The Illusion of Choice

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Originally Posted by KaitlanKela

BTW, honestly I like the game as it is. It's a little linear gear/progression wise, but the gameplay is fun enough so I don't really have anything to complain about.

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And I want to add, even though I want more customization, I still love this game and I'm not going anywhere either. I just think it could do more to be a bit more interesting and varied. Being able to differentiate yourself from players who play the same class as you is fun for many players.

The difference between crafting and having builds is if you don't like crafting you don't have to craft. If you don't like having to mess around with builds you still have to mess around with builds. Screwing around with builds really annoys me. I like to be about to play something without relying on a spread sheet and a calculator to figure out what works. If I need to rely on third party sites to figure out the build I need then that is worse. In my view if the game build system is complicated enough that you cant intuitively figure out what you need for a reliable build in the game itself without having to resort to google then the game is broken.

Using the OP's analogy, its like going to a grocery store and having a random set of ingredients you have feed into a machine to make the cheese but due to the number of options the store lacks a reliable way of knowing if the cheese you want is what you will get when it comes out of the machine meaning you have to on line and research websites other people have made just to try and maybe get the cheese you want. If I had to do that I would just go to a shop where I could just buy the one variety of cheese.

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Originally Posted by Belhi

In my view if the game build system is complicated enough that you cant intuitively figure out what you need for a reliable build in the game itself without having to resort to google then the game is broken.

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Nothing says it really needs to be that complicated, though. The Merit Points system in FFXI only gave you a handful of points to play with—you typically ended up choosing three ability adjustments (such as X Ability has a lower cooldown) and a couple of new unique abilities. You didn't really need to outside of the game at all to make that call. Most of them came down to personal preference or to what sort of content you did most (though there were a few options that were heavily favored for some classes, like Meditate enhancement for Samurai).

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Originally Posted by Darkstride

I understand what you're saying, but none of that actually promotes diversity or interesting gameplay elements. It's still a matter of just having the right amount of the right stat to get the job done. If a boss were to have an astronomical Accuracy requirement, but a lower DPS check, then every tank and DPS would just need to stack accuracy. For a boss that slows everyone, then everyone would have to stack Skill/Spell speed. That does nothing for role or stat diversity, all it does is make that one fight a pain in the ass if you don't have the right accessories. It's basically another illusion of choice. Sure, it's content that needs a different stat for a different strategy, but if the content requires it for completion, what choice is there?

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Ding ding ding!

a fight vs a ifrit that makes tanks wear fire resist gear to win isn't choice. Fighting ifrit and making blm do an imaginary "ice spec" build isn't choice. It's a gear hoop to jump through to complete content. In ffxi in a fight vs skeletons (they took half damage from piercing damage and 25% more from blunt staff damage), a dragoon pulling out a staff instead of a spear wasn't some magical viable fun choice.

These kinds of 'variations' in gameplay don't promote choice. They just promote "here's a new problem. Solve for X. There's still a right answer". That's not choice. Choice implies equivalent but asymmetrical options. But the amount of balance work required to achieve that is really just absurd and impractical. If each job had 3 specs, we're talking 39 classes to balance in groups of 8. The number of party compositions that every piece of new content would have to account for would instantly Baloon astronomically. You don't think that with that many moving parts, a couple compositions that synergize wouldn't rise above the rest creating job and class exclusion lime this game has never seen? It will. There are only 2 ways this method has ever turned out in history. Specs are balanced, but homogenized and boring, or they are interesting and fun but wildly unbalanced with rampant exclusion or preference as the balance pendulum swings back and forth over patches.

You can't have huge variety of classes and specs everywhere without homogenezation or unbalance. There are to many variables to have 1 piece of content somehow be equally friendly to an exponential rise in class/spec variety.

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Originally Posted by WellFooled

Let's use WoW as an example, because it's well known, vs. FFXIV.

There are 13 battle jobs in FFXIV. There are 11 classes in WoW at last count.

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Still missing my point, so I'll elaborate.

In Battlecraft, there are multiple roles, which run hierarchically.


A. Melee
-----1. Melee DPS
----------a. DRG
----------b. MNK
----------c. NIN
-----2. Melee Tank
----------a. WAR
----------b. PLD
----------c. DRK
B. Ranged
-----1. Ranged Noncaster
----------a. BRD
----------b. MCH
-----2. Ranged Caster
----------a. BLM
----------b. SMN
-----3. Ranged Healer
----------a. WHM
----------b. SCH
----------c. AST

Melee DPS
Melee Tank
Ranged Noncaster
Ranged Caster
Ranged Healer

So 5 roles. Each with at least two of their own specific builds, or jobs.
5 is a fair starting point, considering the age of the MMO.

What else could be added? plenty.

Crowd control comes to mind. Along with several hybrid roles, which the devs have hinted at on a number of occasions.

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Originally Posted by Duuude007

Still missing my point, so I'll elaborate.

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I see the one point you're making (within the roles offered there are multiple classes to choose from to fill that role. So there is customization within that role), but I don't think I understand how that point is related to the topic of this thread. I might be missing something obvious here, so please feel free to spell it out simply for me. I'm a simpleton.

Every other MMO also has roles and classes that fit into them, but in addition to that they have so many more meaningful choices. I'd like to see, at least some similar meaningful choices added to FFXIV.

The way the hierarchy is, differs from game to game.


Take WoW Paladin, for example.
3 trees, Apart from hybridizing abilities (potentially gimping your overall potential) you are going to get unique abilities taking any path.

Take FFXIV Tank, for example.
2 trees (WAR, PLD) plus a hybrid 3rd tree (DRK). Apart from crossclass abilities you are going to get unique abilities taking any path.

If you base the lowest level of the hierarchy at the abilities you earn and work up from there, you can see that they are named differently, are leveled differently but have the same core division of features.

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Originally Posted by Duuude007

The way the hierarchy is, differs from game to game.

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I see what you're saying, but even if the options in FFXIV's job system can be compared with the options in WoW's job/tree system it's still only that one choice. WoW (and many other MMORPG) offers choices upon choices upon choices that all lead to many thousands of branching builds that differentiate characters from one another. FFXIV just offers the one choice, with no other additional layers.

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Originally Posted by Duuude007

The way the hierarchy is, differs from game to game

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I understand what you're saying, but even if each job is already a "branch" of each role, all of those jobs are carbon copies of one another. Every job is played identically in regard to abilities, play style and stats with no opportunity for customization or diversity. Even cross-class abilities are so severely limited that there's almost no point in chosing them for yourself, they might as well be automatically set.....it's a false sense of customization.

As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, it could be seen that the multiple jobs are that multiple choice, considering your character can be sufficient in one without ever permently taking away from another. Whether or not that's done effectively is a different question if you look at the likes of war, drg, and mch/brd