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

[Shougun]

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.
• 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.