How can we get more in depth character customization?

[MageBlack]

And good thing it isn't because the materia system in VII made every character essentially indistinguishable aside from their limit breaks, you don't want that in an MMO.

I much prefer the way XIV handles materia and how you can customise your stats to your liking.

Why swim in the ocean when you can splash in a puddle. Different stroke for different folks I guess. Also, what you just described FFVII being bad for is exactly whats happened with roles in FFXIV currently. 6 of one, half a dozen of another...

[Nora_of_Mira]

Breaking the "Illusion of Choice" issue with MMOs isnt actually to hard, I would think.

The biggest issue with Bosses and Boss fights is theyre driven by DPS. More DPS, faster boss dies, less mechanics to deal with = easier fight.

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?

[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.

[Ameela]

Why swim in the ocean when you can splash in a puddle.

The puddle is fun to splash in and I've been doing it for a while so I know it'll remain fun.
The ocean has the risk of drowning, shark attacks, getting lost... plus I've never swam in an ocean so I don't even know if I'll even like it!

[MageBlack]

The puddle is fun to splash in and I've been doing it for a while so I know it'll remain fun.
The ocean has the risk of drowning, shark attacks, getting lost... plus I've never swam in an ocean so I don't even know if I'll even like it!

You shoud try it sometime, a game with more than one option on how to play a character. Might i recommend Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions. I enjoyed the mixing and matching and requirements to unlock new classes.

[Melichoir]

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?

No, no game that I can think of currently incorporates those systems for a few reasons. The main being is yes, it's "Outside of the box" of what players expect in MMOs. Most MMOs are designed aroudn the idea of beating up monsters, and with that is the inherent point of "Deal tons of damage to kill dudes or tons of dudes." This means that ultimately, boss fights are tailored around the end goal of dealing "x amount of damage" to win, where every mechanic is made as a means of slowing down or interrupting damage dealt.

Mechanics like Moving away from teh boss to avoid aoe? Thats to slow down damage dealt. Failing the mechanic strains healers, which strains tanks, which can cause you to wipe, etc etc. DPS Checks mid fight to kill a target (that isnt the boss itself) that if not met will wipe you? Slows down DPS on the boss itself. Any mechanic that stops you from attacking (Eye mechanics as an example), exist to slow down Damage. The end goal, however, ultimately remains the same: Do "x" amount of damage to win. So long as end goal is "Deal x damage to win", the min-maxing crowd will pretty say "Hey, this is the optimal build because htis build pushes out the most damage." You could see a pretty good example of this in any fight where if you DPS fast enough, you can skip mechanics. And broadly, the better you DPS, the less mechanics youll have to deal with (even if you cant phase skip) which makes the fights shorter/easier. Conversely, if your dps is poor, you hit enrage and die. It revolves around damage dealt.


Where as, what I proposed would change the conditions to win. Instead of "Deal x damage to win", a survival fight would be 8 Minutes long, no matter how much damage you deal. If you get to the end, you win. However, fight mechanics would be dedicated to straining your tanks and Healers, where some of that burden could be lifted based on DPS doing fight mechanics perhaps via role actions or other new mechanics made for the fight specifically. Not that DPS wouldnt be a factor, it just wouldnt be teh deciding factor. You could have DPS checks in teh fight that if failed, make it harder to survive, but the checks dont have to be as high and could be more mechanically driven to make it interesting rather than sit there and push out your DPS rotation. Thats just an idea, of course. I dont have a completely fleshed out version of how it would work.

In a Protect fight, it would focus on tanking, positionals, and support NPC targets in some capacity. Again, this fight could be duration based or a hybrid of two. Such as "Protect Targets for 5 minutes, then Damage down the boss." As like the Survive example, fights would be more mechanics heavy, and less focused on 'ideal' comps with maximum dps. You could bring any damage dealer so long as their good at mechanics and do reasonable damage.

These would be ways you could start getting rid of, or at the least, mitigating the "Illusion of Choice" issue. That choice is based on what damage comps work best. If damage isnt the key strat to winning, then so long as you have decent damage dealers who can do a difficult fight well, you have more options.

[Magic-Mal]

You shoud try it sometime, a game with more than one option on how to play a character. Might i recommend Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions. I enjoyed the mixing and matching and requirements to unlock new classes.

Basically MHW is the best game to me when it comes to skills.

[van_arn]

Easy. Force people to double down on a main job.

[MageBlack]

Basically MHW is the best game to me when it comes to skills.

Havent actually played a MH game for more than a single session. Been contemplating MHW but I want it on PC but I wont be able to play with my son on his PS4 so I dont see the point to getting it. When it goes on sale for $29.99 I might pick it up.

[KaldeaSahaline]

Not to be controversial, but can anyone familiar with WoW explain how they manage class customization yet the same would not work in FFXIV? Or do WoW players push meta and all run the same specs anyway? Are the dungeons/encounters very different than FFXIV so that is why it works? I hear these two games compared constantly and wondered if I might have some perspective as to why FFXIV is so limited when apparently every other MMO has more class diversity.

While there are cookie cutter builds, there is plenty of non-meta decision making in the talent tree. Class customization is handled largely via the talent tree. It's not perfect, and it has expansions where it does a good job for some specs,and a downright abysmal for others.

Using Ret as an example (This is a Paladin based melee DPS spec). I have 7 rows of 3 different choices. Not all rows are DPS based and not all talents are equivalent throughput. Some rows synergize with others making "builds" for different content. I.e. dungeons might like a specific setup more, or if you're low on haste (skill/spell speed equivalent) a talent might be more difficult to manage and thus less valuable.

You can also synergize with your team. Imagine if your raid is consistently struggling with doing enough DPS to kill a priority add. You can sacrifice overall damage by picking a weaker talent, to boost on demand burst damage. Alternatively, for hard dungeon content, you can have a situation where your DPS partners are both very powerful AOE classes, so you can tailor your talents to focus on ST damage while they focus on AOE.

There were two different styles I brought up that could work in the current systems like the split class/job/role they did with Arcanist/Summoner/Scholar. I know the devs whined that it was too much work but I could see this FFXIV's version of a talent tree, a job stone for that weapon which gives you a different role/playstyle. A change like that would only happen in increments though unless it was the whole focus of an entire expansion and I'm also aware that, even if they started working on it today, we wouldnt see it until maybe 7.0

So aside from the excuses presented by the devs, what would you guys think of that as a customization solution?

I didn't like it enough to comment on it. While I relish the idea of being able to play a PLD as a DPS, I don't think it does enough as far as 'customization' goes, because even then all PLD DPS will play the same at that point.