What makes a good Job mechanically?

[Payadopa]

in MMO theory, a job has an identity, that feels different from others.

I remember when Ryu and Ken from Street Fighter were pretty much the same characters with different gi colors. Fans considered them great characters once Capcom began differentiating them from one another. They were similar, but different.

Most jobs in XIV feel like Ryu and Ken when aesthetics were the only thing which differentiated them.

This may not be a XIV problem, but an MMO problem in general. I feel players should define their own roles. What is the job/class to you? Champions Online and Final Fantasy XI are the only MMO I know were players defined roles.

Ninja was not designed to be a tank in XI, players made it one. It could also be a powerful Melee, ranged attacker (back in the day with Shurikens) or caster.

SAM was designed to be an off-tank, players made it a DPS.

RDM was designed to be a melee mage of shorts, players made it a off-healer. RDM Melee can also be beastly.

MNK is actually a DPS, but it can tank (Counter tanking a mob in XI who used Hundred Fist results in DBZ -esque rapid strikes between you and the mob).

BST is designed to be a limited job, but can DPS heal, debuff and tank.......whatever you want....BST was known to take down monsters which required an entire group to defeat. Ironically, it was not OP in parties. Its' durability is what made it special. It could use whatever creatures were around as weapons. If one falls, charm another. or, heal the one you have before it falls.

Champions Online actually allowed players to pick powers from any other class in the game to create their own Frankenstein class. It surprisingly was not broken.....

I think one of the problems is the Duty Finder. It's just too static. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to go back to the days of XI where you LFG for hours but everything needs to fit into either DPS, tank, healer. No hybrids, no experimentation, no nothing. And it's made worse by DPS checks and enrage. Now all DPS must be equal. I don't know what the solution is. That's why we have game designers, but I think SE can't really afford to remove even more systems. There barely is anything left at this point. I never understood why XIV couldn't learn from XI, instead of being as different as possible. As per usual in this game there is no middle ground.

[VentVanitas]

I think one of the problems is the Duty Finder. It's just too static. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to go back to the days of XI where you LFG for hours but everything needs to fit into either DPS, tank, healer. No hybrids, no experimentation, no nothing. And it's made worse by DPS checks and enrage. Now all DPS must be equal. I don't know what the solution is. That's why we have game designers, but I think SE can't really afford to remove even more systems. There barely is anything left at this point. I never understood why XIV couldn't learn from XI, instead of being as different as possible. As per usual in this game there is no middle ground.

as much as I would love to have a less rigid trinity system, a lot of the game would have to fundamentally change, changes so I deep that I don't realistically see SE doing to a game that's 10 years in unfortunately. not to say that they still can't learn things from games like XI of course, Eureka/Bozja exist after all.

[RitsukoSonoda]

as much as I would love to have a less rigid trinity system, a lot of the game would have to fundamentally change, changes so I deep that I don't realistically see SE doing to a game that's 10 years in unfortunately. not to say that they still can't learn things from games like XI of course, Eureka/Bozja exist after all.

It's not so much the trinity system itself that is the issue and more to do with the combination of the overall game being nearly entirely stripped of everything related to RPGs in terms of design and game mechanics being paired with dumbing down player choices and decisions as well by essentially making all the job options in each role the same because actual choices beyond aesthetics is too high of a learning curve for the "accessibility" they're trying to create.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

It's not so much the trinity system itself that is the issue and more to do with the combination of the overall game being nearly entirely stripped of everything related to RPGs in terms of design and game mechanics being paired with dumbing down player choices and decisions as well by essentially making all the job options in each role the same because actual choices beyond aesthetics is too high of a learning curve for the "accessibility" they're trying to create.

I think it has more to do with how powerful party buffs are, and the pushing towards that 2 min burst window than anything.


Back in SB, when the windows weren't perfectly aligned, was my favorite tbh. Its not really a lack of RPG elements at fault for the current issues. We had the same lacking back then. Its the way combat is structured, and the way players use jobs, which is done due to damage being the highest goal of a group. So now we have 2 min burst windows that sucked the soul out of everything combat.