What even is the purpose of all those non melee/blm jobs?

[Quor]

I am starting to get seriously depressed at playing a role/jobs that is underperforming just because somebody decided that they should be balanced on their (subjective) "complexity to play", or is the idea to split balance between "noob jobs" and "serious jobs" really a thing?

This is the crux of good video game design; if something is more difficult to do then it has to have some kind of commensurate reward. While some people like to do things that are more difficult as a form of challenge, the vast, VAST majority of players expect that the reward for doing something will be proportional to the effort put in. More effort equals greater reward. Higher complexity jobs require more effort to play at an optimal level so therefore they should reward the player with greater output when played correctly. Put another way, if a job had a simple 1-2-3 rotation as it's entire kit and it did the same damage as a job that has to manage three resources and a bunch of random procs, all while juggling three separate 4-step combos, people would rightly complain that the simple rotational job is either putting out too much damage or else the complex job isn't doing enough to justify the work.

So there has to be some kind of compensation for complexity or else there's no point in playing a more complex job. I don't think it's accurate to describe the job split as "noob vs. serious" but I do think that SE is trying to accommodate for a variety of play-styles. It becomes a delicate balance though. There are only so many ways you can keep simplicity while maintaining power and usefulness. That's why the approach has largely been that simpler jobs bring more utility while the higher personal dps jobs trend towards the complex side of things.

Anyway, that's the underlying approach SE seems to be going for, but in practice they haven't been doing well lately. SAM is braindead fucking simple now that Kaiten is gone but it performs super well thanks to the ridiculous buffs SE gave it. BLM is the only job with a high skill ceiling that's left in the game because SE's new approach to job balance and design seems to be a race-to-the-bottom in terms of dumping skill floors and ceilings as low as possible. Partially to make jobs more "accessible" but also partially because they are getting lazy when it comes to balancing; they no longer care to try and bring nuance to things and instead are just adjusting numbers up and down.

It doesn't feel good at all that my role is still picked in savage parties just because it's filling a party bonus 1%.

Why do we get a group of second rate jobs that bring literally nothing worth of value that the group of objectively better jobs don't bring?

Once upon a time that wasn't so, at least not for most jobs. But SE has been going out of their way to "balance" things such that the job design team has the easiest time of things they possibly can get. Any interesting gameplay/job design you're going to find anymore seems to be limited to BLM or shoved into limited jobs (BLU) or other such side content.

Tanks and healers are all always kept tight between each other, and when it's not the case, it gets adjusted, so what's the big deal with DPS jobs?

The recent buffs didn't change anything worth of note to shake up the current state of things.

This is seriously burning my enjoyment of the game and I'm sure I'm not the only one dismayed by all of this.

That's a fair way to feel about it. I don't have a better answer except to say what I've already said; SE's job team seems to have, at least in part, given up the ghost when it comes to maintaining some kind of unique feel/value for each job. Ideally there would be a situation wherein each job has a low-ish skill floor, to allow for anyone to get in and pick the job up and play it decently, while also maintaining something within each job that allows for skill expression (i.e. a higher skill ceiling) so that players who want to be challenged can push themselves and their chosen job. Obviously not every job can do this; it's good to have some jobs in each role that are simpler than others, to cater to people who don't have the skill/motivation to push that skill ceiling. You want players to be able to enjoy the main content that the game has to offer after all. But I think part of the current job balance issues we've been running into comes down to SE wanting to broaden the game's appeal to a wider audience and the subsequent dumbing-down that this appeal attempt necessitates.

In short, it's a combo of SE's laziness in terms of job design/balance coupled with their desire to bring the game to as many people as possible and to hell with people who want/enjoy complexity in a job (except BLM because we can't touch the favorite job of the boss).

[Valence]

So there has to be some kind of compensation for complexity or else there's no point in playing a more complex job.

Challenge? Satisfaction to play something harder? Being happy to pull it off anyone? You're conveniently overlooking this while this is literally the main driving engine behind people trying challenging things like savage, ultimates, etc. Your argument is not the crux of video game design you seem to take for granted, I'm sorry to say.

Honestly I'd love for them to just complexify the hell out of those taxed "noob jobs" if just to shut down that kind of argument for good. Having an intuitive design isn't mutually exclusive with having complexity on the side. Just take monk for instance, if you want to optimize, you're in for a ride, otherwise, it's not exactly hard. But then again, maybe some people will find it hard at a baseline level. I know people that can't wrap their head around proc jobs like DNC and BRD so...

That's a fair way to feel about it. I don't have a better answer except to say what I've already said; SE's job team seems to have, at least in part, given up the ghost when it comes to maintaining some kind of unique feel/value for each job. Ideally there would be a situation wherein each job has a low-ish skill floor, to allow for anyone to get in and pick the job up and play it decently, while also maintaining something within each job that allows for skill expression (i.e. a higher skill ceiling) so that players who want to be challenged can push themselves and their chosen job. Obviously not every job can do this; it's good to have some jobs in each role that are simpler than others, to cater to people who don't have the skill/motivation to push that skill ceiling. You want players to be able to enjoy the main content that the game has to offer after all. But I think part of the current job balance issues we've been running into comes down to SE wanting to broaden the game's appeal to a wider audience and the subsequent dumbing-down that this appeal attempt necessitates.

That doesn't make any sense to me. On one end you say that it's good to have approachable skill floors while having high skill ceilings for skill expression, and then say that it's good that some jobs just don't. People can still play a job perfectly happily even if they don't reach the absolute nirvana of optimization, in fact that's 99% of the playerbase.

[Quor]

Challenge? Satisfaction to play something harder? Being happy to pull it off anyone? You're conveniently overlooking this while this is literally the main driving engine behind people trying challenging things like savage, ultimates, etc. Your argument is not the crux of video game design you seem to take for granted, I'm sorry to say.

Right, and how many people challenge savage? Ultimate? A minority of players, with the hardest content being something cleared by no more than 5% of the total playerbase (and that's being generous). Those people are the ones challenging something as much for the difficulty and sense of accomplishment as they are for the reward. Most people though? They'll get their crafted or normal raid gear, do the MSQ and side content, play around with their house or their island or maybe make an alt or fantasia their main, and the entire time they do this they couldn't care less about skill ceilings, and only care as much about the skill floor as they need to in order to finish the MSQ and engage in side content of their choosing.

And yes, you can deny it all you want but greater complexity leading to greater reward has been a hallmark of not just video game design but game design in general, gambling and gacha-oriented shit notwithstanding. Stuff that requires more effort to pull off successfully needs to result in greater reward or else there's no point in doing it. If a player base can collectively top dps charts with a job that gets by spamming one button OR they can top the charts with a job that has an incredibly complex 40 button, three-minute rotation, most people will choose the simpler option while the people who choose the complex option will begin complaining that all the effort they put in doesn't amount to anything because the simple job does just as well.

Honestly I'd love for them to just complexify the hell out of those taxed "noob jobs" if just to shut down that kind of argument for good. Having an intuitive design isn't mutually exclusive with having complexity on the side. Just take monk for instance, if you want to optimize, you're in for a ride, otherwise, it's not exactly hard. But then again, maybe some people will find it hard at a baseline level. I know people that can't wrap their head around proc jobs like DNC and BRD so...

I would love for them to do that too. Once upon a time you had maybe one, possibly two "simple" jobs in a role, but even those "simple" jobs had room for skill expression via some kind of skill ceiling, while the rest of the jobs had a lot of optimization space for people to play around with and push their performance. But you're right, there is a significant number of people who just can't wrap their heads around some aspects of each job and so SE's approach has - lamentably - shifted to one focused on making as much stuff idiot-proof as possible.

That doesn't make any sense to me. On one end you say that it's good to have approachable skill floors while having high skill ceilings for skill expression, and then say that it's good that some jobs just don't. People can still play a job perfectly happily even if they don't reach the absolute nirvana of optimization, in fact that's 99% of the playerbase.

You gotta think of it as a series of ranges. Each job should have room for optimization, but having a few jobs trend towards a more simple approach is a good thing. This caters to people who don't want to or can't get better, maybe because they are older or have a disability or something, while also giving new MMO players a few entry-level options to get acclimated to things. But you also want some jobs that *are* complex, to cater to people who want that kind of experience.

Now, strictly speaking, the higher complexity jobs should perform better at the optimized top-end than the simpler jobs, but the difference should be kept tight enough that there isn't a clear benefit to using one over the other. The ideal approach would be old ShB SAM and DNC paired together; DNC was a fairly simple job but it provided strong utility, both to the group and to the SAM. SAM was a complex job that had a high ceiling, and properly supported by a DNC, this ceiling could be pushed even higher. This created a strong synergy between the two, or really between DNC and any high dps job, as when the two were played correctly the comparatively simple rotation of DNC didn't matter because the utility provided via the damage buffs made up for it.

That would be the ideal, and once upon a time we were pretty close to said ideal. Nothing will ever be perfect but most people will agree that ShB balance was probably the best the game has ever had, even if there were still issues with individual jobs. You could clear anything with any combo of jobs just fine. There were simpler options for people who wanted that kind of thing and more complex jobs for players who were into that, but even in the simple jobs you had complexities that allowed for skill expression should someone wish to pursue it.

This ideal has NOT been maintained in EW. One big nail in the coffin was the shift to a 120s buff meta, while another is SE's desire to broaden the appeal of the game to non-MMO players as much as possible. At least some of the job changes we've been seeing are likely casualties of their internal push to make the game as solo-friendly as possible. The current state of job balance is partially as a result of that push.

[Valence]

Right, and how many people challenge savage? Ultimate? A minority of players, with the hardest content being something cleared by no more than 5% of the total playerbase (and that's being generous). Those people are the ones challenging something as much for the difficulty and sense of accomplishment as they are for the reward. Most people though? They'll get their crafted or normal raid gear, do the MSQ and side content, play around with their house or their island or maybe make an alt or fantasia their main, and the entire time they do this they couldn't care less about skill ceilings, and only care as much about the skill floor as they need to in order to finish the MSQ and engage in side content of their choosing.

I thought we were speaking about raiding and where that kind of discussion actually matters most? Why are you deflecting the subject on the casual playerbase?

Nothing will ever be perfect but most people will agree that ShB balance was probably the best the game has ever had, even if there were still issues with individual jobs. You could clear anything with any combo of jobs just fine. There were simpler options for people who wanted that kind of thing and more complex jobs for players who were into that, but even in the simple jobs you had complexities that allowed for skill expression should someone wish to pursue it.

This ideal has NOT been maintained in EW. One big nail in the coffin was the shift to a 120s buff meta, while another is SE's desire to broaden the appeal of the game to non-MMO players as much as possible. At least some of the job changes we've been seeing are likely casualties of their internal push to make the game as solo-friendly as possible. The current state of job balance is partially as a result of that push.

No. ShB and EW balance are exactly the same. We see the exact same dps gaps between two groups of jobs. Edensgate even went up to a 15% gap between the lowest rphys and the highest melee, which they had to fix once again. This is a repeating pattern.