If it is not broken, DO NO FIX IT!

[Eisah]

I'm hoping that there won't be such cookie-cutter jobs in this game. I don't like that everyone looked the same in FFXI. I even stopped playing jobs I liked because if you dared deviate from the norm people got downright ANGRY (I had a time as BRD/WHM where I had 3 mobs, two with pets, all hitting my guy because they weren't being slept like they should. People in the party got mad because, apparently, if I was /NIN I wouldn't have gotten hurt.
I'm not sure what game they were playing, but I DID have NIN and shadows had yet to ever be THAT effective, especially not with 5 things hitting you :| And they certainly wouldn't have been more useful than Blink/Stoneskin/being able to heal myself and the other people. But because I was playing a different subjob than what people normally liked they wanted to complain about it.)
(And just to clear things up, I had been in the group for over an hour and we were doing great. Then a new mage joined and refused to sleep things, so it would all start waking up and hitting me. But instead of people equating new mage==problem, they took it as an opportunity to complain about my subjob. Which had been working great for over an hour and was STILL working. I didn't die with 5 things hitting me, after all!)

I also had times on BRD where the healer would disappear, from DC or something, and I'd take over as main healer for awhile, and we'd keep pulling at the exact same speed as usual. And you know what happened? People would get upset that I DARED to use different spells than normal. They didn't seem to take into account that I had 200 MP and yet was keeping them fully healed, "WHY DIDN'T I USE MINUET AAAARRRRG?!" Some people didn't seem to get that for me to main heal as a bard I needed to use my healing spells! (Although some understood, when you get THAT GUY and they keep pestering you... Yeah, still annoying).

It got frustrating for people not only to expect you to do everything, but to do it the exact same way everyone else has decided to do it, whether or not your way was effective. So I switched to BST and stopped partying, and I didn't have anymore problems with that >.>

I'm hoping that FFXIV will manage to avoid this problem. I know I already mix & match moves based on how I fight... I actually do line stuff up on LNC a lot, so I use those "pierce through everything between you and it" moves a lot. It's very effective, and kind of funny when the enemy between you and what you're hitting dies BEFORE what you're actually targetting!

Anyway, that's my take on it. I really do want it to be very customizable, and maybe have several perfectly practical ways to play each class. I'm sure it will need adjustments as people try it out more, but I'd rather keep the current system and simply balance it out.

(Whoops, sorry for the litte rant there.)

[EliseDee]

Thank you everyone for all of your opinions and rants and raves, as a community I think that's its very important to let our voices be heard alot of people have come up with a lot of good ideas. I think that this will help out alot and hopefully the devs get a read of this when they plan on changing these core features. For all who for, I understand because it is the same place Im coming from. Those that do not even though I disagree I thank you for giving me an insight on it outside of my own. If you guys would like to keep speaking about different ideas and things of the sort you think would improve these two systems please post them for the devs because alot of these ideas are very great.