Feedback : no build diversity in this game, plz do smthing about it.

[Charas]

As an mmo player since more than 10 years, and seeing pvp getting closer and closer, i m starting to be concerned about the severe lack of build diversity this game offers to his players.
Even in pve this is already a problem imo. Only 1 set possible of darlight/allagan/af2 gears per job, no option at all to spec more on 1 stat than on another, no option to choose to sacrifice some dps for some more defense/HP or parry, impossible to choose to spec more on direct damage than on "dot" damage.
This problem also touch our skill trees... well i shouldn't say skill trees as this is completly inexistant, we just learn new abilities while leveling up and at the end of this process, we all end up with the exact same skills on our bars without having any choices to make that would allow us to build our own unique character.
It's pretty sad to see that in the end, we are all just clones, same gears (or nearly), same skills...
ofc we could choose to put our 30 stat points somewhere else but... as the game is designed right now it wouldn't make a huge difference in the end.
Crafted gears don't offer much choice either as you are litterally forced to use this or this materia coz of the "stat cap" on a precise gear and the stats weight as it is set up now anyway doesn't make a difference... 1% crit or 0.02 CD? lol this isn't character customisation.
At the moment in pve, when u run raids or dgs every bards are the same... every monks are the same... every pld... there s just no diversity. If this continues, it will be the same in pvp, and this is a really sad thing.

[shikarin]

I don't see any value in "diversity" created by gear or build.

There is value in diversity of gameplay strategy, tactics, and execution.

(and yes, there is a subtle, or not so subtle, distinction)

[Alberel]

Build diversity in terms of speccing is usually pointless... everyone ends up speccing the same way else they're considered 'bad'. Blizzard even went and essentially removed the talent trees from WoW because there was no point to them when everyone just used the same cookie-cutter specs. Diversity has to come from fluff and cosmetics really; anything that affects combat will eventually be optimised by the min/max players and the 'choice' becomes redundant.

I try to think of the Jobs as the equivalent of different specs for the classes. ACN is the only class that has more than one spec at the moment but the rest will eventually get them too.

[Reokudo]

So basically, you want to a system where like in WoW and some other games you have a talent/skill tree in which you place points in to try and be unique, but in the end there will always be cookie cutter specs that make everyone the same anyway if they want to be "the best of the best". So no skill/talent trees are totally fine. Everyone would be the same anyway with them. At least when someone's a bad player and they're just lacking gear/mental capacity to do something correctly you can at least find the source of their issue and say "Hey bro, you need to gear up better for this." instead of "Wtf did you put your talent/skill points into? You should be this and this to be good!".

[Kayden]

As someone pointed out, even when there are talent tree's in a game, everyone ends up latching on to someone's build plan and copying them anyway. What's the point? And if you take into consideration of what Talent tree's do in other games, between attribute points and material you can get the same outcome, with out having a cookie cutter tree. You get to decide which abilities to use from sub classes here, you get extra abilities from Job Classes. Its exactly like having a skill tree, its just SE spin on how they do it.

[Mokkis]

While I agree with what people say about cookie cutter builds always being dominant, there's also another part to "skill trees", and that's choosing what role your job will be.
If you were a PLD in WoW and met another PLD, that didn't automaticly make you both tanks. One could be a healer, one could be a DD and one could be a tank.

Here it's more like you meet another PLD, and that's all he can be, a tank. He can't be anything else.

But then again, in FFXIV you can lvl all the jobs on one character, but the jobs are still only playable as their designed role.

Edit: A merit system like it was in 11 would be cool though. Especially merit category 2!

[Thagyr]

Everything is the same even in the presence of talent trees. Why? Because math and logic are applied to your 'choices' which tell of the most 'efficient' build that would be required for your task. The only times it would vary is in some cases of DPS classes having multiple effective routes to do damage, yet even then people do the math and one spec will be superior to the other once a milestone is achieved.

The only difference is player skill, and people have learned to judge off that (however harshly sometimes) since in FFXIV since gear at 50 is so readily available.

I think like someone else mentioned here that Jobs are the 'specs' we seek. An Arcanist at 50 can either have a Summoner Job or a Scholar Job. Ones a DD and ones a Healer, both evolved from the same base class. Once SE adds more jobs for the other ones, we might see a bit of variance, though a paladin will never be a DPS, a gladiator at least could choose between that or a DD job when it is added.

[Kayden]

While I agree with what people say about cookie cutter builds always being dominant, there's also another part to "skill trees", and that's choosing what role your job will be.
If you were a PLD in WoW and met another PLD, that didn't automaticly make you both tanks. One could be a healer, one could be a DD and one could be a tank.

Here it's more like you meet another PLD, and that's all he can be, a tank. He can't be anything else.

But then again, in FFXIV you can lvl all the jobs on one character, but the jobs are still only playable as their designed role.

Well yes a PLD role is to tank, but if you don't want to tank and heal, you can change your class and become a DPS or Heals just as easily as you could if you played WoW. The biggest difference is that you can choose any class to dps or heal with here as long as you leveled up the class. Which is much better than only have 2-3 options like WoW did on only one character.

[Ri_ri]

To me, feeling unique would be a lot more enjoyable than any damage meter.

[JayvirDeforte]

The whole idea is that eventually, you could have multiple Gladiators that can fulfill different roles (aka jobs). However, since only Arcanist can select multiple jobs, you don't really see it much in game. Yoshi-P already plans on adding more diversity to the classes by adding multiple jobs so just hang tight.