This whole Meta Party thing is hurting me. x_x

[Terkhev]

As a community, we cannot argue against that statement. All of our data, relative to the developers, is incomplete.

What the developers said is objectively true, not false.

Even this very LL that you use as an argument proved that devs make mistakes and overlook stuff - look at their comments about tank LB. We have situations like that all the time. Another thing is, they don't play on optimal level. All they stated is that the balance doesn't affect normal players, which is true. But neither does meta. What we talk here is about speedkills, where even 1 point of DPS matters.
You want to fight solid math with words that might as well be a PR. There is no point.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

The development team—who has access to more numbers and data than anyone else—is wrong? Do you realize how asinine that sounds?

You do realize ACT calculates its results from the battle log, yes? As in the same numbers the developers use. Now there may be occasional hiccups, especially involving dots but we're talking very small fractions—not enough to matter in the grand scheme of things. To say the meta is fiction based on a PR statement is what's actually asinine.

Now if you want to argue meta jobs aren't required. You'd be correct. Alas, some jobs are objectively superior. No amount of balance will ever change that unless we have full blown homogenization.

[Remedi]

https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/12...tions-requests

He does say that they turn it off to test at the end, however that is for fight balance rather than class balance, and there are some fights that they haven't tested in a true completely toolless state - he also hints that the dev team have "sort of cleared"

As another example of where they get their testing wrong, when Ninja was released and then nerfed shortly afterwards, Yoshi-P remarked that the community worked out a much better rotation than they expected.

It's as you say that they use it especially at first to test the functionality of the fights, afterall we get a redacted version of what the fight really are (ex. the time bombs in ozma were aoe during tests) however it's worth noting that the context of the interwiew was gordias and since then they changed considerably the raid fights.

Frankly I am a bit neutral about the playerbase finding different more functional rotations than the devs, since honestly many eyes see more than few

[Eli85]

Snip.

Of course I am aware that ACT calculates from the battle log. Yet that is still not a complete picture of the numbers. Internal testing, raw mathematics (formulas, interactions) on the coding level, those are all things that we do not have. And I'm sorry, but I will believe the creators of the game far more easily than any player. It's nothing personal, but no player knows the game nearly as well as the developers do.

As for the others who quoted me: if you truly, truly believe that the developers are wrong with an objective analysis of data subsets, there is no convincing you. But the meta is a fiction. The sooner we let go of it, the better.

[Trensharo]

...

You're basically taking the words of some developer and trying to pass it off as "objective data, raw mathematics, etc." which is absolutely insane. Reference Link, please? You see to have seen them yourself, given how reliably you view them to be.

I will take the hoards of data gathered by the community over what the developers "say," any day.

Developers in these games make mistakes on a monthly basis, and companies will never admit their game is imbalanced in a fundamental way. This is 100% PR. It's pretty obvious that certain setups are clearly better than others, and certain classes simply have no place in the optimal setups.

The fact that the community performed better, on a class they added, than even they anticipated should clue you into just how "reliable" their views and numbers on class performance are.

And, rude... trying to shut people up and dissuade them from having a dialog on the matter.

META is not fiction.

[Kolsykol]

I get where the OP is coming from, and I feel the same.
I just recently resubbed again and all of this is already making me rather demotivated to play.
BLM is my fav job, and while I don't mind playing SMN or any healer I just REALLY want to play BLM but all of the doom and gloom is really off-putting.
It's sorta nudging me into playing healer even tho I have less fun with it.

I don't really think that the major problem is the meta itself ( even tho it could be more balanced ), but rather the people that ain't as good as they think that they are who obsess over it even tho they're not good enough to even take advantage of it to begin with and end up making certain aspects of the game rather toxic for a lot of people.
Like if we're talking about people trying to progress and '' accomplish greater things '' so to speak then sure. Obsess over it all that you want.
But if we're talking about more casual play, then I think that certain people need to calm the hell down with it.

I just think that it often tends to be the wrong people who obsess about it.
And it sucks to always have that label over your head of '' not meta '' and being reminded of it constantly.

[Eli85]

Snip.

Yes, that is how it works. Development decisions are based entirely on internal testing, combat logs, and raw game data. They have far more data at their disposal than the "hoards of data gathered by the community." Not only that, but they understand how the game works and balanced far more than you, me, or anyone else.

Talk to anyone who has been in game development and they will tell you that they make objective decisions based on data subsets.

So when the game director says there are no major advantages or disadvantages to any given comp, we should take that as an objective truth. After all, they have more data at their disposal than anyone else.

There is no dialog to be had on this issue. There are only individuals who need the 'meta' so desperately that they're willing to throw logic and rationality away.

The meta IS a fiction. The more we argue against this, the worse off the community is.

[Rezef]

I never bothered with the meta. I just play w/e I like. For example I'm playing BLM at time and I'm having fun with it. Just play w/e you like and stop caring for the meta unless you wanna go tryhard end game.

[DGladius]

Playerbase have shown to be better than the devs at playing at the utmost level of play. This was just the back in July of 17.

[Levy9]

Just play what you like. What's more important is how well you can perform on any particular class you've chosen and how well you understand the fight. PF groups that lock for meta comps give me the impression of someone lacking confidence, someone who is looking to be carried by a meta advantage. It's one thing to prefer a comp, but another to require it, full stop. I don't understand the mentally behind wanting harder content, yet demanding the absolute "best" possible comp in an attempt to make things easier.

People will beg for a challenge then bend over backwards to try and preemptively make the fight less of a challenge. On one end of the spectrum you have groups that intentionally run with unusual comps just to experiment and prove that it can be done.
On the other end, you have people who won't run unless they have the perceived meta advantage.

Lastly, do people realize that the meta is being set by world firsters and people competing for the fastest possible progression times in a competition? These are highly coordinated groups.
These groups set the meta, but they aren't exactly playing the same game that a pug is playing. Your average PF pug is just a bunch of random uncoordinated people thrown together.
Aren't meta comps built up around coordination and team synergy? If so, isn't the average uncoordinated pug going to get less mileage out of a meta comp anyway?