What, no levels?

[Takelli]

Re: What, no levels?

Goddamn it this thread has become very wall-of-text-ridden. Catching up is going to take a whiiiiiiiiiile.

I feel your pain with this...

But to add...

What I am seeing is that Cyprius wants to have the game based upon skill trees. Which really suck...

Yea, you have a skill tree in a sword, and you do all offensive skills, and you left out any defensive so you cant take any hits. But, you want to be able to take hits now and deal some damage, your screwed because you need to start out all over again with a different character as you need to re make the entire tree.

As a mage you could choose Fire Mage or Ice Mage. Fire was better for DD while Ice, while not doing as much dmg, was better in terms of the defensive side.

Yes, but then it leaves out the chance of wanting to go pure offensive, or defensive if you want. Or maybe even both if you change yourmind that you want both. Theres issues with a system like this. Being able to chose both at anyone time is a really nice choice. GW did something liek this, except you can re arange your skill points at will in town. Go from a pure offensive war, to a warrior thats a wall that nothing can kill.

[Coinspinner]

Re: What, no levels?

I doubt there will be any kind of divergent paths within the weapons, at least not until they set the maximum "level". I figure the weapons themselves are the customization.

Like, amongst the warriors, if you wanted to tank you would be using a shield and would have your pick of one-handed weapons. If you want to DD you pick a two-handed weapon, a ranged weapon, or maybe dual-wield. If there's differences between the weapons, there's your customization.

Maybe how you wield the weapons will matter, a bit like in the Last Remnant. A dual-wield skill, for instance, that gave you additional abilities to use so long as you are dual-wielding. Power-grip, monkey-grip... dual-shields, hah. I wonder how open the system is.

[Armando]

Re: What, no levels?

Like, amongst the warriors, if you wanted to tank you would be using a shield and would have your pick of one-handed weapons. If you want to DD you pick a two-handed weapon, a ranged weapon, or maybe dual-wield. If there's differences between the weapons, there's your customization.

I don't see this working; in XIV, your weapon is your job. By changing weapons, you effectively change job and what would be your job level. In XI, if I change weapons, I'm still a Lv.60 WAR. In XIV, the equivalent of a Lv.60 Great Axe WAR might turn into a Lv.20 Sword and Shield WAR after the switch.

What I am seeing is that Cyprius wants to have the game based upon skill trees. Which really suck...

Skill trees don't suck when you can reroll at a low cost. They only suck when it's painful to reroll.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What, no levels?

Yea, you have a skill tree in a sword, and you do all offensive skills, and you left out any defensive so you cant take any hits. But, you want to be able to take hits now and deal some damage, your screwed because you need to start out all over again with a different character as you need to re make the entire tree.

I didn't know that serious consideration into what path you wanted to take a character down was "screwing" you over. Skill trees are meant to define your character's specialization one way or the other, they're not intended to let you retcon previous decisions or let you have the best of everythung.

While FFXI's merit system isn't perfect, it too emphasizes this kind of customization, otherwise you end up with some really marginalized skills. Mission rewards also fall in-line with this approach.

I don't really see skill trees happening in FFXIV, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if we go some form of a skill grid like FFX or FFXII had.

I think the main point of not having typical levels in FFXIV is to disarm the player from the ego of "I has eight 75 jobs, I am FFXI expurt." Though in this case it will just be "I's a weppins masta."

[Pwnagraphic]

Re: What, no levels?

Yea, you have a skill tree in a sword, and you do all offensive skills, and you left out any defensive so you cant take any hits. But, you want to be able to take hits now and deal some damage, your screwed because you need to start out all over again with a different character as you need to re make the entire tree.

Or you could pay a fee that increases everytime you reset your tree.

I think the main point of not having typical levels in FFXIV is to disarm the player from the ego of "I has eight 75 jobs, I am FFXI expurt."

Bragging rights.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What, no levels?

There's nothing really bragging about having eight or more 75s, though, it just means you're less specialized and waste more time than other people do playing FFXI. And the more jobs you have that aren't melee, the more you'll get jerked around at endgame by those that don't by intention (or just flat-out being a dick and lie that they don't have a tank or support).

In the end, FFXI does emphasize specialization, whether its through merits or inventory limits. Anyone can be anything up to a point and then you have to start making plans to specialize. Those that just level everything tend to be marginally-skilled or not at all because their focus constantly shifts.

Its no small coincidence that I rigged many of my jobs to overlap in terms of gear and made two different characters so one character didn't have to give up something so they could be better at something else.

And seriously, I don't mean it as a slight, its just in my experience that the more jobs a player has had to "brag" about, the less impressive they are in the PTs and situations I've dealt with them in. I had a guy pin himself to a CoP mission once to "help," bragging how he had multiple 75s and beat all missions in the game. Fucker showed up naked for the run on 2-5 mammets.

Jackass of all trades, Master of Dumb. And its just one of hundreds of examples i could make.

[Pwnagraphic]

Re: What, no levels?

The game has been out for almost 10 years. And if you been playing FFXI that long, which I do doubt a lot have, then you may have 8 75's. Don't you agree?

[Takelli]

Re: What, no levels?

I didn't know that serious consideration into what path you wanted to take a character down was "screwing" you over. Skill trees are meant to define your character's specialization one way or the other, they're not intended to let you retcon previous decisions or let you have the best of everythung.

Because, it is either im possible to reroll your character with out having to remake him.

Say I use a Sword and I want to be offensive. Then the next day I want to be defensive. But, I put all my skill in offensive skills, I don't want to remake a character just so that I can go deffensive. I want to be able to do all of it. Its a waste of time to have to remake your character if you want to take a different route on the same character and use the same type of weapon.

Or, I put a skill int eh wrong place by accident, and now my character is "gimp" as I cant pull it back out, and use it for something else.

Would you want to remake a character just so you can go on a different path if you wanted to? I sure as hell wont want to.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What, no levels?

Then don't play games that do it. Simple enough.

I made a character exclusively for COR and RNG, so yeah, I have the patience for going down that path. Even redid many of the missions in the game.

The game has been out for almost 10 years. And if you been playing FFXI that long, which I do doubt a lot have, then you may have 8 75's. Don't you agree?

The game has been out for less than six years in the US, almost four in european territories.

I've played the launch of it on PS2 and only have four 75s and several months back, I reached the conclusion that with the exception of BST, its all I cared to ever have. Particularly since I quit BRD upon hating how people treat it at 75.

So COR, BST, RNG and SCH. All I need. One character honed for ranged attacks, the other for magic.

[Ryoii/Nonomii]

Re: What, no levels?

We have two great examples in FFXI of being able to obtain all your abilities and then re-roll freely: BLU & PUP's Automation.

I'd love to see multiple skill trees for each weapon where each is a separate grind, but you need to be able to learn everything and re-roll freely. This way you get the freedom to change out your play style for each quest or group.

EVE did a good job with creating interesting Agent Missions. They have set the bar for Guildleaves. Hopefully FFXIV does even better.

[Cyprius]

Re: What, no levels?

What I am seeing is that Cyprius wants to have the game based upon skill trees. Which really suck...

Yea, you have a skill tree in a sword, and you do all offensive skills, and you left out any defensive so you cant take any hits. But, you want to be able to take hits now and deal some damage, your screwed because you need to start out all over again with a different character as you need to re make the entire tree.

So all you would do is make sure you build your character up defensively under a 2H Sword. So you can carry both with you on a quest, and use each weapon for each different battle as needed. Remember, they're saying we don't need to go back to a MH to change jobs. Simply changing our weapons does that for us.

So you can essentially be 2, or even 3 different types of a player on any quest you go on, depending on how much inventory one character has to all the equip he would need.

Like, we don't know how many weapons there are for sure, but just for fun:

1H Sword
2H Sword
Dagger
Axe
Katana
H2H
Scythe
Marksman
Archer
Staff

Is that not enough of a variety that you would totally turn around your character if you regret what you did in one or two different weapon classes?

Yes, but then it leaves out the chance of wanting to go pure offensive, or defensive if you want. Or maybe even both if you change yourmind that you want both. Theres issues with a system like this. Being able to chose both at anyone time is a really nice choice. GW did something liek this, except you can re arange your skill points at will in town. Go from a pure offensive war, to a warrior thats a wall that nothing can kill.

I'm proposing some kind of system like this, too. If you made a mistake, go back to town, pay some amount of gil to reset a portion, or all of your skill points.

Whatever, in the end, I'm not trying to make you guys like a skill tree system. It seems that even if I did, I couldn't do that.

[Ryoii/Nonomii]

Re: What, no levels?

And we don't have a class like the Samurai. But it depends on how you're going to select your skills and developing your character.

This is the only thing which gives me hope of being able to customize within a class. However, this could very well just refer to which weapon you select and the abilities it grants.

... it's going to be an Armoury system, so it depends on which weapon you use and you can switch your class. That allows the player to use a different ability or skills. ... it will allow you to play solo as well, because you can fight against monsters and you can change to a healer to heal yourself.

I find changing class to heal yourself odd as you'd expect your HP to change. Also changing class every fight would break the immersion for me if it means all of your gear changes. Any ideas on how you'd see this working?

Personally I'll be quite happy if HP and MP improve separately from your weapon skill. If only your weapon changes when you change class, the immersion wouldn't be completely broken. They could implement a long timer if you decide to change additional gear, but only a short one if only changing your weapon. I'd think it reasonable to be able to change your weapon in the middle of a fight if they made it take time. The instant gear swapping in FFXI was ridiculous. The TP loss penalty associated with changing weapon was perfectly reasonable.

I can picture it now. A Lalafell equipped with heavy plate armor, a kite shield, and a sword is fighting a huge dragon. He gets hit hard with a breath attack, so he stuns it with his shield, pulls out his elemental staff, casts an immobilization spell, runs away, pulls out his healing staff, heals up, casts some buffs, pulls out his elemental staff, casts a huge nuke, and pulls out his sword and shield again. Now that would be some fun, strategic combat. (This is actually quite similar to how I saw Druid used in PvP in WoW. Used humanoid form to buff up, changed to bear form to fight, changed to humanoid to heal up and cast other spells, and then back to bear form.)

Also here's to hoping that enemies have one action gauge per head, limb, tail, etc. That along with enemies being in groups will make for some challenging and interesting fights.

[Takelli]

Re: What, no levels?

I'm proposing some kind of system like this, too. If you made a mistake, go back to town, pay some amount of gil to reset a portion, or all of your skill points.

No, in GW you don't even need to pay. You can FREELY move your points around once in town. Its nice how they did their skill system, it helps prevent people from fucking up, and makes it so that people can play the same character, but different ways each game session.

---------- Post added at 06:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:19 PM ----------

So all you would do is make sure you build your character up defensively under a 2H Sword. So you can carry both with you on a quest, and use each weapon for each different battle as needed. Remember, they're saying we don't need to go back to a MH to change jobs. Simply changing our weapons does that for us.

So... In order to have a different skill set I need a completly new weapon?

I would like to be offensive with a 1 hand sword, and the next day I would liek to be defensive with the same weapon. I don't want to have to go to a 2 handed sword to change my style of play. I would like too keep the same weapon, and change my style of play depending on the skills that I select that I can use, which by the way, how FFXIV will most likely run instead of you haveing all the skills and spells at once.

[Cyprius]

Re: What, no levels?

No, in GW you don't even need to pay. You can FREELY move your points around once in town. Its nice how they did their skill system, it helps prevent people from fucking up, and makes it so that people can play the same character, but different ways each game session.

But honestly, don't you think that's kinda horseshit? I mean, what's the point of implementing a system like that if I can just freely change it whenever I want, at any time? People would just keep changing stats all the time. That's the easy way out, with no challenge.

I don't want the game to fall into my lap like that.

And let me reiterate, that I'm not talking about stats, like STR, INT, AGI.. Purely skills or spells.

[Takelli]

Re: What, no levels?

But honestly, don't you think that's kinda horseshit? I mean, what's the point of implementing a system like that if I can just freely change it whenever I want, at any time? People would just keep changing stats all the time. That's the easy way out, with no challenge.

It wont be too easy. As you can not change them while you are in a fight or outside in a town. Hell, even in GW, no matter how well prepared your character was, and everyone else was, you can still get your ass kicked by the mobs as the monk (Who is healer in this game) moved into the middle of the mobs, or the warrior didn't stand just right to body block a mob.

Also, it allows for more stratigic game play. Say you are a water elementilist (AKA Blm but only water spells.), and you end up in a cold region. You can simply re-allocate you skill points to be a fire mage, and equip fire magic to help deal extra damage. Then, you head into a town, and the next mission is in a valcano, you simply swap your skills again, and you can deal more damage to help out the party. Or, if you have monk subbed, you can put a few points in healing magic, and equip 2 healing spells, and help the monk heal.

Even being able to freely change skill points in an out post does not make a game easy. It adds stratagy to the game. It also prevents "The best build for the entire game" shit that most games with skill trees have. Even in PvP, you can change your skills so you can take some more damage, but you don't know what you are going against, so you can change your skills as often as you want so you aren't locked into this one build.

I know you wheren't talking about stats. I wasn't either. I was talking about skills when I said that the game will mostlikley run on skills instead of stats. you have 10 skills that you can use, who knows, maybe thats all you can use until you go back into town or something.