Differentiate me from other players with same class!

[ZodiacBrave]

Thanks!

As far as I have seen in endgame. Sadly, diversity won't be how the dev wants us to play the game.

Personally, I am with you on personalizing our play, but hard truth hit me and just accepted it.

All players of their respective jobs will eventually aim for the gear with the highest numbers, then play in a certain pattern or rotation. We will all end up with the same cookie cutter playstyle and build. Deviations from that will not be favorable as you will end up much weaker than most.

Well, the benefits of that is as the guy above me had stated: optimization. It would be easy for the players and the devs to balance out and work on a certain narrow expectation: dps deal damage, healers heal and tanks tank. At the end of the day that d be all that matters, and all progressions will cater to those expectations.

The only other remaining way to personalize yourself is by glamour, that's it.

[ZodiacBrave]

In my experience, Guild Wars 2 is a good example of a game that allows diverse playstyle. All jobs can play any style they want... warriors can be healers, or mages can be meaty soldiers (no tanking in the game, but still you can be very tough). There are also many ways to deal dps for each job, be it direct damage, DoTs or pets. Granted there are "optimal" builds for max deeps enforced by elitist speedrunners, otherwise every other build you can think of is acceptable and playable.

[Rykken]

GW2 is a solid game. Traits, individual skill leveling, the ability to combine weapons; dual pistols, knife and pistol, etc. Very cool stuff!

Thanks for your opinions. I've played SWG, CoH, CoV, GW1, GW2, EQ2, AoC, DCU, PS and and about 20 more throughout the last 20 years. I'm sure I'm not the only vet. I am no stranger to the imbalances, I even mentioned them in my first post. However, I simply like to have more choices. I don't think it weakens a game if it's done correctly. The problem is, how many development teams have ever got it right? lol.. Not many...

Thank you for your feedback!

[ZodiacBrave]

Well, FFXIV is a pretty solid game too. Despite its many shortcomings that is, but no game is perfect.

This game does have 2 concepts that would have introduced potential diversity: classes and elementals. Elements are kinda obvious, which one is your strength and weakness, and the like. Classes give us more cross class skills and is thus more versatile playstyle, and is designed to branch into potentially multiple jobs adding their own flavors to their respective base class.

Sadly, as far as I am seeing, they are neglecting these two systems in order to provide a more solid and optimized gameplay. Many find it great, and I do find its benefits, but I personally dont like it. With the release of HW, they further made this obvious. Only jobs get new skills, nothing in their base class, even though some of the skills added to the jobs make less sense in terms of the jobs theme and lore. More damage skills for the White Mage?? No new pet actions for the Summoner??