Quote Originally Posted by Lyth View Post
Again, it really depends on the player.

If you're doing a brand new fight, you have no idea what to expect. When a new tier releases and players go to unlock Savage, they make guesses based off what they see in normal. Part of the guesswork involves trying to adjust your comp in anticipation for what you think you'll see. Guess incorrectly, and you might be at a disadvantage until the next lockout.

The role action system, as it was released at the start of Stormblood, addressed some elements of that. It doesn't really matter if you didn't happen bring a PLD and BRD to silence a particular mechanic. You can talk to your teammates and get someone who is comfortable with the mechanic to swap in the action. You might say "Why don't you just give everyone a silence, then?" But figuring out the correct loadout is part of the puzzle. It's only trivial if you read the answer after someone else has solved it for you.

But I think we can add a bit more depth to this. Interrupts are pass-fail mechanics. There are other decisions that are a bit more grey.

Consider the present system of physical and magical tankbusters. Many fights will have a mix of both. But instead of having this be a job level decision (i.e. do I bring DRK for Dark Mind), what if it was an issue of "Do I bring a physical mitigation cooldown or a magical one from the role actions list?" Now you have to look at the fight, which tankbusters are physical and magical, and see what choice best augments your rotation. You can still work around a bad choice, but a good choice will make your life easier.
Okay, but how does a novice, not-yet-to-be-optimized take on a fight vary from... anything else, in terms of customization selection enabled by Role Actions or any variant of that system? And is it fun to be advantaged for having simply "guessed correctly"?

Figuring out the correct loadout? How are there enough pieces to count as a puzzle? In O7S, you have a either NIN with you, or you don't, and then either you skimp on Anticipation, Awareness, or Second Wind.

And again, is learning which choice to bring fun? Perhaps it is to you. But then I have to wonder, is figuring out which jobs you should bring for a fight and replacing them accordingly... fun? Those two things are fundamentally the same. Role Actions not about working around a bad choice, but rather -- since you always have the option of simply swapping it out -- being informed of which is superior. You can inform yourself ingame or online, but either way that is the extent of its impact when able to "work around a bad choice, but [where] a good choice will make your life easier." Jobs are already close enough in their contributions to often be treated as replaceable parts, balanced -- and consequently perceived -- on more a basis of template than contextual capacity. When you siphon away what could have been cohesive components, you just make these exchanges easier. Kill the inferior choice of RA. Kill the inferior choice of job. Okay, now we can finally play the game for real.

If you're the sort of person who is looking up a guide to figure out what's optimal, then it's naturally going to be a chore. But not every player fits this category. Some people read guides, others write them.
And were this a system with an actual capacity to be played optimally or near-optimally in multiple ways, I'd agree. I very much enjoyed WotLK talents, for instance. I made my own builds that others called trash and then I outperformed them with those builds, almost always at top output per gear score (ilvl) when DPSing even in 25-man raids. But this is not that. These are clearly defined if-then advantages/disadvantages which are isolated away from gameplay rather than augmenting it.

Balance is compromise. A given job performs better at this and worse at that. But when you make the choice just whether you want the one aspect that applies advantage or disadvantage, you don't get choice -- you get UI bloat. That kind of false customization literally siphon away from gameplay, directly and indirectly.

One thing that hasn't really been explored is the idea of trait customisation. I'm thinking of something akin to Warcraft's Major and Minor glyph system, which allowed you to tweak your class in small ways.
Better, but still too shallow to apply choice if I had to guess, unless done just right. Some of those major glyphs were actual choices, for instance, but most were not. They were simply something you collected as soon as you could afford them from a crafter or off the AH because their benefits so obvious outperformed others.

Not every customisation option needs to impact gameplay either. Some things could be cosmetic (perhaps reskin Rampart as Shadowskin, as an example).
Then just give it by default. Why go out of your way to take away a buff that already fit a job thematically to turn it into obligatory choice of bastardized aesthetic to then charge the player for a cosmetic augmentation to get back what they already had?