The problem with Tripling Down on Shadowbringers Job Design

[Striker44]

I think “immensely better” is highly questionable. The current balance is in some ways more jank than it used to be.

For the record, I wasn't commenting on whether this particular situation is immensely better, just pointing out what I saw as a significant flaw in the logic being used.

Also for the record, all jobs were not viable in the past the way they are now. This thread itself is filled with examples of jobs at various points in the earlier years (ARR/HW/SB) that were "must-have" and others that were effectively blacklisted. Even if all jobs aren't perfectly balanced now, they are all viable in a way that wasn't the case in earlier iterations of job design.

[ty_taurus]

For the record, I wasn't commenting on whether this particular situation is immensely better, just pointing out what I saw as a significant flaw in the logic being used.

Also for the record, all jobs were not viable in the past the way they are now. This thread itself is filled with examples of jobs at various points in the earlier years (ARR/HW/SB) that were "must-have" and others that were effectively blacklisted. Even if all jobs aren't perfectly balanced now, they are all viable in a way that wasn't the case in earlier iterations of job design.

I get what you mean, and that is definitely true of the language I used. I did mean it more with the specific state of FFXIV balance in mind where Endwalker's balance is specifically not particularly better than the balance of Heavensward or Stormblood. It's more balanced in some spots, but less in others, so in using your example, it's less like getting a score of 20% vs getting a score of 80%, and more like you swapped which questions on the test you got correct from one set of 20 questions to a different set of 20 questions, but you still only got a 20%.

But your example also brings up an important question: What is greater balance worth? Is it worth massively homogenizing all jobs to ensure they are as close to perfectly balanced as possible? Because I don't think so. Balance is important, but fun is more important than balance. I have no interest in playing a game that is dull and lifeless regardless of how balanced its classes are, but I will gladly play a fun, yet unbalanced game where not all classes are treated equal, but all of them are at least viable and offer some unique advantage that only they can provide in their given role. And that has almost exclusively been true of both Heavensward and Stormblood. We have a few exceptions like Scholar at the launch of 4.0, but that was corrected almost immediately. And that's okay in my book.