What Happened to Customization & Specialization?

[Dzian]

Every instance where the "choice is real" in an MMO that i've experienced, the playerbase ends up making the choice with the players. Many FFXI choices were real, so many guilds end up choosing to NOT bring X jobs to Y content.

As much as I loved XI it had some major environmental issues that meant many of its choices simply weren't real or even considered an option..

My earlier example of elements again comes to mind. A SMN, BLM or RDM putting merits into fire or water for example just wasn't an option simply because if you ever looked at the bestiary you'd note that virtually nothing was weak to those elements. 90 maybe 95% of mobs were weak to either ice or thunder thus those were the only choices for merits.

This was also true with damage types such as piercing, slashing and blunt. Virtually everything shared the exact same resistances and weaknesses which then meant jobs that didn't utilise them were considered inferior..

Another was TP. The primary reason many pet classes were shunned and undesirable was because of the massive amounts of TP pets fed to the monsters you were fighting which in turn made those fights harder. You could see this with Dragoon. Piercing damage which was ideal for many mobs in the toau areas. But the TP issue from there pet made them a lot less desirable. And groups would rather take a samurai with a lower polearm skill instead.

Another issue casters faced was the amount of mobs that would either throw your magic back in your face or silence you every 2 seconds made them a undesirable choice at the higher levels. Because the reflected damage made it even harder for the party and the endless silence was crippling.

The jobs them selves though were generally fine and you could do some amazing things with many of them. Monk made a pretty solid tank at 55 when you got counter stance. Samurai was in many cases a better tank than ninja with seigan anticipate an attack that would strip all your shadows..

Many Sub jobs combinations could have been great if they simply scaled properly.. especially the caster ones... cure 1 or even cure 2 on a level 75 player was a joke... some decent scaling of such would have many many more sub choices actually work... the same with subs like thief SATA would have been more viable if it worked with a greater variety of skills for example.

It was the game environment and world mechanics that created many of the problems not so much the jobs themselves..

There were however genuinely questionable skills and abilities. Such as zanashin and the merits to increase zanashin rate.... an ability that offered a chance to attack again if you missed. But there was no logic there because no one would ever build around missing attacks enough to benefit from enhancing zanashin.

But yeah many of XIs choices could have been better simply with some environmental changes.. If you stopped pets feeding mobs so much TP for example drgs would have almost instantly become a lot more popular and viable choice.. So would SMN PUP and hell even BST all from a simple environmental change.

Same goes for for casters. If bestiary was better balanced and more diverse in terms of weaknesses. Casters would have had a legitimate choice to put merits into water potency or wind potency... another environmental change..

A good environment would make his or must haves almost impossible