This leads me to a big question personally. Because you have various trees to level or whatever, can you customize yourself out of being useful? The only part that does not sit well with me in regards to having so much freedom in developing a class is you can create something that groups do not prefer.
Of course, if you want to, you can spec yourself out of usefulness. The devs cant code around stupid and certainly can't make every single combination viable. So, you have to want to do well, rather than strictly pursue a clear archetype...Ie, only take "bardlike" abilities. The thing, though, is that the game isn't really PvE centered enough to require specific combos. It's not like people are running damage meters to determine the best builds. The PvE just isn't refined enough for it to matter in any major scale. I could be wrong, I guess, but I very much doubt there will be hardcore "PvE guilds" that try to do stuff like world first, have perma groups established, trying to gear up. The gear style, the PvE, the progression, the crafting implementation are not designed for that type of a guild. I guess the easiest way to put it is that you don't see any "Hardcore World PvP" Guilds in WoW. Its not because there couldn't be one. Its just that the game isn't focused that way. Its a PvE raiding game for most guilds.
So, to bring it closer to your point. I think most guild applications would require that you have a "viable PvP build" and nothing more or less, with the exception that I could see guilds requiring that new recruits take at least one tree in healing for obvious reasons.
Additionally, I have never really found a point in this type of gameplay as most people end up researching "builds" and just copying the most effective ones. Thus, you wind up with 2-3 primary builds with minor variations so why not just make those 2-3 classes instead of creating over 120 variations?
When I was playing there was a "Stalker" (rough google translation) build that everyone used because you could basically 100-0 people that weren't that build in a stunlock. Not sure if the fixed it or not, but it was basically Warrior, Rogue, Archer or something like that. I may be off on specifics, but ArcheAge keeps the class distribution data on its Korean site. When I last looked 20% of high level players ran that build, which is 1 build out of like 120 total. The next highest was like 4%. I'd be shocked it if wasn't nerfed since then, though.
You will always have FOTM combos when you allow flexibility. THat isn't fatal at all for ArcheAge and isn't really something the devs should concern themselves too much about. As long as you have the LEVERS in place, just balance it as they come up. Now, if you dont put in the right levers, you can be screwed, but ArcheAge has plenty of levers to handle that stuff.
