Dear SE, stop homogenizing jobs

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shyngo

BA was more of a raid over everything else we have so far.

---

How was BA anymore of a raid over everything else in this game? It's literally just like any other tier/24 man with a special-raise-only difficulty modifier.

---

My two cents on jobs and this so-called homogenization:

Jobs of the same types have been given a core kit, with different flairs to those kits. When specific things need to be done across those jobs for content creation's sake, they need to be added to that role. They may then implement quality of life changes, like all tank stances are oGCD now, whereas WAR was the only job with that unique trait. All of the tanks have a heal of some sort, but even now, WAR still has the best self-sufficiency at no cost (and as a healer main, I definitely love WARs over the other tanks when I'm trying to push personal numbers).

The FFXIV development team probably have a class design document that they follow. The issue therein lies of what the players are convinced the identity of the job is or should be versus what the development team intended it to be.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JunseiKei

How was BA anymore of a raid over everything else in this game? It's literally just like any other tier/24 man with a special-raise-only difficulty modifier..

---

Because you eventually had to get to each boss by killing actually threatening trash mobs. That, and everything happened in one massive instance. I'd say that is much more akin to a raid than zoning directly into an instance with a boss waiting for you.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eothas

They will stop homogenizing when people stop crying and excluding other jobs from PF because there is a 2.7% or whatever difference in DPS from the meta composition. Anyone remembers WHM in 3.5, Zurvan patch? PF almost completely locked WHM out in favor of AST players, even though WHMs were completely capable of clearing that fight and likely with higher clear rates because there was a bunch of bad AST players at the time.

IMO they do a pretty good job while doing that level of balancing for this kind of gameplay (Savage/Ultimate raiding, i.e.: DPS matters and very strict rotations most of the time). I don't know any other MMO that has savage+ level of raiding, decent balance and very defined and different jobs and class fantasies, all at the same time, seems pretty unrealistic to me.

---

Try 10%. The difference between Red Mage and Black Mage is absolutely massive—to the point Red Mage literally serves one purpose: Raise bot. It's completely useless otherwise. People really need to stop dismissing job balance like it isn't a big deal when the current disparity is so one-sided. Certain jobs can perform far below average and still offer more to their respective groups than top tier players in other jobs. A Black Mage or Dragoon who dies shouldn't outpace a Summoner or Dancer yet both can. Just to emphasise this point. The disparity is so bad, triple melee is better than taking any of the Range even if that means a melee or tank will have to disengage periodically.

As for your Zurvan reference. First, I very seldom saw White Mage being locked out. Regardless, you're quoting a period where Astro was absolutely broken; offering essentially an AoE Trick Attack or 20% on a single target. White Mage, meanwhile, did crap damage and had the worst MP economy without question. Sure, it could still clear. But Astro did everything better.

Don't blame the playerbase for wanting a far superior job, which, in turn, makes content like Savage easier to clear. That fault lies on the dev team for not balancing the jobs properly. Case in point, no one locks out Warrior despite it being the worst tank. You don't often see Samurai locked out even if it's objectively inferior to Monk and Dragoon. It's almost as though people care less when the difference isn't staggeringly one-sided. Admittedly, FFlogs' change to rDPS certainly helped. But lets not pretend exclusion has nothing to do with poor balancing from the dev team.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eothas

They will stop homogenizing when people stop crying and excluding other jobs from PF because there is a 2.7% or whatever difference in DPS from the meta composition. Anyone remembers WHM in 3.5, Zurvan patch? PF almost completely locked WHM out in favor of AST players, even though WHMs were completely capable of clearing that fight and likely with higher clear rates because there was a bunch of bad AST players at the time.

---

2.7% lol what game you playing cause BLM is eating us casters for breakfast hell im full bis and can still be out dmg’ed by an average BLM not in bis because they are that absurdly ahead. WHM was barely excluded and was more so excluded in SB if you want to go that route but still barely unless it was a speed run.

People are complaining because of what i just mentioned. Balance is nothing to take lightly because without it BRD and MCH would still be casting, BLM enochain would be as it was in HW, PLD would still have hate issues....people asking for balance isn’t ruining the game or calling for homogenization. It’s lazy development that leads to this kind of stuff happening. Some classes were just so broken that they didn’t even know where to start but instead just simplified all classes and roles.

Your complaints against balance are completely irrelevant to what’s happening now and is more so on the developers for not taking the time to make class skills meaningful like they did with BLM. BLM right now is your perfect class with very very very minimum issues and plays like no other class.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Because you eventually had to get to each boss by killing actually threatening trash mobs. That, and everything happened in one massive instance. I'd say that is much more akin to a raid than zoning directly into an instance with a boss waiting for you.

---

Aside from the threatening mobs, it's just like the 24-man raids, which was my point.

Also, Coils and Alexander did have adds. People hated it. It wasn't particularly hard to kill the adds that you needed to clear every week to then get to the boss. The adds weren't exactly like open world mobs, but not quite like the gatekeepers like Faust were. The dev team did away with them. Personally, I enjoy the boss rush-like raids.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Try 10%. The difference between Red Mage and Black Mage is absolutely massive—to the point Red Mage literally serves one purpose: Raise bot. It's completely useless otherwise.

---

Fair enough. I have not been paying attention to the current meta, pretty much skipped this tier to play classic, but this is kind of my point in general. In a PUG having ~10% less DPS in exchange for raises can be pretty acceptable, just decrease the gap a little bit. Sure you can argue that if someone needs raise in the first place they are doing something wrong, but then I'd say you can still get a clear out of it, unless it's cutting edge raiding. Remove RDM raises and increase its DPS and it will be just another copy, keep its raise and it will be the new FoTM. If we assume everyone is playing perfectly there's no way to have variety without having a clear best job for its function. What I'm trying to say is that I think RDM is not useless, it's weaker in a optimal run, but that's to be expected if we don't want homogenization, right?

About Zurvan, Astro would cut what, a few dozen seconds from a run? That's assuming optimal play. I don't think that's enough to lock out possibly great WHMs for possibly mediocre Astros. In a Static where everyone is expecting the best or in an actual speedrun PF, sure. I think that kind of attitude we saw in 3.5 slowly affects how the developers manage balance, they don't want to have a job branded useless because it has ~10% less DPS. I don't say anything about WHM's healing advantage because Astro also had an extremely powerful healing kit (CU used optimally was just waay too strong) but you get my point.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JunseiKei

Aside from the threatening mobs, it's just like the 24-man raids, which was my point.

---

Aside from the enemies being threatening, Savage is also just like Normal. And yet...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Aside from the enemies being threatening, Savage is also just like Normal. And yet...

---

... and yet it's difficult enough between the average player and above average+ player that makes it unique enough. BA's gimmick is the special-raise-only modifier that makes it remotely difficult. The adds in BA are a gimmick as you can 1HKO with Death and even reflect sprites and magus. Everything else is standard 'don't stand there, let tank pull and get hate' things that we learned at least 70 levels ago (or 20 years ago across different games). The place is literally 24-man tier difficulty.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JunseiKei

... and yet it's difficult enough between the average player and above average+ player that makes it unique enough. BA's gimmick is the special-raise-only modifier that makes it remotely difficult. The adds in BA are a gimmick as you can 1HKO with Death and even reflect sprites and magus. Everything else is standard 'don't stand there, let tank pull and get hate' things that we learned at least 70 levels ago (or 20 years ago across different games). The place is literally 24-man tier difficulty.

---

I'm not sure why you're trying to demean BA, I disagree, but okay. I remember when Hydatos/BA first came out and people were playing it hilariously safe by hugging the corridor walls to not get killed by a trap. Or when people started panicking when they didn't know you could interrupt the centaurs' berserk ability and they started slaughtering people left and right. That is something completely different than anything I experienced with a 24 man. Even if that sense of danger didn't last, the first few runs sure created a lot of anxiety and fear. Hell, to this day I get antsy when facing AV and Ozma because of the nagging fear that I'll mishandle the orbs or I didn't notice that I had the bomb debuff.

But if you want to reduce things down to such a base level, then yeah, the boss mechanics aren't that difficult, but that's not where most of BA's difficulty lies anyway. It's in the individual player realizing that their actions can not only get themselves killed, but can lead to the entire raid falling apart.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Auryan

I'm not sure why you're trying to demean BA, I disagree, but okay. I remember when Hydatos/BA first came out and people were playing it hilariously safe by hugging the corridor walls to not get killed by a trap. Or when people started panicking when they didn't know you could interrupt the centaurs' berserk ability and they started slaughtering people left and right. That is something completely different than anything I experienced with a 24 man. Even if that sense of danger didn't last, the first few runs sure created a lot of anxiety and fear. Hell, to this day I get antsy when facing AV and Ozma because of the nagging fear that I'll mishandle the orbs or I didn't notice that I had the bomb debuff.

But if you want to reduce things down to such a base level, then yeah, the boss mechanics aren't that difficult, but that's not where most of BA's difficulty lies anyway. It's in the individual player realizing that their actions can not only get themselves killed, but can lead to the entire raid falling apart.

---

I'm not demeaning BA, as if it had feelings - I'm stating facts. I'm going to call blue when it's blue and not let personal attachments to it change that view. For the record, I enjoyed BA. Any early prog where guides haven't been written yet all feel scary because it's not familiar yet. The difficulty in this whole game is knowing that anything you do can lead to a party wipe in any 8 man content (and 4 man in the case of Rathalos).

Had no stake in the balance between jobs or raids when playing Scholar in ARR and HW, scratched my head at some Stormblood changes, but it was still bearable. Shadowbringers is where this balance seem to have caught up with me. Scholar today feels like the level 32 White Mage I left to puruse Arcanist in ARR because I found stone/aero + healing skills a far cry from the cavalcade of dots, pet hotbars and tools on ACN and later SCH. If we are to still have no specialization beyond being able to have every job on every character why are they trying to make the resemble each other so much. If the game was only Trials and Raid bosses where every fight was contained and sterilzied around the strict script I could see this work, but there are still 200+ duties, solo quests, Deep Dungeons, Eureka, Role Quest and not to mention: MSQ solo duties where close to no healing or even much coordination is required all I think would benefit from jobs being a world apart and play entirely different.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...al-Fantasy-XIV

Yes, the game has literally been dying since release, if you believe people on the forums.

---

Yes thats the thread I was looking for, thank you :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eothas

Fair enough. I have not been paying attention to the current meta, pretty much skipped this tier to play classic, but this is kind of my point in general. In a PUG having ~10% less DPS in exchange for raises can be pretty acceptable, just decrease the gap a little bit. Sure you can argue that if someone needs raise in the first place they are doing something wrong, but then I'd say you can still get a clear out of it, unless it's cutting edge raiding. Remove RDM raises and increase its DPS and it will be just another copy, keep its raise and it will be the new FoTM. If we assume everyone is playing perfectly there's no way to have variety without having a clear best job for its function. What I'm trying to say is that I think RDM is not useless, it's weaker in a optimal run, but that's to be expected if we don't want homogenization, right?

About Zurvan, Astro would cut what, a few dozen seconds from a run? That's assuming optimal play. I don't think that's enough to lock out possibly great WHMs for possibly mediocre Astros. In a Static where everyone is expecting the best or in an actual speedrun PF, sure. I think that kind of attitude we saw in 3.5 slowly affects how the developers manage balance, they don't want to have a job branded useless because it has ~10% less DPS. I don't say anything about WHM's healing advantage because Astro also had an extremely powerful healing kit (CU used optimally was just waay too strong) but you get my point.

---

Except it isn't. People do not like playing jobs which feel decidedly inferior to their counterparts. A slight increase is exactly what the devs cited for Range, and it won't save them. Why would it? You can just take two Black Mages and it be safer. The big three (Monk, Black Mage and Dragoon) outright allow for more mistakes because of how enormous the gap between them and the bottom five is. We're not talking small amounts either. A friend of mine ranked top ten for Red Mage in one of his more recent clears. Guess what? A slightly above average Black Mage still beats him. He literally can't get better. I've died and nearly beat the 97% Dancer in my group despite her having better gear than me. I just happened to be playing Dragoon. Under no circumstance should that ever be acceptable. Not only is it discouraging for people who enjoy those jobs. It's straight up poor design by the dev team that absolutely should be called out. There is no reason for 1,500+ rDPS gaps between the Melee and every other DPS not named Black Mage.

Astro rDPS in 3.4 was absolutely absurd. It shaved off far more than seconds from a run if said player was mildly competent. And when you're farming upwards of 99 runs, even knocking off ten is pretty nice. Regardless, White Mage wasn't locked out of Primals with any regularity. Sure, it happened, but rarely. In fact, there were more White Mages in Creator than Astros currently. That bears repeating. 5.0 Astro is so widely disliked, the disparity now is worse than when White Mage was objectively the worst healer by a wide margin.

There's an easy solution to avoid that branding. Don't scale jobs so they're arbitrarily 10% weaker. There is zero reason Summoner and Red Mage have to be so laughably weak compared to Black Mage. And there's equally zero reason them and the Range are over thousand rDPS beyond every single Melee DPS. You can't even make the utility argument because Monk has a better version of Nature's Minne. All the Range have now is 10% mitigation on 180s CD—which the tanks also have at only 90s—and mobility the tier doesn't require outside a couple instances here and there. They're weak because reasons. If the devs don't want them branded as useless. Stop making them useless.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by linay

I'm not sure about SWTOR, but WoW currently has 24 DPS specs spread over 12 classes and a typical raid group can have 13 spots for DPS in a 20-person group or 17 spots in a 25-person group (not sure about 30-person group, but probably more DPS spots).

FFXIV has 4 DPS spots for 10 DPS jobs.

For Healer role, WoW typically has 5 or 6 spots for 6 Healer specs spread over 5 classes while FFXIV has 3 Healer jobs fighting over 2 spots, and people want more Healer jobs.

It's only for Tank role where WoW has 6 Tank specs/classes for 2 spots while FFXIV has 4 Tank jobs for the same number of spots.

Altogether, WoW still can fit more of its specs/classes than FFXIV can fit its jobs in a typical high end raid. And WoW has only added 3 classes (8 specs) over 7 expansions while FFXIV adds 2 or 3 jobs every expansion so far.

---

In fairness WoW also has 10 person raids versus our 8 and we also have 24 person groups. WoW also has smaller numbers than that for completing heroic dungeons. The difference I expect is that the harder modes of raids require more numbers. But big raids aren't the only thing they are balancing for. And we have big raids of our own.

SW:TOR had a choice between 8 and 16, where 16 is designed to be easier.

But that said, even Wow has become more homogenised and they embraced the dumbing down of jobs, though of course, also like FFXIV this didn't used to be a problem.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Saefinn

In fairness WoW also has 10 person raids versus our 8 and we also have 24 person groups.

---

Savage alliance raids :)
3 tanks, 6 healers, 15 DPS, and completely inconceivable to expect 5 MNK, 5 BLM and 5 DRG.

Quote:

---

Altogether, WoW still can fit more of its specs/classes than FFXIV can fit its jobs in a typical high end raid.

---

Boards ate my really long response, but its basically this.


short version of long answer:

SWToR effectively had 11 different specs, or 14 if you really want to die on the "but the sub-classes are different!" hill for anything but the casters. In practice, serious raid tanks mostly played Shadow/Assassin, because the only thing that mattered for tanks was cooldowns, and Shadsassins had the absolute best, BY FAR. Funny enough, in 14, they would be the least played, because their damage is ~7% below the other tanks. The 3 healing specs all worked vastly different, but you could take any 2 and make it work in a raid. You would have 3 vastly different healing experiences, as one was a shieldbot, one used regens and one used direct heals. It was basically "HERES HOW YOU HANDLE 3 HEALERS: THE PRIMER" (if you ignore WoW and Rift's healing designs for some reason). The DPS was... look, you played either of the good dps specs and they were all within 3% of each other, unless you were a caster, and then you were 1-2% behind. If you played the really bad / not raid designed specs, you did another 4-8% less damage. Your jedi melee had different button presses, but other than "my weapons look different", there were really only 5 classes per side (I separate Caster and Shadow/Assassin because THAT is the textbook example of how to actually make a base class work doing two different things, and the other 3 classes are basically different weapon options).


WoW has 36 specs, but 12 of those are on classes that are only DPS, and you're going to pick one of those specs and only change when you cant use the good one (like mages not being able to use fire for a year because lol fire immune things in the fire raid zones), or you're going to get a few people that go "BUT I WANNA BE THE BOOMKIN" when its 6 years before moonkin is actually viable.

Also, Wow experienced exactly the same issues 14 currently is when its 10mans took off. Balance, and what classes you wanted to bring, was horrendous, at best, at several times.


Guild Wars 2 is another one. It has 10 man raids and 27 (though its really 19, because base warrior is raid viable, but base anything else loses a lot) specs, but it solves this by giving 2-4 specs the ability to cover every job. Need group buffs? Take 2 of Quickbrand, Banner Warrior (either Warrior or berserker), Boon chrono, or Boon renegade. Need a healer? Take Druid (the best healer, run in a lot of groups, but swapped out as your raid gets better because their damage is low) or any of the other 6 specs that provide some amount of group healing. GW2 further makes its bosses immune or highly resistant to one of its 2 damage types; Power, hitting something in the face, or Condition (Condi), which is dots. If you want to raid seriously, you're generally expected to be able to play at least one of each condi and power damage, and most likely also have a support of some kind, either boon or healer, because you WILL have to switch between bosses in a raid wing.

All of those specs play differently, and each weapon set in a spec plays differently. My Quickbrand plays significantly different than my condibrand. Its the same spec of the same class, but uses different weapon sets, different utility slots and has completely different rotations and functionality with its f1 and f2 skills. neither of those plays similar to my mesmer or banner warrior, and those are significantly different than each other.

As a side note, GW2 doesnt (Currently, that is. A worse version of the current 3rd party addon that handles that is coming at the end of the month) have an easy way to change gear and specs (no press a button, change your class and equip a preset gearset + skill set , and top end gear is account bound, so its only slightly more difficult to have 4 different classes for 4 specs you want to play than it is having one character that can do all 4.



14 balancing raids around 8 people hurts it a lot. Even 10 vs 8 is an extra tank, healer, or tank AND healer they can expect you to have, which opens up an incredible amount of options.

Quote:

---

How was BA anymore of a raid over everything else in this game?

---

It used significantly more players, required coordination among a large number of players (Alliance raids dont have that), required more than just tunneling on pewpewpew, and wasnt entirely in a large square/circle you could fall off of, with mechanics on every encounter that tried to push you off the platform.

It was a nice throwback to actual raid content that isnt "Platform Quest: Lol dont fall off XD lolol".

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dzian

Nah what they need is more diverse approaches to encounters than simply whack it till it's dead.

Create actual options for groups to handle things based on there set ups.

Oh hey theres adds spawning. Off tank go grab them..

Only running 1 tank. WellWe got a blm let's sleep them ..
Oh we dont have a blm but we do have a smn let's bind them in place or have a titan egi hold them..

Probably not the best example but give groups options and different ways of dealing with things rather than just round it all up and whack it till it's dead....

---

Reminds me of early 2.0 days when you had to sleep mobs in huge pack pools.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sloprano

If the game was only Trials and Raid bosses where every fight was contained and sterilzied around the strict script I could see this work, but there are still 200+ duties, solo quests, Deep Dungeons, Eureka, Role Quest and not to mention: MSQ solo duties where close to no healing or even much coordination is required all I think would benefit from jobs being a world apart and play entirely different.

---

Those other duties don't need jobs being worlds apart and play differently, though they can.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Saefinn

In fairness WoW also has 10 person raids versus our 8 and we also have 24 person groups. WoW also has smaller numbers than that for completing heroic dungeons. The difference I expect is that the harder modes of raids require more numbers. But big raids aren't the only thing they are balancing for. And we have big raids of our own.

---

FFXIV alliance raids are designed to be 3 groups of normal raid size and you're mostly working within your own group, so it's not comparable to a WoW raid of similar size. That and the fact that alliance raids are low enough in difficulty to not warrant people being selective in jobs. As far as I know, WoW hasn't had a 10-person raid since at least Warlords of Draenor expansion in 2014, if not earlier than that. There is flex, which technically can scale down to 10 (I think), but that's not a typical size as it would also scale up to 30 (again, I think), and the highest difficulty, Mythic, is set at 20.

As far as dungeons are concerned, WoW uses 5-person party as opposed to FFXIV's 4-person party, and I'm told balance is also somewhat of an issue for their Mythic Keystones difficulty. Heroic dungeon is queueable so balance there is not really an issue either.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mistyregions

Reminds me of early 2.0 days when you had to sleep mobs in huge pack pools.

---

The reason for that wasn't because the mobs were difficult or because CC to help burn down certain ones, in most cases.

The reason mobs were slept was because they didn't have artificial locks in the dungeons, like certain mob kill requirements in AK, or tonberry's dropping oil in WP. So we slept the mobs and pulled bosses to skip trash.

Hence why the locks exist now.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RoyalBeef

Yeah no, EQ 1 raids were basically giant 72 person zergs you did with your guild, no one was left behind, not even rangers during classic which was probably the weakest class in any MMO ever lol. Shit only hit the fan when entitled casuals started complaining bc they couldn't gather the force needed for raiding, so devs decide cut the raid size down. Once that happens, of course you have to pick by what classes are most effective. It's a problem that casuals introduced because they still wanted to raid without having to make more than 7 friends lol.

---

talk about revisionist history or someone who didn't play EQ1. it was actually the "raid guilds" that wanted smaller raids and for the devs to "stop the zerging of content" not the casuals. because as with most raiders if there is a way to exclude people from content and make them feel superior they are all about it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vulcann

talk about revisionist history or someone who didn't play EQ1. it was actually the "raid guilds" that wanted smaller raids and for the devs to "stop the zerging of content" not the casuals. because as with most raiders if there is a way to exclude people from content and make them feel superior they are all about it.

---

I played EQ hardcore in it's prime from 1999 till 2006, thanks. You seem to be the one basing your statement on some bare bone skeleteon leftover versionof EQ that had to tune raidsize down due to the fact that like 95% of the playerbase was gone at that point. And the content itself did a great job of keeping people out of content they weren't ready for, there was no need for raiders to be concerned with that. I never saw people in subpar gear not knowing how their class worked expecting to be getting carried through GOD, or Time, or Anguish :P

Quote:

---

talk about revisionist history or someone who didn't play EQ1. it was actually the "raid guilds" that wanted smaller raids and for the devs to "stop the zerging of content" not the casuals

---

Pretty much. Think our world first ToV kills had like 100 people, and our first Emp Ssrsa kill had 112 people, because we boxed shaman and bards and clerics since there was no reason not to. Our knights needed to be doing SOMETHING when we were add tanking. Then we got to the first live version of VT and I cannot express exactly how I felt about that zone without getting banned on these forums, though we did have something like 12 alt, box and casual mages parked there to CoH us past broken spawns, and it STILL DIDNT FEEL LIKE ENOUGH.

PoP having 72 person raids meant a lot less burnout and a LOT less "I guess I -can- play this buffbot, so I suppose I should". And the raid zones were mostly absent weekend-ruining bugs.

Quote:

---

. because as with most raiders if there is a way to exclude people from content and make them feel superior they are all about it.

---

thats a stupid take though. We didnt like having to cart hundreds of people around to things. It turned into a logistical mess.

Quote:

---

I never saw people in subpar gear not knowing how their class worked expecting to be getting carried

---

I'm gonna say you didnt tank or heal or charm then, or you would have dragged countless people through Kyv Heartstriker PLEASEGODMAKEITSTOPINEEDANADULT and his ability to 1-round a tank from full if he felt like it.

Seriously though, I handled recruitment for Knights in a few expansions, and I denied a LOT of apps from people who thought they didnt need a haste item, or were wearing groupable velious era gear in PoP. I was responsible for our rule that if you could upgrade any piece of your gear in the bazaar (excluding the couple best in slot tradable items) you didnt get in. And if you were IN the guild and that applied to you, you werent getting plate until you upgraded it first. you could get leather though, because we got like 20 pieces of leather for every 1 plate drop (we went from Elemental planes in PoP to Tunat in Tacvi until we had a 3rd pair of plate pants drop. We averaged 4 leather pants per raid week)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Barraind

Pretty much. Think our world first ToV kills had like 100 people, and our first Emp Ssrsa kill had 112 people, because we boxed shaman and bards and clerics since there was no reason not to. Our knights needed to be doing SOMETHING when we were add tanking. Then we got to the first live version of VT and I cannot express exactly how I felt about that zone without getting banned on these forums, though we did have something like 12 alt, box and casual mages parked there to CoH us past broken spawns, and it STILL DIDNT FEEL LIKE ENOUGH.

PoP having 72 person raids meant a lot less burnout and a LOT less "I guess I -can- play this buffbot, so I suppose I should". And the raid zones were mostly absent weekend-ruining bugs.




I'm gonna say you didnt tank or heal or charm then, or you would have dragged countless people through Kyv Heartstriker PLEASEGODMAKEITSTOPINEEDANADULT.

Seriously though, I handled recruitment for Knights in a few expansions, and I denied a LOT of apps from people who thought they didnt need a haste item, or were wearing groupable velious era gear in PoP. I was responsibler for our rule that if you could upgrade any piece of your gear in the bazaar (excluding the couple best in slot tradable items) you didnt get in. And if you were IN the guild and that applied to you, you werent getting plate until you upgraded it first.

---

I played brd, I had to pull that shit ^^ But no we did guild exclusive groups only, who in their right mind would takerandoms there? I mean later when level cap was raised and people in OOW gear were EXPing in KT sure, but not when it was current content lol.

Quote:

---

who in their right mind would takerandoms there

---

Apps (sadly) need flags too.

Honestly if you had an enchanter who was good, running that DZ was fantastic AA, you just sometimes didnt finish and hated yourself later.

If we had todays charm pet implementation with that zone back then, it would have been stupidly easy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Barraind

Apps (sadly) need flags too.

Honestly if you had an enchanter who was good, running that DZ was fantastic AA, you just sometimes didnt finish and hated yourself later.

---

They were usually at least ele geared, so they knew what they were doing. A few time runs to get them decked out wasn't too bad. As in not FF14 folks showing up in lv 50 AF gear for lv 70+ content bad ^^

Yeah charmed mobs were fkn broken, but the living on the edge risk vs reward factor was amazing :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ayer2015

As the title indicates, jobs have become far too homogenized in ShB. Fun should come before raid balance.

---

Agree 1000%. This ain't Wildstar, so the rest of the game should not be sacrificed for the ~5% of the community who do Savage (that doesn't mean leaving them out in the cold either, but the compromise should always cut in the direction of what's going to be fun for the majority of players). I'll always praise ShB as being an amazing expansion for what it has, and is, doing for the story and lore, but the gameplay experience has been gutted, particularly for tanks and healers, who are both dead boring to play now.

As long as people will ask for new jobs to be added, SE will be forced to homogenize jobs, so no job combinaison becomes too much stronger than others.

In other words : stop asking for new jobs !

For a game where parties are made with only 8 people, they are already far too many jobs currently !

Agreed, besides the DPS Role, there's very little variance between the jobs in the Tank / Healer role. Tank being the worst offender..... IMO (In my opinion)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Grann-Goro

As long as people will ask for new jobs to be added, SE will be forced to homogenize jobs, so no job combinaison becomes too much stronger than others.

In other words : stop asking for new jobs !

For a game where parties are made with only 8 people, they are already far too many jobs currently !

---

Sucks, but there's some truth to your words sadly

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

I would argue that it is not fun playing a job unwanted in raid because other jobs perform the role better. (War in 2.0, PLD in 3.x, Whm in 3.3+, all of 4.x, SAM in 4.x and 5.0, MCH in 4.x)

Also, jobs have not been homogenized. Roles have. Jobs within a role have to be able to perform the same in certain circumstances or you could be in an instance set up for failure because a certain job isn't there.

---

war got fixed relatively early in 2.x, so that ones null, pld had incredibly meta situations where it was useful, ie cover shenanigans which let you completely bypass some mechanics, so it was most definitely still used in 3.x, the only reason people memed was because block didn't work on magic yet. whm was world first for both ucob and uwu, idk what you're talking about bro, it was definitely still used and fine, sam was perfectly fine in 4.x it was even used for world first bcob, mch was actually also preferred over brd for speedkills due to its personal dps.

tl;dr: you're wrong, just because a job isn't the best doesn't mean it's not usable in content, your argument has zero ground and is the reason we're stuck in an over homogenized environment where jobs lose more and more of what made them unique every expansion.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Grann-Goro

As long as people will ask for new jobs to be added, SE will be forced to homogenize jobs, so no job combinaison becomes too much stronger than others.

In other words : stop asking for new jobs !

For a game where parties are made with only 8 people, they are already far too many jobs currently !

---

That's only a problem for the high-end raiding scene. So no, the problem isn't "adding too many jobs." (Though I think we might have enough DPS now... That might be an unpopular opinion)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Grann-Goro

As long as people will ask for new jobs to be added, SE will be forced to homogenize jobs, so no job combinaison becomes too much stronger than others.
In other words : stop asking for new jobs !
For a game where parties are made with only 8 people, they are already far too many jobs currently !

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by purgatori

That's only a problem for the high-end raiding scene. So no, the problem isn't "adding too many jobs." (Though I think we might have enough DPS now... That might be an unpopular opinion)

---

And really, the high end raiding scene will see job discrimination, regardless of how minuscule the difference between jobs is. If you're doing high-end progression raids, you bring your best crew with the most effective job selection until you have it down; and then after that, you start bringing in the non-optimal group members.
That's how it is and how it will be in every game that has even minor class differences.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mistyregions

This excuse held up in older MMOs when you only had one character and one job, now you have a multiple job character. They need to make one raid tier cater to some jobs and the next cater to the others. If you dont wanna switch jobs, then you are entitled.

---

This is the most ridiculous quote I’ve read on a forum.

MMORPGs are built on the back of the concept of maining one class. We aren’t being entitled, we play what we enjoy and expect the balance to be in a position where we can play the game as we want.

Ofcourse classes should be balanced. It’s ridiculous to revolve a mmorpg around a FoTM system of when things get wildly overpowered. It also would make balancing the raids themselves severely difficult.

You should not be expected to play every class in the game to a exceptional level to savage raid. Nor should it be required to gear 28 classes to enter raiding either.

Amazingly enough players pay to participate in the game. It’s not being entitled it’s being reasonable.

This isn’t overwatch, yes we can level up several classes on one character. But that doesn’t mean the game doesn’t punish you for continously swapping mains.

It will put you behind on gearing etc etc. And will cost masses of gold to keep putting new materia etc etc to build all the sets of armour your gonna need to sustain such a idea.

You can create balanced and fun classes, its just a simple case of balancing the kit within itself. FFXIV has a good lead in creating this as Raid dps is a big recognisition in the game unlike wow where utility isn’t as cared for.

Homogenization creates way more variety in the end. Unless you want a situation where there are only a handful of classes "allowed" in progression content and party finder groups.

Balance is far more important than variety, but SE has to find a good middle ground. I think as it stands classes feel distinct enough.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Goji1639

Homogenization creates way more variety in the end. Unless you want a situation where there are only a handful of classes "allowed" in progression content and party finder groups.

Balance is far more important than variety, but SE has to find a good middle ground. I think as it stands classes feel distinct enough.

---

Except it doesn’t. No matter how hard you try to balance a game there is always going to be a meta that states which classes should used, it’s just the nature of the beast.

Variety is just as important as balance and I disagree with the tanking and healing jobs feeling distinct enough. Hell Dark Knight barely feels (to me) like a Dark Knight anymore, we feel more like a Warrior with some of Paladin’s old moves (looking at you rampart) stitched on to patch up some holes Sqaure created after tearing out most of our unique abilities (gonna pour one out for my homies Scourge, Dark Passenger, Blood Price, and OG delirium).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Goji1639

Homogenization creates way more variety in the end.

---

;)

And sameness creates more difference it does!

That aside, I don't think those of us who don't care about Savage would be too broken hearted over that community squabbling about the viability/desirability of this or that job. I mean, if the argument boils down to "I refuse to play a job from this subset of jobs regarded as being viable, and insist on playing x job, so fix it" and "fix it" = "make it play like the other jobs" then it seems to be that the argument is a self defeating one, since the end result is that now job x plays just like the jobs you didn't want to play instead.

Unfortunately, OP, fun cannot come before raid balance because of how the English speaking community operates. Too many groups in PF only want the mathematically optimal compositions, tossing aside everyone else. So, jobs get homogenized so that everyone has a fair chance of getting in. Why else did they do this? Their analytics must tell them the same thing.

Want to get rid of homogenization? Don't look at the developers, but at the community instead.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EpicOverlord85

Except it doesn’t. No matter how hard you try to balance a game there is always going to be a meta that states which classes should used, it’s just the nature of the beast.

Variety is just as important as balance and I disagree with the tanking and healing jobs feeling distinct enough. Hell Dark Knight barely feels (to me) like a Dark Knight anymore, we feel more like a Warrior with some of Paladin’s old moves (looking at you rampart) stitched on to patch up some holes Sqaure created after tearing out most of our unique abilities (gonna pour one out for my homies Scourge, Dark Passenger, Blood Price, and OG delirium).

---

Sure, there will always be a meta, but classes need to be mostly interchangeable in their roles. That's THE most important rule when designing this kind of game. SE should strive to implement as much variety as possible while adhering to that rule, but these roles CAN'T be functionally different.

Meta is one thing, but I've played games where guilds wouldn't even accept certain classes. Some classes spend YEARS being completely ousted from all serious content mainly because their design was such a curve-ball that it was nearly impossible to make them work in anything but VERY specific situations.

Homogenization is really important. I understand wanting variety, but pushing for too much of it is playing with fire. Your favorite job may end up being the one that falls into an inescapable pit.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Goji1639

Homogenization creates way more variety in the end. Unless you want a situation where there are only a handful of classes "allowed" in progression content and party finder groups.

Balance is far more important than variety, but SE has to find a good middle ground. I think as it stands classes feel distinct enough.

---

Except that's not variety except in name and perhaps aesthetics.

Why are so many so quick to assume a fatalistic zero-sum between variety in gameplay (jobs each feeling different to play) and, well, variety in gameplay (all those different jobs being playable in most compositions possible for most fights)? They're not. It's just a question of quantity and quality of encounter designs and the mechanics beneath combat in general. Any time you can't have both, within reason, something has badly failed at a more fundamental level.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Except that's not variety except in name and perhaps aesthetics.

Why are so many so quick to assume a fatalistic zero-sum between variety in gameplay (jobs each feeling different to play) and, well, variety in gameplay (all those different jobs being playable in most compositions possible for most fights)? They're not. It's just a question of quantity and quality of encounter designs and the mechanics beneath combat in general. Any time you can't have both, within reason, something has badly failed at a more fundamental level.

---

No ones assuming any kind of fatalistic zero-sum; we can and do already have both. Variety always comes at a cost to balance, though. As of right now balance is pretty good in this game, but if we keep demanding variety there's going to be a tipping point.

Classes will eventually be broken beyond repair for the sake of making them "different." I personally like knowing that if my job is going through a rough period that could easily change in a patch or 2. Conversely, I've played MMO's where some classes were so far off the beaten path they would require a complete tear down to fix, and everyone knew that would never happen and was resigned to just not ever getting to play the class seriously. All I'm saying is be careful what you wish for.

Forgot those who raids are entitled to know every aspect of job and knows whats right or not. I miss those simpliest CAST heals..