I'm not arguing for or against anything here, just sometimes various ideas and concepts swim around my head and I like to share them!

I found the idea of 'building your own class' novel, and before the game launched I had a ton of pictures in my head about how things would play out. Sadly, the game hadn't quite polished (or even used) the ideas I had envisioned, and now we stand where we are today (Which I don't have a problem with!)

I think the two major problems with the armory system were thus:

1. You ended up with 'staple' skills, much like a TCG. Skills like Protect, Shell, Stoneskin, Cure, Sacrifice, Second Wind etc, etc, basically skills you typically had no matter what

2. No matter what skills you selected, you were still limited to how your class functioned. Some classes could bend a bit; marauder could tank, and thaumaturge were actually very versatile (Back in the day, you could build a DPS, tank, or support THM, was easily my favorite class because of it!), but still, the class customization wasn't quite there

What I had really envisioned were skills that sort of 'adapted' to whatever class you assigned them to. In the old system you could say "Hey, I want to play a magic knight!" and you could stick 'Fire' on a marauder...but that was it, now you just had a marauder with a rather pitiful 'Fire' spell, and it was almost completely useless beyond sheer roleplaying

An example of how I pictured it before the game came out was this:

Let's say I wanted to play archer, but I didn't want to be a standard dps class. What I want to do is play a support role, with some okay DPS on the side while wielding a kickass bow. Okay, so I would level up ARC, and then work on THM to get Sleep, Poison, and it's other nifty debuffs. When I stick them on archer, casting them would change the properties somewhat. Instead of being spells that have a cast time and simply apply the debuff, they would become weaponskills that consume MP, where the archer would shoot a 'poison tipped' arrow. Perhaps they'd have less of a chance to stick the debuff, but at the same time they would do standard light shot damage on hit, allowing me keep a bit of dpsing up. Then I would supplement those skills with MP management skills so I could keep those debuffs applied

I feel if the armory system had that sort of versatility, we'd easily still be using it today. Anyone have any other cool ideas they had come up with like mine? Again, I'm not trying to start an argument or anything, just want a fun conversation!