Quote Originally Posted by Proxanna View Post
So let's say that yes, MOST players will go with the optimal build and there's maybe 5% of the player base that wants to be a special snowflake and do their own wacky build. That's a lot of time, effort, and resources going into designing and balancing talent trees for 17 different jobs to cater to those 5% that want to feel unique. Every MMO that's started out with a cool and spanning talent tree system has simplified them and made them a lot more rigid over the years because it's too hard for them to balance. Now I'm not saying it wouldn't be cool to have more customization choices. I mean that's a big part of why we play MMOs is because of the customization right? I'm just saying I don't see them doing it because of the above mentioned issues.

That being said, instead of having unique talent trees for each job they could do talent trees based on role. So for example, there could be a Ranged DPS talent tree where you could spec to be more support oriented versus damage oriented, sort of similar to how they did role actions but with a bit more depth. That might be at least a LITTLE bit easier to balance. But again, I just don't see them doing it because of the work required.
I think 5% is an extremely low estimate. That said, according to a recent poll (https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._according_to/), most jobs only have 5% of the player base maining them. So by your estimate not having talents is the equivalent of deleting an entire job.

I also think you would use different abilities for different situations, so I believe the vast majority of players would use the system because it actually would be "optimal" to switch abilities around for different bosses. That would give some variety in gameplay within a job even while you're doing your Savage runs over and over again.