Why can't we have jobs with this level of depth and customization in FFXIV?

You need to consider two things:
- The philosophy of XIV is that every job fulfills a narrow role (DPS, tank, healer) as opposed to XI, where jobs fall on a specialist-generalist spectrum.
- PUP is very weird.

Like someone else said, you're talking about things that came out in FFXI after many years. The automaton in particular is from the third expansion, which means we're talking something in the neighborhood of 5 years? after release. Even then, it was still something that they had to optimize over time.

FFXIV's big problem right now is that everything is so mind numbingly straightforward. The original FFXIV ability system was highly convoluted, but it was very diverse and interesting. The change to what we have now was a major step backwards IMO. However, SE has acknowledged that there will be some changes to the ability system once the first expansion is released. Whether or not they deliver is another story, but they are at least aware.

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Originally Posted by Souljacker

See, the problem with this and other comments like it is that the developers can't say "Well we didn't add this until 5ish years or whatever into our other mmo, so we can skate by with not improving upon that process because hey, it's only a year old!" And it's NOT only a year old. YoshiP has been on the project for a short time, but the game has been in development\reconstruction\planning\etc for over half a decade now. They really can't use the "it's brand, spanking new" excuse when they have almost 15 years experience in building mmos. The complexity should have been there from the start because you always want to improve upon your last project, and if nothing else, should certainly be working its way in there now, 5 years into the endeavor.

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Ever heard of the expression "Rome wasn't built in a day"? Same thing applies to games. You don't toss out "complex" systems at release without the battle system going through the ropes. Just look at all the problems Warrior had at release.

Side-note though: I just have to lol at your jibes at FFXIV being simple (in some aspects it is, others it's more complex) and unchallenging, while FFXI was complex and challenging. People need to stop "glorifying" the challenge of FFXI when most of it came from players being at the mercy of rng. As for complexity, well, it is true that we gear swapped a lot. Can't really say that I miss those days though.

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Originally Posted by Exstal

It takes time for things to be developed. That's why.

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There's been no hint there will ever be anything like this in XIV. But if we let the devs know it's something we'd like to see...

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Originally Posted by RiverTams

If this game turns anymore into XI its going to drop so many subs.

XI was just an awful game.

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Again, I don't want XI-2. Please read my previous posts and original post.

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Originally Posted by Exstal

It takes time for things to be developed. That's why.

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been about 4 years now. This games direction is pretty much set in stone.

Casual duty finder theme park with a bunch of one shot mechanics and a gear treadmill.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

Why can't we have jobs that have this kind of customization and depth in FFXIV?

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Go ask all these Puppetmasters how often they get parties.

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Originally Posted by Souljacker

See, the problem with this and other comments like it is that the developers can't say "Well we didn't add this until 5ish years or whatever into our other mmo, so we can skate by with not improving upon that process because hey, it's only a year old!" And it's NOT only a year old. YoshiP has been on the project for a short time, but the game has been in development\reconstruction\planning\etc for over half a decade now. They really can't use the "it's brand, spanking new" excuse when they have almost 15 years experience in building mmos. The complexity should have been there from the start because you always want to improve upon your last project, and if nothing else, should certainly be working its way in there now, 5 years into the endeavor.

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This game mostly opted out of having a complex battle system while in development mostly because the concept is a false prophet that taunts you with ideas of "Options" and "Variety" when in the end it all just becomes stale rehashed designs with a new name.

They built a simple combat model to save time and allow them to make interesting content more quickly rather then trying to make content fit into a bloated system.

By default, the system will still grow as the game continues in development. Having it start off with an elaborate system would just be insane.

The main problem is that FFXIV is a modernized MMO with veeeery careful tuning to ensure that a well-played job performs similarly to others in its role. FFXIV also adheres very strictly to the MMO Trinity of roles, so you can't have any particular job that outclasses others.

FFXI is a very outdated MMO environment, where things are made for the sake of flavor rather than practicality. It also doesn't care one iota about the Trinity; there's nothing stopping you from forming an entirely ineffective group of jobs. (and indeed it's very LIKELY that you will if you don't carefully sculpt your alliance)
Heavily customizable content like PUP and BLU in FFXI's outdated environment is okay because people can and will make tons of varieties of builds, with vastly differing effectiveness in different situations. That's fine there, because holistically the game is 'looser,' in fight difficulty, tuning, DPS checks, etc.
In a modern MMO like FFXIV there's no point in making a ton of customizable content for one small subset of players. (a single job for instance) Suppose that you bring back PUP as a DPS. Very soon players will find one or two "optimized" DPS builds, which might end up blowing other DPS out of the water. Because this is a modern MMO, those builds necessarily MUST be nerfed/reworked so as to bring PUP DPS back in line with DRG and MNK. This process repeats until eventually there is likely only one remaining competitive PUP build, or a handful of exactly equal potency. If you don't have one of those specific, carefully-crafted builds, you will be a pretty useless DPS. SE tunes fights under the assumption that the damage dealers collectively do X DPS, split 2 or 4-ways among relatively even jobs, (plus tank damage) and it's pretty clear from playing how carefully-tuned these things are. If you bring any PUP build that isn't the absolute best of the best, you're deliberately reducing your party's chance of success.


tl;dr Making heavily-customizable content for jobs is a large amount of man hours spent in design, followed by a large amount of man hours spent in rebalancing, with the end result of a job with effectively one 'real' build anyway, a build that SE will have to assume everyone is using when they make new fights. They could just do away with the middleman and make it with one build to start, and make that playstyle more interesting via other factors (see: stances, charges, pets, combos, etc)

While Gilthas puts on a good point, I wish to add onto the social aspect of such options.

Diversity is neigh on impossible to maintain in a game culture that worships gleaning efficiency and uniformity in every conceivable aspect.

Take the Subjob system. A Job was expected to have a specific set of sub classes it was to use, and woe onto the player that experimented beyond the experienced norm. Same went for equipment or weapon usage. The use of Red Mage alone was a perpetual debate on even the smallest of party trash mobs.

Here, the roles, the flexibility and usefulness are clearly defined. The game gives you limits and bounds with a bit of flexibility of use but primarily maintaining a clear focus. The trade off is that every player can still play every class on a single character- a level of diversity and depth that is still lacking in most MMOs to date - something I feel players overlook.

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Originally Posted by GalkaBikini

Go ask all these Puppetmasters how often they get parties.

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Not applicable, I'm not asking for XI's mechanics, endgame, or puppetmaster to be implemented in this game.