How do you feel about Multi Role/Sub Role?

When Blue mage was introduced we had the first experience with a Multi Role Job, although Limited still.

Heres a few questions that comes to mind just thinking now

1-Would it be a good way to keep getting new things after SE stops the develop of new Jobs?
2-Do you think that it would bring more diversity?
3-How do you think that it would impact negatively the game? And positively?
4-Since not every job would fit MT or OT, would it permit Tank Jobs focused into MT or OT to exist again?
5-Would it be a good way to end the feeling of Job homogenization?
6-How do you think it would be a better way to implement it?
7-Would it be a good content for when we reach Lv 99? Or would it be better getting before it?
8-More of the same, or innovation?
9-Would it make you choose a role at the city, or permit you having both?

I always wonder what will happen when we finally reach Lv 99. I personally don't want to reach Lv100+. I think that being able to choose a second role and level it too would be a nice addition. It sure would need to break stereotypes from other FF games, but since they are just legends in FFXIV it's no problem to have some unique additions. For Example BLM, I imagine a second role of Tank, using Umbral ice stance and manaward to mitigate with the MP.

Just some brainstorming, here's a brief list of how I would make Sub Roles:

Sub Tank:
SAM Tank with Counter mechanics. Using it in the MT or yourself.
DRG Tank with Jump mechanics can give him a dodge up to x% of total damage.
MCH Tank using robots.
BLM Tank using Manaward and umbral stance to use MP as a tool to mitigate damage.
SMN Tank using Titan.

Sub Dps melee:
WAR Dps with burst and warcry buffs.

Sub Dps Ranged:
AST Dropping Ress to gain a combo that permits the upkeep of Lightspeed infinitely.
GNB Gains ability to transfer the vibration from the Gunblade as a wave through the air with all their actions, gaining speed with Combos and different bullets.

Sub Dps Caster:
WHM as Geomancer'ish
DRK The Dark battlemage. Consuming HP Shield to gain access to Dark Spells.
PLD The Holy battlemage. Uses melee actions to increase the power of the next spell.

Sub Healer:
RDM Dropping Jolt spells to get access to more cure. Using cure actions to restore both Black and White mana.
MNK Healing with stances, Fire for raw heal increase, Wind for skillspeed/spellspeed, Earth for shield, and the new one Water for regen.
NIN Healing with ninjutsu.
DNC Healing with the dance.
BRD Healing with songs.

TLDR:
Dps/Tank: SAM, DRG, PLD, GNB, WAR, DRK, MCH, BLM, SMN
Dps/Healer: AST, WHM, RDM, MNK, NIN, DNC, BRD

I think we're past the point in FFXIVs life cycle where they'd implement such major changes to how jobs are designed and work.

While it might be interesting, it would also be hard to balance. The basis of the trinity system is that you need a tank to soak damage from the enemies (because healers and DPS die too easily), you need a healer to counteract that damage (because tanks and DPS alone do not have enough recovery) and you need DPS to beat bosses before they enrage and generally make the content go quicker (because tanks and healers do less damage). The content is designed for a fixed amount of each role. With so many different role combinations this would no longer hold. Consider the following (notation is main/sub role):

A DPS/healer would presumably do less damage than a pure DPS but more than a healer, and would heal less than a pure healer. Since dungeons are designed to be done with one full healer, it would be detrimental to replace one DPS with a DPS/healer (less damage -> slower run; extra heals not needed). On the other hand, if the heals from a DPS/healer were enough to beat the dungeon, it would be optimal to drop the full healer and take a DPS/healer instead. Similarly, if a DPS/tank has sufficient damage mitigation to tank the content, it makes no sense to bring a full tank.

How would this be implemented in the DF? Would DPS/healer and DPS/tank be able to take the healer and tank slots? That would mean the content would have to be designed so that the lower healing output and damage mitigation are enough, further deprecating the actual healer and tank roles. I wouldn't be surprised if some people started abandoned duties when they don't get the right classes. Or it could be made so that a healer slot and a DPS slot can be converted to two DPS/healer slots, which would create all kinds of fun confusion in figuring out who does what.

One approach to balancing would be making classes perform approximately equally as long as they have the same combination of roles in any order. In other words DPS/healer = healer/DPS and DPS/tank = tank/DPS. This would avoid the favoritism but it would not increase diversity either. It might even reduce diversity if a tank/healer combination didn't exist - and that combination could easily be overpowered.

A decade ago I played another MMORPG called Anarchy Online. It had 14 different classes and no clear roles, but instead most classes were able to do multiple things with varying degrees of success. Besides tanking, healing and dealing damage, it also had extensive buff and crowd control systems. The end result was that some classes were strongly favored over others. Doctor was the best healer and was always welcome to a team. Enforcer was usually the first choice for a tank, though a skilled Soldier could perform even better. Bureaucrats with their strong CC abilities could trivialize many fights, and did good damage too. Nano-Technicians and Shades excelled in pure damage. A few other classes were okay too and were generally not turned down. But then there were those classes that no one seemed to want. Fixers had HoTs and some CC ability, but only mediocre damage so they mostly ended up used for taxi service thanks to their access to a unique transportation grid. Meta-physicists had some of the most useful buffs in the game, but since they lasted 8 hours people often just got the buffs and ran off without taking the Meta-physicist in the team.

It's possible a solution exists, but I've yet to see any game implement class diversity successfully.

That's just simply way to much dev time to work. Swtor has this and it was ok but it significantly increases dev time on class/job dev time so they, while i was playing, never added more classes/jobs.

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Originally Posted by tdb

While it might be interesting, it would also be hard to balance. The basis of the trinity system is that you need a tank to soak damage from the enemies (because healers and DPS die too easily), you need a healer to counteract that damage (because tanks and DPS alone do not have enough recovery) and you need DPS to beat bosses before they enrage and generally make the content go quicker (because tanks and healers do less damage). The content is designed for a fixed amount of each role. With so many different role combinations this would no longer hold. Consider the following (notation is main/sub role):

A DPS/healer would presumably do less damage than a pure DPS but more than a healer, and would heal less than a pure healer. Since dungeons are designed to be done with one full healer, it would be detrimental to replace one DPS with a DPS/healer (less damage -> slower run; extra heals not needed). On the other hand, if the heals from a DPS/healer were enough to beat the dungeon, it would be optimal to drop the full healer and take a DPS/healer instead. Similarly, if a DPS/tank has sufficient damage mitigation to tank the content, it makes no sense to bring a full tank.

How would this be implemented in the DF? Would DPS/healer and DPS/tank be able to take the healer and tank slots? That would mean the content would have to be designed so that the lower healing output and damage mitigation are enough, further deprecating the actual healer and tank roles. I wouldn't be surprised if some people started abandoned duties when they don't get the right classes. Or it could be made so that a healer slot and a DPS slot can be converted to two DPS/healer slots, which would create all kinds of fun confusion in figuring out who does what.

One approach to balancing would be making classes perform approximately equally as long as they have the same combination of roles in any order. In other words DPS/healer = healer/DPS and DPS/tank = tank/DPS. This would avoid the favoritism but it would not increase diversity either. It might even reduce diversity if a tank/healer combination didn't exist - and that combination could easily be overpowered.

A decade ago I played another MMORPG called Anarchy Online. It had 14 different classes and no clear roles, but instead most classes were able to do multiple things with varying degrees of success. Besides tanking, healing and dealing damage, it also had extensive buff and crowd control systems. The end result was that some classes were strongly favored over others. Doctor was the best healer and was always welcome to a team. Enforcer was usually the first choice for a tank, though a skilled Soldier could perform even better. Bureaucrats with their strong CC abilities could trivialize many fights, and did good damage too. Nano-Technicians and Shades excelled in pure damage. A few other classes were okay too and were generally not turned down. But then there were those classes that no one seemed to want. Fixers had HoTs and some CC ability, but only mediocre damage so they mostly ended up used for taxi service thanks to their access to a unique transportation grid. Meta-physicists had some of the most useful buffs in the game, but since they lasted 8 hours people often just got the buffs and ran off without taking the Meta-physicist in the team.

It's possible a solution exists, but I've yet to see any game implement class diversity successfully.

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Interesting, all points and concerns valid.

Well, I take WoW as a basis. While it is not a example of balance, but of a "try" of implementation.

But for FFXIV I think that the player must choose which role they want to be at cities, or at least before entering a party or duty. Having Every Job able to perform at the same time both roles would not fit FFXIV, in my opinion.

Since every Job just need selected skills to get mechanics done I can foresee the additions. Let for example say that a tank need at least 8 specific tank actions to perform the Job, and a DPS need also 8, then swapping roles will auto swap these actions.

Sure, the skill tree approach is a workable one, and has been implemented successfully in several games. I'm most familiar with it from SW:TOR. It has four base classes per faction, each of which splits into two advanced classes at level 10 (you can't progress before choosing one) and each advanced class has three different skill trees. Two trees are DPS trees with different mechanics (such as DoT vs direct damage) and the third is either another DPS tree (for two classes) or a tank or healer tree (for three classes each). Originally they were actual trees but metrics showed that almost everyone picked the same skills with very little variation, so they were simplified into a linear progression. From what I understand WoW has some kind of skill trees too.

It's worth noting that the tank and healer roles are already effectively tank/DPS and healer/DPS. Tanks in particular generate enmity primarily by attacking the enemy. I can't think of any game with pure healers either. This is in part to make all classes viable for soloing - a healer with no damaging abilities or a tank who can only taunt and mitigate but not attack would have no way of defeating enemies.

As you say, skill trees imply that the player must choose their role before queuing for a duty. So a tank is expected to be a tank and not switch to DPS mid-dungeon. So the remaining question is if there should be varying degrees of tradeoff between the roles. I think that would mostly just muddle up things for little benefit. It's better that all tank classes are equally good at tanking and all healer classes are equally good at healing, to avoid the discrimination scenarios described above.

A potential problem with player-selectable skills is also making sure that the combination of skills is viable. For example, Esuna in FFXIV is mandatory in many raids and dungeons, but the old cross-class and role ability systems allowed it to be unselected. I think this was also part of the reason why the skill trees in SW:TOR were simplified. If SE implements a skill tree system for FFXIV, it will likely be similarly straightforward.

If it was just jobs having the skills to do some things outside their normal role in a pinch, then fine. Like how Red Mage can cast a decent heal and raise people.

If it's different specs for one job, then no. It's redundant as everyone is already the ultimate multi-role job, the Warrior of Light, able to change spec between tank, damage dealer, healer, crafter and gatherer on a whim.

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Originally Posted by Lersayil

I think we're past the point in FFXIVs life cycle where they'd implement such major changes to how jobs are designed and work.

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This. In theory I'm not opposed to it. Like in WoW where some classes can do multiple roles but not all of them at once.

But it's a bit late for FFXIV to suddenly start doing it.

While DCUO is far from my favorite mmo I actually liked how it handled that with its power sets/classes. Everyone could dps, but you could also either tank, heal, or support/crowd control depending on your class. So everyone got dps and one other role. In a new MMO I'd like to see something like this. So you don't have the disparity of say WoW where come classes can only dps, some can do all roles and some in between, but you also don't have mono role classes. Under this sort of system, red mage coudl be caster dps or healer, paladin could be tank or dps, same with DRK etc. But it's too late to drastically shift things in FFXIV job design outside of limited jobs which are side content minigames more so than normal classes.

Whilst I'd like the idea and think it'd be a great and add an extra dimension to the game. I feel we are too far down the rabbit hole for such a thing. Plus it'd make balance harder. Given the volume of playable jobs I feel the trade off has been to not have different specialisations, which from a development point may as well be different jobs/classes.

But I do agree that it works nicely for Blue Mage. It's a shame the limited job system isn't better, because we could find it easier to get behind more limited jobs that can fulfill multiple roles. But given the current Blue Mage patch is a lot better than the previous iteration IMO, so potentially it could have a positive future? Hard to say. But if the system does, I feel this is where the middle ground would be to have that concept of multi-role jobs.