How can we get more in depth character customization?

[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.