Just a interesting artcile about FFXI (and XIV)

[Benediction]

Beastmaster was intended to be a solo job, primarily. I'll have you know that just for fun, I made a group of RDM BRD BST BST PUP PUP once versus Greater Colibri. We had a blast. It's just the fact that, like it's been so many times now, people are lazy and rely on the cookie-cutter far too much.

You can argue here that the cookie cutter in this party was that: healer, DPS, tank (pets would tank). or, you can argue that the cookie cutter here was that you had a RDM healer. Why can't you have a WHM or SCH healer? Hell, even a SMN healer should be as effective as a RDM healer.

Balance... just sayin.

[Xoo]

honestly if one party make up is way easier... people are going to gravitate towards that and shun the other classes
Knowing that people aren't going to change... the fights could be made to encourage more varied groupings of classes

How is SE and/or design responsible for what you and others simply negate to do? You two both seem like the victims of a vicious cycle and train of thought: I got quick invites on Samurai, (because everyone thinks it's the best in all situations), and slow to non-existent invites on other jobs, thereby re-inforcing your belief that the jobs are imbalanced.

[Rydin]

You can argue here that the cookie cutter in this party was that: healer, DPS, tank (pets would tank). or, you can argue that the cookie cutter here was that you had a RDM healer. Why can't you have a WHM or SCH healer? Hell, even a SMN healer should be as effective as a RDM healer.

Balance... just sayin.

because then THAT would require some seriously innovative game design...
And the cost effective approach is to be only as innovative as you need to be to pull in as many subs as possible
i.e. developers want to put in less effort and yet appeal to more people
Thats why so many games clone a certain MMO

How is SE and/or design responsible for what you and others simply negate to do? You two both seem like the victims of a vicious cycle and train of thought: I got quick invites on Samurai, (because everyone thinks it's the best in all situations), and slow to non-existent invites on other jobs, thereby re-inforcing your belief that the jobs are imbalanced.

whether its the chicken or the egg... its got to stop somewhere...
And we are more likely to see a design change than a change in the mindset of players everywhere

[Xoo]

You can argue here that the cookie cutter in this party was that: healer, DPS, tank (pets would tank). or, you can argue that the cookie cutter here was that you had a RDM healer. Why can't you have a WHM or SCH healer? Hell, even a SMN healer should be as effective as a RDM healer.

Balance... just sayin.

I didn't say you couldn't, but obviously SCH WHM or SMN would not have been great in this situation. A WHM (SCH SMN) NIN THF RNG COR SAM could make it most excellently. By the way, Summoner is a pet class and was never really intended on playing the main heal role.

[Benediction]

How is SE and/or design responsible for what you and others simply negate to do? You two both seem like the victims of a vicious cycle and train of thought: I got quick invites on Samurai, (because everyone thinks it's the best in all situations), and slow to non-existent invites on other jobs, thereby re-inforcing your belief that the jobs are imbalanced.

lol sure it might be reinforced that way, but how many times have you been in a party (that you didn't form) and undesirable job vs desirable job were seeking and the leader (obviously) picked the diserable job? Your scope of reference seem to be only on what you experienced through forming parties, rather than step back and see the overall system.

[Benediction]

I didn't say you couldn't, but obviously SCH WHM or SMN would not have been great in this situation. A WHM (SCH SMN) NIN THF RNG COR SAM could make it most excellenty. By the way, Summoner is a pet class and was never really intended on playing the main heal role.

lol this is pretty funny...

[Xoo]

Why's that?

[Benediction]

because then THAT would require some seriously innovative game design...
And the cost effective approach is to be only as innovative as you need to be to pull in as many subs as possible
i.e. developers want to put in less effort and yet appeal to more people
Thats why so many games clone a certain MMO

Several other MMO's did it, I'm sure SE could do it as well.

Cost effective or not... the amount of effort you put into your work has no bearing on how much you'll be paid at the end. Put in a little or a lot... you're still going to get paid for any work you do. But your effort has an effect on whether your product is attractive to subscribers.

So, put in a lot of effort > innovative product > sales for the company > recieve a promotion or fame > more money for you

[Rydin]

Several other MMO's did it, I'm sure SE could do it as well.

yea... they can... but I don't know if they will

[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.