Census Results - Get your slack asses in here.

[Jiro]

It's good to see that my constant prickery (totally a word) has managed to spark a little bit of discussion. Honestly though, I'm just smurfing with you all. Thanks for being good sports! There are no right or wrong answers in the Census!*

Least Favourite Customisation System

Let's take a look at which of these fine setups you hated the most. If it were up to me, we'd have a lot of ties for first place seeing as "customisation" also seems to stand for "making clone armies" in Final Fantasy. I thought the term was meant to imply a certain level of uniqueness.

One Pointers

• Natural Progression (FFII)
• Materia
• Character Class (IV/IX)
• Espers/Relic

Disappointed to see the creative genius that is Natural Progression sitting there. Why would anyone hate a game that rewards you for wailing on team mates? You're obviously doing things wrong.

Whatever you call FFII's system. The beat-up-your-own-characters-to-build-your-stats system.

I should've known it'd be you, pops! You're making me sad. Maybe I need to make a pie chart for you, too.

Fourth Place (3)
Chilling here is the License Board. I'll tell you why it sucked because I'm one of the three people who voted for it. Bloody thing isn't even real customisation.

The License Board was a good concept that ultimately fell short. It was far too easy to just grind for LP and fill the board entirely, instead of making choices about where to go next as was the case with the Sphere Grid.

See? It's bollocks. Waste of time. How does it even work, anyway? I'm sorry you can't use that axe because you don't have the right license! WHAT THE smurf SERIOUSLY COME ON.

First Place (5)
We've got a three way tie for first position, and frankly, you're all wrong. Well no, that's not true. Five of you are correct. First of all, we have the Junction system. It might be easily exploited but "easy" doesn't really discount the fact that it can be horribly horribly time consuming. I think our voters are either too lazy and stupid to make it work, or just didn't know how to vote for something truly tit.

I guess I'd say Junctioning. That's system seemed bitchy.

What does that even mean?

]

Our next tied position and once again the wrong decision is the Sphere Grid. You guys wouldn't know customisation if it ran up and smacked you in the face with the Buster Sword and then ran off humming a chocobo theme. smurfing hell. Maybe you just didn't get the Expert Grid. The Expert Grid is amazingly good for customisation. It's so good at making things customised that you could potentially smurf everything up. You only hate that if you're a useless wimp, so suck it, suckers.

Sphere Grid. Didn't get it.

Precisely.

The last and only acceptable winner of this is the Crystarium. There was no actual "customisation" here. You followed one pathway, and that was it. Sure, you have the choice between which jobs to level, but you have to level them all if you want to succeed. It's stupid. Only in Endgame can you really customise party-wise and by that point you're probably already on your way to maxing the three main jobs so it's not even like there are differences between each of your characters!

Crystarium. So little ACTUAL customization, to call it such is laughable.

Crystarium or whatever it was called. Its nothing more than you manually upgrading your party like the CPU did back in FFIV. There is no real customization option to be had and it becomes a total grind fest by the end game. At least Sphere Grid gave the illusion of customization, even if it rarely amounted to anything of use.

Lastly we have an astute observation from Mr VeloZer0.

Crystarium. As a wise-ish man once remarked, we have come full circle to the computer handling the battles and the player handling the mundane stat upgrading.

Yeah, smurf you Crystarium. It was pretty, at least.