Seriha wrote:
If you really want to get around the balance thing, then some people have to accept that Rock will beat Scissors. The MMO endgame some aspire to seems to be the eternal struggle of Paper instead beating Scissors. The concept of the trinity probably needs to be abandoned, at least out of dev enforcement, with people instead picking and choosing their skills as they go from a classless start with vanity choices further asserting a look to their character.
So, let's say someone likes the image of a White Mage. They start off picking a staff, club, or hammer with stats well suited to healing. Perhaps they like the aesthetic of the white robes with red trim, or they could adopt more the D&D model of an armored cleric, including holy offensive magic. In time, you'd simply continue to foster skills related to your desired play style like cures, regens, status removals, and so on. But then again, someone could do exactly the same, but instead preferring swords and heavier armor, making them more the Paladin archetype. The game would never officially call you these things, but in time, what cookie cutters do arise would pick up such monikers.
Getting the introductory skills for any sort of "tree" shouldn't be too difficult, but it's the combination of what you do with them after that could lead to both individuality and ingenuity. When you also eliminate things like harsh DPS checks or allow environment to play a role in your encounters, battles will vary based on who all is present, presuming it's meant to be more of an epic encounter. It's also kinda why "attack who has the highest enmity" is sorta dumb when you attempt to think of it from a realistic perspective. Mobs are going to have different instincts or levels of intelligence. Wasting attention on the armored dude doing little damage just wouldn't seem smart when you have that squishy guy in robes lobbing meteors from afar. What you'll wind up with is a true variation of tactics when people begin to consider how to keep the mob away from that perceived threat or simply keeping the target alive if there isn't a way. And that could further go into dynamics as a mob realizes the healer should possibly be the first target. This would would be where the player would be wise to have invested in defensive skills, either to soften blows or to keep them from coming in the first place.
In the end, you could be a glass cannon, sure, but you might not get far if you play alone. The more successful players will likely be some degree of hybrid, and I don't mean that in the damning sense we tend to get in MMOs with things toned down because specialists would whine. I look to it more as actions having consequences. You might be the rock to scissors in one fight, but somewhere along the way, it'll be more like you're the rock against paper assuming any attempt at mob variety is made. The above hypothetical White Mage is going to want to have some means to deal out hurt, unless they're quite okay with grouping exclusively with people who could do it for them.
There is so much wisdom in this post that I have to acknowledge.
ESO and Vanilla XIV are not that different in general approach but ended in a different result (XIV ditching and ESO keeping)
You start with an open class which can equip most skills depending on the weapon and can equip various armors. In my memory of XIV builds were called titles, in ESO they have titles for builds. The original XIV was criticized for classes being too open. In ESO there are limits, and they have traits aligned with certain gears or guild lines. But enough talking about the past, ARR took the game in a different direction and are most likely not going to go back and change the core this far into the game's life. Though they could make classes viable in open world or public content that relies less on the trinity or a stand-alone dungeon like Deep Dungeon. This would take them wanting to put development time into making or wanting that.
You hit the nail on the head for dynamic enemy AI. If enmity was so volatile and unpredictable, then even with the strongest DPS skill set, one would have to worry about other things besides doing the mechanical burst rotation or dodging a patterned environmental aspect. A healer would have to know when or when not to heal the heavens weighing a death or party wipe as a consequence. As for the tank if his aggro skills were not so overpowering, but limited in spurts or if his survival was rock steady or weaker in certain circumstances, he would have to know when to go all out getting hate or let some of the others bear some of his burden. It's kind of like the Souls series, mobs hit like a tank, don't have a billion hit points, but if you play smart, the game is actually easy and enjoyable because it requires focus on when you do skills and not how many you can do. And the souls series is kind of simple, so much more could be done in a multi-player scenario.
And yes it would take an interesting experimental foray into these dynamic situations, not needing 40 skills on hand in all or one circumstance but instead having a fluid 1-10 skills depending on the circumstance, and making it more about it's what,where,how and when you do it.
