If the different options were only visual or aesthetic in nature, it may still achieve their goal of creating a sense of progression. Not saying they will only be aesthetic in nature, but it's possible ie. replace Garuda with Ramuh on summoner.
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Other games have had countless iterations of their talent tree and has worked with lots of feedback. Post ShB FFXIV scorched earth'ed the job design so it is going to take a long long time before a good talent system can be cultivated from the ground up.
It will be especially bad if they don't do any kind of pre-exposure of what they are thinking of doing in this expansion. They have a habit of keeping new features tightly under wraps until near the day of release which has its pros and cons but for something like a talent system the con of not getting early feedback is tremendous.
Anything that is too "customizable" is bound to be a nightmare. (see skill trees with divergences like vanilla wow).
I like the idea of an alternate leveling system (like Eureka or Bozja).
I also like the idea of powering up skills.
No, just no. In the end, you're going to be forced to play a certain build. This creates toxicity - just look at wow. If you don't play the wanted build, you're not wanted for groups. The whole thing with everyone have the exact same skills is what sold me to ffxiv.
This is my one pet peeve in wow, the illusion of choice for talents is insane and really kills the system for me in general. Although I still raid there and get early Cutting Edge clears so w/e.
Some talent trees are so poorly designed that you have next to no free talent points to pickup utility that you might need when you're already forced to invest into specific damage nodes.
FFXIV's levels unlocking abilities/traits is honestly so refreshing, having your whole class kit from the get go without losing out on over half your utility is a much better scenario. It's one of the main reasons I keep coming back to FF over the years too.
FFXIV should have somekind of D&D Job design mixed with FF style one job one tree but playing other job feels like playing another game