"A system that rewards effort and innovation" can't be buzzwords for imbalance-get

[Arcell]

So then how would YOU design combat encounters to work against having just those 3 classes shine? How would YOU envision a system where Rangers and Thaums aren't > all?

Personally I think the first step would be to "fix" Emulate so that Thaums can't solo NMs. There's no reason any one class should be able to solo content that others need groups for.

As far as Archers go, give directional AoEs (not necessarily front or wide) that extend past an Archer's range. That way they're in just as much danger as everyone else is. Their ability to stay out of AoE range is a great asset and if you can take that away there will be need for others. Other players who are closer to the enemy can more easily get out of a cone AoE's range by moving around it. Archers are further away and thus must move a greater distance to get out of the cone. Even further maybe give enemies attacks lie Arrow Helix and Iron Tempest that actually don't hit melee range but have a huge radius.

Aside from that giving enemies the ability to reposition themselves mid-fight would help at the very least keep all classes on their toes. What was once at max range could in seconds be in your face.

Outside of things like that though I'm not sure what you could do about fixing it aside from straight numbers balancing.

[Peregrine]

You have no way of knowing that they aren't going to be doing a lot of balancing as it stands in the next few patches.

And you have no way of knowing they do. You have their 4-year start history in XI, where they didn't, and you have their 1-year FFXIV start history where they don't.

I'm not the one without any evidence when I say watch the class balance like a hawk. You actually have no evidence when you say ehhhhhhhhhh let's wait and see.

No, let's not.

[Peregrine]

So then how would YOU design combat encounters to work against having just those 3 classes shine? How would YOU envision a system where Rangers and Thaums aren't > all?

Personally I think the first step would be to "fix" Emulate so that Thaums can't solo NMs. There's no reason any one class should be able to solo content that others need groups for.

As far as Archers go, give directional AoEs (not necessarily front or wide) that extend past an Archer's range. That way they're in just as much danger as everyone else is. Their ability to stay out of AoE range is a great asset and if you can take that away there will be need for others. Other players who are closer to the enemy can more easily get out of a cone AoE's range by moving around it. Archers are further away and thus must move a greater distance to get out of the cone. Even further maybe give enemies attacks lie Arrow Helix and Iron Tempest that actually don't hit melee range but have a huge radius.

Aside from that giving enemies the ability to reposition themselves mid-fight would help at the very least keep all classes on their toes. What was once at max range could in seconds be in your face.

Outside of things like that though I'm not sure what you could do about fixing it aside from straight numbers balancing.

I would implement regimens and strategies that gain exponential momentum based on the different classes in it, and I would make them so beneficial that teams that whore out jobs for imbalance have a difficult time keeping up. Thus, a party with only two or three kinds of classes or jobs in it is always inferior to a party with 6 classes or jobs in it. People flock to imbalance too easily. The solution is to OP balance.

Or have a status effect, where if your party is balanced, you get enhancements like comrade in arms. "Strength in Diversity"--TP regain? Attack and potency boost? Regimen output+30%?

The solution is to overpower balance. Reward diversity. Don't just sit there and develop challenge that benefits the same stunners, sleepers, spike damagers, and ranged attackers as always.

But I'm not in the business of saying how it should be done. I only care about what needs done. I don't care how it's done honestly. You cannot put hackneyed challenge checks into this game, or it'll instantly become and archer and thaumafest.

Honestly my solution to archer is to give meleers multishot. Archers have no business avoiding AoE while being the kings of spike and DPS.

Thaumaturge...yeah it's just a matter of fiddling with their abilities. I like the idea of a magical tank, but if they're the magical tank...they'd best be paying for that with a big fat damage reduction like gladiator does.

They've already proven they can kick the player base's habit of inviting as few people as you can, to the point where parties actively want more people as opposed to wanting as few as possible. They've already designed content where strangers who NM hunt are better off pairing up and helping each other out rather than countercamping.

They can create a system where job diversity is celebrated, not intentionally avoided because it just dilutes good jobs with bad ones.

[Tsuga]

I would implement regimens and strategies that gain exponential momentum based on the different classes in it, and I would make them so beneficial that teams that whore out jobs for imbalance have a difficult time keeping up. Thus, a party with only two or three kinds of classes or jobs in it is always inferior to a party with 6 classes or jobs in it. People flock to imbalance too easily. The solution is to OP balance.

Or have a status effect, where if your party is balanced, you get enhancements like comrade in arms. "Strength in Diversity"--TP regain? Attack and potency boost? Regimen output+30%?

The solution is to overpower balance. Reward diversity. Don't just sit there and develop challenge that benefits the same stunners, sleepers, spike damagers, and ranged attackers as always.

But I'm not in the business of saying how it should be done. I only care about what needs done. I don't care how it's done honestly. You cannot put hackneyed challenge checks into this game, or it'll instantly become and archer and thaumafest.

Honestly my solution to archer is to give meleers multishot. Archers have no business avoiding AoE while being the kings of spike and DPS.

Thaumaturge...yeah it's just a matter of fiddling with their abilities. I like the idea of a magical tank, but if they're the magical tank...they'd best be paying for that with a big fat damage reduction like gladiator does.

These are awesome ideas, but I feel like there's really no way to make sure that EVERY class is included. When it gets to the point that XI did, people are going to hand pick classes/jobs that are better per situation, and there will always be a couple of classes that get left out. It is just too difficult to make perfect balance when there is so much diversity.

I am hopeful that the devs have something up their sleeves, though. Naysaying what they haven't even shown us yet won't fix/change anything, since we have nothing to criticize, yet.

[Peregrine]

Then it is the SITUATIONS that need changed.

Stop making every boss go berserk at 20% life and start spamming AoEs and power attacks. That only plays to stacking archers that can spike it down at the end and mages who don't get hit. It plays against meleers who are at that point simply sitting ducks.

Stop relying on "stun" innovations to avoid death unless all the jobs have stun.

Stop making fights more challenging by simply adding more numbers of enemies. That plays to mages and spike damagers who can immediately take enemies out of the picture. Divine might, what did you do? You Chi blasted or manabursted something to win that, by the demographic none of you probably fought that fight toe to toe with them. You did SOMETHING to avoid the challenge, and I guarantee the dragoon had nothing to do with it.

If you're going to design fights that cater to certain jobs, you can't keep designing the same stupid mechanics that keep playing to the same jobs. If you can't design a fight where you can make a dragoon as wanted as a black mage, your game needs balancing work. Your dragoon needs help.

[Teknoman]

Major lesson FFXIV should have taught you by now: Don't assume the developers can get it right without help and guidance. In fact, assume they can't.
You're willing to take the chance that they know what they're doing. I'm not at this point. My guess is that they already have boss berserk modes at 20% health and massive sleep/paralyze/AoEs that hit anything hard in range as a solution.

And the solution to that will be to get rid of players with your profile.

Heres the thing, its not from the same team, so this should have a totally new set of expectations...or at least expect a more refined/faster paced version of what we saw in XI.

[Peregrine]

I'd feel better if it was strictly the XI team, because they know how badly they screwed up the initial years. Whatever people made archer and thaumaturge clearly don't have a clue or give a **** about job balance.

Tanaka, if anything, was the one guy who realized how badly he did ranger, black mage, bard, and red mage in FFXI. Thieves and dragoons, in fact all meleers, were essentially 2nd class citizens for years.

Yoshida favors playing ranged attackers in MMOs and is likely to drag his feet on the changes that need done for that reason.

Come christmas 2011 we'll all be rangering ranger on our rangers again, just like in 2003. lolmrd. lolpug. lollnc. lolthf. loldrg.

When you can't think of anything useful these jobs can bring to parties that someone else can't already do better, it's time to do what needs done. Not sit there and hope the same situation turns out differently.

FFXI didn't have 4 million players because of class balance issues made the game an inhospitable hell for 60% of its player base. This game cannot afford that mistake.

[DurtiMonkeyToe]

And you have no way of knowing they do. You have their 4-year start history in XI, where they didn't, and you have their 1-year FFXIV start history where they don't.

I'm not the one without any evidence when I say watch the class balance like a hawk. You actually have no evidence when you say ehhhhhhhhhh let's wait and see.

No, let's not.

Unfortunately you're wrong, I do have evidence:

-Changes to actions for Disciplines of War & Magic classes
-Further changes to enhance class uniqueness
-NEW- Adjustment of certain action effects in line with the introduction of dungeons
-NEW- Adjustment of range of effect for actions (single target or area)
-NEW-Adjustment of recast time and MP consumption for actions
-Reexamination of stats

All pulled directly from the LFTP. Sounds a lot like 'balancing' to me.

[Lerris]

The best example I've seen of an encounter rewarding diversity was the first part of the Alexander fight in ToAU, where Raubahn developed resistances to the predominant damage types in his second and third incarnations, encouraging parties to have a melee DD, magic DD and a ranged DD. This of course forced the party to be balanced for the second part of the fight as well.

[Tsuga]

The best example I've seen of an encounter rewarding diversity was the first part of the Alexander fight in ToAU, where Raubahn developed resistances to the predominant damage types in his second and third incarnations, encouraging parties to have a melee DD, magic DD and a ranged DD. This of course forced the party to be balanced for the second part of the fight as well.

Things like that would be great, but then you have the issue of being forced to have a certain job type. What if nobody from your LS has levelled that job, or there's nobody free online from one of those jobs? It's the same issue that we had in XI where we couldn't even level unless we had a fairly specific setup for a party.