Your Opinion on the Current State of Job Identity/Balance in 6.4?

[Vulpixi]

Honestly the jobs never had any different builds, and there was always just one way to play them. During ARR you had to level other jobs in order to get all the skills you needed, notable BLM for Swiftcast if you were playing any kind of healer. In other games that have different builds or skill tress it inevitably comes down to one build or skill path being optimal and then enforced by the players, there is no real choice there if you want to participate with others. The jobs as they are now though are very similar across roles, with abilities having been pruned away in favor of a simpler and similar playstyle that is easier to pick up but leaves players wanting to change jobs more often. The instant job change mechanic is really hampering design in this way because it allows the developers to simply tell people to change jobs often if they are getting bored with one, instead of creating jobs that are fulfilling to play for any length of time.

Let me ask you this: Do you think Jobs should be expanded to have different builds (like other MMO's) or do you think Square should focus on making different jobs as uniquely distinct from one another as possible? (or both?).

As a former ESO player, I lean more towards the latter option myself. I think people underestimate just how much players value flavor in their classes, even if its just getting a unique animation or jump (like in old WoW for example).

[SieyaM]

Let me ask you this: Do you think Jobs should be expanded to have different builds (like other MMO's) or do you think Square should focus on making different jobs as uniquely distinct from one another as possible? (or both?).

As a former ESO player, I lean more towards the latter option myself. I think people underestimate just how much players value flavor in their classes, even if its just getting a unique animation or jump (like in old WoW for example).

Different builds usually leads to only one of them being optimal and then enforced by the players, which means there will be only one build you are allowed to actually use. Honestly I would rather they gave up on the idea of achieving perfect balance across jobs and just design them to be fun, it seems that the hyper focus on balanced play in the highest tier of content is what is keeping them from doing anything interesting with the jobs.

[Ivtrix]

Different builds usually leads to only one of them being optimal and then enforced by the players, which means there will be only one build you are allowed to actually use. Honestly I would rather they gave up on the idea of achieving perfect balance across jobs and just design them to be fun, it seems that the hyper focus on balanced play in the highest tier of content is what is keeping them from doing anything interesting with the jobs.

Not a terrible idea by any means but as long as SE continues to commit to making savage and ultimate content (which while they threatened that they could pull the plug let’s be real they arnt stopping anytime soon) then job balance will be of some importance as long as they push the facade of “any combo of 2 tanks 2 healers 1 melee 1 ranged 1 caster 1 flex should be able to clear the content”, as dangerously close we have been to “fuck the 5% we’re gonna drop caster/physr and bring another melee” we got to this expansion