Dps jobs share at least 90% of their abilities

[Mikey_R]

Design a job that doesn't.

I am actually intrigued as to what someone could come up with.

[R041]

Design a job that doesn't.

I am actually intrigued as to what someone could come up with.

It's more complicated than just designing a new Job, they've pigeonholed all design. A class/character in a video game is a reflection of it's environment and the ways it can navigate said environment.

The worst problem is they don't want to design varied environments and encounters. So what happens is you're forced to basically give everyone everything to complete them. When you only have 1 hallway, you need to make sure everyone can get down that hallway. CC, buffs, debuffs, encounter management.. None of that is required.

There are ways to design new characters, but we've both boiled everything down into their pure meta form AND have given the existing characters everything. So really the only thing we can do is just make new Jobs that have different ways to build/spend while staying within the strict meta of timing.

At this point in XIV, there needs to be a complete shift in environment/encounter design - Or we're going to just continue to boil and release more mary sue builder/spender jobs.

[Mikey_R]

It's more complicated than just designing a new Job, they've pigeonholed all design.

The problem is, you cannot have some sort of CC that is unique to one job to the point where you NEED to have that job for an instance, not only does this go against what the devs want, in that all jobs have to be able to clear in any (reasonable) composition, but it could also reduce the impact of attacks.

Going with stuff commonly queued through DF. You get a dungeon/trial that has a mechanic that this one job can stop/change in one way or another. If you happen to have the job, great, however, if you do not have this one job, you cannot make that mechanic deadly as you cannot guarantee that one job is in the party.

Going onto extremes and to a higher extent, Savage and even Ultimate. This one mechanic is likely to be deadly, so you need to bring this one job in order not to die to it. This would be even worse in Savage raiding/ultimate encounters. Imagine getting to the last boss of Savage, or the last phase of Ultimate, and wiping because you did not have this one job for this one mechanic, however, noone has this one job levelled/aren't good enough to raid with it. You effectively halt all progress for something silly.

If you have another unique way a job can function, then by all means, explain another way. Even if you have to change the fight design slightly, I'm all ears.

[VirusOnline]

At this point in XIV, there needs to be a complete shift in environment/encounter design - Or we're going to just continue to boil and release more mary sue builder/spender jobs.

This will never happen. We'll continue down this road, else imo we'll have a situation on our hands very akin to how WoW approaches class/encounter designs.

What I would like to see if the bringing back of risk vs. reward type abilities. i.e. cleric stance.
I also remember a time when wars had an ability that gave them quite a good mitigation but after the ability wears off it debuffs them with a detriment. Concussion, was it ?
It would be nice if dps had to actually manage this type of thing.

[dspguy]

It's more complicated than just designing a new Job, they've pigeonholed all design. A class/character in a video game is a reflection of it's environment and the ways it can navigate said environment.

Very true. In other MMOs I've played (among them EQ1, FFXI and LOTRO), there was some content you simply could NOT clear without a certain job/class. Some content required crowd control. Some content required a job with certain weapon or spell damage types since the enemies were resistant to some of it.

Leveling these other jobs/classes was a pain. Sometimes, if you were lucky, it just meant leveling another job and then changing to that job to run the content. In others, it meant rolling another character from scratch or spending days (weeks?) begging for help.

For a game where leveling jobs is easy, it boggles my mind that we've been forced into the design we have. The OP and this poster are spot on. And isn't just DPS. I did a deep-dive into tank abilities a few months ago. I can set up my tanks with nearly identical hotbars and play them blind. If I could blank out what the abilities were called (and their icons), any player could play any tank job at probably 95% efficiency if they can play ANY of the 4 tank jobs. That's how job design is in this game.

The only differences are the style of gear and the animations. That's pretty much it. We can't have a real blue mage since it would break the trifecta. We can't have a LOTRO-style warden because it would break the trifecta. We can't have an EQ-style enchanter since it would break the trifecta. We can't have an FFXI-style bard because it would break the trifecta. We can't have a true solo job because ALL jobs can solo.

However, some of this is just part and parcel of making a casual MMORPG. Sadly, the players tend to force developers into this position. When we have content (savage) that has tight DPS checks, players realized that the way to clear it with less gear upgrades is burst windows. Jobs that don't fit those windows were less desirable. SE's solution was just to fit more jobs into those burst windows over the last few expansions. That's just one example. There's a reason why players are so laser-focused on what jobs do the most DPS when played optimally. So, SE has done their best to make the choices more varied by leveling the playing field as much as possible.

[DixieBellOCE]

Design a job that doesn't.

I am actually intrigued as to what someone could come up with.

That wouldnt be terribly hard.

Something akin to an elemental duelist, where you apply certain elemental debuffs to proc other effects when using different abilities.

You could even make it a status based gamplay where you apply dots/debuffs based on what elements combine.

Fire/Ice/Lightning/Earth

Fire+ice = water
Fire+Light = Explosive
Fire+Earth = Lava

Ice+Earth = Frozen
Ice+Lightning = ???

Lightning+Earth = ???

Each combination could apply different DoT or Status effects that help your party.

There we go, a job that doesn't have a gauge and plays extremely unique compared to anything else in the game.

[VirusOnline]

That wouldnt be terribly hard.

Something akin to an elemental duelist, where you apply certain elemental debuffs to proc other effects when using different abilities.

You could even make it a status based gamplay where you apply dots/debuffs based on what elements combine.

Fire/Ice/Lightning/Earth

Fire+ice = water
Fire+Light = Explosive
Fire+Earth = Lava

Ice+Earth = Frozen
Ice+Lightning = ???

Lightning+Earth = ???

Each combination could apply different DoT or Status effects that help your party.

There we go, a job that doesn't have a gauge and plays extremely unique compared to anything else in the game.

You don't need a job gauge for anything. It's a mechanic and nothing more.
What SE uses them for is as a way to give each class its "ultimate" ability which usually falls within that 2m window.
Sure the above class may not use a gauge, but it's ultimate would operate on a 2m CD either way and we end up with the same problem OP presented.

It may "sound" unique, but it'll have it's single target and aoe rotations all the same just like old SMN.