Why can't we have jobs with this level of depth and customization in FFXIV?

[Hyrist]

No, the answer isn't to just stay quiet and make excuses such as "Rome wasn't built in a day" so SE can justify slacking off. The answer is to continue to offer suggestions, draw comparisons, and hope that someday the *right* dev will see the thread and that light bulb will go off in his\her head.

Or the light-bulb can come on in yours and you can realize that perhaps you are not the target audience SE is hoping to reach. And that those of differing tastes are not lesser people or gamers for it.


Square Enix, nor FFXIV's development team in particular, are under no pressure to 'see the light' in this particular case. And it's a thinly veiled insult to believe that one set of design path is the 'correct' one, rather than stating one's own preferences and leaving it at that.

This by no means is encouraging you to be silent, but instead to be more respectful when you're providing feedback, and attempt to see matters beyond your own viewpoint.

Providing ideas that appeal to you is fine, but be aware when those ideas may not fit within the vision of the game itself or the ideals of other groups of its players. There are plenty if people that have provide concise feedback as to why such level of depth has, thus far, been discouraged by the development (And they have not hidden that fact, they have repeatedly explained their philosophy of a simplified combat system that makes more use of existing skills rather than flooding a skill menu.).

There comes a point when you have to realize that perhaps you have a impasse of design philosophy, and then decide whether or not that impasse is going to prevent you from remaining a subscriber.

Asking for this level of complexity in a game that values a minimalist approach, on my observations, seems to be clashing that impasse intentionally.

I understand your and his points. But even in XI's subjob system, you usually have a few options, even if it's just 2~5, and more if you solo. Rather than everything being ironclad, and the only thing that really changes from fight to fight is when you strafe left or right to dodge mechanics while doing your rotation. Yes, some builds will be shunned, but even a couple options and configurations is better than none, IMO. And if it's something you can tinker with while solo or in the open world for nontraditional builds, that's something I think will be pretty neat as well.

I understand this concern. However, for me I feel that such aspects at this, infant level juncture of the game (Do not count FFXIV 1.0 as a point in history, the game was reconstructed neigh completely only barely reusing assets that saved them development time. Most of the game was scrapped or re-coded.) only a year in, I can't expect that depth to truly grow so quickly. ToAU was multiple years into FFXI's development.

My desire as far as increase of depth comes from the Job system template we have in Arcanist. Skills we have are utilized in differing methods providing new directions for existing mechanics. Pretty clearly I can see portions of the Lancer Class that could be used, with some tweaks, to construct Lancer into a Tank, which I would love to be able to do.

As far as - off beat builds. FFXIV does what FFXI dared not to - allow skills to be exchangeable with classes on a singular basis. Nothing but peer pressure prevents a player from making an off-beat build by cherry picking class skills available to them at the sacrifice of Job Mechanics. Gearing would be the biggest difficulty forseeable in that aspect, and even then, there are a wider array of options than players notice.

The vast majority elect to overlook these methods for the very reason why a varied system would be a poor idea - efficiency. So the design challenge is creating a system that allows viable variance in classes. And if the developers follow through with their Class/Job idea, with a bit of refinement, I can see it working out quite well.