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

[mallleable]

The thing is it it has very little to do with movement penalty, and more to do with the cast time. The cast time is essentially a 'do nothing step' -- a delay from when you press the button, and it deals damage. A concept that shows up in many other kinds of games. You can have a turn based game where you can have an extremely powerful attack on your next turn in exchange for skipping your current turn. Or even a card game where you can have an extremely powerful card, but you have to skip a turn before you can play it. When you reload in an FPS, you are doing nothing in exchange for replenishing your damage resources. Even down to something like fire rate where each 'bullet' from a high fire rate, high ammo capacity SMG will deal less damage than say each bullet from revolver that has a lower rate of fire, and can only fire off 6 shots before reloading while we're still on FPS games. Oh no, there are downtime mechanics in my single player FPS game because everything is uptime DDR, it's busted.

Back to FFXIV, there is like a lot a lot of downtime in every fight where no one needs to be running round so the movement penalty from walking casts or any casts in general means very little. Job design, fight design, and yes player skill have improved to such a degree that movement penalties from casted actions is not a problem, like at all. And to such a degree that I don't think that current physical ranged design holds up anymore.

[Lyth]

There are good points on both sides of this. There's nothing to say that you couldn't introduce stationary casts or walking casts on a Physical Ranged job. We have two melee jobs that use casts as well. The primary drawback is that casts come at the cost of APM, so you're left with slower gameplay. You also might risk alienating an existing playerbase if you implement it on a current job rather than a new one. I think the main reason this discussion point comes out is because Physical Ranged is viewed as unilaterally inferior to Magical Ranged, and casts are usually brought up as the point of discrimination (even if an unwarranted one). You could argue that a Physical Ranged job that tears down that boundary would spark a conversation about why we have two tiers of ranged jobs split across three sub-subcategories.

I'm surprised that there isn't an Grappling Shot or Jet Pack movement tool out there yet for BRD/MCH, respectively. Even the healers are getting them now.

[Valence]

The thing is it it has very little to do with movement penalty, and more to do with the cast time. The cast time is essentially a 'do nothing step' -- a delay from when you press the button, and it deals damage. A concept that shows up in many other kinds of games. You can have a turn based game where you can have an extremely powerful attack on your next turn in exchange for skipping your current turn. Or even a card game where you can have an extremely powerful card, but you have to skip a turn before you can play it. When you reload in an FPS, you are doing nothing in exchange for replenishing your damage resources. Even down to something like fire rate where each 'bullet' from a high fire rate, high ammo capacity SMG will deal less damage than say each bullet from revolver that has a lower rate of fire, and can only fire off 6 shots before reloading while we're still on FPS games. Oh no, there are downtime mechanics in my single player FPS game because everything is uptime DDR, it's busted.

Back to FFXIV, there is like a lot a lot of downtime in every fight where no one needs to be running round so the movement penalty from walking casts or any casts in general means very little. Job design, fight design, and yes player skill have improved to such a degree that movement penalties from casted actions is not a problem, like at all. And to such a degree that I don't think that current physical ranged design holds up anymore.

That analogy has nothing to do with cast times. A better analogy would be the PCT motifs : skip a GCD and your next is going to be double/triple more powerful. A cast time, unless going well over the GCD normal recast, is not affecting the GCD structure (turns) in any way, shape or form. The amount of bullets per GCD is also directly tied to the GCD recast speed (old rapid fire, current hypercharge, etc), not the cast times.

I'm surprised that there isn't an Grappling Shot or Jet Pack movement tool out there yet for BRD/MCH, respectively. Even the healers are getting them now.

Because healers are casters. Fast casters sure, but still casters, and with very limited uptime options in comparison to other casters. Some of them also do need to be at melee range for some of their attacks.

This is not the case of BRD/MCH (at the opposite of DNC), and since those do not have any cast times, they do not need any mobility tools. I don't see the point of them getting any in their current state and people asking for them just because other jobs have them is just weird. If anything giving them mobility tools would further enforce the argument that rphys is too mobile and free and needs to be taxed.

[Lyth]

Movement is fundamental to game design, because players often make decisions about whether they want to play a game or not based off of control responsiveness. Games succeed or fail on this point. That's why we've seen a move towards more fixed distance gap closers, and now speed boosts. I think if they want to attract and retain new players, every job needs to have movement tools, even if it's just for zipping around a starting zone.

PCT doesn't need a gap closer to get into melee range. But yet it has the most powerful movement tool in the game despite supposedly being an 'damage' caster and most overpowered job in the game. And tell me, what do you have to lose at this point? It's not like they can tax Physical Ranged any more than they already have. You're in the low end of the same damage tier as Raise Casters who have movement tools, but you don't even have a Raise to show for it. I have no idea why you would defend the status quo. You have every right to demand more; they can take nothing from you.

[Valence]

Then by your logic you can remove all casting constraints from casters because it restrains their movement and keeps the game from attracting new players but perhaps that's what they've done with SMN already?

No, I have every right to demand more, but demanding useless tools in the current metrics of the game is just misleading and shooting oneself in the foot. Perhaps both feet. I'd rather ask for more productive assets.

[Lyth]

What constraints? It's being systematically designed out of the game, and that has nothing to do with the availability of movement tools.

[Carighan]

Once you establish that level playing field, you're free to come up with whatever support concepts that you like. I think this is an underdeveloped area in the game, especially when you consider that the most creative concept that we've seen in a while is Expedient.

Well, to this I'd say: "Good luck with that then", should you ever become a game developer.

See, even ignoring support tools and how they may or may not be factored into DPS (after all, if one of your support tools is a way of becoming faster, there can very well be situations where that increases your DPS and others where it does not), sheer mechanical difference in just the DPS tooling will make true DPS parity impossible.

Source: Every MMORPG ever. Seriously, it's not like this wasn't attempted before. We can, lacking any evidence to the contrary, probably assume that it is an inherent function of "classes" that it is impossible to balance their damage output. Hence it's safe to rethink your approach. Do not assume DPS parity can be achieved. Find a workable solution for your approach that does not require DPS parity in the first place.

But it gets more problematic than that. It's not like other MMOs, notable WoW in the post-Cataclysm era when it replaced talent trees with triplet-choices and then later GW2 with its completely radical approach to class balance (everyone is DPS+xyz, but always DPS first and foremost), have not attempted this "Everything to differentiate is tacked onto a balanceable DPS core". Now, as above, so far not a single MMORPG has ever managed to show that said balanceable DPS core can actually be balanced. It seems to not be possible. But even ignoring that, looking just at the tacked-on part, the two examples we have promptly broke their DPS balance with it, if in radically different ways.

Which, if you think about it, is bleedingly obvious: If DPS were equal (or well, within 3%-5% of each other, which is the closest anybody ever got which means people just stack the better class anyways) then naturally who stack whoever has the strongest non-DPS tools. Why wouldn't you?!
So in summary:

* Balancing DPS output is utopian, nothing supports that it is possible to do this.
* Balancing an optional tacked-on non-DPS set of abilities on top will naturally imbalance classes again. We had two games showing us that this happens, and zero that this will not happen.

MMORPGs aren't a new genre. We can just look towards what worked and didn't work for other games.

[Lyth]

The dev team have demonstrated that they can balance DPS inputs on jobs if they want to. Melee and tanks have a pretty good DPS balance right now within their respective role categories, to the point where we've seen jobs change rankings on a weekly basis based off of changes to clear times. It's just a question of offering something fair to other roles as well.

What makes non-DPS abilities easier to balance in a way is because it's harder to compare the benefit that they offer. Partial homogenization is the real problem, where you can look at two actions and see that one is clearly superior. Let me give you an example:

• Aetherial Shift (Ability, Lv. 40): Quickly dash 15 yalms forward. Cannot be executed while bound. 60s recast.
• Smudge (Ability, Lv. 20): Quickly dash 15 yalms forward. Cannot be executed while bound. 20s recast. Additional Effect: Increases movement speed. Duration: 5s

One of these is mathematically better than the other. That's partial homogenization, which is neither fair nor interesting, and is even worse than complete homogenization. Ideally, you offer players an apples-and-oranges choice that they can't draw a direct comparison between. And if you can't balance the effect in question no matter what you do, then you turn it into a role action.

[Supersnow845]

You are also comparing between two completely roles that have completely different inherent mobility as a result of their role design

I’d argue 3 charges of en avant + DNC having no cast times is stronger than smudge especially in the levels prior to (82 I want to say) when smudge doesn’t have its sprint but I also don’t think looking at gap closer differences between roles is a useful comparison because at that point WAR wins for best gap closer across the 21 classes

If you look at aetherial shift its comparison points would be primarily Icarus and secondary expedient and lightspeed.

Aetherial shift has the longer CD but also has the benefit of being untargeted. Comparing to expedient it has a shorter CD and is a true gap closer but expedient is party wide and also provides a mitigation. Comparing to lightspeed it has the same CD but is a true gap closer, lightspeed provides mobility but is more used as a weaving tool

Smudge’s comparison is aetherial manipulation primarily and they both have upsides and downsides. Smudge gives sprint and is untargeted while aetherial manipulation has the shorter CD, is targeted and can be paired with between the lines when under leylines which PCT has no counter to (but has larger gaylines to compensate)

[Aco505]

One of these is mathematically better than the other. That's partial homogenization, which is neither fair nor interesting, and is even worse than complete homogenization. Ideally, you offer players an apples-and-oranges choice that they can't draw a direct comparison between. And if you can't balance the effect in question no matter what you do, then you turn it into a role action.

Smudge is very good, but I don't believe it should be nerfed. I don't see that as the problematic part of PCT's kit and frankly, if PCT wasn't pulling those DPS numbers, no one would care.

Or to put it another way, imagine SMN dealing PCT levels of damage, there would be endless complaints about the job due to its ease of play as well as its almost endless mobility and (lack of) identity as a caster. The latter already happens anyway.

I’d argue 3 charges of en avant + DNC having no cast times is stronger

En Avant is kind of whatever for DNC. Mobility actions on physical range are more "panic" buttons than tools that would see continued use. Gap closers on melee and dashes/instant casts on casters exist to compensate for the uptime troubles the jobs might have, which is not something the p. range role has to care about.

I suppose that we could argue that in very specific scenarios, En Avant is required for the DNC to be in range of the target faster to be able to hit a Finish, but that situation is likely quite rare in high end. In fact, where it actually becomes useful is in dungeons in order to keep up with the tank and hit the enemies reliably with the melee range AoEs. This is probably why the ability exists in the first place.