather without dismounting.
- Teleport: Moonglade / Dreamwalk, Has a special zone they get to go to, teleports them there and then back to where they casted it from if used again. This is a fast port to your class hall as well, which is a sort of Island Sanctuary like content themed to druid (each class gets one, this class gets a portal to theirs).
- Can customize their shape shifts
- While cheating and verging into combat discussion these forms provide their own substantial changes (and is one of the most complicated classes from a design perspective, but allows them to also do things like stealth and visit all roles).

Hunter:
- Has probably what we will be getting as a limited job (beast master) as an entire side gig for their main component. While naturally balanced due to that (primarily three archetypes), you can tame and take care of a lot of different types of pets and challenges for collectors. A spec allows you to have two pets out at the same time even, and other customization allow you to go even further temporarily.
- Massive movement speed aura
- Cheating again, but a minor diverge, but the pet gets substantial presence in your combat (felt worth mentioning given we seem to have major issue with pets)
- Eyes of the beast, see through your pet's eyes and scout with them
- Eagle Eye, scout out a distant spot
- Feign Death, fake your death and drop aggro (combine with shadowmeld to get out of basically everything ever when in the open world)

Mage:
- Special teleports (custom aetheryte options)
- Blink (teleport, but better than Ninja's iirc)
- Slow Fall, ... causes you to fall slower (also as an aside fall damage kills you in WoW lol)
- Semi-combat but just examples of big things (Ice Block ignores damage for 10 seconds and unlike Blue Mage's Diamondback.. you can actually cancel this effect -_-, yes that was shade thrown lol)
- Polymorph turns enemies into sheep lol
- Conjure refreshments, summon some drinks for your team!
- Invisibility

Warlock:
- Unending Breath, underwater breathing
- Eye of Kilrogg, control a magical eye you can scout with
- Demonic Circle / Gateway, basically a leyline you can teleport to. However you can use Eye of Kilrogg to then teleport to where the eye drops the circle instead. Gateway allows other players to use it.
- Create Healthstone, creates a potion essentially
- Subjugate Demon, Force a demon target to do your bidding
- Create Soulwell, create a sort of health potion fountain for your party- essentially
- Substantial pet presence, including a zoo type build (lots of minions), and many of the minions have substantial abilities including to tank, CC, and deal damage
- Some summoning mechanics allows you to effectively have an army out, like 10 + imps and other demons

Demon Hunter:
- Double Jump, does what it says
- Glide, slow fall on demand
- Spectral Sight, you can see enemies, including the stealthed and invisible enemies, through walls

Rogue:
- Unlocks chests and doors
- Pickpocket
- Stealth ;3

Death Knight:
- Path of Frost, allows you and your allies to walk on water
- On a Pale Horse, increases mount speed
- Can have permanent mounted combat via spec hero tree (in open world, and a castable in non-open world)
- Death Gate, teleports you to Ebon Hold (and then back to where you used it from)
- Lichborne, temporary immunity to some status effects
- Wraith Walk, removes CCs and grants you 70% movement speed for a few seconds
- Death's Advance, 35% movement speed increase and cannot be slowed below 100% movement speed for 10 seconds, passively prevents you from being slowed below 70%

BUT WAIT- THERE'S MORE BILLY M-- They are adding Hero Talents in the upcoming expansion, the purpose is to add additional roleplay flavor to your job without causing as large balance concerns. They will be adding about 39 'sub' specializations to match the 39 specializations available for the 13 'jobs' (we have 19-20 for context, soon 21-22). Here is a quick summary of the two hero talents exampled:

Keeper of the Grove (Druid):
- Gives you a buff per treant and grove guardian
- Has your treants cast moonfire / enhanced healing from treants
- Treants generate resources

(lore context, this one should be obvious but a keeper of the grove would naturally have a class fantasy around their tree buddies)

Elune's Chosen (Druid):
- Enhances multiple moon related spells (twice once the tree is completed)
- Chance to have moon damage trigger more .... moon damage! lol
- Stacking buffs for actions taken, related to.. moon damage ; )
- Debuffs applied to your .... you better have said moon damage

(lore context, elune is a moon goddess- so the druid chosen by elune would... be good at.. and I swear to Thal if you don't guess moon damage at this point I will toss a gysahl green)

Due to their design the balance impact will be smaller than normal while still allowing extra roleplayability, and particularly their roleplayability hits upon a lot of class fantasies in the game. Like warrior get mountain king or hunter will get dark ranger. Let's be sure to be fair though and note this is a /new/ feature to WoW so we will see it's impact the end of next year; however, I want to say from a distance, on paper, it reads awesomely.

And hopefully the point is given. Naturally they have many combat abilities that have theme but I wanted to avoid just stating every ability cause... that's what'd we have to do. FFXIV has theme'd combat abilities too, though reading the WoW abilities often read far more crazy. The benefit being is classes can feel really different, the negative naturally is some classes and specs specifically are going to be huge dumpster fires in certain types of content (luckily it's easy to re-spec, so long as you're okay dropping beastmaster to do end raiding or something).

Non-exhaustive list, I skipped classes because I didn't want to label every single one- not because I named them all already.

FFXIV does have Ninja with stealth and reduced fall damage but that is like 'the most creative' they get* (Edit: added a post on Ninja, they also have mug, and while I still think they can do better, I want to say Ninja is an example of things going in the right direction), meanwhile every class in WoW has multiple flavor elements in and out of combat. We are also currently in a 'hyper tuned' moment in FFXIV history where due to the excellent feasibility of any job for any content, we also have fewer differences.

I want to say though if they do improve those differences we will return to some classes being disregarded for certain content. I don't think FFXIV's earlier period where it was worse are great examples of 'returning to' though, because for example some of the classes back then were just all around worse. You had multiple jobs where another job did EVERY SINGLE element better lol. To use a WoW example beastmaster hunter is usually not that great at the high end content; however, it is absolutely amazing in open world and has it's own enjoyable systems associated to it and is extremely serviceable outside of high end-- I remember a few times in FFXIV where like one tank or healer was just all together worse in every single metric possible than another and while we were more unique in the past... the fact that you had 'worse at everything' is not good 'unique balance'. If you're going to balance for thematic uniqueness you shouldn't have a situation where two jobs of comparable roles and one of them is better at every single thing... . So yes there are somethings in the past that are good, but ideally (and not really whole point of the thread) if combat is made unique again.. aim better than the past not just 'the past'.

Going back on point.... We've talked Class and Race now, but we're not even vaguely done..


Then you've got professions with benefits (with most being engineering...):

- Flexweave Underlay, permanent glide passive to a cloak
- Gnomish Gravity Well, high jump toy
- Jeeves, bank access and repair
- Loot-A-Rang, ranged looting
- MOLL-E, toy, mailbox
- Ultimate Gnomish Army Knife, allows resurrection and acts as all crafting tool
- Portals, you can make portals..
- Goblin Glider Kit, can glide
- Auto-Hammer / Field Repair Bots, can field repair with them some allow allies to do so too
- Transmute: Water to undeath essence (and other transmutes)
- Limited Invulnerability Potion, makes you immune to physical attacks for 6 seconds
- Pygmy Oil, shrinks you a little each time you drink it
- Etheral Oil, turns you transparent
- Deepstone Oil, gives you a gold / statue tint and freezes you in place
- Potion of Illusion, makes you look like your target player
- Potion of Treasure Finding, increases treasure drops in specific zones
- Potion of Gusts, sends you forward on a gust of wind
- Cauldron of the Pooka, restores mana and chance to transform you into a cute animal (an aside on drinks in WoW, and GW2, you can get drunk which will give you a dizzy visual effect temporarily)
- Delicate Suspension of Spores, while you're dead you can use this potion to spread healing spores to allies (can also be cast on other dead players by living ones)
- Potion of Chilled Clarity, reduces mana cost by 100% but increases casting time by 20%
- Craftable mounts
Etc

Though in my mind if we had crafting toys they wouldn't be generally focused to just one craft lol.

Since mentioning toys though, they have toys as a system concept... which are all neatly stored into one UI. Tangent point but their transmog is also similarly neatly stored into a UI (and stores essentially every single visual option in the game, thousands of 'slots'). Toys come from all sorts of things from quests, achievements, dungeons, and events. Some samples below. The effects range from mini-games, social goofs, to actual features.


Toys:
- Everlasting Horn of Lavaswimming, you can swim in lava
- Iskaara Tug Sled, You pull a sled that your friends can ride
- Dragon Tea Set, you serve tea lol (you can interact with it)
- Laser Pointer, Don't let the cats in the quicksand get it, please don't RP in /say, /shout . . .
- Gastroped Shell, Summon and control Jerry the snail
- MOLL-E, once you unlock it, it is technically a toy (listed under engineer)
- Chef's Hat, Allows you to cook faster lol
- Crystalline Campfire, Can set up a portable campfire (different than a minion, and a theme in general you'll find if you compare WoW / FFXIV as WoW made an attempt to role play the idea.. so this campfire actually functions as the in game campfire and allows you to cook with it)
- Unstable Portal Emitter, .. just teleport to the four corners of the game
- Rainbow Generator, Generates a rainbow to your target lol
- Panflute of Pandaria, makes critters follow you (critters are actually pretty cool and another tangent on this thread to FFXIV.. in WoW sheep, snakes, bugs, things that can fill the world but shouldn't be fighting the freaking Warrior of Light, God Slayer, are in the environment to fill out the environment-- in FFXIV they're either enemies, or they don't exist :/ )

Summoning critters, snowballs, social mini games, area effect pieces, on and on.. (the toy box has a lot of toys). Many times the effects are simply RP value, like you finish a quest line with a group of characters that has a special effect marking part of their lore. For DBZ watchers it'd be like if you did the Buu saga and then unlocked the M marking, could use it for fun.. doesn't do much, whatever- fun is fun.

GW2 Aside (does a good job with open world as well):

I didn't mention GW2 much, even though I think they do these gameplay roleplay elements to an extent 'too', but mentioning as much here at least. I think the greatest take away I'd point at GW2 in this would be their worldspace and 'FATEs' are generally consistently more thematically interesting and grounded as most of ours feel like kill X rats or "see that cool object, it's meaningless" (while in GW2 it probably has some sort of interaction, even if it's under the mastery system). We do have some interesting boss FATEs mixed in, but comparing again to GW2 our scaling is significantly worse and reward structure isn't as solid both of which lead to a difficulty being 'evergreen'.

Final 2 gil:

While playing WoW and GW2 my feeling wasn't "why am I playing FFXIV, these games are better" it was "Man I wish FFXIV did this, cause I would rather experience this in FFXIV's world". As for those two games, I don't think they're bad and I am happy to point out what they do well, so my preference to FFXIV does not mean a condemnation to those other two games either. In fact I am quite excited for WoW as they said some huge keywords recently that makes me think the future "could" be very good for that game.

Thanks for reading

[shiraneko]

I recently started playing wow, both retail and HC classic, and I agree, especially "I wish these features could be in XIV because I would enjoy it more here". I think this is one of the problems that adds to XIV feeling more and more dull. As someone who started in Stormblood, I saw the gradual culling of these gimmicky utility skills of ARR/HW, to the streamlined SHB/EW where there's only damage and damage reduction skills. These utility skills made up a big part of the class fantasy and distinctiveness. Since I started as a healer, skills such as fluid aura, time dilation, and even the act of casting protect gave me a warm feeling as a healer lol. The act of casting buffs like protect and power word fortitude still add to the class fantasy imo.

In wow I thought it was cool how there's many different kinds of interactions you can have with raid bosses that aren't just dmg/dmg reduc. Like a raid boss named Painsmith sending rolling boulders of death down the arena, but people came up with the strat to glide off the arena and glide back to dodge them. Actual non dmg interactions like more interrupts, CCs mattering. Mechanics that give the players more control like tank boss positioning rather than scripted movements, WoW-style player placed perma puddles, and HP triggers rather than scripted time triggers (that aren't just tied to phase enrages).

Of course I know the jobs 'play' different in FFXIV but except for some key points the theme and the play are not really interlocked. I think my brain most immediately registers SMN's mobility and combat raise, RDM's chain heal and chain raise, and then Warrior and Paladin's insane team support, but even thoughts are not really strong mental connections to themes as much as just registering some standout mechanics.

Yes, sometimes I feel like I'm just playing the same job with different skill skins when I switch to other jobs in the same role.

Itemization has been reduced down so much that it's just the illusion of choice. Crit>DH>Det with minor 1% dps variations and mp economy. Complete reset each raid tier that even your ultimate and relic weapons don't matter on the same tier they're on let alone the next one. Each new raid tier just feels like I'm stepping on a roller coaster ride where everything's decided for me rather than playing an rpg with the fun of picking items/stats/attributes. I hope Yoship takes a cue from WoW with the plentiful choices of pre-raid gear from various sources, gear from the previous tier being bis in many cases, and set bonuses.

Jobs should have skills that create their class fantasy, whether it's a gimmicky utility skill or combat skill. It's ok for jobs to be different from each other. It's ok that some jobs do better in certain situations than others. Especially in 14 where you can switch to any job at any time and not have to level an alt, imo it should give them even more reason to build raids around different job variations.

[Cynric]

I’d be ok with more unique abilities personally. Though it’s definitely a tightrope with balance . One of the reasons for example the races don’t have anything special to each was for balance and the team does tend to let balance be the number one thing over experimentation.

So I wouldn’t necessarily mind if they added more unique skills in a general sense ,however I am against them adding abilities to the itemization. One of the major things that really bothered me when playing wow was how a piece of armor would change an entire ability or even give an entire ability. Which meant I would only get to enjoy that while I used it.

I’m sure some people like this but this was one of the factors that made me not really enjoy gearing up in wow. Gaining crit isn’t exactly interesting, but losing abilities every tier or expansion is just saddening.

While I’m sure something could be done to make itemization more interesting I definitely don’t want to see my armor changing my skills or adding any. Keep that done via leveling , I’d even be ok with a skill tree or something.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Gosh, I never even thought about this but yeah I love how World of Warcraft has those extra class specific abilities that do things out of combat.

The only job ability we have in FFXIV that has that function is the Bard's performance ability and all of the physical ranger jobs having Peloton that increase party movement.

This game has a serious problem with making jobs feel satisfying to play so I would love if they implemented some extra stuff like for example, an Astrologian having the ability to fortune tell any player granting them a variety of minor buffs or debuffs effects (once per day) or Dragoons being able to double jump or high jump.

Stuff like this would help solve some (and I emphasize on SOME) of the homogenized feel of the jobs if every job had at least some unique function to them that doesnt necessarily have to always be combat related.

[Boblawblah]

idk, a lot of this feels like "oh, OH! I like 'x' from 'y'! We should totally put it into 'z'!" even when it just doesn't work like that. "Hey, let's make FFXIV's mount system just like GW2s! because it's the BEST! (it isn't)" is easy to say, but their entire world is built around that system. Their whole combat system is connected to their mounts.

I mean sure, it's good to look at how FFXIV could improve, and there are so many ways it needs to improve, but it has to fit into how the game has already developed to some degree, unless we're talking a new reboot like 2.0 was. They're not going to suddenly just say "yea, let's just do the complete opposite of what we've been doing", as much as you want it.

[LilFlowers]

All this stuff is what put me off WoW after its free trial, all this stuff is cool in Classic for a more old school MMO feel, but putting wings so you can glide only on Demon Hunter? Stupid. I much prefer GW2 style of handling stuff like this, they were just like let's give everyone a glider to glide for example.

[Shougun]

All this stuff is what put me off WoW after its free trial, all this stuff is cool in Classic for a more old school MMO feel, but putting wings so you can glide only on Demon Hunter? Stupid. I much prefer GW2 style of handling stuff like this, they were just like let's give everyone a glider to glide for example.

I'll respond to others in a bit but I think it was worth underlining for the last two posts, yours was far more constructive and the other just reads to me as low effort FFXIV #1 (that FFXIV is #1 is fine haha, the part that is unfortunate is just the low effort denial of ideas).

Something I said 3/4 the way down the wall:

NONE of the above has to / should be copied 1:1, that doesn't even make sense in the context of roleplay gameplay.

So I really appreciate that you feel that way and I didn't list a bunch of stuff so it all could be carbon copied. It's not roleplay if we're roleplaying things that are not even in our game... That'd be weird. While I wont quote it I also said early on I'd prefer nothing that feels like you have to restart your game to get that neat effect.

To your statement, you basically said you thought some of it was cool (I think I was getting from that), but you were annoyed by it being walled off. Now though I want to push back on that, given that WoW obviously /was/ annoying to multi-character on, and FFXIV is really easy to multi-job on, do you believe that feeling would actually maintain in this realm?

By that, I mean we are, imo, prime for these ideas when its so easy to switch jobs vs where it can be more annoying if something really cool is not for 'you' because you're not that thing. For example if Dragoon had passive high jump and no fall damage, if you REALLY wanted that in FFXIV it'll take you 2 seconds to switch to that job. Or alternatively if alchemist could make cool goof off potions everyone could use (as currently we honestly have very little roleplay in all of the crafts).

I have my own ideas of what I'd like to see and I am honestly probably more towards something that might feel like "well if I want to jump high I guess I need to be dragoon", but I am also honestly at the point of "ANYTHING" is better than nearly nothing lol. So for me, yeah I'd like Dragoon to have cool high jump (akin to double jump on DH), but you might gain that via other methods too (leaping lizzy boots, grants high jump!). Yet I still respect your feelings on things being partitioned. I believe it adds to the roleplay and if not in a way that doesn't cause huge effort to 'fix' (like restarting your character, good lordy!!) then that's good roleplay. Like talking to animals in BG3 or other roleplay skills there, not too hard to get but they left them in such a way you role... play... the concepts.

Dragoon is my and funnily enough apparently others too lazy (easy ) go to example of clearly the roleplay of Dragoon is they're a great jumper and yet it is not represented in general roleplay of this game (they do have combat jumps though!), funnily Ninja is the one that gets reduced fall damage while Dragoon plummets to the ground just as poorly as everyone else XD.

[LilFlowers]

So more job related passives that anyone can gain such as Ninja run speed/Jump animation? Yeah I'm all for that dude thanks for clarifying.

[Luluya]

They could take another page from FF6 with how they have magicite as well as relics that are either for all characters/jobs or just specific ones.

Like for example the dragoon boots relic in FF6 changed the characters attack command to jump, they could do a similar thing here but adapted for XIV's mechanics. Maybe the double jump thing, and have it be a thing only dragoon can use.

Or for something more tangible, take the magicite mechanic and turn it into equippable gems for summoner that change its summons into bismarck/leviathan/shiva/etc etc other summons

I think both of those to be honest would be a neat feature to include as the new exploratory zone's logos/lost actions mechanic (assuming it has one)

[Raraka]

Totally agree with the post. While reading it I instantly started thinking what they could do with XIV and... yeah, not everything has to be amazing, just needs to contribute to the feel of being certain class/job, so I would be more than happy to get new things to play with in XIV

Some of the ideas I brainstormed:

Racial examples:

Keepers of the Moon/Sun: Movement speed buff when its night/day time respectively. The /dance emote changes to a more intricate dance along the buff

Plainsfolk: Increased GP regen while not mounted
Dunesfolk: Chance to save Crystals and clusters while crafting in one of the main cities

Seawolf/Hellsguard: While on the Sea/Desert respectively, massively increase health regeneration. Seawolf get a Sea-shanty singing action, and Hellsguard can lay down to stargaze on the sands

Class examples:

Scholar - Tape and Pencil: With the help of your fairy/carbie you can extend a measuring tape between you two, to measure distances (visible by party members). In instances, you can draw on the floor while out of combat (and it gets erased when combat is engaged). Ideally this would be used to explain things in scholarly fashion, but I would accept goofy drawings too

Warrior - Beast Roar: De-aggro and make overworld enemies run away from you

Paladin - Out of combat raise/first aid : ^)

I would keep going but I think I have seen posts before where people listed similar concepts. As for the Toy box, I would go as far as to pay for it ;_; I genuinely love so much the effects you describe, my favorite ones were the Chef hat and the shrinking potion. Pls give