What Happened to Customization & Specialization?

[Jandor]

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...

Leveling other classes to get extra skills was part of what made it superior.

Absolutely essential skills like provoke being a part of the system was a mistake, but the underlying system was better than role actions.

[BillyKaplan]

Leveling other classes to get extra skills was part of what made it superior.

Absolutely essential skills like provoke being a part of the system was a mistake

Superior in what way? It was a hassle. Also these two statements feel contradictory. No one is going to level a class they don't like for a skill that's just flavor, so the system only had a reason to exist at all if the skills were important.

but the underlying system was better than role actions.

The underlying system was about the same, though. The only time in which it was really different was if you ran things as a class, and there are some mighty fine urban legends about such instances. But those are the niche of niches and nothing to judge the overall system based on.

[Jandor]

Superior in what way?

In that it provides an incentive to try more things and playing different roles gives at least a basic understanding of them.

It also made more sense. Leveling all classes on one character is a rather unique feature, that the various combat classes you can level don't interact at all and actually bothering to use the feature provides no real bonus is odd to say the least.

[BillyKaplan]

In that it provides an incentive to try more things and playing different roles gives at least a basic understanding of them.

Playing a GLA at 15 gives you very little insight into the job at 70. Maybe in the past it was more useful, but as the level cap increases, what little benefits that used to have only continue to dwindle.

It also made more sense. Leveling all classes on one character is a rather unique feature, that the various combat classes you can level don't interact at all and actually bothering to use the feature provides no real bonus is odd to say the least.

You get to use all the resources of your main character while leveling up alt jobs. All those extra tomes, all that gil, and ofc the ability to make gear and food and potions yourself, is absolutely nothing to sneeze at. Oh, and not having to go through the story again just to experience a different job. So while I do agree with you on the pure gameplay angle, you really can't say the feature provides no real bonus.

[Jandor]

Playing a GLA at 15 gives you very little insight into the job at 70. Maybe in the past it was more useful, but as the level cap increases, what little benefits that used to have only continue to dwindle.

It's not about giving you an understanding of the all of a jobs various intricacies at max level, it's about giving a basic impression of them so the party can function better.

I started as a Gladiator with no prior experience at all of trinity MMO gameplay, being encouraged to level other classes to get various bits of kit made me a better tank and a better player.
Trying Conjurer to get Cure and Raise made me more aware of what healers were putting up with when I was tanking, moving to Thaumaturge to get swiftcast for my Conjurer made me more considerate of stances, timers, etc. etc. as I flitted around through most of the basic classes.
A lot of the things I picked up doing this are so obvious to me now of course that it's hard for me to believe I ever didn't know them, but I didn't.

Just to clarify, I'm not saying cross-class was perfect, but IMHO it was far superior to role actions. It should have been tweaked, not replaced. I mean, they didn't even do a good job replacing it, it still exists essentially unchanged for crafting classes, where are my crafting role actions?

[BillyKaplan]

It's not about giving you an understanding of the all of a jobs various intricacies at max level, it's about giving a basic impression of them so the party can function better.

How much is someone going to learn about party function when they can level up a thing completely outside of dungeons? Or perform subpar for the sole sake of leveling up because they couldn't care less about their performance on that class?
If people should learn those things, they can be added to Hall of the Novice, along with half the game's mechanics and core concepts. Just because something had some positive added value doesn't mean that's where it belonged, or that people actually benefited from it in that context.

Where are my crafting role actions?

While really far from ideal, they actually did try to address this by introducing specializations in HW, and giving everyone roughly the same skills in SB. It being crafters they simply didn't bother with overhauling the core system as it wouldn't have been worth it. Throw in how most of us level up all crafters anyway if only to make our own sub-mats and there really wasn't any need for that.