Just a interesting artcile about FFXI (and XIV)

[Rydin]

What you seem to think of as imbalance - I call depth. Something FFXIV is desperately lacking.

Having certain classes be unusable is the opposite of depth...

[Elexia]

Having certain classes be unusable is the opposite of depth...

Not necessarily, just like in the shooter genre, some weapons work better than others in certain situations and yet they can still be pretty deep in terms of execution because you could either embrace the weakness and try to overcome it or just cop out and pull out a rocket launcher.

The former (embracing and trying to overcome weakness) is what depth is, using what's given to you and utilizing it in different ways and situations, as in making you think. The latter, pulling out a rocket launcher, is what FFXIV and almost all new MMOs are like, no thinking and just plain facerolling.

For example in FFXI the only balance issue in terms of jobs were player contrived because humans in general want the easiest way out and quickest way to things, which is why when ToAU rolled around and people found out Colibri were the next best thing, guess who they turned to after years of "LOL GTFO MY GAME YOU GIMP?" That's right, Dragoons. You know what changed between 2004 and 2006 for Dragoon? Absolutely nothing that redefined the job.

That is what creates imbalance, you didn't have to target colibris as there were plenty of other targets from even 2002 that made a viable camp, but because ToAU was easier and quicker, people went to that instead.

So as you said, people will gravitate to one thing and it doesn't matter what the developer does, the players are the ones who can and will always shoehorn things, even when you had absolute freedom with your classes in XIV, it was always expected you had a, b, c, and d classes leveled for certain skills even if you didn't want to, for example DoW was always expected to have LNC, MRD and PUG skills at bare minimum, as well as DoW spells like Protect, Stoneskin and Cures for certain situations.

So no matter what happens, there will always be an "imbalance" as long as there's humans playing this game.

[Benediction]

stuff

Well, as you said that's assuming that classes are balanced... so yeah people will gravitate to something easy or popular. Like you said, it's just human nature.

But the focus is to make them balanced to give that freedom. You can only do so much with what you are given with.

Sure I can go to parties and present myself as a SMN healer (with the system that SMN is given with), but how effective would I be compared to a RDM? I guess I could put in more effort to be almost as effective... but if I want to be a healer, I'd rather go to a job that takes less effort to be more effective.