[Fern]

Just to chime in here that I did read the topic and am still following it.

I do feel the topic got a bit off the rails at some point though, because it lacks a bit of a clear focus (which is to be expected when a lot of people are giving their opinions), since it became less about 'what is samey' and more into past balance fu discussions. Which isn't to say that I'm chastising people for doing so, or that there isn't useful information contained here.

However since the problem isn't very clear cut and people seem to have trouble agreeing on a common pain point (beyond, to a certain degree, weapon scaling), I'm not sure I can promise anything substantial any time soon. I am also hesitant (but not completely against) large system overhauls because as Senna pointed out, that could very easily lead to a result where things are even more precarious and can be difficult to get right simply because the game has so many moving parts. That would probably require a large-scale player survey before anything were to be done that way.

The simpler solution is shaving down the outliers (as we usually do) but that may be simply treating the symptoms rather than the cause.

TL;DR of everything:
-The majority of the equipment list being very niche with its scalings or effects makes them become less likely to get used over something that's generally more stat efficient. Here's a Shine Sword build that relies on basic attacks compared to the average Raijin build for example. Notice how the Shine Sword setup sacrifices too much in order to be decent, not even necessarily good-- just decent. This is because basic attackers require far too many stats to be considered functional (STR/WIL/SKI/defensive stats of choice, I.E CEL or DEF or RES/LUC/VIT/GUI) compared to other archetypes. This isn't just a basic attacker thing, this also applies to other archetypes such as Mages - tomes that require too much stat investment or are meant to use on hit effects are generally avoided (I.E Rose Whip, Manic Slasher, Carteblanche) in exchange for more stat efficient books that scale with defensive stats (Custom Tome, Blacksand, Torment Noctis, etc.) More examples include dagger users when comparing things like Tsukikage/Hikage to Tessen fan daggers (STR/GUI scaling vs non-STR) or archers avoiding STR scaling bows like the plague (I.E you'll almost never see someone using a Hunting Bow/Knight Slayer/Longbow/Thorn Shooter but you'll see them using Bow of the Green Forest/Filcherbird.)
  
-A lot of "different" competent character concepts require utilizing classes that are far mechanically weaker compared to most cookie-cutter optimized builds (I.E, good luck playing a basic attacker Fire Kensei in PVP and being threatening against anything remotely meta, good luck playing a Twin Dancer dagger user on a Spellthief without Tessen fan daggers, good luck playing Magic Gunner without single shot or Ring of Thorns Plus if you're doing multi-shot, good luck playing [insert most basic attacker choices here] without Fleur in PVP. Not that Fleur helps you much when the other person is a spellcaster wall with a lot of damage reduction...)
 
-Because people generally want their character to be decently capable in a fight, they FREQUENTLY feel forced to run a specific class or setup that contrasts/protests against the theming they originally planned, because as it stands the (current) game balance makes you do that (I.E, you need Fleur if you want to be a meaningful basic attacker, you need VA if you want to be a meaningful dagger user even if your character wouldn't use the Void, you need Ghost if you want your basic attacks to do decent damage even if your character wouldn't want use the spooky stuff.)
  
There are people that run meta because they want to run the strongest thing they can muster, there's no denying that, but the point is that there's also a significant amount of people that fall into meta by force if they want their character to be remotely competent. As a personal example, the Shine Sword build I showed earlier in this post is mine- I went into it fully knowing that it wasn't an optimal or necessarily strong way of building that character, and I'm fine with it because it's not like the character is meant to be decently strong and is more so for fun. Originally I didn't intend for the character to use Ghost though, and I ended up doing it because otherwise I wouldn't do any meaningful damage with the Shine Sword whatsoever. At the moment I'm just sucking it up since I know that if I run anything else for a Duelist Main Class the setup is going to lose its functionality- Kensei would force me to use a katana and Firebird would force me to use a Spear or Vent Petale, the former of which would remove the Shine Sword aspect and the latter of which would make my damage non-existent due to a lack of Two Hand.
  
Some people did make a good point in that archetypes shouldn't be locked to a specific class in order to be functional- anyone wanting to run hit rate shouldn't be (frequently) locked to running Fleur, and anyone wanting to run a traditional dodge character shouldn't be railroaded into Cobra Stance. Since it prevents a lot of build diversity to have it this way.
 
Hesitating with larger system overhauls such as the notion of changing Fleur's effect and making Critical Hits +2M by default is understandable to me. Personally I'm positive it would do more good than harm since it's not like people can often die to round start criticals as is (Deployment and new Turn Order being a thing) and you wouldn't have to code in a "pseudo-Fleur" for every class a la Bloody Shift from Shapeshifter or Twin Dance from Rogue so long as those two (and literally just those two examples) are accounted for (I.E you only get the +2M once, rather than per weapon, or Twin Dance specifically makes it that way, etc.)
    
I don't see a problem with putting up a survey for system overhaul proposals as well. Surveys also usually give a general idea of what people want or feel.
  
Mega Summarized TL;DR:
-Most weapons are niche and make you break your back for effects that aren't worthwhile when it comes to efficiency, thus driving people to the best possible choices and leading to samey-ness.
 
-Basic attackers require too many stats to function (STR/WIL/SKI/LUC/GUI/VIT/defensive stats of choice, less so WIL but some really need it I.E Engineer and Verglas) and add to the problem mentioned above.
 
-"Best option of the month" is always going to be a thing no matter what, but even a decent bunch of the "best options" aren't that good because of what's mentioned above. Even if you're a max-geared PVP optimized Mirror Spear and Spine Leash user with 152 SWA with bonus damage from Elangreve (Duelist) and 30 Guile, you're going to end up at one point wishing you were a mage or autohitter instead. I'm not actually exaggerating about this one: see this and this too. The mage target in this example could run Black Knight for even more damage reduction too. I'm also going to mention that damage is before stacking Claret Call, so anyone hoping to do good damage with that would need it if not something similar. This is part of the "samey" problem.
 
I hope that helps narrow down things! Please don't mind the naughty number from the critical hit, I didn't expect it to be that exact amount.