The difficulty of normal content is great as is. Do not revert them.

[jdtuggey]

Not just gear (because gear is subject to change), but things like attribute points, skill points, mastery tracks and passive points (see GW2), unlockable talent trees, etc. Anything that adds power but not necessarily being gear-based.

We're still making choices like that. I'm doing better on my summoner since I adjusted my spell speed for optimal alignment of my cooldowns.
They're less significant than many other mmo, but also they're not nearly as insignificant as you think ?

Concerning talent trees, there was this really good MMO that really emphasized talent trees like... ~10-15 years ago ?
It was called Rift. Man I loved that game, you could match 3 talent trees out of a selection of trees that were available to your class.
I loved theorycrafting all kind of weird builds. The reality though is that most people just googled optimal builds and the game fell into obscurity despite having pretty great wow-style content and a fair amount of budget at its prime.
SWTOR also has talent trees, and it's fairly successful and long running, but the talent trees are an afterthought, and they've been simplifying them over the years because players don't want to engage with that.
Players just want an optimal tree, so might as well give the benefits of an optimal tree to everybody. :P

That is totally understandable and fair. But in the long run, the instant catch-up is IMHO doing more harm than good for the overall health of the game.

I think Square has data on this, and their choices to move away from that kind of system was informed by that.
I haven't seen a single MMO like this do as well as FFXIV does ? Not even wow at this point. Though if you want that, I think Wow or GW2 can fit that need pretty neatly.
(To be fair, wow probably has catch-up mechanics too at this point... Because you know... I think players prefer that)
Like, FFXIV has been working like this for a very long time, and it's only growing in popularity ? (Speaking as general trend, there's highs and lows ofc)

Oh, I think that FFXIV absolutely needs more midcore content, don't get me wrong. But whether a) the normal raids should be it and b) whether they should be accessible via DF rather than PF is another question entirely.

Or maybe Normal Raids via duty finder is that, and you just need to give a moment for the expansion to land, for people to learn and adapt to it, for gear to be released (doesn't matter if you don't do savage, people around you will start to do the content and lift you up with them) and other stuff like that to happen.

Like, there's some things that could be added to ffxiv to make the experience more interesting, and I'd love to have this discussion, but not in the context that ffxiv is not okay and needs to change.
And even less in the context that it needs to be like other X game. It's fine, lol, even after dawntrail. ;p

[Yrusiel]

DT difficulty is good.
Harder than ARR, yes, but who wants to run sastasha over and over again ?

[TDawnstar]

We're still making choices like that. I'm doing better on my summoner since I adjusted my spell speed for optimal alignment of my cooldowns.
They're less significant than many other mmo, but also they're not nearly as insignificant as you think ?

It's a joke compared to what it could be. Stats were simplified into oblivion since ARR times, and secondary stats are unbalanced as well as crit overpowers everything 95% of the time.
And as a healer main... mana is pretty much irrelevant unless you die, and piety may as well not be there.

Concerning talent trees, there was this really good MMO that really emphasized talent trees like... ~10-15 years ago ?
It was called Rift. Man I loved that game, you could match 3 talent trees out of a selection of trees that were available to your class.

It doesn't have necessary to be trees per se. A very good recent implementation of character power was Lost Ark, where you have stuff like talent points, tripods etc. all making your character a lot more powerful before gear even kicks in.
Unfortunately, its developers decided to shoot themselves in the foot XD

I haven't seen a single MMO like this do as well as FFXIV does ? Not even wow at this point. Though if you want that, I think Wow or GW2 can fit that need pretty neatly.

Well, let's put it this way: even in the peak low that was Shadowlands, WoW was probably having more subscriptions than FF does. Now, that doesn't mean that we need FFXIV to copy WoW (far from it), but putting FFXIV on top is very optimistic to say the least.

Or maybe Normal Raids via duty finder is that, and you just need to give a moment for the expansion to land, for people to learn and adapt to it, for gear to be released (doesn't matter if you don't do savage, people around you will start to do the content and lift you up with them) and other stuff like that to happen.

I would be simply happy if they unscrewed the netcode and made it as reactive as WoW or GW2. There is some stuff you should be able to avoid with twitch reflexes, and currently the netcode is preventing that.
Also, having a "foll" button like in GW2 would help a lot, I feel.

[jdtuggey]

Why do you want to change this instead of playing these games ?

[Jinglypockets]

Most of the time, talent trees boil down to "Go to Icy Veins and let them tell you which talents to pick." You have to have pretty extensive game knowledge to be able to go off-book without kneecapping yourself. Of course, you can still customize and pick the abilities if you want if the "meta" picks aren't for you. I've certainly run into cases where the "meta" pick includes abilities I hate (looking at you, Primordial Wave), and having the ability to *just pick something else* goes a really long way.

I don't think character customization is the biggest benefit, though. The main thing, to me, is that it gives them a way to add new kinds of fun abilities and player power that doesn't have to contribute to button bloat. If they gave every class four new abilities from level 90 to 100 but you could afford only pick one of them (or had to give up one of your older abilities to get two), they could add a lot more flavor and explore more new ideas with the jobs in a way that isn't really possible right now without breaking everything.

It also gives SE more options for dealing with situations like Viper, where they think it's too busy and a lot of Viper players disagree. They can have different playstyles available to players depending on those players' preferences, with different builds emphasizing the parts of those jobs that people like.

I'm not really an "add talent trees" advocate because I think they would also add a ton of overhead and cause a lot of balance problems, but I do think focusing on the "it doesn't really add options because you have to just go with the meta anyway" part misses the point.

[TDawnstar]

Why do you want to change this instead of playing these games ?

Because it is important to look at what your competition makes and actually consider good systems. Being obstinate and ignoring that isn't a very good sign, as a rule.

[TDawnstar]

I'm not really an "add talent trees" advocate because I think they would also add a ton of overhead and cause a lot of balance problems, but I do think focusing on the "it doesn't really add options because you have to just go with the meta anyway" part misses the point.

Yes, they really need to change the way jobs work compared to each other. Right now, the only outlier is BRD with a priority-based system that looks like as it comes straight off from WoW, and DNC/RPR which are a bit more proc oriented. Everything else is way too similar and homogenized.

[jdtuggey]

Most of the time, talent trees boil down to "Go to Icy Veins and let them tell you which talents to pick."....

....I'm not really an "add talent trees" advocate because I think they would also add a ton of overhead and cause a lot of balance problems, but I do think focusing on the "it doesn't really add options because you have to just go with the meta anyway" part misses the point.

The first part is exactly what I meant, and I thought the second part was implied by me saying I loved to theorycraft builds on rift.
Maybe I expressed myself poorly. I wouldn't ask for that because I was one in 1000 players that loved to play around with the system, you know ?
I also said most people will just look up optimal solutions.

I don't feel it would make any difference on my enjoyment on ffxiv if they implemented this either.
I admit that some might find value in that, but I also think that it seems like a good idea on paper, in execution in the context of FFXIV though, am not so sure.
Like, we're in a thread that exists because some people think Dawntrail is too hard. I don't think adding even more layers of complexity to characters would work out.
At least not for 7.x

Concerning looking to other games, I have nothing against that. ARR is basically yoshi p sending all his staff to play wow so they understand how modern MMO's work lol.
But there's also reasons why we play FFXIV in particular and not other games. (not saying no one that plays FFXIV plays other MMO's with this lol, before someone calls it out)
The ultimate end of "We should take things from other MMO's" is all MMO's being the same.
So perhaps best to be careful with this.

And well, concerning talent trees and if players want them, there's mixed data on this. They've sometimes been pretty successful in WoW, but I haven't seen them work anywhere else.
They work hardcore in ARPG's though, like PoE.

[Kuroka]

DT difficulty is good.
Harder than ARR, yes, but who wants to run sastasha over and over again ?

Exactly thats our problem, many want that - too many...

[TDawnstar]

Concerning looking to other games, I have nothing against that. ARR is basically yoshi p sending all his staff to play wow so they understand how modern MMO's work lol.

That's a fact
However, sometimes I do wonder whether they actually drew any lessons from playing it