Skill tree. Could it branch out?

[Zenaku]

skill trees dont really exist because your forced into one thing and forced to have skills.
just be more of a pain to do anything. you might like one skill build but guess what no one else likes it so your stuck into something you hate.

Yep that the downside of that system and the idea Yoshi-p had is class have more then one job which allow you to play the same class but in a new way. Like GLA having dark knight which you need GLA,THM and MRD level the only downside of that is we wont level much in the game for some of us who enjoy level up a new class but at the end i enjoy storyline better and job is about story so that best way go about it. I hope Yoshi-p would get into that more later on in the game life

[Naraku_Diabolos]

Skill trees are nice in games designed around it, XI/XIV for example are more designed around that jobs are predefined roles (FF game after all), so while there's people who want to be a WHM with a pure focus on nuking and melee and saying fuck curing, that's not gonna happen most likely xD

Side note, the only reason prices shot up on materia (certain ones) is due to Relics, otherwise there's more than enough supply to meet demand which drops prices, not raises them.

You also have to remember that on FFXI, you had to purchase spells. Not everyone is going to have all the spells up at their lvl because some spells maybe hard to come by at times. I mean, some of my friends didn't have the teleport spells for WHM at one point because they were busy with lvling up that they couldn't do the quest. I know for me, gil was a serious issue and I always spent it on the spells and gear, and I only have abou 200k left on FFXI

[Alhanelem]

As others have said, it creates more pigeonholing and thus doesn't really make more variety in the end.

FFXIV does a decent enough job offering some variation by way of cross class skills.

[Duelle]

The last thing I want to see are shouts for Black Mages with a specific build that isolate half the the servers Black Mages by "elitists".

This is easily fixed by making difference in damage between black mages minimal regardless of spell line chosen.

The reason it didn't work the last time this was tried was because damage potential of spells scaled depending on the level you acquired them. This is why it was better for a BLM to merit Lightning Potency and get Burst II or Ice Potency with Freeze II. Everything else was a waste, and the players knew it.

Of course, if you want to make all builds mechanically different and be on par in performance (especially for non-mage classes and jobs), then you have potential headaches.

[Ingolf]

Well, in RO you have DEX based assassins, LUCK based assassins, pillar of fire mages, fighting priests, vs undead priests, etc

It was designed in such way that all the builds were pretty much even

That won't cut it. MMO's are about min maxing.

[Pebe]

I believe that our sub abilities should be incorporated more into the job to help with variety.

Example: My Idea of rdm implementation
Job: Red Mage
Requirements: Fencer 30, CNJ 15, THM 15
Sub classes would obviously be cnj and thm

RDM lvl 30 ability: Elemental strike
-Delivers a non-elemental damage attack
Combo: Fire/Blizzard/Thunder/Cure/Aero/Stone
-Changes the element to element of prior combo spell, and does additional effects based on previous spell

It would work like this:
Fire -> Elemental Strike(ES) = Flame strike(pacification + fire damage)
Thunder -> ES = Thunder strike(stun + lightning damage
...etc, earth would give slow, ice would give paralyze, aero would give silence, water would give poison

The lvl 35 ability would be something for utility, idk about this

RDM lvl 40 would be a ws that finishes off a fencer 3 step combo

RDM Lvl 45 - Spell Blade (couldn't think of a name - SB for short)
This ability would allow access to a four step combo. The combo would be:
Spell -> ES -> spell -> SB
Depending on which two spells used, different effects would happen
Example
Aero -> ES = Windstrike + silence -> Aero = Spell Blade: Whirlwind(add effect dispelga)
or
Aero -> ES = Windstrike + silence -> water = Spell Blade: Typhoon(erases one debuff of all party members)
or
Thunder -> ES = Thunderstrike + stun -> Thunder = Spell Blade: Indignation(Lightning damage and AoE Stun, and/or always crits)

I could go on and on and on, but I won't, to many combos to think of. But I hope this illustrates how many options SE can pull off with the class system if done right, even in its current state. RDM would be a front line DD like everyone wanted it be with this set up, and get cool effects.

TLDR: There is alot of potential in incorporating the abilities of sub classes for a job into combos.

[A_Hortensia]

Really don't like this idea for FFXIV.

We already have a good amount of liberty with the discipline classes to be creative with our own builds. I'm also not a big fan of choosing one thing over another; and even if I were given liberty to switch freely between previous choices.. I wouldn't really see the point. I'd much rather have SE build-upon and perfect our current system.. and give each job/discipline a great deal of options so we can use/not use what we want, but still have complete access to it.

Otherwise, this idea sounds very similar to the merit point system that exists in XI. It's initial point was to allow players at the level cap to basically make choices between different job abilities/spells/traits. "Do I want to focus on enfeebling, or do I want to focus on enhancing?" "Soloing/Lowman or large group specialties?" When the merit point system existed with the hard 75 level cap, it was "kind of cool". Some jobs had no brainer options, others were torn between what kind of utility they desired. As far as I'm aware, once the level cap got lifted, the merit point system just felt limiting.

So; yes please to more tools and more unique abilities per job/discipline. No thank you for having to sacrifice one trait/ability for another. That kind of decision already gets made when you change jobs. (WAR vs PLD, MNK vs DRG, THM vs BRD, ect.)

[Imoen]

You seem to be stuck in FFXI, classic DRK did use a normal sword, classic DRK was the complete opposite of a PLD, lower DEF, used dark/black magic instead of light/white magic, but they used normal swords, only FFXI made great sword and scythe better for them


Classic DRK did use black magic, DRK would work well using THM as a second class to get actions off, then for job specific actions things like sucking the life and soul from the enemies.

That is not what I was getting at, but I can see how my statement would give off that impression. I simply meant that I don't want to be toting the same weapon on gld pld and drk.