Ability Points, Skill Trees & Talents being considered to replace leveling. Thoughts?

[KisaiTenshi]

Here's a thought experiment. Think of a game (any game) where customizability worked really well - it made you different than your peers, it let you play differently, and still let you excel in the content. What was it about that game that let that happen and why could it not happen in this game?

It never really works in any multiplayer game. There is literately no way to make a game fair if the differences are too far apart that the meta becomes "use this exact build or you will be excluded from all content harder than facerolls." Which, guess what, was the case for most of 2.0 and 3.0 when the jobs were the most different. Right now it's like 'use WAR, or don't bother raiding as a tank'.

Like if you think about why the game does what it does, it comes down to fight choreography. If you have 3 different tanks and one is weak to piercing, one is weak to blunt, and one is weak to slashing, but you design the fight around each boss having this kind of combat, then you get painted into a corner where players will demand the content be nerfed.

Likewise with the elemental strength/weaknesses. It only works well when players can have that ahead of time. So as far as tanks and healers go, you can't design this. Since you can't have 6 DPS players, you can't have one player with each element, nor can you have each melee DPS with slash, stab and blunt.

I understand why they removed these elements, because it makes the PUG duty finding impossible. You'd have to make it so that duties have 1 of each which means you'd end up with 6 element casters (DPS, or healer if it calls for "Light",) 3 melee or ranged DPS, and with so many DPS you'd have to nerf everyones DPS down.

Unfortunately that means re-designing things in a way that would require changing everything. It's far too late in the game's life to do that. Never try to turn a game into something it was not. This is why FFXIV should never have had PvP, and should never have had the Deep Dungeon. The former because they had to effectively create a second game on top of the first one for it to work. And the latter had to be an alternate dungeon system. Sure the Deep Dungeon, is fun once or twice, but it's basically just "easy mode leveling" instead of playing the DF content.

So if you change things to be ability points, what are you going to do with the PvP? Pretend it doesn't exist like normal? What are you going to do with the Deep Dungeons?

It's just that I don't see what they want to do here. Unless they are going to basically add yet another dungeon mode, and basically go "Hey we're sending you back in time before the world was sundered, and also you have amnesia and don't remember any of your skills." Before the time of the ancients. I don't see how they can logically do this.

Maybe they could get away with having the player have to solve a solution to rejoinings, which involves going into each reflection and each reflection has a different combat system that has levels independent from the source.

[CidHeiral]

This is why FFXIV should never have had PvP

lolwut? I was with you until this line. Sure it took a long time to get there but PvP is great now.

[KisaiTenshi]

lolwut? I was with you until this line. Sure it took a long time to get there but PvP is great now.

Every time I tried frontlines it was like 50% bots by volume and I was like "these are just powerleveling bots, I don't want to be carried by this nonsense." Again though, I don't play it, so if you say it's good now, I'm assuming you like the PVP itself and not the easy EXP or grinding till you get the rewards and then dropping it entirely.

[Frodnoxx]

...

I said in my post that elemental and pierce/slash/etc weaknesses and resistances is not the way to go because of the reasons you described. I also said there are other ways to have situations where players get to stand out without doing it with explicit weaknesses and resistances (see my bullet points). It can also be done without people being excluded by having enough areas in a fight where different builds can shine. Again I am not advocating for elemental weaknesses, but the analogy would be to have a fight that cycles through all the elements over its course. That way no one build is definitively better than another and people still get to be different.

But I also did say (as you are saying) that the game is what it is and the re-design would be too big, and the devs have made it all too clear how averse to change they are.

[PercibelTheren]

I really like the idea of them but I'm afraid it would only lead to what everyone else is saying - the community deciding one way is better because it does 0.5% more DPS or something stupid like that. We already see this when people lock certain jobs out of PF because they perform ever so slightly worse, despite being perfectly viable. Unless we can somehow make people stop doing it, I don't see a way it would work.

[AmiableApkallu]

I really like the idea of them but I'm afraid it would only lead to what everyone else is saying - the community deciding one way is better because it does 0.5% more DPS or something stupid like that. We already see this when people lock certain jobs out of PF because they perform ever so slightly worse, despite being perfectly viable. Unless we can somehow make people stop doing it, I don't see a way it would work.

I might argue that Bozja shows that people can look past the meta. Outside of DRS and 5-person speed-runs of DRN (and the occasional cranky person in CLL who gets upset over saving only 5 prisoners), I've really not seen people care all that much about exactly what essences and lost actions others use. The needs of DRS don't seem to be forcing everyone who's not running it into the same builds.

[Graveyardprincess]

People seem to assume that there will only be 1 right option with skill trees, but that is 100% false yes there will be some that by pure numbers seem better which become the meta for stupid people who aren't smart enough to plan around themselves with the job/class etc. I mean Really just becauce the vast majoirty are drones following the single set mindlessly doesnt make it the only one possible nor does it even make it the best option. in fact in alot of cases with trees there ae 100x better options than what everyone else does when you take into account how you play exacly, and you design around that...

I mean in diablo 2 enchanter sorceress/ frogger barbarins poison necros were by the far the least used by the majority but could destory all the metas if done correctly. The same goes for martial artist assassin...

Just because their is a meta and a prime build all the little sheep follow doesnt mean there is only 1 good one, or that one is even good at all tbh

[knaveofcups]

i’m not inherently against this but i think they’d need to grow their combat dev team a lot to make it work. replacing what we currently have entirely with ability points and trees might be too much, as opposed to say, allowing us to pick from some specializations that retain the job core but change gameplay enough to be interesting

[Ayalu]

Leveling wise Level 100 would be the cap and they dont want us to increase in numerical things as those could lead to the problem that lead to the first number crunch.
So post level 100 the new system would be the new way of progression.
But something that came to mind is...if higher and higher numbers will lead to problems. Would that mean our gear would also stop progressiing for the most part?
Would new gear mostly be new glam options?

[Raikai]

Truth be told, they will have to do something.

If they really intend that 8.0 will me a job revision across the board to address identity, that's actually the perfect cue to either do a major level squish or a secondary leveling system post 100.

I think just a level squish is merely a band-aid, because level inflation will catch up again. Anyway, whatever they do, it must be somewhat future-proofed for at least 4-5 expansions.