A thought of inviduality to jobs

[Shurrikhan]

This "talent" or spec based game design is exactly why WoW (and many others that follow this design choice) is completely impossible to balance. FF14's skill expression is what you can accomplish with THAT character/job, not in a "spec building" stage and I am forever grateful they chose this design philosophy. It's part of why you can bring any class to any encounter and not be kicked because "not Night Fae Fire Mage with X Legendary item".

For all its many added layers of customization (specialization, race [with actual abilities], talents, covenant, conduits, trinket choice, legendary effects, etc.), and more diverse fights, the gap between an optimal and half-assed build or, say, the best and worst spec (despite those compounding differences due to layers of customization) is still only some quarter of performance there, compared to our sixth of performance here.

For how tightly that focus on balance, if we wish to consider the lack of any meaningful customization beyond job choice as such, constrains us, I'd expect that balance to be, well, tighter.


That being said...

At least back then u had to think "is this monster a fire type or is it a ice type" "should i use fire or blizzard or other attacks on this monster" also ffxi had merits were you could make choices to self design.

Merits were not a particularly good example of customization and element(al affinitie)s alone merely make for job exclusion and/or waste of half or more of any element-based job's toolbar.