Dps jobs share at least 90% of their abilities

If your job is a dps it probably has at least 90% of these abilites:

- Deals damage, fills some gauge/gains a marker;
- Deals AoE damage, fills some gauge/gains a marker;
- Deals damage, applies a buff/debuff/dot;
- Deals AoE damage, applies a buff/debuff/dot;
- Deals damage but OGCD;
- Deals AoE damage but OGCD;
- Spends gauge/marker, deals big damage:
- Spends gauge/marker, deals big AoE damage;
- Deals damage but ranged (if your job is melee) or instant cast (if your job is magic dps);
- Some gap closer/movement tool;
- Some instant gauge/mark filler
- A couple of self buffs (probably a damage buff or a defensive);
- A couple of party buffs;
- Fill the rest with combos/procs.

Which means that all the jobs identities are on their gauge management and that's it. There's no cool unique ability that a single job does that no other doesn't unless it's some weird thing that doesn't apply in gameplay very often.

Yeah, and iirc it's because they don't want a situation where a DPS is shunned because it doesn't have the correct seasonings, so to speak.

If you look at this particular bit of job design as a way to influence in-game community behavior,it makes more sense.

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Originally Posted by Irenia

Yeah, and iirc it's because they don't want a situation where a DPS is shunned because it doesn't have the correct seasonings, so to speak.

If you look at this particular bit of job design as a way to influence in-game community behavior,it makes more sense.

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And in turn makes everything absolutely boring to play because they are actual copies of each other

Design a job that doesn't.

I am actually intrigued as to what someone could come up with.

https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca88...ICreoGez2zynLY

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Design a job that doesn't.

I am actually intrigued as to what someone could come up with.

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It's more complicated than just designing a new Job, they've pigeonholed all design. A class/character in a video game is a reflection of it's environment and the ways it can navigate said environment.

The worst problem is they don't want to design varied environments and encounters. So what happens is you're forced to basically give everyone everything to complete them. When you only have 1 hallway, you need to make sure everyone can get down that hallway. CC, buffs, debuffs, encounter management.. None of that is required.

There are ways to design new characters, but we've both boiled everything down into their pure meta form AND have given the existing characters everything. So really the only thing we can do is just make new Jobs that have different ways to build/spend while staying within the strict meta of timing.

At this point in XIV, there needs to be a complete shift in environment/encounter design - Or we're going to just continue to boil and release more mary sue builder/spender jobs.

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Originally Posted by R041

It's more complicated than just designing a new Job, they've pigeonholed all design.

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The problem is, you cannot have some sort of CC that is unique to one job to the point where you NEED to have that job for an instance, not only does this go against what the devs want, in that all jobs have to be able to clear in any (reasonable) composition, but it could also reduce the impact of attacks.

Going with stuff commonly queued through DF. You get a dungeon/trial that has a mechanic that this one job can stop/change in one way or another. If you happen to have the job, great, however, if you do not have this one job, you cannot make that mechanic deadly as you cannot guarantee that one job is in the party.

Going onto extremes and to a higher extent, Savage and even Ultimate. This one mechanic is likely to be deadly, so you need to bring this one job in order not to die to it. This would be even worse in Savage raiding/ultimate encounters. Imagine getting to the last boss of Savage, or the last phase of Ultimate, and wiping because you did not have this one job for this one mechanic, however, noone has this one job levelled/aren't good enough to raid with it. You effectively halt all progress for something silly.

If you have another unique way a job can function, then by all means, explain another way. Even if you have to change the fight design slightly, I'm all ears.

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Originally Posted by R041

At this point in XIV, there needs to be a complete shift in environment/encounter design - Or we're going to just continue to boil and release more mary sue builder/spender jobs.

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This will never happen. We'll continue down this road, else imo we'll have a situation on our hands very akin to how WoW approaches class/encounter designs.

What I would like to see if the bringing back of risk vs. reward type abilities. i.e. cleric stance.
I also remember a time when wars had an ability that gave them quite a good mitigation but after the ability wears off it debuffs them with a detriment. Concussion, was it ?
It would be nice if dps had to actually manage this type of thing.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Design a job that doesn't.

I am actually intrigued as to what someone could come up with.

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It's a feedback forum so the actual game designers have an idea of what the community wants. I don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that when a rocket explodes it was probably faulty. Nor do I need to design a new one. lol

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

...

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All you did was repeat what I said, but praised it. lol

This is game design 101. Characters need to have faults to introduce challenges. Encounters need to allow multiple methods of dealing with them. Even moreso in an MMORPG, or it's just a singleplayer beat-em-up. I cannot rely on you, if there's no reason to rely on you. There is nothing in the design outside of healing players that is emergent or reactive. It's all passive and learned. This is especially true for the Job rotations/mechanics.

I am 100% saying we need to stop being damn carebears about everything, and understand that not every job should be able to do everything, with perfect precision, in the same timing, for all content. This isn't the gotcha you think it is, it's not a good thing. It's the reason we're in this situation to begin with. Even Melee no longer have the fault they were designed for.

It's difficult to come up with a solution to this, because they've made it almost impossible over the years with how efficient they've made every encounter. You are thinking within the box that they've so thoughtfully put you into.
If raid is so important to force every class to be viable at, they don't need to introduce these class faults into them that teeter on full failure, but they do need to introduce class faults overall.

Godamn Super Mario Bros 2 has more complex environment and class design than FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

It's a feedback forum so the actual game designers have an idea of what the community wants. I don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that when a rocket explodes it was probably faulty. Nor do I need to design a new one. lol

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The problem is, the list basically covers everything you could possibly do, which leaves no room for anything else. Let's put this in a different way.

Tanks:
-Damage that provides gauge/marker
-AoE that provides gauge/marker
-Defensive oGCDs
-Enmity swapping tools
-Damage oGCDs (including AoE)
-Buff oGCDs
-Raidwide mitigation
-Gap Closer
-Combos to fill in the rest

Tanks share at least 90% 90% of this list. Fantastic. You have just listed everything a tank can do and each variation that they can do it. There is nothing else to add as you have covered all bases. If you want something unique, it needs to not be on the list of everything, however, my claim is that you can design whatever job you want, it WILL fall into the list one way or another. Even if you want to change fight/job design, you will still end up with a job that will follow the list. That is how broad the list that was made is.

Most MMO's I've played are like this. *shrug*

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

The problem is, the list basically covers everything you could possibly do, which leaves no room for anything else. Let's put this in a different way.

Tanks:
-Damage that provides gauge/marker
-AoE that provides gauge/marker
-Defensive oGCDs
-Enmity swapping tools
-Damage oGCDs (including AoE)
-Buff oGCDs
-Raidwide mitigation
-Gap Closer
-Combos to fill in the rest

Tanks share at least 90% 90% of this list. Fantastic. You have just listed everything a tank can do and each variation that they can do it. There is nothing else to add as you have covered all bases. If you want something unique, it needs to not be on the list of everything, however, my claim is that you can design whatever job you want, it WILL fall into the list one way or another. Even if you want to change fight/job design, you will still end up with a job that will follow the list. That is how broad the list that was made is.

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Rofl Lost Ark's gunlancer is more interesting than any FF14 tank with only 8+1 skills. You know, you actually feel like tanking in that game.

Anytime they introduce something interesting or unique, people just bitch about how it isn't in line with their meta and then it gets smoothed out to be like everybody else. If you want class fantasy, you'd better learn to enjoy PvP I guess.

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Originally Posted by R041

All you did was repeat what I said, but praised it. lol

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You say praise, I say flaw.

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This is game design 101. Characters need to have faults to introduce challenges. Encounters need to allow multiple methods of dealing with them. Even moreso in an MMORPG, or it's just a singleplayer beat-em-up. I cannot rely on you, if there's no reason to rely on you. There is nothing in the design outside of healing players that is emergent or reactive. It's all passive and learned. This is especially true for the Job rotations/mechanics.

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If the fault is too severe, noone will take the job. If an encounter has multiple ways of doing it, the easiest and safest way will always win out, which could mean a guaranteed slot for one specific job and not adapting to the fight dependant on the party. If you cannot rely on me, why should I rely on you? Nothing wrong with reactive boss mechanics, but that isn't the point in the OP.

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I am 100% saying we need to stop being damn carebears about everything, and understand that not every job should be able to do everything, with perfect precision, in the same timing, for all content. This isn't the gotcha you think it is, it's not a good thing. It's the reason we're in this situation to begin with. Even Melee no longer have the fault they were designed for.

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If I only want to level Black Mage, but this fight is ass for Black Mage, why should I spend the effort to level Red Mage when I don't want to? Why is it a good thing that you effectively force people to level what they do not want to level?

As for hitboxes, make them smaller, and give melees their positionals back. This has nothing to do with the OPs post however.

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It's difficult to come up with a solution to this, because they've made it almost impossible over the years with how efficient they've made every encounter. You are thinking within the box that they've so thoughtfully put you into.
If raid is so important to force every class to be viable at, they don't need to introduce these class faults into them that teeter on full failure, but they do need to introduce class faults overall.

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The box OP has drawn is so vague and broad, anything you potentially design will fit into the list in one way or another. Most of the list is just building and spending gauge, with some oGCDs, and ten the AoE equivalent. 10-11 out of the 14 are just the bare minimum you expect, or do you not want jobs to have oGCDs?

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Godamn Super Mario Bros 2 has more complex environment and class design than FFXIV.

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Single player games cannot be compared to MMOs. The main reason? You don't have a community that expects a fight to be done a certain way to keep consistency between fights and different parties. You can play the single player game however you want, whether it happens to be an RPG or not, however, there will always be that minimum expectation imposed upon everyone in an MMO setting.

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Originally Posted by Kickwars

Rofl Lost Ark's gunlancer is more interesting than any FF14 tank with only 8+1 skills. You know, you actually feel like tanking in that game.

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Silence TitanMen, stick with one character and stop making alts to troll. Maybe then somebody will take your opinion seriously.

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Originally Posted by Kickwars

Rofl Lost Ark's gunlancer is more interesting than any FF14 tank with only 8+1 skills. You know, you actually feel like tanking in that game.

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Thats the thing though there are "bad" jobs in Lost Ark that folks refuse to take into high end or find too difficult to use. Its a lot harder to have that happen in FFXIV, happens sure but rarely and often gets quickly mended...

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Silence TitanMen, stick with one character and stop making alts to troll. Maybe then somebody will take your opinion seriously.

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You mad that a cashgrab KMMO can make more compelling tank gameplay with one-third of the buttons

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Originally Posted by Hanayumi

Thats the thing though there are "bad" jobs in Lost Ark that folks refuse to take into high end or find too difficult to use. Its a lot harder to have that happen in FFXIV, happens sure but rarely and often gets quickly mended...

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You can play any job in FF14, easily. It's kind of insane people still want to be one-trick ponies in 2023. A bit of imbalance for more heterogeneity and sharper gameplay is totally fine given that it has never been easier to level a job up. Unlike Lost Ark where you will never have an alt job catch up to you unless you whale.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Single player games cannot be compared to MMOs. The main reason? You don't have a community that expects a fight to be done a certain way to keep consistency between fights and different parties. You can play the single player game however you want, whether it happens to be an RPG or not, however, there will always be that minimum expectation imposed upon everyone in an MMO setting.

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I can't take you seriously when you actually argued with my Super Mario Bros 2 meme. lol

It's okay that you enjoy mary-sue design for everyone with the power of friendship, but for those of us that don't? It's why this thread was created.

The rest? Literally nothing-discussion when you refuse to understand the basics of character conflict and design. At that point, there's no discussion. You're a brick wall.

we share at least 90% of DNA

Kupo <3 them spreadsheets kupo <3 lol jk

What I want them to make:

A bestmaster job who captures monsters and uses them to fight other monsters;
A geomancer job whose spells have different properities based on the current weather and terrain.

What they would probably make:

A beastmaster job that summons monsters as sfx for their abilities;
A geomancer job that uses weather as sfx for their spells.

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Originally Posted by Vandso

What I want them to make:

A bestmaster job who captures monsters and uses them to fight other monsters;
A geomancer job whose spells have different properities based on the current weather and terrain.

What they would probably make:

A beastmaster job that summons monsters as sfx for their abilities;
A geomancer job that uses weather as sfx for their spells.

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Beastmaster has a lot of potential as a Limited Job, I think. BLU has some really fun unique content, and most people that meme on it haven't even tried it. I imagine something akin to the The Masked Carnivale, where you need specific monsters to clear unique challenges. And then of course parties of 8 Beast Masters clearing Savage could also be a lot of fun.

Geomancer sounds too situational, as you described it. I think other people have said this before, but I feel the issue it's not so much with Jobs themselves, and more with encounter design. I'm not a game designer and I don't run the hard content enough to offer realistic ideas, but I think of stuff like... "This phase requires more Black Magic, so BLM and RDM can provide good value here" or "Boss is immune unless Bard sings this song", but I guess that runs the risk of becoming gimmicky and forcing people into certain jobs for some encounters? I guess they wanna avoid that, and I read somewhere that SVG/ULT raiders don't care too much for gimmicky fights.

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Originally Posted by Vandso

Which means that all the jobs identities are on their gauge management and that's it. There's no cool unique ability that a single job does that no other doesn't unless it's some weird thing that doesn't apply in gameplay very often.

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Players complain when one job can do something and others can't. In fact, even as we speak, I see people complaining about that on these forums occasionally. They are asking for PLD to get their gap closer earlier like other tanks (in other words, homogenization). Before that, they were asking for WAR's gap closer to not cost gauge (homogenization). Before that, they were asking for PLD to have a gap closer in the first place like DRK (homogenization). Before that, they were saying WAR lacked utility compared to PLD, so SE responded and gave it things like Shake it Off and Nascent Flash (homogenization). Before that, they were saying blocks should work on magic (resulting in Sheltron being similar to Rampart) and that Parry shouldn't exist (resulting in Raw Intuition being similar to Rampart).

The point is, homogenization is something players asked for, most likely including many of the people who later criticize it since many of these requests are on the forums too. They just didn't realize they were asking for homogenization.

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- Deals damage, fills some gauge/gains a marker;

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Gauges replaced status effect tracking in Stormblood, because SE felt status effects were too complicated for many casual players to track or understand, and even got confusing for some veterans, showing an example of a long row of status effects that included cross-class skills. That's why the ones on PLD probably won't last.

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Originally Posted by R041

I can't take you seriously when you actually argued with my Super Mario Bros 2 meme. lol

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At the root, it is probably closer to being accurate than you probably realise.

As for your points, you seem to want something, but do not care about how it potentially affects the game, either positively or negatively. You just want it how you want it. Unfortunately, that isn't how it works, there are consequences for everything and understanding the consequences is important when making decisions, especially in cases where a potential decision limits party formation.

you will fell cleave and you will like it.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

At the root, it is probably closer to being accurate than you probably realise.

As for your points, you seem to want something, but do not care about how it potentially affects the game, either positively or negatively. You just want it how you want it. Unfortunately, that isn't how it works, there are consequences for everything and understanding the consequences is important when making decisions, especially in cases where a potential decision limits party formation.

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Yeah no sh*t, that's what I was literally explaining. We're saying the same thing, but my position is that fun and engagement is more important overall. Where you believe balance is king. Balance is where fun goes to die, because everyone and everything is equal.

It's like you understand the issue, but refuse to comprehend that it's a problem for replayability and engagement. They're complex issues that have been boiled down into simple systems by SE to avoid any future complicated design decisions or need of foresight. They're afraid of problem solving and balance issues - But still, to this day fail to prevent those issues no matter how hard they try. So maybe.. Just maybe stop caring so much about balance, and focus on gameplay and class fantasy.

It's like SE has anxiety that it'll make the wrong decisions, so it just avoids confrontation and reduces the amount of potential problems by removing them entirely.

There's an interview recently where someone asks WoW devs how it must be difficult to design all of the abilities and allow customization through a Talent Tree. Knowing someone might not pick that player because yada, yada. While XIV is so afraid of it - WoW just doesn't care. They're more focused on game feel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af99bZVqRsc&t=504s

This is also a great discussion from Work To Game "Why Jobs Are Homogenized and Not Unique?" https://youtu.be/PDxI4nv7JmI

We SEE Class Fantasy, but we don't FEEL Class Fantasy. It just no longer exists today. Everyone's a Builder/Spender Ranged DPS.
When the meta and content style is set in stone, when the basic encounters are no longer engaging, the combat overall becomes stale. It's felt stale since Shadowbringers, and it continues to be stale. It's only getting worse.

The actual irony that we're so happy to have all classes on one character.. Yet they all do the same. exact. thing. Seriously missed opportunities with hot swapping classes that have actual diversity and playstyles.
They're just grind milestones now, nothing else. You know it, and I know it.

what a shame SE.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

you will fell cleave and you will like it.

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No, we will fell cleave and we will like it, every job will eventually just fell cleave, only fell cleave.

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Originally Posted by R041

Where you believe balance is king. Balance is where fun goes to die, because everyone and everything is equal.

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Funny how in this thread we can clearly see who are the WoLs and who are the Ascians.

I feel like ppl confuse why we are at the state we are rn with balance when in reality it's the 2 minute meta which was put in to help the more casual base align and such as the main problem. Course we can see it doesn't really work because those players don't really think as hard when it comes to things and hit it whenever. But the other part is the player base that is also the cause like Jeeq mentioned.

Also w2g kinda leand more into a stance of "why isn't ff14 ff11" which usually doesn't help

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Originally Posted by Rymi64

I feel like ppl confuse why we are at the state we are rn with balance when in reality it's the 2 minute meta which was put in to help the more casual base align and such as the main problem. Course we can see it doesn't really work because those players don't really think as hard when it comes to things and hit it whenever. But the other part is the player base that is also the cause like Jeeq mentioned.

Also w2g kinda leand more into a stance of "why isn't ff14 ff11" which usually doesn't help

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That's fair, it's just a good discussion though. SE is so worried about high end/world first, yet it's the other 99% that suffer for it. The 1% will always find ways to not include a certain class due to balance reasons no matter what game.

Just like I'll continue to say, the dungeons being optimized by players shouldn't warrant the dungeons being optimized by developers.

When you design the nuance out of your game, you tend to design the fun out as well.

Ugh. All jobs have you walking or running everywhere. Mounts if able to use.

It's all the same!

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Originally Posted by R041

That's fair, it's just a good discussion though. SE is so worried about high end/world first, yet it's the other 99% that suffer for it. The 1% will always find ways to not include a certain class due to balance reasons no matter what game.

Just like I'll continue to say, the dungeons being optimized by players shouldn't warrant the dungeons being optimized by developers.

When you design the nuance out of your game, you tend to design the fun out as well.

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That's the thing though, they don't design it more for the high end they design it for the more casual ppl that's why we are where we are. If they did design for the high end ppl might be on here saying that jobs are to hard and the like.

Dungeons are also have to cater to the more casual which is why they're usually easy. And also designed to be a "in and out" deal which is why they are the way they are.

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Originally Posted by Irenia

Yeah, and iirc it's because they don't want a situation where a DPS is shunned because it doesn't have the correct seasonings, so to speak.

If you look at this particular bit of job design as a way to influence in-game community behavior,it makes more sense.

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And yet jobs are regulary excluded from parties or flat out unable to clear content until the content is nerfed / the job buffed. Seems like their goal isnt working :)

And before you say "But what about the casual playerbase?" They play content so easy that many of them cant even hit their buttons properly and still clear, job balance doesnt matter to them.

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Originally Posted by Rymi64

That's the thing though, they don't design it more for the high end they design it for the more casual ppl that's why we are where we are. If they did design for the high end ppl might be on here saying that jobs are to hard and the like.

Dungeons are also have to cater to the more casual which is why they're usually easy. And also designed to be a "in and out" deal which is why they are the way they are.

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It's somehow the extremes of both, and nothing in-between.

Well.....yeah. I press a button and it gets me closer to my goals. You know FF14 and Mario Kart are a lot alike.

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Originally Posted by R041

It's somehow the extremes of both, and nothing in-between.

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What even would be good midcore content anyway? I was thinking time attack instances where the better your time, the better your reward. Also the better you play, the higher rolls you get, and once you roll AND win, you cannot roll again until the reset, but you will accumulate tokens one to five per day, depending on your performance, to exchange for the rewards you would otherwise get at the end. You will only see your results and none of the other players'.

Thoughts?

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Originally Posted by EgilTheStressedMage

What even would be good midcore content anyway? I was thinking time attack instances where the better your time, the better your reward. Also the better you play, the higher rolls you get, and once you roll AND win, you cannot roll again until the reset, but you will accumulate tokens one to five per day, depending on your performance, to exchange for the rewards you would otherwise get at the end. You will only see your results and none of the other players'.

Thoughts?

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That's basically m+ but a bit different, which would be by lightyears a better system than the current system, M+ gives rewards based on level of the key (and in the past depending on the time it's beat in you'd get more chests) and once a week gives a "big reward".

Some system around that in FFXIV would not only make FFXIV a bit more competitive but also more entertaining and fun for those that want a challenge.

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Originally Posted by Vandso

What I want them to make:

A bestmaster job who captures monsters and uses them to fight other monsters;
A geomancer job whose spells have different properities based on the current weather and terrain.

What they would probably make:

A beastmaster job that summons monsters as sfx for their abilities;
A geomancer job that uses weather as sfx for their spells.

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I think SCH in XI has something like what you're looking for, where weather provides great bonuses to one of thier spell sets. SCH also has spells to inflist enemies with certain kinds of weather to ensure they can get those bonuses. I'm not real sure, but I think those weather effects also effect other jobs abilities as well.