Homogenization and Job Identity - Are they mutually exclusive?

Let me preface this thread with a series of related questions stemming from the primary inquiry:

Why do you play your class?

Is it because the gameplay (or flow, etc.) appeals to you?
Would you continue to play that class even if it wasn't the "top dps"?
Would you continue to play that class if its gameplay lacked fluidity?

To quote one of the official translations from the latest live letter:

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Q5. It was explained that in Patch 4.0 the focus was to reduce the large DPS disparity, but certain jobs feel more reliant on player skill than others. Are certain jobs intended to maintain that difference?

A5. One of the main concepts of FFXIV is that “when playing a job, you experience the uniqueness of that job.”
Due to this, there is a difference in difficulty between the jobs, and it used to be that higher difficulty meant more DPS. We will be scaling down this factor.

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Let us suspend our disbelief and for a moment imagine that Square could perfectly balance all of the classes (although for the purposes of this thread, we will be speaking strictly of dps). For example, if someone ran a parser, they'd find that each dps class would be within +/- 5% (let us attribute this discrepancy to differences in player skill) of each other in terms of total damage dealt.

To the more "hardcore" players, I imagine a +5% difference in dps might be an unsatisfactory reward for the depth and understanding that they've put into honing a certain class's rotation. However, would that pittance be enough to deter you from FFXIV? Would having your class's skills be interesting and enjoyable to execute sweeten the deal?

Looking at the quote from the recent live letter, it seems fairly clear that the goals of Square are twofold:

1. have each class bring a unique gameplay experience
2. close the discrepancy between casual and hardcore players

Before going any further, I must disclose that I've been a MNK main for the majority of my time spent in FFXIV. I chose MNK because I usually gravitate towards melee/fist classes; it wasn't until later that I fell in love with the fast-paced nature of MNKs. I started about 10 months ago, so I can't attest to any balancing issues there might've been before then; therefore, any ensuing comments mentioning those times may be lost on me. And speaking of recency, it wasn't until maybe four months ago that I was introduced to the concept of parsing. I had chosen to main a dps class, so it seemed wise that I should start parsing to see exactly how much I was contributing to each fight.

Taking a closer look at where I stood in the pecking order made me reexamine what I thought I knew about MNK and its rotations and openers. The months of experience I've had with the class made it relatively easy to adjust my inferior rotation, and before I knew it, I was at the top of the charts for most of my encounters. What I came to understand about MNK was that it was a hard-hitting, fist-slinging, mobile class with strong DoTs and respectable AoEs. Being satisfied that I knew the class like the back of my hand, I decided to try said hand with a different class, MCH.

Unlike my MNK, I leveled my MCH solely through PoTD, so my experience with the class was severely lacking. It wasn't until I was grinding A1S for my Anima weapon that I was able to perfect the rotation allowing me to hit 25k Wildfires***. While I don't have the same depth of experience with MCH as I do with my MNK, I can confidently say that the two classes are decidedly different in terms of gameplay. Range and the freedom of no positional skills are two of the more glaring differences, but where MNK was more structured in terms of its rotations, MCH felt more like a game of whack-a-mole due to the "proc" nature of its weaponskills.
***Note: I just wanted to stress that it was very, very fun to nail the rotation for the 25k Wildfire, and that it was incredibly rewarding to see that number float up.

It was thoroughly enjoying, rewarding and refreshing to experience such a distinctly different class. (As an aside, I've refrained from mentioning my time spent learning how to tank on DRK, but suffice it to say that it was also an enjoyable experience.) Now let's take a step back and revisit parsing. By the time I was grinding A1S on my MCH, I was very familiar with the process, and I noticed that despite frequently topping the charts, my MCH did not do as much dps as my MNK (there was about a 300-400 dps difference if I remember correctly). With that being said, I still enjoyed playing both classes, and I believe I still would have enjoyed playing both of them if Square had homogenized their dps output - just based on the fact that they offered such different playstyles.

With the release of the Stormblood, I was hoping that my favorite jobs would receive some added complexity and/or interesting skills to accompany the increased level cap. Unfortunately... As much as I would love to expound on how Square's delivery of MNK and MCH have been deeply disappointing and upsetting, it seems I have already done so vicariously through the threads and comments of other forum users. It's what spurned me to create this thread in the first place.

I was so disappointed with MNK that I decided to level up some other dps classes (namely DRG and SAM) to see how fluid their gameplay was. What I found was that they weren't as distinctly different from each other as I found MCH and MNK were (although that's pretty obvious considering that's a ranged vs melee comparison). DRG seems to follow an even more combo heavy rotation with a fair bit of ogcd weaving and SAM seems to be an amalgamation of DRG and MNK, building up resource and expending it depending on what cooldowns are up. More importantly to the thread at hand, DRG and SAM seemed very fluid in their gameplay. I understand this is a completely subjective observation, but if those of you who've had experience with (at least) these three classes could provide input, that would be a great avenue for discussion. Despite sharing the occasional positional requirement and the standard 1,2,3 combo structure, DRG, SAM and MNK all maintained a unique playstyle.

(As you may have noticed, I've only dabbled in melee dps classes, so if you DoM forum users could provide some insight on differences between caster classes, that'd be much appreciated.)

So my final point is this:

if Square homogenized the damage across all dps classes while having each maintain a unique and enjoyable playstyle, would that be acceptable?

I know this may be a rather long-winded exposition, but I hope it serves to illustrate a point on job identity and complexity; and I hope it also serves to catalyze a civil and constructive discussion.

Thank you for your time.

In order to homogenize the dps classes they would have to either make it so that the combination of the damage you deal directly and the damage you add to others would be equal to all classes with their different and unique buffs/debuffs, OR they should remove all utility and then equalize the direct damage classes deal.

The 1st one is what SE tries to achiev, but it is pretty hard to do since the uniqueness of utilities makes it so that comps will play a hug factor on how much damage you are adding, and the second one would bring the wow problem where raids stack classes that are stronger in order to have an easier time, and since it is much easier to level and equip an alt class in ffxiv than it is in wow so you could expect this to happen even in pugs.

Now, there is another factor that is the difficulty to perform with a job. If SE manages to perfectly homogenize all jobs so everyone deals the same virtual damage(direct damage + damage add to the group), then the easier/less punishing classes would end up as the stronger class. Let's say for example that RDM and BLM are dealing the same virtual damage, in this case RDM would be the stronger job, because it is far less punished by mechanics that force you to move, stun/silence you and things of the sort.

Should they make it so that classes overperform others depending on the situation? This brings another problem: What happens if a raid tier has many encounters that favor one job? Talking again about the RDM x BLM, what if a raid tier has 4 fights that don't require much movement? BLM would come on top, and RDM would be just left in the shadow. But should raid design be limited so that an even number of encounters favor different classes?...

And this goes on and on and on, every answer brings on more issues. I think that they should be going down the line of thought that I described until they find the spot with 'more acceptable issues' and then stop there, perfect balance will never come.

I stopped playing DRK on SB seeing as how it lost it's fluidity and became completely clunky. It's not fun to me anymore, considering you can't even lose Darkside anymore, and makes even more use of Dark Arts. They took out the Parry procs gimmick and Scourge, which I sorely miss. I liked how it played on HW, now? It's something entirely different.

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Originally Posted by 3ureka

Is it because the gameplay (or flow, etc.) appeals to you?

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what monk apeals me is the speedy playstile and its flow what had on arr and on hw

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Originally Posted by 3ureka

Would you continue to play that class even if it wasn't the "top dps"?

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yes meanwhile is fun

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Originally Posted by 3ureka

Would you continue to play that class if its gameplay lacked fluidity?

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no, and is lacking already thanks to riddle of fire(and because of that i started to level other jobs)

Job identity is pretty much dead. Everything has been homogenized so much in the name of balance that any uniqueness and individuality between jobs is almost non existent.

Tanks are a perfect example here. Where the game began paladins had the identity of defensive fortress style tank. While warriors where the brutally offensive orientated tank.

As the game has progressed though there's almost nothing that separates them. Plds can do as much if not more dps than warriors can. Warriors can survive all the same tank busters a paladin can. They nearly always share gear which in turn means they're defence and stats are the same. They've been balanced so much that they have no identity anymore. Dark as well.

Healers as well. Every one can heal just as well as the next with very little identity setting them a part. They tried to make whm a pure healer but that didn't work cos that extra healing power just wasn't necessary because balance means sch and ast also had to be able to cope. So again healer identities are gone.

Dps again much the same. On the most basic levels virtually all dps bring the same to the table. Every dps has some form of aoe attack. For example you don't have an aoe king that sucks at single target. Or a single target king that sucks at aoe. Now every melee has access to goad and invigorate natively. Goad being one tool that set a ninja apart now homogenized to all melee.

It's the idea of balance and homogenization that every job has to be perfectly viable in every situation that completely destroys any real chance of job identity.

The only real difference between melee for example is the weapon they hold.

This is also why crowd control has never been utiisised in this game. Silences sleeps binds heavy stuns all exist but have never been utilised.. Throughout 2.0 and 3.0 they were only ever used as a dps increase. And never touched for there actual effect. So those unique elements jobs bought to a party were never actually used.

I cannot tell you the last time anything actually "had" to be slept for example. or bound in place by a bard. none of those things even though they are in the game have never been made use of because of balance.. and that's why job identity is gone.

As someone who has played all 4 melee at 70, I can offer some insight.


Any way I typically would default to my favourite class (DRG ) if they were all homogenized but it is honestly a hard question to answer; I don\\'t know if I changed to MNK because it was top personal DPS, whether I liked its playstyle or because my static needed it at the time. But I personally agree with the poster above, most would just end up with the lowest risk but I\\'m sure a lot would end up picking their favourite.

Uh im on mobile so I can't edit my post with the bulk of it so don't mind the inconsistencies

I remember back in coil, you wanted these jobs for this turn, and these for this turn, and those guys had to go caster or melee for this turn. The fights felt more dynamic. Granted I skipped most of HW raiding due to life stuff.. and I like the idea of jobs being able to play equally but there are far to many roles for every single one to be viable in every comp while retaining identity. If everything HAS to be viable for EVERY comp in EVERY fight, then everything is more so or less the same with small quirks differentiating them. Thats not what I call unique job and role experiences. I call that a reskin with higher damage or an added effect.

Not that the game is at that point yet... but it certainly is a disheartening feeling seeing it go towards that direction.

Hell, even in 1.0 the classes still were more distinct from each other than they are now. I daresay I enjoyed it..

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Originally Posted by 3ureka

Let me preface this thread with a series of related questions stemming from the primary inquiry:
1) Why do you play your class?
2) Is it because the gameplay (or flow, etc.) appeals to you?
3) Would you continue to play that class even if it wasn't the "top dps"?
4) Would you continue to play that class if its gameplay lacked fluidity?

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1) Because Summons in FF series always catched me so I started FF14 without any knowledge of the cls interpretation for this mmo. I liked the lore and the story elements around the cls and my first carbuncle as well. Now years later it might be melancholy staying with smn through all the good (hw) and bad (aar) times - looking for their/our place in stormblood after the hype and trouble settled down a bit.

2) in opposite of the majority I think less dots and more egi-related skills (at least the idea behind enkindle cd reduce, ruination and devotion) feel way more summoner than before. (im not saying that the skills and mechanics are great yet but they go in the right direction for me) - although Bahamuts mechanic feels more like a summonerfinisher than just deathflare in the end as well but maybe thats just the visual-impression.

3) never was interested in being top tier all day long. I played the noob smn in aar and the aoe king in hw - dps and rankings are no argument for me to chose a cls I'd like to play. never was, never will be. that being said im deep into Brd/Sch/Whm as well - all cls have their criticism and again I don't care that criticism if I like the overall-cls design and lore.

4) Never give up trying... there is always a way to improve, some are easier some are harder and need more effort but just giving up on something which is different than before without even trying isnt an option. haven't changed a cls or cls-liking cause of adjustments yet. and honestly I don't think I will change main or even sub cls based on question 3 & 4.

Not mutually exclusive, but hard to pull off.

For example, they COULD remove all "buffs" for DPS and focus on them all being selfish DPS without homogonizing them too much. However, each one would have to play uniquely enough to not feel like more of the same. That means distinct ways to deal damage, different resources, etc.

The problem is that even when you do that, there will be balance issues. Look no further than WoW for that. The classes have been pared down and homogenized quite a bit, but most still play differently enough to keep their identities. However, balance is still a pain and some playstyles just aren't fun. Like Unholy Death Knights and their RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG. Sure, it plays differently than Frost DKs or Ret Paladins or Fury Warriors, but it isn't fun (and was one of the weakest dps classes when I stopped playing Legion). Unholy wasn't any harder to play than Frost, but did far less dps.

They're not mutually exclusively. Take 3.x's BRD and MCH for example. The two shared so much in base foundation, there was very little differentiation despite how (GB/WM excluded) you try to differentiate them down the road. Both use a priority system based on procs, both maintain a self-buff, both maintain a DoT. The only real difference came from their cooldowns and one not being designed for cast times due to the nature of oGCD resets. Compare it to 4.x; both have a rather distinct take on their rotation and gameplay.

I'd honestly rather play a game where every character (or on this case, jobs) plays differently from each other and can be interchangable for the content. It's been said again and again; unless you're absolutely min-maxing, you don't need to bench out certain jobs for content (and honestly, it's also why gear is shared to an extent to begin with).

Yes you can do it, the biggest problem is SE is rather unwilling to look at larger meta concerns with classes. They've just begun to look at other resource management but only touched on a few classes and not in a very deep way. Resource management is one way to make classes feel very different. SE basically just has MP and TP and more or less they function exactly the same. So they have one resource. I remember in swtor they had 4 management systems. One was a standard mana bar, one had two types of skills resource builders and resource spenders, one had an ammo system, and one had a system where it was like a mana bar but it would regen faster the higher it was. So if you dumped it all it was slow to regen, but you had skills that could fill it on longer cooldowns so there were times you wanted to dump the bar and times you wanted to be careful not to dip too low.

Now that's not the end all be all but that right there shows you systems that SE is just ignoring. What about larger meta concerns, well lets take the rdm, blm example from the first page here. Why is a rdm not punished so harshly by mechanics? Well because they have a means of dealing with mechanics, namely mobility. Now it's certainly an identity for a blm to be largely immobile, they want their feet planted in the same spot as long as possible. Here's the problem with a situation where rdm and blm do the same dps, dps is not the only concern in balance, the whole package is. Rdm was given something in addition to it's dps which thus throws the situation out of balance. So what do you do with blm? More damage, well that's not really fair? Mobility? That's boring and homogenizing. What about skills to deal with mechanics? Imaging if blm was given something like a blink spell. Wrapped in FF lore, the spell phases the blm into the ethereal plane(or perhaps the void) and while there are untouchable by material beings or abilities while still being able to affect them. Self only, lasts for say 2 - 5 seconds whatever is considered balanced, and has some cooldown. Now when something comes along requiring movement the blm can simply blink out and not get hit by the aoe or other mechanic. Obviously we can't have them blinking every single last mechanic away but I think you should get the idea.

As with the given mnk, mch example, and my rdm, blm one there are lots of things they can do to preserve a class identity, give them interesting ways of accomplishing their goal, all while doing similar dps. The problem is SE seems to now largely lack creativity when it comes to this stuff.

Homogenization is the idea that you give up your class uniqueness in order to gain equal footing in objective power. This happens largely due to your playerbase insisting that they need to be as viable as the other guy despite their own class's strengths or weaknesses. In some cases the changes are good (2.0 Warrior to 2.X), in some cases the changes are neutral (ARR Dragoon to HW Dragoon) and in some cases the changes are negative (ARR Bard to HW Bard)

What we saw in Stormblood was the Homogenization of a 'role'.

Tanks are tanks, melee are melee, casters are casters, and so on. They all must fit within the boundaries of that role to complete the content they aim to do. However

A Black mage does not play anything like a summoner or a Red mage.
A monk plays nothing like a Ninja
Bards do not play like Machinists
Warriors do not play like Paladins or Dark Knights


This is important. All classes are competitive within their role, but none are required to absolutely do content as it was balanced (Day 1 pushing content with no gear is not 'as balanced' when it comes to Savage).

The old paradigm of "Paladin is the most durable thing ever" went in the same vein that "White Mage is the healer, Scholar is the DPS support" went. As more jobs get added, it's the -role- that they are balanced around. Individually, they will all have something that makes them different. (Cards, Faerie, OGCD use)

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

This is important. All classes are competitive within their role, but none are required to absolutely do content as it was balanced (Day 1 pushing content with no gear is not 'as balanced' when it comes to Savage).
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This is the key point right here when job design is to be considered. 4.0's state of balance was nowhere near as bad as 3.0 for MCH/BRD/AST or 2.0's WAR, and for the most part were perfectly feasible to bring into content (in MCH/BRD's case, they got their changes as early as 3.01, before Savage even came out (and ASTs had to wait until 3.07)



The current situation for example right now, MCH's inherent issues is not the disparity between itself and it's counterpart (the BRD), but that the job at the time is rather unrewarding for utilizing it's mechanics properly (overheat), was overly punishing and now really doesn't have a coherent gameflow after heat adjustments. I still played MCH out of preference over bard, and was fully capable of clearing O1s last night (with a group that's also carrying a scholar and monk, two classes whom get quite a bit of flank for apparently being not-so-go)

Remove your identity politics from our game!

I don't think SE even wants all dps to do the exact same amount of damage even with rDPS contributions. There's differences in them for a reason and we still see good representation on every class even if it's not all the same.

(This is in reference to someone mentioning making all DPS do the same and suggesting square wants them to with their rDPS contributions.)

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Originally Posted by 3ureka

Why do you play your class?

Is it because the gameplay (or flow, etc.) appeals to you?

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Part of it. Class concept/fantasy also have a hand in it, but gameplay has to fit the class concept. You can have a guy dressed like a pirate with a gun in his hand, but if he's spamming cures and buffs and not doing piraty things, then you have dissonance between the image the game is trying to sell you and how the class actually plays. At least to me, at that point it doesn't matter how well or terrible the class plays, because that dissonance muddies the whole experience.

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Would you continue to play that class even if it wasn't the "top dps"?

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This is a tough question, because viability is determined largely by theorycrafting/numbers, but optics also play a role in it. I'm personally fine with variances in DPS, so long as the difference between the top and bottom is fairly small.

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Would you continue to play that class if its gameplay lacked fluidity?

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This is a really weird question, because what you're suggesting is classes with abilities that have absolutely no interaction with one another or serve no purpose in the intended role of the DPS in question.

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if Square homogenized the damage across all dps classes while having each maintain a unique and enjoyable playstyle, would that be acceptable?

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Ideally, yes. I personally do not see identity in things like DPS variances. If DPS variances must exist, they usually come as a result of advantages in other aspects (utility, an edge in single-target DPS, an edge in AoE DPS).

Of course, variances are unavoidable, especially if you're tuning classes around what WoW veterans call a Patchwerk-style fight (a fight that allows 100% uptime with no mechanics or telegraphs involved). They surface as soon as you throw in mechanics that favor melee or ranged, or put in anything that requires movement.

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I personally would not call equal DPS homogenization. Real homogenization comes about when you make classes play entirely too similar to one another. And even then, it's more of a gray area than anything else. I say this because otherwise NIN, WAR and SAM would be called homogenized only for having Slashing debuff (if anything, I'd make that argument if we were talking Beast gauge vs Ninki vs Kenki, though that's because I feel not every class should have gotten a resource bar).

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Originally Posted by Yorumi

They've just begun to look at other resource management but only touched on a few classes and not in a very deep way. Resource management is one way to make classes feel very different. SE basically just has MP and TP and more or less they function exactly the same. So they have one resource. I remember in swtor they had 4 management systems. One was a standard mana bar, one had two types of skills resource builders and resource spenders, one had an ammo system, and one had a system where it was like a mana bar but it would regen faster the higher it was. So if you dumped it all it was slow to regen, but you had skills that could fill it on longer cooldowns so there were times you wanted to dump the bar and times you wanted to be careful not to dip too low.

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To add to the list, there's WoW Rage (resource generated from auto-attacks and taking damage), Energy (resource that regenerates very quickly but is also spent quickly), Mana (standard faire), Runic Power (generated by using special moves), and Runes (resource that can be used for special moves and regenerates on its own over 15s). Now all of these systems don't sound like much, but they are a big deal because they can help set the pace of gameplay for classes that use it, which I think is another great way to help differentiate classes from one another.

I'll admit that I have been disappointed with the fact that SE has married every job to TP and MP. Especially after seeing that one WAR mock-up where they used UI scaling to replace the MP bar with the Beast gauge bar.

Id rather have more diversity in jobs specifically verse roles, with multiple fights/raids/primals that capitalize on their uniqueness. Meaning some comps might not be viable in somethings but this other one is and visa versa. Would make me feel better about the time I spent leveling other jobs.

As a healer example: This boss absorbs shields on party members as a HP regen so you cant bring a Noct AST or SCH for mitigation, but this other boss does special attacks that need to be mitigated or it's a wipe. This of course would require re-working some jobs to fill those specific roles within the healer/dps/tank category. Not the best example it's just something to explain what I mean.

Well the jobs system and roles triangle have been kind of like oil and water, in classical FF sense. I'd rather have identity over homogeny, but I get the whole trinity thing, to a point. A lot of classical jobs, were pretty much hybrid archetypes, which was their identity but also encroaches on the "one job do one thing" way of the trinity system imo. So

I stopped playing SMN recently because they were poorley setup in SB . the gameplay is a clunky joke let alone the flavor and made the switch to red mage which is superior in every way. My metric here is of course "fun" because its a video game.I couldn't care less about dps numbers.I beleive access to that information is a cancer in mmos. The goal should be to give each job a unique experience. But you can't do that with a MMO model that is inherently tied to fundamental mmo mechanics which now makes the system 13 years old which at the time of wows emergence was only the standard due to technical limitations and NOT lack of innovation. Needless to say we can't get what we want without a paradigm shift in the genre which is a topic for another thread. There's never going to be "balance" without sacrificing uniqueness. The community will need to decide which is more important as long as mmos stick to this model.

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Originally Posted by Schondetta

But you can't do that with a MMO model that is inherently tied to fundamental mmo mechanics which now makes the system 13 years old which at the time of wows emergence was only the standard due to technical limitations and NOT lack of innovation.

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The age of a system has nothing to do with it's value. There are things we love in video games that are approaching 40 years old. Innovation is not automatically good, often times it ends up terrible or worse off. The core mechanics of ff14 arn't what are hurting it's jobs, it's a lack of creativity in implementing those jobs that is.

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Originally Posted by Yorumi

The age of a system has nothing to do with it's value. There are things we love in video games that are approaching 40 years old. Innovation is not automatically good, often times it ends up terrible or worse off. The core mechanics of ff14 arn't what are hurting it's jobs, it's a lack of creativity in implementing those jobs that is.

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I agree 100% I meant to say the model stifles creativity which I am sad to say square is not above that influence. But you do have to change SOME things else we just keep having these nerf vs buff arguments every patch for every mmo ever

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Originally Posted by Schondetta

I agree 100% I meant to say the model stifles creativity which I am sad to say square is not above that influence. But you do have to change SOME things else we just keep having these nerf vs buff arguments every patch for every mmo ever

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Not really. You can make interesting classes within the framework. The problem is not the core game mechanics so much as the desire by mmo companies to keep people on the treadmill perpetually. It's not lack of creativity, it's lack of desire. Think about our dungeons in this game. Since the end of ARR all our dungeons are copy/paste, it's 2 trash pulls, 1 boss, 2 trash pulls 1 boss, 2 trash pulls 1 boss and done. They just put a new coat of paint on each one. Raids? 1 Boss fight, with 4 total fights released every raid patch. It never changes. Why is every combo in the game no more than 3 buttons long? There's nothing mechanically limiting that.

It's not the game mechanics stifling creativity in ff14, it's a total lack of desire on SE's part to be creative. I could come up with all kinds of ways to make some very interesting classes, and would be capable of balancing them and I'm just some bozo on the forums. Plenty of others here could do so as well.

Think about some of these questions, why are they so afraid to allow us to debuff bosses? I'm talking things like paralyze, blind, stun, slow or other such things? They could easily balance fights around the use of these abilities. Why do true support classes not exists? I'm not talking bard and mch that have a couple of useful things, I'm talking true support that has big buffs and debuffs. They'd be required? Well yeah, just like a tank is, or a healer, or dps. Why not explore a lot of the alternate resource management systems?

I started to suspect in HW but SB has confirmed it. SE has absolutely no desire to do anything interesting. They seek to stay in the holding pattern. Continue to copy/paste dungeons and raids, as well as just using a standard stat progression equation to perpetuate the treadmill. Again this has nothing to do with the core mechanics, it is totally and entirely a complete lack of desire to be creative and do anything more except the bare minimum.

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Originally Posted by Yorumi

The age of a system has nothing to do with it's value. There are things we love in video games that are approaching 40 years old. Innovation is not automatically good, often times it ends up terrible or worse off. The core mechanics of ff14 arn't what are hurting it's jobs, it's a lack of creativity in implementing those jobs that is.

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The creativity is restricted by the stupid concept that everything has to be perfectly balanced and perfectly viable for every piece of content. Pair that with duty finder and you put a lot of limits on what you can do with jobs.

You will never see for example an evasion tank. Nor will you see a glass cannon dps job. Or even an aoe king that's weak at single target damage. You will never see content that require crowd control of any real form. Balance is the reason sleep has never been utilised in oven for example. The second you require mobs to be slept you tilt the scales in favour of blm for example which breaks the balance. However you could have a fight where magic damage isn't effective and balance the job that way.

Duty finder also because well what happened with tanks basically. Get 2 p aladins in your party amazing defence but good luck clearing those dps checks. 2 wins raw healing power but no support or utility same problem. Theres no flexibility in party composition. Taking a whm for example doesnt mean you only need one healer because there so powerful. But sch and ast you might need 2 but they offer more deeps.

The very design of the game places a lot of limits on there creativity and options.

Which goes to back to my earlier post and tanks.

Paladin used to be the ultra defence tank. Warrior used to be the ultra offence tank. Now though they're exactly the same. Only the weapon is different

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Originally Posted by Dzian

The very design of the game places a lot of limits on there creativity and options.

Which goes to back to my earlier post and tanks.

Paladin used to be the ultra defence tank. Warrior used to be the ultra offence tank. Now though they're exactly the same. Only the weapon is different

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You're looking at it the wrong way. A class should not be defined by how much of a stat it has, but how it does it's job. A tank should not be defined by how much defense or offense they have, those are just numbers. Think of it this way, if you took two tanks, gave them both the exact same kit, literally identical skills, with just different names and animations, but made Tank A have more mitigation, and tank B have more potency on the skills we'd all say that's boring as all hell. Lets look at the opposite extreme though, both tanks have exactly the same mitigation, and exact same dps, but they both play radically differently. They have different resource management, totally different combos and playstyle. We'd all be praising the design. Here's the thing, since both have the same mitigation and same dps they fulfill that requirement of all classes being viable on all content. You're also not worried about getting multiple of each one in duty finder.

Now with different class design it could mean that skill ceilings are higher and not everyone is capable of performing on a class. That shouldn't be a problem though as long as there are accessible classes. The good players will enjoy the high skill classes and others need to get get good or play another class.

Even when it comes to things like sleep, or CC in general. They could easily define a 4th role of support and it's classes all have buffs and CC and dubuffs and such. Likewise since it's already required, nothing is really stopping them from giving CC to healers and requiring it. They could even implement other types of CC that fit with other classes, like stunning fear: "Your rage filled shout makes enemies so afraid they cannot move or act, effect ends upon taking damage."

It's all there if they want to use it. However, as long as classes are defined solely by how much defense, or how much offense they have, yes you're right there's not much they can really do.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

Job identity is pretty much dead. Everything has been homogenized so much in the name of balance that any uniqueness and individuality between jobs is almost non existent.

Tanks are a perfect example here. Where the game began paladins had the identity of defensive fortress style tank. While warriors where the brutally offensive orientated tank.

As the game has progressed though there's almost nothing that separates them. Plds can do as much if not more dps than warriors can. Warriors can survive all the same tank busters a paladin can. They nearly always share gear which in turn means they're defence and stats are the same. They've been balanced so much that they have no identity anymore. Dark as well.

Healers as well. Every one can heal just as well as the next with very little identity setting them a part. They tried to make whm a pure healer but that didn't work cos that extra healing power just wasn't necessary because balance means sch and ast also had to be able to cope. So again healer identities are gone.

Dps again much the same. On the most basic levels virtually all dps bring the same to the table. Every dps has some form of aoe attack. For example you don't have an aoe king that sucks at single target. Or a single target king that sucks at aoe. Now every melee has access to goad and invigorate natively. Goad being one tool that set a ninja apart now homogenized to all melee.

It's the idea of balance and homogenization that every job has to be perfectly viable in every situation that completely destroys any real chance of job identity.

The only real difference between melee for example is the weapon they hold.

This is also why crowd control has never been utiisised in this game. Silences sleeps binds heavy stuns all exist but have never been utilised.. Throughout 2.0 and 3.0 they were only ever used as a dps increase. And never touched for there actual effect. So those unique elements jobs bought to a party were never actually used.

I cannot tell you the last time anything actually "had" to be slept for example. or bound in place by a bard. none of those things even though they are in the game have never been made use of because of balance.. and that's why job identity is gone.

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I just wanted to say that I agree with just about everything you said.

Also that you are the only other Lala I've seen with the same hair colors, and nearly the same complexion as me. we are nearly twins lol. And both on Sargantas. And both Tanks.

What are the odds.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

You will never see content that require crowd control of any real form. Balance is the reason sleep has never been utilized in oven for example.

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Not really. Poor design and their inability to fix a simple problem is why the devs don't allow Sleep to be used.

Instead of having to give themselves even more work by creating barriers between dungeon sections, they only needed to:

- Remove Deep Sleep: No more AoE sleep.
- Set dungeon mobs to ignore the boss room barriers: Means you can't just ignore mobs and run to the boss. The train will follow you into the boss room, through the barrier and obliterate you.
- (Optional) Make trash hit harder so that it is a lot easier to die if you pull a lot of mobs.

CC would need to become more spread out, or involve adds in boss fights. I think of the Kel'thuzad fight that mind controls raid members, requiring your mages in the raid to polymorph MC'd members until the MC wears off, and ask myself why SE doesn't do anything like that, for example.

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The second you require mobs to be slept you tilt the scales in favour of blm for example which breaks the balance.

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Machinist

22 Tranquilizer Dart - Puts target to sleep. Receiving damage will cancel the effect. Duration: 30s

Astrologian

38 Stop - Prevents target from moving or performing any actions. Receiving damage will cancel the effect. Duration: 30s.

Red Mage

15 Versleep - Puts target to sleep. Receiving damage will cancel the effect. Duration: 30s.

Dark Knight

46 Torment - Draw out hallucinations that confuse and torment target, preventing them from moving or taking actions. Receiving damage will cancel the effect. Duration: 30s. Cooldown: 60s.

I think with that, we have enough CC spread out that we can go ahead and make CC a little more important throughout content.

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Paladin used to be the ultra defense tank. Warrior used to be the ultra offence tank. Now though they're exactly the same. Only the weapon is different

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Being the ultra defense tank is what got PLD flushed down the toilet last expansion. If you want to create differences between tanks, you need look no further than parts of the tank paradigm and go from there.

By comparison, none of the WoW tanks had anything about damage (at most, Death Knights developed a knack for soloing older content because of how the Vengeance mechanic worked in combination with Death Strike/Blood Shield). Two of the tanks used sword and shield, one getting angry when hit and the other using holy magic to partially reflect the damage. One turned into a bear with high armor and high HP to make up for their lack of blocks and parries. One drained HP from their enemy over the course of a fight (Death Strike healing + Bloodworms) and could shield themselves as long as resources allowed while still having some basic mitigation cooldowns. One relied on keeping effects active (+dodge, +parry) and managing a mechanic that split damage taken (80% on hit, 20% over 12s), along with a self heal. These are the sort of distinctions you want between tanks. Making one the "defense tank" and another the "damage tank" is laughable when you compare it to that.