How would you tackle job identity?

[MagiusNecros]

Make different jobs do different things that other jobs can't. Job identity seems to be present in spades in PvP but also in other Square games like Bravely Default, FF3, FF5, FFX-2, Octopath Traveler, Dragon Quest, FFXI.

Maybe the devs should play some of the RPGs their own company made? Or play WoW since classes there have identity.

Maybe they will add an AP system and give us skill trees?

[Shikiseki]

Honestly just look at the PvP kits and you get a pretty accurate picture of all jobs, if they weren't bound by the trinity and rigid 2min battle designs...

[Zolvolt]

Job identity is very difficult to balance well with small raid sizes of 8 people. Theres a reason world of warcraft killed 10 player raiding and went with 20 player exclusively. It opens up their raid design to a point where they can reasonably assume every raid team will have 1 or 2 of each class to handle certain problems a specific way. In FFXIV you can't do that. Every tank team, every healer team, and every dps comp (of 1 melee, 1 caster, 1 phys ranged and 1 any) would have to be able to handle anything that happens. This game's raid-scene is not friendly to jobs that are unique or do unique things. FF11 is such a good example of job identity because theres so much room for jobs to do unique but helpful things that are completely different from other jobs and so much room for jobs to play as either a tank or a dps and play so differently in doing so. FF14 can't be like that. It's knows exactly what kind of game it is and has been since implementation when it started off as raid comps being 1 pld, 1 war, 1 whm, 1 sch, 1 bard, 1 monk/dragoon 1blackmage/summoner and 1 any.

We've just added more jobs and had to struggle to fit in every job into that formula. This game will never truely have unique job identities because of that. I'd also like to submit that the holy trinity in it self makes job identity difficult to have implemented well. The lack of a support role in mmo's always leads to homogenization.

Anyways, as exciting as job identity is I can't help but see the forest for the trees. 8.0 is going to have some jobs be very poorly balanced to the point that people will not bring them. Y'all think p8s balance was bad on week1? that was nothing compared to a world where job identity is the core goal of job balance.

[Reimmi]

Before tackling job identity, I'd actually see the encounter design and how its features can actually accomodate the job kits, which I think it's essential to even address the healer situation, for example.

Irony is what they are doing in Dawntrail... However, I'm not holding my breath at all to see something new so distinct that it will fuel the plans for job identity in 8.0. Would be nice to be surprised, though.




Like for example, you put this... but with the current 2min meta this is completely trash and people would probably get mad at drifting if they wanted to use their actions earlier.

Ideally all 2 minute meta would go away, and astrologian bard, dancer etc would be changed to be reactive buffers. By this i mean there's no buffs that are on 2 min cds, instead your buffs are tied to resources. E.G foes ballad would be one for bard, alongside your always active song, and then another song on a short CD that can be applied to party members

Astrologian would have only its cards for buffs, all on short cds that give things like skill speed, attack damage, crit chance, make cooldowns tick down faster.

Dancer would be the one that giga buffs one person with dance partner, but not the entire raid. their niche is making one person insanely strong with timing your buffs with their CDS

Probly one or 2 more jobs could have this playstyle, but not *everyone* has a raid buff, and they are not tuned around a set timer meta.
Give every class unique cooldown times and mechanics, hell even have some jobs that have no cooldowns and are focused on sustained damage throughout the entire encounter. Like a dot class

Will it be unbalanced? Absolutely. Tuning would take a while, but i have faith in the devs on that front. I'd tather they take the risk to make the game more fun

[Hycinthus]

Job identity is very difficult to balance well with small raid sizes of 8 people. Theres a reason world of warcraft killed 10 player raiding and went with 20 player exclusively. It opens up their raid design to a point where they can reasonably assume every raid team will have 1 or 2 of each class to handle certain problems a specific way. In FFXIV you can't do that. Every tank team, every healer team, and every dps comp (of 1 melee, 1 caster, 1 phys ranged and 1 any) would have to be able to handle anything that happens. This game's raid-scene is not friendly to jobs that are unique or do unique things. FF11 is such a good example of job identity because theres so much room for jobs to do unique but helpful things that are completely different from other jobs and so much room for jobs to play as either a tank or a dps and play so differently in doing so. FF14 can't be like that. It's knows exactly what kind of game it is and has been since implementation when it started off as raid comps being 1 pld, 1 war, 1 whm, 1 sch, 1 bard, 1 monk/dragoon 1blackmage/summoner and 1 any.

We've just added more jobs and had to struggle to fit in every job into that formula. This game will never truely have unique job identities because of that. I'd also like to submit that the holy trinity in it self makes job identity difficult to have implemented well. The lack of a support role in mmo's always leads to homogenization.

But WoW’s dungeons only have 5 members and that works? Maybe we just increase party sizes of dungeons to 5, of trials to 10?

[Bitmoar]

In general, remove the 2 minute meta and spread out potency so DPS isn't so reliant on nukes critting in a 20 second window. Make buffs more varied beyond damage% up or crit/dh% up. Vary them in their cooldowns as well, giving options for aligning after downtime, but making it not optimal in a dummy fight.

Add 2 and 5 piece set bonuses to capstone level sets.

Then add a Specialty stat that enhances a job's niche and acts like a buildable passive (i.e. SCH Spec could enhance the effectiveness of Chain and Fairy skills, maybe give a buff to Catalyze for their crit shields).

For anyone who plays HSR:

Shield Healers = Preservation/Nihility
Pure Healers = Abundance/Harmony
Support DPS = Harmony/Nihility
Pure DPS = Hunt/Destruction/Erudition
Tanks = Preservation/Destruction

Accept that jobs won't be perfectly balanced and some may be more effective paired with others, and some may be more effective in specific fights.

And that is my job identity fanfiction.

[Reimmi]

Job identity is very difficult to balance well with small raid sizes of 8 people. Theres a reason world of warcraft killed 10 player raiding and went with 20 player exclusively. It opens up their raid design to a point where they can reasonably assume every raid team will have 1 or 2 of each class to handle certain problems a specific way. In FFXIV you can't do that. Every tank team, every healer team, and every dps comp (of 1 melee, 1 caster, 1 phys ranged and 1 any) would have to be able to handle anything that happens. This game's raid-scene is not friendly to jobs that are unique or do unique things. FF11 is such a good example of job identity because theres so much room for jobs to do unique but helpful things that are completely different from other jobs and so much room for jobs to play as either a tank or a dps and play so differently in doing so. FF14 can't be like that. It's knows exactly what kind of game it is and has been since implementation when it started off as raid comps being 1 pld, 1 war, 1 whm, 1 sch, 1 bard, 1 monk/dragoon 1blackmage/summoner and 1 any.

We've just added more jobs and had to struggle to fit in every job into that formula. This game will never truely have unique job identities because of that. I'd also like to submit that the holy trinity in it self makes job identity difficult to have implemented well. The lack of a support role in mmo's always leads to homogenization.

Anyways, as exciting as job identity is I can't help but see the forest for the trees. 8.0 is going to have some jobs be very poorly balanced to the point that people will not bring them. Y'all think p8s balance was bad on week1? that was nothing compared to a world where job identity is the core goal of job balance.

Jobs dont really have to do unique things, just have unique gameplay. Warrior and dark knight do not both need to have a fel cleave spam ability, for example
All the tanks having gap closers is fine. all the tanks having fell cleave is not

[MagiusNecros]

Jobs dont really have to do unique things, just have unique gameplay. Warrior and dark knight do not both need to have a fel cleave spam ability, for example
All the tanks having gap closers is fine. all the tanks having fell cleave is not

You get it. Give Job's a unique playstyle that says "This is a Dark Knight and this is a Bard".

Which PvP Limit Breaks do wonderfully.

[Zolvolt]

But WoW’s dungeons only have 5 members and that works? Maybe we just increase party sizes of dungeons to 5, of trials to 10?

In wow dungeons certain classes are significantly better than the alternatives and creates scenarios where people just do not accept certain healers, or certain tanks or certain dps. In ffxiv this would translate to "sorry we don't bring white mages. only astrologians. sorry we don't bring warriors ever. pick another tank if you want to come. This probably even bleeds into casual play when you look for groups with random people. But the class design is largely aimed at raiding. So increasing from 8 to 10 people doesn't fix the problem. Wow found that even with 10 people they still had to homogenize classes in order for fight mechanics designed for 20 people to be even be possible for 10 player raids.

Jobs dont really have to do unique things, just have unique gameplay. Warrior and dark knight do not both need to have a fel cleave spam ability, for example
All the tanks having gap closers is fine. all the tanks having fell cleave is not

One one hand you're absolutely right. Warrior and dark knight being that similiar is a big mistake. On the other hand, you can only do so much to make them different in this game. They tried to do this in the past where only certain tanks had raid-wide cd's or only certain tanks had gap-closers. So some classes felt really cool to have those things, but really it just meant the other classes felt lacking and when a mechanic was difficult to solve you could just throw in the tank with the raid-wide or gap closer to solve the issue. Thats what unique job identity does. It leaves other classes feeling "worse off". SEnix should get props on how different they make certain jobs play though. Dancer, picto, gunbreaker, paladin, are just some examples where they have made the gameplay stand out a bit from other jobs, but even in those cases the jobs still feel homogenized because they can't give jobs unique flashy fun mechanics without undermining job balance. But ffxiv has always been that way. "you can play anything because balance is so good, but you won't get anything crazy in terms of job gameplay"

[mallleable]

To me, identity in terms of game design exists more or less abstractly, and it is the designers job to translate these abstract concepts into gameplay. For jobs, it it translating concepts into sequences of button presses. Such concepts can include how it uses its weapon, role responsibilities, and lore. Weak job identity is usually a result of poor translation where in cases the gameplay strayed too far from, or does not reflect the initial concepts, or the concept is too vague, and not enough gameplay can be gleaned from it. Sometimes the input is the problem, and sometimes the output is the problem.

I think job identity currently shine the strongest in PVP. Due to likely self imposed constraints, designers were forced to provide more gameplay with fewer actions. Each job's concept, and gameplay had be carefully considered when reimagining them -- only the strongest elements can make the cut, and if the concept or the gameplay was weak it received changes. It is most apparent when comparing PVP SCH, BRD, and DRK to their PVE versions. SCH plays more like a battle field tactician by being allowed to manipulate more things with their abilities, BRD manages to provide incredibly strong party buffs to their allies while at the same time being able to be a respectable menace to the enemy depending on player's skill, and DRK is monster that burns through its own HP to destroy their enemies. The heart of each job is present in their PVP versions because they were forced to have one though good design.