The Illusion of Choice

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Originally Posted by Pence

Illusion of choice is real...Yoshi acknowledges it, WOW has acknowledged it, everyone with half a brain has. Get on our level plx.

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Really? Because I'm pretty sure Diablo, Borderlands, Destiny and even ESO all give you the ability to choose how to play a class. Each of those games all fall under the mmo genre within a degree. Yoshi may acknowledged that there isn't any builds in this game but that obviously isn't entirety true, we in fact do have builds in very small scale. A DRG may choose to use the Gordian Trident over Rhongomiant simply because they rather have the 71 crit rate over the 102 skill speed. A WHM might want to choose the Majestas over the Gordian Cane, because they want the determination the Majestas has over the spell speed of the Gordian Cane. Choice doesn't just mean someone rather be a fire mage or ice mage, it also includes the gear the player utilizes as well.

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Originally Posted by Saccharin

I spent yesterday doing Void Ark, we wiped three times because fist of all people were not playing properly so damage was low and secondly, the most important they were not moving out of stuff they should. The other healer let the faerie do most of the healing so I had to do most of it.

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Is it possible we where in the same alliance yesterday. I had some terrible runs yesterday... The party was like filled with leechers.

If your argument is "ice Mage will be good one raid cycle and not the next thus "you're left out" as a counter argument to customizable abilities and gear stats because one option is always the best for every scenario. Then we should cut to the chase and stop making new jobs. A raid can only have 8 people. They're gonna just take the jobs that are Best in position right? If you have that mentality you should be against jobs too.

But people find new jobs to be fun. Why can't these people understand a skill tree can be fun, or various stats.

Everyone always takes the absolute worse case scenario as if that will be what happens everytime.

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Originally Posted by Jetstream_Fox

Really? Because I'm pretty sure Diablo, Borderlands, Destiny and even ESO all give you the ability to choose how to play a class. Each of those games all fall under the mmo genre within a degree.

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Borderlands and destiny mmo? That's like saying warfare is mmo. So no.
The problem with ''choice'' you mentioned, the weapons. One of the weapons will always be better. Weapon dmg> If you lets say have ilvl 220 but raid weapon is ilvl 230 and you obtain it, you rather use that, because weapon dmg> all. That's not a choice, that's something you want/have to use.

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Originally Posted by Jetstream_Fox

Really? Because I'm pretty sure Diablo, Borderlands, Destiny and even ESO all give you the ability to choose how to play a class.

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Diablo isn't an MMO, it's a Multiplayer Dungeon crawler. Borderlands isn't an MMO, it's a Multiplayer FPS. Destiny is an MMO (of sorts), but your freedom of choice there is more due to the fact that it is an FPS so freedom of play is generally inherent.

Now ESO is an MMO and it has some deeply seeded faults within its system which in some way or another can actually be tied back to your ability to 'choose' how your play, or at the very least the appearance that you get to choose how you play. Yes, you can choose whether or not you want to focus on one particular family of spells, or a particular type of weapon... but when you get into the actual gameplay it becomes almost immediately apparent that there are just some 'choices' you can make for your play that just plain don't work. My first attempt at playing ESO I decided to play my normal Elder Scrolls style which is stealth and ambush... it's my choice to play that and it's fully there. However if you actually try to play that style you soon find out it's completely unworkable since someone else is likely to come up and steamroll that mob you just spend the past minute working your way behind to do your ambush attacks.

Even if you have 100% freedom on stats and skills, people will find the most "optimal" or most used builds, so in the end it's an illusion too; everybody will use the exact same build on the exact same content.

Instead of making a double illusion system, they kept the base being the same, and then let you change stuff a bit, like letting you choose 35 stats. This way characters are always balanced and the raid team knows exactly how the jobs will work.


Maybe you've played games like Ragnarok Online, but that kind of freedom couldn't work here, because RO just has roaming MVPs and PVP, while FFXIV has dungeons,raids etc wich needs to be balanced and work properly for everyone, so the mechanics can work fine.

The choice is to change your job and/or use the rotation you want.

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Originally Posted by ChocoFeru

Even if you have 100% freedom on stats and skills, people will find the most "optimal" or most used builds, so in the end it's an illusion too; everybody will use the exact same build on the exact same content.

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I can see what you mean with that, merit points in FFXI was good and surprisingly alot of people there used different build even when most people lets say played SAM. So that's not always the case. The choice in job chase is ''limited'' you choose 1 class but you have to somewhat stick to it, if you want to gear it up. The fact you have weekly restriction of loots/tomestones makes it hard to build a second class good as first one. The rotation isn't a choice. If you wanna spam blizard over fire, that's bad :p.

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Originally Posted by ChocoFeru

Even if you have 100% freedom on stats and skills, people will find the most "optimal" or most used builds, so in the end it's an illusion too; everybody will use the exact same build on the exact same content.

Instead of making a double illusion system, they kept the base being the same, and then let you change stuff a bit, like letting you choose 35 stats. This way characters are always balanced and the raid team knows exactly how the jobs will work.

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Out of curiosity, did you read my initial post? The entirety of it was arguing against the use of the term Illusion.

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Originally Posted by Pence

No one is denying you to play how you want. You do you and roll that ice mage bae. It's your $15. But remember: it's the parties $45. If you don't play optimally because of your own enjoyment? Expect to be kicked. You're potentially ruining it for them.

I couldn't care less about your enjoyment. I find mine in clearing content and not taking 25m in a 15m dungeon.

Illusion of choice is real...Yoshi acknowledges it, WOW has acknowledged it, everyone with half a brain has. Get on our level plx.

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I find it odd that this post has the most upvotes, when the post was completely off topic. Are most people just not reading my initial post? I apologize for its length.

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Originally Posted by ChocoFeru

Even if you have 100% freedom on stats and skills, people will find the most "optimal" or most used builds, so in the end it's an illusion too; everybody will use the exact same build on the exact same content.

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I use to think like this when people attacked FFXiII. Plenty of FF
Gamea before xiii were linear. With the illusion of choice. To progress story you only had 1 destination. Same with battle. If it's weak to fire, why waste time finding out? Just let the auto attack Pick fire for you. Pointless to choose when the best choice is obvious right?

FFXIII is the extreme version of your way of thinking.

Some people enjoy illusion. Once again, Are you against new jobs? Because best in position will be found out anyway right? What's the point of new jobs if the beat jobs are the only ones people want.

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

I find it odd that this post has the most upvotes, when the post was completely off topic. Are most people just not reading my initial post? I apologize for its length.

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Basically. Sorry, Kaurie.


You were wanting to be able to build your character within a job a certain way for a certain fight, and then be able to easily switch it so that if content changes you won't get locked out? And that the different builds would play better in slightly different circumstances, but not so much that they would be selected against in story mode content?

I said we basically had that with different accessories/materia which could stack different stats, but that content didn't give us an excuse to stack anything but (SCH prospective) Mind. They just need to give us a reason to equip different things.

And then everyone said that it still wouldn't be a choice, you'd just stack those things for the one fight and then switch.

But that's exactly what you were asking for...so I'm pretty convinced they missed your point altogether.

The bottom line is that you can either have balance through switching your build easily, although this homogenizes the players for any given fight, or you have exclusion because you lock yourself into a certain build, even though you have diversity. You cannot have meaningful, lasting diversity and balance to the point that every build is viable and included. For all practical purposes you have to pick one.

Yoshi has gone with balance + homogenization. Honestly I'm fine with that. I wish they gave us reason to play around with different substats: that's the only think I would change. More varied content which requires branching out from the "stack your main stat only" build and experiment; and/or play around with the weights of the substats and make them more effectual.