Why balance jobs to just high-end raids?

[Kazhar]

This isn't just about world first racers. I spent some time lurking in a few places high-end raiders tend to congregate. One of the things mentioned in convos in these places were "sims" and "automarkers" that were recommended to people trying to prog Ultimates or do them through Party Finder. Someone even bemoaned about how "automarkers" are starting to be used for content that was previously cleared in PF without them. And people talk about party comps all the time. In another convo, someone asked about playing caster in TOP and was responded with "just don't play BLM."It might not be as outright, but high end raiders do metachase in order to clear content.

"I paint everyone with the same brush", the post.

[Leifei]

In my opinion, balancing the jobs really is just about making sure each role has an engaging toolkit and does nearly equal dps(per role). From what I've seen, most of the jobs are fine in that regard, except for maybe the healers. Don't most of them only have 2 dps buttons for single target situations? If so, that sucks. To add, balancing jobs for high end is where it matters because other content doesn't challenge people enough for balance to matter.

[Avoidy]

Man I'd kill for just... jobs feeling GOOD across all content. 90% of this game tosses you into downsynced content that feels like shit to do because you're missing skills or you're cockblocked from even pulling off your rotation. This insistence that the only content allowed to flow well and feel good should be limited to a small niche area of the game is so lazy. I'm thinking now of when Yoshi told healers to just play ultimates if they wanted an engaging experience. Literally the most niche 1% tier of content in the entire game. So what the head dev is telling me is that if I'm a healer and I don't want to fall asleep in your game, 99% of the content available isn't going to cut it. That sounds like a cop out to me. If the gameplay loop is fun at its core, then doing ezmode content becomes enjoyable because the job you're playing is fun.

Hell, even outside the realm of downsynced content, in the vast majority of level 90 content stuff dies before it can even do its mechanics, healers feel totally unnecessary, downtime/mid-fight cutscenes will occur right as players are about to go into their bursts (which all feel railroaded thanks to the new 2m setup we're forced into, yet we still have situations like these that feel like shit), I could go on. Euphrosyne for example, is level 90 content that's normal difficulty and it feels like a boring slog because the outgoing damage is pitifully low, the dps checks are a joke, the mechanical aspects are recycled from older content, the bosses have so little hp that they melt before they can even finish teaching you their mechanics, and they have this gross habit of disappearing right as your railroaded 2m burst comes up, as if the devs knew how hard they were pigeonholing us with this 2m meta and then decided to just ... go out of their way to blueball us on purpose.

[Heavenchild]

The only real way for them to have perfect balance is to pretty much just have every job have the same buttons, have the same numbers, have the same uptime and have the same resources, downtime strategy, crit rate, crit swing and damage swing. That was kinda the point of Shadowbringers job design and onward. Any variance in gameplay would result in number differences, and that is considered not very cash money by the community.

I think they're doing a good job though. SAM being auto crit and losing their DH/SKS builds is a step going towards that. Melee losing their downtime as a result of raid bosses having very large hitboxes is a large step forward towards that goal too. Eventually every job will actually play the same across the spectrum, and not just amongst their roles. Just have patience. It'll get there.

Personally, I'm betting on crit being removed. Maybe Battle Litany will be changed to function the same as Arcane Circle. Or even just remove damage swings in general.

The MCH problem was the really bad rDPS (raid dps). Because MCH has no partybuff for dps like DNC or BRD. But instead of giving MCH the needed party-dps-buff (for example with a skill like 'scanner', that finds out a week point or sth like that), they buffed the potency again and again und gave MCH a skill that lowers the enemies dps. :')

I like that skill but it could not solve the problem this class had. And now this range-dps dominates in casual content. It is not really good if people are top-dps in the group just because their class is out of balance. :')
That's also somehow a 'bad feedback' for the players.

[CelestiCer]

Man I'd kill for just... jobs feeling GOOD across all content. 90% of this game tosses you into downsynced content that feels like shit to do because you're missing skills or you're cockblocked from even pulling off your rotation. This insistence that the only content allowed to flow well and feel good should be limited to a small niche area of the game is so lazy. I'm thinking now of when Yoshi told healers to just play ultimates if they wanted an engaging experience. Literally the most niche 1% tier of content in the entire game. So what the head dev is telling me is that if I'm a healer and I don't want to fall asleep in your game, 99% of the content available isn't going to cut it. That sounds like a cop out to me. If the gameplay loop is fun at its core, then doing ezmode content becomes enjoyable because the job you're playing is fun.

Been told numerous times to go play Ultimate after I lost my Kaiten by many friends... and there was no joy in it...

Complexity from content is no where near the same as Complexity/Depth/Nuances from your favorite Job... Content mastery will never be as meaningful to me vs Class mastery in almost any MMO I ever played, yet I am being sold on FFXIV that its the reverse here which is a load of horse radish. It's soulless. I went from being a Raider? to becoming a Gposer/Housing decorator out of Copium. I enjoy it? but that's how bad the changes have been. Doing content has never been this boring because my Job was never this boring...

Keep my Job fun? and content is more likely Fun to do, no matter how boring the content is. Keep my Job braindead? then no matter how amazing the content or raid or ultimate is going to be? my Job... my favorite Job? might as well be dead to me which makes the content dead to me.

[ForteNightshade]

Criterion pretty much already proved that. People screamed for years on these forums for hard 4-man content and swore up and down they just wanted a challenge and didn't even need rewards. Lo and behold, now they won't do it because it doesn't have rewards. I always respected the one or two who were like "Of course I'm not going to do it unless it also has a good reward" because at least they were honest about it.

Way to lump everyone together with a pretty baseless accusation. Most players, regardless of skill level, aren't going to spam any piece of content without some form of rewards unless there are other incentives. You're also ignoring why Criterion Savage is hard compared to say, Ultimate. It isn't because of a mechanical dance or a grindy DPS check but because of Raise restriction. Play absolute perfect or do the whole 20+ slog all over again. Oh and it's exactly the same as the "Extreme" version except for even less rewards since you don't even get tokens towards the throne mount.

Nobody is going to spam either version of Criterion after doing it once or twice when there's literal no incentive. They've overcome the challenge, so why bother? The few people who said they'll still do it for challenge sake are still doing it. Most players never said they would and have moved on or didn't bother to begin with. You're conflating the few with the many.

As for the thread at hand. Balance only matters in high end content, specifically Savage and Ultimate, because it's the only content that actually threatens the player. The new dungeon coming out in 6.4 will have an ilvl of 605. That's essentially what our ilvl could reach when the first tier of Savage launched. Meanwhile, the crafted gear alone will be 640. Every single job will utterly decimate that dungeon. So who cares if Machinist is better than Bard or Dragoon better than Monk? None of it matters when you're rolfstomping everything in sight. You don't even need to heal tanks anymore, especially Warrior.

Speaking of Warrior, despite a lot of casual players whining at how powerful it is in dungeons, it's been among the weakest tanks in high end content because oh, look, Bloodwhetting isn't actually all that great in a single target setting where tank busters do far and away more damage than you'll ever heal. In fact, the job has been buffed in every single patch since Asphodelos and they still have to buff it again come 6.4 because it can't keep up with Dark Knight, the tank those same casual players think sucks.

It's almost like casual content is irrelevant in terms of balancing which is why they don't consider it.

[TaleraRistain]

This is just blatant double standards. Everyone does content for the rewards, not just high end players. Literally all content of the game would get instantly deserted without a goal or a carrot to do it again.
Fun only gets you so far.

Not only that but not everyone can just form a static of 4 players. Without a good reward structure, how can you possibly pug this content a week after most those who were interested already got their first and only clear?

That's exactly my point. There were people on these forums who swore they would do it no matter what for the challenge and it didn't need rewards. And it was absolute bs because SE gave them exactly what they said they wanted and now they won't do it. They don't want the challenge. The want the reward to lord over others. That's why people stand around with their Ultimate weapons in high traffic areas. So why should SE make content for a static of 4 players instead of something with wider appeal?

[Kazhar]

That's exactly my point. There were people on these forums who swore they would do it no matter what for the challenge and it didn't need rewards. And it was absolute bs because SE gave them exactly what they said they wanted and now they won't do it. They don't want the challenge. The want the reward to lord over others. That's why people stand around with their Ultimate weapons in high traffic areas. So why should SE make content for a static of 4 players instead of something with wider appeal?

And will you provide any proof that the people who asked for that type of content:
- Claimed they weren't interested in the rewards
- Still complained that the rewards weren't good enough
- Represent most people who asked for that content.

Because so far it seems to me that you're just creating your own imaginary enemies here.

(If aveyond is mentionned again as a boogeyman for an entire part of the community I swear...)

[CelestiCer]

I don’t see the point in balancing jobs to high end raids.

Balancing based on the toughest content will set the Limits of what Jobs are allowed to do, creating a baseline for balancing everything else in the game. Do this in reverse? and it will make no sense, breaking the game. Raiders flocking to what's easiest to play? will become the least of our worries then... What I have an issue with is Square's obsessive focus on " Perfect Balance " that is impossible to achieve. Every Job would need to play the exact same way, same roles, same stats, same damage, same everything even the same one button rotation because that's what it will take to reach Perfect Balance. That kicks the Fun out of a Game all for Perfect Balance that is unobtainable.

We're noticing that a lot of skills mirror each-other even when they are from completely different Jobs, kicking the uniqueness out of them. Balancing High-End raids? does not need to come a the cost of ruining how fun Jobs can be or how unique they should feel, neither vice versa. Time will tell, cause they are slowly but surely seem to want to make everything dumber...

[ForteNightshade]

That's exactly my point. There were people on these forums who swore they would do it no matter what for the challenge and it didn't need rewards. And it was absolute bs because SE gave them exactly what they said they wanted and now they won't do it. They don't want the challenge. The want the reward to lord over others. That's why people stand around with their Ultimate weapons in high traffic areas. So why should SE make content for a static of 4 players instead of something with wider appeal?

"The forums only make up a very tiny fraction of the playerbase. Most players are just enjoying the game!"

How come this argument isn't being applied to those clearing Criterion or Ultimate? Because you do realize the overwhelming majority don't give a damn about "lording over others" and just did the content for themselves, or didn't due to the lackluster incentive, yes? What's funny is even less people than the fraction posting here ever said they'd not only do challenging content for the sake of it but also continuously spam it for zero rewards. Once again, you're conflating a minority of a minority and attempting to argue the whole high end community thinks this way.

With all that said, I do actually think the supposed "Extreme" version should actually be that: an Extreme version that is more pugging while still retaining a noticeable step up from casual content like 24 mans. Criterion does kind of sit in no man's land right now, partly due to having no real demographic its targeting but largely because of its awful reward structure.