The Illusion of Choice

[Kaurie]

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.

Definitely. I can understand the desire to not want these things for balance, and think that is an acceptable argument. However, I think "Illusion of Choice" is a poor argument.

I made a thread about making all the stats affect every job, so that there would be reason to slot something other than your primary stat, but many argued against it with "The Illusion of Choice". I think that choice could be added in many ways, even within the scope of what is already in game (Attribute points, accessories not job bound, job changing with weapon swapping and encounter mechanics), but they are not really encouraging this. Attribute points go to your main stat, except BLM who may slot a PIE or two, and tanks who may slot STR vs VIT (but that will change shortly). There is no current reason in PvE for anyone to slot anything other than their main stat.

If, as you said, they created encounters which required different stat builds that would be something. That said, I think VIT vs MND is a rather boring choice. I suggested adding things like DEX improving accuracy, which WHMs with no accuracy gear may opt to slot in if they wanted to DPS (sacrifice 1% of healing ability, so that they hit accuracy cap). Perhaps STR could be CRIT focused, so a SCH who wants to crit more with adlo would slot that instead. The post was only made earlier this week if you care to see it.

Other options within the realm of what is in the game already (accessories not job bound, job changing and encounter mechanics) could be altered to make things more enjoyable. For example:

1. They could make it so you could gear more than 1 job at a time - i.e. put the 450 eso cap on purchases, rather than earning of tomestones. You can only spend 450 on SCH this week, but you can also spend 450 on SMN if you so choose. This would keep people from max gearing quickly, and provide incentive to run more roulettes throughout the week.

2. They could make secondary stats much more potent, so that you may opt to wear an accessory for another job due to the powerful 2ndary stats (45 MND 45 PIE 30 SS vs 45 INT 45 CRIT 30 DET -> if CRIT and DET were much more important, perhaps this would be more desirable, at least as your 2ndary ring)

That said, there wouldn't really be alternate builds that you can play with per encounter. There would still be one best option for your job. The great thing about adding variety and choice is that you can have multiple best options. As mentioned earlier in the thread, you could have a very high burst DPS build that rocks in Ravana EX due to the sword/shield swap, or you could have a great low TP/MP high sustained DPS that works well in long encounters, or you could have a high aoe but low single target build that rocks in A2S etc etc.

SMN and BLM do the same thing but they don't get there the same way

I strongly disagree with this statement. I am not sure how to argue it though. My only argument is that they don't do the same thing, with the only similarity that they do damage. In which case, a SMN also does the same thing as a WAR. Unless you mean they both use magic? In which case a NIN and a PLD are also identical, in that they both use physical damage. If you care to elaborate more on your point, that may be good, because perhaps I am missing something.

if they never made SMN and instead the Aetherflow mechanic with *Bane and Fester" was part of the Black Mage Thunder build, that would be a disservice to the community.s.

I completely agree, but removing an entire job to make a spec is not adding customization or variety, it is removing it.

As someone who hates BLM with an unknown passion, and finds every job outside of SMN, SCH and WHM to be utterly boring, if they made that change - I wouldn't be here.

[KaitlanKela]

1. They could make it so you could gear more than 1 job at a time - i.e. put the 450 eso cap on purchases, rather than earning of tomestones.

2. They could make secondary stats much more potent, so that you may opt to wear an accessory for another job due to the powerful 2ndary stats

That said, there wouldn't really be alternate builds that you can play with per encounter.

Agree, agree and agree.

1. Make encounters to where something other than "stack main" stat is encouraged
2. Make it easier to gear up secondaries at the same time as your main, while still retaining the time-gate in general
3. Make secondary stats mean something

All changes would be easy development wise and have never explicitly been denied. In fact, they've definitely done (1) in the past, and one could argue that the str -> vit thing they're doing and/or the changes to materia is something like (3). This would encourage different types of gameplay and flexibility within a job across encounters. Which is what you're asking for. Some might argue that there's still no "choice" for any one fight, but that's inevitable and unavoidable. I see no reason why it should be a reason for preventing something like this from being implemented.

The only thing is the weekly loot lockouts which would make it incredibly prohibitive to experiment with different gear builds and, by extension, melding. (2) addresses the issue. But without (2), the whole thing becomes needlessly time-locked and becomes to cumbersome to work.

[Reynhart]

How many Dark Knights and Warriors would actually specialize to be Tanks?

Judging by the heat debate over Vit vs Str, and "We want turtle tanking" vs "I want moaaar DPS" a skill tree would actually be the solution to please all tanks.

And again, yes, maybe "I want moaaar DPS" is the optimal path for clearing savage quickly, but "I want turtle" will catch up eventually. To each player its purpose, to each player its choice.
And to all of those "Don't waste my time in raid by being sub-optimal" people, don't worry, I won't even try join your static or your party finder. Like I didn't join the WAR bandwagon just for the sake of the raid-race.

[melisande]

I still have yet to see this 'Ice Mage' person, ever.

[Ibi]

Figured this was relevant. Source

It's relevant, sure, but it's also a bit contradictory.

He claims that they can't add different modes to each jobs because people would only ever play the strongest one and they'd have to design content around it, but how is that any different to the existing situation with regards to the different jobs in each role?

Part of the issue is that they're not clear (or are undecided) on how much imbalance they want to allow. They've been saying for months that paladin was in a good place and didn't need adjustments, it's just that Gordias' encounters weren't well-suited for their design intent. Even if that premise had been correct, they've now told us that paladin will be seeing significant adjustments in 3.2.

Is that because it wasn't being played enough? Is it because the perception is that it wasn't being played enough? Is it a change in their design concept for paladin? Is it because they found that theorycrafters were coming up with things they hadn't considered? We don't know, and we likely never will, but it shows that they a) don't actually have a problem with things being imbalanced between two ways to play for an entire tier of raiding and b) don't have a problem with making adjustments somewhere down the line to try to bring things back into alignment.

If they can do all of that for different jobs, it's not impossible to do it for different roles.

And the answer to "but if you can already play all the jobs in role, why do you need specs?" is "because I don't need to acquire a whole set of new equipment from weekly-limited sources in order to play to different specs of the same job, but I do need to do so to play different jobs of the same role."

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.

Only if you limit all the "choices" to being throughput-based. You can make people vary builds by adding utility or flexibility. WellFooled has the right of it:

Imagine end game as a choice of three weapons and for one melee dps it could look like this: One weapon gives you 10% more movement speed constantly, one makes your sprint not cost any TP but increases its cool down, one has a built in cooldown ability that teleports you to the location of your selected target.

If you make the choices things that either don't have a mathematical best answer or that have a mathematical best answer on paper that's more difficult to achieve in practice, you can have actual choices.

Actually while WoW has 3 specs per class, they removed almost all the customization per spec. The term "Illusion of Choice" COMES from blizzard for crying out loud.

You do know that the term "Illusion of Choice" very specifically referred to the old talent trees, and was the entire reason they got rid of them in favor of the current ones, right?

Unless you're doing mythic progression raiding, you can bring whatever specs you like, using more-or-less whatever talents you like, to any encounter in the game and be completely viable.

That's a complete turn-around from something like Wrath, where the talent trees had way more buttons to push but almost all came down to "Here's where you'll want to put the first 61 points, and the last 10 can be option A or option B."

[Critical-Limit]

Saying "it's for balance" as an excuse, also means you don't want jobs. What is the reason we love jobs? Because we can get a different experience trying to do the same objective. A MNK feels completely different from a BLM.

But they both DPS. The end result is the same goal. However one can outshine the other in specific situations. This is imbalance. The reason no one is upset is because they are "close enough" no one cares, as long as the jobs are done.

Why can't gear be the same way? Or skill trees?

Why is it everyone assumes skill trees and gear stats will never be balanced well enough that people can did the imbalance negligible.

Fighting games that have a top 8 balanced roster. You'll still find imbalance in small degrees but people wave it off because it's negligible. Why can't OP's proposition meet this standard if you guys are ok with it in the jobs department?

[Iromi]

It is time we got our stats back that we've been told we're coming since alpha forums. That would at least add some depth and choice to the game back...

I'll never forget getting the alpha and seeing our relics/gear with all the wonderful stats missing. Everyone was saying on xivpads chat like.."This is a joke right?" "Yeah, dont worry..these are probably just place holders" then the game launched and we still had these mundane stats lol.

I would like to think eventually we will get some form of customization back but I am not holding my breath. It is hard to take it seriously when we are told there is nothing like that in this game because balance is important. This game has just as much balance issues as other MMO I have played.

[Kaurie]

It's relevant, sure, but it's also a bit contradictory.

and snip

Nice post Ibi

One thing I wanted to add on that Yoshi article. In my view, suggesting that there is 1 optimal build is essentially Yoshi admitting that the only thing that matters in this game is DPS.

Perhaps, prior to adding customization (hypothetically), the development team should work on adding encounters that favour more CC and other non-DPS related systems.

[Iromi]

Nice post Ibi

One thing I wanted to add on that Yoshi article. In my view, him suggesting that there is 1 optimal build is essentially Yoshi admitting that the only thing that matters in this game is DPS.

Perhaps, prior to adding customization (hypothetically), the development team should work on adding encounters that favour more CC and other non-DPS related systems.

I would love to see actual CC have a use in this game. CC job and pure support are my two favorite jobs to play..this game has neither atm.

[Iagainsti]

I still have yet to see this 'Ice Mage' person, ever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_the_Plumber


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda-setting_theory