Are cracks in the Armoury System beginning to surface?

[Physic]

I completely agree with OP.

Honestly, i've seen the shortcomings in the Armoury system since day 1 as well, and knew it would be but a matter of time before they'd reach this disaster. I had mentioned this to a friend since the beginning and he disagreed back then but now he himself is not interested in playing anymore 'cause he can see the cracks opening wide. Although it's starting to become visible now, i'd hate to picture this game in another year or more, you'll have an army of super-hybrid-abominations roaming around Eorzea. All with the same classes leveled and same abilities, executing the same moves, only difference is their class title.

I personally very much dislike the Armoury system myself and prefer the job system. In all the previous FF's, they were more or less job based systems, and they all succeeded as games, some more fun than others but they all worked. Armoury system, while interesting as an idea is quite flawed and short-sighted and only introduces problems in many ways and the complaints have already been made by people time and again and they still stand.

1) Lack of Uniqueness - People by nature like to be unique. It absolutely sucks to be the same as the rest of the players no matter what class you're on, gives no sense of identity or need for you as an individual. At the end of the day, in FFXIV, all players who want be somewhat competent, whether casual or hardcore, will need to get the same abilities more or less to make the most out of the game and you end up with duplicate supermen doing the exact same thing.

2) Lack of Party play - Armoury system is the biggest culprit here, when you have a gladpugconjmrdthm, why would you target a specific class anymore? There are no requirements due to this mash of roles. As long as someone tanks and someones cures. Party play is only rewarding when each player has a sense of need and unique contribution. Obviously SE realized that now with majority of votes complaining about this and now they are introducing Job system.

3) Lack of Balance - There are mutliple areas where balance will be hit hard, whether it's the vast difference in power or challenging game content for all players or the even more prominent issue i see coming with the new job system is the devs having to constantly address and keep up with class VS job system throughout the whole game.

As it stands now, Time is the primary and main factor in distinguishing between players rather than skillful play. This turns it into an SP game when infact it was intended with casual player in mind, being able to completely enjoy the game and not feel left out or gimped, pretty much SE's own words.
Heck, in this regard, even FFXI which was hardcore style play still felt more casual than FFXIV. Atleast in FFXI, you could level one job to 75 and be fully content with the game experience and with your competence against other players to a good extent. I had one job at 75 and i had an amazing experience and i could often outplay or outdamage other 75's even though they had better gear and merits and many other jobs at 75. This is how it's supposed to be, especially so in FFXIV. Makes no sense to have for eg. a rank 50 10 yr old with all the time on his hands outplaying a mature skillful rank 50 30 yr old purely because the kid has all classes leveled.
Hence the limits set in subjob systems as in XI. Limits are good, it keeps game in balance and within reason and it fosters more skillfull play and demand for other players.

This is ofcourse not to say that those spending extra time should not reap the rewards, i think that's fair game, but the fundamentals of the game should not be tampered with. There are many ways to reward the hardcore players. Be it merits, or elite gear and ofcourse.. even the simple fact that they can play and enjoy many more jobs at rank 50 while the casual can only enjoy 1 or so. I always wanted to play other jobs in FFXI or have more subjobs, but simply didnt have the time for it, i never complained, i thought thats fair, in the same time i could enjoy the game without feeling completely gimped. These are just a few ideas. The point is everyone can be happy and content in this game, no need to screw one group for the other's sake.

The way i see it, Yoshi and the new dev team realize this but are stuck with the short-sighted vision and mess that the old team put them in and it will be a rather challenging task to fix the game now. In all honesty, The Job/Subjob system worked far better and addressed all the probs of Armoury system (mentioned above). I am glad to see job system coming back, however.. i'd really like to see it completely replace the class system, otherwise we'll have an issue of redundancy. I just really cant see the 2 systems working together, they're contradicting and the abilities will be quite redundant, we already have all the cures, taunts, provokes, hp leech, regen, nukes, list goes on.. of abilities in our current classes. How redundant will the new jobs be with their new abilities?
Just make it simple, FFXIV doesn't need more complication, especially now when the new dev team trying to fix the mess they're in and make the game playable and bring the masses back. Replace the classes with the new jobs so no one's efforts are gone and i would love to see subjobs brought back into the game.
Some sacrifice needs to be made in order for game to progress forward and prosper.

I pray for Yoshi and dev team's success. This may well be a make or break for the game.

heres the problem with the whole class uniqueness theory, if each job is completely unique, and no one else can be like that, you have 7 jobs, thats it. thats all.

How many different builds do you think there are now? even if we only have 7 types of super build, guess what? you still have no more uniqueness, 1/7 people are the same, the difference is, in the armory system, they dont have to be the same.

you can build a drk knight type, with absorbs and DD, you can build a tp smash type, you can build an evasion tank, you can build a single target tank, you can build a multi target tank, a healer a debuffer a DD mage lng range DD long range melee support.
the fact is there is way more options and uniqueness going on with armory than without it. people say they want to be unique then say you must wear 1/7 uniforms, thats not unique. There is war more viable options withing the armory system than without it, or nerfing it further.

far as lack of party play, armory doesnt effect that, balancing effects that, they made virtually no changes to the armory system, and with this patch, its much easier to progress and do things in parties than without.

far as lack of balance, nope, the culprits for the lack of balance class to class, dont involve the armory system, it usually involves the unique skills of a class, like having shields, having better cures and exclusive cures, an a mp halving skill on a lower cool down, and being able to do DD without getting close.
far as balance of hardcore versus not, this is the biggest difference, and the major problem, to be the best at a role, you may have to go outside your discipline, this may be time consuming, but this is not that different than other systems that you have already seen, the game has no merits, and it has no insane gear that puts you way higher, it also has more skills available and thus has a higher skill curve.

I had one job at 75 and i had an amazing experience and i could often outplay or outdamage other 75's even though they had better gear and merits and many other jobs at 75.

im sorry but this is just not true, well you could have had an amazing experience, but there is simply no way in ffxi to outperform a person with better gear and merits, unless they are abnormally bad at playing ffxi.
ffxi had really op gear that put you bounds ahead of anyone else.
haste gear, you see black belt? byakko pants? relic weapons? kirins osode? once you got into gear swaps, people had gear sets that could give you like +90 strength for a weapon skill.

and merits? look at at samurai merits, increase of katana and str alone would put them high above you in acc and attack, but now add dex,
0verwelm? shikyoko? meditate recast?
you are living in a non final fantasy fantasy world if you think some one who was just 75 had a chance of competing with a hardcore 75.
do you know how long it took many people to get some of those gears? haidate, osode? a lot longer than it takes to get pug and mrd to 30, or even 50.

dont kid yourself ffxi people were super overpowered versus regular newbie 75s and the time investment for that was A LOT higher.

[Gennosuke]

There is war more viable options withing the armory system than without it, or nerfing it further.

I understand your point, i think it's obvious that with Armoury system, you have room for way more customization and in that sense you are calling it uniqueness now. The prob is, as i had been explaining, is that with time, you will inevitably have players whom have all classes leveled and in parties they would *need* to conform to what is known to work best in a party setup. No mage would be expecting a melee to be casting cures or debuffs. Neither your mp pool nor your attributes will make you an efficient one at that as a melee. So where do we end up? back to job defined roles, DD will look for DD abilities, tank will look for tank abilities. This is the very reason they are introducing Job system, to give jobs a sense of uniqueness and make party play more efficient and viable by having specialized roles, because unfortunately, the Armoury class system fails to address that at the moment, classes are too generic and non specialized enough to pull a specific role if you were to mix them up and be a Jack of all trades, master of none. If this system you're so fond of worked so well, SE wouldn't be looking at specialized jobs now.

Again, the point mentioned by OP still stands strong, that number of classes ranked to 50, and hence time spent on game is the distinguishing factor between players. Although, to be honest, again there is no point debating this anymore, because SE obviously realised this too and hence as a person quoted few messages back, they are re-designing classes and limitations from the ground up.

So if you ask me, i think SE already listened to my and other players concerns regarding this topic, so im happy enough to see these changes take effect in future. I hope it can work out for you too. My remaining issue would be to completely replace what i feel will be a redundant Armoury system with the new job system coming up and bring subjobs back, but i realize thats just wishful thinking on my part, will have to wait and see what they have in store.

Lastly, I somewhat sense a bit of an offensive stance by you 'cause i mentioned i outplayed/outdamaged other 75's who were more hardcore. Mind you, first of all i quit early on in the game, the time when merits were still new and god gear wasn't around for every tom, dick and harry to collect, and ofcourse only a very small handful with relic weapons, and that was the beauty of it, only real hardcore players reached such stages then. With time however, i would imagine more and more players reached such standards. Then again, even being a casual player on a 75 job playing consistenly, i might've probably also have gained merits for my job, and if lucky enough scored some elite gear. Not necessarily for ALL jobs, but at the very least for one job. Maybe yes, maybe no. I wasn't dying for it, i was happy with my progress and with the experience the game offered for the stage i reached as mid-casual player.

And..no i'm not kidding myself, you do realize, there are many factors that set apart good vs bad players? You can't simply assume because someone merited or got elite gear, they're skillful. There's tons of stuff to set one apart, be it macros, modifiers, food, abilities used, choice of weapon, skills, strategic play, subjob, etc. Just piling up Str doesn't necessarily set you apart, although it certainly helps. Obviously, a skillful player with all the right gear will outplay a skillful casual and that's fine. The prob here in FFXIV as mentioned several times already is, the criterion that sets players apart is number of classes i.e time, not skill. Make sense?
In other words, casual will always be severely hurt coz they can never level up all jobs to max level. In XI, that was never the case, everyone could enjoy it regardless due to design and limitations of the Job/Subjob system as opposed to Armoury.