Idea to fix the lack of Char Customization and Horizontal Progression: Action Glamour

[Devils_Lawyer]

Great idea in my opinion but you forget one thing.

According to SE people cannot tell the difference between classes unless they look like the classes should (never mind the actual class symbol with matching background color) which is the reason mages cannot glamour metal armor etc.

If a White mage suddenly starts shooting fire then all them poor players will not be able to tell hes a healer and its the same problem all over.

[Shurrikhan]

I honestly don't remotely want anything that switches our animations out with others. I have no intention of Full Thrusting on my Monk or Aeroing on my BLM. I see no benefit whatsoever, only really messed up battlefield tells. Augment them, perhaps, but then we might as well actually have differing abilities to go with the modified or new animations.

I wouldn't mind some additional stance choices though. Though I may be one of the few people to find DRK's Fenestra guard fairly practical (aside from the part where it doesn't actually thereby perform any counterattacks), Cloud's stance would be a nice touch, especially if I were to say, swap into it only when in Grit or only when out of Grit, either way.

[Duuude007]

5 unique disciplines branch out to 24 individual roles. How is that not variety, again?

[YGSLlew]

Which other modern MMO has done away with all build design? Every single one I play has some.

Guild Wars 2
has trait paths you can do with major traits that affect the way your skills work - as well as having gear builds, and customized skill sets (you can choose to bring a limited number of utility and have a wide selection. It has a bit more, but point made there I think.

World of Warcraft
still has trait paths that you can choose, specializations that you can choose, interesting stats that you can pick and choose from and has glyphs as well as crafting stuff that augments how you play (like enchanting).

Wildstar
has customized action bar sets where you choose which skills you want and can add limited action points to skills to change how they operate as well as AMPs which unlock certain abilities or change how your abilities may work.

Blade and Soul
has a pie chart thing - I only played briefly in Closed Beta, but there was some customization there. There was also a trait/skill tree to unlock your desired path.

Tera
has a system, i think called glyphs, but it's been awhile. You can purchase these to unlock them and then apply a limited number of points to each skill to modify how they work.

Onto a couple of successful recent single player RPGs.

Fallout 4
has multiple paths, where you can choose to buff up your strength or focus on things like lockpicking, persuasion or toughness.

Witcher 3
has skills that you unlock via investing in as you level up and then a system to modify them via Mutagens

The closest thing this game has is the system where you can change jobs on one class. While cool, it's not really the same thing.
Despite all of this, I personally found Vanilla WoWs the most fun system. It's too bad they scrapped it.

Don't forget "The Secret World": You have a so called "Skill Wheel" with 512 different skills. You had to build your "deck" with 7 active and 7 passive skills, fitting to your choice of primary and secondary weapon. This was a nice method of customizing your playstyle.

[Morzy]

Don't take away my monk animation! It gets the ladies boobs bouncing and thats all that matters <.<

[Kaurie]

Don't forget "The Secret World": You have a so called "Skill Wheel" with 512 different skills. You had to build your "deck" with 7 active and 7 passive skills, fitting to your choice of primary and secondary weapon. This was a nice method of customizing your playstyle.

Ah I wasn't forgetting Secret World, I was just listing games that I've played :P I've never really played Secret World (I think I briefly played a beta or something a long time ago)

[Andrea]

I feel if this was to become a thing instead of glamouring using already existing spells ( like your fire - stone example) they should be 100% new animations altogether. I just feel that it would be better that way than say seeing a healer using essentially blm spells

[Mycow8me]

Solution to lack of character customization:
Add more customization.

Solution to memory limitations:
Add more memory...

[Xatsh]

OP Trust me when I tell you this.

This would not satisfy the vast majority of people complaining about lack of horizontal progression or customization. IT will make the people wanting their character to look different happy, but that is not the majority of complaints on this matter.

Overall most people do not care about glamour, or titles, or achievements, or minions, or mounts. Yes there are some who focus on these things, but most just get them when they get them.

We already can run older content for glamour gear, most people do not. A new pose is no different then gear. We want meaningful horizontal progression where things are situational and the game is not a strait shot to the top. AKA we do not want each patch to increases the item level and have gear that is the exact same with +2 stats on it. Yoshida has stated in a recent interview he has no intention of deviating from the pure linear game design. So there is no making the people who want customization and horizontal progression happy with FFXIV. It is why alot of people are leaving the game.

With the current model the devs are struggling to release content fast enough. Aka they are releasing 1/4th the amount of content needed in a vertical progression game. Them taking dev time to develop this and add it to old content is a waste of their time. They need to focus on adding more dungeons, more raids, more primal, and more fluff content. (Since the content usually last 1-2 months tops). Unless they hire new people to specifically work on this I feel it would not be a good use of their man power.

[silentwindfr]

For the most part in mmos build customization is an illusion of choice. Awhile back ago in WoW they had huge talent trees where people could put like 80 points into their talents in 3 different trees. But for every class and spec min maxers came out and said this 1 build does the best dps if you aren't using it you are wrong. So they did away with the huge talent tress because having an illusion of choice was just bad game design.

SE has a similar problem with FFXIV but on a smaller scale with every class they have 1 stat they stack, playing a nin, bard, or mch if you didn't put all your points in dex you are doing it wrong. Playing a monk or drg not putting all your points in str you are doing it wrong.

Personally I would like to see them get rid of stat allocations and do something else.

first even illusion of choice is still choice. not everyone will try to be optimized and time to time new idea will pop out and new way to play will be found.

now about the stats point actually it's SE fault this system is too much wrong. do we really have the choice? no, outside the tank, all the other jobs will probably never invest point in other stats, because from the start, the primary wasn't the one we was needing to.... customize.

if you want to add customization, you can, if you really try. the trouble there is not in the game, but in the dev mentality to only think the game throught the hardcore and the raid. when we have a whole game unused and barely developed like it can be... because all them effort are turned to make the raid only revelant content. and since they want to balance the content for hardcore player, they need to be sure people will have the same stats and such for match them test team.

we can say, they have added casual content, but it's not the most important part of the content for them... the best example is the last live letter, where every concern of the dev was to make sure that the raid will be done.... they have loose of sights that a mmorpg is not only about raiding... that why we don't have customization, that why we only have one type of endgame content.... that why each patch look a like soo much... that because the dev are trying too hard to make everyone do raid. when a mmorpg is not only played by raider. (and less by hardcore)

ps: for make simple for make a choice exist, you need to offer decent option....