Please reconsider stance on blue mage

[Aegis]

Fun is subjective. What someone finds fun, someone else finds boring so of course balance in this case as to supersede it.

I disagree. As you point out, FFXI is, and always has been an imbalanced game. It's been going on for over 12 years now and is SE's most successful ever game.

How important can balance be?

fun > balance

[Dwill]

I disagree. As you point out, FFXI is, and always has been an imbalanced game. It's been going on for over 12 years now and is SE's most successful ever game.

How important can balance be?

fun > balance

Fun is subjective. That's not hard to grasp.

[Aegis]

Fun is subjective. That's not hard to grasp.

Only to a limited extent. Most people can agree on most things.

Watching paint dry: not fun
Playing with your children: fun

If fun were so subjective, so difficult to pin down and design for, no games would ever be made, because games are designed to be, above all other things, fun.

And my point still is, balance isn't as important as you think it is. Otherwise how could such an imbalanced game be so successful? Answer me that.

[Dwill]

Only to a limited extent. Most people can agree on most things.

Watching paint dry: not fun
Playing with your children: fun

If fun were so subjective, so difficult to pin down and design for, no games would ever be made, because games are designed to be, above all other things, fun.

And my point still is, balance isn't as important as you think it is. Otherwise how could such an imbalanced game be so successful? Answer me that.

Balance is as important as I think. FFXI was successful because it was the first Final Fantasy MMO ever done and it had quite a few similarities with EQ so it attracted a lot of people that were fan of either or both. The game was really fun if you were a bard, a samurai or a red mage. Wasn't really as fun for summoners, dragoons or beast master who were all discriminated for playing a class that they had fun with. And what's fun for most people first and foremost is not feeling discriminated for playing something that they enjoy. So yes, balancing the classes to make sure that the players playing they are not left aside for certain content that they want to enjoy, even if it means that certain abilities might look bland and boring to certain people.

[Aegis]

Balance is as important as I think. FFXI was successful because it was the first Final Fantasy MMO ever done and it had quite a few similarities with EQ so it attracted a lot of people that were fan of either or both. The game was really fun if you were a bard, a samurai or a red mage. Wasn't really as fun for summoners, dragoons or beast master who were all discriminated for playing a class that they had fun with. And what's fun for most people first and foremost is not feeling discriminated for playing something that they enjoy. So yes, balancing the classes to make sure that the players playing they are not left aside for certain content that they want to enjoy, even if it means that certain abilities might look bland and boring to certain people.

Lots of games had similarities to EQ, lots of them died off. FFXIV V1 was a Final Fantasy MMO, it flopped hard. Those weren't the only two things going for FFXI. Saying so is pretty disingenuous.

As for the quoted bit, only one of your the jobs you listed as being fun because they were popular (RDM) was even in the top 5 played jobs. MNKS, WARs and THFs all ranked higher and were certainly not FOTM at that point.
(using 2007 census because that was the 'golden era' just after expansion onto xbox, pre WoTG/Abyssea).

FFXI was Imbalanced and successful. ergo balance is not required for success.

It would be hard to argue fun is not required for success with any kind of straight face.

If you want balance, play Rock, Paper, Scissors.

You also go on about how fun is subjective in one post then say how you know what people found fun and what they didn't in another. As if all people found the same things fun/not fun. Most BSTs i knew didn't care that we weren't wanted for parties. That's not what BST was about. That's not how it was balanced. Most RDM players I know didn't like playing RDM at all and did not find it fun.

[Dwill]

Snip

When FFXI came out, there wasn't that many game with an EQ'esque PvE out there. And I said the first Final Fantasy MMO so of course that drove hype so I don't know why you even bring 1.0 in this.

White mages according to that census were the most played yet most White Mage and Red Mage I knew were doing it out of need, not out of fun. That data, while nice, is to be taken with a grain of salt. Samurai were extremely popular with Monks in end game, something that this census isn't taking into consideration. If you were a main Summoners or a Dragoon( and even Dark Knight to a degree) before the introduction of Hasso, you were not wanted. They were too much of a hassle to deal with and it was easier to just stack monks, samurai and warriors for DDs.

Whether you want to believe it or not, balance is one of the most important point nowadays if you a healthy MMO. If you want to believe otherwise and live in denial, be my guest.

Snip

Your talking about one encounter (Garuda EX) versus years of discrimination. Not even comparable. It wasn't fun for them to be the laughing stock of the endgame community (I was a Samurai by the way so you can't say that I have a grudge) because they had fun with the playstyle that Square Enix introduced but that they couldn't balanced worth a damn.

What you call "sameness", I call balance. The goal of balance is to be able to achieve the same result using different jobs:

Tanks:

• Paladins are less prone to spike damage, more mitigation tool, less damage, unlimited amount of stuns. Can Main tank and Off tank with ease.
• Warriors have a bigger HP pool, gets healed for more, more damage, unique resource system. Can Main tank and Off tank with ease.

Healers:

• White Mage: More focused toward raw healing than damage prevention.
• Scholar: More focused toward damage prevention than raw healing.

Ranged DPS:

• Black Mage: Caster that is more focused toward nukes and bursts, outstanding at AoE, unique resource system.
• Summoners: Caster that is more focused toward DoTs and constant steady output, uses a pet, hardly penalized by movement.
• Bards: Ranged damage dealers that uses TP instead of MP, great support abilities, amazing burst, not penalized by movement whatsoever.

Melee DPS:

• Monk: Uses a unique stance mechanics to deal its damage, extremely good single target damage, decent utility via Mantra.
• Dragoons: Uses the ever so popular Jumps, pretty good balance of single target and AoE damage, good gap closers.

It's the difference in playstyle and job mechanics that makes this game actually pretty well balanced. So of course, if it's balanced, the end result will be the same when people press their buttons. Tanks will tank, DPS will DPS and healers will heal so in the end, the only things that changes is how you achieve the results you want.

[Prototype909]

Snip

Dragoons, Summoners, and Beastmasters weren't discriminated against anymore than melee DPS were discriminated against when Garuda EX was first released. They weren't barred from doing content, they just had to potentially wait longer or make their own groups. What we have now isn't even balance, it's just a sense of "sameness" that permeates every role except for the healers which actually do fulfill different niches at present. It's fine for now because the actual selection of jobs is so small, but as more jobs are added more people will start to see that they're fundamentally no different than what we already have in terms of everything except how you press your buttons to get the same results as the other person.

Balance should be a goal to strive for, but it shouldn't be some constricting factor that prevents jobs from actually branching out off of one another.

[Duelle]

Dragoons, Summoners, and Beastmasters weren't discriminated against anymore than melee DPS were discriminated against when Garuda EX was first released. They weren't barred from doing content, they just had to potentially wait longer or make their own groups.

That's...what being discriminated against actually means. The community at large did not welcome those jobs. DRG was mislabeled as a gimp job between call wyvern having a 2 hour cooldown (when the wyvern was a part of DRG's overall DPS yet could die if anything sneezed in its general direction), SMN's avatars were largely useless because of how they were implemented (scaling with summoning skill helped a little bit but as I've said in the past, all that did is bring SMN up from the 5th sub-basement under the bottom of the barrel to the 3rd sub-basement of same) to the point the job was more useful to parties subbing WHM and spamming cures. BSTs were also pretty horrid because jug pets had fixed stats and levels and charm being temporary meant your extra party member could suddenly turn on you, and lol at you if the re-charm was resisted; not even getting into the perceived exp penalty (even when it was discovered the pentalty was BST-only, it's still horrible design because in a party setting you have a member that will eventually drag your party down due to leveling slower).

What we have now isn't even balance, it's just a sense of "sameness" that permeates every role except for the healers which actually do fulfill different niches at present.

What you call sameness is relative balance. We have actual parity between DPS jobs, healers and tanks. This means you don't see stupid things like everyone and their mom doing all BLM runs for primal fights (the way stacking BLMs made Garuda a joke in 1.0). I'm sure XI's PUPs, THFs and melee RDMs would love the be in an environment where their jobs have an equal chance of participating in content without special caveats or terrible gimmicks (see: Treasure Hunter and THFs) as the "real heroes" of that game (AKA the 6~ jobs that get brought to all content that matters).

You can try to demonize it but the sheer fact that I can put together a party with any set up of tanks, heals and DPS and still clear content already makes this game infinitely better than what XI could ever hope to offer for party content.

[Dwill]

That's...what being discriminated against actually means. The community at large did not welcome those jobs. DRG was mislabeled as a gimp job between call wyvern having a 2 hour cooldown (when the wyvern was a part of DRG's overall DPS yet could die if anything sneezed in its general direction), SMN's avatars were largely useless because of how they were implemented (scaling with summoning skill helped a little bit but as I've said in the past, all that did is bring SMN up from the 5th sub-basement under the bottom of the barrel to the 3rd sub-basement of same) to the point the job was more useful to parties subbing WHM and spamming cures. BSTs were also pretty horrid because jug pets had fixed stats and levels and charm being temporary meant your extra party member could suddenly turn on you, and lol at you if the re-charm was resisted; not even getting into the perceived exp penalty (even when it was discovered the pentalty was BST-only, it's still horrible design because in a party setting you have a member that will eventually drag your party down due to leveling slower).
What you call sameness is relative balance. We have actual parity between DPS jobs, healers and tanks. This means you don't see stupid things like everyone and their mom doing all BLM runs for primal fights (the way stacking BLMs made Garuda a joke in 1.0). I'm sure XI's PUPs, THFs and melee RDMs would love the be in an environment where their jobs have an equal chance of participating in content without special caveats or terrible gimmicks (see: Treasure Hunter and THFs) as the "real heroes" of that game (AKA the 6~ jobs that get brought to all content that matters).

You can try to demonize it but the sheer fact that I can put together a party with any set up of tanks, heals and DPS and still clear content already makes this game infinitely better than what XI could ever hope to offer for party content.

Well said and pretty spot on.

Seriously, the whole reason we even have the current Jobs system is because they wanted to introduce iconic Final Fantasy Jobs. Now he is turning around and saying no to Thief and Blue Mage because of reasons.

Or maybe, just maybe, since the list of potential jobs from the Final Fantasy universe is not that small, that not all of them could make the cut for this game ?

Either that, or the backlash from Summoner not being Summoner has them too scared to be creative with Jobs. How dare they be creative in order to ensure balance, they should have given us Scholar and Red Mage as effectively the exact same Job!

Oh please, you're giving the "Summoners not being Summoners" way too much credit. Square Enix isn't scared at all that a tiny minority of people didn't like the job, I'm pretty sure they were expecting it.

[Prototype909]

Snip

The issue is not "They should make this like FF XI to the point where the jobs are so indistinguishable from one another that they form tiers within themselves", the issue is that they basically seem to have no desire to even try anything out of the ordinary before even seeing the results.

The issue is that they are basically admitting they won't even try to make the classes different because they've trapped themselves within the confines of the way abilities are learned in this game, as well as how many you get and how they should be used.

It's one thing to say "We want to strive towards this ideal of all the classes executing their role in a similar fashion, but we will work on allowing for some greater variety and balance accordingly if problems arise" and another to say "We aren't even going to try to implement this job because it doesn't conform to the pattern set by the other jobs in the game". Which is exactly what their stance fundamentally is about Blue Mage, regardless of whether or not it would actually be effective because it doesn't fit the three molds they've based the game around they won't even consider it.

For me the irritating factor is that they won't even consider jobs of varying complexity (Such as more advanced pet mechanics on SMN or a non-standard amount or abilities/non-standard ability procurement for something like BST or BLU) because of the notion that everything needs to be for everyone. I don't see anything wrong with letting people who enjoy more challenging mechanics enjoy them, if people can't cope with them they can either learn to or find alternatives.