Genuine Question about Job Homogeneity

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Originally Posted by Ritsugamesh

EDIT: Oh, and we HAD to lose Nocturnal AST so SGE could exist because heaven's forfend we have 2.5 shield healers and 2 pure healers. Does this mean we'll get 2 healers in an expact so it isn't unbalanced? I highly, highly, highly doubt it.

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What do you mean, they'll do exactly like they did for HW: they'll add a new healer that can shield and pure healer at the flip of a switch!

And it won't be AST so that SE can drink the tears of AST mains. That's how they usually alienate their vets.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Seems like stretching here. My hotbars for the two are setup the same and there is barely a difference aside from GNB being more oGCD centric due to Continuation, and the Atonement combo on PLD.

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Just because things are setup the same, doesn't mean they play the same, however, you also need to take into account that jobs do need certain tools in order to function. Tank defensives for example, Yes, they all have the same number, all with their own flavour (excluding Rampart), but they are used in the same way. But, how would you make them different? PLD can Holy Sheltron themselves and Intervention someone else in quick succession, GNB and WAR cannot do that. DRK can via Oblation but Intervention and Oblation also have different conditions on their use, Oblation being 2 charges at 60 seconds each and Intervention being on a 10 second cooldown, but being gated by the gauge, which will give enough every 22.4 seconds, as long as the PLD can auto attack. This is before we even talk about Intervention being stronger than Oblation, even before we take into account you can make it even stronger if you already have Rampart or Guardian up.

Even when tanks do get more unique things, it isn't liked. Dark Mind being useless against physical attacks? How often do you see it mentioned that it needs to have some sort of mitigation for physical attacks, the same for Heart of Light and Dark Missionary.

Going onto rotations, I already told you, in basic terms, why PLD and GNB are different in one aspect, but you blindly reject that difference just because you can put buttons in the same place, therefore, they are the same. To take this to an extreme, every job interacts with the GCD and oGCD, therefore they all play the same. In some aspect, that is true, but it misses the detail. Some GCDs have cooldowns, some oGCDs have charges, ok, some do damage, others do not, some proc others etc. As you look into the detail you can start to see how they are different. So the question is, why have you chosen to make criticisms at (what I consider) such a broad level.

But, I think the biggest thing is, how would you (or anyone else) change it? I often hear about how ARR/HW/SB done it better, but let's hear some examples. I played during that period, so I do have hands on experience and can relate (not so much for healers, weakest job role for me). I also don't want to hear the old excuse of, 'I'm not a game dev, they should be the ones doing this'. That helps nothing. You need examples, especially if you can point back to the past and say, this was better, because of X reason. Suggest how it could be better, for example, how would you change Sacred Soil and Kerachole so that they are different enough for you? By showing the kind of diversity you want, with more specific examples, it is easier to know what you are after, what you want. Just be aware that you need to keep in mind one thing. Every job has to be able to complete every piece of content. That is the only restriction.

they aren't the same but if you look at the basic it never really change other then some trick.

but compared to there early appearance in 14 all job look more alike then different like whm used to have protect shell stoneskin both fairy used to do two different thing bard having more song smn more Dot's like early job were more complex and if you wanna see some of those skills(yes some are still in game but not for player) do the squadron mission you will see some

There is a bit of dis-ingenuity in trying to find minute differences in pve abilities under the pretext that some numbers vary by a % or a second or two.

Take pvp, riddle of earth versus a more traditional sheltron (barrier + mit) and you'll see they already provide ten times more diversity and flavor than what all pve tanks currently have. And pvp holy sheltron still offers the "sheltron bomb" just to add that flavor to an otherwise pretty boring defensive. Pve isn't a totally lost cause yet though, as some little things are pretty unique, but you have to really count them on the fingers of one hand: living dead (even though Eventide is still way more engaging and spicy), vengeance/damnation (the retaliation effect) are two examples.

But also, and that's where the crux of the problem tends to lie as well: pvp offers a multitude of metrics and variables to design upon, while pve is a glorified 2 axis metric where it's all about dps/uptime, and some interspaced healing.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Just because things are setup the same, doesn't mean they play the same

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People's problem is probably that they play similar enough to the point they can be setup the same.

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jobs do need certain tools in order to function. Tank defensives for example, Yes, they all have the same number, all with their own flavour (excluding Rampart)

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Much of that flavor eroded. PLD's 30% mit used to be 40%. In DT, they gave each of the 30% mits a different effect (shields, healing, regen, etc). But rather than this making them unique, it has homogenized them more. You used to be able to say "DRK is the magic shield tank, PLD is the raw mit/block tank, WAR is the HP and self-heal tank, GNB is a jack of all trades" but now they are all a jack of all trades with a mixture of shields, regens, self-heals and raw mit.

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PLD can Holy Sheltron themselves and Intervention someone else in quick succession, GNB and WAR cannot do that.

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WAR's version also has an effect on themselves, whereas PLD's are separated (I honestly expected them to merge Intervention into Sheltron in the 6.3 revamp and was surprised it wasn't). While GNB's is not separated, it also has Aurora which they can choose to use on either themselves or the target, similar to how DRK has two utility abilities it can use on any target.

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Even when tanks do get more unique things, it isn't liked.

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I would say that the unique things are liked - for example a lot of people liked how DRK was in HW or SB. The problem is that unique things are liked too much - to the point people want their job to have that unique thing too. So after SE complies and gives the unique thing to all jobs, it ceases to be unique.

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So the question is, why have you chosen to make criticisms at (what I consider) such a broad level.

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It's less a criticism and more answering OP's question and explaining why other people feel this way. I don't personally care that much and think that SE has mostly just removed redundant abilities and listened to feedback.

However, in addition to those things, SE has simplified the rotations to make them hard to mess up. To a large degree, this has been good because it's removed annoying and redundant things, but they could be a little more interesting in some cases. Managing resources on DRK used to be genuinely challenging and get you thinking strategically, but it really isn't anymore for example; you just press all your abilities on cooldown and that's it.

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But, I think the biggest thing is, how would you (or anyone else) change it? I often hear about how ARR/HW/SB done it better, but let's hear some examples.

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If you played then, why do you need examples? It's tedious doing a millionth trip down memory lane trying to remember stuff from 10 years ago, especially if you can do it yourself. A lot of wikis have History tabs to see action history in the past, and old youtube videos exist to see them in action. Chances are, others write about "how jobs used to be" in the job/battle forums all the time.

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how would you change Sacred Soil and Kerachole so that they are different enough for you?

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I don't know about those abilities, but I can give a great example of a job that always felt different despite having all the standard healing actions: AST. The card game always set it apart, even despite all its iterations of it. The criticism of AST became that the cards were no longer unique, so SE made them unique again. But now the criticism is that the cards have no RNG and there is no Royal Road or Lord/Lady system to put bad RNG cards into, and the effects end up being the usual healing oGCDs most healers have for the most part.

The RNG and Royal Road or Lord/Lady system made it fun and dynamic, at least for me, because I had to constantly figure out what to do with the cards I was dealt. Now I know what cards I will be dealt, and I'll do virtually the same thing every time, which is dump them on the tank and dps cards on the DPS, in the same order every single time now.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Suggest how it could be better, for example, how would you change Sacred Soil and Kerachole so that they are different enough for you? By showing the kind of diversity you want, with more specific examples, it is easier to know what you are after, what you want. Just be aware that you need to keep in mind one thing. Every job has to be able to complete every piece of content. That is the only restriction.

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For your example with sacred soil and kerechole they don’t both need to be a 15 second regen, 15 second 10% mitigation in roughly a circular shape. For example neither of them need the regen but if you are going to keep it only keep it on one. One could also offer more mitigation in exchange for being shorter. SCH could also return the old dys synergy with shadowflare as a key design of sacred soil. Sacred soil also benefited for its smaller size encouraging particular placement and strat arrangement

Basically SB sacred soil should be what SCH has and SGE should be given something actually unique as it doesn’t NEED a sacred soil equivalent, even a short oGCD shield could be an equivalent, or a pankardia+shields as a mitigation.

There was no need for SGE to just copy SCH’s abilities

While I'm well aware there's folks who think it was the right move, the biggest strike for me was them changing WHM/SCH's Glare/Broil into 1.5s casts from the 2.5s. I still stand by that they should've added different methods for gaining weave windows and mobility instead of just making it the same as AST, who actually needed the constant weave to manage the card systems with RNG, and even that's been replaced with a 60s cd that recovers mp and grants 2-3 utility options like Aetherflow.

Also with regular content, healing skills act similar enough to each other that you can use each job's counterpart the same way most of the time. I only really feel the differences when doing extremes and up. The same can be said for mitigation tools on tanks/physrange.

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Originally Posted by Ritsugamesh

R.e. healers and specifically SCH/SGE. They are the same job with a different coat of paint. I literally did a spreadsheet breakdown during EW mapping all their skills to figure out whether I was going stir crazy and there was something I was missing.

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But... I still love SCH and hate SGE

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Originally Posted by DiaDeem

But... I still love SCH and hate SGE

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I'm with you. People in this thread are saying WAR and DRK are the same...but WAR puts me to sleep while DRK never does. I get that these jobs play similarly and maybe too close for some people's enjoyment, but...they're different enough that SGE makes sense to me while SCH is impenetrable nonsense and WAR literally puts me in a trance while DRK is engaging to me.

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Originally Posted by DiaDeem

But... I still love SCH and hate SGE

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Same, but my reason for that is slightly different: I think SGE is a total waste of design space that could've been something unique on its own rather than a carbon copy. Furthermore they do not fulfill the promise of being the 'healer that heals through dpsing' as they've described. Like, I can't imagine this is what they've cooked up after claiming to have spent a loooooong time to figure out what to make out of 4th healer back in 5.4 LL when they first teased us about the job. Yes, that was to their own admittance.

The only thing that I could do on SGE and not over on SCH is to Rescue a person standing on a wrong spot and Icarus to my own designated spot. I did this in P2S prog back in Asphodelos when helping a friendo static. But I can't do this too often & it's also a super niche thing they're not enough to make me feel I'm playing a different job.

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Originally Posted by Astronis

I'm with you. People in this thread are saying WAR and DRK are the same...but WAR puts me to sleep while DRK never does. I get that these jobs play similarly and maybe too close for some people's enjoyment, but...they're different enough that SGE makes sense to me while SCH is impenetrable nonsense and WAR literally puts me in a trance while DRK is engaging to me.

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I feel exactly the same, yes, WAR is something I play for roulettes once an expansion to get it caught up on levels for the achievement, and even then I wouldn't have bothered if there weren't mounts tied to them, then I shelve it until the next.

Also not what the thread is about, but some jobs I just enjoy aesthetically, SGE feels great for me to use because I adore they way it goes blib blop when I heal people, it's a gratifying noise for it to make.

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Originally Posted by VeyaAkemi

I feel exactly the same, yes, WAR is something I play for roulettes once an expansion to get it caught up on levels for the achievement, and even then I wouldn't have bothered if there weren't mounts tied to them, then I shelve it until the next.

Also not what the thread is about, but some jobs I just enjoy aesthetically, SGE feels great for me to use because I adore they way it goes blib blop when I heal people, it's a gratifying noise for it to make.

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I like SGE aesthetically because most everything about its kit is blue. From the visual effects to buff icons, it's even bluer than BLU. The way it goes blib blop is cool, too.

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Originally Posted by JimCasey_RF6

I like SGE aesthetically because most everything about its kit is blue. From the visual effects to buff icons, it's even bluer than BLU. The way it goes blib blop is cool, too.

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Tbh BLU is not very blue beyond the outfits, mostly because of its nature of spells coming from all over the place, your hotbars and animations end up looking like a veritable rainbow.

I feel like a lot of players discount things like animations, and sound design. I think aesthetics matter to players a lot more than they are willing to admit, and not just with ffxiv jobs as well.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

I feel like a lot of players discount things like animations, and sound design. I think aesthetics matter to players a lot more than they are willing to admit, and not just with ffxiv jobs as well.

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It matters to me for about as long as it takes to go past the absolute surface level of job gameplay, then it quickly becomes a question of "what am I as a player actually doing to achieve those VFX sparkles and big numbers?" and a lot of jobs fall apart almost immediately.

But it's also true that a lot of people never go past that surface level, it's why Summoner is popular despite the job being actually laughable in terms of player input. They're happy to just press the glowy button and watch pretty sparkles, basically the game's equivalent to jingling keys.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

I feel like a lot of players discount things like animations, and sound design. I think aesthetics matter to players a lot more than they are willing to admit, and not just with ffxiv jobs as well.

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Yeah this certainly chimes with me. i've never been able to click with DRG. And I'm pretty sure its just the lethargic/ponderous feel of the animations. I main PLD and love it. I doubt PLD is any more dynamic in terms of its button action weaves and combinations per second than dragoon.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

I feel like a lot of players discount things like animations, and sound design. I think aesthetics matter to players a lot more than they are willing to admit, and not just with ffxiv jobs as well.

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I'd say this is the primary PRO for FFXIV's designs. When I think of competitive MMOs (I'm not going to compare FFXIV against D tier P2W trash fires), I readily think FFXIV has some damn pretty designs. Yeah sure maybe I have certain vibes I want to see, but like for what they ARE they do well. Like initially I'll think GW2 or WoW, and FFXIV, imo, has way better job visuals than those two. GW2 especially is like ... "what wet noodle of a fireball is that?". WoW is more inconsistent, cause some effects are modernized and some still pretty bad (like immolation on Demon Hunter, to me, looks worse that Warcraft 3s and I don't know how they did that).

Though on the flip side I'd say both of those games have better class identity with things that make you go "oh my goodness I'm different" whenever you change jobs.


If they did this poorly, and the other elements, I think we would be in a massive world of hurt.. cause then it'd be like "spot the thing FFXIV does well for jobs" and we'd be like.. "um......"... lol. I would say people do not normally compliment, so many who have issues with the jobs might also think similarly to me, but it's still worth hearing nice things occasionally especially if you're the dev lol.

"bad bad bad bad bad bad, super bad, hot bad, biggest chocobo turd bad, bad bad bad bad, sucks, bad, please quit, bad". Stressful sounding, emotional waterboarding xD. Not that I will never criticize again, certainly will, just have to imagine its nice to hear the good things too.

To preface, I know these aren't necessarily your points.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

People's problem is probably that they play similar enough to the point they can be setup the same.

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And why would some expect anything different? If we take a basic tank kit, 1 single target attack, 1 AoE, 1 ranged, 1 defensive and 1 provoke, you cannot tell me, if you had 2 tanks that had that basic kit, you wouldn't lay them out the same? How about if we add 2 more single target and 1 more AoE? You are going to put them in the same places across the jobs, doesn't matter if job 1 is a standard combo and job 2 is a 50% to proc the next one in the combo. Just to illustrate, if we assume 25 actions, just with the job basics, that is already 20% of your buttons that are going to be in the same place and that % only goes up as you add more. This is an issue of human nature, not the game systems.

Going onto defensives, did the extra 10% on sentinel actually matter? No, still used it the same as Vengeance and Shadow Wall. It even had a longer cooldown back in the day as well, did it matter? No. Nothing has changed there then.

Extra effects, Starting with the comment about DRK magic tank etc. That caused problems, we all know about HW so I won't go into it. Separating a tank into magic or physical is bad, to the point where every tank cooldown is at least partially effective against both types of damage, except Dark mind. Even Camouflage has a 10% base mitigation to go along with the purely physical mitigation from Parry. Noone is saying Dark Mind needs to be just as effective against Physical damage, it just needs to be not useless. Secondary effects on the 40% mitigation, what would you propose? Bearing in mind other cooldowns as well. Would it make sense to give GNB 2 Excog effects? Warrior having 2 sources of HP increase? Would giving PLD just straight up more mitigation (50-60%) and no additional effects be acceptable, or would that feel boring compared to the rest? These are very much subjective things.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

If you played then, why do you need examples?

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Because how I perceived the game doesn't necessarily mean someone else saw it in the same way. To give a basic example, DRG's old RNG 4th hit. That alone can lead to 4 different opinions. Either liked, or disliked, or, for the middle, Liked the mechanic, hated the positional part, or liked the positional part, hated the RNG. Different perspectives can help you understand why someone's thought process is as it is. And I mentioned that I did play during that time, mainly so someone doesn't have to go into full detail about the mechanic they wanted to talk about and could focus on what they thought the good design decision was.

Now a quick one on AST cards. Only 1 thing mattered, AoE balance, if you were getting unlucky, you might accept AoE Spear. As of SB, noone liked Arrow, except maybe BLM due to GCD preventing things from lining up. Bole was unreliable as a mitigation tool, so you focused on mitigating/healing with the rest of the kit, Ewer and Spire were also equally bad and you wanted to Royal Road them for AoE anyway. A similar thing can be said for Lord/Lady, you couldn't predict when you would get either one, so, especially in the case of Lady, you cannot plan around it, so you likely just used it so you could fish fore more Lords. It was a fun, unique, mechanic for more casual play, but it fell off when you tried to do harder content.

We have to remember DPS is king and has been for at least 4 expansions now, likely closer to 5 (and even at the end of ARR, it was starting to creep in). One way or another, this DPS focused mindset was going to creep in, we were all still new to the game back then and, as the game got older, we got better, we pushed those limits. This is another reason why it is useful to look back at mechanics you enjoyed or thought were better and actually think, was it better, or was it more a case of ignorance. If that mechanic was in the game now, would I actually enjoy it.

This then goes back to what I have been saying the whole time. People need to stop parroting everything someone else says and think for themselves.

If you want a quick example from me, I will say Monk. Monk used to rotate around it's attacks based on the buffs/debuff they gave. As the expansions came and went, especially in EW, I almost felt that sometimes they were getting in the way. Now, whilst I never expected them to go, part of me was a little excited to see how it would play out, especially since the rotation was changing from 112 to 123. Played it, I didn't care that the buff/debuff management was gone, as the rotation felt more chaotic. It was a bit harder to keep track of and I had to concentrate more. The buff/debuff management was replaced with something else, that I thought was better. Unfortunately, people complained and it went back to 112. It is the same we had before, just without the management. It was mad worse. The worst thing about this is people wanted rotations to be shaken up, but that was apparently too much. I see it as a good example of where people are their own worst enemies.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

For your example with sacred soil and kerechole they don’t both need to be a 15 second regen, 15 second 10% mitigation in roughly a circular shape. For example neither of them need the regen but if you are going to keep it only keep it on one. One could also offer more mitigation in exchange for being shorter. SCH could also return the old dys synergy with shadowflare as a key design of sacred soil. Sacred soil also benefited for its smaller size encouraging particular placement and strat arrangement

Basically SB sacred soil should be what SCH has and SGE should be given something actually unique as it doesn’t NEED a sacred soil equivalent, even a short oGCD shield could be an equivalent, or a pankardia+shields as a mitigation.

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So, the issue isn't that you would use them in the same place, but more that they are exactly the same. Though I do have to warn about Shadowflare, If it uses an Aetherflow stack, you will lose out on Aetherflow stacks to Shadowflare over the other abilities, if it was as it was in the past you then restrict the use of SS. It might be what you want, I just want to make sure that the consequences are known first.

However, to go back to the original point, that Scholar keep mitigation and Sage have a shield, should that necessarily extend to the rest of the kit? Adloquium and Eukrasian Diagnosis are the same (except MP cost), should they be changed to have different effects? Adlo mitigation and Sage can keep the shield? How would that then affect Scholar when we talk about Emergency Tactics, which Sage doesn't have an equivalent of, with the closest being Pepsis. They achieve similar things, but done differently. I could go on.

At what point does something become the same as something else? When it performs the same duty? Are we going to call basic functions of a job the same, for example the basic cure spell and equivalents? Technically, Cure is different in that it can proc Freecure, but noone cares about that. WHM and AST are stronger than SCH and SGE, but noone cares. Mainly because they aren't used admittedly, but how much different would they need to be before someone goes, yes, they are different.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

I feel like a lot of players discount things like animations, and sound design. I think aesthetics matter to players a lot more than they are willing to admit, and not just with ffxiv jobs as well.

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Yet all healers are getting wings...

while i do see where others are coming from (my hotbar setups are also very much 'oh, its like that skill, ill put it in the same spot'), i dont necessarily agree. i main pld, cannot STAND gnb at ALL. war is fun, drk makes me want to rip my hair out. love sge, havent played sch, but i hate whm. dont have a lot of melee experience outside of rpr and sam because the other ones dont look fun at all for me, even then i didnt like sam either. i wont touch nin and mnk unless i get bored enough because the way they play sounds not fun at all to someone like me, but i know many that love the classes.

it really comes down to what each individual enjoys i suppose. and for some, the small differences that make me not want to touch a class at all isnt different enough, which is fair. but imo, the small differences in how a class play will make or break it to me. a little goes a long way.

(also it has been nice to read a civil conversation from both ends, i do like hearing the other side of this even if i dont agree.)

For me it's mostly how most if not all jobs turned into a 2minute burst show overtime. I was fine with Machinist being the one that really wanted to shove their entire kit into their wildfire window as I had other job styles to play, now it's all the same.

So it's not necessarily the unique job gimmick each job has that feels samey (cause each job does have that lil flavor).
I'd just like to have that lil flavour of the job not just be 20% of their kit but it should be closer to 70% while the remaining 30% of the skills should be akin to role skills, ensureing that you have the basics covered to fullfull your role itself.
The personal high-level tank and healer skills are an excellent way to add flavor to the jobs (think Sheltron/Aquaveil etc)

I think it's pretty obvious that over time, class mechanics have been simplified so that players can easily choose which "skin" (job) they want to play and not have to worry much about how to play that class as they are all relatively the same based on what role (dps/heal/tank) that they perform.

Some classes have a bit more uniqueness than others but even still, the differences between classes have diminished.

The simplifying of classes has even been addressed by Yoshi P. Yoshi has stated that "streamlining" the classes was a priority for 7.0, although it's been happening gradually anyway over the years.

Here is a link to the live letter from the producer where he speaks on this specifically: https://www.youtube.com/live/oh5piV-0MWQ?t=7145s

In the video he states classes will begin to become more unique by version 8.0. Who knows if that will happen or what that will look like but if you were on the fence as to whether classes were losing their identity or not, hopefully hearing it from the director and producer of the game is proof enough.

I think I figure out what Yoshi P means when he said that he want to simplify the jobs till 8.0 then add complexity and identity for all jobs.

But I believe this is a wrong approach, but he may surprise us Idk