DualShocker Interview - 3.5 pt 2 next week, supposedly

[Kosmos992k]

I would extremely caution the idea that certain jobs have much higher results when played better than others at max skill level, you can change how hard it is to get to that master point and their floor skills though. Like easy to grab, hard to master vs moderately difficult to grab and moderately hard to master. Where at the max perfection of each job = the same end result (even if the method of the end may be different, like Paladin being so tanky that healers get to DD a lot more).

Indeed, so if WAR and DRK can actively manage specific debuffs that in effect give them similar DEF to PLD who has the passive DEF already, they can achieve the same defense that the PLD can. bu the same token, the far more tanky PLD can though their own skills with their damage dealing - as well as the potential impact on other damage dealt by healers for example, the end result could be a wash. but for a player who prefers the more active style of play PLD would be a nightmare because it would feel slower, where WAR and DRK would be so much more active that a player who prefers a more steady pace would enjoy PLD more.

And correct me if I'm interpreting it wrong but it sounds like you're suggesting the difference between defenses is Paladin is easy to handle and the other tanks don't have better defense but are harder to put to Paladin's level- meanwhile all the damage differences remain. The end result of that would still be what we have now were people dislike paladins and just request better tanks, except maybe in PUG DF where they might be happy to see a Paladin lol. Paladins would still be undesirable in raids where people want efficiency over player enjoyment (there are some raids that don't care about meta at all, and just want to play even if it doesn't mean sweeping the floor lol).

To be honest I am not sure if you are wrong or not. I'm suggesting that all tanks could eventually achieve similar defensive resilience, but PLD can stand there and focus on other things, while WAR and DRK have to weave additional skills in to gain the same kind of defensive performance while tanking - passive vs pro-active defense. At the same time, if a WAR or DRK is using their proactive defense, it takes the edge of their damage dealing so that if they go full turtle with their pro-active defenses, it reduces their DPS to something more like the PLD can achieve.

So it becomes a balancing act. PLD has a harder time with meeting the DPS that WAR or DRK are capable of, but in order to achieve the same resilience of a PLD, both WAR and DRK end up doing less damage by burning GCDs on skills for that.

I haven't mathed this out,, it's nothing more than a concept. But it just seemed to me that an ability to actively balance offense and defense dynamically would fit WAR/DRK very well, while a PLD would be less dynamic through the passive defense. To balance this out, the Shield and Sword oaths could be used to create more variance between the stances so that the PLD can achieve decent DPS, with lower defenses - in effect the reverse of the WAR/DRK.

There's a really good chance that this is just a back of the envelope thought, I just like the idea of each tank filling specific niches better than other tanks. Also, During raid content (full party) passive party buffs could even things out to prevent PLD being *the* MT. But that would require even more balance at which my head starts to hurt.

I'd like to see the change where each job offers something that makes you happy to see them, and Paladin is lacking in his side points to make those his glory moments and his defensiveness ability (minus cheesy abuse Hallowed Ground strategies) is not good enough to make that his shinning point (other tanks can offer up similar tanking ability, again minus that moment where you need 10 seconds of no damage). In the changes mentioned in the interview If his defense is his "point" then simply Paladin will become main tank and the other tanks will become "bruisers", even though warriors already play mostly like a bruiser anyway lol.

Could have misunderstood you though

I agree that each should have their reason to shine. I was just thinking that PLD making a virtue of their passive defense could be counterbalanced by active defensive skills that WAR/DRK could use.

Ah, well, it comes down to I play Paladin, and I would like there to be something that each tank is right for, and the party is therefore happy to see them - as you say.

[Shougun]

Indeed, so if WAR and DRK can actively manage specific debuffs that in effect give them similar DEF to PLD who has the passive DEF already, they can achieve the same defense that the PLD can. bu the same token, the far more tanky PLD can though their own skills with their damage dealing - as well as the potential impact on other damage dealt by healers for example, the end result could be a wash. but for a player who prefers the more active style of play PLD would be a nightmare because it would feel slower, where WAR and DRK would be so much more active that a player who prefers a more steady pace would enjoy PLD more.

I would agree that different play styles is highly enjoyable and important. One of the reasons why I dont think cleric stance is god awful but at the same time I don't want to see it on all healer jobs, It will get in the way of creating styles of playing on healer job that others may find more enjoyable.

To be honest I am not sure if you are wrong or not. I'm suggesting that all tanks could eventually achieve similar defensive resilience, but PLD can stand there and focus on other things, while WAR and DRK have to weave additional skills in to gain the same kind of defensive performance while tanking - passive vs pro-active defense. At the same time, if a WAR or DRK is using their proactive defense, it takes the edge of their damage dealing so that if they go full turtle with their pro-active defenses, it reduces their DPS to something more like the PLD can achieve.

So it becomes a balancing act. PLD has a harder time with meeting the DPS that WAR or DRK are capable of, but in order to achieve the same resilience of a PLD, both WAR and DRK end up doing less damage by burning GCDs on skills for that.

One of the unique issues that SE has created, maybe on accident, is that auto attacks are generally not that strong and so being able to weave in a combo that shortly increases defense (either via healing, shield, or mitigation) means it can be better than just hitting a button that has longer lasting passive effects (making the Paladin's long lasting easy button not as good). It's true the one button vs three button thing can represent difference in fight knowledge but it just means that if you have the option of 3 buttons + higher damage vs 1 button and lower damage with similar results, the choice will slowly lean to 3 + more damage. Made even more fun by the fact that Paladin will actually run out of TP the fastest while having a lesser damage max output lol (also while sword oath is very strong, people will generally not "feel" its strength - or see it if a Paladin doesn't switch out, while true other tanks have damage benefits from switching too but the other tanks also have stronger MT damage too (double too)).

I haven't mathed this out,, it's nothing more than a concept. But it just seemed to me that an ability to actively balance offense and defense dynamically would fit WAR/DRK very well, while a PLD would be less dynamic through the passive defense. To balance this out, the Shield and Sword oaths could be used to create more variance between the stances so that the PLD can achieve decent DPS, with lower defenses - in effect the reverse of the WAR/DRK.

There's a really good chance that this is just a back of the envelope thought, I just like the idea of each tank filling specific niches better than other tanks. Also, During raid content (full party) passive party buffs could even things out to prevent PLD being *the* MT. But that would require even more balance at which my head starts to hurt.

I always thought the oath mechanic could be expanded a bit, with an oath always being active (fits paladin "lore/theme") and certain activities increasing your oath intensity / or effect, like a sort of rehearsal/vow mechanic. Casting Clemency rehearses your oath, and also can change how it behaves. Depending on how you do it you could theoretically have both oaths active at once for a short time. Could also be a way to easily add two abilities to Paladin in SB without changing the ability count, activating an already activated oath instead of deactivating it could instead trigger another effect. Like a activate-able passive (Master Yi in LoL as a random example).

Tempered Will when used with sword oath buff gives you %X TP and Mana return on use and half that to party members, and knock-back resistance for self, with shield oath it will give you and your party knock back resistance, +10% HP restored on a prevented knockback to each party member. Basically many abilities would obtain vow effects, the ability wouldn't change but if you had a vow it'd use it to gain extra benefit.

Keep Paladin's from being able to damage things significantly but allow them to boost their allies to take their place at the table. All the mechanics basically making them feel like the person at the door saying after you, while they hold the fiery beam from coming down. Meanwhile the other two tanks would be variations of running into the fiery building head first.

Although I don't really mind what they do so long as they can balance the fact that defense = defense and damage != damage is not balanced, and they need to either bring Paladin's damage up or his support up in a way that allows (doesn't guarantee) that his team can make up for his loss (like allowing healers to DD, or by buffing and supporting allies through spells/mechanics). Just being the same in defense (at max skill) and being worse at damage (at max skill) and that's the only difference isn't balanced and hope that's not what happens to Paladin.

I may suggest they change how the super tank moves are designed just so they stop being planned around boss fights though, rather than all competing for the same purpose make them a super move in their theme (that doesn't involve invulnerability).

I agree that each should have their reason to shine. I was just thinking that PLD making a virtue of their passive defense could be counterbalanced by active defensive skills that WAR/DRK could use.

Ah, well, it comes down to I play Paladin, and I would like there to be something that each tank is right for, and the party is therefore happy to see them - as you say.

They can definitely make balance around the styles of defense, they just need to also make sure there is something else Paladin brings if they're going to balance defense then.

But yeah agreed . Paladin is the Fortress, the Alexander. So hopefully it feels and plays like an Alexander. Or if they can't balance it around that, at least comparable in end results when input with max skill - which isn't really the case right now, you /will/ get better results on a max skill warrior minus the exception where hallowed ground cheeses warrior out. I think warrior's issue is they're just so tightly wound like a scholar or something lol, they have a nice package deal with many things properly greeting the other in mechanical love. That's at least how I've read it, I've read a lot more about warrior than scholar :P. If SE can't fix Paladin by SB or at least show good signs for it, I'll be switching jobs for sure - even though I like the theme/idea of Paladin more.

Just an aside while jobs that require more to play may not like that they don't output more I believe that regardless of max skill required to play, if you put in maximum input the relative output is tightly related to each other (even if the route to the end is different). So ultimately that's what I'd like to see changed with tanks as that's not really true right now. Even though Paladin isn't dysfunctional to be 100% useless but, why pick "can do dungeon" when you can pick "can do dungeon faster and easier" (assuming that the tank themselves is a pro, which isn't always true - I'm definitely not a master but I feel "okay enough" to notice the other tanks have better balance if you give them more energy).

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I'm suggesting that all tanks could eventually achieve similar defensive resilience,

Then Paladin will continue to warm the bench for yet another raid tier. They can buff Paladin's defenses through the moon. The only pertinent questions people at endgame care about are:

- Can Warrior and Dark Knight survive the incoming damage?
- Can both the healers heal either whilst maintaining high DPS relevant to the reduced damage Paladin takes?
- Does Paladin provide better utility?

If the answer to the first two questions is yes and the last no? Many raiders won't care what Paladin does. It's deemed inferior because damage is all that matters in FFXIV. White Mage suffers the same issue right now in that it's designed to be a raw burst healer yet no fight requires burst healing. And it's two counterparts can easily cover whatever incoming damage there is while providing vastly superior raid utility. The devs either have to devise a means of punishing players who value DPS above all else or overhaul the design of both jobs and give them equivalent utility.

[Kosmos992k]

Then Paladin will continue to warm the bench for yet another raid tier. They can buff Paladin's defenses through the moon. The only pertinent questions people at endgame care about are:

- Can Warrior and Dark Knight survive the incoming damage?
- Can both the healers heal either whilst maintaining high DPS relevant to the reduced damage Paladin takes?
- Does Paladin provide better utility?

If the answer to the first two questions is yes and the last no? Many raiders won't care what Paladin does. It's deemed inferior because damage is all that matters in FFXIV. White Mage suffers the same issue right now in that it's designed to be a raw burst healer yet no fight requires burst healing. And it's two counterparts can easily cover whatever incoming damage there is while providing vastly superior raid utility. The devs either have to devise a means of punishing players who value DPS above all else or overhaul the design of both jobs and give them equivalent utility.

To me, this suggests that the game might be better off without the raiding tier since it is the raiding meta that is distorting the rest of he game. I'm not suggesting that raiding should, or will be dropped, but so many points in discussions come down to whether or not the proposed change will work for raiders. To me, that says that much of the core eleent of the game is predicated on raiding, and honestly, I think that's unhealthy for the game as a whole. We've been suffering this DPS meta for almost the entire life of FFXIV since ARR. It's time to go in another direction IMHO.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

To me, this suggests that the game might be better off without the raiding tier since it is the raiding meta that is distorting the rest of he game. I'm not suggesting that raiding should, or will be dropped, but so many points in discussions come down to whether or not the proposed change will work for raiders. To me, that says that much of the core eleent of the game is predicated on raiding, and honestly, I think that's unhealthy for the game as a whole. We've been suffering this DPS meta for almost the entire life of FFXIV since ARR. It's time to go in another direction IMHO.

Because no other content matters in terms of balancing. Normal modes and dungeons are complete facerolls. You scarily even need to know your rotation, nevermind anything else. Without Extremes and Savage, the devs have to develop brand new content. Keep in mind, those harder difficulties are more or less the same fights scaled up. It's a simple task to scale existing fights whereas eliminating them completely means you're guaranteed to lose a large portion of your playerbase. The impact wouldn't just be felt on the raid scene either. No raids means you have no need of pots, food or crafted gear, thus putting a sizable dent in the crafting market. You then have to ask what keeps even the casual players interested? If Alexander Normal and Dun Scaith were all we got. Well, you certainly don't need 260 or 270 gear. What motivation do they have to repeatedly run content? There's a massive trickle down effect to removing Savage.

We're suffering this DPS meta because the devs do not offer an alternative. Fight designs all revolve around damage and nothing else. Healers are too powerful, thus they have ample down time and are expected to DPS. Tanks have little use of their tank stance because every fight is entirely predictable. After prog, you'll know when to swap and will inevitably spend the vast majority without it. That all said, plenty of players like the harder PvE focus. You can't just have a game of entirely faceroll content or people will get bored.

[Zojha]

[...] and every enemy has at least one special ability to watch out for.

In fairness: This is already the case. It's typically a telegraphed AoE and if you do a mass pull, you'll often have dozens of them flung right at you. Getting hit by one just... usually doesn't matter. Healers can pick up the slack easily.

The whole "insta-death" paradigm that's not just in higher floors of PotD, but also in Savage is a symptom of healer power - nothing else but death matters, because only death has a considerable cost to erase. And at times, even death only matters because of the stat debuff that might prevent you from beating enrage.

Personally, I don't think punishing people with an instant:"You're out." card, i.E. death if they make a mistake is particularly fun design. I much prefer it the way most games do it: You can get hit multiple times, but replenishments for your HP are scarce. Alas, healers again - They're too powerful to allow for that.

We're suffering this DPS meta because the devs do not offer an alternative.

More precisely: We're suffering this DPS meta because the game revolves around lowering health bars to 0 in order to win a fight and the only way to do that is to deal damage. Damage is what matters, the only thing that matters. Everything else is fluff - You do it if it's required, to the degree it is required, but afterwards go back to damage, because only damage will further your win.

It's a common metagame - Every shooter, every fighting game, most bullet hell and strategy games as well as tower defense games have the same. Probably a lot more. They have different ways on how to deal that damage, but on the meta level, all of these games are identical - there are health bars, hit points or whatever and you want to reduce those to 0 to win the round/game.

As such, I have a hard time considering it inherently flawed. It just has grave consequences for the trinity design: Two parts of said trinity are only as relevant as they are required. They are fluff. And for a player, it sucks if your chosen identity is essentially fluff.

There is no systemic fix for that - You can invalidate damage as win condition to put the importance on mitigation/healing, but that only shifts the issue around: Now you only deal as much damage as required and then go to mitigation/healing, whereas previously, you'd mitigate/heal as required and then go to dealing damage. That's not making things better.

All you can try is to require so much healing/mitigation, that the respective roles cannot do much else, because they're so busy just fulfilling that role. That doesn't fix the issue, mind you - DPS is still king. But at least the players of these roles would not feel or be urged to DPS, because realistically, they can't.
For that to happen however you'd need drastic nerfs and far higher complexity - As it stands, mitigation is largely something passive, you only actively mitigate when a tankbuster comes in by pressing a single CD. It would have to change to something highly active.
Likewise, healers would need far higher complexity in their healing, because just nerfing their potencies alone would result in nothing but a boring Cure spam. That gets rid of the downtime that makes people urge them to DPS, but it's not engaging. Maximizing your AoE healing output should require far more than medica II, then spam medica I. Maximizing single target healing output should require far more than putting a regen on them and spamming Cure II. Then, maybe, we can also stop having healer checks be all about unforgiving timers, because as it is, whether it's a prey mechanic, a tank buster or AoE nukes, it's all only about knowing the timer for the mechanic by heart and pressing the solution heal for it, otherwise death/wipe happens.

[Naunet]

More precisely: We're suffering this DPS meta because the game revolves around lowering health bars to 0 in order to win a fight and the only way to do that is to deal damage. Damage is what matters, the only thing that matters. Everything else is fluff - You do it if it's required, to the degree it is required, but afterwards go back to damage, because only damage will further your win.

And only in this game are the requirements for "everything else" so minimal that "how much damage can you do" becomes the most important question for both tanks and healers as WELL as dps.

FFS, SE, just design encounters that require tanks and healers to do their jobs.

[loreleidiangelo]

And only in this game are the requirements for "everything else" so minimal that "how much damage can you do" becomes the most important question for both tanks and healers as WELL as dps.

FFS, SE, just design encounters that require tanks and healers to do their jobs.

Fixing healers is kinda easy - nerf healing potencies, up healing requirements, possibly do something about how brutally effective their DPS is while in Cleric Stance, boom. But how would you "make tanks tank", exactly? Looking at the design of something like a PLD, which relies heavily on cooldowns, if you simply make things hit super hard so that a tank always needs to have CDs up to soak damage...well, it'll work well at making WARs tank, because they'll be using Inner Beast instead of Fell Cleave (I don't play DRK so not sure how they'd be affected), but how would PLD handle that same scenario? They don't really have a "spammable" cooldown outside of Shelltron, which is 30 seconds and...not super great, tbh, because of how parry works in this game. (It also doesn't affect magic damage, so rip pretty much every major raid boss ability in the game.)

And how exactly would you make offtanks "tank more" instead of sitting in DPS stance? Endless dual bosses a la T1? Constant add waves to manage? There's only so much you can do to try to regulate how much damage tanks do...even WoW, which IMO has a lot better trinity balance still doesn't really find ways to make off tanks do a whole lot outside of swaps and adds.

Sorry if I seem like I'm attacking you, since I actually agree that the slow distillation of the trinity into "who can deeps moar" also bugs me, but I've struggled to find a solution for tanking woes for some time now that would work outside of a straight tank re-design. Things like, dropping fire n' forget tank stances in favor of making those same effects be maintenance buffs that tanks have to use certain combos to keep up, etc, to make them feel more like they're tanking and less like they're DPSing. And I don't really know how well that would translate here, all things considered.

[Ryel]

To me, this suggests that the game might be better off without the raiding tier since it is the raiding meta that is distorting the rest of he game. I'm not suggesting that raiding should, or will be dropped, but so many points in discussions come down to whether or not the proposed change will work for raiders. To me, that says that much of the core eleent of the game is predicated on raiding, and honestly, I think that's unhealthy for the game as a whole. We've been suffering this DPS meta for almost the entire life of FFXIV since ARR. It's time to go in another direction IMHO.

There's a fundamental lack of understanding of both human nature and game design 101 with comments like this.

Let me preface, I understand you think we should go in another direction when it comes to class balance due to the DPS meta but what you need to understand is that optimization will always be a thing and its a universal common in MMOs.

This is because MMOs use skinner box concepts of effort/time v reward which means efficacy, optimization and repeat success are often rewarded while outside of the box thinking (which can be fun) isn't universally adopted unless it proves to be more efficient in either ease to execute or time involved.

MMO job balance (especially in subscription based MMOs) will almost universally be based around wherever the highest level rewards are obtained due to them being the largest carrot in the game by which all other reward systems are compared to and balanced against.

So this is usually raids.

However lets put aside raids for a moment and assume they balanced jobs around say... dungeons.

Because dungeons are meant to be run more than once, players will then adopt the speed-running meta (even more-so than we already do now) because this is what class balance and reward systems would be determined by.

Faster dungeons = more dungeons completed = faster loot.

So...

The Tank able to deal with the largest pulls, hold threat and contribute damage would be the meta pick.
The DPS able to do the most AoE damage and deal with bosses would be meta pick.
The Healer able to heal the largest pulls and output the most damage would be meta pick.

This would always be the case no matter which way the devs push the numbers, because players will always gravitate towards the most successful combination.

What if they balanced around FATEs?

The jobs able to accrue the most participation values would then be the ones that shined the most. This means anything that uses DoTs (sup SMN) would instantly be tossed to the wayside as you would see massive influxes of healers and tanks spamming threat generation abilities in order to get max credit.

The list continues when applied to ANY content in the game. Players will always go with what works the best.

This doesn't even take into account that content like that isn't even difficult enough to actually see real balance against anyway, unless you're proposing they start creating savage dungeons on the level of raids in which case the meta will simply become whatever 4 job composition completes the instance easiest / fastest which makes it a moot point.

So back to raids

There are a couple of solutions to the problem.

A) Every role is able to do the exact same thing with different colored abilities AKA perfect homogenization.

This is boring because the razor thin differences in classes we already have would disappear entirely, this means DRK/PLD/WAR would have every ability do the exact same thing under every single circumstance, they would just be skinned differently.

Which incidentally is the avenue they seem to be pushing towards, they just haven't fully committed because they know people would get bored and likely unsub.

B) Aspects of the battle and encounter system would have to be redesigned from the ground up to allow more variance in the way we approach encounters.

This is massive can of worms because whatever change made will eventually be optimized on a per fight basis, its just how things always end up. Look at every single MMO in existence if you need reference on this. The woes of battle systems and class balance is something that plagues nearly every single multiplayer game because there are just massive numbers of variables in playstyles and approach that developers cannot account for.

This also works counter to the Duty Finder because a fight with too many possible encounter scenarios / strategies means the most popular / known one will likely be the one that is the easiest to execute and the jobs that favor that strategy will be preferred.

Which leads to the final issue

Players by far understand the game better than developers do.

It's funny because people always come up with the "let the devs do X because they know better" which almost universally Is not the case, developers may have a vision that they want things to fall in line with but it's almost impossible to brute force players to act in an specific manner and it still be considered fun.

Don't believe me?

Read Yoshida's comments on things like NIN/MCH/AST/WAR all when players were backing up how the jobs either performed way above or way below developer expectations because either players were just plain better than the developers at playing the game (See: NIN damage) or party composition / encounter level / tested gear did not match what the developers were planning (see jobs performing differently with gear/party variance).

It's not even a phenomenon unique to FFXIV, there are tons of game developers who have straight up admitted that classes/characters/jobs/specs/warframes/champions/heroes/etc have performed entirely different in live play than they initially planned.

It's why we have balance patches to begin with.

And why some games have public test servers.

So yeah you're looking at the symptom but not the actual problem.

Also I implore you to read this carefully should you chose to respond so we dont suffer another misunderstanding.