Differentiate me from other players with same class!

So I have been playing the game for a week now and just hit level 30. It is a fantastic game! However, I was wondering what really differentiates my White Mage from other White Mages? Or any other class for that matter.

Other than attribute points, armor options and player habits, is there any other system in place to make me different from others of the same class? I ask this because there are quite a few games out there have some other system in place to personalize your character, in addition to the above mentioned. I do know that when systems like this are present, class imbalances may arise, but I was just wondering. Maybe I missed something.

Thanks!

Nope. The personalization is in the Glamour System that you can unlock at lvl50. Pretty much all jobs get a list of must-have cross-class abilities with only one or two you can leeway. All mages are pretty much "required" to have swiftcast, etc

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Originally Posted by Rykken

Other than attribute points, armor options and player habits, is there any other system in place to make me different from others of the same class?

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You're going to have the same abilities as any other white mage. The main difference between you and other players are the decisions you make in combat, and to a lesser degree the choices you make with gear.

In theory the cross class system allows some customization, but in practice you'll wind up with the same skills as everyone else. And this is the problem with selectable skills in any MMO system. People will find the most practical setup and that will become the cookie-cutter build. There might be the appearance of choice, but you are only weakening yourself by being different. The development team also has to look at this build and balance the class/job around it, not alternative builds, because everyone will be using it. By leaving everyone the same they cut away the illusion of choice and can balance around a standard template, which is much easier, which in turn makes the player experience more reliably solid, which makes for a better game.

My point in summary is that offering such choices only really serves to weaken, not strengthen, the quality of an MMO. Players still have a great amount of ability to stand out via their actions. You still see a wide range in how well players perform at their roles and it really stands out given you know they all have the same basic tools to work with.

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Originally Posted by Rykken

Thanks!

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As far as I have seen in endgame. Sadly, diversity won't be how the dev wants us to play the game.

Personally, I am with you on personalizing our play, but hard truth hit me and just accepted it.

All players of their respective jobs will eventually aim for the gear with the highest numbers, then play in a certain pattern or rotation. We will all end up with the same cookie cutter playstyle and build. Deviations from that will not be favorable as you will end up much weaker than most.

Well, the benefits of that is as the guy above me had stated: optimization. It would be easy for the players and the devs to balance out and work on a certain narrow expectation: dps deal damage, healers heal and tanks tank. At the end of the day that d be all that matters, and all progressions will cater to those expectations.

The only other remaining way to personalize yourself is by glamour, that's it.

In my experience, Guild Wars 2 is a good example of a game that allows diverse playstyle. All jobs can play any style they want... warriors can be healers, or mages can be meaty soldiers (no tanking in the game, but still you can be very tough). There are also many ways to deal dps for each job, be it direct damage, DoTs or pets. Granted there are "optimal" builds for max deeps enforced by elitist speedrunners, otherwise every other build you can think of is acceptable and playable.

GW2 is a solid game. Traits, individual skill leveling, the ability to combine weapons; dual pistols, knife and pistol, etc. Very cool stuff!

Thanks for your opinions. I've played SWG, CoH, CoV, GW1, GW2, EQ2, AoC, DCU, PS and and about 20 more throughout the last 20 years. I'm sure I'm not the only vet. I am no stranger to the imbalances, I even mentioned them in my first post. However, I simply like to have more choices. I don't think it weakens a game if it's done correctly. The problem is, how many development teams have ever got it right? lol.. Not many...

Thank you for your feedback!

Well, FFXIV is a pretty solid game too. Despite its many shortcomings that is, but no game is perfect. :)

This game does have 2 concepts that would have introduced potential diversity: classes and elementals. Elements are kinda obvious, which one is your strength and weakness, and the like. Classes give us more cross class skills and is thus more versatile playstyle, and is designed to branch into potentially multiple jobs adding their own flavors to their respective base class.

Sadly, as far as I am seeing, they are neglecting these two systems in order to provide a more solid and optimized gameplay. Many find it great, and I do find its benefits, but I personally dont like it. With the release of HW, they further made this obvious. Only jobs get new skills, nothing in their base class, even though some of the skills added to the jobs make less sense in terms of the jobs theme and lore. More damage skills for the White Mage?? No new pet actions for the Summoner??

a While back ago i read from a article maybe it was on reddit not sure. but there was some talk of having jobs with duel roles how would they implement that? i mean that's the only way that i could think of. Was the class system made for this? for example lets take conjurer and let it branch out to two classes healer WHM or Dps Geo. Was that the purpose from the beginning having the class with the same core skills but play diff by having diff jobs.

Well the potential of class versatility is there, and actually implemented by the arcanist class. With that, people (like me too) are hoping other classes will follow suit.

I dont know if they actually intended it, but at the moment they seem to be steering away from it.

I'm still kinda bitter they put Stone 3 and Aero 3 in WHM. -_-

FYI, the class system is more of an artifact from 1.0. It is a design they're phasing out, especially with the expansion only introducing new jobs and the crafter specialist system. Both make sense in my opinion with how the current game works. I just don't think an all-rounder class who can draw abilities from all jobs is that desirable for the current system and party-centered brand of FF mmos.

As for the reddit post, there was some speculation early in 2.0 that other jobs would branch from other classes like SCH (healer) did for SMN (mage dps) on arcanist. The expansion suggests this is not going to be the case.

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On topic, the dev team was playing around with some ideas to improve the materia system, a largely ignored aspect of the game at endgame.

The basic idea was to allow materia to improve and provide unique effects to existing skills. For example, a materia that dramatically improved a Dragoon's Jump damage at the cost of a shorter CD. That way, individual players would be able to customize their playstyle and equipment.

The problem they had was balancing it for all possible variations and classes in player testing. So, this is a subject S-E is aware of and they want to improve on. It's just not at the level where they can go in to detail about it.

Keep up threads like this and tell them what you want. It's going to take an awful lot of noise to persuade Japan's top-down management, but we know they're invested in making the game great. Just remember how much they put in to push 1.0 to 2.0.