ShB bard has turned me into a ball of rage and depression

[RoyalBeef]

Yah, the game where jobs become a reskin and rename cop out abilities of each other.
Fun.

If you only want every job to be homogenized, then everyone will discriminate against job with lowest dps number. Simple as that.

As long as DPS is the answer to everything, classes will always be judged by how many personal DPS or raid DPS they bring, so unless they are 100% equal, there will always be a meta, where when you have 2 open slots and 3 applicants, you let the 2 applicants in that play the meta jobs (unless the is a giant skillgap ofc). When there are 15 classes but only 8 spots in a raid, you might as well not have the 7 other classes that are objectively the least efficient. That's why imo having raids restricted to only 8 people while having bosses that require raw DPS and nothing else to kill cannot work if you want a diverse roster of classes and give people incentives to actually play them.

Being a former Everquest player, there were encounters that were completely immune to magic damage, basically making every caster useless in that fight.There was no size restriction for a raid tho, so you just went there and took them along. In return there were encounters where melee classes were useless and casters could shine, and again you went there together, no one caring about there being classes in the raid that could not contribute to that specific fight, bc there would be another fight where it was the exact opposite. No onewas ever left behind because of the class they played, there was enough space for everyone to tag along, and every class had raids where they could shine, and even raids where they brought key skills other than DPS that only their class had, that were required to even beat the raid.

The funny thing is, in EQ, similar problems began when they started introducing 6 man trials for even getting access to later endgame zones. Those were insanely hard, and required certain classes to be in the party to even have a chance of succeeding. Players that played suboptimal classes were struggling finding people who would bascially drag them through bc they were useless for that content, my raid guild dedicated whole evenings just forming parties that were somehow capable of 5 maning those to each get 1 guildmemeber through that was playing a "useless" class just so they could participate in the raid content that was locked by those trials. To me it became clear back then that putting such restrictions on anything that has to do with raiding was a poor choice.

[DawnSolaria]

Yah, the game where jobs become a reskin and rename cop out abilities of each other.
Fun.

If you only want every job to be homogenized, then everyone will discriminate against job with lowest dps number. Simple as that.

Actually if your utilities suck you will be discriminated harder. Head on over to healer forum and see how AST is faring. Their damage buffs are not measuring up to personal dps whm is outputting, and now most top clear times are done by whm and sch combo.

[TcomJ]

Actually if your utilities suck you will be discriminated harder. Head on over to healer forum and see how AST is faring. Their damage buffs are not measuring up to personal dps whm is outputting, and now most top clear times are done by whm and sch combo.

Yah, take that for example. So they try to homogenize role into the same thing. Healers only heal.

You get WHM the best and people who play other healers see no need why AST should exist at all. Good thing Sch is not as bad, but hooray homogenization, so fun so good right?

Same thing as DPS, if they are going to homogenize DPS, then all identities are gone except for the one that is "my damage is my utility" will be ok, but the unique hybrid roles, people who play these will not take it.
Then we will get who has higher dps, go for that just like healers.
That's healthy for a fantasy mmo game?

[TcomJ]

As long as DPS is the answer to everything, classes will always be judged by how many personal DPS or raid DPS they bring, so unless they are 100% equal, there will always be a meta, where when you have 2 open slots and 3 applicants, you let the 2 applicants in that play the meta jobs (unless the is a giant skillgap ofc). When there are 15 classes but only 8 spots in a raid, you might as well not have the 7 other classes that are objectively the least efficient. That's why imo having raids restricted to only 8 people while having bosses that require raw DPS and nothing else to kill cannot work if you want a diverse roster of classes and give people incentives to actually play them.

Being a former Everquest player, there were encounters that were completely immune to magic damage, basically making every caster useless in that fight.There was no size restriction for a raid tho, so you just went there and took them along. In return there were encounters where melee classes were useless and casters could shine, and again you went there together, no one caring about there being classes in the raid that could not contribute to that specific fight, bc there would be another fight where it was the exact opposite. No onewas ever left behind because of the class they played, there was enough space for everyone to tag along, and every class had raids where they could shine, and even raids where they brought key skills other than DPS that only their class had, that were required to even beat the raid.

The funny thing is, in EQ, similar problems began when they started introducing 6 man trials for even getting access to later endgame zones. Those were insanely hard, and required certain classes to be in the party to even have a chance of succeeding. Players that played suboptimal classes were struggling finding people who would bascially drag them through bc they were useless for that content, my raid guild dedicated whole evenings just forming parties that were somehow capable of 5 maning those to each get 1 guildmemeber through that was playing a "useless" class just so they could participate in the raid content that was locked by those trials. To me it became clear back then that putting such restrictions on anything that has to do with raiding was a poor choice.

That's their balance fault. EQ sucks anyway, unlike the maddening craze of Ragnarok back in the day, the reason Rag was king is because the balance and job identities are unique and connect to people views on their fantasy role especially in Asia.
To me like WoW and FF13, homogenizing and linearity everything is a poor choice.

Guess why FF12: Zodiac Edition is better than FF12? (while not being an MMO, it's the premises of final fantasy core)

Like AST and how healers other than WHM are screwed because of it.

[DawnSolaria]

Yah, take that for example. So they try to homogenize role into the same thing. Healers only heal.

You get WHM the best and people who play other healers see no need why AST should exist at all. Good thing Sch is not as bad, but hooray homogenization, so fun so good right?

Same thing as DPS, if they are going to homogenize DPS, then all identities are gone except for the one that is "my damage is my utility" will be ok, but the unique hybrid roles, people who play these will not take it.
Then we will get who has higher dps, go for that just like healers.
That's healthy for a fantasy mmo game?

Then the problem here isn't really SE but the players? People will always push for more healing/damage, it's a no brainier? They could make half of Bard skill heal but if they make brd also do 50 percent damage who would want that?

[TcomJ]

Then the problem here isn't really SE but the players? People will always push for more healing/damage, it's a no brainier? They could make half of Bard skill heal but if they make brd also do 50 percent damage who would want that?

Another person who thinks healing is the only support/utility can exist in an RPG game. Yes, it's the fault of a few small group of people who won't to go easy with every damn thing, the most optimal to the point that certain abilities and jobs must be ruled out while completely destroy the fantasy aspect of the genre.
And it's the fault of SE who put too much importance and can't balance these aspects out ad listen too much to the small group of people or the typical mass of "I want pew pew only in every job that's not healers".

And if you actually read the healer forum, AST complaint is not just oh we heal less.

It's "SE tries to make us all into a WHM, but we are not WHM but a worse whm with gutted identity and fantasy aspect of the job then make us worse heal in the main number."

I played AST and Brd for the reason of its unique aspects not to be homogenized like some brain dead number generator. Oh look, both got gutted. What a coincident.

[Cain-Galeserpent]

Solid damage..

[Taranok]

Yah, take that for example. So they try to homogenize role into the same thing. Healers only heal.

You get WHM the best and people who play other healers see no need why AST should exist at all. Good thing Sch is not as bad, but hooray homogenization, so fun so good right?

Same thing as DPS, if they are going to homogenize DPS, then all identities are gone except for the one that is "my damage is my utility" will be ok, but the unique hybrid roles, people who play these will not take it.
Then we will get who has higher dps, go for that just like healers.
That's healthy for a fantasy mmo game?

The issue is that Healers have a double whammy. They're homogenized twice over. Once for losing a lot of personal support towards DPS, and twice because they all fundamentally accomplish their role the same way. The only major difference is whether you land Succor/Medica 2 before, or after, big hits happen.

Ironically, this design style massively blows the balance issue out of proportion with where it should be, because when all healers play the game fundamentally the same way, you exaggerate what little difference there is.

If the healers were designed so that they fundamentally healed differently at a core level, then as long as they were close enough, people would play what they stylistically prefer, not what just happens to be the best at that time. Of course, the prog groups will prefer the meta, and a meta will always exist, but you would see far less shaming because the style is different and it brings something unique to the table.

DPS suffers from the same problem, but because they have different ways of accomplishing the same goal, people will still prefer what they prefer even if something is optimal towards a meta. Prog will, again, prefer meta, but outside of that you find general acceptance of any job that is objectively not dead weight.

SB had the issue of BLM and SAM flat out launching so heavily undertuned that support-oriented classes could actually out-DPS them, which led to the stereotype that they were bad, but at the end of the day I had no trouble finding or seeing BLMs join parties because they could still do the content and doing well on a bad class is better than doing poorly on a good one. Usually.

Even if the classes are homogenized, having major stylistic differences helps promote diversity more than destroying it, but healers don't have real major stylistic differences outside of "Barriers" and "Not barriers." And that's what's making the healer issue come to a head.

[TcomJ]

The issue is that Healers have a double whammy. They're homogenized twice over. Once for losing a lot of personal support towards DPS, and twice because they all fundamentally accomplish their role the same way. The only major difference is whether you land Succor/Medica 2 before, or after, big hits happen.

Ironically, this design style massively blows the balance issue out of proportion with where it should be, because when all healers play the game fundamentally the same way, you exaggerate what little difference there is.

If the healers were designed so that they fundamentally healed differently at a core level, then as long as they were close enough, people would play what they stylistically prefer, not what just happens to be the best at that time. Of course, the prog groups will prefer the meta, and a meta will always exist, but you would see far less shaming because the style is different and it brings something unique to the table.

DPS suffers from the same problem, but because they have different ways of accomplishing the same goal, people will still prefer what they prefer even if something is optimal towards a meta. Prog will, again, prefer meta, but outside of that you find general acceptance of any job that is objectively not dead weight.

SB had the issue of BLM and SAM flat out launching so heavily undertuned that support-oriented classes could actually out-DPS them, which led to the stereotype that they were bad, but at the end of the day I had no trouble finding or seeing BLMs join parties because they could still do the content and doing well on a bad class is better than doing poorly on a good one. Usually.

Even if the classes are homogenized, having major stylistic differences helps promote diversity more than destroying it, but healers don't have real major stylistic differences outside of "Barriers" and "Not barriers." And that's what's making the healer issue come to a head.

You seem to know how to use flowery words. Stylistic DPS designs? The only thing stylistic about DPS is their abilities design to their lore, their uniqueness and mechanics. Not sure if you ever play other final fantasy or the classic MMO like Ragnarok, but having a copped out naming and movement from the outside as a reskin and the rest is DPS numbers just the same are not "stylistic".

Homogenization's bland, uncreative and shallow....just like WoW now and the beginning of lazy designs. Homogenization is what kill RPG in any games because it only cater to the specific group that the job benefits from.

There are wayy more jobs in Ragnarok and none of them do the same. You have a priest who only does damage to undead, yet people pick priest still to raid.
You have sage who buffs people with gemstone, yet people don't their bard.
None of them are homogenized hence the popularity of the fantasy game.

https://irowiki.org/wiki/Classes

[HyoMinPark]

Well, we were like that in 3.0 and 4.0 no? And I honestly don't get kick out simply because end game raiders want to finish quicker as I don't see other people got it also.
There are probably some sad people who kick people out simply because the job has lower damage number than the other and don't account the other perks once progression is done. Really small group of toxic people who we should NOT care for.

3.0 and 4.0 BRD weren't anything close to the suggested XI BRD. BRD in XI was pure support and had no offensive attacks, making any solo play impossible for the job. It was also fairly strong in terms of its utility, which, in this game, would make it instantly meta - especially if debuffing utility was actually viable in higher end content. It basically stood around and sang to buff its party, and debuff bosses. And that was it.

3.0 and 4.0 BRD was a hybrid, and the closest this game had to an actually Support role without it being pure support: we had utility, but we also had a decent amount of personal damage and the vast majority of our kit was offensive in nature - BRD at the end of HW was actually among the strong DPS (with MCH) after the neverending buff wars that occurred between the two jobs through the entirety of 3.x.

The person I replied to was suggesting a full support role akin to XI BRD. If you don't know what that entails, I'd suggest reading up on what BRD was like in XI. The BRD in XIV is nothing close to to XI's BRD.