Dps jobs share at least 90% of their abilities

[TomsYoungerBro]

That was the level of individuality we had originally in ARR and HW. But because certain jobs were just not taken because they were outclassed by others, the devs decided against that remaining. Basically people crunched numbers, certain jobs were lacking with certain utilities or synergy, and those jobs were almost never taken as a result. Thus leading to the dumbing down of jobs by the devs. We've tried this, and the playerbase itself is why we can't have nice things.

Yet I look at omega clears and Bard is rarely taken in compared to Machinist and Dancer. Why are we homogenizing jobs again?

[Frodnoxx]

That was the level of individuality we had originally in ARR and HW. But because certain jobs were just not taken because they were outclassed by others, the devs decided against that remaining. Basically people crunched numbers, certain jobs were lacking with certain utilities or synergy, and those jobs were almost never taken as a result. Thus leading to the dumbing down of jobs by the devs. We've tried this, and the playerbase itself is why we can't have nice things.

Perfect balance will NEVER be achieved until the devs make every job carbon copies of each other, which they are well on their way of doing. Until then there will always be deviation that is exacerbated by the 1% and trickled down to the masses who don't know what they want to play.

It's an ironic cycle actual. Players don't know what they want to play because none of the jobs have any outstanding identity or uniqueness mechanically, so they just play whats good numerically. Devs see that there is a skew towards those jobs and further homogenized to achieve closer numeric balance and consequently even less uniqueness. Players lean further into the numerically advantageous jobs despite those jobs having a smaller advantage now.

Uniqueness and perfect balance are at odds, yes. But that doesn't mean uniqueness can't be balanced. And SE has just been exceptionally lazy with their job design decisions.

[Mikey_R]

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.

Yes, nice base, however, based on this we can already assume we will have single target and AoE versions, you have already stated that there will be things that cause buffs/debuffs, it 'spends' gauge/marker (though whether it gets rid of the debuff or not, it is essentially the same. I suspect this model would only work if the debuffs are spent though). If we continue and speculate that the job will have some sort of buff and have some sort of damaging oGCD, we are already up to filling in 9 of the 14 from the OPs list, or about 64% of it. This is before we add in any insta casts, movement utility, any potential filer, whether it has a raid buff, some way to instantly give a mob multiple debuffs etc. For such a basic concept, it has already filled in so much, and that was the point I made. Any job is going to fulfil the criteria laid out by the OP, making it a pointless list.

For a game where leveling jobs is easy, it boggles my mind that we've been forced into the design we have.

Why should someone be forced to level a job they do not want to play just because a specific fight demands it?

Why not apply the PVP combat to PVE and see how that works for a bit?

Whilst PvP combat is fine for PvP, it would not translate into PvE at all. PvP is mostly about reactive or predicting your opponents actions and countering them, it has ways to disable players, or take them out of the picture for a time. Alot of these things you wouldn't be able to do in PvE as it would just either break fights or enemies would just be immune, making them non existent in the first place.

Yet I look at omega clears and Bard is rarely taken in compared to Machinist and Dancer. Why are we homogenizing jobs again?

Is it to do with homogenisation or is it to do with people not liking how Bard plays? Even looking at TOP logs, Bard is the highest rDPS, so that isn't a factor which further cements the idea that it is how the job plays and not the homogeneity of the role.

It's an ironic cycle actual. Players don't know what they want to play because none of the jobs have any outstanding identity or uniqueness mechanically,...

But Monk plays differently to Samurai who plays differently to Ninja who plays differently to Dragoon who plays differently to Reaper. But, you said they were all the same, which is blatantly false and this is true for all roles.

Sure, you can say they all conform to the 2 minute meta and have a combo. Brilliant, reducing things to such a vague notion is obviously going to make it seem like every job plays the same. You have to go deeper.

Monk has a completely unique way of cycling though it's actions, Dragoon has 2 combos, which are very rigid in they way they are used compared to Samurai who has 3 and is more flexible in the order, but Ninja only has 1 combo, the same as Reaper, but Ninja doesn't use the gauge to build up another gauge like Reaper does. What's that? Perfect Balance is basically Mudras? maybe from a distance, but there is a fundamental difference, Mudras do not do damage, whereas using PB stacks does. There is also multiple ways you can get the desired outcome from PB and since you do damage, it means there is an optimal way to go through, but you don't have that consideration when you use Mudras.

I could go on just on melees, however, I think I have got the point across. Note that this does not mean I think things cannot change, getting away from the 2 minute meta and giving more positionals to melee, even if it is just Monk, are just a couple of things that can change, however, as a concept, the jobs themselves do play differently.

[RyuDragnier]

Perfect balance will NEVER be achieved until the devs make every job carbon copies of each other, which they are well on their way of doing. Until then there will always be deviation that is exacerbated by the 1% and trickled down to the masses who don't know what they want to play.

It's an ironic cycle actual. Players don't know what they want to play because none of the jobs have any outstanding identity or uniqueness mechanically, so they just play whats good numerically. Devs see that there is a skew towards those jobs and further homogenized to achieve closer numeric balance and consequently even less uniqueness. Players lean further into the numerically advantageous jobs despite those jobs having a smaller advantage now.

Uniqueness and perfect balance are at odds, yes. But that doesn't mean uniqueness can't be balanced. And SE has just been exceptionally lazy with their job design decisions.

The saddest part was that a lot of what people ask for these days, more meaningful support, difficult healing, enmity meaning something, individuality between jobs, etc. was all there back then. The problem was the playerbase caused every problem to now.

People just wanted to get to the boss and didn't want to run through adds in Raids, so the journeys to the bosses was removed. People refused the higher difficulty dungeons we got, so the dungeons weren't that difficult anymore. People refused to learn how to do mechanics and run Steps of Faith as it originally was, so it got dumbed down to being able to ignore mechanics (the instance not resetting when everybody was dead didn't help). People complained that healing was too daunting, so it got dumbed down. People complained that maintaining enmity was too hard, so it got dumbed down. People complained that X job can't do Y, so it wasn't being taken into raids, resulting in Y being given to X jobs (homogenization).

The playerbase again, is why things are as they are now. We can't have anything nice because of outcries. Hell, they tried to get both Final Steps of Faith and Royal Menagerie nerfed for Hydaelyn's sake, both of which are not difficult fights (nor were they really at launch). We're never going to have that individuality back because of the playerbase.

[TomsYoungerBro]

Is it to do with homogenisation or is it to do with people not liking how Bard plays? Even looking at TOP logs, Bard is the highest rDPS, so that isn't a factor which further cements the idea that it is how the job plays and not the homogeneity of the role.

The question shouldn't be "Is bard getting neglected because of homogenization?", but rather "why are classes still getting neglected regardless of homogenization?" which was the point I was trying to make. If homogenization was done to stop classes getting neglected, then why are classes still getting neglected? In 6.2 savage Machinists were getting kicked out of parties as another instance. Look at Summoner clears compared to red mage or black mage...Homogenization has done nothing except make the game less enjoyable lmao.

Now as to why Bard is getting neglected? Well because Machinist and Dancer can do the same things while being more flexible. Machinist is an Adps class so looking at just rdps numbers won't tell the whole story either. Buff cap on P3 is also a problem for bard due to buffs. Bard also hates any form of downtime while Dancer and Machinist are fine. At the end of the day, Homogenization has only hurt the game.

[Semirhage]

We SEE Class Fantasy, but we don't FEEL Class Fantasy. It just no longer exists today. Everyone's a Builder/Spender Ranged DPS.
When the meta and content style is set in stone, when the basic encounters are no longer engaging, the combat overall becomes stale. It's felt stale since Shadowbringers, and it continues to be stale. It's only getting worse.

The actual irony that we're so happy to have all classes on one character.. Yet they all do the same. exact. thing. Seriously missed opportunities with hot swapping classes that have actual diversity and playstyles.

I agree with this take. Where I think a lot of the discussion around this often goes off the rails, however, is the "bring back Heavens/blood" "solution".

Jobs used to be much more heterogenous it's true. I'd argue that they weren't heterogenous in a good or healthy way that jived with FFXIV's content. Good job diversity makes me good at X and you good at Y, and they're useful in different scenarios and for different reasons, and maybe there's a fight where X just demolishes one mechanic that Y limps through, but Y really pulls its weight on the next boss.

Storm/ward heterogeneity was largely a game of I'm a Mary Sue good at X and Y and average at Z, you suck at X and Y but are a bit better at Z, and then lol who cares, the combat system never ever pressures Z at all so your advantage is meaningless, there's no scenario where I'm not a direct upgrade to you.

[Mikey_R]

The question shouldn't be "Is bard getting neglected because of homogenization?", but rather "why are classes still getting neglected regardless of homogenization?" which was the point I was trying to make. If homogenization was done to stop classes getting neglected, then why are classes still getting neglected? In 6.2 savage Machinists were getting kicked out of parties as another instance. Look at Summoner clears compared to red mage or black mage...Homogenization has done nothing except make the game less enjoyable lmao.

If there was an inherent issue in the PRanged role due to homogenisation, do you not think the jobs would be MORE evenly played? If they all have the same issues, then it doesn't matter what you play. However, this is not the case. There is an intrinsic difference between BRD, DNC and MCH to the point where people just do not bring BRD as much, which means, they are not homogenised. The obvious factors here are the playstyle of Bard, aka, do people actually enjoy playing it and unique rotation they bring to the table and how it interacts with the fight.

To start, Bard playstyle as a whole. Whilst I do not frequent Bard threads, I do know that one of the major complaints about Bard is the disconnect between DoTs and the rest of the kit, they just do not feel impactful anymore. This is despite the fact, functionally speaking, having the songs proc every 3 seconds is essentially the same (minus the chance of a double proc). I'm sure there are other factors that can be said but as I said, I do not know them, but the feel of a job is an important thing to consider.

As for the other point, how the kit interacts with the fight. You have already stated that, due to the buff limit in P3 and the fact Bard gains nothing from downtime, that really limits what the job is capable of. ie. it does not suit the encounter at all. if you want to solve this issue, you have to either give Bard some way to gain resources in downtime and/or make the buff limit not an issue.

Now, how has homogenisation caused the above issues when the issues themselves have nothing to do with homogenisation? Infact, the claim that Bards kit does NOT fit with TOP is a clear indication that the jobs are not homogenised and instead is an example of what would happen if they were all unique.

You also have the opposite case for casters, as you have touched upon, however, how is Summoner absolutely dominating in terms of usage compared to BLM and RDM? Is it because SMN just has the tools to deal with the fight better than BLM and RDM? However, if there is this massive discrepancy, how is that a case for homogenisation when SMN has clearly gone down a different path compared to BLM and RDM.

Even going to tanks, DRK dominates the usage and tanks are more homogenised than DPS are. But, between DRKs kit, the high damage and ease of use, it makes it a top pick. It is worth noting however that tanks are much closer in usage when you look at savage (which does apply to every role mentioned in this post). TOP, being an ultimate fight, people are more likely to bring what they want in order to give them the best chance of beating the fight. This again highlights the fact that, despite the differences being small, it is still enough that people will pick one job over another just because it suits the fight better.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

The playerbase again, is why things are as they are now. We can't have anything nice because of outcries. Hell, they tried to get both Final Steps of Faith and Royal Menagerie nerfed for Hydaelyn's sake, both of which are not difficult fights (nor were they really at launch). We're never going to have that individuality back because of the playerbase.

Sad
but
True

And people today still love to say "They Dont Listen"
They did...and this is the Consequence.

[ForteNightshade]

Yeah, and iirc it's because they don't want a situation where a DPS is shunned because it doesn't have the correct seasonings, so to speak.

If you look at this particular bit of job design as a way to influence in-game community behavior,it makes more sense.

This is correct. They have openly said they consider a failure if players exclude jobs due to designs in fights not working for them. Which comes with its pros and cons. On the one hand, it leads to a certain amount of necessary homogenization due to no one job being allowed to stand out in any given encounter. On the other, it means players won't feel forced to play something they may not like. Of course, this philosophy hasn't exactly been well executed. Every expansion has a few jobs that simply dominate. Dark Knight has been the god king of Endwalker pretty much from day one. The one drawback it had was Living Dead, which absolutely needed to be address. However, it's now far and away the best tank in the game.

To be fair, it's hard to argue with this philosophy even if I do think they've taken the homogeneity too far. A frequent complaint in other MMOs, especially WoW, is how a person's main class is rendered worthless in a given fight and they can't find groups willing to let them in. Now the counterargument here is you can play everything on a single character but most players don't want to. Speaking for myself, when it comes to the Melee DPS, I like Dragoon and Ninja, don't mind Reaper and rarely touch Monk or Samurai. Being forced to play Monk or have a hell of a time getting into parties because Dragoon or Ninja aren't desirable wouldn't be fun. And don't anyone dare say people wouldn't look out jobs. They would and have.

[Frodnoxx]

But Monk plays differently to Samurai who plays differently to Ninja who plays differently to Dragoon who plays differently to Reaper. But, you said they were all the same, which is blatantly false and this is true for all roles.

Sure, you can say they all conform to the 2 minute meta and have a combo. Brilliant, reducing things to such a vague notion is obviously going to make it seem like every job plays the same. You have to go deeper.

Monk has a completely unique way of cycling though it's actions, Dragoon has 2 combos, which are very rigid in they way they are used compared to Samurai who has 3 and is more flexible in the order, but Ninja only has 1 combo, the same as Reaper, but Ninja doesn't use the gauge to build up another gauge like Reaper does. What's that? Perfect Balance is basically Mudras? maybe from a distance, but there is a fundamental difference, Mudras do not do damage, whereas using PB stacks does. There is also multiple ways you can get the desired outcome from PB and since you do damage, it means there is an optimal way to go through, but you don't have that consideration when you use Mudras.

I could go on just on melees, however, I think I have got the point across. Note that this does not mean I think things cannot change, getting away from the 2 minute meta and giving more positionals to melee, even if it is just Monk, are just a couple of things that can change, however, as a concept, the jobs themselves do play differently.

I guess it's a matter of perspective whether these examples play differently enough. If you take a step back and take into consideration every other kind of rotation in the game (example BRD, RDM, BLM) and the possibilities of rotations that could exist and do exist in other MMOs, it's not hard to see that in this game all the melee, tanks, and machinist have the same scheme with differing accents - the accents being the things you listed. Like yea there are significant differences but a zebra is a horse with stripes. I'm not saying that this scheme they all have is bad, I would just like some variety and creativity in new jobs that they introduce. Reaper and sage were extremely safe and familiar.