message from a player to part of the community about jobs

[Kuwagami]

I'm not sure the OP is even still reading these messages, but I'll try :

AskaRay, how many years of gamming do you have under the belt? I have over 20 years of gamming experience. 14ARR has only been online for a few years already and you tell me I must absolutelly follow the orders of those that believes themselves to be gods? I'm not a little lamb that will go and do what they want, I've met persons like them IRL, they're bullies that believe no one else is better than them. When they are unhappy about something, they usually hurt someone. here's a fact, no one is better and no one is worse, everyone is equal with me. I hate elitists who concrete pour something into a mold because it's the ''right'' way to do when in fact it just destroy. Pretty sure youre a borderline elitist too.

first thing first : experience on other games mean nothing. At most, only experience on MMOs has a meaning.

Second, every MMO is different, with different mechanics. And there are exceptions everywhere. FFxiv has such an exception : the black mage. While mages on most games and MMOs have to watch their MPs, FFxiv's BLM is totally different as it has unlimited MP ressources. Saving your MP pool is detrimental to your job as a dps. Your experience with mages on other MMOs doesn't mean crap when it comes to playing the BLM right.

Third, and probably the most important point : FFxiv is lacking a lot in diversity for the sake of balance. That means there is really only one way to play any and every job, especially when it comes to the dps roles. You have to constantly do X thing or keep Y debuff, etc... and if you don't, then you're doing it wrong. Not because people don't like your playstyle (like in talent tree MMOs) but because you fail at the unique playstyle forced upon you by the game.
So yeah, when you suck at it, and do not want to remain a bad player ad vitam eternam, you kinda HAVE to listen to more experienced players. Because they played this game longer than you did and mastered the mechanics better than you.

It would be boring if everyone battled the same and knowing SE there is more than one way.

You don't really know SE, do you ? I can't think of any job which doesn't have a playstyle set in stone. Because it's simplier for SE to balance everything if there is only one way to play. Also because Yoshida doesn't like talent trees or the likes because "people would play mostly the most optimal anyway". Direct quote from here :

Customizing characters besides just appearance?

We got several posts from players who wanted to be able to customize not only their character's appearance but also their skills and equipment for a particular job so that they could show some more individuality. This is a topic we've seen come up since the initial release of A Realm Reborn.

Yoshida: Right. So, if we did something like add mode A and mode B for dragoon, eventually people on the internet would examine them and choose which one was stronger. Then, when we created new content, the content would have to be based on whatever was strongest. There would be a lot of discussion about the job states like "that job is too strong" or "that job is too weak" and people would always choose what they felt was best. That's not to say a skill system like that would be negative, but the armoury system itself already allows you to play all of the different jobs. Since we already have that system in place, I'm not expecting that we'll make branches for jobs for the time being.

The flow of the game is to keep collecting higher performance equipment and challenging more difficult content, so of course you'll certainly want to figure out what works best. Some people only play their favorite jobs and in the end wind up playing whichever they feel is the most efficient.

Yoshida: We're working to get rid of those differences, but I wonder if it would be better to add a new job to make more people happy.

No doubt. I think FFXIV is the kind of game where you work to be most efficient. Do you think adding some more individualization will play any role in the game?

Yoshida: That's like a console game or MMORPG based on a skill system. With a leveling system, all the jobs need to develop side by side so it would be correct to say we won't be adopting a system like that in FFXIV.