Group-DPS buffs aren't real "Utility" or "Support"

[SweetPete]

Any content could be cleared with any combination of jobs in Stormblood, as well, and jobs had nearly equal usage, too (at least in the healer department). And yet they still gutted the healers and tanks and gave us the ugly, gray blandness of homogenization we have now (where there are clear preferences for specific classes when you look at participation, too, with ridiculous shit like WHM being used more than SCH and AST combined and WHM having as much as 4x the usage of AST early on in the expansion, and with WAR facing the lowest usage of the tanks by a significant amount in spite of the damage of the tanks being within a very small margin of each other. The obsession with balance and making all the classes play the same is hurting usage and variety, pretty significantly at that.

EDIT: not to mention the lore trainwreck that is caused by the AST changes (Arcana butchered, Jannequinard made a rambling fool instead of "bad in practice knowledgeable with theory", time manipulation completely dropped and thus the meaning of the 60 quest somewhat lost, Jannequinard and Leveva constantly talking about royal road and nonsense that's not used anymore making them look incredibly unlearned, and a lot more) ,and SCH changes (Faeries have no difference now, "use the leeches", the soldier side of Nymain Scholars lost with their DPS gutting, and some other small stuff), and to a lesser extent DRK (no real punishment for "going in too deep" with dark abilities anymore, which is a key theme of the 30-50 quests).

This comment right here.

I completely agree with everything you said. However, I do have faith. During the keynote or live letter not sure which it was. Yoshi did say he wanted to bring back the fantasy of the jobs. To me, maybe that was an apology for screwing up some of the jobs in Shadowbringers. Especially the healers and tanks.

We shall see though how true they holds up in Endwalker.

[Marxam]

This game went from adps to rdps around SB but at least in SB they were double digit buffs, stance dancing, fairy solo heals were still a thing. This game used to be the weakest player had to perform to match others, but now its the party that has to match the weakest player. Utility is non-existent and what was once utility was consolidated into one of two categories: dmg up or heal. TP being gutted also removed half of the utility that could have existed in the game. Every job can sustain itself, where as previous expansion you had to rely on another party member to help you when you are in dire straits. The focus has shifted from what can each job bring to the party that no one else can provide, to now, where all you need to be is halfway decent wince all jobs have the same toolkit.

Interesting shift of ideology to appease the casual crowd so we'll see if it pays off in the long run. Luckily the story and music is good with gameplay being quite shallow, but 2/3 is not that good and I expected more of FFXIV and the foundations ARR and HW have set. I can tolerate good story and music to a point but when the gameplay is lacking, its a deal breaker because I personally play games for the gameplay and the story and music are just the icing on the cake.

[Payadopa]

Here's the secret: these two things are related.

Hard disagree. There is a difference between all jobs being good enough and roles playing pretty much the same.

[Sylvain]

Hard disagree. There is a difference between all jobs being good enough and roles playing pretty much the same.

But this is not what he quoted

You said " I don't get the obsession with balance" and "Any content can be cleared with any combination of jobs"
to which he replied that both are related.

Which is true, it is because jobs are balanced (numerically for dps, ability to survive/make group survive for Tank and Heal) that you can bring any job to any content.
It is because people freak out for 500rdps gap that everything is very close together when it comes to rdps and utility. (the later scaling poorly as we get more gear, but on the other hand dps balance becomes less of an issue we get said gear)

So.. he's right, they are related,

And you're also right, there's a difference between job balance and gameplay (I assume that's what you meant by "roles playing pretty much the same).

[Dzian]

You can have very diverse jobs and still maintain a decent balance if the content is designed right.

if we look back at early heavensward they tried to diversify tanks by making paladin physical defence and drk magic defence and war being in your face dps.. that was pretty cool and would have helped each attain its own identity.

where it fell short was badly designed content. quite literally an entire tier of content was almost exclusively magic damage based and thats where they went wrong. not with the jobs themselves.had they done it right that could have allowed for some much more interesting tank swaps than the arbitarry forced swap because of a debuff mechanic.

utility is effectively the same. you can balance well around utility if you design good content.. taking something like blms sleep one of the few things that does still exist. could provide utility without being mandatory. design encounters where players might need to step on weighted platforms to activate a shield. a blm might then have the ability to sleep adds on those platforms to provide the weight allowing the players a little more freedom.. it opens up an option for gameplay without being a mandatory element. another approach might be having the off tank grab them and hold them all on the platform. and thats just one quick example off the top of my head. well designed content could have hundreds. taking a blm to sleep mobs there might beconsidered optimum as it allows more uptime but wouldnt in anyway be mandatory to clear the content from a design perspective.

homogenization is a terrible way to balance because everything ends upbeing exactly the same...

it'd be like a racing game with just 1 car. sure you can change the colour but its the same car. racing games actually provide a solid example of balance through diversity and content.. dozens of different cars. some have super quick acceleration but terrible handling and an average top speed.. others have a high top speed with decent handling but pretty poor acceration. others have amazing handling average acceration but a pretty low top speed. yet balance is maintained through decent track design. one car may leave the others in the dust on the long straights. but another will blow them away in the tight windy corners.

shooters are the same. you have ya big bad close range shotguns, and ya long range sniper rifles but decent level design provides balance. a shotgun in a big open area would be a bad idea but when ducking through buildings and alleys it would give you a pretty decent advantage over that guy with a sniper rifle.

MMO's are really no different decentyl designed fights and encounters would allow for a great deal ofdiversity between jobs that would make them all feel unique and different, but this homogenization where everything feels the exact same is just boring.. a paladin spamming holy spirit is really no different than a warrior spamming fellcleave, or a drk or gnb spamming whatever.. every jobs brings theexactsame stuff to the table thats its just boring.

[Mikey_R]

Why would you have a BLM do it rather than a healer with Repose? A healer's GCD is worth less than a BLM after all.

Also, your 2 examples do not work. In the racing one, assuming it is more of a SIM than an arcade racer, in theory, what you do is tune your car for the track. If the track is windy, you can sacrifice your top speed for better grip and acceleration, if it has more straights, you need to think about how much top speed you can potentially sacrifice to give you the best outcome. etc. Arcade racers don't tend to follow this as they are a completely different racing style, drift for boost and keeping speed, powerups etc. It isn't a good parallel.

For shooters, it is the same. If you are on a map with tight corridors, you use the short range more destructive weapons, if it has plenty of high vantage points, you use a sniper. Again, you adapt to the map and take what suits it.

If you wanted to follow the same philosophy, you would take different jobs dependant on the fight and with the design philosophy being, any job can tackle any content.

In this regard, any potential a job has should be shared throughout the whole role. This is why all Melee have a stun, all ranged have interrupt and tanks have both.

To make jobs feel unique, it is all about how the job feels when being used, not differentiating them based on utility. Rotational variance is so that everyone can find a job they enjoy playing, not every job has to be enjoyed by everyone, however utility variance is something that can affect whether a job sees content or not.

Going back to your example, I have already mentioned Repose, however, having an Off Tank hold a mob on the platform, well, you have just taken out the tank for the raid DPS, so it will be a loss, unless the content is designed to have the OT stand there and contribute nothing.

Going back to the HW example. With warrior being so strong, and the meta being, as much DPS as possible, Warrior was the obvious choice. Then, to determine the other tank, is the fight mainly magical or physical? You would then pick one or the other based on that. If we were to carry that over into Shadowbringers, Gunbreaker would be another high DPS tank, so your preferred party would be Warrior and Gunbreaker, remembering that all tanks have to be able to survive all things, so they are perfectly fine bringing 2 tanks that have the damage capabilities of an actual DPS player, or close to it.

This is why Tanks now have similar DPS and a similar defensive kit, this is why Warrior no longer has a full damage down, DRK doesn't have the INT down and PLD doesn't have the strength down etc.

So to recap, rotational variance is how you make a job feel different and having to much variation on what a job can provide utility wise (not counting DPS increases) will cause some jobs to be taken over others.

[Dzian]

Also, your 2 examples do not work. In the racing one, assuming it is more of a SIM than an arcade racer, in theory, what you do is tune your car for the track. If the track is windy, you can sacrifice your top speed for better grip and acceleration, if it has more straights, you need to think about how much top speed you can potentially sacrifice to give you the best outcome. etc. Arcade racers don't tend to follow this as they are a completely different racing style, drift for boost and keeping speed, powerups etc. It isn't a good parallel.

For shooters, it is the same. If you are on a map with tight corridors, you use the short range more destructive weapons, if it has plenty of high vantage points, you use a sniper. Again, you adapt to the map and take what suits it.

They can and do work. Tuning your car for a particular race really isn't any different to how many mmos ofte nworked. Especially the older ones, You "tuned" your character to the encounters in much the same way..
Oh hey this boss has really high defence and is tough as nails. I'll trade some strength for attack power..
Oh this boss is quite squishy and agile but he doesnt hit too hard. trade some of that defence for dexterity or accuraccy...
Oh this boss isnt terribly tough but hits like an absolute truck, maybe trade off some of that attack poweror dexterity for extra defence or hp..
It's really no different to the example you gave about tuning cars.. But homogonization and over simplification of literally everything has lead to everything being the exact same and thats both shallow and boring.

Shooters it works as well as most of the decent shooters have well designed maps that have quite alot of diversity in there design. You might get a big frieght terminal map with lots of wide open spaces but on the very same map find lots of freight containers and lorries and stuff thrown around even warehouses full of freight where making large enclosed spaces. Balance is then obtained by the enviroment no one weapon or loadout has the advantage accross the entire map and this is often where the fun comes from as it becomes less about meta or strong builds and more about player choices and how they actually make use of the enviroment.

These are all elements that add depth and complexity to gameplay and thats what makes games fun.. Simplicity and homogenization doesn't which is why many jobs feel so boring to play. It's not just the jobs either. SHs actual content is pretty widely regarded as the blandest content in the game. so shallow and lacking in comparion to previous expacs.

[Raikai]

This statement may have some sort of intuitive appeal, but I don't think it's particularly connected to the reality of the game.

NIN really doesn't play like DNC really doesn't play like BLM really doesn't play like DRG.

Maybe I wasn't clear, but when I meant homogenization was regarding the OP's topic of utility or support. Further in my response I'm even stating that a way to counter this is to make the playstyle non-homogenized, and that's something that already happens with the DPS jobs at least.

I personally wish that it was more evident for tanks and healers, but then, for that to happen the encounters themselves (or rather, the formulae that they usually follow) would need to be redesigned, because those roles are much more close tied to it than the DPSers'.

[Aiscence]

I just wish free movement wasn't considered utility in a game where it's never needed