How can we get more in depth character customization?

[Ameela]

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

[Duskane]

honestly with how easy it is for current jobs to keep up buffs and dots
removing the other dots is so unneeded
Dragoon isn't even high risk high reward anymore since BotD doesn't drop ever
Bards dots last 30 seconds now
Drk and War don't do much else so fracture and scourge really didn't need to go

[Soraki-Muppe]

Drk and War don't do much else so fracture and scourge really didn't need to go

Ya, the changes that came with SB was a mix of "This is good", "sure why not", and "this makes no sense". The changes felt really uneven, not every class was treated equally.

The role action system feels meh, and after the last and rather silly change it went from meh all the way to pointless. It is a system that by design makes the classes feel less unique, I get the idea though. I even liked the idea of needing to change your skill load-out depending on the encounter, but the sad thing is that some skills were just that much better then the others which resulted in players mostly using the same skills all the time.
But was the right answer to increase your "choices" to everything? No, that just made the entire system pointless.

[Shurrikhan]

Ya, the changes that came with SB was a mix of "This is good", "sure why not", and "this makes no sense". The changes felt really uneven, not every class was treated equally.

The role action system feels meh, and after the last and rather silly change it went from meh all the way to pointless. It is a system that by design makes the classes feel less unique, I get the idea though. I even liked the idea of needing to change your skill load-out depending on the encounter, but the sad thing is that some skills were just that much better then the others which resulted in players mostly using the same skills all the time.
But was the right answer to increase your "choices" to everything? No, that just made the entire system pointless.

I can't even get behind it as far as "meh". As much as I like not being hampered by mechanics forcing poor positionals once every few minutes, and like that I'm not overtuned elsewhere to compensate for niche problems, I just don't like True North being the solution to that. At best, it feels like a cop-out to normal skill-gap that should be worked around, and often seems to owe itself to weird snapshotting of split-AoEs or the like more than being over-ambitious or even being a highly positionals-dependent melee. At worst, I feel like it's been given in compensation for far more fluid and skill-based tools, a la Fracture and ToD, which could be delayed slightly (within an 18s period per ToD at most high-SkS breakpoints, and a few GCDs depending on eventual desync, respectively) which were both needlessly removed with no new native capacity given to compensate for them (or for what used to be Monk's core mechanic, modular control of stance timings to allow for a greater variety of rotational strings).

Arm's Length and Surecast, on the other hand? Those just seems pure bloat, all in order to maintain intentionally bloated "customization" elements. Here, you can now choose to ignore this mechanic, or make this other mechanic easier via Largesse synced with Convalescence, since, frankly, it's not like you'd want to take a WHM anyways. Cleric Stance? It just feels so lackluster given the button-space it takes, and it has zero cohesion with anything?

If Rescue is supposed to really feel at all useful or healer-integral, it should have unique takes on it between healers. Same with Esuna. Same with Largesse. The system feels somewhere between clunky, misdirected, misinformed, and blatantly compromising it what doesn't need or deserve compromise.

[Shurrikhan]

@OP

Fundamentally, customization is never additive. It is purely restrictive.

Its only benefits, therefore, occur when the concepts cohesive to a class's identity outnumber the concepts mutually cohesive in gameplay. In this sense, a job of "over-abundant" prospects can be pared down into sensible spins on the same theme, allowing for greater breadth of player attraction to the class than could be achieved by selecting only the best, unrestricted translation of theme to gameplay. This benefit is rarely present except in games with excessive bloat or particularly low confidence in their players' skill levels and a low desired skill requirement from said players.

You can have tremendous depth and breadth without spending time in menus (and just as likely, on forums or guides to dictate your choices to you). Take Enochian for example. Imagine if it could have any of three mechanical bonuses, for Ice, Lightning, or Fire. Like gameplay-replacements such as customization menus, gameplay itself tends towards rigid fight-by-fight min-maxing, but it can still provide distinct gameplay strategies -- ideally distinct also in playflow -- that are within a hair's breadth of each other in output, allowing for multiple ways to play at least as surely as any talent system. Perhaps a certain mechanic receives more advantage from the draw-in or repulsion side-benefits of Thundercaller (Lightning-Enochian), and so it sees frequent use starting just before that mechanic, but unless prepared for appropriately off of either an earlier use of the same or a well-timed build off of Flamespeaker (Fire-Enochian) or Breath of Winter (Ice-Enochian), it stands as a compromise. Ideal gameplay allows for constant improvement, revision, and experimentation between macrorotational elements that feel distinct from each other as to add breadth to the class's experience without forcing every aspect upon the player (who may rather avoid certain mechanics' use, especially while still learning). Learning one's job should be a less an improvement to sustained or theoretical damage, which should allow for multiple ways to "play" the job, and much more a fight-by-fight nuanced mastery by which you can adapt to any situation (breadth of toolkit).

[KaldeaSahaline]

We can't.

Not because there aren't ways, but because the game systems and encounter design don't support it.

Unless they drastically overhaul that I see no way we can have meaningful character customization (gameplay wise). I've posited numerous times on here about a Materia system where you socketed effects into gear. Each job would have dozens of Materia that impacted various skills in different ways. But the thing is, having all these cool modifiers on abilities is useless if the encounters never utilize them.

Here's a post I made a while back:

Materia should be a gameplay changing system. Yeah I know people will say math this, math that, but you can design it to work, it's just challenging.

Honestly, I'd rather see the devs make jobs have more specific niches, and let Materia be a system to fill gaps in the kit for various content forms, while simultaneously improving chosen aspects.

For PLD:

Here are some examples of how Materia could impact the PLD's Shield Lob skill:
Hit additional targets (if X number are hit do Y effect).
Hit a target past X yalm - allow combo ender/oGCD to be used for free
Increase move speed after hitting target (for on demand burst mobility)
Enemies hit are pulled towards you

Then you assign different colored materia to effects and have different gear come with different number and colors of sockets. For instance maybe throughput effects are considered Red materia so you're limited to how many you can have.

The idea would be that you could socket different materia for different effects and they'd even synergize with each other.

Like you could equip the materia that enables the oGCD/combo ender if further than X yalm, and the one that pulls towards you and boom you have a shield lob that has 2 new effects on that work in tandem.

This is just 4 different mechanics for one specific ability for one specific job. The problem is that if these tools are never needed because situations in combat never arise requiring them then it's useless (and that's the current system we have today).

[odintius]

It one of the reasons I do story stuff then go play another mmo, because honestly I don't even consider this a mmo. I'll take that illusion of choice over what we currently have any day although as mention to much of a overhaul needed and doubt that will change.

[Lunalepsy]

Again, horizontal mentality needs to come back. They need to understand this is a Final Fantasy game.

[Ameela]

Again, horizontal mentality needs to come back. They need to understand this is a Final Fantasy game.

And Final Fantasy has had horizontal gear progression since... when, exactly? By the end of each game I tend to have all the characters in the best possible equipment I can get my hands on, aka the one with the highest stats... and that's if the game even HAS equipment considering a lot of the games also limit you to changing your weapon and accessory only.