Talent tree (spec) suggestion

[MikoRemi]

I believe talent trees can work but only if they're designed in a way that answers a player's need rather than a meta.
In short, no choices involving DPS potential but utility.

For example what if you had to choose between an extra dash or an sprint with a shorter cooldown?
What if you had to choose between GNB's Aurora reducing damage taken or stronger healing?
What if DRK could ditch Living Dead's healing effect but its cooldown is reduced?

You could have choices to compensate the lack of a specific job.
The hardest part is to design the talent well enough to answer the player's need rather than answer a fight specific need or a meta.

I mean the main thing really is you'd need an actual reason to design it too when the current design works just fine. Got a role you want but have particular needs? Scroll on through until you find one. If not, then maybe it's not your kind of role.

Having seen many KRMMO's try a talent tree system, all that ends up happening is you pick a particular meta for your kind of job or you get laughed out of existence or just will have a much worse time overall if you don't pick the "correct" path. Want to try a hand at talent trees currently? Meld materia...oh wait, we pick Crit/Det/DH when not picking the Speed you need because Tenacity and Piety are memes.

I'd rather not have an illusion of choice but given how much effort would need to be put in there to make it not your typical KRMMO system, that effort could be better spent elsewhere. It's why this suggestion really doesn't work for this kind of game.

[Carighan]

I believe talent trees can work but only if they're designed in a way that answers a player's need rather than a meta.
In short, no choices involving DPS potential but utility.

Of course.

But, WoW in fact already tried this. They did a system where you had 6 lines, each where you pick one of three choices. And they never (well, about never) related to your primary function, they were always either utility or off-role.

Was kinda fun, but was ultimately scrapped again for an interesting reason: It didn't make players feel like their choices mattered, so they picked whatever was "meta" anyways (as even these utility things obviously had stuff that worked better or worse depending on what content you did, for example in many movement centric fights the Priest picking Angelic Feathers for extra on-demand runspeed for the whole group was amazing, much as that was balanced against the other two picks in a vacuum).

It just... can't be done. Like what you say there, extra dash vs shorter sprint CD, does the fight have a lot of disconnects? Easily dash. Otherwise: Sprint, faster moving through cities. You just end up swapping constantly. Likewise Aurora, do you expect to use it on another tank with you the offtank or are you tanking yourself: Pick damage reduction. Otherwise, go with more healing. Etc etc etc. There is no balance that doesn ot affect your fight enough for people to not "just go meta", and then fights having to be balanced around these meta picks being present 100% of the time, punishing those who pick something else.

[BabyYoda]

Thank you all for sharing your interest,

regarding how skill trees could work yes I believe it can work with the current tank design, but not dps and maybe healers.

I want to bring skill specialization system in T&L, it is a great example on how this system could work.

Like tank stance here is options:

1- tank stance will 100% give you aggro for 100% of the time. (MT)
2- tank stance will be an activation skill each 30s and it will give you aggro for 10s + additional buff to damage skills. (OT)

GCD AoE skills:

1- circle shape that garenties hit 15 yalm around you.
2- straight forward hit for 30 yalm but radios is lower to 7 yalm.

things like that could work giving people a choice that won't have high impact in fflog but it would matter for player experience.

things like double down from gunbreaker, they could add options to the skill:

1- it will cost 2 cartage for each 30s with damage adjusted
2- it will cost 1 cartage for each 60s with damage adjusted

it wont matter in the end it depends on people perspective of people like to have faster skills or not

[Mikey_R]

Like tank stance here is options:

1- tank stance will 100% give you aggro for 100% of the time. (MT)
2- tank stance will be an activation skill each 30s and it will give you aggro for 10s + additional buff to damage skills. (OT)

If you can tank with option 2, that will be the default, if you cannot do that, you will be useless about 50% of the time and it will be something that needs fixing.

GCD AoE skills:

1- circle shape that garenties hit 15 yalm around you.
2- straight forward hit for 30 yalm but radios is lower to 7 yalm.

things like that could work giving people a choice that won't have high impact in fflog but it would matter for player experience.

Straight line for your GCD AoE aggro generators is a bad shape, so in this case, circle will be picked. The only other shape that could work is a cone, as per old Overpower. This is more of a personal choice, however I suspect most will stick to the circle as it is easier to use. This is however the closest you get to a fair choice.

things like double down from gunbreaker, they could add options to the skill:

1- it will cost 2 cartage for each 30s with damage adjusted
2- it will cost 1 cartage for each 60s with damage adjusted

it wont matter in the end it depends on people perspective of people like to have faster skills or not

Assuming your got your cooldowns backwards here (1 cartridge every 30 seconds or 2 cartridges every 60 seconds), then the 2 cartridges every 60 seconds will be the one that is used. Not only will it put more damage into the buff window (not even looking at the raid buff windows here), but Double Down every 30 seconds is not viable as you will not have the available cartridges to use without it conflicting with Gnashing Fang combo. This is a straight one is better than the other, not just for pure DPS, but also just in how the job flows in general.

[Carighan]

Yeah all of these ideas for "optional picks" just have one very clearly superior option. You are all just showcasing why these systems don't work.

[Rithy255]

Yeah all of these ideas for "optional picks" just have one very clearly superior option. You are all just showcasing why these systems don't work.

Disagree. (outside of DPS options, because then you just pick whatever does more damage)

Things like Mitigation and/or healing will have more value in different situations and can actually be fight dependent.

[Carighan]

Things like Mitigation and/or healing will have more value in different situations and can actually be fight dependent.

Ah, that's what you meant.

Yeah, I don't think that can work either, since that just creates the problem WoW used to have with per-fight-talent-specs, but worse. If the value is actually different per spec, people will just default in their picks. Like the option with the Aurora above, there's very clearly one superior choice for each context. So for one fight you pick X, for the other you pick Y, but you just apply that like swapping a character job before joining a group.

But then you loop it back to the designers, what do they do now? Do they balance for the assumption that everyone has the superior pick, codifying the "pick superior for each fight" thing? Or do they not, making the fight easier if everyone does just go with the meta picks anyways?

There's no truly good option there. The only way out would be actually not offer any primary (and DPS is always a primary role for everyone I suppose, granted) power gain at all, but even that is something WoW (and GW2, too) tried, and neither could make it stick. GW2 actually did a bit better with it's strong focus away from traditional roles coupled with giving everyone a dedicated healing button. But even that immediately had meta picks for certain situations which were quite visibly outperforming other options.

But don't get me wrong, I love talent trees and picks and all that. I just don't see it ever working in a manner that isn't essentially the same as not having that choice in the first place. At least not in MMORPGs, it works fine in single-player games of course. More so if they're story-driven and hence most players don't get a second try at doing their talent setup anyways and have to pick while not knowing whether/how useful this'll be later.

[Rithy255]

Snip

I think when you look at it at your angle yeah, it wont work for people trying to optimise literally everything, I personally don't think the game should have to suffer because of people being against any sort of creativity.

If you look at the Jobs themselves, you could argue that it's pointless having more then one job of the same category, because one will almost always be less useful in the same category then another, but regardless people still play that job because it's fun for them. I see it the same if we could customise some aspects about jobs, then the more casual or even midcore side who doesn't worry too much about top end would be more free to be creative and have fun, while the upper end 1% can just go with whatever's meta, We see people still running suboptimal jobs that are clearly outclassed because a lot of people actually just go based off what they enjoy

I'm just honestly sad that this game is only balanced for savage and ultimate's because it's ruined any creativity the jobs themselves can have, I think it does work for MMO's it just doesn't work for whats "meta". It's really pointless to strive for only balance, FF14 needs to lean back into fun and creativity with jobs.

while I don't think talent trees would be the solution, I do think it would be something actually more fun and interesting then what we usually get (which is small number tweaks and/if a job feels unique it gets reworked so it can fit in line). I just rather they try with something interesting then the same old balance that we're getting, it's clearly not actually popular to just balance everything for the 1%

[Mikey_R]

Disagree. (outside of DPS options, because then you just pick whatever does more damage)

Things like Mitigation and/or healing will have more value in different situations and can actually be fight dependent.

But then you are choosing based on the fight and not what you want. Which is, again, an illusion of choice.

[dspguy]

Instead of a talent tree, I'd rather see SE demand more "talent" by the player. Go back to having tank stances with damage down and Cleric Stance with damage up/heal down.

Take tank stance for a second. Enmity is a resource. A tank keeps hate whether they are 1 "unit" of enmity above #2 on the hate list or 1 million "units" above. This resource should have value. We should be able to turn off our ability to accrue hate at an absurd rate (and it IS absurd) and increase our damage instead.

When it comes to enmity, it is possible to do tank swaps while one of the tanks has NO idea what they are doing. Let's say MT is clueless - MT takes the tankbuster with debuff... OT provokes. Takes the hit. OT Shirks. Hate is back on MT. MT does nothing.

Let's say OT is clueless. MT takes the tankbuster and the debuff. MT Shirks. OT takes the hit. MT Provokes. Hate is back on MT. OT had to do nothing.

And while they are at it, they shouldn't have changed accessories. HP is another resource. You are alive whether you have 1 HP or 200,000 HP. If you don't need 200,000, exchange some of that HP for more STR (and more damage). Change the damage formula again and let tanks use STR accessories and meld STR.

None of this will ever happen of course. The game is simplified in almost every way imaginable. But, a return to ARR tank stance and healer stance would demand higher skill by the playerbase.