Remove or decrease race penalties

[Arcon]

"Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."

A bullshit saying that history teachers use as their sole justification for why learning history is important.

1. Are you seriously saying that the reason why race stats should be mitigated is because players are too lazy or apathetic to the information? If they didn't care when they chose the race, why care now?

They do care, but that information is not readily available. It doesn't say anywhere accessible that HP is the most important of them. You call someone lazy or apathetic because they don't wanna read through fifteen 100-page NM strategy threads where they see that people get one-shot due to lower HP? This entire argument is a lie.

Also, I never said I was even in favor of this, I just said your argument was bullshit. I do believe the HP/MP discrepancy is too high, but personally I don't care too much about the rest.

If you're suggesting that picking a certain race hurts your gameplay, then I'm sorry but you're playing wrong. I don't think that's what you are actually suggesting, but I know some people think this.

It wasn't what I suggested, but it is very true, and you have the IQ of a deck chair if you don't see why, especially because it's been said at least five times on every page of this thread. Picking a Tarutaru will get you one-shot easily, while picking a Galka won't. How is that not a significant gameplay disadvantage?

However, if you're suggesting that picking a certain race will increase your performance (albeit marginally) and you want to make up for having that few less STR than say a Hume or Elvaan (which I think is the argument), I'd call that "buyer's remorse".

And why shouldn't that be addressed? This is the worst kind of buyer's remorse, because it's permanent. It's not just some money lost that you can make again. I paid 5 euros last night to go to the Sneak Preview, knowing there was a chance they could show the same shitty movie I saw the week before in another cinema, and it happened. So I walked out. Buyer's remorse, I made a mistake. But even though it cost me real money I'd still prefer it over a mistake in choosing a race, because it's a mistake that sticks with you throughout your entire FFXI career and there's nothing you can do about it.

It's actually a FFXI-unique issue, because in other games races and classes are often tailored to one another, and mistakes like this do not happen. But in FFXI, where one race can play every job, it is a noticeable problem.

However to mute the differences between the races, in my opinion, minimizes the fantastical and real aspects of the game, it reduces player-contribution to character development, and perpetuates the overwhelming irresponsibility of future MMO playerbases.

That is the only argument there ever was against this change, everything else is, as you described it yourself earlier, a cop-out explanation. And this is subjective. I personally believe variety comes from the people playing the game, not from stat difference. It's like the people saying being allowed to merit everything reduces player variation, which is equally wrong. Stats do not make a player, only people make a player. Variation will always be there as long as humans play this game.