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

[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.

[Aidorouge]

I think I'd much rather if jobs just got to have a dual role they can queue for with the flip of a button. Let that Dragoon feel vindicated when they turn on their stance, let that White Mage remind the Black Mages why there was a War of the Magi, let that Warrior shake is green heart out.

We already know it's possible for skills to have alternate functions/effects via PVP, and Duty Support/Trust NPCs have been double-dipping for years. Maybe instead of ever upwards advancement we just do some side-stepping.

[TaleraRistain]

I think I'd much rather if jobs just got to have a dual role they can queue for with the flip of a button. Let that Dragoon feel vindicated when they turn on their stance, let that White Mage remind the Black Mages why there was a War of the Magi, let that Warrior shake is green heart out.

We already know it's possible for skills to have alternate functions/effects via PVP, and Duty Support/Trust NPCs have been double-dipping for years. Maybe instead of ever upwards advancement we just do some side-stepping.

That could potentially work. Balance new trees around the roles that aren't the base roles for a given class. Then have those skills utilized if they join as their off role. Kind of like how we can take our chocobos down different role paths.

There would probably still be some that on paper someone thinks are better than others but I think we'd be fine because everything isn't perfectly balanced now. So if the design was of a similar level of balance where things may not be ideal but are viable, then that should satisfy the balance concern.

[Zaniel]

Levels are just a number, it doesn't matter if it's 50 or 500, reworking levels like WoW did to cut them in half isn't actually about game design or efficiency, its a placebo to placate players who struggle counting without using their toes.

On another level what many people are asking for when they ask for "ability points" is a grind, they want to grind power so there is a functional disparity between the people who play 23 hours a day and other players. It doesn't matter whether this is grinding levels or grinding points its just a desire for grind. If you want to see how this pans out you can look at Everquest and Black Desert. EQ introduced ability points on top of levels and it became an absolutely MASSIVE gatekeeping system. Want to join a top guild? Sorry, you don't have 300+ AP so no. Want to do top shelf content? Sorry no, need to grind mindlessly for months for sufficient AP. The system also runs away with itself with the required AP becoming more and more absurd with new players never able to participate with veterans and even veterans quitting because they can't keep up with the need to fuel an endless appetite for grind. It's a guaranteed way to crucify your game. Black Desert has an exponential XP system where grinding for higher levels requires progressively more XP but if you live in the game and never visit the toilet you are rewarded with an enormous power advantage because levels mean a lot because they are so hard to get. Same problem.

Also, meta builds make the game unbalance-able - cf: WoW. Also these people who say FF14 isn't perfectly balanced now are COMPLETELY mentally insane. Have they even played an unbalanced game like WoW before? Where DPS log differences between classes and builds could reach +200% (not the 1-5% in FF14).

[PaulusHamsteru]

No thanks.

[CaptainLagbeard]

As fun as seeing numbers go up is, just endlessly raising the max level with each expansion isn't really a solution.

But at the same time, they could go prune away some levels from ARR... Since it doesn't really need 50 levels to be honest.

[kaynide]

No thanks;

It’s not the same, but they did have something kinda-sorta like this with optional abilities you could get in 2.x.

(Aka play warrior to get the provoke skill for tanks)

It just resulted in “you have to get all the things”, and wasn’t really designed for experimentation.

Bottom line in FF, if I get into a dungeon with any tank, I need to expect they can do xyz, and not have it be a mystery whether they can do xy or z.

Similarly they allowed putting points into attributes, but it boiled down to “just do this or be suboptimal”, and they had materia for similar purposes. It’s all been removed, mostly.

[Cerbolt]

Yeah no thanks. Talent trees are just an illusion of choice and everyone ends up running the same builds anyway. So what's the point?

[Ayalu]

Okay, im curios let's say leveling and sudo leveling is not a Option. As this seems to be the case and they dont want a new number crunch demanding situation.
For the nay sayers what would you to for a Progression system.

[Mikey_R]

Okay, im curios let's say leveling and sudo leveling is not a Option. As this seems to be the case and they dont want a new number crunch demanding situation.
For the nay sayers what would you to for a Progression system.

The thing is, anything that isn't levelling, is pseudo levelling. Grind out AP for a tree, you are still 'levelling', but getting AP instead of levels to get your strength. This applies to pretty much anything you can think of for getting stronger. Job mastery levels? At 100, you start getting job levels, at levels 2,4,6,8 and 10, you get something new. Everything is pseudo levelling.

If they want to prevent another number crunch, they need to stop players getting stronger. The problem is, players want to feel stronger as they progress. Why have I got this flashy new toy, when it doesn't increase my damage, and this even goes down to more utility things like gap closers or things like Triple Cast.

Even during an expansion as we go through raid tiers and consequently gear increases (which can also be seen as a form of pseudo levelling), you want to feel stronger. Imagine beating the first raid tier, getting the best gear, the next tier comes out, but you already out gear it, that challenge is lost.

All this to say, everything is levelling in one form or another, and you cannot prevent numbers getting too high. Players always want to get stronger, it is inevitable.