Making jobs simpler is a mistake, let players fail.

[Aravell]

Your argument rings a bit hollow when it basically amounts to “I’m willing to sacrifice healers at the alter of balance as long as it means my role; which is not healer; is balanced enough that the job I like is never not viable

Square enix has shown in the last 3 expansions they can’t balance anything unless they make every job play exactly the same and EW over ShB showed that homogenising the jobs even further around the 2 minute window ironically made the balance worse compared to ShB, considering every job except PIC basically got “1 more finisher in the burst window” this is liable to become even worse

In the “balance vs homogenisation” argument we are losing on both fronts

It's also worth pointing out that balance at the start of EW was one of the worst. What's the point of all that homogenisation anyway?

[rawker]

Why are we going to heal a tank that can take care of it, themselves..

Oh by the way, i don't play tank. But I want tanks to be better.

[Turtledeluxe]

From what I understand, XIV has never been incredibly exclusionary per expansion on a job basis. It's not like a majority of jobs were ever locked out of parties. Again, from what I understand, it was very specific jobs for very specific reasons. Not saying that is good, but just worth noting.

I'd also ask if "refinement" was/is the only solution to those problems? I.e. MNK has issues, it's not being picked up in parties, so let's gut all jobs. Hm, not sure about that approach.

Third, it's not like metas still don't form today. It isn't like participation rates by job are ideal (depending on time of expansion, admittedly).

So, yeah. I think gutting jobs was the easiest thing to do so they did that. Rose tinting it like some noble deed is a little much imo.

And if you look at the recent BLM adjustment, seems obvious to me the change was driven by a minority of endgame players who used third party tools to gain an edge in parsing. So in that case you have a specific instance where refinement is just the devs squashing skill expression due to a handful of dishonest players, probably a very tiny %.

I also don't like this idea that casuals don't feel or understand the changes. That doesn't mean devs can do whatever they want, even if it is true. Devs have an obligation for the game to be fun. There's no real way for us to measure this ambiguous "casual player" satisfaction either-- they're still subbed, but are they happy with their job? Those things don't necessarily correlate.

[Sqwall]

Why are we going to heal a tank that can take care of it, themselves..

Oh by the way, i don't play tank. But I want tanks to be better.

Tanks are fine the way they are.

If they want to do anything for the tanks...improve DRK's sustain some.

[Supersnow845]

I don’t think it’s remotely fair to blame people using a mana regen timer for the BLM changes especially given the new gauge is obviously designed to quash non standard lines

The mana regen tick system has always been stupid and always should have been either a core feature where the mod gauge is available for all players or is based off umbral ice spells cast

It just seems like they finally got sick of balancing non standard lines and went for the lazy approach

Tanks are fine the way they are.

If they want to do anything for the tanks...improve DRK's sustain some.

Yes yes we all know you’d delete healers if it meant that we could give something to the tanks to pretend to justify how overpowered WAR is

[GoatOfWar]

I don’t think it’s remotely fair to blame people using a mana regen timer for the BLM changes especially given the new gauge is obviously designed to quash non standard lines

The mana regen tick system has always been stupid and always should have been either a core feature where the mod gauge is available for all players or is based off umbral ice spells cast

It just seems like they finally got sick of balancing non standard lines and went for the lazy approach



Yes yes we all know you’d delete healers if it meant that we could give something to the tanks to pretend to justify how overpowered WAR is

The only correct answer is to just throw in the towell and play dps at this point.
They'll just continue to carve out more and more of the gameplay experience. Yoshi P basically even admitted defeat when he said they'll fix the tanks in 8.0 instead.
A position he only found himself in because SE decided to listen to streamers for their game design and balance instead of people that are actually qualified.

[Sqwall]

I don’t think it’s remotely fair to blame people using a mana regen timer for the BLM changes especially given the new gauge is obviously designed to quash non standard lines

The mana regen tick system has always been stupid and always should have been either a core feature where the mod gauge is available for all players or is based off umbral ice spells cast

It just seems like they finally got sick of balancing non standard lines and went for the lazy approach



Yes yes we all know you’d delete healers if it meant that we could give something to the tanks to pretend to justify how overpowered WAR is

Wait...haven't DRK's been asking for sustain?

[AmiableApkallu]

There will always be a most efficient pick, that will never change as long as there's numerical differences. I'd rather they focus on designing the jobs to be fun rather than wasting time trying to kill a meta.

I think the P8S-on-release situation is instructive here. SE wanted to set a tight enrage. They can't do that, and support all jobs and comps being viable, unless they make it so that the differences are sufficiently small.

[Rithy255]

Low skill floor high skill celling.

Normal content offered a safe environment for people to learn and get better at their particular job, even so you can do really in that sort of content and not really get punished.

But in harder content performing a "hard to play job" or even something with a bit of a higher celling with optimisation added so much replay value to those said fights, also New jobs should keep the fight fresh, but instead now that jobs are very samey it all kind of blends together and doesn't matter how many different jobs you have when they are all very functionally similar.

Personally I think jobs should be "easy to get into" but they shouldn't be without a learning curve, the bar to doing "passable" in average content really requires very little so why are jobs being punished? How are we actually lowering the bar down even further.

[Sqwall]

I think the P8S-on-release situation is instructive here. SE wanted to set a tight enrage. They can't do that, and support all jobs and comps being viable, unless they make it so that the differences are sufficiently small.

Like I said...I don't think we can have it both ways. P8s is a good example of the content being 1% out of balance with the jobs. It was easier to change the boss HP...rather then upset job balance.

To that I argue that streamers and day one enthusiast pressured SE to make the change....SE could have just held their ground and let them get better gear on week 2 re-clears rather then bend the knee. P8s was....it was a rough fight all around.

SE should stop giving clout to streamers "as free marketing" and focus more on sticking to their decisions on savage fight design. When you have streamers screaming and whining "job balance this" "job balance that" "Just look at the logs!"....you start to see SE bending the knee so that can keep the money machine moving correctly. Give them what they want...and things will calm down.

If I was in Yoshi P's shoes...I would not invite a single streamer to the media tour. I bet some of those streamers give him so much heartburn because of the audience they have and influence they give.

Not everything should be completed on day 1 because a streamer says so.