Revisiting the 10 year roadmap

[Kes13a]

The job balance team has dents in their heads that destroyed the frontal lobe and there is no saving them.

I havent played any game yet where the developers have been able to balance to satisfaction. why? because of the players. unless all jobs are exactly the same, you will always have one that does more of something.

people complain about something being unbalanced so they "balance it" and then people complain about loss of "job identity"

bottom line is, the problem with balance is your fellow players. once someone learns a job well, they will naturally outperform people who do not. the player base screams for the mythical balance to counteract that, its an endless circle of demands that has led us to exactly what we have today.

[Tsumdere]

I havent played any game yet where the developers have been able to balance to satisfaction. why? because of the players. unless all jobs are exactly the same, you will always have one that does more of something.

people complain about something being unbalanced so they "balance it" and then people complain about loss of "job identity"

bottom line is, the problem with balance is your fellow players. once someone learns a job well, they will naturally outperform people who do not. the player base screams for the mythical balance to counteract that, its an endless circle of demands that has led us to exactly what we have today.

Hi!

Don't!

The hardest jobs in the game being lower than melee is not balance (except now BLM after buffs because we can't let BLM be bad! fuck the other guys tho.)
Being able to lose DPS checks due to poor RNG (happened to us once in TOP because we legit low rolled all LBs and none of us crit big skills) is not balance.
The devs admitting they overtuned something and it being basically impossible to beat in certain comps is not balance.

Removing Kaiten is not good design.
2 Min Meta is not good design.
Pruning meaningful skills while leaving AoE skill bloat is not good design.
Removal of a job archetype and not replacing it is not good design (DoT).
Healers not having to heal, but also not having a DPS rotation is not good design.
Oblation is not good design.
Enhanced Unmend is not good design.
BRD is not good design.

This isn't about perfect numerical balance, but their decisions making no god damn sense. They remove Kaiten because of button bloat but leave a ton of pointless AoE skills? Why does DNC do everything better than the other phys ranged - mobility, support, damage, and ease of use? Why is DRG getting a rework but not BRD? Why do they insist on taking everything away from healers leaving them as hollow shells of "press glare, sometimes assize". Why do both Crit/DH exist? Why keep making skills auto-crit? Because of damage variance? But it will continue to exist because of DH and the absolutely insane potency of some of these skills. What is the point of crit then?

They are dent heads.

[Semirhage]

bottom line is, the problem with balance is your fellow players. once someone learns a job well, they will naturally outperform people who do not. the player base screams for the mythical balance to counteract that, its an endless circle of demands that has led us to exactly what we have today.

Check the giant, visible cliff between melees+BLM and everyone else. That's not "learning a job well". That's melee favoritism.

My ice-cold take that rarely sees agreement is that FFXIV has never been particularly well balanced. Numerically, sure. Prior to Meleewalker the numbers were usually close enough. However, Square Enix tends to "balance" things in such a way that makes one job just...flat out better than the others in its role. Even if it's by 1%, there's seriously nothing better about its competition. Good balance means classes have different strengths, not that one is designated the designers' favored child and it gets the best of everything. That's been the story pretty consistently since ARR.