Quote Originally Posted by Lyth View Post
Variations in gameplay cannot come at the expense of job balance. Otherwise you end up with homogenized picks instead of homogenized jobs, which is even worse.

The real problem isn't homogenizing jobs. It's partially homogenizing them. If another job does everything else identically +1 extra thing, then you've created a mandatory pick. Either make the differences significant enough that players can't make a simple mathematical comparison, or make them identical.
Not really, even when classes were not as homogenized every class was viable. In the end that is all that matters if every class is viable to clear content. Mandatory picks and meta game play is more for competitive games.

Your concept of everything +1 extra thing isn't viable either. There is never really a reason to bring a ninja over a reaper, machinest over a monk, a samurai over a blackmage or a bard over a dancer. The only real reason people use is raw damage numbers. So to narrow it down to a mandatory pick as an excuse for things just aren't homogenized enough is just incorrect.

This game used to have a whole system of synergies, to where if you have x than it is not a bad idea to bring y because they synergize but we did away with that to homogenize things. There was never an actual issue at this time but people would complain and say that x class was not viable for y reason that was usually untrue. The game is in the state it is simply because people won't take time to learn to play so the devs have to make the game play for us. It sucks and I blame this games horrible player base, as well as the devs disconnection between the way they believe the game plays and the way the players actually play it.