Dear SE, stop homogenizing jobs

[Ayer2015]

As the title indicates, jobs have become far too homogenized in ShB. Fun should come before raid balance.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I would argue that it is not fun playing a job unwanted in raid because other jobs perform the role better. (War in 2.0, PLD in 3.x, Whm in 3.3+, all of 4.x, SAM in 4.x and 5.0, MCH in 4.x)

Also, jobs have not been homogenized. Roles have. Jobs within a role have to be able to perform the same in certain circumstances or you could be in an instance set up for failure because a certain job isn't there.

[Siete]

The great obliteration of World of Warcraft classes came with raid-oriented class balance.
Look at them, they used to be the strongest MMO out there now they're down the sinkhole, DEAD.

So yeah, if Final Fantasy is going the WoW way with class design and balance around raids, it will share the same fate and die.

[Shori]

I feel the point OP is making.
I dont play FFXIV to raid, I play FFXIV to have fun and do many DIFFERENT things. Now, playing WHM feels the same as playing SCH, which used to be so very different in play style.

[DevilsDontFly]

I'm okayish with the way things are at the moment, sort of. I just wish balance patches were done sooner and better. And by balance patches I mean number tweaks rather than mechanic or playstyle changes.

It's very frustrating when the community is like: "Hey SE RDM feels very weak damage wise can you do something about it?"
And SE goes "Oh sure, here, have this buff to DRG. RDM changes will happen within the next six months please look forward"

I'm not a SMN main but I feel bad for all the people that love (loved?) playing SMN because chances are SE will keep making weird bandaid fixes for the entire expansion and you'll have to deal with it for the next one and a half year until they decide to redesign the job. Again.

[Saefinn]

I feel like there could be a middle ground. We have a specific set of skills balanced for PvP. Do the same for raids but more suited to raiders & raids. Go for optimisation of fulfilling those roles for a raid set up. Then for everything else, the focus can be on other things that make the job fun to play, particularly when they're not being squeezed to get the most out of them. Because this over-emphasis on balance and being streamlined is making the jobs less fun to play and not everybody is in a static running savage and ultimate.

And people being excluded in things on Party Finder because of their job choice has always felt dumb. People do it and it sucks, but you're not going to know the ability of the player you're going to get, though I don't think it's an attitude that should be accommodated for. That slot could have been filled by a MCH who's worth his salt is filled by a BLM who just can't get their DPS up. I've generally argued the meta is only really important for higher percentile groups, which accounts for a smaller portion of the player base. If somebody is able to pull their weight, then arguably it doesn't matter who job they're on. Most of the time people play better on the jobs they enjoy rather than the bandwagon ones they play because it's meta.

I mean, a "Raid" set of skills is probably not the ideal solution, but I'm not sure if there is one, because it is incredibly difficult to make the job engaging, dynamic and fun whilst at the same time making it fluid and balanced according to its role. At least doing something like this would make a separation of concerns.
Raid set for rading (Savage and Ultimate)
PvP set for PvP
Then a normal set for everything else


Taking my SCH. It's well balanced. It flows. It's intuitive and works really well.
But I'm bored playing it & I didn't used to be.

[Raqrie_Tohka]

The meme-level pf experience compounded with meme-level class balance and design makes for a pretty bad raid-pugging experience.

But I’m not sure SE really cares about PF. It can even be argued most of the allure from static’s don’t come from a class played well but is instead simply provided by the company of other people. In other words, people don’t care what they’re playing as long as they clear a raid with their static and show off to each other in their little circles. Or as assumed by SE.

In reality a significant amount of players pug, and are judged harshly and critically for their performance, now made easier due to the shallowness of classes. Even healers and tanks are judged primarily by their Dps. Furthermore, the 2-chest system and 1-week lockout without grace period forcing pugs to feel pressured to clear each and every week direly, may work well for statics, but is close to downright hostile for pugs.

When put into this perspective, as I have described, I believe it is possible to say the massive shallow-fication of classes have already exerted a considerable but not highly visible toll to the atmosphere of this game, and to the enjoyment of many players playing this game. While this may not be the only reason for danger of the game taking a turn for the worst, it would certainly be one of the more prominent ones. (Shallow gear design, and so on etc. more issues once it all feeds into the overall lackluster system and unhealthy end-game activity feedback experience loop, especially for pugs, results in things which may convince players after all this, “this was not very fun, not really worth my time, don’t have much to look forward to anymore” etc. culminating in the dreaded “leave game” ending.)

Edit: So it’s a valid issue, and a worthy argument.

[Kleeya]

It's very frustrating when the community is like: "Hey SE RDM feels very weak damage wise can you do something about it?"
And SE goes "Oh sure, here, have this buff to DRG. RDM changes will happen within the next six months please look forward"

Well, to be frank i prefer that RDM changes keep being postponed, rather than having SE listen to those players in the dps forum suggesting to remove from RDM what make it feel different : vercure and verraise. So that his damages can be increased for the sake of his performances on 99 fflogs percentile, and become a plain DPS job like BLM and SMN except that you will graphically have some verthings instead of explosions and summons. Just before the same players will complain "SE, why are all mages jobs becoming more and more the same ? Who did ask you to do that ? Please stop !".

[Raqrie_Tohka]

However, as a counterargument, it may be that SE believes a large part of the “fun” and allure of the game does not come from people trying to play complicated classes to their utmost potential in a large variety of content which for the most part, simply does not require such performance, especially content accessible by newcomers.
Aka. Fun from the game story, style, content itself, instead of the playing part. Thus a simpler combat system is doing people favors.

But increase in class depth, and party composition/raid synergy MUST be compensated for from somewhere else. Final Fantasy series simply won’t be so without trademark depth and party composition systems, and combat depth. Not complexity, depth. Strategic depth not tactical. Or even lesser, finger-jerking attention checks and ping-check mechanics.

SE seems to have trouble balancing and synergizing between theme and gameplay excellence, as evident by the other recent FF titles.

[Shyngo]

The great obliteration of World of Warcraft classes came with raid-oriented class balance.
Look at them, they used to be the strongest MMO out there now they're down the sinkhole, DEAD.

So yeah, if Final Fantasy is going the WoW way with class design and balance around raids, it will share the same fate and die.

^^This.

And the worst of it is, this game doesn't focus on it's raiding community at all,we get only 4 "weekly-reset trials" per tier, no true raid dungeon, with bosses always on squares/circle arenas. But hey, at least classes are balanced, right?.

BA was more of a raid over everything else we have so far.