alright folks i'll settle on a compromise for job uniqueness or a trial run if u will

[Gemina]

Given that the game has pretty much just had more RPG elements trimmed and removed over the years without them really adding anything back. I'd pitch this as a direction to consider on the next FF MMORPG which hopefully will actually be an RPG from a mechanical standpoint. Where damage being physical or magical matters, where your weapon dealing slashing, blunt, or piercing damage matters, where elemental affinities matter, where gear can actually be interesting with set effects, added effects, skill bonuses instead of just being a matter of equipping whatever shows green numbers on the stat comparison, where every job/class has their own chance to shine because of how varied the monsters/enemies/encounters are rather than trying to make everyone the same on everything.

This is fine for a single player game, wherein these variables only need to be designed and programmed once. FFXIV used to contain many of these elements, and the fact they went away from it should tell you something.

In an mmo that is constantly churning out content, this is unrealistic. It's what I call "dot shading", and while effective, it is not very practical. Due to the size of the game today, and the increasing demand from the playerbase, this method also isn't realistic, or logically sound.

Tl;Dr? Expect even more simplification. Not the opposite.

[RitsukoSonoda]

snip

FFXIV actually was either missing these elements or had them reduced to the point of them being pretty much moot from the start and there are larger MMO's that have all these variables. Many which existed before FFXIV and still run today.

The issue that hit FFXIV is that a decision was made to chase the delusion that a game could be made for "everyone". There is no game that exists both online and offline that will appeal to "everyone". In their pursuit to try and appeal to "everyone" they've been systematically removing as much as possible to reduce thought input by players which has essentially made the game just MMO and no longer RPG and now a very sizable amount of the player base are players that don't play actual RPGs.

Claiming that having actual RPG variables in an online game is unrealistic shows a lack of vision and thought on the matter.

Expecting these to be added to FFXIV however would be unrealistic as it would require the entire game be overhauled again from the ground up as some jobs would require a complete rebuild from scratch and would be met by all matter of complaining from players that cannot handle the additional variables and/or the freedom it would bring for character build. As for the whole "meta" excuse. "Meta" is a player base problem. Not an issue with a game so long as the game developer doesn't make the mistake many in the past have done on multiple offline and online titles of creating content with the expectation of challenging "meta" players. One example that comes to mind is Borderlands 2 which gearbox went to overtuning enemies on Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode and OP levels because they wanted the small number of players using broken OP "meta" builds to be challenged and essentially made everything that wasn't a broken OP "meta" build either unusable in that content or able to do the content but take half an hour to kill 1 fodder enemy. Discrimination online for being "meta" or "non-meta" is a problem of the online community in MMORPGs however you'll find the ones that actually care about any of that to be a small minority which will eventually just play exclusively with their group away from everyone else. It's not like League of Legends where all 9 other players filed reports against me every time I chose a champion that wasn't one of the 2-3 they wanted for the role or lane I was playing regardless of the fact I facerolled the other team with it. Despite having one of the highest negative report counts on there I never once received any disciplinary action from Riot because it was literally all just butthurt "meta" players claiming that I wasn't playing ranked seriously or trolling on it while the in game performance said the exact opposite.

In the end the only Meta I care about is Meta Knight because he's awesome and I've always liked his character design even though he's also kinda broken in Smash so I don't use him there much.

[Rolder50]

This is fine for a single player game, wherein these variables only need to be designed and programmed once. FFXIV used to contain many of these elements, and the fact they went away from it should tell you something.

In an mmo that is constantly churning out content, this is unrealistic. It's what I call "dot shading", and while effective, it is not very practical. Due to the size of the game today, and the increasing demand from the playerbase, this method also isn't realistic, or logically sound.

The fact that basically every other big MMO on the market has these elements kind of disproves that it's a given.