Out of the comfort zone! Dev Challenge.

[AoiX]

Like the title implies, I want for the development team to design and add events within the game that take you out of your comfort zone. An event or fight where being a PLD doesn't mean you have to tank. A healer doesn't have to heal. A blm doesn't have to use elemental magic. Who knows, maybe a BRD will tank.

People are used to do the same thing over and over with the same job. Sometimes it gets boring. Bringing new mechanics to the game, without adding anything to the current jobs is a challenge for devs and players alike. There are so many underused abilities, spells and mechanics in this game that need to be used. Maybe a new ambuscade... maybe something totally different.
Hope to see this implemented.

[Jile]

Personally, I'd rather SE not blow precious dev time designing new mechanics even for a single event, right now when things are still not functioning correctly or effectively for all jobs - I don't want my WHM or BRD to tank, I would however like to see WAR or NIN be consistently used for tanking again, I would like my BRD to have song effectiveness in line with GEO, my BST to have better range to use JA's than my Great Grandmother can spit, my cooking mule to be more worthwhile again post moogle destruction and many other things they could be doing instead of redesigning our intended roles.

[OmnysValefor]

Crazyvic:

Ambuscade 12 man would be horrid. Ambuscade is relaxed content. You only need 6, and most of your party can be trusts. I prefer to do it with real people but if there's one thing I like about ambuscade, it's that you can go with your friends whenever you feel like it.

OP:

Do you have any idea how this could actually work? It would require significant effort to make all 3 tanks unworkable (Ninja too!) and some unique zone buffs to make say... bard songs.. produce the necessary enmity. Other aspects like other jobs performing ouside their roles... how would that work? How do you make whm or blm melee a thing while rendering say, blu and mnk melee, useless? (All can use clubs, etc).

Jile is right. Jobs/mechanics need real attention and not flavor fights.

[Shyles]

Interesting idea, but I agree with Jile. There are far more important balance issues for the developers to worry about. Also, I'm not sure what an archetype-breaking event like this would really achieve. It's already happening..

Scholar's are mages, but are also better skillchainers than melee.

Healers aren't healing. They're in Adoulin using their Yagrushes to drum empty buckets for tips.

Puppetmasters are tanking in Reisenjima when they're actually supposed to be laughed at and called lolpups.

Melee jobs are running on a treadmill waiting for a party invitation that never comes.


There are all sorts of strange things going on right now. Cheese strategies dominate the metagame, so things are rarely done conventionally anymore. There are so many underused abilities because those abilities aren't needed right now. The game needs to be properly balanced before worrying about adding even more gimmicks to the game.

[AoiX]

I get where Jile is coming from too. But taking a broader look at all mechanics, spells and abilities jobs currently have and making a spin off out of them will also let devs check any balancing issues. Regardless of which approach it's been made, reviewing all of that is part of balancing the game.

[OmnysValefor]

Giving bard a fight to tank or whm's a fight where they need to melee or whatever does absolutely nothing for overall balance.

[Selindrile]

Scholar's are mages, but are also better skillchainers than melee.

The phrase "better skillchainers" is a little odd here, nothing about the skillchains themselves are any better than melee, they are slower, can't do higher Tier SC, and limited by stratagems, the thing that makes them "better" is that they don't have to be in "ridiculous aoe spam range" to do them, I still say the problem herein lies not in Sch/Melee comparisons, but in the way monsters use TP moves, and what those TP moves are.

But overall, I mostly agree with the sentiment of your post.

[Shyles]

The phrase "better skillchainers" is a little odd here, nothing about the skillchains themselves are any better than melee, they are slower, can't do higher Tier SC, and limited by stratagems, the thing that makes them "better" is that they don't have to be in "ridiculous aoe spam range" to do them, I still say the problem herein lies not in Sch/Melee comparisons, but in the way monsters use TP moves, and what those TP moves are.

But overall, I mostly agree with the sentiment of your post.


Scholars are definitely functionally better in our current metagame than melee right now, to the point that melees are almost entirely shut out of CL 140+ content. The speed and damage of the skillchains are a non-factor when you consider all of the other reasons. And Magic bursts are so powerful right now, it makes up for the lack of SC damage.

[Edit] I had a few more overly explanatory paragraphs, but I decided to delete them since we already have a lengthy discussion in the Immanence thread (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/51166-Immanence-Balance-Discussion) with all of it.

So the TL,DR version is that currently, Scholars are the safest, least support-dependent, least gear-dependent, most consistent, and most reliable skillchainer in the end game right now. They literally allow a party to side-step nearly all of the challenges, and to put bluntly, the liabilities a melee job introduces to the equation. It has completely flopped the core concept of Physical DD = Skillchain, Mage = Magic Burst on it's head, and it has left many physical DD players very disappointed.

So I'm not sure how an event encouraging even more cheese strategies would benefit anything. Instead of SE working on more gimmicks, it's probably better that they focus on more conventional and fundamental class balancing.

[OmnysValefor]

Shyles, you have a thread about Immanence. There's no need to derail other threads into Immanence discussion.

I'm all aboard the balance-train with you but let's keep it to related discussions.

Scholar's skillchains are inferior to melee in every aspect except that they don't need TP and don't need to be in vulnerable range, nor special support (haste, accuracy buffs) to provide them. The unfortunate part of the current "balance" is how beneficial it is to ignore all of Immanence's weaknesses. SE is taking small steps towards adjusting the lopsided nature, but it takes time (which, frustration aside, rebalancing should be done with caution).

Anyway OP had a "fun" idea. I just don't think that it's really feasible, or worth the significant development time.

[Selindrile]

Scholars are definitely functionally better in our current metagame than melee right now, to the point that melees are almost entirely shut out of CL 140+ content. The speed and damage of the skillchains are a non-factor when you consider all of the other reasons.

This is the equivalent of saying that a sea gull is better at flying than a hummingbird because less things eat it.

Again, I don't disagree with you at the state of the game, (though perhaps we disagree on how best to fix it), only at the wording you put forth, monsters having ridiculous moves may make melee skillchaining unusable, but that is a function of the skillchain targets, rather than the inherent ability of producing skillchains.

Also: What Omny said, completely agree.

[Kjara]

Revive Monstrosity. That will do it :/

[Jin_Uzuki]

Tbh, I feel like what OP is asking is already in the game.

FFXI game system already allows tons of improbable and different strategies, or weird job/sub job combination. Of course, most people want to play it safe, but nothing wrong with it either.

[Nyarlko]

On the off chance that the devs actually listened to your suggestion and implemented something like this, do you really believe there is even the slightest probability that they would actually play it themselves to examine anything, much less "balance" issues? How would forcing jobs into unconventional roles help determine any sort of balance issues to begin with? Do we really need mage melee, bard tanking, or the like to be looked at? Do you really want to have to collect yet more gearsets to clog up your inventory with just for the sake of being able to do them?

There is not really a need or widespread demand for what you are asking for, and the "dev challenges" that have been implemented (Master Trials) seem to be rejected by at least most of the non-Japanese playerbase already. What little dev manhours that can be mustered should be used towards fixing our most common complaints rather than building new systems from scratch for fringe style gameplay.