Lack of lore behind new job skills

[Jeeqbit]

So a lot of the older skills, either through flavour text on the effect (combustion for AST, TBN for DRK), in the skill's tooltip (Hide for NIN, Ley Lines for BLM) or through the relating job quest have some amount of explanation as to what exactly the skill does in the lore.

They do, but the developers said it is extremely taxing trying to design a compelling story while simoultaneously explainining why you were learning each action. I think the Dragoon story did it extremely well, for example, but I can see how much effort it must have been to try and figure those actions into a story.

And for what? Most people don't do the job quests until max level, apparently. So they were wasting their time having job quests except at max level and pacing the job story with the MSQ progression.

So this led to the point where we are at now, where we don't have job quests except for new jobs.

Healers used to have seperate Esuna-like skills a long time ago, as each healer in the lore would use different *methods* to get rid of ailments, but achieve the same effect. The same is still true for Phys Ranged's Shield Samba/Tactician/Troubadour, which are different in name, and more importantly flavour, only. Why did we keep one, but not the other?

This is a great point, but there are more examples.

Why do tanks have a role action for their 20% mit, but not their 30% mit? Why do tanks have a role action for Provoke, but not Shield Lob/Lightning Shot/Tomahawk/Unmend? Why do tanks not have a role action for their AoE combo and their gap closer? Why is Cure/Physic/Benefic/Diagnosis not a role action? We could go on!!!

It's almost random which are role actions and which are not. Personally, it would be better to just get rid of most Role Actions so they can all be given flavor and job fantasy animations, such as Low Blow being Shield Bash for PLD.

Similarly we have little idea what methods a Black Mage uses to cast Paradox, something that could have been elaborated on in a job quest, even one that is optional and a yellow quest.

All this is to say that I enjoy job flavour and fantasy, and little blurbs in debuff/buff text or the skill tooltip itself can go a long way in absence of proper job quests giving us exposition, and I'm sad that they seem to be on the way out too.

It would be good if these could be explained somewhere at least.

[CaptainLagbeard]

It's almost random which are role actions and which are not. Personally, it would be better to just get rid of most Role Actions so they can all be given flavor and job fantasy animations, such as Low Blow being Shield Bash for PLD.

Well Shield Bash and Low Blow do serve slightly different purposes, as Shield Bash is GCD and Low Blow is OGCD. And Low Blow was a DRK skill back in HW... WAR also had their own unique stun skill...
Additionally, while Shield Lob, Tomahawk and Lightning Shot are identical, DRK's Unmend is classified as a spell and does Magic damage rather than physical.

[Jeeqbit]

Well Shield Bash and Low Blow do serve slightly different purposes, as Shield Bash is GCD and Low Blow is OGCD.

Yes, and my point is nobody uses Shield Bash. I think the last time I used it was probably in Heavensward or ARR, when I wasn't being healed in an ARR dungeon and I survived by stunning all the enemies endlessly.

Arguably, people hardly use Low Blow, but they do occasionally and it is definitely useful on trash packs as a form of interrupt, or even potentially in a place like Eureka or POTD.

Shield Bash has remained because of the job fantasy, so they could make us actually use it by just changing Low Blow into a normal action each job has, but restore the job flavor.

• WAR: Brutal Swing
• DRK: Low Blow
• PLD: Shield Bash
• GNB: No idea

[Don_Kiwi]

Yes, and my point is nobody uses Shield Bash. I think the last time I used it was probably in Heavensward or ARR, when I wasn't being healed in an ARR dungeon and I survived by stunning all the enemies endlessly.

Arguably, people hardly use Low Blow, but they do occasionally and it is definitely useful on trash packs as a form of interrupt, or even potentially in a place like Eureka or POTD.

Shield Bash has remained because of the job fantasy, so they could make us actually use it by just changing Low Blow into a normal action each job has, but restore the job flavor.

• WAR: Brutal Swing
• DRK: Low Blow
• PLD: Shield Bash
• GNB: No idea

GNB could have something called "Flashbang" or "Stun Round" to keep with the gun/bullet theme of the job.

[Mecia]

They do, but the developers said it is extremely taxing trying to design a compelling story while simoultaneously explainining why you were learning each action. I think the Dragoon story did it extremely well, for example, but I can see how much effort it must have been to try and figure those actions into a story.

Scratch the story then, id take even just talking to our relevant trainers and them giving a speech or demonstration or whatever.

[Don_Kiwi]

They can just dedicate the bottom part of the tooltip for flavor text, in a different font and "".

I find really bad that jobs are nowhere as lore rich anymore. I understand why they wanted to discontinue job quests, there are some valid reasons, but that left out with a void. If only the Encylopaedia Eorzea could elaborate further, but alas it's pretty selective on what it (briefly) further explains about a job.

As someone who plays DNC a lot, it was really frustrating to see the lack of lore information available in the EE3, or in game at all. We get to travel to their home nation and the only sprinkles of Dancer are:
- A temple in the middle of Thavnair, without anything else;
- 2 Dancers performing at the pub;
- The Xaela girl NPC that mentions wanting to take up on DNC arts after her quest chain;
- Random Radiant Host NPCs may have chakrams equipped;
- We get a cameo glimpse of Nashmeira during the MSQ, but it's so fast you may even miss it - and it's not even in Thavnair.

the lack of dancer lore is criminal, for sure. The Job quest itself barely even gives you lore about Radz-at-han while most other jobs (NIN, MNK, DRG, etc.) give you a good chunk of lore about ther origin nations, long before we actually go there.

Scratch the story then, id take even just talking to our relevant trainers and them giving a speech or demonstration or whatever.

This is why I said that they should do yellow quests, like the level 80 one, for each job. One every time you'd learn a skill, or one bigger one at the level cap were you tell your former mentor about these new techniques/demonstrate them in a sparring match. It doesn't even have to be a long quest...