Honest question: If every player/class/job is equal,who is unique? (Gameplay topic)

[WellGramarye]

Pot. Kettle. Black.

[Madoka]

Holy cherry picking and deflection

Let this guy talk to himself or something goddamn

[PArcher]

I was going to make a nice post to try to help the OP...but then the OP decided to start with insults and some of the other classic "I've lost the argument but will never admit it" posting behaviors.

I will say this though...getting only a handful of classes to 50 but calling everything as the same...that's just LOL-worthy. In serious content, you can't play any of the jobs like another. Not unless you're being carried...

Hmm...wonder if the OP has done any serious content at all? Or is ST (which you can definitely AFK and still earn commendations) the top of his mountain? EDIT: Dang, hasn't even done Coil1 at all (not that T1-4 are much more than slightly harder 8-man dungeons now). OP needs to do some of the content where you can't just pretend you're just a "healer" or "DPS" or "tank" and have to learn your job and actually work for your wins.

[RiceisNice]

...

Now the problem is, how do you stray from the concept of "basic" before you cross the line of losing the identify of what they're supposed to do in that specific role, or what's even considered out of the basic? Do we really want to over-complicate things so much that it ends up becoming more of a burden trying to balance the class, and to the point that they can't even keep up with the previous classes because of it?

The earliest example I can come up with this is WoW's paladin during classic, they'd have over 5-6 different seals that give them different combat boosts, only one can be active at a time, lasts 20 seconds ,and can be used with judgement to procure different effects (nuke damage, healing, mana restoration, snaring, etc). The problem was that it ended up being incredibly cumbersome and all but 2 seals ends up being impractical in PvE. It became so overly complex and unnessescary that they eventually ended up making the seals a 30 minute self-buff and took out a lot of the unnecessary ones. I have other examples of where some games have gone out of their way to make a character have incredibly unique mechanics, but it ends up breaking what little balance the game had, but it's straying off the topic at that point.

And with regards to OP, I've only looked at the topic a little bit, but the problem he's presented is that the classes are all the either the same or play too similarity to each other (which I'm sure you can disagree, espesically in regards to how each of the tanks work and the healers themselves). And when you start making single posts just to discredit or bash people without contributing anything, it quickly becomes a problem and really doesn't help your standpoint.

[Brine_Gildchaff]

Knew a potshot relating to my playing FFXI was going to occur at one point, I predicted this many pages ago people.

It's not about you playing FFXI. It's about the perception that you feel superior -because- you played FFXI.

And let's just straighten something out here: just because you keep moving the goalposts around and shifting your definition of "unique" to coarser and coarser grains, doesn't mean the classes aren't actually unique. Let's go over it again, from the top:

PLD/WAR: Differ in their styles. Paladins prepare with damage mitigation abilities, Warriors have some mitigation but also rely on having a much larger HP pool, a Bubble skill (Thrill of Battle), and a large number of Drain-type attack abilities. They are VERY different beasts.

SCH/WHM: Speaking as someone who plays both of these classes in endgame material they are -very- different, and in fact -because- of those differences, they have an almost glorious synergy. SCH have pitiful multi-target healing, their best skill being tied to their pet and only granting an effect equivalent to WHM Regen, but they have unparalleled single-target healing, incredibly powerful shielding (crit Adlo makes even WHM Stoneskin look weak), damage mitigation through Sacred Soil, and a lifesaving emergency heal button in the form of Lustrate. White Mages can do phenomenal burst healing and have one of the most powerful (and aggro-drawing) skills in the game in the form of DS+Medica II. Just one Medica II is enough to stave off even devastating raid-wide attacks like Titan's stomps and The Avatar's towers. They are different as night and day and it's -wonderful- that it is that way. You have one of them at 50, go grab your opposite number, hit up Coil or an EX Primal, and see what a difference it makes.

BRD: The only physical ranged DPS. Extreme mobility compared to SMN and even more so compared to BLM. Has excellent support utility even if a lot of players don't seem to know how to use it. Synergizes well with SMN/BLM due to their Foe Requiem skill.

SMN/BLM: One has huge flashy slow magic skill with terrifying burst damage and a very unique astral/umbral mechanic. The other one has a pet that does a pretty big portion of their damage, can serve as an extra tank in emergencies or to aid in specific fights (I've seen Mog EX run by using Titan-egi to hold the King while the two tanks grab a moogle each), and deal the vast majority of their damage through DoT spells.

DRG/MNK: I can't say a -ton- about dragoon, but monk is very, very different than any of the other three melee classes. GLA/MRD/LNC all focus around series of very specific chains attacks that when used in the proper order gain potency and various effects. But now look at monk. The specific order is actually irrelevant. Twin Snakes does the same thing whether you precede it with Arm of the Destroyer, Bootshine, or Dragon Kick. Instead, monk has three sets of three attacks each and move through those sets in a cycle, weaving together attacks as you go, on the fly. There's theoretically a "perfect rotation", but it exists only if you're hitting a training dummy (or Ramuh/T8 I guess). Every single attack you make is chosen from one of the next set in the cycle's three choices. Is my strength boost starting to fall off? Better pop in Twin Snakes. Is it -almost- going to fall off? I'll weave in one of my extra moves (Impulse, Fracture, Touch of Death, etc.) They even get an incredibly helpful healing buff in the form of Mantra. Dragoon has NOTHING like this, and to say otherwise is to take things so coarse-grained that you might as well claim XIV and XI are identical because they're both Final Fantasy-themed MMOs with classes based off of iconic clsses from the franchise's history.

[CruxisSeptentrion]

In 2 of your posts you've said negative comments towards WoW players making assumptions that are untrue and unfounded. Obviously you have no idea about the history of class homogenization and why it occurs.

I will back up my statements with the fact that I played FFXI for years and then moved to WoW and played it for years before starting up in FFXIV: ARR (I didn't play 1.0 because the beta was so horrifying to me and I was scared).

I started FFXI at the end of CoP and was around level 20 or so when ToAU came out. I still do and will always love the game but there were huge gaping flaws such as the fact that if you weren't a specific job and job combination, you never got invited to anything. Ever. I waited for over 4 hours as a thf for a party in the dunes once, and that was just for a subjob! Then ToAU came out, and I discovered that after level 51, BLM wasn't invited to parties anymore because of colibris, do you remember that?

The community was extremely elitist and wouldn't account for anyone that wasn't exactly what they needed to be. Everyone had to have /nin, nobody wanted a smn, bst, pup, blm, thf, drg (Except in certain circumstances like farming or endgame activities). Do you have any idea how alienating that is for a huge % of the population? Don't forget, this was when it took months to level anything to 75 as well, so as much as it was a huge achievement to get there, the road to 75 could be pretty terrible. It was FAR worse as someone who came into the game late and was playing catch-up for years.

Cut to WoW. Did you know that WoW was based off of Diablo 2's system? Diablo 2's classes had VASTLY unique abilities, and many of the WoW classes reflected that as well. Did you also know that Druids, while designated and originally designed to be raid healers were never invited to anything? Then Burning Crusade came out, and with it a raid that most people required a lot of crowd control but most were undead so they started to invite Priests...eventually Mages weren't invited for anything because they were less effective and got to make food and drink for their parties and then sit out because they couldn't join in unless a group needed them. Near the end of BC a raid called Sunwell was released and thus began the class stacking nightmare of Paladin and Shaman. If you weren't one of those classes you were pretty much SOL for most content unless you had generous friends.

Blizzard saw this trend and over the last 8 years has made buffs and nerfs to the classes over time which has homogenized them for balance purposes so that they're doing generally similar dps. FFXIV has followed a similar path in making sure that players aren't left out of content because their class is useless and had made the resource management/playstyle of the class/job the main focus vs fancy abilities that are unique to every class.

I get where you're coming from, but you need to realize what you're asking for is a step backwards in the MMO genre and there are specific reasons why these classes aren't super unique.

[Scootaloo]

And with regards to OP, I've only looked at the topic a little bit, but the problem he's presented is that the classes are all the either the same or play too similarity to each other (which I'm sure you can disagree, espesically in regards to how each of the tanks work and the healers themselves). And when you start making single posts just to discredit or bash people without contributing anything, it quickly becomes a problem and really doesn't help your standpoint.

If you'll excuse the childish and cliche statement but...

*makes her best little girl whining voice* They started it!

*sigh* but i digress, cynric states many points and things that I failed to convey properly in my OP. The fact that nearly every poster in this thread(with the exception of a few people) has more or less made it clear that they don't care or that they don't want things to change and are using every single means of discrediting to make me look like a noobish idiot, makes me think they are see these issues as well and are simply lashing out in hopes that if they derail this thread and turn it into a potshot thread, no GMs will dare look at it and possibly convey these issues to the devs.

While they may not speak English, the GMs do and will translate these things for them.

To people who have been doing their best to bash and derail this thread:

So congrats people, you've made sure no GM will dare look at this thread and convey these issues to the devs, congrats!

[RiceisNice]

Near the end of BC a raid called Sunwell was released and thus began the class stacking nightmare of Paladin and Shaman. If you weren't one of those classes you were pretty much SOL for most content unless you had generous friends.

Dont you dare speak that instance name here. Sunwell was so bad with the class stacking and the difficulty that resulted from not doing so gated quite a bit of guilds. Want to down M'uru? Hope you don't have more than 2 mages in your party. This is the sort of thing you'd want to avoid in a MMO to avoid ailenating players, and it's very easy for it to happen when classes are incredibly varied and differentiated in regards to what they bring to the table. And even with all the homogenization, the individual classes still play differently down to each of their three specs (fire mages play differently from both frost and arcane, and so on).

[Madoka]

>mlp gif

Abort

[Pantz]

To people who have been doing their best to bash and derail this thread:

So congrats people, you've made sure no GM will dare look at this thread and convey these issues to the devs, congrats!

If you mean people challenging your views and opinions are bashing and derailing your thread, I really pity you. I guess the only thing you want to hear is people agreeing with you and calling you a genius for making a suggestion.

And you are still missing the point people make so many times in this thread already. There are no "issues" to begin with at all.

And for goodness sake, stop exaggerating. There are a lot more posts that properly challenge your points than there are posts that just plain insult you. Pointing out the flaws in your points isn't derailing a thread.

Attacking your points isn't the same as attacking you.