If it is not broken, DO NO FIX IT!

[Abriael]

They can not make stats effective while we have the physical level system because then you really would be tied to certain classes. If they allowed stats to work properly and you decide to spread your point's more evenly so you can level other classes you would be terrible at all classes at high ranks compared to the guy who only focused on DD and put all his points in to STR and DEX.

Nope. There are hard caps in place. If you unbalance your stats excessively, you run into the cap and waste points.

The only, real, big problem is that the caps are not visibly indicated.

[Abriael]

I think the game needs level restricted armor. As of now theirs nothing really to strive for.

I would say that if your only reason to level up is wearing new armor, then the problem isn't that the armor is not level restricted, but that the game is too shallow and needs more depth and goals.

I'm all for SOME level/class restricted armor, by the way, as long as there's also a sizable variety of generic armor to mantain look variety and the ability to mix and match, and to avoid the "army of clones" effect where everyone with the same class in the same level range wears exactly the same stuff. That would be a very sad step back.

[Ablongman]

Again... Ultima Online and Darkfall are both MMORPGs where you can make what ever type of character you want. So this isn't something that only exists in single-player RPGs. If you try to argue if FFXIV is theme park or sand box it's probably supposed to be a theme park mmo... but uhhh I find we are having to make our own fun more than running content from SE so does that make it a sandbox at the moment?

The fact is that freedom to make any character you want means, by necessity, the freedom to mess up your character any way you like. Some choices will always be better than others. True balance is impossible, which would not matter if you did not have a community obsessed with being hardcore and min-maxing.

If character A can bring the debuffs you need, do exceptional damage and survive, why would you bring character B who free-formed it, has the debuff, but does less damage because he chose to allocate stat points to boost his self-healing? The ability to choose is golden, but mix-maxing is all about getting what you need and minimizing redundancy. A build that overlaps with the job of another member of your party is sub-optimal in a hardcore environment, and therefore, less desirable.

Long post short: Free-form is not free when some choices are better than others. And since true balance is impossible, there is always a "right" and a "wrong" way to build your character for endgame content.

Also, to your point about sandbox vs. theme park: this game is not a sandbox, it just sorely lacks meat on the bones. Take RIFT, for instance. 90% of the quest content in that game is glorified grinding. However, the quests justify it, give it a strong purpose, and guide you along a storyline that makes the game feel cohesive and alive.

Sandbox MMO's sound great in theory, until you realize that a lot of the players are not very good at content generation and storytelling. I presume many of us are here because we enjoy FF-style storytelling and gameplay, both of which FFXIV lacks right now.

[AlexiaKidd]

Well the hard cap for VIT and MND is 174 at Rank 50, tell me do you have stats anywhere near that? Like I said at lower ranks it is fine, you hit cap easily, now try and hit cap at Rank 50.

[Abriael]

Long post short: Free-form is not free when some choices are better than others. And since true balance is impossible, there is always a "right" and a "wrong" way to build your character for endgame content.

Removing choice completely isn't for sure the right solution to the fact that there are some choices better than others.

As long as there is a sizable variety of viable and good choices then the fact that some choices are better than others is a complete non-issue.

[MANTASTIC]

Anyone who likes the current system is in the minority. If you want evidence of that, look at the number of people who bought the game versus the number of people who play the game.

The whole concept of physical level runs counter to the philosophy of playing whatever class whenever, wherever. By "customizing" your character for one role, you're essentially stuck with that unless you want to spend a few hours reallocating each and every time you switch classes. And even if you just want to play one role and have no need to reallocate, who different is your character from anyone else playing that role? The point is attribute points don't customize your character at all, they just pigeon-hole it.

As for the ability to wear gear above your characters rank, that too is completely dumb, and hurts every single player. All classes leveling have nothing to look forward to gear-wise if they're already wearing whats considered the best. Crafters leveling up have greater difficulty selling their low to mid level gear simply because there's the perception that high level gear is just as good as appropriate level gear.

[Abriael]

Well the hard cap for VIT and MND is 174 at Rank 50, tell me do you have stats anywhere near that? Like I said at lower ranks it is fine, you hit cap easily, now try and hit cap at Rank 50.

Then the problem isn't the system in itself, isn't it? It's that the caps are badly balanced, and should be rebalanced (and replaced with soft caps, by the way, hard caps are always worse than soft caps), AND be made visible, of course.

Systems that don't work perfectly don't need to be necessarily scrapped. They can be tweaked and rebalanced.

Anyone who likes the current system is in the minority. If you want evidence of that, look at the number of people who bought the game versus the number of people who play the game.

I'll have you know that the "I'm right because I'm in the (perceived) majority" is a rather flawed and faulty argument.

Oh, since we're at it, people that bought the game and don't play anymore, do so for a very wide variety of reasons. Assuming that they don't play anymore because they don't like what YOU don't like is another flawed argument based on nothing.

They may not like the lack of content, of polish, the UI, the lag, they may simply like other games more, have to work and a moltitude of other reasons.

[Ablongman]

Anyone who likes the current system is in the minority. If you want evidence of that, look at the number of people who bought the game versus the number of people who play the game.

The whole concept of physical level runs counter to the philosophy of playing whatever class whenever, wherever. By "customizing" your character for one role, you're essentially stuck with that unless you want to spend a few hours reallocating each and every time you switch classes. And even if you just want to play one role and have no need to reallocate, who different is your character from anyone else playing that role? The point is attribute points don't customize your character at all, they just pigeon-hole it.

As for the ability to wear gear above your characters rank, that too is completely dumb, and hurts every single player. All classes leveling have nothing to look forward to gear-wise if they're already wearing whats considered the best. Crafters leveling up have greater difficulty selling their low to mid level gear simply because there's the perception that high level gear is just as good as appropriate level gear.

Logical fallacy, sir. Correlation does not equal causation. Just because people quit playing does not mean that they quit playing because of the armory system. It's not as if there aren't at least a dozen salient issues with this game that could drive anyone short of a die-hard fan away.

And the solution to your gear concern isn't to completely remove the ability to equip armor. It's to make the penalties scale more drastically, to the point where armor over 10 ranks above/below yours no longer provide any stats when equipped. This way, roleplayers and people who enjoy wearing cool-looking armor around town can be happy, and still have a reason to look for level-appropriate armor for their day-to-day.

Again, let's search for sensible solutions to problems without throwing the house out the window or resorting to misrepresentation.

[Xzen]

The fact is that freedom to make any character you want means, by necessity, the freedom to mess up your character any way you like. Some choices will always be better than others. True balance is impossible, which would not matter if you did not have a community obsessed with being hardcore and min-maxing.

If character A can bring the debuffs you need, do exceptional damage and survive, why would you bring character B who free-formed it, has the debuff, but does less damage because he chose to allocate stat points to boost his self-healing? The ability to choose is golden, but mix-maxing is all about getting what you need and minimizing redundancy. A build that overlaps with the job of another member of your party is sub-optimal in a hardcore environment, and therefore, less desirable.

Long post short: Free-form is not free when some choices are better than others. And since true balance is impossible, there is always a "right" and a "wrong" way to build your character for endgame content.

Well You can't main heal or Dot effectively on any classes but DoM. I think the idea is that you are supposed to be able to be versatile. Ok my grind party lost the Gladiator so now I'm going to tank as my Pugilist instead of DD. I change my actions to what I need for Tanking and on we go. This is better than sitting around waiting for the Gladiator we just invited to run from the node. Or if we couldn't find another Gladiator we could just continue on without them. The same applies to NM hunting.

[Gracious]

One of the rewards of gaining is ranks should be the ability to wear new gear. I do not like the current system of one size fits all.