Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Sebazy]

Not to mention jobs are designed to be played in a certain way. However, Yoshi-P himself has stated many times that they will never be as smart as their players, which isn't a bad thing, it's just a fact. However many hundred of devs is nothing compared to the millions that play the game, and there is a good chance the player will find a way to play the job better than the devs ever intended.

Just to chip in a small addition to this point here.

It's important to remember that they have 5 or 6 battle system designers total depending on how much Sato's role leads towards production management now.

If SE had hundreds of devs (Or even a consistent testing team of that scale with experience and skill comparable to a prog raiding static) then I don't think they would be making the significant oversights and mistakes that are pretty much a given with each expansion release. This pattern of releasing a few jobs in a state somewhere between non competitive and barely functional and then having to spend the next 6 months worth of patches simply fixing them is both predictable and a huge waste of their time.

As of right now I assume they have a similar setup to what I had at EA/Bullfrog with a large shared pool of testers and a system that simply dishes out tickets and assignments randomly as testers become available. This is backed up by how Yoshida talked about the difficulties and compromises the testing team had to make back in HW and Gordias (which in turn resulted in infamously wonky DPS checks). That's fine for a standalone single player style game or a multiplayer game that has more in common with it's peers. But FFXIV's end game is quite different to the competition and it takes time to adjust.

[VentVanitas]

This pattern of releasing a few jobs in a state somewhere between non competitive and barely functional and then having to spend the next 6 months worth of patches simply fixing them is both predictable and a huge waste of their time.

I can't stress enough how important this specific statement is. A lot of problems with jobs are almost always identified immediately when new changes are presented, but only very few of these issues are addressed while others are ignored or procrastinated on for a later patch. They waste a lot of development time fixing their own easily preventable design problems, most of which can be avoided had they stopped being so selective in their feedback.

[ForteNightshade]

If SE had hundreds of devs (Or even a consistent testing team of that scale with experience and skill comparable to a prog raiding static) then I don't think they would be making the significant oversights and mistakes that are pretty much a given with each expansion release. This pattern of releasing a few jobs in a state somewhere between non competitive and barely functional and then having to spend the next 6 months worth of patches simply fixing them is both predictable and a huge waste of their time.

Meanwhile, the continual irony is people will prop up how incredibly balanced all the jobs are despite them being anything but. Presently, we're seeing comically high DPS discrepancies that simply shouldn't exist this long into an expansion cycle. For specific highlights:

White Mage is worthless. And I don't say that to be hyperbolic. The job offers literally nothing its counterpart Healers don't perform better at. Since the release of Endwalker White Mage has: the lowest DPS output, the weakest MP economy, the least mobility, the weakest healing flexibility and is the least able to recover from dying. Simply put, White Mage does nothing. It's downright baffling and a little embarrassing it was left in this state come 6.08. Unfortunately, White Mage remains incredibly popular at a casual level. So it may be left to rot for several patches.

Another major balance issue is the Physical Range. Nevermind the whole range tax is nonsense, Machinist is so woefully inferior DPS wise, the job may as well not exist. The supposedly selfish DPS job can't keep up with Dancer of all jobs. A similar problem has happened with the Casters as Black Mage utterly dwarfs Red Mage and Summoner since its 6.08 buffs—to the tune of nearly 1,000 rDPS. It's insane just how much stronger Black Mage is. And before anyone mentions it being the selfish Caster. Dragoon, Reaper, Monk and even Ninja are all reasonably competitive with Samurai despite its selfish nature. Hence why right now the only role decently balanced are the Melee. Bit ironic considering how the role started.

[Liam_Harper]

Meanwhile, the continual irony is people will prop up how incredibly balanced all the jobs are despite them being anything but. Presently, we're seeing comically high DPS discrepancies that simply shouldn't exist this long into an expansion cycle. For specific highlights:

I expect one of the reasons is they "balance" it by making content easier in terms of enrage timers and healing required. When content is easy other than resolving mechanics, it matters less whether the individual classes you bring are bad and more whether your team can do mechs correctly. Thus creating an artificial illusion of "balance" where all classes are fine.

Very little content in the game has tight dps checks now. Normal has almost no dps checks or enrage. EX is extremely lenient. Even Savage is designed so it can be cleared with multiple deaths, 50% uptime healers and a few single digit parsing dps as long as half the group is competent. Ultimate is known for low dps checks and being mechanics focused.
Same for healing, everything in the game requires very little healing and the cases that do, GCD heals are so strong even a WHM can churn out a few 1000 potency Medica IIs and cover it. The GCD heal dps loss won't matter because enrage timers don't matter much.
There's also the 1 phys ranged, 1 caster, 1 melee restriction as well as the fact that buffs from the same class don't stack, to discourage players from trying to exclude the "bad" classes and stack the good ones. It's not that bad to bring a MCH because hey, you get your 1% party bonus. "Balanced" without the work of actually balancing.

In the very rare cases healing or dps isn't easy and it actually matters, balance goes out the window. The best example is WHM in p3s, where suddenly it statistically goes from being the most popular healer to one of the least popular. Why bring the barebones rubbish healer when there's actually a difficult healing mechanic that can make or break a clear, that AST laughs at. Or the "no PLD" groups for early tier prog where damage was more important.

[SeverianLyonesse]

Meanwhile, the continual irony is people will prop up how incredibly balanced all the jobs are despite them being anything but. Presently, we're seeing comically high DPS discrepancies that simply shouldn't exist this long into an expansion cycle. For specific highlights:

White Mage is worthless. And I don't say that to be hyperbolic. The job offers literally nothing its counterpart Healers don't perform better at. Since the release of Endwalker White Mage has: the lowest DPS output, the weakest MP economy, the least mobility, the weakest healing flexibility and is the least able to recover from dying. Simply put, White Mage does nothing. It's downright baffling and a little embarrassing it was left in this state come 6.08. Unfortunately, White Mage remains incredibly popular at a casual level. So it may be left to rot for several patches.

Another major balance issue is the Physical Range. Nevermind the whole range tax is nonsense, Machinist is so woefully inferior DPS wise, the job may as well not exist. The supposedly selfish DPS job can't keep up with Dancer of all jobs. A similar problem has happened with the Casters as Black Mage utterly dwarfs Red Mage and Summoner since its 6.08 buffs—to the tune of nearly 1,000 rDPS. It's insane just how much stronger Black Mage is. And before anyone mentions it being the selfish Caster. Dragoon, Reaper, Monk and even Ninja are all reasonably competitive with Samurai despite its selfish nature. Hence why right now the only role decently balanced are the Melee. Bit ironic considering how the role started.

It may be intentional design that certain iconic jobs are just easier to play and optimization is less important to the devs. If a new player can come in and do okay as a WHM or SMN or RPR, then the popular "entry level jobs" are performing as intended.

Put another way, and using casters as I think a pretty clear example, what if the devs' idea of "balance" is having a job for every level of skill?

* SMN - beginners, casual
* RDM - intermediate, prog
* BLM - expert, current raid tier and Ultimate

You can even see a similar spectrum across Maiming vs. Striking (although I'm not sure where NIN was *intended* to fall in that spectrum).

Does that obviate a hope that jobs can still be balanced at all levels of play? Not at all. Does that still suck for people who mained WHM prior to this rebalancing? Absolutely. But I do think it is important to keep in mind that there may be other factors at play. The more jobs we have, the less important job balance actually becomes if there are other prevailing priorities like accessibility.

I also have no idea how WHM plays at lower levels and if it actually *is* more accessible than the other healers. But I have a strong hunch it probably is the most intuitive of the healing jobs, despite all its inefficiencies, because compared to the other healers the concept is quite direct and gimmick-free.

[ASkellington]

Put another way, and using casters as I think a pretty clear example, what if the devs' idea of "balance" is having a job for every level of skill?

That falls flat when tanks and healers do not have that distinction.

WHM is only "easy" because it isn't a proactive healer (shield) and doesn't have anything else to juggle (cards).

SGE imo is an easier SCH because it doesn't have the pet ai to mess with.

SCH isn't exactly hard either.

And AST? I'm an AST main and have been since I got into HW and all through EW. There is nothing hard about it even when you factor in the cards.

Besides all that focusing directly on the healers' primary job, there is nothing HARD about how they heal either. Shield healing is rather straightforward and both SGE and SCH have easy to use regens. Is it harder for them to recover from a party mess up? Yes but not by much.

AST would be a harder healer to use if it had both Benefics remove and only had ED for its burst healing and hand to rely solely on regens. It doesn't.

And WHM...


Also, while RDM and BLM are intermediate to hard to master, their bar to entry is still easy. They have growth. SMN mains are asking for that growth as are we healers.

RDM and BLM should be the standard design of jobs across the board. They aren't hard to do their basic job: damage. But they have intricacies to make DOING DAMAGE interesting.

Now if only healers and tanks could get that.

[SeverianLyonesse]

That falls flat when tanks and healers do not have that distinction.

WHM is only "easy" because it isn't a proactive healer (shield) and doesn't have anything else to juggle (cards).

SGE imo is an easier SCH because it doesn't have the pet ai to mess with.

SCH isn't exactly hard either.

And AST? I'm an AST main and have been since I got into HW and all through EW. There is nothing hard about it even when you factor in the cards.

Just because they aren't hard for you doesn't mean the average noob might have a more difficult time juggling cards/faeries/DPS than they might have with a more straightforward job like WHM. People who find *any* job easy in this game are probably not the target audience being designed for...for every one of you, there are five casuals who SE is trying to rope in with a very low accessibility threshold.

And just because the distinction is different across healers or tanks as opposed to casters or melee, does not obviate the possibility of an intent for *some* skill-based stratification of jobs. Again, I point toward the fact that WHM seems pretty clearly designed to be easier than any of the other healer jobs, and also happens to be an entry point for a lot of healers because of the iconicity of the job.

Also, while RDM and BLM are intermediate to hard to master, their bar to entry is still easy. They have growth. SMN mains are asking for that growth as are we healers.

RDM and BLM should be the standard design of jobs across the board. They aren't hard to do their basic job: damage. But they have intricacies to make DOING DAMAGE interesting.

Now if only healers and tanks could get that.

Again, just because they have a low barrier of entry *to you* does not mean that they aren't still more complicated than SMN. RDM and BLM place a lot of player agency on properly ordering spells to manage doublecast/AF-UI, as well as forcing them to figure out their burst windows manually. SMN--as far as I understand the rework for not having played it--is practically on autopilot rails, where the spell choices hardly matter and the burst windows are for the most part built-in to the burst spells.

SMN feels designed to introduce players to DPS, the same way WHM feels designed to introduce players to healing. We can argue whether WHM actually does a good job of this (and I agree it doesn't seem to be accomplishing it at the moment), but I think it is a factor that needs to be accounted for in discussion of why and in what manner WHM is struggling.

[ForteNightshade]

It may be intentional design that certain iconic jobs are just easier to play and optimization is less important to the devs. If a new player can come in and do okay as a WHM or SMN or RPR, then the popular "entry level jobs" are performing as intended.

Put another way, and using casters as I think a pretty clear example, what if the devs' idea of "balance" is having a job for every level of skill?

I may be tempted to agree... if there were any signs of consistency with this mindset. There aren't.

Melee have been horrendously imbalanced at both Shadowbringers and Endwalker's launch. Ninja and Samurai were both woefully inferior despite both being the harder Melee to play, especially in early 5.0. Reaper, meanwhile, is among the easiest jobs in the entire game to simply pick up and play yet it stood as the strongest; so overpowered at 6.0 that it could die and still parse better than a Orange tier Machinist or Dancer.

Going to your Caster example. As ASkellington said, none of them are particularly challenging at a sub-optimal level. Black Mage has become far more inviting and easier to grasp than its older iterations. Even if that were the case, you simply can't balance jobs around difficulty because it will promote exclusion. Come the release of Dragonsong, the only thing keeping Red Mage and Summoner alive is Resurrection/Verraise. The damage difference between them and Black Mage is so massive, it'd be silly not prioritizing a Black Mage player over the other Casters—assuming a comparable enough skill level. Machinist doesn't have such luxury and basically needs Jesus come 6.1 or it will rot. The imbalance between it, Bard and Dancer is just too significant.

Bringing this back around to healers. White Mage doesn't even excel at being the easiest healer to play. Sage is comparably easy at a base level but has far better versatility. At this moment, White Mage absolutely nothing it excels at in any noteworthy way.

[SeverianLyonesse]

I may be tempted to agree... if there were any signs of consistency with this mindset. There aren't.

I have to note that consistency doesn't necessarily obviate an intent...it just means the vision wasn't successfully realized. I still think RPR makes a pretty strong case for accessibility being at the forefront of job design.

Going to your Caster example. As ASkellington said, none of them are particularly challenging at a sub-optimal level. Black Mage has become far more inviting and easier to grasp than its older iterations. Even if that were the case, you simply can't balance jobs around difficulty because it will promote exclusion. Come the release of Dragonsong, the only thing keeping Red Mage and Summoner alive is Resurrection/Verraise. The damage difference between them and Black Mage is so massive, it'd be silly not prioritizing a Black Mage player over the other Casters—assuming a comparable enough skill level. Machinist doesn't have such luxury and basically needs Jesus come 6.1 or it will rot. The imbalance between it, Bard and Dancer is just too significant.

Again, this is assuming comparable skill level. Which I think I think may be a tad unfair to what XIV seems to be trying to do, make space for (very) casual players to enjoy the game as well. I don't even know where I fall on that and whether the disdain for bad players is warranted, but I do think it is unrealistic to pretend that XIV isn't catering to extremely casual players.

But, more to the point, I think this idea of "exclusion" is a bit misguided among the playerbase. When you compare to a WoW or GW2, job balance matters because players invest in a single job and have to entirely re-roll a character if the job they have is excluded by the meta (in theory, both games allow for speccing differently, but then we are talking players being shoehorned into a specific role they may not enjoy, so not much better). FFXIV, in theory, would not be "excluding" anyone from participating in higher tier content when they have the option to switch to any other job. The fact that XIV's balance is such that "any job can clear" is certainly quite nice for people who like a particular job fantasy and definitely helps its sub-base. But again, I pointed out that we have a *lot* of jobs to choose from--in theory, allocating a small handful of jobs to "baby's first" category would not destroy job balance and create exclusionism in a way that would totally ruin the game like it would other job-locked MMOs.

Yes, we would have some small job-specific cults that would be put out that their favorite job is no longer viable at higher levels. And we could argue how bad that may be for the game, but I don't think it's the death-knell people would paint it to be. There's a lot of nuance and interest-balancing. Like, having under-powered or easy mode jobs in a game can easily be spun as a "challenge mode" for more skilled players (oh wow, you cleared Dragonsong with WHM? Mad skills.). The idea of job balance in FFXIV is not as binary as it is in other MMOs because the job system is so flexible.

[Skiros]

The idea of job balance in FFXIV is not as binary as it is in other MMOs because the job system is so flexible.

ROFL

As if FF14 doesn't have one of the strictest job system among MMOs because there's only one build, only one objective (damage, even during progression), only one relevant piece of content where balance matters (raids).