Concerns Regarding DPS Balance: Physical Ranged, Red Mage, and Summoner

[Eraden]

Mao gonna chimes in here because Mao thinkings is importants to remember the core of the job problem. There is some jobs whats valued WAY less than others in same categorys to the point where thems is played far FAR less and even discriminated against when building groups for certain activities. Mao wonderings why Devs go to such troubles to make so many jobs if some of thems efforts is so devalued that those efforts might as well has been flushed down the toilet. ALL jobs whats are in game should be valued. Is not need be absolutely equal but should be similar enough that can find healthy populations of each job in all activities.

To make all jobs be valued, two things are needed. First, jobs must have depth in complexity. This means low skill floor and high skill ceiling. Second, fight designs need to be more complex and feature challenges for every job. Mao thinkings DDR-style fights are probably not the way to go. Mao would like see fights with lots more random elements such as boss not being tethered to center. Current design keeps pushing for more DDR-style fights and more job simplifications. Mao thinkings this will eventually wreck game. Mao probably won't be around to see when this happens because Mao too old to sit around and wait for game to crash and burn in order for Devs to start rebuilding jobs and fights to be interestings again.

[Carighan]

I think in an ideal world, it would be nice if every job had its own set of little tricks to make everyone's performance indirectly better in a non-quantifiable way (and using movement tools to generate uptime is my favorite example of this). But DPS absolutely matters to DPS players, and there's no escaping that fact.

Yes, and this is the crucial issue with MMORPG job design. We don't need to look at just FFXIV as a specific game, the genre is big. And for the few games that survived their formative years, as they age, their unique aspects get removed slowly, further and further. Casters get more mobile as raid designers need to use harsher and harsher movement checks, non-utility jobs get more and more utility as the need for more and more new abilities expands in subsequent expansions, melees get more and more ways to manage uptime both from new abilities and a faster combat flow to keep old players engaged.

But without wanting to also equalize DPS, you can easily keep everyone feeling very unique, simply by not working with unique non-performance tools, but in fact, performance tools. But this goes against something else: As the game grows older, players have more and more classes at their disposal. So as soon as a fight favors X, the fight designer needs to assume that the role will be filled entirely by X, simply because enough can now do this - something they could not do back in the first year of DAoC when they played someone else and it took months and months to level a single class. They barely had one to bring, nevermind all of a role!

But later in a game's life, you cannot do that any more.

But this does not make DPS parity a positive. It is just about the most egregious, toxic, limitating factor to intelligent combat and class design in MMORPGs. It's ability to be seen and analyzed by players is the crucial part of why combat is restrictive, boring and formulaic. Why fights tend to be copy-pasted with no real variations. The few positive examples are usually loved in hindsight, but hated at the time (remember the boss that you had to heal to 100% to win in WoW, not kill? with Shamans healing 2x as much on targets at low health?).

Necessary as it might be as a reality of how design of MMORPG works, don't mistake it for a positive goal. DPS-parity is the enemy that you begrudgingly have to accept after you're hopefully done doing actual class design. Which FFXIV has not done yet, so I find it extremely unnecessary to even talk about parity. Plus keep in mind that if we assume this is a necessary thing (so you were to say that output has to be balanced) then "modern" jobs like Picto are going to be the model job, as in, ultimately all jobs ought to be designed like it, with a mix of mobility and immobility and a freeform combat flow. It's very noticable how it's not as outdated as the other designs - Summoner also shows this to a degree but much less so. But it's important to keep in mind that if we are to assume DPS parity and design unification as a necessary evil and also want to solve it now, Picto is not "the enemy" it is "the result".

[Carighan]

As a further food-for-thought, consider how in an "idealized" world but set in the current overly restrictive framework of job and fight design a better balance would even look, in particular Lyth who keeps bringing up things such as Picto as if there's any easy solution.

Let's look just at the 4 casters for a second, and assume that none of them can have:

* Party utility (this belongs to the physical ranged DPS as per the thread)
* Mobility except in minority edge cases (this belogns to the physical ranged DPS as per the thread)

Now we have 4 casters. How would they differentiate from one another. More so, as Lyth keeps saying, DPS parity is supposedly important. How do they differentiate if none of them can have party utility, none of them can have more or less mobility, and their DPS needs to also be exactly equal? Could it be we're only talking about one job here, not four?

Lets for example assume they're all fully casting, Black Mage style (nevermind how little Black Mage casts with all their modern tools, we're assuming they lost them all as they increase mobility!). But what makes a Red Mage unique then? They can't have a heal or a rezz, that's party utility. Do they still attack from melee range every so often, but even those have a cast-bar now so they're not mobile like other melees?

Hey that'd be a solution, right? Red Mage attacks from melee every so often, Black Mage stands fully at range!

But oh no! Now Red Mage is weaker on fights with lots of moving out of melee range, they need to move more often anyways, and also need to be able to contact in melee at defined points. Now we can't have people leave melee range at all any more in our fight design, or casters are no longer balanced in DPS!

(and it goes on like that for every single possible solution you might think of, they cannot be balanced in actual fights)

[Valence]

Not gonna lie, reading what people find gratifying and enjoy in the game makes me feel like an alien. Maybe that's why I play rphys.

I'm with mao.

[BabyYoda]

I feel like FFXIV devs do not have clear vision on how role/sub-role should have.

Like I remember when RPR released they added it as Maiming because now DRG can share gear with other job and this is the problem with it.

VPR is an exception, it does feel like similar with ninja, so it is logical that it share gear with it.

casters are suffering, it is now casters with rez vs casters without rez.

PhyR is the worst of it.

healers failed so hard with pure/shield

I feel like tanks was about to go heal vs block but it didn't work so it is 100% homonigized.

[BabyYoda]

I feel like FFXIV devs do not have clear vision on how role/sub-role should have.

Like I remember when RPR released they added it as Maiming because now DRG can share gear with other job and this is the problem with it.

VPR is an exception, it does feel like similar with ninja, so it is logical that it share gear with it.

casters are suffering, it is now casters with rez vs casters without rez.

PhyR is the worst of it.

healers failed so hard with pure/shield

I feel like tanks was about to go heal vs block but it didn't work so it is 100% homonigized.

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I remember they balance blackmage as a higher DPS because of "hard" to play, is this a professional way to balance the game? all jobs should be harder than what we currently have.

the problem with easy jobs it will always ruin the balance like how phyr jobs are in horrible state.

the other misconception is how they balance the game around high APM which is not professional at all.

jobs should have a close range of APM if medium is 40 all jobs should be 38-42 APM it will reduce the issues of people having high ping (thanks for great server structure).

Most games specially PVP games they are masters of balance, it is way easier to balance PvE game than PvP.

in summary:
1- Do not balance jobs around difficulty but balance them around functionality. (what they can do)
2- Keep APM for all jobs similar and add uniqueness to it.

one thing that I like in DT is how they make BLM easier but it was too much easier than before, it should be a bit harder and keep all jobs at this level of difficulity.

[Lyth]

They clearly don't balance around APM. PCT is the most powerful job in the game, but has less than half the APM of the fastest jobs in the game.

More so, as Lyth keeps saying, DPS parity is supposedly important.

Not really sure what your posts have in relation to mine. I am confused on this point, though. Do you think that DPS is unimportant? If so, I doubt that we will ever be able to have a meaningful conversation on this topic. The playerbase of this game values DPS above everything else, and that's just a fact of life. Game designers have to play the hand that they're dealt. You don't have the luxury of redesigning the playerbase.

[Carighan]

Do you think that DPS is unimportant?

Not unimportant, but less important. That is, mechanical design and lore and fantasy come first. These create the components that afterwards can be numerically balanced to provide close-ish DPS.

However, any non-trivial gameplay or mechanical design will always create natural imbalances based on context. A very simple version of this we all think is entirely normal is melee vs ranged. Melee will naturally deal less damage when having to be at range. This is just one such example, and a crass one, but this would naturally prevent any "true" balance across all types of design. Nothing can ever truly be equal despite being fundamentally different. Still, it's important to design gameplay and mechanics first simply because otherwise any modification to these would naturally invalidate all numerical balance, so you want to get it perfected first.

But my point was that (and I'm sorry I quoted you, it wasn't aimed at you I just needed you because you keep mentioning DPS parity) true DPS parity won't work because then you might as well just have "DPS job" as a single job and remove all other ones.

[Lyth]

Mechanical design and job fantasy are great incentives to get people to play a role. But if one job is unambiguously better than the alternatives, then those jobs might as well not exist. That's why DPS parity is so important, especially within role categories. On tiers with tight DPS checks, players can and will lock out jobs. And even if you're not explicitly locking jobs out, I can guarantee that at least a few people in your PF week one enrage attempt party are sighing in frustration when a RDM shows up for the Caster slot instead of PCT. They don't need the raise, they just want the DPS to get them through that last percent.

DPS parity should be the starting point. This has nothing to do with homogenization, gameplay, or lore, because all those can be unique without changing that number. It's just a fundamental point that lets everyone compete on a level playing field. I acknowledge that there will be limitations around this. If tanks or healers had DPS parity with DPS, you would run an all support party. If ranged had DPS parity with melee, you would run an all ranged party. That's why fights are designed on a 2/2/2/2 principle. But if you balance well, then ranged will sometimes be better than melee, and melee will sometimes be better than ranged. Burst will sometimes be better than sustained DPS, and sustained DPS will sometimes be better than burst. That's what I mean by parity.

You can be as creative as you like outside of this. But it just comes down to letting everyone have their moment to shine. And by levelling the playing field for DPS, other gameplay elements take center stage. That's why it's so fundamentally important to get this right.

[SoloWingMetatron]

I created a new alt the other day and started leveling Summoner from scratch and going through all the story again...Summoner is the main job I play on my main character and leveled it exclusively back when I first started playing FF14 during the 2.0 beta.

Since the Summoner rework I've been intending to go through the Summoner story again on an alt for quite some time, in order to gauge how the rework effects the job at lower levels...I am currently level 33 on my alt and have unlocked Summoner and the Ifrit-Egi...Already I can see a vast difference in game play at these low levels...Unfortunately the majority of these differences are a downgrade in my opinion.

Back in 2.0 or even up to before the job rework, Summoner and also Arcanist had much more of a presence/identity...Your Carbuncle/Egi actually took part in battle and you were able to micro manage it's abilities alongside your Ruin/DoT casts...This gave the class a very unique gameplay loop that was quite enjoyable during the leveling stages (especially at such low levels where you already had so few abilities available).

However since the rework I feel the Summoner leveling experience has been totally gutted of any identity or fun/unique gameplay elements...It feels to me like it's missing a whole portion of a class/job - That being the Carbuncle/Egi taking part in battle...Now all a Summoner does is spam Ruin over and over. On the odd occasion we get to pull out a different coloured Carbuncle for a brief moment, only for it to do a single quick attack and then it's back to the Ruin spam...At least before the rework Carbuncle or the Egi was constantly fighting alongside you and you always had the option to either issue it commands or allow it to do it's own thing!...Furthermore, because leveling is so fast now you way out level the point you are in the story, so in battle mobs often die before you even really get to do anything with your Carbuncles/Egi!....Again, at least before the rework the Carbuncle/Egi could get some auto attacks off before a mob dies...

I can't help but feel the current Summoner rework only works from a certain level onwards (70+) but anything lower than this and the job/class is just incomplete and offers a dull leveling experience when compared to other more complete jobs/classes at those lower levels...I know there was a reason for the devs to move away from pet management. Specifically the delay on issuing commands to Egi during endgame content...however I feel removing the Carbuncle/Egi auto attack/commands all together was the wrong move.

I think at the very least auto attack should be brought back to the Carbuncles/Egi, and if that causes delay issues again then I think it would make more sense to simply have the Gemshine/Demi summons be separated from the Carbuncle/Egi. That way we can have a pseudo pet in the form of the Carbuncles/Egi, that has at least the ability to auto attack (if not it's full ability set from 2.0) and the Gemshine/Demi's that can be summoned independently and no longer tied to the Carbuncle/Egi...I feel that this would make for a more fun leveling experience from start to finish because in the earlier levels you can play the job as a watered down version of the 2.0 Summoner and then as you get into the higher levels it starts to add those extra layers through the Gemshine/Demi's.