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

[CelestiCer]

Hot take: this game has bad job designers and raid testers

This. Took me until " Kaiten Removal " + SAM changes to delve into what the Devs been doing,... or lack there of. We have dedicated players who push their jobs passionately to their limits, with evidence to support disparity between Jobs? only to have players who never touch difficult content? to ignore the blatant evidence that Square poorly balanced the Job's and then defend Square on-top of it. Specially on Square's grounds, their philosophy -> DPS based off of Job Difficulty, like okey dokey...

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

Square addressed some of the Job's with buffs recently? Doubt it's enough to really satisfy the ignored Ranged players. Bones were thrown, they'll take what they are given and just wait and hope for that next big Patch to see something. Answer to the thread topic? Purpose is for Jobs to be good enough for players to pay their Subscriptions while not complain or not overwhelmingly. It seems they done just that. Doesn't matter if they made it worse or coulda done better it's " Good enough for players to keep paying ".

But!! Are you optimistic? Fear not! here are Square's good ole lines

• We hope you like the changes
• Give us your feedback
• Post on forums in a friendly manner
• Please look forward to it

I'm sure Player Feedback won't be ignored, like ever.

[Lyth]

Discussion around Kaiten became virtually non-existent in here overnight when SAM was found to be uncontested at the top at the start of this tier, and that was after months of SAM players rendering this subforum unusable with hundreds duplicate Kaiten threads. The bottom line that everyone cares about is dps output. Everything else, be it 'utility', 'job difficulty', 'Kaiten removal', or any other excuse you can think of is simply a bargaining chip for players to demand that their job provide the highest damage for the least effort. End of.

It's in everyone's best interests for these appeals for extra dps to be ignored, and for the dev team to provide a universally level rdps playing field across all jobs in the DPS role. If the devs put their foot down, then perhaps we'll see more legitimate discussion about making jobs fun to play, rather than watching players constantly seeking to game the system for unfair advantages.

[CelestiCer]

So what's the solution?

Square goes against their own DPS = Job Difficulty performance philosophy. Players like myself, ask for gameplay to be preserved, Kaiten as 1 example. Cause I like DPS to not be effortlessly obtained. Yet they remove any ounce of complexity or nuances with a whole history of Jobs being homogenized/simplified.

Unless players complain overwhelmingly? Think Hagakure removal and revert example, Square will enact radio silence. Gameplay forever lost in exchange for Square shoving either Buffs down the players throats to choke on to shut them up, or ignoring the player feedback they themselves asked for.

Players can wait for months some even years with no response nor gameplay update to address any of it. While players will flock to the Meta/simplified/performing jobs to support Square's Metrics, no matter what negative gameplay changes it was going through.

What do you want passionate players to do to be heard?

• Make video feedbacks?
• Post on the Mega-Threads?
• Go to the JP forums?
• Make multiple threads and a compilation?
• Gather statistics and evidence?
• Hoping your player feedback gets heard?
• Awaiting those patches with nothing written on it for your job?
• Unsubscribe?

Nothing seems to work. Just be happy with what you got. Is it sucky? yeah. If you got a method of having Square / Dev's / Yoshi-P and Co to stop willfully being blind and deaf to do something with the player-feedback they been ignoring? we're all ears.

Otherwise? Everyone should just temper their expectations and just expect another 10% potency buff here and there with... copy paste explanations for their reasons of doing so in the Job update page.

[Lyth]

Square Enix historically hasn't had a 'job design philosophy'. The only reason why 'job difficulty' has come up as of late is because a lot of forum posts this expansion have been demanding that certain jobs 'deserve' to have unfair advantages over the others just because based on arbitrary claims that they're 'harder to play'. And that's an absurd stance that I'm going to directly challenge at the next Q+A. I believe that all DPS jobs should be on a level rdps playing field, regardless of subrole.

The modus operandi seems to be to avoid confrontation with the playerbase. If a job needs to be nerfed, either every single other job gets buffed, or the nerfs are implemented as a stealth change between expansions, when nobody knows what any of the numbers actually mean. The problem with this mindset is that overpowered jobs tend to stay overpowered, because they subsequently become the most played, and those players drown out everyone else's voices. I'm actually really happy that we're finally starting to see some pushback against that, and there's actually some mention of discussing the overarching 'design goals' behind a job rather than simply offering knee jerk responses to mollify demand threads, as was the case historically.

I think it's good to be enthusiastic and passionate about giving feedback about your job, especially when it comes to gameplay. I think that it's equally important for others to resist and shoot down your suggestions, especially when they know that they won't be enjoyable or when they know it gives your job an unfair advantage over the others. And I think that the dev team needs to be open about why they make changes, what their aims are, and also be willing to put their foot down when necessary. But we as a community need to change as much as do they.

[Alex1337]

Pretty sure SAM we’re silent at start of tier because there was actual new content, had nothing to do with them being “top” anyone who has any brain cells would have known SAM being at the top would have been short lived and was only due to gear funnelling in conjunction with players being genuinely curious how crit changes affected SAM numbers and picking it back up, nothing else.

People do still care that kaiten was removed or, rather, that it was removed with nothing to do other than 1 button, just most people have accepted the fact that it’s all fallen on deaf ears.

[CelestiCer]

Treating " a lot " of forum posts simply as players deserving/demanding " unfair-advantages " is a lil dismissive... Cause I could say the same for the amount of posts players wanting their Job's Gameplay to be preserved, improved, expanded upon a lot entirely unrelated to DPS output in our Western Forum. Players want what is fair and they don't feel like Square is treating their jobs fairly. And, irregardless to Square's historical Job design philosophy? it's their own words " DPS performance based off of Job Difficulty ". Not ours.

Square Categorized the DPS jobs atm as " Melee / Physical Ranged / Magic Ranged ". Honestly atm it's more like BLM/SAM on their own, then Raidbuffing Jobs and lastly MCH. Sounds blunt, then again Square treats it this way cause reasons? Ranged tax?

They should make the DPS Categories be something like the following.

• Selfish DPS ( SAM/BLM/MCH )
• Melee DPS (DRG/NIN/RPR/MNK )
• P.Ranged DPS ( DNC/BRD )
• M.Ranged DPS ( SMN/RDM )

Ranged tax made a lot of sense when the Hitboxes were small. But just do away with it, re-balance the DPS numbers of DPS Jobs to have equal RDPS. That doesn't mean ADPS, it means RDPS and with this I agree cause it makes sense. Keeping the party composition bonuses the same to prevent really weird parties from dominating the meta. This all requires" Zero Job skill changes " because it can purely be achieved with calculating and adjusting DPS numbers. No Gameplay lost for any Job while achieving improved better Balance, making DPS performances more fair.

Then again, hoping that Square will move anywhere near to this direction would be shocking in itself.

[Shurrikhan]

They should make the DPS Categories be something like the following.

• Selfish DPS ( SAM/BLM/MCH )
• Melee DPS (DRG/NIN/RPR/MNK )
• P.Ranged DPS ( DNC/BRD )
• M.Ranged DPS ( SMN/RDM )

Why, though? The only interdependents are "selfish" and Dancer. Dancer obliges a BLM/SAM/(MCH if it was better tuned). That's it.

Nothing else is particularly relevant beyond, as you mentioned, whatever arbitrary sets the devs want for thematic purposes to push players into taking one of each regardless of quality of balance for the given tier of content and play(er relative performance) therein. And I don't see why these categories would be any freer, more thematic, or more intuitive than the current M/MR/PR distinctions.

re-balance the DPS numbers of DPS Jobs to have equal RDPS. That doesn't mean ADPS, it means RDPS and with this I agree cause it makes sense.

A couple small notes:

1. Equal rDPS... for what setting? For what level of effort? For what level of play? Jobs don't stick in exactly the same places as you move up the percentiles, nor do they all follow the same relationship/curve between a given percentile and its portion of the top parse's damage (even once a tier has basically exhausted its potential for further relevant parses).
   
   
2. rDPS for a single job isn't as relevant as you might think, especially if you ignore raw/adjusted DPS. Two jobs can have equal rDPS, yet one will also allow its buffers to have higher rDPS atop that by nature of greater exploitation of buffs. This is one of the reasons Ninja's actual contribution to party speed, for instance, may outpace an DRG's despite the latter's slight lead in rDPS; Ninja's burst is more concentrated, thus granting more rDPS to its fellow buffers as well.

[CelestiCer]

Why, though? The only interdependents are "selfish" and Dancer. Dancer obliges a BLM/SAM/(MCH if it was better tuned). That's it.

I mean... DNC isn't the only job with Raidbuffs? wait... the point I'm trying to make is that Square has vague reasonings behind Job Balance. Hence I make the comment they should categorize MCH/SAM/BLM as Selfish. I could care not for how vs that they do. Visually in-game in Character Menu, their website idc aslong as its reflected in how they Balance the Jobs which they clearly aren't.

Equal rDPS for what setting?

Yes Cause opposite of that is far apart rDPS? which is ...imbalance?

Sure, players can clear content with imbalances but players feel disparities between Job not being equally or fairly balanced making it not worth playing. Wasted effort. Hence make rDPS more equal. How they implement the mathematical changes in a sensible fair manner across every level/content/raid/fight/jobs without gutting personal DPS vs overtuning rDPS-etc, that is all the Dev's Balancing problem. Not ours. Also no one mentioned to ignore " raw/adjusted DPS " either. I am not saying we all should be even more made braindead and all flatline the same raw DPS output, no. Then again this is all hypothetical as hypothetical the suggestion is to remove Range tax when they do all this.

You know what Square hypothetically could also do?

• Throwing around random potency buffs
• Applying them at random to random skills
• Then randomly simplify and rework Jobs
• That somehow deals more DPS after being made easier
• Contradicting DPS based off of Job Difficulty
• Pissing off players arguing what is actually more difficult
• And out jealousy players demand balancing
• Which randomly be addressed or just entirely not
• Then incomes new Job with Expansion
• With the random possible message look forward to it!

I'm not even trying to be cynical or pessimistic or spoiled like what we have isn't' good enough. Look at what I main, yes Decorator lol I'm just being realistic at this point lol. We all know it, we all know we're gonna get those potency buffs and it's not gonna be good enough for later down the road, we're still expecting it to happen. We know Range Tax is there to stay we know it. Players say it's BS that they don't like it, heck I don't like that I don't need to fight for my uptime as melee like in ShB raids it doesn't feel as rewarding alongside not having Kaiten but hey? players will still play with it cause it's how it is. Deal with it. We're still gonna be let down somehow cause it's not changing even though it all has flaws and it coulda been better. We know we're not supposed to expect anything otherwise, so lets just go with that

[Shurrikhan]

I mean... DNC isn't the only job with Raidbuffs?

DNC is the only DPS with single-target buffs, which are the only ones that have any significant degree of interdependence.

If a DNC doesn't have a partner with maximal raw dps, they lose rDPS. That partner, despite increasing their rDPS, gets no rDPS for their help since, like looking only at raw damage, it only accounts for a single direction of buffs (buffer gets all for rDPS despite interdependence, instead of buffed gets all despite interdependence).

Cause opposite of that is far apart rDPS? which is ...imbalance?

That's not what I was asking. If BLM is tuned around a striking dummy fight, it will underperform in a fight with high movement requirements. If a CD-heavy job is tuned around perfect effective uptime, it will underperform in any fight that has long downtime pauses (or, dies) just before its next major burst phase comes up.

You cannot have rDPS equality for all jobs for all fights unless all jobs function identically (and/or identically well) in each fight. And even then, are you balancing theoretically best output or merely the output most likely (albeit from a highly skilled player)?

[Quor]

Discussion around Kaiten became virtually non-existent in here overnight when SAM was found to be uncontested at the top at the start of this tier, and that was after months of SAM players rendering this subforum unusable with hundreds duplicate Kaiten threads. The bottom line that everyone cares about is dps output. Everything else, be it 'utility', 'job difficulty', 'Kaiten removal', or any other excuse you can think of is simply a bargaining chip for players to demand that their job provide the highest damage for the least effort. End of.

It's in everyone's best interests for these appeals for extra dps to be ignored, and for the dev team to provide a universally level rdps playing field across all jobs in the DPS role. If the devs put their foot down, then perhaps we'll see more legitimate discussion about making jobs fun to play, rather than watching players constantly seeking to game the system for unfair advantages.

To paraphrase good ol' honest Abe, you got the facts right but you came to the wrong conclusion.

I won't speak for other SAM's, but for myself....once I saw that they were just going to sledgehammer buffs into SAM to make it perform like it used to I gave up on feedback. It was clear it didn't matter, and short of the game dying again SE wasn't going to give a damn. Make the number go up and it doesn't matter how much you reduce job engagement. It's hyperbole of course, but I have to wonder if they're just going to continue to crater the skill floor into the earth's core or if there will be a pendulum swing at some point where more room for skill expression gets created (aka a higher skill ceiling). As it is now though? SE seems to believe that they can just make the big number go bigger and the playerbase will largely be ok with - and probably even praise - their efforts. With the caveat that any arguments made against such an approach will be duly ignored.

There was a lot of hopium. I had my fair share. Maybe it would be the next preview, the next live letter, the next interview. It was none of that, 6.2 came and went and now we're well on our way to 6.3 and if any changes are forthcoming they won't be until the next xpac. Maybe SE will surprise us, but whether they do or not, the 6.1 changes will be remembered as a major screw-up moment for a lot of people who once had faith in SE. And in the meantime it's clear that "feedback" can and will be ignored if it goes against their designs.

Now? My "hopium" is that WoW will have some nice success with their new xpac and SE will realize that the gravy train cannot and will not last forever and they'll start re-focusing attention back towards FF14 (which to date is still their most reliable and productive money-maker). I can understand not wanting to put all their eggs in one basket but anyone who's been watching what SE has been doing recently has got to be scratching their head in wonder, trying to figure out wtf senior leadership is doing. As things stand now, it's all giving me the same feel that I had around the time that Squaresoft released Spirits Within, and we all know how that ended up.