The design formula and job difficulty segregation are on brand

This is directly taken from this reddit thread. Please make sure to peruse it in its entirety and keep in mind that it has gone through translations.

Nothing new to me under the sun, but I still find it interesting to get the game's producer say it in such clear terms:

- They do balance jobs according to an arbitrary rating of difficulty and complexity. Surely that's why RDM can't outpace a SMN in damage output, or that a BRD/MCH is unable to do better than a DNC, for example. The premise being flawed in nature, I could at least attempt to comprehend it from their side if it actually made any sense in what we have in game in the first place. But no, you'll enjoy your jobs sucking because some devs arbitrarily decided that "it's ez". I'm sure that's why tanks are so overpowered, because surely they're the hardest thing to play in the game.

- They follow the same process to design every encounter in the game. Now you have confirmation that everything is formulaic by design. No surprise, always the same things, the same bosses, the same mechanics. They probably think that the visuals and the inevitable initial tank buster or party wide showing at 30s instead of 15s is making a fight different. So enjoy your circular arenas with a boss always doing the same thing in the middle, and your 2 packs > boss > 2 packs > boss > 2 packs > boss dungeons because this ain't about to change, no matter how we were promised new and exciting encounter design for 7.2. Hell, even the devs when surveyed say they do not want to work with people asking for harder and more complicated things to make.

We more or less knew about this, but it still somehow hurts to read, at least for me.

I remember there was evidence that they rated Dark Knight has way more difficulty than other tanks at some point. It may have been Shadowbringers? And obviously it was one of the easiest tanks in terms of rotation. It just didn't feel that way for the first 5 minutes or day of playing. Once you're used to it, it's not very difficult at all, but I doubt the developers play it for more than 5 minutes. Hence the difficulty rating.

They should just scrap difficulty ratings because difficulty depends on the person and how much time they play it for.

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Originally Posted by Valence

This is directly taken from this reddit thread. Please make sure to peruse it in its entirety and keep in mind that it has gone through translations.

Nothing new to me under the sun, but I still find it interesting to get the game's producer say it in such clear terms:

- They do balance jobs according to an arbitrary rating of difficulty and complexity. Surely that's why RDM can't outpace a SMN in damage output, or that a BRD/MCH is unable to do better than a DNC, for example. The premise being flawed in nature, I could at least attempt to comprehend it from their side if it actually made any sense in what we have in game in the first place. But no, you'll enjoy your jobs sucking because some devs arbitrarily decided that "it's ez". I'm sure that's why tanks are so overpowered, because surely they're the hardest thing to play in the game.

- They follow the same process to design every encounter in the game. Now you have confirmation that everything is formulaic by design. No surprise, always the same things, the same bosses, the same mechanics. They probably think that the visuals and the inevitable initial tank buster or party wide showing at 30s instead of 15s is making a fight different. So enjoy your circular arenas with a boss always doing the same thing in the middle, and your 2 packs > boss > 2 packs > boss > 2 packs > boss dungeons because this ain't about to change, no matter how we were promised new and exciting encounter design for 7.2. Hell, even the devs when surveyed say they do not want to work with people asking for harder and more complicated things to make.

We more or less knew about this, but it still somehow hurts to read, at least for me.

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That comment about job difficulty felt crazy to me.

Why RDM dps is so low then, if current is the hardest caster to play optimally? Verraise? I think the value of that spell became so low nowadays to justify it.

BLM, the top tier child, became so easy that the only thing easier is SMN. I'd say it's even easier than DNC and BRD, and the only actual point of BLM difficulty nowadays is dealing with extended movement periods, but it's just a matter of knowing when it's coming and saving the Triplecast for it, since even that barely has any dps impact anymore.

The amount of fail points to the RDM compared to the almost not existent on BLM says a lot. Heck RDM even still has an actual skill ceiling with the oGCD alignment thing.

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Originally Posted by Also from that reddit thread

Meanwhile, I want to build a story where the player is the protagonist.

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Was he even involved with DT?

The job difficulty thing has always annoyed me. So they absolutely neutered summoner and the reward for long time summoner fans is that their job is now undertuned? And as you've already pointed out, this policy doesn't track because some jobs that are objectively simpler to play well do more damage than jobs with more intricacies and execution requirements.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I remember there was evidence that they rated Dark Knight has way more difficulty than other tanks at some point. It may have been Shadowbringers? And obviously it was one of the easiest tanks in terms of rotation. It just didn't feel that way for the first 5 minutes or day of playing. Once you're used to it, it's not very difficult at all, but I doubt the developers play it for more than 5 minutes. Hence the difficulty rating.

They should just scrap difficulty ratings because difficulty depends on the person and how much time they play it for.

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You know what's funny to me? There was a PLL with Q&A just at the release of Stormblood (36 or 37 iirc) where the answer is to a question is that they used to design job power around difficulty but decided to stop.
Yeah right.

I already said all this in that reddit thread, but there are some obvious problems with balancing jobs around "difficulty." First of all the difficulty is a subjective thing. But mostly I don't think very many players choose their job based on difficulty. Some do but for most players I think the biggest factors are either aesthetics, or where the job falls on a DPS chart. Someone who loves the Samurai aesthetic is gonna play SAM, regardless of their ability, they'll just play it badly. And it's not just raiders who care about DPS, low-info players constantly ask "what's the best job" and make choices based on that.

Worst of all they don't even follow their own rules. No one thinks Pictomancer is hard to play, but it isn't balanced like an easy job.

I don't mind balancing around difficulty, in theory.

If you have both extremely easy jobs and extremely hard jobs (not that we do anymore; everything's been pushed towards center-low) and balance them identically, then the only people who have the full range of jobs available to them at a competitive level are your absolute most skilled players, while those who'd struggle to optimize the harder jobs for no reward really would, in effect, be sandbagging their parties.

That said...

1. it's a waste to develop an intentionally easy job, as that just means arbitrarily limiting the gameplay depth and performance, both, one can reach via a given set of EXP and gear, and
   
   
2. for any actual improvement to job selection, that "difficulty" would have to be based on something rather more objective, such as alpha tests for a given job experiencing a far wider or narrower standard deviation than others across a given phase, fight, tier, or expansion.

There's no reality where CBU3 is balancing job DPS around difficulty. Maybe Yoshi-P is talking about roles, and not balance within the same role.

If they want braindead easy jobs across the board - with their current PVE design - then they need to deliver twice as many fights/duties or find a way to make their content stay fresh for longer. How they make their fights, extremely formulaic and scripted to be executed with little to no deviations, leave nothing interesting after you cleared a couple of times. If jobs were complex, it wouldn't be an issue because you'd still have your "perfected gameplay" entertainment to justify running fights on recelars.

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Originally Posted by Valence

- They do balance jobs according to an arbitrary rating of difficulty and complexity.

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LMAO, ok. So according to SE. SMN harder to play than RDM? VPR harder than SAM? DNC harder than MCH? Thats why they do more dps?

-Not that there is a Job hard to play in this game, but some jobs are less braindead than others ig.

I would be in favour of small difficulty balance (AKA more difficult job having room for SLIGHTLY more damage) but theirs really nothing to balance anymore as every job is a bland mesh of one another.

Don't really think anyone can brag that their job is cool and unique more difficult!!! and that's why they should do 0.2% more damage then your job! Because every job at this point is just copies of each other, I mean the last bastion of that was Black mage now it's just bland mage might as well play a healer with how little you manage on it.

I mean we can debate in theory that Reaper is easier then Ninja or something like that but the gap between both of them is so small that a 0.1% damage variance wouldn't even be justified anymore, which is likely a goal of the devs if you think about it because the crusade of "No Jobs left behind" actually means all jobs suffer from a gameplay perspective and instead of being miserable because woah my job does 0.5% less damages!!! we are now miserable because our jobs were slowly remade into the bland generic formular.. Aka builder spender burst 2 minutes.

Though I'll keep coping in 8.0 we will get job talents and we will have a cutscene where our warrior of light personally destroys the two minute meta and we get interesting job design and encounters and I get to say Hi to my beloved real DOT goring blade and we defeat the imposter fake burst goring blade who is lame and is boring.

I'd honestly love to see the Developers difficulty ranking of the jobs

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Originally Posted by brinn12

There's no reality where CBU3 is balancing job DPS around difficulty. Maybe Yoshi-P is talking about roles, and not balance within the same role.

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Yeah that must mean that tanks are so incredibly hard to play, right?

As I said in another thread, this genuinely seems like nonsense to me. Like I’m huffing copium that it was a mistranslation or misunderstand because it makes no sense whatsoever in the face of actual evidence?

Summoner is almost unanimously judged as the easiest job in the game yet it’s higher than all three phys ranged?! Like from my perspective Machinist should be the top dps then, because it just makes no sense to me at all lol (what do you mean I don’t just press the glowing buttons?!). Plus isn’t Viper generally considered straightforward and simplistic? Yet it’s the top performer? This ain’t adding up, people!

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Originally Posted by Connor

As I said in another thread, this genuinely seems like nonsense to me. Like I’m huffing copium that it was a mistranslation or misunderstand because it makes no sense whatsoever in the face of actual evidence?

Summoner is almost unanimously judged as the easiest job in the game yet it’s higher than all three phys ranged?! Like from my perspective Machinist should be the top dps then, because it just makes no sense to me at all lol (what do you mean I don’t just press the glowing buttons?!). Plus isn’t Viper generally considered straightforward and simplistic? Yet it’s the top performer? This ain’t adding up, people!

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Phys ranged is still paying for the sins of Bard in 2.0, where they were incredibly overpowered and you would commonly go into alliance raid roulette and end up with 10 of the 15 DPS on Bard. It's an incredibly outdated design philosophy they they refuse to back off on.

Anyone knows what's happening with Bard players? Done several times unreal and Bards tend to be last on dps spot where even healers outdps them which is incredible. I wonder if I was just unlucky with players or this job definitely feels bad.

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Originally Posted by MayuAmakura

Anyone knows what's happening with Bard players? Done several times unreal and Bards tend to be last on dps spot where even healers outdps them which is incredible. I wonder if I was just unlucky with players or this job definitely feels bad.

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Bard generates a lot of its DPS from raid buffs which aren’t seen on the agro list (~~or the overlay DPS meter from what I’ve seen from people who stream with them on~~) purely from their pDPS they do less than tanks and are Just above healers. Healers then also generate healing agro (especially if you get a WHM medica 2 spammer)

BRD is just also not a very easy job to play either so people are likely only playing it to like 80% of its actual capacity

BRD currently tends to output similar or slightly above personal damage than tanks when both are played properly. It also provides the party with something around 20% of their total contribution (or an added value equal to 27.5% if their personal dps), effectively putting them way above tanks by that margin.
Obviously BRD also lags approximately 10% behind the highest damage dealers in total party contribution so... lol.

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Originally Posted by Valence

- They follow the same process to design every encounter in the game. Now you have confirmation that everything is formulaic by design. No surprise, always the same things, the same bosses, the same mechanics. They probably think that the visuals and the inevitable initial tank buster or party wide showing at 30s instead of 15s is making a fight different. So enjoy your circular arenas with a boss always doing the same thing in the middle, and your 2 packs > boss > 2 packs > boss > 2 packs > boss dungeons because this ain't about to change, no matter how we were promised new and exciting encounter design for 7.2. Hell, even the devs when surveyed say they do not want to work with people asking for harder and more complicated things to make.

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I think this framing is misleading. This is the relevant section of the interview:

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Yoshida Naoki: Our process goes like something like this.

We start with a specific theme for the fight. Say, for instance, painting. Then every mechanics’ from the boss will revolve around re-painting paintings. This concept will then be approved by the content lead in charge of the content, associate directors, and finally me.

Once approved, our battle design planner starts planning each phases. For example: Phase 1 is to allow players to learn what to look for on each painting and act on everything; On phase 3 mechanics from before combines together. After we approve the design for each phase, we then add in a programmer and our battle designer builds a detailed timeline like ‘5 second into the fight and we had a raidwide’; ’15 second in we had a tank buster’. Battler designer team then pitches unique mechanics to programmers and ask if what they request can be achieved in according to the timeline. Our programmer gives their feedback, builds the programming of boss according to that timeline, and both sides bounce back and forth until they finally finished designing the fight.

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Now, there is certainly a process described here, but that process is about how the workflow functions across multiple departments on the way to putting out finished content. You could argue that parts of it are overly rigid, like that every fight seems to include a fixed timeline or that programmers are the ones making the initial decisions on raidwides and tankbusters so they might be less focused on having the fight feel unique than the creative professionals—I think those are valid points. It's not as you seem to imply though, that the whole of every encounter is working off some cookiecutter blueprint demanding a circular arena and a spread/stack mechanic at some point, etc. It actually sounds quite open-ended beyond the basic constraint of needing to operate on a timer, which I'll admit I wish they did more to change up both in fight and job design. It is kind of depressing to be able to map out the exact GCD you'll be on when a mechanic happens every single pull.

EDIT: I misread the quote at first; it is indeed the battle planners who lay out the initial timeline, which makes a lot more sense.

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Originally Posted by Bitmoar

The job difficulty thing has always annoyed me. So they absolutely neutered summoner and the reward for long time summoner fans is that their job is now undertuned? And as you've already pointed out, this policy doesn't track because some jobs that are objectively simpler to play well do more damage than jobs with more intricacies and execution requirements.

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SE neutering summoner in EW made me change my main to both red mage and monk after completing Asphodelos. I wanted to give the new summoner a chance back then, but the simplicity just took out all of the enjoyment and fun I had playing it.

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Originally Posted by StarlessSky

I think this framing is misleading. This is the relevant section of the interview:



Now, there is certainly a process described here, but that process is about how the workflow functions across multiple departments on the way to putting out finished content. You could argue that parts of it are overly rigid, like that every fight seems to include a fixed timeline or that programmers are the ones making the initial decisions on raidwides and tankbusters so they might be less focused on having the fight feel unique than the creative professionals—I think those are valid points. It's not as you seem to imply though, that the whole of every encounter is working off some cookiecutter blueprint demanding a circular arena and a spread/stack mechanic at some point, etc. It actually sounds quite open-ended beyond the basic constraint of needing to operate on a timer, which I'll admit I wish they did more to change up both in fight and job design. It is kind of depressing to be able to map out the exact GCD you'll be on when a mechanic happens every single pull.

EDIT: I misread the quote at first; it is indeed the battle planners who lay out the initial timeline, which makes a lot more sense.

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Alright, then if the process isn't to blame, then what is to blame for the cookie cutter rigid formulae and the copy pasted fight mechanics and gameplay everywhere?

Who knows? The interview certainly doesn't tell us. That's the only point I'm making.

Feel free to speculate, but it is just speculation.