Quote Originally Posted by zosia View Post
Also, why is the illusion of choice toxic to MMOs? That seems like a pretty brash statement without backing it up.
Your exposition on WoW talents today ignores its not-so-civil history. Back in the day we had real choice in talents. Problem was, it got so complicated that everyone either conformed to a set-list of talents or they didn't get to participate fully in content. That went for a lot of PuGs too.

Since there was a set-list, and everyone was expected to know it and believe it, there was no room for "flavors of choice" if you wanted to do content. That was the 'toxic' part.

The solution? Water talents down to the point where they don't make any difference.

FFXIV doesn't have talent trees. Perhaps that would satisfy the need for 'flavor'? Might be easier to implement than a complete rewrite of the DPS algorithms.