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

[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.

[Quor]

Ultimately, then, this doesn't disprove my statement. If there is indeed an egregious discrepancy between jobs, the developers will rectify it. But if the differences are minor, then the problem isn't the game, it's the players excluding Job A because Job B does 3% more damage despite both jobs being able to clear the content.

The biggest issue is that it shouldn't have gotten that bad in the first place. The greater concern that a lot of people have isn't with the nuts and bolts nitty-gritty output of job performance, but rather with what this means "under the hood" from a development perspective. Most people who care about this sort of thing would forgive a 3-5% discrepancy, but 10%? That's far too much. And it speaks to some kind of larger internal issue. SE has famously been very tight with their QA and balancing but recent decisions - ranging from the NIN and SAM changes to the SMN re-work to the 120s buff meta to more recent stuff like the tank balance issue at the beginning of 6.2 - has caused a lot of people to lose faith in the balancing team and it's ability to create/preserve interesting and balanced gameplay.

Now to be fair job design/balance is no easy task, and no one is under any illusion to the contrary. But historically there isn't a precedent for this kind of thing, as even the worst balance situations of HW and SB weren't so bad that swapping one job for another of the same role made the difference between a clean clear and constant enrage wipes.

[Shurrikhan]

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?

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%.

You're going to have inevitably going to have homogeneity in one among...

1. Performance (in which case playing more difficult jobs are treated as either "griefing" if played imperfectly or "ego-stroking" if played perfectly just to reach the same output as easier jobs get far more reliably),
2. Complexity (in which case one can't have jobs with varied skill ceilings anyways), or
3. Performance-given-complexity (in which case easier jobs are permitted at the highest end and hardest jobs at the low end only for their 1% party bonus).

Honestly, the last seems the least harmful, at least.

To be clear, though, these imbalances are small enough that it's quite unlikely a party would fail a would-be clear just because the party took a RPR instead of a DRG, MCH instead of a DNC, RDM instead of a BLM, etc.

Now, if all three of those things happened together, atop WAR/PLD over DRK/GNB, etc..., that would potentially be significant in something like Ultimate, but so is a player getting tilted/distracted more quickly over repeat attempts because they don't care for the job they're pushed towards, which is also especially important in a static doing Ultimate. So pick your poison.

[ForteNightshade]

Ultimately, then, this doesn't disprove my statement. If there is indeed an egregious discrepancy between jobs, the developers will rectify it. But if the differences are minor, then the problem isn't the game, it's the players excluding Job A because Job B does 3% more damage despite both jobs being able to clear the content.

Even 3% is still significant. Players excluding jobs is still on the devs for poor balancing decisions because there's simply do advantage to bringing a job that is underperforming. Warrior, for example, doesn't offer anything Dark Knight can't do. Once gear gets factored into the equation, the job exclusions lightens up but in the early weeks, it's simply better to bring the "meta" jobs if only to compensate for PF inconsistencies. That 3-5% difference between Warrior and Dark Knight could easily make up for a subpar healer who isn't DPSing much. It could also make up for a death.

This isn't simply a "muh parse!" argument but clearing the fight as a whole.

When it comes to the Prange. They have a whole separate issue. The entire role exists only because of an arbitrary party bonus the dev team slapped on. It's understandably frustrating your job's only relevance is a meager 1% bonus you don't actively provide. This isn't a min/max thing but simply the byproduct of the dev team deciding there needs to be this massive a "range tax" when it hasn't been relevant for years.

[wereotter]

The biggest issue is that it shouldn't have gotten that bad in the first place. The greater concern that a lot of people have isn't with the nuts and bolts nitty-gritty output of job performance, but rather with what this means "under the hood" from a development perspective. Most people who care about this sort of thing would forgive a 3-5% discrepancy, but 10%? That's far too much.

I don't disagree. I think they need to check, double check, and quadruple check the numbers before the jobs go out into the wild. But I also think it's okay that if they get it wrong, that they can quickly adjust the issue and bring the jobs more in line. There's a lot that went wrong with 6.2 that wasn't just job balancing, they also admitted they gave some of the savage bosses too much health, for example. But even here, you seem to agree with my original point. A small percentage difference between jobs is okay, and we've seen the outroar in these forums when one job is doing slightly more DPS than another, and when you go to sites to look at people recording their results on jobs, they differences are less than 5%

Even 3% is still significant. Players excluding jobs is still on the devs for poor balancing decisions because there's simply do advantage to bringing a job that is underperforming. Warrior, for example, doesn't offer anything Dark Knight can't do. Once gear gets factored into the equation, the job exclusions lightens up but in the early weeks, it's simply better to bring the "meta" jobs if only to compensate for PF inconsistencies. That 3-5% difference between Warrior and Dark Knight could easily make up for a subpar healer who isn't DPSing much. It could also make up for a death.

This isn't simply a "muh parse!" argument but clearing the fight as a whole.

When it comes to the Prange. They have a whole separate issue. The entire role exists only because of an arbitrary party bonus the dev team slapped on. It's understandably frustrating your job's only relevance is a meager 1% bonus you don't actively provide. This isn't a min/max thing but simply the byproduct of the dev team deciding there needs to be this massive a "range tax" when it hasn't been relevant for years.

As long as the jobs can clear the content, I'd argue no. It's not significant, and we shouldn't be excluding jobs because one job does 3% more damage. Honestly, say that out loud and see how petty it sounds that you want the job that does 3% more damage. There will NEVER be a perfect balance where every single job does exactly the same damage within the role, so we shouldn't be fussing over an amount of damage that can change with just crit variance.

[Doc_Seraph]

Kupo <3 to be fair..that ~under 5% dmg difference is normally between player and another player. If it is really around 1% more so kupo <3 The difference is nothing to worry about unless it becomes wider overtime kupo <3

In other words have fun play what you enjoy playing and be kupotastic! <3 kupo

[Equitable_Remedy]

I am starting to get seriously depressed at playing a role/jobs that is underperforming

If 2% differences in DPS seriously depress you, online games with balance changes over time are going to be rough.

The simplest solution in FF14 would be to stop playing (don't play the game if it doesn't make you happy) or level up all DPS and play the fad of the moment at any given time.

[Tiramu]

Early on in 6.2, WAR/PLD were so far behind GNB/DRK that the functional dps difference between the highest tank (GNB) and the lowest tank (WAR) was nearly 10%. This was addressed shortly after, but the fact that world-first teams were running up against enrages due to this dps difference (Xenosys has a video on youtube that clearly shows the difference between WAR and GNB) is unprecedented. A difference of maybe 3-4% dps would be acceptable but 10%? That's insane. Especially on the back of ShB where the difference between the top and bottom tanks was about 1%.

They patched that though, temporary exceptions dont make the rule

[Quor]

They patched that though, temporary exceptions dont make the rule

I never said they did. Don't put words into my mouth. What I *did* say is that it's part of a pattern of slippage that's been happening more often recently and that it has a number of people concerned as a result.

[Ralphe2449]

Translation: "God forbid I am not allowed to beat a boss week 1 with limited gear, game is ruined, i cant wait a couple weeks for gear to get us past the check"


FF14 is BY FAR one of the most balanced mmos but metaslaves as per usual like in any mmo will literally pretend 4% difference between dps classes is "literally unplayable"

Here's a suggestion, dont befriend or be close to metaslaves, it makes for a superior mmo experience in any game since such people are often average and insufferable to play with.