If it is not broken, DO NO FIX IT!

[Amsai]

I think FFXI was the best MMORPG to come out since original UO. But alot of the things that people had to say about it was it was too hard and it took too long to find a party and a tank ect...because every class was so class specific that if you weren't something and did something specific you were left out. I disagree whole heatedly but these were the complaints and that is what gave this game its birth. I understand where you are coming from with the class uniqueness ect ect. But that doesn't mean the whole core system needs to be removed. Just tweaked to work properly. Because I think the customization of the stats is needed its good and that having skills used from whatever class is good too. Just make the affinity less if its that big of a deal. Which it doesn't seem like that because my cure hasn't gotten any better in my 42 ranks of pug that's because Im not going to put anything into mind and its already working at half efficiency because its a sub class skill, so if these ALL IN ONES want to gimp themselves they will learn, but I think this system will promote a lot of really sweet builds end game and hats why I don't want to lose it.

I kinda agree with what you are saying, but I have a lot of issues with this game that I don't think tweaking will fix. If by some miracle they can, then thats great, but I just don't see how its possible. I do not hate stat allocation. I do not hate the armory system in general. I hate to say this but the player base is not smart enough. Without some clear direction and limitations, people will do whatever they want without a thought for what is best or for what works. You know what happens in most parties im in? All melees do damage and tank and heal themselves, and all mages do damage and heal themselves. That is the limit of strategy in the game. As Abiael has said, this is partly because of a lack of challenging content. However, its also because the player base lacks specified roles, and instead of trying to specialize they all just sort of end up doing everything. This will not change becuase of 3 mindsets:
1. They are Soloers.
2. They are part of the ignorant masses and will nilly willy do whatever fancies them.
3. They are worried that other people can't properly fill a role so they try to fill multiple roles to compensate for the ignorant masses.
These things do not foster confidence or dependence on our felllow players, which is what the game mechanics should be doing.

The direction of this games core elements makes me think it would have been better, if they just went with a completely classless system as opposed to an almost classless system. I definately would prefer the classic FF jobs and specified roles, but if they want the system to be more open they need to just go ahead and finish the thought and make it classless. At least then the system would make sense.