Why refusing customization is a fallacy

[Aeyis]

Well you know how you queue for a roulette and you get Steps of Faith or Bismark and people start jumping ship immediately. Same reaction when they see Blizzard Mage.

Altho just my personal experience. I noticed the opposite when I played less attractive classes or specs in wow (or other games) and did well with them.

However, as someone else mentioned that we should think about others.
Perhaps thats a very wrong way of thinking.


Maybe we should be more considerate of others, and think more about ourselves.


As I used to say in WoW: ''I dont care what class or spec you bring, enjoy what you enjoy playing most. Just play your a game on whatever you do bring.''

Which I think is very reasonable since I personally always aimed to bring my SS game myself. (did not always work, but hey they arent proper standards if you can reach them reliably)


Frankly speaking I'd be more alarmed when a tank falls off, or in one attempt a guy uses LB on Bismarck while standing on the island.
You know, the kind thing that actually matters, and that you cant calculate beforehand?

for raw numbers to operate with. As those the real thing that matter.

Per defination, numbers are not real.
Unless you define reality itself as theoretical, I suppose.

Damn, I just killed my own argument.
Well nevermind that!

Eh, your topic is wrong, there is no fallacy in refusing customization, the fallacy is in not understanding the complexity of creating content for PVE based on all the variables you offer to PVE without alienating certain job setups from the game.

This is solved by having more then a single path of progression. More then a single endgame. Creating anything is complex. And its people that alienate others.

Unless content is literally balanced so that you cannot possible clear it with all of x class as dps, or without having a ''custom'' skill: jobs wont be alienated by the system.


For example in wow fire mages were not a thing in Molten Core. Because most mobs in there were immune to fire damage. That said, it was not like the frost tree was useless, as there were other parts of the game that could be played; not just MC Raid[s]er/[]ing.

This is ofcourse an extreme example, as this customization is more then just a different ability or effect, it tremendously changed the gameplay of the specs to the point where it literally effected where you could go.

Now as far as complexity goes. I will disrespectfully disagree with your statement that designing FFXIV endgame is (relatively) complex. Does it require more time and effort? Yes. Each variable you add increases the time you need to spend calculating and considering. But that doesnt really make it that much more complex.

For me, balance is fun. I come from Ragnarok Online, which had a huge degree of customization, but in the end it came down to exactly what other people who have played other MMOs with extensive customization have been saying: certain builds are deemed to be the best and then people either follow those builds or get given grief for not doing so.

Which is fine if you're only interested in doing solo content, but not much fun at all if you want to play in groups. The customization process itself wasn't fun, either: I spent literally hours on end grinding mobs to get the right cards to put on my gear so that I would have good stats and abilities.

There's no reason to add skill trees or different specs to a game that already allows you to play all of the classes on one character. If you want variety, you can simply pick up a different class-- you're not stuck with one thing. There's even a certain amount of customization you can already do with the classes themselves (VIT vs. STR on tanks, the examples other people have given for healers, etc.). Adding more stats/specs would be unnecessarily complicated and would bring no real benefit in exchange.

I came from RO as well. And ill say it again: its people causing grief. I played outlandish or ''standard'' builds all the time.
Im guessing your reason to give RO as an example comes down to personal experiences with this.
Because RO is actually a pretty good example of where customization worked:

-you had vit priests, agi priests, healing priests of various stats. And thats just general builds. Everyone would have their own idea on how much vit, int or str to add to their hunter for example; their own preferences. There was no ''ideal'' build.

VIT vs STR, the example you used is only possible on accessories, and only for tanks since VIT has added value for them.
There is virtually no customization in this game, so im not surprised you grasp for this straw.



Also im sorry you had to grind for hours for great rewards. Currently in HW the crafters have to grind for many hours each week, for virtually no reward.
That's off-topic yes. So is your argument, what does grinding have to do with customization?

[Reynhart]

Is this so called "ice mage" really a thing?

No, it's not a thing. But, I'm speaking of Frost Mage as an hypothetical spec where your Ice spells would be enchanced by traits.

You can cry all you want about customization, but as long as there will be timed dps checks and every single job boiled down to bare bone functioning (all the fancy animations and graphical shinies removed) will be identical how they work and what they do, ppl will look past they shinies and will look for raw numbers to operate with. As those the real thing that matter.

Thank you for this insight. And it's a real thank you, and let me explain why.

Nowadays, you see a lot of threads where PLD complains that they're left behind, especially when it comes to DPS. And a lot of answers pointing that their DPS is high enough for any content so that it's not a big deal.
It's exactly the same with specs. IF the "Frost Mage" can pass the DPS check in an "average" party setup, then it's not a big deal if the "Fire Mage" deals a little more damage (Keep in mind that a "Frost Mage" spec would offer something "better" than the Fire Mage, even if it's not raw damage).

As for extremely tight DPS check, the only content to use them is Alex Savage, and we come back to "only 5% of the playerbase will need that level of min-maxing".

Well you know how you queue for a roulette and you get Steps of Faith or Bismark and people start jumping ship immediately. Same reaction when they see Blizzard Mage.

Good, let them eat the 30 minutes penalty because they're morons.

And again, stop considering that a "Frost Mage" would do 50% less DPS than a "Fire Mage"...
People don't leave en masse the Duty Finder when they realize the healer is an Astro or that one DPS is a Machnist...


Oh, and now that I think of it, someone mentionned how FFXI was a proof that jobs would be excluded like DRG, or PUP...
I wonder if anyone realizes that those jobs were actually awesome and that people who didn't want them were just idiots following a trend by the toxic community ?