Game Mechanics

[sunspawn]

But the concept itself is valid and gives a way to make secondaries impact a pc in more ways than just extra skills.

[Schwerpunkt]

May 2, 2013 11:42:01 GMT -6 sunspawn said:

But the concept itself is valid and gives a way to make secondaries impact a pc in more ways than just extra skills.

I think that's the crux of the issue.

It doesn't make sense for a Knight/Priest to get the same MP and MA growth as a Knight/Lancer. It just doesn't. Having the secondary provide a long-term stat bonus is the ideal solution.

As for prestiges, I'm not sure I'd want them to change your stats at all (aside from, maybe, a one-time bonus). If we have stacking level up bonuses, it'll get kind of crazy.

[kablizzy]

How'd I miss skill tier discussion? Dude, Schwer, you may have inadvertently made the bridge to the P/S/T issue. Howabout, instead of JP caps, we cap abilities by Tier? It's a metric fuckton of a lot cleaner, and as you said, it removes the concept of arbitration from the classes like Geomancer, where 90% of its abilities cost exactly 150 JP. And then potentially accessing all support and reaction abilities? Dunno about that one, but something to consider.

[Schwerpunkt]

The problem is that those tiers were never intended to be exclusive; they weren't there to draw clear lines between "you can multiclass with this" and "you cannot multiclass with this." To employ them in that fashion will both betray the intent behind their design and force a re-evaluation anyway.

Again, I really don't think HoI's system is a good one to emulate. You've said many times that it's poor balanced (and it is); the decisions made seem like a ham-fisted attempt to prevent unbalanced skills from snowballing. I would rather see players have the option to take whatever secondary they want, and go for whatever skill they want, without penalties and handicaps.

HoI's class system was just dreadful. I'd much rather see a guy play a Knight/Priest because he really likes the idea than having to piss away his secondary on something from the same tree (forcing him to become, say, Knight/Ninja) just so he can later take a tertiary (thus becoming Knight/Ninja/Priest), with the hope that someday he'll get the Holy Sword skillset (thus becoming Knight/Ninja/Priest/Holy Knight).

I'd rather that same guy gets to just immediately choose Priest as his secondary, understanding that his spells are going to be crappy compared to a pure Priest (even one of a lower level) and have unfettered access to that entire tree.

[Mordred]

Restricting abilities based on Tier is a better idea than JP caps... though I'm still not sure what problem it purports to solve. I'm with Schwer.

I might as well just put my POV on the whole skill access conversation in my signature, since I bring it up often enough. I apologize to the dead horse.