Why refusing customization is a fallacy

[Reynhart]

I've seen more and more posts, in every section, debatting over skill trees, multiple specs, uniques stats on certains items, etc..

And, every time, someone point out that it absolutely wouldn't work because of optimization.

Let me tell you that this is false. Well, not false per se, but absolutely without consequences on the game.

First, let's see the current meta. As you probably witnessed in several threads, most people bitch about one job or another, complaining that it's better/more optimized/more easy, etc...
Yet, every job is still played. You'll see plenty of people claiming that, in order to clear Alexandre Savage, you need to be this tall...sorry, your DPS needs to be this high.
And, not having set foot in Savage yet, I'll believe them...but what about the next month ? Or the month after ? Where everyone will have better gear to match the DPS/Healing/HP check ? Will it bother them torun a non optimized setup ?

Let's say you could spec you BLM a Frost Mage, doing around 20 or 30% less DPS than Fire Mage, but putting more debuff. Who will care when, by being full ilvl220, you'll be doing 40% more DPS than people will do now not being full 190 ? Will you be taken to savage now ? Probably not ? Will you care since you obviously want to play for fun and not for competing at world or server first ? Absolutely not.

The same is true for items. Yoshi-P said he wouldn't make exclusive bonus, fearing that these items would become mandatory. But items would already be mandatory if you want to be optimized. Back in 2.5, Relics Zeta were the absolute best weapons. Yet, people would still clear content without wearing one.

People need to realize that true hardocre raiders only represent a minimal part of the community. Why refuzing something because 5% of the population will use it to create their setup ? Besides, even those people will have fun theorycrafting about what spec is the best for each job, of what item combination gives the best results.

The other 95% will just play what they want to play and wait to overgear (or Echo) the content to clear it the way they want.

[Talraen]

When people say 'required' they do not (generally) mean literally. Being a suboptimal class won't keep you from 100% of the content, but it will keep you from a good fraction of it and make your gaming life much less fun. This atmosphere leads to frustration and people quitting, which is why they don't make MMO's like this anymore. Use all the logic and reasoning you want, the truth is (as has been pointed out many times in the dozens of threads like this one) that this has been tried, repeatedly, and it's a bad idea.

Also let's be honest, the only reason these threads exist is because people want to DPS on WAR and DRK. :P

[Duelle]

When people say 'required' they do not (generally) mean literally. Being a suboptimal class won't keep you from 100% of the content, but it will keep you from a good fraction of it and make your gaming life much less fun. This atmosphere leads to frustration and people quitting, which is why they don't make MMO's like this anymore.

This a million times over. Being sub-optimal means you get odd looks from others and more-often-than-not don't "fit in" with the community, which is detrimental in a game genre that is built around people playing together.

PS: Aim customization to be in the vein of aesthetics and you get what you want without messing with game balance.
PPS: To drive my point home, here's some DRG merits I came up with:

Dragoon

General
Light Armor - Allows "of striking/scouting" gear to be glamoured on to of your equipment.
Robes - Allows "of casting/healing" gear to be glamoured on to your equipment.
Working Clothes - Allows DoL-specific gear to be glamoured on to your equipment.
Manufacturing Attire - Allows DoH-specific gear to be glamoured on to your equipment.
The Blue Gale - Allows access to a new hairstyle via the aesthetician (a long, thin ponytail)

Category 1
Bloody Trade - Adds blood particles to all your attacks while under the effect of Blood for Blood.
Temple Smash - Replaces Leg Sweep with Temple Smash (hit the target's head with the butt of the spear). Same effect, different animations.
High Jump - Replaces Elusive Jump. Jump off-screen instead of backflipping. Same effect, different animation.
Dragon Spirit - While under the effect of Blood of the Dragon, an ethereal dragon will hover around you.

Category 2
Highwind's Stand - Persistent Emote. Assume a pose associated with a famous azure dragoon.
Mounted Jump - Jump off your mount on to target enemy. Shares a cooldown with Jump. Cannot be used in PvP.
Leaps and Bounds - Increase the height and range of your jumps (the ones you perform pressing the space bar) and negates falling damage. Each jump consumes 50 TP. Effect ends upon reuse or having enmity/attacking mobs/taking damage.
Draconic Ward - Channeled effect. Creates a glowing mark at your feet with the DRG symbol for 10 seconds.

Note: Leaps and Bounds is basically a travel power of sorts. I got the idea from how Estinien just leaps around easily along with the DRGs seen in the opening cinematic, and is based on the Super Jump movement power from City of Heroes

[Joeking]

I think customization is usually for game where, you pick your class and your that class forever. While here we can switch on the fly.

In a sense each class is a spec. lols

[Gilthas]

The real fallacy is pretending that game balance is only important for hardcore raiders. As I've said elsewhere:

I'm hardly a hardcore raider, but balance is very important to me as well as for most of the playerbase, not just raiders. You act like "balance" opposes "fun and interesting", but that's simply not true.

It's not fun when:
- everyone only wants Rangers because their damage is so much better than everyone else's
- Rangers get nerfed into the ground and perform worse than almost everyone else so no one wants them anymore.
- people only want Warriors for their merit parties because they have great damage and good survivability
- no one wants your Dragoon because the community thinks the job is crap
- Black Mages no longer can get regular parties because TP-burns are much better experience
- Puppetmasters are considered a joke job.

And so many other glaring issues that FFXI had because the developers sucked at balancing.

Having unbalanced jobs is bad for everyone. It's bad for the player that likes the job because he gets shunned from most parties, and it's bad for those who don't play the job, because they get stuck with an underperforming job in duties.

[Reynhart]

Being sub-optimal means you get odd looks from others

What others ?

The people in Duty finder who won't care as long as everything go smootlhy even if you're not the ultra top DPS they'd like you to be ?
Or the friends who play with you, who know perfectly how you want to play for fun and that it's enough to clear 90% of the content, even at launch ?
Or the people in Party Finder, that you will probably avoid simply because they'll refuse 1st timers on day one and kick you at the 1st mistake ?

And again, apart from Alex Savage, we'll overgear every content pretty soon. Look at ARR. At launch, the best gear was ilvl90.
It allowed you to enter every instance up to Turn 6, released 6 months later.

By the time "casual" content required such a high item level, everybody was around ilvl 120 or higher. Who cares if your BLM isn't perfectly speced if you can roll on content by gear only ?

The real fallacy is pretending that game balance is only important for hardcore raiders. As I've said elsewhere:

If you're not a raider, chances are you'll do most of your content either on Duty Finder or with people you know. That is to say, instances where people don't care what job you are as long as you know how to play it.

FFXI is a terrible comparison since party leaders could always picked exactly who and what they want.

As I said, "Best In Slot" is a real thing in FFXIV, yet it could be the first form of discrimination.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

I want to see healers go do content without Swiftcast and see how people react for the sake of customization.

[Gilthas]

FFXI is a terrible comparison since party leaders could always picked exactly who and what they want.

No, FFXI is proof that you're wrong.

FFXI's classes were an unbalanced mess, which is why so many jobs were discriminated against for pretty much all party content, not just hardcore raiding.

Job balance is important for everyone, stop trying to pretend that only hardcore raiders care about it because that's a blatant lie.

[Reynhart]

I want to see healers go do content without Swiftcast and see how people react for the sake of customization.

My girlfriend finished ARR storyline and CT without Switfcast because she didn't like playing THM.

No, FFXI is proof that you're wrong.

Again, in FFXI, people could chose what they want. That's why jobs were discriminated.

Or you tell me that if you go in Duty Finder 4-man as a DPS and ends up with a DRK, MCH and AST, you'll kick everyone or leave ?

Or that you kicked someone because he didn't have a Zeta ? You know, the item that was the absolute best so that every none wielder was undoubtedly weaker and "deserved" to be discriminated.

[Duelle]

Things as designed right now are tuned well enough that you don't have glaring issues between the jobs. The closest thing to that in recent memory was BRD and MCH at launch, where people would cringe at having them around since they convinced themselves the group's DPS went down just from having them in the group.Balance between jobs matters regardless of the level of content. Any trends formed at endgame trickle down to the rest (see: WARs being told they couldn't tank past HM Garuda when the issue for WARs was turn 4 of coil). Trying to use gear progression as an excuse to throw balance to the wind outside of raiding is short-sighted and doesn't do anything to help your argument.

And even if you continue to ignore it, I'll reiterate: the type of customization that would work alongside preserving balance is in the form of aesthetics. Spell effects, flavor abilities and replacement abilities would go along way in helping develop job individualism without messing with class balance.

FFXI is a terrible comparison since party leaders could always picked exactly who and what they want.

It's an excellent example of what would happen if the devs went along with you. Most of what happened there was a combination of bad design and human nature. You seem to severely underestimate the latter or are just oblivious to the consequences for some reason.