I don't know what can honestly be done for Final Fantasy XIV at this point.

[Adeacia]

Job custom building would be meaningless. People will just figure out the optimal build and everyone will just use that. I'm pretty sure that's literally the reason this kind of thing doesn't exist in the game.

[Kaliesto]

Job custom building would be meaningless. People will just figure out the optimal build and everyone will just use that. I'm pretty sure that's literally the reason this kind of thing doesn't exist in the game.

Not if its done right, there is plenty monster variety in every dungeon that you could make it where anything can be used and not be lopsided to just one way. I've seen and read this point many times, but there a lot of ways to negate that possibility mostly for normal content.

Extreme, savage, and ultimate content on the other hand yes I can see how that would be a issue, either those substats is disabled in those or the bosses have timed weakness windows so for instance lets do Chaos:

Chaos weakness becomes Water if he uses Fire, Chaos weakness becomes lightning during the Water phase and so on and so on.

Chaos weakness against a variety of weaponry depends on what he is doing during that phase to unleash your skill windows for max damage (let you use your imagination on that).

So Having these sub-stats and passive skills would not really be pigeon holed to just one thing so there is no possibility of players being ****s by locking out other jobs.


=====

I really think we need to stop thinking in a way that players will just try to keep pigeon holing a battle system, and there is so many ways we can stop that from happening if we brainstormed enough on it to come up with something that could work out.

[Sicno]

Job custom building would be meaningless. People will just figure out the optimal build and everyone will just use that. I'm pretty sure that's literally the reason this kind of thing doesn't exist in the game.

This would be true if peak performance was mandatory for clearing all content. The vast majority of the content is incredibly lenient and people already play suboptimally most of the time (just take a quick look at any random page in Tales from the Duty Finder), so I don't see the harm in having options for flavor. Even in "hardcore" content you're gonna find a big enough gap in skill between the absolute top players and the people who can barely clear the content. Many times there's even room to carry people, maybe not on day 1 but eventually with good enough gear. If you're struggling sure, you may want to have any advantage at your disposal including the most optimal build available to you, but anyone above that point should have enough room to sacrifice some efficiency if that allows them to engage in a playstyle they'd enjoy more while still getting the job done.

[Erinellza]

Job custom building would be meaningless. People will just figure out the optimal build and everyone will just use that. I'm pretty sure that's literally the reason this kind of thing doesn't exist in the game.

100% this! I hate custom builds in MMOs because people still force that one best meta build on everyone and if you don't play that meta build, you get kicked out of groups. Sure, you can have a custom build for solo stuff but forget about it if you want to do group content. Source: I also play ESO and GW2 where custom builds and heavily enforced meta builds exist. I'm so glad I don't have to deal with that crap in XIV.

[RyuDragnier]

100% this! I hate custom builds in MMOs because people still force that one best meta build on everyone and if you don't play that meta build, you get kicked out of groups. Sure, you can have a custom build for solo stuff but forget about it if you want to do group content. Source: I also play ESO and GW2 where custom builds and heavily enforced meta builds exist. I'm so glad I don't have to deal with that crap in XIV.

This is the main reason why custom builds could never work. There are meta builds, and then there's everything else. Want to do Raids or Strikes(Trials)? Too bad, you need that meta build or you're likely not getting in the group. Trying to heal or buff without an optimal build? Get out we can get somebody better.

As much as I love GW2, I won't deny the amount of pigeonholing that the playerbase does for anything that's considered high level content. For a good example of a class that's completely pigeonholed, Druid. You are healing/supporting as a Druid, period. You will not do damage builds, you will not do anything less than optimal, and you WILL do every mechanic because only a few people need to know them and the rest of the group is too lazy to learn how to do A SIMPLE MECHANIC THAT TAKES LESS THAN 5 MINUTES TO LEARN. Sincerely, a player who was stuck in Druid jail for 4 years.

[VeyaAkemi]

This is the main reason why custom builds could never work. There are meta builds, and then there's everything else. Want to do Raids or Strikes(Trials)? Too bad, you need that meta build or you're likely not getting in the group. Trying to heal or buff without an optimal build? Get out we can get somebody better.

As much as I love GW2, I won't deny the amount of pigeonholing that the playerbase does for anything that's considered high level content. For a good example of a class that's completely pigeonholed, Druid. You are healing/supporting as a Druid, period. You will not do damage builds, you will not do anything less than optimal, and you WILL do every mechanic because only a few people need to know them and the rest of the group is too lazy to learn how to do A SIMPLE MECHANIC THAT TAKES LESS THAN 5 MINUTES TO LEARN. Sincerely, a player who was stuck in Druid jail for 4 years.

Me, trying to play Reaper because cool spinny scythe feels good but everyone pushing me to play Scourge.

I took a break on GW2 shortly after EoD because there was this heavy demand for any DPS Necro to be Scourge, but I just didn't find Scourge fun or enjoyable, that, combined with the fact that building Legendary weapons require GoB, and my utter distaste for PvP, meant that the game didn't have much else for me until we got more story.

[RyuDragnier]

Me, trying to play Reaper because cool spinny scythe feels good but everyone pushing me to play Scourge.

I took a break on GW2 shortly after EoD because there was this heavy demand for any DPS Necro to be Scourge, but I just didn't find Scourge fun or enjoyable, that, combined with the fact that building Legendary weapons require GoB, and my utter distaste for PvP, meant that the game didn't have much else for me until we got more story.

Had the same problem with me wanting to play Daredevil but nobody wanted Daredevils in their group (dunno why, we're good DPS), which is what led to me being in Druid jail. I do not wish that hell in this game for anybody. Hell, this game already lived that hell (in a sense) during HW and SB when certain jobs were unwanted, we don't need a repeat.

[Shinkuno]

Me, trying to play Reaper because cool spinny scythe feels good but everyone pushing me to play Scourge.

I took a break on GW2 shortly after EoD because there was this heavy demand for any DPS Necro to be Scourge, but I just didn't find Scourge fun or enjoyable, that, combined with the fact that building Legendary weapons require GoB, and my utter distaste for PvP, meant that the game didn't have much else for me until we got more story.

But would you really be forced to do the same in FF14? In the community that rather drags an afk through the finish line than kick them?

[RyuDragnier]

But would you really be forced to do the same in FF14? In the community that rather drags an afk through the finish line than kick them?

Yes. Because that's exactly what happens in GW2 mechanically. You think FF14 is bad with braindead strats, GW2 was nothing BUT braindead strats for a while (and still is in open world content). Back when dungeons were a thing, we all just stacked in a single corner to lure a boss, and then just attacked. You could literally press 1 (the equivalent of just auto attacking) and the boss would die with nobody else dying as long as just a single person spammed heals. You can do the same with World Bosses. It's only recently with the EoD Strikes that they started requiring everybody to know the fight. Before you could easily get through them with somebody dying and being dead weight. Starting in EoD they added the equivalent of FF14 mechanics to things, requiring people to be alive or things go south quick, especially in the Challenge Mode versions (aka Savages).

[Sebazy]

Job custom building would be meaningless. People will just figure out the optimal build and everyone will just use that. I'm pretty sure that's literally the reason this kind of thing doesn't exist in the game.

The solution to this is to simply make different content require different things so we don't all sit in the same groove. The flexibility of the job system offers so much but SE really fail to capitalise on it in the same manner that FFXI did.

*edit*

To clarify, I don't mean that X content requires you to queue as one job, whilst Y requires you to be on another.

Rather, raid tiers should be designed with more variation in what they demand from the different jobs within each role as to try and give multiple jobs an advantage over each other within fights of the same tier.

On paper, it's a great way to bust the monotony of people mindlessly following the meta, the downside is of course that the severe homogenisation that we have today makes this kind of difficult.