For me the classless system tends to mean everyone plays a twohanded sword mage in plate with self-heals. I believe this is how Darkfall works, it’s also what I played in Daggerfall and Morrowwind. I don’t honestly think it’s a better system.

For me, a choice only counts if it affects how I play. I personally don’t care how many other people make the same choice. Doesn’t bother me how many other people picked undead warriors, this one is MINE.

Now you say that choice counts for you if it lets you distinguish yourself from other people.

So I guess people have different ways of measuring the importance of a choice.

Its hard to explain without getting technical. In FFXI your sub is half of your level. If I am a level 18 warrior my sub will be a level 9 monk.

Lets say I wanted to sub red mage instead. I do it, and while I have all the abilities a level 9 red mage has, I have not much of the stats a level 18 red mage would have, and no gear to boost it. That means I cannot land spells on any tough mob, and I have a tiny MP pool, because warrior adds no MP.

Its a good example of the illusion of choice, because in practice a lot of the subs don’t work, or are one trick ponies. For most jobs really you can make do with 1-3 of them, and only a few use more. Those jobs tend to be ones that complement the main job, not open up really radical playstyle choices. You sub sam or nin for damage reduction, or sub scholar as a mage.

If you don’t believe me try seeking in it sometime as a war/whm or even as a drg/thif for experience.

I personally am not inclined towards games that will say ‘gotcha’ after X amount of time, because I wanted to just jump in and play it, try stuff out, see what was fun, instead of spending hours reading forums and minmaxing first. But there probably is a solid niche for a minmaxing game that isn’t afraid to show its true colours.

The key is probably setting player expectations. If it’s a minmaxing game, then let people know that they need to go do that at the beginning.

But for all that, I really did empathise with your post. I think we’ve all been there, whether it’s both rolling a tank or healer, or both levelling the same tradeskill, and only finding out after it’s way too late to change.

I think they’re really getting somewhere with ‘bring the player not the class’, it isn’t perfect but it feels more flexible these days. Still doesn’t help when you only need 2-3 tanks for raids though. I felt rubbish this week when a really nice player applied for our raid group and was told ‘sorry, we already have enough tanks’ I feel as though I’m part of the problem.

So finding in practice that one power combo is really weak might just kill the whole concept for someone.