Quote Originally Posted by CarmenSandiego View Post
Balance! *Rabble Rabble*
There's always someone who'll use balance as the reason not to have something. My answer is simple: If the developers spend more than five minutes thinking about the Materia choices then I'm sure they can make something work. They can even Hotfix it if it's such an issue, they have in the past.
So, I assume you are a veteran game designer who has worked in balancing MMOs for years to make such sweeping statements?

Seriously, you're making this out to be way easier than it is by any realistic standard. Balancing something with so many co- and interdependent variables as an MMORPG must be a complete nightmare and the people who do it have my respect. Adding even more such variables is just making it more nightmarish without any real gain whatsoever.

The truth of the matter is that FFXIV's whole basic design is not suited to extensive customization without breaking - or fundamentally changing - the entire game, and I'm of the opinion that this is not a bad thing at all. Other games have done near-infinite customization a lot better than FFXIV (often because they were designed from the ground up with that in mind), and I see no reason to shoehorn it in just for the sake of having it.