Balance, Homogenisation and Encounter Design: The Problem.

[Acidblood]

When you remove the hard enrage you remove any reason to perform any mechanic except to the extent that you survive that mechanic and that mechanic alone. There is no interconnectedness. There is no lingering consequence. Survival in each mechanic becomes even MORE binary. There are no degrees of risk-reward. There is no need to find a balance between the two.

A hard enrage is precisely what makes it so you don't need only to survive to the end (hard enrage) or not. Running around like headless chickens simply will not get you through mechanics. You can have a party that's bad at one mechanic or two and have to completely divert their focus for it or come up with strategies that favor mitigating risk (survival) over facilitating reward (uptime) and a hard enrage will allow for that leniency on those few mechanics so long as you can perform the others sufficiently well.

Neither gameplay with or without a hard enrage will ever reward you for overhealing or overmitigation. Ever. You would need to incorporate a gimmick 'deep damage' mechanic or the like whereby players are temporarily crippled if reduced to critical HP or whatnot. The only difference you'll get from removing hard enrages is the ability to average out your performance check over multiple mechanics, to recover over the course of other mechanics what you struggle with on one or few particular mechanics.

Given the current state of the combat system, where the party effectively has infinite resources, and DPS loss (including death) is the only real penalty that mechanics can apply, I would agree. The downside is of course that the system inherently lacks depth*, and what little it may have will probably, over time, be removed in the name of 'balance' (see: this forum and the progression of combat in FFXIV so far).

Which is OK (I guess), but without any depth (e.g. a spectrum of party compositions) content gets stale extremely quickly and a constant stream of new, well designed and (hopefully) engaging content is required to keep the game afloat**.

* Don't confuse complexity (e.g. the current stat system, or a new boss mechanic) for depth (or simplicity for the lack of it), complexity will always get boiled down in time but if there is no real choice underlying it then there is no depth.

** Again, this is OK (I guess) but it means putting a lot of resources into constant content regeneration, resources that (arguably) could have been better spent elsewhere, such as making Diadem not so... umm, yeah. It also risks content becoming copy / paste (see: FFXIV dungeons, and even to an extent trials and raids).

If job identity causes one tank to deliberately sacrifice all but 1 hp, then let it die.

Otherwise, this tank uses a gunblade, that tank uses a sword and shield. This ranged DPS shoots arrows, that ranged DPS dances. This caster summons egis, that caster attacks from near and far. All these melee DPS use positionals differently.

Those differences are sufficient for job identity.

Wow, so are we really down to cosmetics and pushing buttons in a slightly different order?

[linay]

Wow, so are we really down to cosmetics and pushing buttons in a slightly different order?

In my opinion, as it should be. A job is not just a job. It has a role and role identity trumps job identity. A dark knight should be a tank first and foremost in its identity and utility in a fight while offering the identity of a dark knight in terms of aesthetic and lore and flavor text and maybe order of rotation.

[Shurrikhan]

Given the current state of the combat system, where the party effectively has infinite resources, and DPS loss (including death) is the only real penalty that mechanics can apply, I would agree. The downside is of course that the system inherently lacks depth*, and what little it may have will probably, over time, be removed in the name of 'balance' (see: this forum and the progression of combat in FFXIV so far).

Again, though, hard enrages do not enforce certain metas. Bad balancing does. While it is true that removing hard enrages outright would likely give us a different meta (e.g. defensive and curative utilities above all) when damage is not equally enforced for dps check mechanics specifically, that wouldn't really be any more varied, just dependent upon different imbalances to form said meta -- which would likely only swap one favored set of 4 with a new favored 4. When the jobs are properly balanced, the "meta" is only a vague notion or just a matter of which CDs are most easily aligned in a particular fight.

Since you mention infinite resources, I have to ask -- What additional depth is specifically gained by having finite healing resources? Is depth increased by no longer being capable of so many Raises? Is depth increased by no longer being able to AoE heal except in the most sparing of ways? I'd imagine those questions are hardly answerable on principle alone; it depends upon exactly what gameplay decisions are brought into what balance of each other, thus creating more or fewer options in a given scenario. Such is contextual. And almost none of it would be unique to making resources more finite.

For instance, there's little that finite resources could do to inflate risk that, say, Supplication (max HP down based on damage taken) could not. It's just that non-healers can no longer see the increased risk themselves (i.e. directly or intuitively) and other's mistakes now more directly affect their survival.

It's not that a hard enrage is removing available mechanical depth. It, again, is just a way to make individual mechanics not quite so overbearing while still keeping the fight at the same combined difficulty. We can still make mechanics even more cumulative in other ways. We already see this with vulnerability stacks. We see it with raid damage mechanics like Doomtrain's. We see it with Flare placement. We could easily see it with AoE overlaps where 3 would be fatal without shields, 4 fatal regardless, 2 an uptime increase, and 1 healing/vuln stacks spared.

T8 had us control the pace of long and short term risk in tandem against additional scripted raid damage. T7 had large ranges in safety based on player tactics. T6 had greatly divergent risk-reward strats, with short-term safety (worms/brambles) against long-term safety (the hard enrage). T1, albeit a soft enrage if you prefer that terminology, set risk of add management and resources wasted against boss damage stacks and healing.

There are plethora more opportunities to create interesting mechanics with a larger emphasis on survival. It's just about finding the right balance between stopping people at one mechanic until they've beaten their heads against it enough and giving them a little more leniency in individual mechanics in favor of the whole. Hard enrage is simply the easiest way to provide that flex, not that we don't have plenty of other examples (T1, T2, T6, and T8 most noticeably) of other means of bringing both short- and long-term risk.

Removing such varied elements of fight design wasn't done in consequence of 'stagnant metas that undervalue indirect contribution to clears' designs. Rather, it's what led directly to that state so many take issue with.

[Acidblood]

Again, though, hard enrages do not enforce certain metas. Bad balancing does. While it is true that removing hard enrages outright would likely give us a different meta (e.g. defensive and curative utilities above all) when damage is not equally enforced for dps check mechanics specifically, that wouldn't really be any more varied, just dependent upon different imbalances to form said meta -- which would likely only swap one favored set of 4 with a new favored 4. When the jobs are properly balanced, the "meta" is only a vague notion or just a matter of which CDs are most easily aligned in a particular fight.

True, but seeking to eliminate the meta is a fool’s errand; there will always be one, and the ill-informed will always assert its ‘truth’ (I’m not a bad player, class X just ‘sucks’). Which is not to say that reasonable balance should not be strived for, I would just prefer that balance to be less comparable than a single number. I would also prefer that the focus of said ‘balance’ be placed somewhere other than DPS, as DPS will always be naturally valued (i.e. part of the balance) and there is little reason for the game to inflate that value.

Since you mention infinite resources, I have to ask -- What additional depth is specifically gained by having finite healing resources? Is depth increased by no longer being capable of so many Raises? Is depth increased by no longer being able to AoE heal except in the most sparing of ways? I'd imagine those questions are hardly answerable on principle alone; it depends upon exactly what gameplay decisions are brought into what balance of each other, thus creating more or fewer options in a given scenario. Such is contextual. And almost none of it would be unique to making resources more finite.

With a hard enrage you have to finish a fight in X minutes, no ifs, buts, or maybes; and as I’ve said this reduces survival to a binary… unless of course the timer is generous, which would then negate the benefits you have outlined.

With a finite resource system that timer can be variable, as the rate of resource expenditure (and regain) can be variable. This variability adds depth, as it creates a trade-off, a choice if reasonably balanced, between resource expenditure, regain, and the time for which it must last, with individual classes, and even encounter mechanics, contributing to each of these factors in some way.

Note 1: This will not create a perfectly ‘balanced’ system, at least not in the sense that classes can said to be ‘equal’, but that is the whole point; classes should be valued for the individual benefits they bring, not reduced to some number on a line (though I’m sure that will happen anyway; i.e. the meta).

Note 2: Please do not base finite resources on the current healer (or general class) design, it won’t work. The current design is for burst healers able to counter mechanics that drop the party to 1 HP every 30 seconds... finite resource healers, and support classes, need to be a much slower burn in terms of both heal speed and resource usage; similar to how damage is delt by players over the length of an encounter.

To be fair, certain aspects of a job need to be uniform. Otherwise, people prioritize the superior option above all else. I mean, why wouldn't they? Case in point, when Paladin was the physical tank and Dark Knight magical. You saw less and less Paladins because practically the entirety of Alexander was magic heavy.

That was a failure of encounter design; i.e. there should have been a much more even mix, giving both PLD and DRK a chance to shine at appropriate moments, with WAR being a more even middle ground. (The game also needs to make it much more obvious which attack type is which as even now we have ‘magic only’ mitigation).

I do agree though that all tanks should have Provoke, a ranged emnity skill, and a basic cooldown kit (can we get some individual skins please?), but beyond that… there is zero reason for all tanks to have the same AoE for example.

[Dzian]

That was a failure of encounter design; i.e. there should have been a much more even mix, giving both PLD and DRK a chance to shine at appropriate moments, with WAR being a more even middle ground. (The game also needs to make it much more obvious which attack type is which as even now we have ‘magic only’ mitigation).

This is very true.bad encounter design has been a common denominator for many various job issues.

WHM being a pure healer was never a problem, the problem was encounters were designed in such predictable ways that healing was generally just not needed. Hence why so few gcds were ever spent on healing spells.

the same was true for monks, paladins, blms, many of the problems jobs have suffered stem from flaws in the design of encounters more than the jobs themselves.

[Shurrikhan]

True, but seeking to eliminate the meta is a fool’s errand; there will always be one, and the ill-informed will always assert its ‘truth’ (I’m not a bad player, class X just ‘sucks’). Which is not to say that reasonable balance should not be strived for, I would just prefer that balance to be less comparable than a single number.

Oh, same. Absolutely. I hate that "Which job is best?" for so many people will boil down purely to that job's fflogs page for a given fight. I miss the little advantages of frequent extra stuns or bonus healing or added range or restoration or free cleanse, and wish they had gone further in that direction by more frequently including mechanics which could make use of these things, rather than taking them out back and putting these utilities 'out of their misery' (especially given that these utilities were only disempowered by the dev's specifically making most mobs immune to them).

I don't mind that one comp is meta for one strategy for dealing with a fight. I just mind when there's only one strategy and therefore one meta. And I especially mind when that meta is propped up only by differences rDPS. (And, no, I don't believe we'd still see metas enforced by rDPS differences if jobs performed within a couple % of each other, rather than up to some 15%+ difference between 'god' jobs and 'tier 2' jobs)

With a hard enrage you have to finish a fight in X minutes, no ifs, buts, or maybes; and as I’ve said this reduces survival to a binary… unless of course the timer is generous, which would then negate the benefits you have outlined.

Again, it does the exact opposite of that.

Fight design without hard enrage:
Mechanic 1: Must perform at 75% or higher.
Mechanic 2: Must perform at 70% or higher.
Mechanic 3: Must perform at 80% or higher.
Total: Irrelevant. You already either failed at Mechanic 1, 2, or 3 individually, and each had no further consequence on the rest of the fight.

Fight design with hard enrage:
Mechanic 1: Must perform at 55% or higher.
Mechanic 2: Must perform at 50% or higher.
Mechanic 3: Must perform at 70% or higher.
Total: Must perform at a combined 225% or higher. The combined difficulty is still the same as without enrages, but the mechanics are no longer binary. The excess performance on one can be applied towards another after its minimum performance.

Hard enrages are one of many ways to make individual mechanics non-binary. Using none of those ways, as per any modern fight if denied its hard enrage, would make each mechanic binary and grant absolutely no reward for performing a mechanic better on one run than another or better than another group so long as no wipe occurred in either case.

Finite resource systems are another way to make, effectively, a hard enrage, but it involves exactly the same risk-reward structure as what we have now except denies players ready access to information. I can tell by the duty clock and the boss's %HP if I'm likely to make it or not, but there are just too many variables between healer MP and success to be sure of anything in regards to the imminent wipe provided by finite resources, muddies player-by-player risk reward, as one person taking excess damage will just as likely lead to someone else's (or everyone's) death, and generally just makes for a more convoluted experience despite having the same pressures and priority on dps. (Unless, again, you want healers not to deal damage at all and to retune bosses around that change, because whether you like it or not, the way we clear content now absolutely, undeniably, takes healer damage into account.)