How can we get more in depth character customization?

[Ryaz]

Unfortunately, "Illusion of Choice" will strike and make the entire thing completely worthless when theorycrafters math out the best one.

I wish it could be more in depth but, it just wouldn't work here. Not with this community.

Theorycrafters are the bane of fun and interesting.

[Reynhart]

Unfortunately, "Illusion of Choice" will strike and make the entire thing completely worthless when theorycrafters math out the best one.

No, the problem is within the game itself that any content can be beaten the most efficiently by the same "best" setup...or, worse, than even if different content required different setup, the game probably would allow you to change it instantly at no cost at all so that you wouldn't even have to weigh your choices.

I remember putting points into dexterity as PLD because I thought it'd make my shield block more often.

It used too, in ARR, but since SE don't want things to be too hard, the drawback of blocking less was non existant, so...MOAR DEEPS !

[KisaiTenshi]

Unfortunately, "Illusion of Choice" will strike and make the entire thing completely worthless when theorycrafters math out the best one.

I wish it could be more in depth but, it just wouldn't work here. Not with this community.

That's a consequence of having a story. You simply can't make one build suitable for only one story segment, because then everyone has to do it the same way, thus eroding any perceived choices anyway.

If the game had no story, at all, players would be forced to change builds for expansion areas, because the developers would be free to pull the "only a magic user can get through here, as the monsters have no resistance to magic" or "only a ranged combat player can hit the switches here" and such. Thus a reasonable party would have at least one player that can do whatever the gimmick mechanic is, and solo players would have to level up a job they haven't played if they want to progress.

Ultimately, by balancing the game so everyone can play, this renders the game having choices that do not matter, and requiring less skill. When you look at other games, you also see the same irrelevant choices, be it character builds or story consequences. It's simply not possible in a MMORPG context to offer players meaningful choices in how to play the game because the math will always favor one build when all builds can do the content. This is the entire reason why the entire green-dps problem is a problem. You can't play the storyline by only healing. Yet the storyline's solo content is easy enough for a healer to DPS through, it's certainly not challenging enough for a regular DPS to play through since the helper NPC's are always a tank+healer.

This was really one aspect of V1.0 that the developers should have tried to solve another way, crafters were thrown under the bus, denied any ability to participate in the storyline without a combat job.

We're really at an impasse on how to keep MMORPG's relevant when other games (eg MMOFPS Battle Royale (Fortnite,PUBG), and Team Arena (eg Overwatch, TF2, Splatoon)) have no relevant story, and don't really evolve beyond cosmetic items since they can't make lopsided balance changes either. But at least in a game like OW, each hero at least plays differently enough that someone can get close mastering it as long as the developer doesn't decide to nerf it.

In MMORPG's, you can't master a job/class, they change, and with every expansion, you have to rethink your strategy. If you take too long a break from a MMORPG, things may change too much that you have to learn everything again.

But that doesn't change the illusion of choice.

Idk what to address first, but the ideas you have for "survive" and "protect" is literally the Tank and Healer roles in a nutshell while just removing DPS. And a fight a that's not driven by how much damage you're doing? What are you actually imagining people doing here? Does any game do this? Is this "so out of the box thinking" that I just dont understand?

Sounds like they want a game that is more literately PvE, where it's an endurance race.

[Genz]

We'd need to replace both the dev team and the playerbase, because both have been drugged for 5 years by the idea that "customisation" can't work.

[Connor]

I love the idea of having more customisation, there’s currently very little to differentiate yourself from another player outside of aesthetics.

That said, the dev team’s idea of ‘customisation’ is the materia melding system and the old role skill system. Melding is barely negotioable on what to do because a stat is either crucial or useless. And they had to remove all elements of choice from the role skill system lol.

More Customisation would be great but I don’t think the game can handle anymore than what we have (which is a shame)

[MageBlack]

I love the idea of having more customisation, there’s currently very little to differentiate yourself from another player outside of aesthetics.

That said, the dev team’s idea of ‘customisation’ is the materia melding system and the old role skill system. Melding is barely negotioable on what to do because a stat is either crucial or useless. And they had to remove all elements of choice from the role skill system lol.

More Customisation would be great but I don’t think the game can handle anymore than what we have (which is a shame)

Even the Aesthetics are now homogenized. All tanks share the gear, all ranged dps share the gear, all healers, share the same gear. All you have left is your artifact armor but even that doesnt really look as original as it should have, the BLM AF3 is pretty messy looking and the WAR gear is just bad. Once upon a time you could get JOB specific gear from PvP that looked different for each job, but I guess that proved to be too taxing on the team because its now just has generic as the rest of the gear.

[Fawkes]

Boy, I wish I could have my own custom build where I get to randomly miss because I don't have enough accuracy.

[Magic-Mal]

Boy, I wish I could have my own custom build where I get to randomly miss because I don't have enough accuracy.

Good thing I used my own custom build to do more damage by purposely having less accuracy. The raiders told me no!

[Gemina]

What if you could select your weapon, Giving you a small handfull of Job Specific weapons and the traits you would normally have for that Job, Then you could select your Role which would give you the bread and butter to accomplish that Role, Then you could select a subjob that would give you access to skills half of your main Job's level. For an example

What ways do you think we can get more in depth character customization?

Definitely have to appreciate thinking outside the box to change things up. Unfortunately, any system that basically 'borrows' skills whether from another job, or from a list of available skills just isn't going to work. They've tried multiple times now, and I think the forced customization is an intrinsic result of this kind of system.

Even when I think back to single player console games that allow a lot of customization, you might be able to get past encounters in your preferred set up, but even then there was still an optimal composition of jobs and skills to accomplish any given task in the most efficient manner. FF super bosses is a great example of this, as the guides that came out to beat them would always have an optimal set up, or at least what the author felt was the optimal set up. Very relatable to our current savage content, would you not agree?

Customization in this game can't impact the gameplay or you immediately enable the very 'forced customization' you're trying to avoid due to optimization. As we have seen, it is very difficult for SE to balance all the jobs within a given role, and usually takes them well into the current expansion to get existing jobs to an 'acceptable' state with the playerbase. This is a direct challenge from trying to diversify the jobs within a given role while still keeping them playable. Role skills/sub jobs further complicates this issue.

I believe customization in this game outside of aesthetic that also keeps things balanced is extremely difficult to accomplish. The only way around it that I can see is we as the playerbase accept less than optimal customizations to clear content to give the dev team more flexibility, but will admit that my scope of innovation is very limited.

[Hypnotic13371337]

More /change poses and battle/victory emotes?