Balance, Homogenisation and Encounter Design: The Problem.

[Dzian]

I’m not sure I am seeing the level of homogenization you are describing. Yes tank defense is very homogenized now for basically the reason I described, all tanks have to be able to tank with the same effectiveness. There are basically two types of tanking: mitigation and avoidance and everyone should be well aware you can’t balance the two...so every tank in this game is a mitigation tank with the same tools. But offensively the four tanks are very different in mechanics.

This isn't necessarily the case you can have tanks with different levels of effectiveness without any real issue at all if the content isn't biased.

a poster said earlier for example that PLD was a very effective physical damage tank but a not very effective magical tank. then you hard DRK that was a very effective magic tank but not very effective physical tank. and warrior as a kinf of middle of the road.
having jobs with different strengths and weaknesses and varying levels of effectiveness is a good thing.

The problem tanks faced with this however was that the devs went and made entire raid teirs magic damage heavy and thus paladin was undesirable because it was totally unaffective at magic damage...

if the damage in alexander was better balanced between magic and physical then the varying levels of effectiveness between tanks would not have been an issue because while paladins may have taken a beating from magic attacks they would have shrugged off the physical and thus balanced themselves out..

[Dot21g]

OP, you bring up good and interesting points, many of which I've pondered myself as well. I tend to agree with much of what has already been said by others. Some of my favourite RPGs of all time threw balance out the window and ended up being better for it - Final Fantasy Tactics, to name but one.

However, and I'm not entirely sure if this has been brought up or not, some of the comparisions for more streamlined and superficial experiences that have come up concern single player games, e.g. Final Fantasy XII and XIII. And therein lies a part of the problem, I think. While I'm totally in favour of a less balanced but more varied, in-depth and engaging experience for single player games (I loved breaking the hell out of FFT, lol), this is an MMO we're dealing with here. This means that the variety of the player base has to be considered. You have more and less experienced players, some players play the game really well, others not so much, and so on.
If you design a single-player game, I tend to think it's easier to strike a balance between, well... balance and variety because what the player does with what they've been given is entirely up to them. No other person is involved in the experience. This does not apply to multi player games, where not only a player's stance on the game and its systems, but also on other people playing the game have to be taken into account.

So, for example, if you have one class that is, say, really difficult to play but a blast and really powerful when done right, you'll usually end up with two (or more) camps: Camp number one who plays the class and does so well will have tons of fun playing it. Another set of people, who plays the class as well but perceives it as too difficult to be able to realize its full potential will say that it's too hard to play and should be simplified for maximum output. Yet another group, who prefers a more straightforward, but no so powerful class will say that class X is OP and should be nerfed because 'Waaah, my class doesn't have as much output as class X does'.
You can extend this argument to other areas, for example class combinations in high-end content and the fact that people have been openly harassed in PF/RF for picking the 'wrong' class. Really, you can't make that stuff up.

What I mean to say is this: The debate of balance vs. variety in games is a hard enough one already, as the two often come at each other's expense, but with so many classes and people who play them, and subsequently many, many interests at odds with each other, I just think it's the easier and less stressful path for the devs to balance, and thus homogenize, as much as they can, both from a game design and business standpoint. Things like depth, variety and class identiy will necessarily suffer from this, and this is indeed a problem, but I feel that the more discerning player base who favours more depth and variety while accepting a certain loss of balance will always be in the minority.

[Edax]

OP, you bring up good and interesting points, many of which I've pondered myself as well. I tend to agree with much of what has already been said by others. Some of my favourite RPGs of all time threw balance out the window and ended up being better for it - Final Fantasy Tactics, to name but one.

Part of the fun of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was building some disgustingly broken class combinations, but that's kind of thing you can only get away with in a single player game. If there are broken classes in a multiplayer game, the entire meta shifts around it which will annoy the majority of players because they are being forced by said meta to use the broken classes.

What I mean to say is this: The debate of balance vs. variety in games is a hard enough one already, as the two often come at each other's expense, but with so many classes and people who play them, and subsequently many, many interests at odds with each other, I just think it's the easier and less stressful path for the devs to balance, and thus homogenize, as much as they can, both from a game design and business standpoint. Things like depth, variety and class identiy will necessarily suffer from this, and this is indeed a problem, but I feel that the more discerning player base who favours more depth and variety while accepting a certain loss of balance will always be in the minority.

Yes, I remember WoW when it was "young" it had tons of class identity and even broken racial stats. It was all so horrifically unbalanced and I still remember the videos made of players who hated it. If you weren't in an optimum spec or class, you were basically worthless and under extreme pressure to just start an alt with the "correct" class. Homogenization fixes this to some extent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5mD1n4v2JA

[Dot21g]

Part of the fun of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was building some disgustingly broken class combinations, but that's kind of thing you can only get away with in a single player game. If there are broken classes in a multiplayer game, the entire meta shifts around it which will annoy the majority of players because they are being forced by said meta to use the broken classes.

Yup, the arithmetician in FFT: War of the Lions (can't really speak for Advance here) paired with, well, almost any other class was one such case. The stuff you could do with that class was just... ridiculously broken. Or Cid Orlandeau himself, whom you could basically cheese the rest of the campaign with once you got him, lol. But I digress...

Anyway, I can't imagine that this is something that any dev truly wants. A player base that is divided into players who just want to play the game and have fun, regardless of meta, or who strongly identify with a certain class or role - and those who enjoy creating broken and OP characters to the point they have an unfair advantage against others. I see where you're coming from, and I agree with you, though I can't help but wonder if it's not also a player base problem (being able to deal with a certain amount of imbalance without having a meltdown, I mean), rather than one that is rooted in the game itself. Lack of balance, as long as it wasn't totally over the top, has never been an issue in single player games, at least to me, so... isn't how players respond to this kind of thing something to consider as well?

[Vulcann]

the problem is this game is going the WoW route, where as its "raid or die" so of course there is going to be homogenization, because everything needs to be "optimized" for the hardest raids. the best thing for this game would be to give us more options on character advancement.

i would love to see the Trust system expanded on, unlocking more characters and allowing us to take our trusts into things like heaven on high and even raids (obviously not savage raids)

[Melichoir]

I think that would be the potential issue. If a more complex job outputs the same DPS as a simpler job (and this might be subjective as different people work differently and may find different things to be complex, though some things can be universal as well), either people would see no point in taking the more complex job as it would mean higher chance of failure with no extra benefit or it would feel unrewarding to play unless the player is looking for that exact complexity in gameplay.

This is partly true from an "On Paper" point of view. Why take a 'riskier' job that requires a higher skill floor to play when you can face roll it all the same with an easier job. But it doesnt take into account how players can be. Sometimes players will play the harder class because of aesthetics or because its funner. You might be able to offset it by rewarding a little higher dps overall to the more difficult classes. Not that it should be so substantial that its a must take, but that if you have someoen who can play it that well, that you get the benefit of a bit more dps for your raid. Maybe that job can have a utility that boosts everyone's dps overall by doing it right. It's all a matter of figuring out a way and then balancing it accordingly. It should be fine to have some classes easier to play and some be harder to play. Minor differences in out put with some relationship to input will make things alright.

It is not always good for classes to be the same difficulty cause that tends to lean more towards having a simpler lower skill floor and easier play style than complexity. And if its to simplistic, it can get boring fairly quick as people reach the skill ceiling with little effort.

[RoyalBeef]

the problem is this game is going the WoW route, where as its "raid or die" so of course there is going to be homogenization, because everything needs to be "optimized" for the hardest raids. the best thing for this game would be to give us more options on character advancement.

The problem is there is not really "the hardest raids" and "other raids"...there's just "raids."

Progression in this game looks like this:

Cakewalk everything before Savage <--- brickwall ---> Savage

There is no fun but challenging content for non min-maxers. Well, Farm Ex mounts...yay

If there was enough content in different tiers that's worthwhile, no one would care if the top 1% were min maxing and creating metas. But now it's either "play class X or there is no more content for you bc you wont find a party for it" so of course people become frustrated.

[Driavna]

i would love to see the Trust system expanded on, unlocking more characters and allowing us to take our trusts into things like heaven on high and even raids (obviously not savage raids)

No, just no. FFXIV is an MMO, social interactions should be spected. Expanding Trust for all the neccesary related MSQ content is one thing, but beyond that? No.

There are plenty of solo games out there to enjoy.

[SaberMaxwell]

No, just no. FFXIV is an MMO, social interactions should be spected. Expanding Trust for all the neccesary related MSQ content is one thing, but beyond that? No.

There are plenty of solo games out there to enjoy.

I mean in that case why don't we abolish df entirely to enforce those social interactions? :shrug:

[Driavna]

Duty Finder, or Party Finder, (or anything that make you play with random people) does not negate social interactions even when most people stay silent. I really don't understand your point, after all, DF is not that different from PF or spamming a general channel.