Here's a thought experiment. Think of a game (any game) where customizability worked really well - it made you different than your peers, it let you play differently, and still let you excel in the content. What was it about that game that let that happen and why could it not happen in this game?

Weirdly enough for me, I look at some FPS games (specifically Deep Rock Galactic if anyone can relate). There a lot of different guns you can bring with their own features, strengths and weaknesses. The key here is that the enemies present such a wide variety of things to play against. For example there are big meat shield enemies, flying enemies, swarming enemies, armored enemies, etc etc and they each present a challenge that while any gun can deal with decently, some guns excel in.

Bringing it back to MMOs and FF14. I don't think there is anywhere near enough avenues of different challenges for a customization system to work. Every single boss encounter in the game presents: figure out where to stand and either do single target DPS or party wide healing. There are no other niches that players could potentially fill through customization because the options that do not lend themselves to single target dps are invariably worse than ones that do. And so the strict meta forms.

The most heavy-handed way to account for this is to do something like element/attack type weaknesses, but that's not interesting nor fun and has been attempted and failed time immemorial. But that's the basic idea that just needs some elegance injected into it. It's more difficult to come up with varying challenges for an MMO than an action game. But here are some examples:

- Having significant phases of the boss not be purely single target so that AoE, cleave, funnel, etc damage types can excel
- Having mechanics that emphasize different types of healing: clumped up, spread out, pressure on a non-tank, spot healing, etc.
- Having mechanics that emphasize a non-tank's self-mitigation or mobility

In conclusion. For a system that lets players change their strengths and weaknesses to work, the content needs to present different areas to be strong and weak in. And currently the game has a very narrow playing field. So unless this expansion's "Enhanced Combat Design" opens it up, I don't think a customization system in 8.0 will work.