I think they can manage balance (not perfect balance oc but it will only affect HC raiders) + reward + fun
they did it in HW
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Heavensward & even Stromblood got a lot of backlash from the playerbase.
People constantly complained if their favorite job wasn't part of meta. Most of the people complaining aren't even participating in World Race nor clearing Savage week 1.
Non-meta comps can still clear Savage week 3~4 just fine with tome gear & Savage loot drops. Yet, people still complained just because they want to feel good about playing a meta job.
There were a lot of problems in PF. People were locking out/kicking certain jobs because they're not part of meta. Despite the fact that it was probably week 4+ where forcing meta is redundant.
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That's a good idea. It's true that it is usually just 1 boss. They have split them up sometimes (like O12), but it's rare overall.
I assume it's a Final Fantasy thing. FF games are typically about that 1 small party vs 1 villain, whereas other games may be content with "50 players fighting a war" and be able to make as many villains as they want.
So if they split it up they have to move away from that more often and say that it's not 1 villain. Still, they have usually managed to make an add phase in most fights that they could use better in some of the ways you mentioned, such as when they bring other ascians back in Hades.
People locking out jobs is greatly exaggerated, might've been a case in early SB where Samurai would get oneshot by raid wides and Whitemage generated so much enmity it was an actual pain to deal with. The sentiment got occasionally carried over into Sigmascape but it wasn't exactly rampant.
And during Alphascape I never had a problem getting into a pf group, even on the lower performing jobs.
Were people complaining? Of course. Shitters, because let's be honest that's what they are, will always complain that their job isn't the best, is too hard, too clunky, too whatever, because they want all of the glory with none of the work.
That is never going to change, no matter how failure-proof they make the gameplay.
At some point the devs need to realize that designing job gameplay for the absolute lowest common denominator is a futile effort, because they will tunnel right under whatever floor they put the bar on.
The part here that doesn't match up is choice. in FPS, you have a set loadout, you know where in a map your strong points are, so you gravitate towards those areas, you might have to go through an undesirable area, but that might be a risk you have to take to give yourself a better advantage later on.
If you had a raid with 4 bosses, you don't get to choose which one you fight or not fight, you have to fight them all, you are forced into that encounter with a less than desirable choice. Rather than you calculating the risk, and making the choice based on several factors, you have been forced into it. It is the choice that makes it interesting.
This is conflating rewarding with skill ceiling and damage output.
This is also trying to wedge an opposition between fun and rewarding, which is a bit mindblowing to me.
No more than today. And I've raided on Aether back in SB and have virtually never seen jobs locked out of PF beyond "log runs", and Aether has always been notorious for weird takes with this.
that depends on the map and the objective i guess. are you going to never cpature that cp or flag and help your team win because you have to navigate a section of a map thats less favorable to you?.
another example could be a race track. 3 cars 1 has the best acceleration. 1 has the best top speed. 1 has the best handling. you'll never make it to the finish line just staying on the part of the track where your car has the advantage over the others.. a well designed track will have sections where all 3 of those cars are superior.
If you know the map and goal, you swap your loadout before you go in to give yourself a better advantage. If you cannot change after finding out the map and objective, you alter your strategy to make the best use of the tools you have. In both cases, you adapt to the situation.
FFXIV would be the first one, you know what to expect (once you know what to expect, you can plan for it), so you change your party to best suit the situation.
As for the cars, no track is perfect, so you will alter some aspects of the car to better suit the track, this is despite the track having aspects that better suit one car over another. This is, again, a case of, choosing the best party for the job.
And let's be clear here, it isn't even a simple case of job X is physical and job Y is magical, Paladin, Dark Knight, Ninja and others do have both types of damage.
I will reiterate again, knowing the map, the track etc. allows you to adapt your loadout, your car etc. to better suit this map/track. You choose how you want to tackle that obstacle. FFXIV, you would have no choice. Boss 1 and 2 are Physical and Boss 3 and 4 are Magical. If it were to all even out in the end, why bother? You haven't made anything interesting except reducing the damage from some people arbitrarily. So why try and balance around it.
Part of the reward for playing a high-ceiling job correctly is dealing more damage. This doesn't mean that more punishing jobs aren't fun to play. HW DRK & MCH come to mind. It felt satisfying & rewarding when playing them correctly. They were punishing to mistakes, but still fun. Others might disagree & say they had a bad design. This entire topic about job design & what people find fun is subjective. What we should agree on is that more effort should be rewarded with more damage. Equating high effort with low effort is not fair.