Playing an expansion as current content has been a lacklustre MMO experience

[Shurrikhan]

Designing alternate paths wouldnt really solve the job homogeny because every mob encounter is literally dealt with the same role comp.

I didn't say it would solve job homogeneity. But if you have content homogeneity w/o job homogeneity, you're going to have 1-5 jobs outperforming the rest and becoming go-to picks not just sometimes... but nearly all the time. And if you have both content and job homogeneity, imbalances are that much more sensitive to changes, since the jobs generally less favorable for underperforming in raw throughput over time, etc., can neither possess nor utilize any redeeming features.

No, content diversity won't solve job homogeneity. Content diversity merely reduces the likelihood of job design excusing itself deeper and deeper towards homogeneity because it offers new and different levers for diversity in job design to pull differently.

The problem then, though, becomes that without truly stellar design and/or many iterations of polish so that nearly every job can offer to a fight advantages that are distinct but roughly equal in value, you end up then with go-to picks on a fight-by-fight basis. While more diverting and offering objectively more to experience within the game, that can also be more annoying, given the time the game milks from (or to be a) multileveler(s).

You can still get a greater sum of diversity and parity in the meantime, though, by just making it so a given instance isn't as likely to pedestal or dumpster a given job by offering more choices by which that instance can be run, as per R041's example of multiple paths. That's something specific to dungeons, while the likes of trials and raids would need more sophisticated solutions, but we were discussing dungeons, after all.

Tl;dr:
If you want jobs not to play the same, there needs to be a playground in which for them to play differently. There's only so much distinction one can get out of {Pull All Trash and Just AoE it Down x2, Bossx1, Repeat}. Job diversity and content diversity pretty much have to be taken as a leap together.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I didn't say it would solve job homogeneity. But if you have content homogeneity w/o job homogeneity, you're going to have 1-5 jobs outperforming the rest and becoming go-to picks not just sometimes... but nearly all the time. And if you have both content and job homogeneity, imbalances are that much more sensitive to changes, since the jobs generally less favorable for underperforming in raw throughput over time, etc., can neither possess nor utilize any redeeming features.

No, content diversity won't solve job homogeneity. Content diversity merely reduces the likelihood of job design excusing itself deeper and deeper towards homogeneity because it offers new and different levers for diversity in job design to pull differently.

The problem then, though, becomes that without truly stellar design and/or many iterations of polish so that nearly every job can offer to a fight advantages that are distinct but roughly equal in value, you end up then with go-to picks on a fight-by-fight basis. While more diverting and offering objectively more to experience within the game, that can also be more annoying, given the time the game milks from (or to be a) multileveler(s).

You can still get a greater sum of diversity and parity in the meantime, though, by just making it so a given instance isn't as likely to pedestal or dumpster a given job by offering more choices by which that instance can be run, as per R041's example of multiple paths. That's something specific to dungeons, while the likes of trials and raids would need more sophisticated solutions, but we were discussing dungeons, after all.

Tl;dr:
If you want jobs not to play the same, there needs to be a playground in which for them to play differently. There's only so much distinction one can get out of {Pull All Trash and Just AoE it Down x2, Bossx1, Repeat}. Job diversity and content diversity pretty much have to be taken as a leap together.

Im saying in regards to the design that we have now. Changing encounters needs to also involve changing jobs themselves to be less homogenized so yeah I agree. Because the only real difference jobs have with current combat design is just all about damage and buffs. For the jobs to be truly unique they need to offer actual different strategies for a fight like in FFXI. But because encounter design lacks any actual strategy in the standards of rpg depth such as weaknesses, buffs, debuffs, resistances etc then you'll get what we have now where we live with the whole every class is a dps meme. The encounter design cant be changed for the better without needing to change the combat itself.

So yeah I thiiiiink I get what you're trying to say.