What Happened to Customization & Specialization?

[AppleJinx]

You actually consider role actions a form of customization? Oh boy. Don't worry no one will ever know which role actions you have on unless you tell them so you can always pretend you are unique

[Hamada]

Customization & Specialization is a nice idea but the current system is an illusion of choice. If they cannot design it properly get rid of it completely.

Everyone will be the same cookie-cutter job at this point. Its really disappointing.

Been that way since ARR, where have you been?

[ElHeggunte]

I don't think I've ever played an MMO that has so many well balanced choices that no two players are the same unless someone goes out of the way to build themselves like a clown just for the sake of being "unique". Most of the time there are clear superior choices, or at least choices that are marginally better in more situations, so everyone just tends to gravitate towards using those and leaves everything else to rot.

Not even XI had much more in the way of customization. Every class had certain subjobs that were "the best" and were more or less required for you to have (and you were sometimes denied groups if you didn't). The rest had mediocre or down right terrible synergy with your class so they weren't used. The same thing goes for the Merit system; you had "options", but nine times out of ten some were clearly better than others and it was silly to go out of your way and intentionally pick the inferior ones.

Don't be one of those people who gets taken in by the illusion of choice.

And don't compare MMOs to single player RPGs.

[BillyKaplan]

Everyone will be the same cookie-cutter job at this point. Its really disappointing.

Setting aside the fact that, as pointed out before, customization in this game is an illusion, it's the sort of customization that's either meaningless or outright detrimental. A best case scenario is that you picked a skill that won't contribute at all in the content you're running, and all alternatives are equally useless. The worst case scenario is that what skills you didn't pick benefit you or are even mandatory to your content. Your healer picked Esuna? You don't need it in this dungeon and they're doing less damage than in Cleric Stance, also getting knocked back all the time. Your healer picked the reverse? You're stuck with Paralysis that eats at your dps and survivability.
But hey. At least you're special.

My one curiosity now is why not remove the limitation outright, but I guess they're keeping open the option to add more in the future (please don't). Alternatively, it is truly a bandaid fix, and the limit will be properly removed in 5.0.

[Hasrat]

Specialization is great when you have the freedom to experiment and all the pros and cons together form its own sort of challenge.

Specialization in an MMO? That's how you get ice mages. Technically works, but not as intended, and incredibly impractical.

[Jandor]

Role actions are terrible anyway, cross-class was superior in almost every way.

[BillyKaplan]

Role actions are terrible anyway, cross-class was superior in almost every way.

Except the part where you had to stop whatever you were doing and level a class you had absolutely no interest in ever touching again. Oh, the many THMs in leveling roulette who wanted to get to 26...

[Ameela]

Except the part where you had to stop whatever you were doing and level a class you had absolutely no interest in ever touching again. Oh, the many THMs in leveling roulette who wanted to get to 26...

To be fair it was at least a way of incentivising you to try out different classes, which could have lead to you finding something you liked that you may have never tried otherwise.
That's what happened to me anyway, had absolutely no interest in Monk until I had to level it for Warrior cross-classes and now it's my go-to DPS.

[BillyKaplan]

To be fair it was at least a way of incentivising you to try out different classes, which could have lead to you finding something you liked that you may have never tried otherwise.

I'm certain that was at least part of the logic behind it. Since we can run all battle classes on a single character, why not give us a reason to at least try them all out? But there's a catch to that, too, because a class plays v. differently at 15 compared to 50, 60, and oh boy, 70. It was all the more so the case in HW where BRD and MCH were bow and gun mages. So in a sense, the itty bitty tiny bit you get to experience is nothing but false advertisement. It's one thing to try a job based on what you see in end-game, and then power through the leveling process, it's another to go through the leveling process only to see the end result is nothing like what you thought it would be.

[Ameela]

I'm certain that was at least part of the logic behind it. Since we can run all battle classes on a single character, why not give us a reason to at least try them all out? But there's a catch to that, too, because a class plays v. differently at 15 compared to 50, 60, and oh boy, 70. It was all the more so the case in HW where BRD and MCH were bow and gun mages. So in a sense, the itty bitty tiny bit you get to experience is nothing but false advertisement. It's one thing to try a job based on what you see in end-game, and then power through the leveling process, it's another to go through the leveling process only to see the end result is nothing like what you thought it would be.

That's more the result of Heavensward severely altering the way certain classes play at end-game.
Back when level 50 was the cap there wasn't really much of a difference between a level 20-30 class or a level 50 job, as you got most of your core skills early on and everything after was extra stuff to make those early skills stronger, the only exception to this was White Mage, whose later skills significantly alter the way the job is played and even then you could make the argument that was just the players using the skills in ways the devs didn't anticipate them to.
I never said the cross-class skill system didn't need to be changed, just that it wasn't as bad as it's made out to be because it actually made sense in the context of when it was first introduced.