What Happened to Customization & Specialization?

[Aerilon]

With the extension of being able to 10 role actions, Square has practically removed every aspect of character customization from the game. Every Summoner is the same as every other Summoner, every Paladin is the same as every other Paladin. Your character has no uniqueness - aside from glamour, of course.

I suppose one could argue that the Job System is the customization, but that seems like a cop-out to me. One of the best things about all FF games has always been building your character into unique and specialized roles through specialization trees such as the sphere grid - or the materia system - but in FFXIV - there is no specialization. Every RMD runs the same gear, and even gear variance really only SLIGHTLY effects DPS - every RDM runs the same materia, and now every RDM will run the same role actions. Even FFXI has infinitely more customization possibilities because of the sub-job system.

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

[Theodric]

Customisation in the form of additional abilities is very much a case of the illusion of choice. There's quite a few abilities that are a 'must have' and are objectively much better than their counterparts, so by allowing everybody to access the entire list the overall game is more balanced.

In-depth customisation for abilities works much better in single player games rather than in multi-player games where the expectation is going to be to use the 'best' abilities for the sake of efficiency.

[LineageRazor]

Customisation in the form of additional abilities is very much a case of the illusion of choice. There's quite a few abilities that are a 'must have' and are objectively much better than their counterparts, so by allowing everybody to access the entire list the overall game is more balanced.

In-depth customisation for abilities works much better in single player games rather than in multi-player games where the expectation is going to be to use the 'best' abilities for the sake of efficiency.

Customization doesn't HAVE to be an illusion of choice. While it's certainly the case that the hardcore parsers will eventually work out what combos are optimal, so long as the variance in potential is small it won't stop them from participating in content. It's the same reason why (most) raid groups allow job variance: while certain jobs might be better for certain fights, they all do well enough that turning away, say, a MNK to hold out for a DRG is rarely done and considered petty when it happens.

The potential is there to allow deep job customization without everyone turning to the same cookie-cutter build, for precisely the same reasons that not everybody plays the same jobs in the existing game. The individual mechanics of each job appeal in different ways to different people. With a system of customization, different job builds would appeal in different ways to different people. So long as all those builds are viable, there is still choice.

The danger is that the greater the level of customization there is to be had, the more potential there is for a player to "screw things up" and wind up with a build that is NOT viable. To avoid this, there are three options: They could allow the playerbase to sink or swim, let the folks learn that they'll get nowhere with a nonviable build (FFXI did this). They could endlessly tweak abilities to try to keep everything even, or at the very least shuffle around which build was on top at any given time (FFXI AND FFXIV have done this). Or, they could reduce the amount of customization available, so that there are only a few builds to tweak at any given time (FFXIV's chosen path). The last of those three is the easiest, and upsets the fewest players - at the expense of creating a fairly bland playing field where everyone is pretty much the same.

FFXIV, ever since the disaster with version 1.0, has shied away from taking chances, so it's not surprising at all that they took the easy road. Options for customization have been getting fewer and fewer over time, and I expect that this trend will continue. It would not surprise me to see the whole Materia system disappear eventually, for example - though that one's so deeply entrenched in the game that it might be more effort than it's worth to remove, just to protect players from melding Spell Speed onto their Dsciple of War gear (it'll make my Ninjutsu faster, right???).

[Shurrikhan]

Customisation in the form of additional abilities is very much a case of the illusion of choice. There's quite a few abilities that are a 'must have' and are objectively much better than their counterparts, so by allowing everybody to access the entire list the overall game is more balanced.

In-depth customisation for abilities works much better in single player games rather than in multi-player games where the expectation is going to be to use the 'best' abilities for the sake of efficiency.

No more so -- necessarily -- than job choice, minus the limit gauge gimmick...

The additional abilities in XIV have wholly amounted to illusion of choice, but that's an issue with implementation, not an inherent flaw.

For now, though, I'm glad to see Role Action swapping gone. That stuff couldn't even manage the illusion part.

[Vaer]

To me the role actions felt more like a chore than actual customization. Some of them were useless in certain situations so everyone brought mostly the same set anyway. So you would just end up fiddling with them depending on the fight but you would just end up using the same ones for specific fights and then feel bad when you forgot to equip interject for O7S to silence Ultros, forgetting Surecast for knockbacks and both Healers in O4N forgetting Esuna so no doom cleanse and two people die off the bat.

Anyways it is a boon for HoH since most CCs work in there at some capacity.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

To me the role actions felt more like a chore than actual customization. Some of them were useless in certain situations so everyone brought mostly the same set anyway. So you would just end up fiddling with them depending on the fight but you would just end up using the same ones for specific fights and then feel bad when you forgot to equip interject for O7S to silence Ultros or forgetting Surecast for knockbacks.

Pretty much this. Our PLD forgets it occasionally, and its pretty much just a wipe and reset at that point.

So many of the abilities are situational its a pain to swap them out, and it will be handy to be able to put goad on a hotbar for occasional use.

[ObsidianFire]

I am so happy I will be able to change my "Boss Role Actions" and "Dungeon Role Actions" swap macros so that it's just shuffling actions around my hot bars. Currently they have to turn different Role Actions on and off and you can't do that if any of the Role Actions are on Cool Down.

This is certainly a band-aid fix that I expect them to look at more later. As far as band-aid fixes go, it's one of the better ones that at least addresses the problem enough that it doesn't feel so bad.

[PandaMonium]

No more Protect/Esuna macro! It's so annoying to get locked out of Esuna because someone ninja pulled while you are casting Protect...

[Divinewindx]

I am not sure if we have been playing the same game.

[Doozer]

Bold of you to assume everyone plays at the same skill level. I assure you, what skills/abilities people have at their disposal will not affect the unique experiences each person will bring.