Why refusing customization is a fallacy

[Aeyis]

Interesting. Perhaps its different when your ahead of the curve and actually make some of those ''BiS builds''. There is very rarely a true best build. Even more so if the abilities are not the same one with a different color.

I think its more a problem of some people wanting something to believe in. A ''skill build'' to believe in, haha.
Bit a little more serious, really people should get over themselves.

It's particular silly to require of people to ''spec like this because I read this in a PRO guide''.


If you've ever been part of any high level build/spec discussion then you would know there much of such builds are up for debate.
The only times there are clear distinctions is when something is clearly for an entirely different area of the game (IE PvP: raid bosses/mobs are usually immune to CC), or when one of the abilities is imbalanced compared to the others.

[Gilthas]

A bst could go naked and solo the hell out of this mobs , same goes for NIN/DNC or DNC/NIN , PUP , RDM and dependding on what type of mobs BLM/SCH could solo it with easy.

some jobs are far better at soloing stuff than others? yes happens in every mmorpg , u dont balance around "soloing" because then the game will be a mess

And yet here in FFXIV all healers have access to a DPS stance and have several DPS abilities. And tanks have abilities to increase their DPS too.

Probably because someone at SE figured out that it's nice to be able to efficiently solo things in the open world.

They want to play it safe because players complain as soon as they have to "think".
Diablo 2 ? Let's imagine some buils and try lots of skills. Diablo 3 ? Let's have all the skills available because we don't want the "burden" of creating our own character.

FFXIV v1 ? Plz, remove the physical level, it's sooooo complicated to spend our stat points wisely if we wan't to create either a specialist or a jack-of-all-trades.
And yes, I realize the the physical level had flaws in v1, but instead of adjusting it, they decided to scrap it completely because people cried over and over. So, in v2, they gave stat point distribution back, yeah ! But it's useless, since almost every job use only one stat.

Lol, really not surprised to see that what you really want is for others to get screwed over for making the wrong choices.

[Sandpark]

And yet here in FFXIV all healers have access to a DPS stance and have several DPS abilities. And tanks have abilities to increase their DPS too.

Probably because someone at SE figured out that it's nice to be able to efficiently solo things in the open world.

No, someone figured out if they made jobs too rigid in their role. Certain jobs would not be able to solo anything except easy prey. It is one thing not to have a ton of open world content. It is another if you can't solo what little open world content is there.

Lol, really not surprised to see that what you really want is for others to get screwed over for making the wrong choices.

Who cares what he wants for others? Isn't that the point of an rpg? To put yourself in different roles and make hard choices, and how you progress is due to the good or bad choices you made? If there is no input besides pushing play or choosing an order which it plays, it may as well be a movie.

[Reynhart]

Lol, really not surprised to see that what you really want is for others to make choices.

Fixed that for you.

You realize that, by allowing everyone to play each job, FFXIV is the perfect game for testing ?
Let's say I love tanking as a PLD and a DRK. Maybe I'll decide to follow the "accepted best" build (Quotation marks, again) for DRK to participate in endgame raid, but I'll can try to focus my PLD on it's CNJ heritage to make him a back-up healer for every other content ?

My PLD will feel unique to me, and with the lockout, endgame raiding will always be only a small fraction of the content I'll do each week, anyway.

So even if you think my PLD is "screwed", my character as a whole can still participate in everything.

Back in ARR, friends decided to test almost every low-level dungeon as a 4 Arcanist team (Not SCH nor SMN, ACN). You know what ? It was fun.

EDIT : And before someone jumps on the "You see, customization is already in the game for ACN". Yes, I know it is, but still ONLY for Arcanist, and only because it evolves into two different role so it needs a more versatile toolkit.

[Instrumentality]

The only times there are clear distinctions is when something is clearly for an entirely different area of the game (IE PvP: raid bosses/mobs are usually immune to CC), or when one of the abilities is imbalanced compared to the others.

That's it. You figured it out. This always always always happen. 3% more damage on combustion or an extra 30% on bleeds that increases your proc chance on a trinket or pyromancers gaining an extra damage buff if they spec 38 points in or anything that makes any of the selection of choices mathematically superior. And there is always a mathematically superior choice. You don't 'debate' which choices are best when you've simmed them out for millions of hours of play time to figure out precisely which is the superior choice for each kind of fight that you'll be participating in.

It's another step in the complexity chain of playing that gives you no actual choices and gives players another opportunity to shoot themselves in the foot by making obviously inferior choices. It is a bad idea. No one has ever done it correctly, and trying it once again is something I don't want to see any MMO dev wasting time on. Much less devs for a game that I actively play. Spend more time creating new raid bosses or new jobs to play or new gold saucer events or anything else.

[MageBlack]

So, let me get this straight just to make sure I'm not misrepresenting the idea put forth. What people want is not just a few more skills to allow branching out but whole different specs that would effectivly change a PLD's blue tank symbol into a red DPS symbol. just for the sake of simplifying the argument. Would that be a correct simplification of the desires in this thread? If not. please give me the TL;DR.

[Reynhart]

My initial idea is different specs so that not every iteration of the same job will be 100% the same.
For example, a PLD spec who trades mitigation for a better offense, for people who prefer off-tanking, or a spec that improves your healing potency, etc...yet the three spec would still be tank specs.

The existence of jobs and classes point in the direction where they considered different roles between the class and one of its job, but, apparently, SCH is a "proof" that it doesn't work well, even though SMN and SCH are very efficient.

[Kazama]

PS: Aim customization to be in the vein of aesthetics and you get what you want without messing with game balance.

This negative a million times over. Many of us have absolutely no care whatsoever about aesthetics. What the hell is wrong with gamers these days... has all the console "DLC Skin" garbage gone to your heads this bad? What is fun about glamouring your character? Seriously, how is this even entertaining in the slightest? You click a button and you look different WOOOOOW such excitement! I do that every day when I put my clothes on...

Personally, your PS sounds to me like getting none of what I want an even more of what I couldn't care less about. I'm going to go ahead and say, it's players like you who are destroying this genre of games. It's all turning into Barbie Dress Up Party 2015

As far as the OP is concerned, I'm all for it. Even if it's just fun to try strange builds to solo one fight, options, illusions or reality are always nice to have. People already run around in sub optimal gear and who knows where their stats are allocated sometimes. I mean, we already have lolDRGs running around in full tank gear...

[Sandpark]

You sound like Dennis Leary lol, but I don't care for aesthetics either. What is the saying? Lipstick on a pig? Then to top it off, some of those aesthetics are locked behind dlc content in a bunch of games...

I want customization but I don't think it should come in jobs, only classes. Jobs are designed to fill one role, when they start filling others, all jobs start to feel very similar. In a large group setting, it makes dynamics less interesting. Plus we get less new jobs designed. If the horizontal mambo is done to classes, that will make it still be specialized according to job you play. Then the classes will become like subjobs to the jobs, some locked to certain jobs.
Some new classes should be designed to augment job playstyles in different ways.

Outside focused hard group content. They should remove the cooldown of switching between classes(jobs remained on cooldown). The armoury system was originally built that way. No other game I know of, allows you to swap skills and gear that fast without macros.

Classes= Sandbox experimentation.
Jobs= Themepark ride.

[Reynhart]

I want customization but I don't think it should come in jobs, only classes.

Classes are a nice starting point, yes. Problem is, without any new skill, they'd be way too weak to particpate in any content at 60.

Jobs are designed to fill one role, when they start filling others, all jobs start to feel very similar.

I'm not so sure of that. We already have several playing the same role very differently, it's not impossible for them to play another role in their own way.

But, you'd have to decide the base core of the classe regardless of its role. Basically, Arcanist (Still him ) is a pet class. That's his core. Therefore, if you make a pet tank, a pet DPS of a pet healer, Arcanist will still be the only (for now) pet class.

When the "Gun" job was annouced, several people thought about Chemist. If Machnist had a spec where it could use healing bullets with the same kind of procs between each other, it would still a unique gameplay.