Hello everyone!

For those of you not interested in reading my whole post, this thread is about HOW to give physical level another life if point allotment becomes class-specific. Not why physical should be removed. Proceed and give us your ideas.

I would like to make suggestions about the physical level tied to racial benefits.
But first, let's go back in time. Back during the development, it was planned to have both class ranks and physical level separated in order to measure both character growth as a whole and class growth as separate things. Having a separated physical level from class ranks allowed for experienced players to skip the low rank learning curve when starting new classes and customize your character to give it a unique "flavour" regardless of the class. However, the group of elitist players (it's not a bad thing, don't get me wrong) in the game felt they were tied up with this system, having to redistribute their point allotment at all occasions to constantly be at the top of their capacities. However, it must be said, the problem does not lie in the physical level itself, but the point allotment tied to the physical level.

In order to resolve that problem, many suggestions were proposed to tie the point allotment to class ranks rather than the physical level. This solution, however, leaves the physical level with almost no means to do what it was supposed to do: measure character growth as whole. So, many are asking to remove the physical level.

I do not share their point of view, I believe the physical level is not obsolete, it just needs to be given other tools to do what it was meant for.

The idea to tie physical attributes with the physical level came naturally during the development stages of FFXIV: a character that is more experienced is stronger (STR), has more dexterity (DEX), has more vitality (VIT), is more intelligent (INT)... and so on. Then, there is the idea to tie more abstract aspects to the physical level, such as elemental affinities. I believe we should still hang on to this idea: the physical level should be tied with "physical" aspects of our character as a whole.

With that in mind, I would like to propose a tree of talents tied with the physical level. That tree of talents would give the little extra we need to experience character growth as a whole and make our characters more unique and personalized (as opposed to clones that put all their points in the same group of stats, because it is the "right thing to do" to have maximized potential for each class. Which is more or less likely to happen with point allotment tied to class rather than physical level since not all stats have a meaning for all classes -- for example, in FFXI, everyone was expected to equip the "right" sub-job with each job, which made two mithra, the same job level, be clones [with the exception of rank 75 bonus I never got to]). The idea to go back to have physical level measure core character growth and enable another level of character customization, without hindering class growth, leaves us with few options if things remains as is. That is why I propose that this physical talent tree be based on race. Our character's race never changes, it follows us all the way from rank 1 to rank 50, from class A to class B to class C, that's why it makes a good base to tie up with physical level.

However, during development stages, it was decided that race should only have an aesthetic motivation and not advantage certain classes and penalize others. And I do stand by that, that race should primarily be an aesthetic concern during character creation. And so, to tie a racial talent tree with physical level, we need it to be organized in such a way that it does not advantages certain races and penalize others.

There are many possibilities on how this can be achieved, while having a variability with each race, even with clan and gender too. I'll present here only a few ideas, we can always add more later when the underlying concepts (keeping physical level) is approved by the development team.

  1. The racial talent trees for physical level can be organized as a wide maze, where each race/clan starts at a different corner, allowing different talents at early level, but in the end allow each race/clan to pick up any (not all!) talent through precise routes in the maze.
  2. A long vertical talent tree with multiple talents for each level, however, you can only pick one (1) talent for each level line. Each race/clan would either have different trees or the level line ordered differently.
  3. A classic talent tree, each race/clan having its own unique talent tree OR talents ordered differently within the talent tree.
We can come up with many other ideas and they are welcomed. However, one key aspect is to make sure it is impossible to have ALL the talents when the maximum physical level is reached. Otherwise, we would be all clones then. But, obviously, it would be possible to reassign the talents under certain circumstances (price to pay, cool down timer, etc).

Possible racial bonuses for the talent could include the following: HP bonus, MP bonus, maximum accessory slot point bonus, inventory space bonus, resistance to poisons (or curses, etc) increased, +% bonus a given elemental affinity, etc. Let your creativity flow.

Thank you for reading it through.
If you have other ideas for the physical level, be sure to share it here too!

For those of you not interested in reading my whole post, this thread is about HOW to give physical level another life if point allotment becomes class-specific. Not why physical should be removed. Proceed and give us your ideas.