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Context:
I'll split my opinion into segments for reading convenience. Of course, anyone is free to chime in with their own as well, whether they agree or disagree. I put this in General Discussion because it's too spread out to be put into Balance Fu.
WHAT DOES 'SAMEY' MEAN HERE?
It's referring to when things feel very similar/unvaried/repetitive. When there's not a significant difference between one thing or the another. In this context, it's about roleplay characters frequently being nearly identical in the mechanical sense. Not talking about them as a character, but the gameplay part of them. Tangent found below.
WHY CHARACTERS TEND TO FEEL VERY SAMEY
As we all already know, no game balance is perfect and there's always bound to be things that are slightly or majorly better than other things in spite of pros and cons they may have. Sometimes for example, a sword can have the exact same abilities as another one while having far higher stats in a video game. Occasionally, a normal skill can outshine one that requires far more investment to get to activate.
The reason I mention that is because a majority of the items in SL2 are not things that, when you reach the end game (Level 60) can stay relevant. I find that to be more forgiving for items obviously designed for beginner characters, such as the Boxing Gloves or the items you can buy in Pink's Tower, as well as the blacksmith in the Badlands Arena.
In addition to that, class balance can render the idea of a character build concept pretty weak in comparison to certain combinations. Weak in the sense that their performance tends to be below-average, and this is not accounting solely for PVP- I'm talking PVE as well.
Because most build concepts are not things that can perform as well as a small select amount of combinations, people tend to feel forced with the looming thought that they absolutely must use a specific class/equipment/race for their concept to be able to work decently. Emphasis on decently, we're not talking necessarily 'very good' here. Just enough that the player might consider it acceptable.
Because people often feel forced to take those routes, we end up with the same cookie cutter character builds. And it's not necessarily because they're meta - most of the time it's because if they don't do it that particular way, the character won't be able to prove much of a threat in a PVP or PVE setting, with some more emphasis on the PVP side of things.
WHAT ARE SOME DIRECT EXAMPLES OF WHAT YOU MEAN?
EXAMPLE 1: You want to do the build of your gunner character Keenu. They are a stylish, agile individual that shows off with handguns, but more importantly they're meant to be built for damage at the cost of their durability. Still, they're meant to be fast so they can look pretty cool with their moves, right?
So you start looking for handgun options for your build, but then you quickly realize that in practice most handguns don't do noteworthy damage against people with some semblance of damage reduction. Even though they pierce armor, they don't really hurt people all that bad-- even when the target in question doesn't really have all that much reduction, say 15% reduction. You find out that anyone swinging a magic book (occasionally with a custom spell) or a Scaled Weapon Attack gouged, two-handed blade with autohits outraces the damage you've built for with handguns. Even if you're somehow fitting in 50 scaled GUI, 60 scaled SKI, you have to jump a lot of hoops to do as much as they are on average.
It turns out, however, that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. You can utilize a pair of Quickdraws and use flat Power bonuses in order to add damage per shot - that would mean you have to use Ring of Thorns Plus and Quickdraw in order to achieve your image of the character. Quickdraw specifically, because otherwise if you do it with other handguns the damage still won't pay off building for a Glass Cannon archetype.
You wanted to use a Bell of No Rest or a Toyatori, or perhaps both. You found the idea of Sound Damage or having fancy ice wings on your icon cool. But neither scaling would support your need for SKI/CEL/LUC/GUI/VIT/only some WIL (notice how you're needing six stats to be considered somewhat functional) so you had no choice but to say good bye to them and resort to Quickdraws. You don't really like the idea of Quickdraws for your character, but it's what you have to do in order to make them do meaningful damage.
Then you find out nearly every other multi-shot gunner had to resort to the same thing because they also wanted multi-shot guns on their character, but none of them could afford any of the other cool weapon choices because they were not simply possible to afford investment for with the classes they wanted to run.
EXAMPLE 2: You want to give a build for your cool katana nerd Ashu. Their IC is that they're a very talented, agile katana swordsman of fire that's a follower of Amiras, and thus they know many techniques. Or at least, they're supposed to be like that, so you end up making a Destiny Duelist!
It however turns out that Kensei is not particularly friendly to using more than one weapon that isn't a Katana, thus making not only most of your base Duelist skill tree irrelevant to you, but rendering Firebird not a good option for your sub-class. You end up considering Ghost, but you're not quite into the idea of your character summoning spooky phantoms or firing blood magic across the place- in fact, they're an Onigan that despises magic. That stuff is a no-go!
"Well, maybe I can just use Ghost for the innates" you think to yourself. You build yourself as a Glass Cannon since you also want to do big numbers and be flashy, after all you're an Onigan katana master. You proceed to hit a Wings of Fire for 160 damage on a Critical Hit...!
The Wings of Fire presses a button called Immolate a pair of times, proceeding to destroy a good part of your health bar in the process. "Well I signed up for this anyway" you reassuringly mutter to yourself. It's a good price to pay for that sweet 160 damage, isn't it? Let's try the setup out against another player character.
You hit Black Knight John McDoe for 47 damage, blast that damned Critical Evade. You finally score a Critical Hit, causing your damage to be like 72 instead. You try to push through, but fail because the Black Knight is doing far more than damage with far less effort than you, through either being:
A) A mage
B) A priest
C) A melee autohitter
D) A summoner
Their spell or autohit ends up doing triple the damage than you're doing to it. Later on, you attempt to face off against someone that isn't meant to be so bulky, an evasive character instead. They also happen to be one of the above, so their damage is far higher than yours still. This is not quite what you imagined for your katana character, so you start trying to look for potential work arounds.
You could finally give in to the choice of main classing Ghost and using Wraithguard, if you use that then maybe you won't die too fast to the point you won't accomplish anything meaningful in a fight. You end up trying it out in spite of your original IC for the character not being to dive into that kind of stuff, and it turns out it makes things somewhat better. You still don't do all that much damage though, and it doesn't seem Rogue's Work Gloves 10% critical damage does the job either. It turns out Bloody Palms can apply LV12 Hunted and LV12 Claret Call at once if you hit someone while wearing a Swordmaster's Ring for that on hit magical damage... or one of the elemental katanas.
You were originally a fire katana user, but Cinders don't really do noteworthy damage (usually ranging from 15 to 20 a tick) and you need more attack power, so you end up rejecting your original IC in order to become a lightning katana user. At least it looks flashy. Though you need to remove your Amiras Prayer so that the Bloody Palms Hunted LV goes up with Warpaint Chimeric, because otherwise your damage isn't so good against the average tank either..
Your damage has become more noteworthy in the end of things, still not catching up to a bunch of magic spells or some autohitters on average, but being close enough. It turns out a lot of things have physical damage reduction, so you need magic damage-- there's Power Gradation from Duelist but it's 4M and that's very disadvantageous for you. Maybe you should use the Blood Spells after all...
In the end, this is not really the character you imagined, and you feel unsatisfied - but you have to keep it that way because otherwise you won't accomplish what you wanted. A damage dealing katana user. And then it turns out several other people also ended up in the same hole as you for different reasons, so they're also doing a lightning Kensei with Bloody Palms and some kind of on-hit katana weapon, usually Raijin because it's the most forgiving one when it comes to doing your stats. After all, otherwise you'd need heavy amounts of STR/SKI/CEL/VIT/LUC/GUI all at once.
TL;DR OF THE PREVIOUS PART
Don't be fooled by the lighthearted phrasing of the examples, because these are actual things that still happen to this day. In way more discouraging ways than described, people often end up forcing themselves to using a particular item/skill/class for their character that frequently doesn't fit their original image of the concept. The summaries of Example 1 and Example 2 could be narrowed down to:
-Multi-shot gun builds are almost always railroaded into using Ring of Thorns Plus and other flat Power modifiers so they can do good damage.
-Destiny Kensei is not actually friendly to most of its potential kit, because Kensei would rather not use a Spear when it's the promotion of a class that has a skill tree heavy into sword/spear stuff. Not to mention that the only variant of Kensei you (usually) can see nowadays is lightning for the reason that the Glass Cannon drawback doesn't feel worth it at all unless you use a Jupiter Badge for damage.
Thing is, it's not just these two things. This sort of thing happens with a lot of combinations and character concepts that tend to not be executed as desired or as imagined because of current balancing preventing it from occurring. Heavily summarized additional examples found below:
A) You want to make a traditional Void Assassin, but in order to use things like Detogate and Black Bolt you need a different casting tool because Daggers are not compatible with them. So you either go full physical Void Assassin or "Void Mage" (character that only uses VA for non-dagger stuff, usually built as a mage)
B) You want to make a basic attacker (not referring to strictly normal attacking, this include things like Hanging/Checkmate/Cutthroat/etc.) but it turns out that you absolutely need Fleur because otherwise your damage isn't worth the investment at all. Because otherwise, you're far better off building as an autohitter or a magician. People pack enough damage reduction that Critical Hit damage is mostly negligible even when it rarely breaks the threshold of 100 under very specific circumstances, so you absolutely need that bonus momentum and so you force yourself to be Kensei or Ghost. Kensei makes you utilize a Katana at all costs, and it's not what you envision the character as, so you regrettably go Ghost even if you don't want to be making spectres or firing blood magic.
C) You want to make a traditional Spellthief, a dagger user that also casts stolen spells. None of your copy spells are compatible with daggers, and if you want to cast them from a dagger you need a Magical Photon which requires WIL/GUI scaling. That's pretty heavy of an investment, needing you to invest WIL/SKI/CEL/LUC/GUI/VIT all at once in order to be considered remotely functional. But if you off-hand a tome, you lose out on Twin Dance which is most of your damage.
D) You want to make a character that's meant to be some kind of seductive/sadistic person with a whip, so you want to use the Rose Whip for that sweet charm. It turns out that it's also far too much stat investment, WIL/SKI/LUC/GUI/VIT/the defensive stats you'd want to use. Spine Leash is much easier to stat for being 60% STR/SKI scaling and not requiring 3 stats for SWA at once, so you end up using that instead of your original want for the Charm effect.
E) You want to make an Engineer/Spellthief destiny character with daggers, but that's not compatible with half of your kit unless you once again try to force the Magical Photon in, which is far too much investment. So you end up building it as a mage tank stat-wise that launches bombs across the replace for damage that doesn't come from spells, entirely removing the part where you're using daggers for some of your attacks.
F) You're trying to build for an Eresh because you're a dark sword wielder or something along the line, and you want to basic attack people with it. It turns out that it requires you to build STR/WIL/SKI/DEF or CEL/RES/VIT/LUC/GUI. That's 8 mandatory stats, though you can make up for not investing WIL by trying to manage your FP costs with things like High Mage's Cape or Warpaint Grimalkin. Personal example of mine, as I have unfortunately chosen to go basic attacker Eresh in spite of fully knowing that it would be much better if I abandoned Hit Rate and SWA-gouged with additional DEF investment. It works well-enough for what I want at least, and I get by with having Critical Evade and Wraithguard. Otherwise I would easily die to far more things. Do note how much I have to cripple my stats in order to achieve the character concept I want; a basic attacker with a dark blade.
I could list many more examples but it would take far too much time and I'm certain no one would want to read through every single one of them. If you want the easiest example of "forced into cookie-cutter build" then you can look at basic attackers as a whole. Anyone building basic attacks will crave for something like Fleur to be competent, or Twin Dance in select circumstances such as using two Tessen fan daggers, because otherwise your damage doesn't catch up to a magic book swinger. If I had to choose between Twin Dancing a pair of fan daggers and a couple of Vorpal Fangs, I would choose the former immediately. Because people usually pack enough external damage reduction that even Vorpal Strikes can get turned into negligible damage (I.E Black Knight.) and the on-hit damage from the fans add up.
There "is" the option of Shapeshifter for basic attacks as well, however it means having your character use Youkai and not everyone wants to do something like that. Nearly every basic attacker wants Claret Call from Ghost, so they end up using Bloody Palms or using the class in spite of their IC, this also adds to people being "same." The next point is not so related to mechanics, but still relevant to the notion that "characters feel samey."
ROLEPLAY DOES NOT ACTUALLY FEEL RELEVANT TO CHARACTER STRENGTH FROM A GAMEPLAY PERSPECTIVE
Your character is someone that has been around for an extremely long time. I.E:
A) A priest character that has served Mercala and has been fervently devoted to her for OOC years, aiding many people in need and sometimes even getting into dangerous circumstances, but doing your best to help others in need in spite of that. Your character makes it to a higher rank within the Church, but unfortunately in spite of all your efforts, someone building for a meta class combination exceeds your character's priest skills in every single aspect, no matter how long that character has been present for and no matter what they've experienced.
B) A character that has experienced training from many professionals throughout OOC years. Their identity is that of a character doing Critical Hits, but because basic attackers are almost always lacking in damage compared to things like magic and even some autohits, it doesn't actually feel like that training ends up reflecting in your gameplay. Because the current balance in that aspect prevents it from happening at all- in spite of your character's best efforts to be stronger over time, they're actually pretty far behind most other people.
C) Your character is meant to utilize a variety of martial weapons such as swords and spears and has gone through many near-death experiences through a very long time. So you utilize Duelist's Vent Petale, but dual wielding weapons of any kind tends to make you lose so much damage compared to just two-handing something and slapping on Bloody Palms that you blow up to most fully optimized character builds.
If any of the examples above wanted to reflect IC strength into mechanical, they would be forced to run what people commonly call a "cookie cutter build." Using the same thing most people must use in order to make something work.
TL;DR OF EVERYTHING
-Because only a relatively small pool of select items and class combinations are considered "functional" in PVP, people tend to use the same things over and over.
Kensei in general is an easy example of this, with Raijin and Jupiter Badge being the go-to for anyone building a basic attacker Kensei. Lightning criticals are far more helpful than most of the other Elemental Impacts for Kensei simply by providing significant bonus damage. Raijin is stat efficient as it makes you not have to invest too much STR, which is a stat sometimes basic attackers avoid if they can help it. Because investing STR/WIL/SKI/CEL, DEF, or RES/LUC/GUI/VIT at once is terribly painful. And because Kensei isn't particularly friendly to Vent Petale, you almost always see someone two-handing a Raijin or a Tarnada instead.
Another example is the traditional Boxer, needing to SWA gouge with a high scaling fist in order to do meaningful damage (I.E, even though Hands of the Giant would seem like a good choice for someone wanting to punch hard, you're actually much better off using the 115% STR scaling from a Brawler's Glove and thus preventing most people from using other fists most of the time.)
People being railroaded into needing Fleur is another huge example of all this. They're forced into looking for it not because the damage increase is significant- it normally isn't all that big of a deal. It's because they need the momentum economy to be considered remotely competent. However if you use Duelist, you have to pick between Ghost, Kensei and Firebird. You're not always a character with a katana, and you're not always wielding a Fire or Ice elemental to make use out of Firebird's Ignite Power for whatever IC reason. So you end up going with Ghost, even if you don't particularly envision your character to be doing all of Ghost's stuff- you end up doing it because you have to if you want to be decently strong.
-A character's roleplay experiences do not reflect in their gameplay unless you intentionally hold back on the mechanical end of things (I.E, make it a self-rule to not use promoted classes until a certain point even if you have them unlocked, not using a certain weapon until X tragic circumstance has happened, not using X ability unless another character teaches yours how to do it.)
-Character variety did commonly exist before Grand Reckoning thanks to RNG making stats nearly completely different for every character, but one of the cons of Grand Reckoning is removing that part. I would like to note I vastly prefer GR over pre-GR in spite of that, as the RNG madness from the old days could be pretty cruel, but it's something I wanted to mention anyway.
There is much more I want to say on the matter, but I don't want to make this a nightmare to read when it's an already long post. I hope my opinion sheds some light on the matter, and that people can provide input of their own as well.
I apologize if it's a bit messy to read, I wanted to quickly get this out since I'll be out of commission for a bit due to my second teeth extraction soon...
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