FFXIV's Systems Ain't That Deep, but They Could Have Been.

[Shurrikhan]

No they couldn't. Monk pulled from Lancer and Marauder.

Ahh, I guess I was just pulling Spiny Plume with Skull Sunder, then, when one of the two tanks just somehow could not handle that mechanic.

Classes could pull from all, but then, as a Monk, you lost Fists of Fire and Dragon Kick.

If, for whatever reason, you had to tank as a Monk, you weren't typically taking the 5% damage increase over the 10% mitigation increase anyways, and you were swapping targets too often for Dragon Kick's -10% Blunt Resistance to matter much outside of bosses, especially given that its opportunity cost was your strongest attack (after the first Bootshine buff).

It also meant you could take Convalesce, Awareness, Perfect Dodge, etc.

There are a lot of issues that hide below the surface which is why I always say you have to think critically about what you actually want and what the pros and cons are. Do the pros outweigh the cons.

Agreed. Tbf, when I heard that we were replacing Additional (Cross-class) Actions with Role Actions, I had hoped (even if not so reasonably) that they meant Cross-Role Actions.

Think of it this way: On a DPS, Diversion is purely bloat apm. During uptime, you hit it on CD. But, what if it instead gave an emergency Enmity boost, instead, for situational use? Now, it would actually do something that merely passively decreasing DPSs' enmity could not; each job would have more agency, even as core play is less bloated.

Imagine if a Physical DPS could each pick --with 2 charges shared across all these skills (despite, yes, their having varied CDs)-- any 3 actions from among, say...

• Aid (Make a downed ally healable, regaining control of their character when they reach 20% HP. Downed but Aid-ed allies receive 60% less healing. If equipped, Weakness afflicts your for 20 fewer seconds and you revive with 20% more HP.)
• Rally (Usable on self or ally. Provides target with a temporary barrier equal to half their missing HP that fades over 10 seconds and causes them to heal for 30% of their damage dealt and 20% of their healing done for 10 seconds. If equipped, your maximum HP is increased by 6%.)
• Hunter's Chance (For 15 seconds, heal for 30% of your damage dealt and heal for an additional 3% of HP per second. Additionally, your attacks afflict your victims with an aura which, while Hunter's Chance is active, causes your allies to heal for 15% of their damage dealt to your victims. If equipped, your self-healing done, except through Cross-Role actions, is increased by 20%.)
• Fend (For 4s, allies within 3y cannot be reduced to lower than your own speed and cannot be drawn in or knocked back if you cannot. Split a portion of targeted damage nearby allies would take to you as well, based on the %HP to which the attack would reduce each of you. If equipped, you take 20% less damage from directed attacks not directly targeting you.)
• Diversion (Distract the enemy, if any, and those nearby, causing a high amount of temporary Enmity (fading over 15s). For the 15 seconds thereafter, your Enmity generated is vastly increased. This bonus fades over the duration, from a 500% to 50% increase. If equipped, you stagger attacks directly targeting you, delaying 20% of their damage dealt to instead be taken over 6 seconds.)
• Cripple (Interrupts the target's current spell or special attack and afflict the target with the least diminished status effect among Stun or Bind, Heavy or Slow, Silence or Pacify. If equipped, your native stun will also interrupt, and your other movement-affecting skills have a 50% chance not to inflict diminishing returns..)

With that, they'd actually be capable of emergency action, but there'd be no cross-class progression necessary. Yes, Rally or Hunter's Chance would be damn near obligatory as a choice in most content for their free Bloodbath-esque sustain, but hey, since they're on shared charges, you at least have 1-2 free (or, more contextual) choices. And, ofc, balance of value is subject to tuning.

[KenZentra]

While I'm likewise disappointed by the lack of flair (assuming it can be handled reasonably)... how are leveling and gear progression not character progression? It is objectively making opening up more content (per the encounters you can face and the tools by which you can face them) to you and/or making that content easier, just like... any other form of "progression".

No customization (beyond jobs and GCD tier)? Absolutely. But "no progression"? Does "progression" need to be capable of being failed, or briefly need to take you to 3rd party guides/cheat sheets, to count as "progression"?

When you reach max level, progression for your character stops aside from gear. Your Job (barring balancing/revamp changes) will play exactly the same way start to finish. (Skipping over making an essay about what gear does for you) Gear in FFXIV has a fatal flaw, it doesn't change anything about your character, or your jobs capabilities. It only serves to increase your overall power to meet enemies of increasing overall power. This barebone idea of gear is true for almost every RPG ever. You get gear to fight bosses to get gear to fight bigger bosses to get bigger gear to fight even bigger bosses, ad infinitum. You could easily implement a system that is just, "When you kill dude, you get to fight next dude", and if you keep the numbers the same in terms of damage and hp and whatnot, you'll probably have a similar system to "get gear to kill dude to get gear, etc etc.".

10 years after ARR has released, we still have the same kind of gear. Increase overall power, forever. All gear is the same. Vitality, Main Stat, Secondary stat 1 (which is maxed out on the gear), Secondary stat 2 (not maxed out). Good gear progression is gear that enhances how you play in a meaningful way, but not in a permanent way. Such as a piece of gear that increases Auto-Attack speed after you finish your combo, or a Staff that has a chance of procing Thundercloud when using Blizzard, but Thunder's duration is reduced by half. Stat upgrades from newer gear would replace these, keeping them from being permanent, however there should be another piece of gear to look forward to, while still having the option of gear without any special effects as well.

Would gear progression be more meaningful if each piece was also useful only to a narrower band of content, such that you'd have to take more time to gear all content and/or you'd need to base your gear acquisition around what content you don't want to be held back in? Would it be more meaningful if every piece of gear was job-specific?

Only useful in certain content? No. Would it be more meaningful if every piece of gear was job-specific? I mean yeah it would to an extent actually. We already have gear for certain armor classes, such as Fending, Aiming and the such. It'd make perfect sense for these armor classes to have specific additions for specific Jobs. We would have the gear we already have, but also extra gear in the loot tables specific to gear Job. Maybe like single pieces or even Set of gear (with set bonuses!).

Customization and good core experiences are generally at odds outside of a narrow span, as customization at least as often as not just means holding some part of the base experience back or hostage to the player inputting the appropriate build choice.

I think the game is already enforcing that players do the "correct" build choice. If you like the idea of attacking really fast so you stack SkS or SpS, you cannot do anything other than normal content, as most enrage timers are fairly tight imo. Your DPS wont be good enough for it.

I really hate the argument that customization will always be min-maxing cookie cutter builds that everyone has to do anyways, as if there isnt so much casual content that doesn't require much out of each player. There will always be min-maxing. There is min-maxing right now, should we remove the small bit of customization we are allowed to have because of it? No we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, but also we shouldn't judge customization (whether through a talent tree, Cross-Class, or something similar) on its worst case scenario.

Consider this. Every Job right now, is no different than a cookie cutter, min-maxed talent build. The only difference is that you weren't even given the chance to play the way you'd want to. With some sort of Character progression, such as a talent tree/cross-class actions, you have at worst exactly what we have now, and at best new ways of playing the same Jobs whilst still being viable.

Lastly, we of course should not just fall head first into a sea of customization options for hundreds of aspects of the game. But currently there is, practically speaking, nearly zero ways to customize how you play any given job. In a manner of speaking, its like someone on dry land saying they want to go for a swim in a pool and giving them caution about swimming in the open ocean.

All of this customization of course, hinges of SE giving support to these new ways to play. Say for instance, you like the idea of dealing damage over a wide area so you spec a BLM for lots of AoE rather than single target damage. If SE then says "You know what, all dungeons and raid encounters are just single bosses. No adds, No Trash at all, nothing but 4/8 dudes pummeling down a single foe". Then that avenue is practically dead. A tale told since ARR to this very day.

[NekiUno]

Ah... The cross-class system where a ranged Bard had to level melee skills. Because nothing said "ranged" like sort-of mandatory lancer and pugilist skills one obtained by leveling 3 classes.

Archer to 15 for: Unlocking other classes.
Lancer to 2 for: Feint
Archer to 30 for: BRD Requirement.
Pugilist to 15 for: BRD Requirement, Internal Release.
BRD to 50 for: Maximum level.
Lancer to 34 for: Blood for Blood
Pugilist to 42 for: Mantra (All Cross-class skills obtained)

[Source: https://ffxivguild.com/ffxiv-bard-br...-skills-guide]

Yeah, that system gives me PTSD for real and don't get me started with crafting and gathering cross-class (That's why you see so many characters having max level CUL before anything else).

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...2/blog/140116/

[Cynric]

Consider this. Every Job right now, is no different than a cookie cutter, min-maxed talent build. The only difference is that you weren't even given the chance to play the way you'd want to. With some sort of Character progression, such as a talent tree/cross-class actions, you have at worst exactly what we have now, and at best new ways of playing the same Jobs whilst still being viable.

Lastly, we of course should not just fall head first into a sea of customization options for hundreds of aspects of the game. But currently there is, practically speaking, nearly zero ways to customize how you play any given job. In a manner of speaking, its like someone on dry land saying they want to go for a swim in a pool and giving them caution about swimming in the open ocean.

All of this customization of course, hinges of SE giving support to these new ways to play. Say for instance, you like the idea of dealing damage over a wide area so you spec a BLM for lots of AoE rather than single target damage. If SE then says "You know what, all dungeons and raid encounters are just single bosses. No adds, No Trash at all, nothing but 4/8 dudes pummeling down a single foe". Then that avenue is practically dead. A tale told since ARR to this very day.

I've said it before but, I wouldn't be against us getting some sort of skill trees, or talent style system. That being said, I don't think cross class would've been that system. I think if we had to level multiple jobs to be able to make builds the game wouldn't have been as popular. I think that's honestly the main reason why cross class doesn't work. There's an expectation of "play something you hate, to gain something you need" and that's just terrible imo.
If it were introduced into the game where we could have "builds" it would be a completely new system than anything we've had before. Something like a DPS has multiple skills they can pull from to enhance themselves or a specific job. I think that's more where FFXIV would have success at. Leveling the job you like should give you anything you need for progressing its different playstyles, you shouldn't have to go heal for 30+ levels to gain an important ability or go play a job you aren't interested in.

Like right now Role actions are more or less what Cross Class turned into. So that system is changed drastically, but it isn't wholly removed either. It's just not what you'd want in terms of customization. I would love for us to have some type of customization because it might make things more fun. If they were to do it, I would hope that they would do it well, in my experience no games have really been able to make great use out of the talent/skill tree style of gameplay. Even WoW which has tried many different iterations usually can't keep meaningful choices between talents.

Sadly as you say, currently the game wouldn't encourage having customization, it's very rigid.

[Shurrikhan]

On the assumption (perhaps errant again) that this time you are truly replying to the person you're quoting...

When you reach max level, progression for your character stops aside from gear. Your Job (barring balancing/revamp changes) will play exactly the same way start to finish. (Skipping over making an essay about what gear does for you) Gear in FFXIV has a fatal flaw, it doesn't change anything about your character, or your jobs capabilities.

Again, I ask: Why is that necessarily a fatal flaw?

Consider the alternatives. Take WoW's tier sets, for example. Unless they stand in place of a internal balance (skill A relative to skills B, C, D, etc.) correction (which in turn means a worse kit for everyone not raiding), they tend to devolve gameplay, rather than evolve it. Not always, but if they have an actual impact on how you play, it is more often for the worse. They make a given skill or couple skills more powerful, more necessary to hit as often as possible, etc., but in doing so they overwhelm previously held nuances for a net decrease in available skill expression.

Or, consider something like (High) Jump's damage being greatly increased in a piece of DRG armor. Sounds neat, right? But it does nothing to gameplay, either, because you were already using that skill on CD.

There are ways to do it right. They're just a slim portion of the possibility, and all too often require, in essence, holding back otherwise almost unanimously perceived improvements to the kit just so they can then be trickled out later as gear rewards.

It only serves to increase your overall power to meet enemies of increasing overall power.

Which is what customization mostly amounts to beyond content- or build-specificity. If you don't want the gear to be an upgrade only for fights X, Y, Z, or builds A or B, so that --in effect-- "unlocking" your actual build or content choices just requires far more grind, then that vertical progression is what you're left with.

You could easily implement a system that is just, "When you kill dude, you get to fight next dude", and if you keep the numbers the same in terms of damage and hp and whatnot, you'll probably have a similar system to "get gear to kill dude to get gear, etc etc.".

You largely could, and I would kinda dig that. But gear does do something more than that, for better or worse: it increases the required grind period without increasing the difficulty that has to be set for each fight's (first) clear, and creates (if in a somewhat illusory way, given community expectations in PuGs) an option between rushing content (coming in minimally geared) or fully preparing for it (having up to all of what gear one can from prior content).

That's it. That's gear. It's a means of letting players feel rewarded for re-running content for a somewhat flexible number of incremental successes/acquisitions. Most progression systems are the same, just with a slightly different means of acquisition.

Good gear progression is gear that enhances how you play in a meaningful way, but not in a permanent way. Such as a piece of gear that increases Auto-Attack speed after you finish your combo, or a Staff that has a chance of procing Thundercloud when using Blizzard, but Thunder's duration is reduced by half.

Having actually played with those things, again, I have to disagree. They more often reduce the net depth of kits than increase them, for the simple fact that if you make the base experience appealing and then add some shit atop it, the result is almost always going to destabilize it for the worst. It is not impossible to design them well, but I'd take any promise of actual customization, let alone gameplay improvement, from them with a lake of salt, as they are more likely to simply narrow the portion of the kit you're competitively allowed to play with and/or the number of considerations you'd see net reward for tracking/optimizing.

While there are occasionally good design ideas a dev come up with later into a given expansion and couldn't excuse adding into the base kit at the time but could put into a gear set (which then usually gets, thankfully, rounded into the base kit with the next expansion if well received), the effect is more often the likes of (A) swapping between gear-dependent rotations, each with fewer adaptations or nuances available than previously available to you, or (B) having to hit Thunder as often as possible, removing any value in holding Thundercloud, or Thunder no longer being worth casting at all.

Only useful in certain content? No. Would it be more meaningful if every piece of gear was job-specific? I mean yeah it would to an extent actually. We already have gear for certain armor classes, such as Fending, Aiming and the such.

Then enjoy either being locked into one job for more than just the single raid tier, if the available progression is as time-locked as typical and/or decently long, or the further grind requirements in order to actually play with multiple jobs on the same character.

Yeah, that may stimulate more interest for some --say, those who don't really want to experience fights through more than a couple jobs and enjoy flavor text or feeling superior/distinct for using a different rotation than most... as made obligatory by their gear-- but it definitely has its downsides, too.

I think the game is already enforcing that players do the "correct" build choice. If you like the idea of attacking really fast so you stack SkS or SpS, you cannot do anything other than normal content, as most enrage timers are fairly tight imo. Your DPS wont be good enough for it.

Technically, you'd fall within standard deviation of BiS gear's performance still, but fair enough, the devs haven't balanced what few choices we have despite having the means of doing so laid out for them pretty thoroughly since ARR.

But surely skill-specific buff/proc-generating set bonuses will be more balanced?

I really hate the argument that customization will always be min-maxing cookie cutter builds that everyone has to do anyways, as if there isnt so much casual content that doesn't require much out of each player.

Two things there:

1. Not everyone enjoys normal content, and just throwing some set bonus jank (or even, hell, a theoretically "well-made" set bonus) isn't going to suddenly make Normal content engaging to them. And, no, it wouldn't just be a matter of they're then sticking to the cookie-cutter builds in order to remain allowed to play the rest of the content. Unless you want your customization to be, effectively, dead on arrival, just making space / possible interactions for those new options will impact the rest.
   
   
2. If the likes of a 0.4-2% difference from playing at a different GCD tier is going to, as you said, limit one to solely Normal content... then it's not a mere matter of "min-maxing" so much as one choice to be allowed to play the whole game, while everyone else is limited to just a part of it.

No we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, but also we shouldn't judge customization (whether through a talent tree, Cross-Class, or something similar) on its worst case scenario.

I'm not judging either by only on their worst-case scenarios.

Gameplay-affecting tier sets / set bonuses I'm literally just judging by their norms, the many design tweaks to avoid those negative effects that WoW's theorycrafter and /or invested community has suggested over the years when presented with those problematic tier sets (which is nearly all of the gameplay-affecting ones), and how few lessons were ever learned from those design shortfalls made. (And similar gameplay-affecting gear or systems in other MMOs).

Cross-class, I'm clearly not judging by its worst-case scenario, or I wouldn't be bothering with mock-ups on how it could have been done better (let alone have discussed alternatives and improvements for over a decade).

Again, the matter is pretty simple:

The priority of customization should, in essence, be to find an appropriate middle-ground between fine-tweaking and set experiences, so that the customizations aren't able to min-max or easy-way-out the fun right out of the original classes/jobs/et cetera but can nonetheless widen and/or deepen what would attract players among those original classes/jobs/et cetera. Customization nearly just for the sake of customization, though, tends to solely add bloat that reduces accessibility and/or intuitiveness for no actual increase in engagement (especially within the consequent gameplay).

Consider this. Every Job right now, is no different than a cookie cutter, min-maxed talent build. The only difference is that you weren't even given the chance to play the way you'd want to. With some sort of Character progression, such as a talent tree/cross-class actions, you have at worst exactly what we have now, and at best new ways of playing the same Jobs whilst still being viable.

I agree. But, again, consider the alternatives:

Let's say we have even some dozen builds available for Black Mage, be they from combinations of talents, sub-classes, set bonuses, individual gear special effects, skill-adjusting consumables, or what have you. How expansive should its base/core kit be? How consistent/involved should its identity be? What is a Black Mage? How do you balance the easier builds thus generated against those that require more fight knowledge, in-the-moment reaction speed and awareness, and generally faster decision-making so that the latter aren't simply culled from the class?

A mere dozen is far, far from the combinatorial nebula that is most involved talent systems (literal four- to six-figure numbers of combinations), let alone their intersections with other customization systems, and still those questions have to be answered. The limits of how much you can/should cut away from the base experience while still letting it be conveyable and enjoyable, and the parameters of gameplay to result from those combinations, is something that needs to pretty well hammered out before looking at what can be twisted, pulled, and replaced.

In a manner of speaking, its like someone on dry land saying they want to go for a swim in a pool and giving them caution about swimming in the open ocean.

No, it's rather more like the pool being deeper than the person is tall and that person having never swum before (as there is no customization in this game from which, apparently, to much conceptualize its impact). The caution conveyed doesn't require any mention of the ocean that the advice-giver may swim in; both the ocean and pool can drown the other person just fine. None of the caution I've mentioned depends on the magnitude of fine adjustments seen in the likes of GW2 or WoW or Rift or what have you to start becoming an issue, and thus far I've only even discussed set bonuses and cross-class, neither of which are ocean-sized means of customization.

All of this customization of course, hinges of SE giving support to these new ways to play. Say for instance, you like the idea of dealing damage over a wide area so you spec a BLM for lots of AoE rather than single target damage. If SE then says "You know what, all dungeons and raid encounters are just single bosses. No adds, No Trash at all, nothing but 4/8 dudes pummeling down a single foe". Then that avenue is practically dead. A tale told since ARR to this very day.

Agreed.

Aside: Though, "customization" involving speccing directly for a category that's basically just given by the content type (Boss-fight [ST], or Dungeon [predominantly AoE] can also only ever be practically dead from the start, in terms of actual gameplay customization. It tends to have all the effect of Talent Set A for Content Type A, Talent Set B for Content Type B, or <Just this if the boss is humanoid> and <Use this if the boss is not humanoid>. There are exception, but they are outliers. Speccing directly for categorical difference is bad design.

[Shurrikhan]

Some food for thought, with some customization ideas ordered by degree of ambition:

1. Balance the Damn Stat Choices

• Spell Speed and Skill Speed consolidated into Speed. Speed now affects the recast times of most short CDs, as to prevent conflict with the otherwise-desynced accelerated GCD, and increases the resource generated by resource CDs (%chance, quantized to the nearest smallest increment of increase, such as 5 Kenki or 1 Cartridge [overcharged, increasing the effective maximum cartridge count]).
• Certain DoT and HoT actions now deal a portion of their remaining periodic value instantly upon being replaced (this portion decreasing as duration clipped increases) or "roll over" their duration onto the next application, increasing the number of GCD thresholds able to be fit to their rotations where those jobs would otherwise lack any other competitive means of control over the timing of those skills' reapplication (think Demolish, short of greatly increasing the tick value of Demolish and greatly raising the ppgcd of Meditate to allow for use of its 1s GCDs during uptime).
• MP tick values are now increased proportionately to GCD rate. Most abilities no longer generate MP, as that merely further encouraged using them on CD (which was already the dominant pressure regardless), and Lucid Dreaming has been removed. In exchange, natural MP tick rates have been increased. All this makes Speed no longer uniquely exempt from increasing one's relative MP efficiency.
  
• Crit again only affects crit chance, but "guaranteed" chances now act as a +100% chance and excess chance is converted into proportionately increased effectiveness; a 120% chance of a +50% crit would become a 100% chance of a +60% crit, a 125% chance of a 20% DR parry would become a 100% chance of a 25% DR parry, etc.
  
  
• Tenacity, Piety, and Direct Hit moved to their own, separate category of Tertiary Attributes, and have been changed into Tenacity, Vigor, and Mobility, respectively, none of which have any offensive value.
• Tenacity solely decreases damage taken. Vigor increases HP and MP generated over time. Mobility increases movement speed and movement speed bonuses.
• Increase the impact of all secondary stats by a good 50% or so, allowing players to actually reach some high crit rates or low GCDs, if they so please, and reducing the undesireable gameplay impact of ilvl syncs. Increase the tuning of content accordingly.

2. Facilitate Effective Customization-of-Stats-via-Materia

• Materia no longer uses items except in exchange between players. Instead, it is predominantly a granular currency, as found within a new section of one's Currency Pane. Gear no longer carries a Spiritbond %, but instead just consistently produces fine amounts of Materia-as-a-granular-currency from any Spiritbond-increasing activities.
• Upon log-in following this change, all players' Materia (as items) from their Inventory, Retainers, and Saddlebag of any Grade will have been converted into an amount of that relevant Materia (as currency), now of a single grade each, with Materia (as items) for Skill Speed and Spell Speed of course consolidated into a single Materia (as currency) and Materia for Piety (now Vigor) and Direct Hit (now Mobility) renamed.
  
  
• Roulettes which previously rewarded tokens exchangeable for Materia now just reward additional Materia-as-currency.
• The Extract Materia action has been replaced by the Infuse Materia action. This allows you to infuse a Clear Orb with 10, 25, or 80 Materia of a single type (forming a Dim, Lit, or Glowing Orb of <Stat>) with other players directly or via the Market Board. The Clear Orb can be purchased for a pittance from vendors commonly found near market boards, and the same item can be used for any of the three sizes.
  
  
• Materia is no longer added to gear, but instead to one's job, via the new Junction system, which has replaced the Meld Materia action. Each job may 'junction' a particular maximum amount each of Secondary and Tertiary-stat Materia, regardless of what the player carries within their gear, to a maximum determined by the highest equippable item level they've unlocked on that job. (The consequent Materia-granted stat total, too, is therefore decreased when one's item level is synced down.)
• The Junction system allows one to set priorities based on resultant stat effects, such as to prioritize reaching a certain GCD if possible before dumping into Crit up to a %, and then Determination, or if not, a lower GCD before whatever trickled-down priorities beneath it, etc. Materia allotments will be automatically adjusted around your gear and total Secondary/Tertiary materia allottable to meet those priorities as best as possible.

3. Give us Some Actually Interesting "Core" Materia

• Filling that "Primary" Materia slot, players can now also Junction a "Core" materia. These come in a few flavors, though they are not categorically distinct:

1. Materia granting general conditional effects.
2. Materia enhancing a job action, minorly adjusting one's toolkit.
3. Materia adjusting multiple job actions, significantly adjusting one's toolkit.
4. Materia adding a separate conditional effect as thematic to a particular instance or set of instances (such as a raid tier or Exploratory Mission zone).

Examples of Materia granting general conditional effects:

• Wardancer - You have an initially near-guaranteed chance to dodge or parry attacks that would otherwise kill you, but this effect cannot then occur again for a period based on the damage thus nullified relative to your health. While fully charged, your dodge and parry chance are each increased by X%. Nullifying damage against you increases your attack power by up to Y% of the damage nullified, but with heavily diminishing returns. Recommended Roles: Defenders, Skirmishers, Strikers.
  
  
• Siege Engine - Your damage dealt generates a barrier against avoidable area of effect attacks equal to X% of your damage dealt. Recommended Roles: Casters, Strikers, Skirmishers, Defenders.
  
  
• Phoenix Heart - Once downed, you choose to tap into your Phoenix Heart to revive yourself, though this effect will take X seconds to be fully readied again. While fully charged, Weakness and Brink of Death wil last Y fewer seconds on you.

Examples of Materia enhancing a job action, minorly adjusting one's toolkit.

• Six-Star Striker - Requires Monk. Six-Sided Star is now an ability on a 10r (10-round / 10-GCDs) recast time that can be used even while still recharging. It no longer respects the global recast timer, but still incurs a further delay of 2 rounds atop the existing global recast time still remaining. The available charge is consumed to reduce the global recast time incurred by up to 100% (at 10 rounds of charge).
  This allows the Monk to increase their APM with some additional kickery and adds some minutial nuance in avoiding (de)buff clipping by using the partial GCDs incurred through SSS to delay the reapplications of Twin Snakes and Demolish.
  
  
• Demolisher - Requires Monk. Demolish enhances your next Form-bearing weaponskill, causing it to deal X% additional damage to the target and all enemies nearby.
  WIP. May inadvertently devolve Demolish into a per-2 Coeurl action due to how Leaden Fist currently works.

Examples of Materia adjusting multiple job actions, significantly adjusting one's toolkit:

• Dragon Dancer - Rather than solely upgrading your next Bootshine into Leaden Fist, you next Form-bearing weaponskill, augmenting all with additional effects.
  Obviously very WIP. But think some of the animations of Hephestis blended with those of Scrapper or War Dancer from Lost Ark. It makes Dragon Kick even more disproportionately valuable to Monk, however, and may occasionally conflict with Nadi generation (but, if I can get the tuning right, only to the point of giving Nadi gen some priority conflict, rather than outright overwhelming it).
  
  
• Raptor's Reach - Replaces your True Strike with Shrike, Twin Snakes with Hawk Strike, Dragon Kick with Falcon Dive, and Snap Punch with Eagle Wing. Compared to their original versions, these are extremely mobile skills with a more complex and varied rotational loop.

Examples of Materia adding a separate conditional effect as thematic to a particular instance or set of instances (such as a raid tier or Exploratory Mission zone):

• Time Bulge (Alexander Prime Savage) - While stunned, the durations of your beneficial effects do not decrease. Effects elapsing within a second of each other have an X% chance to instead extend their durations by 6 seconds, and a Y% chance to instead refresh their durations completely. This chance decreases after activation but recovers with each failure to extend or reset durations.
  
  
• Riversmeet (Hydratos) - Casting a spell on an ally increases your Speed by 5% for 5 seconds. (Multiple applications of this effect may occur simultaneously, but do not refresh one another. Each is applied and fades separately.)
  
  
• Hellforged (Hephaestus Savage) - <Something something damage dealt increases Physical Defense, damage taken makes your attacks fiery and deal more damage.>

4. Classes each have 2-3 Major Traits, and can equip 2 more from other Classes. (Similar to sub-classes, but more dynamic, integrated, and thematically specific. Jobs fill these slots with their own, leaving no such customization.)

• <WIP> <Entices content adjustments / new content types as well.>

5. A full-on AP system, where customization is also progression.

• <WIP> <Would damn near require a full rework of the content available across the leveling experience to be remotely worthwhile. I would love a game that could situate this effectively; I just doubt XIV would ever be it, or would any likely be maintainable until we've, say, learned how to utilize machine learning for encounter design guidance (easing developer cognitive load in keeping in mind what builds could do/engage with what) and/or balancing (of those builds relative to each other and to content).

[Zarkovitch]

The game should go back to the stormblood era in terms gameplay and raiding. The game was more fun.

[kayll]

Don't get me wrong, in principle it is good, but the cross-class system itself at the time of implementation was heavily criticized and disliked which indicated they didn't like it, and for a good reason, it wasn't one of those systems they just aimlessly went headfirst in and removed for no reason, there was genuine feedback against that system. Edit: I would say given their development or lack thereof in Heavensward shows how they themselves felt about it, even before it was replaced by role abilities.

I'm not entirely hung up on cross-class actions being deleted its just an example, I wouldn't really care if it was replaced with something else meaningful... but it wasn't, it was more a hypothetical that if they kept the system and worked on it, they could have developed something meaningful over time.
Though when I played in ARR I saw no issue with it personally, you wanted your character to be stronger? You played more of the game, that just makes sense to me in an MMO.

Character progression was putting stat points into your main stat. Yay. Could it be expanded to put them into secondary stats? Sure, now they all go into crit. If you have a different idea, please share.

Gear progression, there is going to be a BiS, no matter if it is for every fight, or specific fights, or hypothetical different builds. What do you actually want to see out of gear progression?

What systems are you actually saying they should add? Taking into account how players actually interact with said systems and not necessarily how you want them to interact.

Why would I care about manual stat allocation in this game when stats are about as worthless can be?
You pretty much highlight some of the things wrong with the game yourself as some sort of "gotcha" towards me.
Substats are unbalanced and don't matter, there is no meaningful choice to be made there.
BiS is used to farm the things you got BiS from,Whats the point? it will get replaced by crafted gear next patch.

What systems are you actually saying they should add? Taking into account how players actually interact with said systems and not necessarily how you want them to interact.

I'm sure if I was getting 15$ a month per player I surely could come up with something in at least 10years.

[DPZ2]

I'm sure if I was getting 15$ a month per player I surely could come up with something in at least 10years.

Except, well, they have "come up with something". The fact that you, personally, do not like what they decided on may be the issue - for you, personally.

For me, personally, customization was that thing you go to icy-veins to let them tell you what the current Balance discord figured out within the current parameters of the game.

What I really despised about WoW was that special gear with neat stats and procs became useless in the next expansion. And don't get me started about Legendary Weapons and the grind to feed them.

[kayll]

Except, well, they have "come up with something". The fact that you, personally, do not like what they decided on may be the issue - for you, personally.

I'm curious of the "something" they came up with is, can you enlighten me?
Willing to give credit where credit is due, but the games systems are still a very same to the game release.. and don't get me wrong I don't hate the game, I just wish it was better in some places.

What I really despised about WoW was that special gear with neat stats and procs became useless in the next expansion. And don't get me started about Legendary Weapons and the grind to feed them.

How is that worse compared to the current FF system, no neat stats, no neat procs, yet your gear becomes useless all the same?
Also I don't get the complaints about having to play the game in an RPG to make your character stronger, that is kinda the most RPG thing about an RPG imo.