How can we get more in depth character customization?

[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.