What if they added sub-jobs to ff14

[Aurikai]

It creates exponentially harder balancing, all for the least palpable impact on the breadth of aesthetic and playstyle choice provided for the effort spent even on initial ideation, let alone actual balancing.

Exponentially? Do you know what that means? There's a 7 point difference in scores between a MUCH larger amount of specs/classes in WoW, and ranged are actually near the top.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/31

Same 7 point difference in FFXIV, except the top is all ruled by melee.
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/49

So literally there's no major "exponential" gap between specs. It's just laziness on SE part not offer us more choices.

[Shurrikhan]

Exponentially? Do you know what that means? There's a 7 point difference in scores between a MUCH larger amount of specs/classes in WoW, and ranged are actually near the top.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/31

Same 7 point difference in FFXIV, except the top is all ruled by melee.
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/49

So literally there's no major "exponential" gap between specs. It's just laziness on SE part not offer us more choices.

I didn't say it couldn't be done, but you end up with each talent being balanced on the basis of many other talents, which are each balanced on other talents balanced on other talents, etc., in turn.

The efforts required to reach that balance is greatly increased, and each component has to be constrained by the other, often forcing the apparently myriad options into, in reality, only a handful of bundles.

All that, for the least noticeable differences possible in playable experiences.


Again, I'm all for more customization. I just find a talent tree system like WoW's about the absolute least efficient way to provide that, especially outside of a game built from the bottom-up for one (think Rift, for instance, more so than WoW, where they've had enough work thrown at them not to feel too half-assed... but still run into inherent issues on jobs that don't well or cleanly blend nor divy up their thematic potential across roles [see Hunter, Death Knight, Priest, for instance]).