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

[Carighan]

Job balance is essential.

#doubt

In fact, I'd go as far as saying that this approach automatically undermines any approach to intelligent and interesting design, and further that history has shown that it while MMOs all eventually homogenize to improve balance, every time they de-homogenized (granted, less examples, few MMOs live this long) is always when player feedback was the most positive. Moreover, if we are to look at non-MMO games (whether that's relevant I can't judge) then we can also see that balance is not at all important, and often actively unwanted.

Players want to make plays that are inherently unbalanced. The key is not to balance things, it's to provide equal opportunities for each side's unbalanced moves to dictate combat so that everyone gets to feel OP roughly as often as everybody else.

Hence me saying above that this ought to be fixed on the combat and systems side (providing equal opportunities for a widely divergent class design), not on the class/job side where the only wat to provide a semblance of balance is by homogenization. Granted, the former has two big flaws:

* Homogenization is much much easier, cheaper and faster. MMOs aren't done out of fun but for a profit, so naturally this solution dominates independent of whether it's actually better or not.
* A divergent class system balanced by opportunity naturally homogenizes something else: Encounter design, specifically. It's a trade-off, like everything always is.

Also you'd do well if you stop constantly harping on about Picto, because it strongly undermines your argument (but that as an aside). The job is OP, but not as OP as you always imply, which is blatantly obvious to everyone and hence reduces much of your other arguments. You would be better off using a job that's relevant in a discussion about class balancing vs class homogenization, like tanks as a whole role and Warrior in particular, or Dragoon and Viper for melee, stuff like that. Casters in fact are a rather bad role to pick for this, since they're actually somewhat different in gameplay.

[Lyth]

No, it comes down to feeling valued.

A few months back, there was an M4S clip posted in the tank forums with a PLD saving a run by using Cover on the VPR during Sword Quiver. That's not unbalanced, even though no other job could have made that specific play. It just comes down to providing non-comparable utility. I can't plug this scenario into a formula and determine how much of an advantage Cover provides. You can create balance without requiring homogeneity. In my opinion, that's the most interesting type of design.

Expedient is another current example of what I consider to be an 'interesting' action, because there's no way to 'calculate' its benefit. If you gave every healer an 'Expedient' effect, that would be 'balanced', but also pretty boring. But what if you gave WHM Warp, and let them place a tile that connects two points on an arena (with a fixed number of charges). Both are raid movement tools, but there's no way to mathematically determine which is better. It's still balanced. It's just more interesting.

DPS is usually the cornerstone about what we talk about in job balance. I know that isn't important to you, but that's also the reason why you'll end up waiting until 7.1 or Echo to clear the softest and most accessible tier that we've had since Deltascape (ironically, this is at least in part by the numerical damage advantage PCT provides over its alternatives and the balance decisions that followed this). Maintaining DPS balance really has nothing to do with design creativity, gameplay, or homogeneity - it's just fundamentally essential to keep all jobs viable. There are lots of ways to do damage, but the number does need to be balanced because it's a mathematical point of comparison. As players, we do lock out jobs that underperform in this area.

That's also a big part of the dissatisfaction felt by the 'lower tier' of ranged players (Physical Ranged and Raise Casters). People want to feel valued for the effort they put in, and one of the simplest ways to express this is raw damage. It's not hard to balance this, and then you can focus on the more interesting stuff.

Having different tools with some clearly, objectively superior like SiO, isn't a proof of anything but bad balancing and design execution.

Precisely this. Partial homogenization is bad design.

[Supersnow845]

Having 13 way DPS parity also doesn’t work because it forcibly homogenises their utility offered or you just end up partially homogenised by another axis using that logic

For example if you forced all 13 classes into the same DPS right now then selfish jobs that offer no utility or non selfish jobs that offer extremely limited utility (like NIN for example) would struggle to find a niche because jobs that have non damage utility would just be better because they offer the same damage, this is basically the situation the tanks are currently in. They all do the same damage do you basically tailor the tank you pick to what they offer that isn’t damage which usually works in WAR and PLD’s favour. If you equalised their DPS but then offered actual gameplay changing utility (expedient is the closest to what I’m imagining here) then you basically just create partial homogenisation axis based off utility they offer (arguably you could say PCT’s motifs in downtime or WHM’s lilys actually fit here) which still creates the same problem it’s just not based on damage. If you try to take the “enlightened 3rd way” of “equalise damage and shuffle the current utility around a bit to equalise it” then you’ve basically just created 13 shades of 1 class which is a pointless endeavour in a game that prides itself on the ability to allow you to play every class

There is really no long term stable proposition for equalise damage across all 13 classes and work from there because all that leads to is the tanks

I will also note that the worst offender of DPS discrepancy within a role is actually AST and by a country mile so I’d use that as the prime example of unfair DPS balancing if that’s the stance you want to take especially since the healer numbers are roughly balanced even though AST and SCH are just objectively better by a wide margin

[nobleboivin]

Unpopular opinion. Reduce cast times on BLM spells. Especially the fire 1 and ice 1 XD.

Another unpopular opinion for caster DPS. Let us move while casting :3

[Aravell]

I feel like something no one is taking into account when talking about the level of homogenisation versus balance is the inherent difficulty/complexity of said job when the role is diversified.

Let's look at Abyssos, people were locking out WAR and PLD because they did less damage, yes? Consider that this happened because the tanks were partially homogenised to the point that knowing how to play one tank can allow you to easily translate that knowledge to any other tank within the role and still do well.

Now let's consider an alternative scenario. We're back at Abyssos again, WAR/PLD are both 10% below DRK/GNB if played well, but DRK/GNB are now more complex and punishing than WAR/PLD and if played badly, they do 5% less than a well-played WAR/PLD. In this scenario, do you think general PF would still lock out WAR/PLD when the guarantee of a half-decent DRK/GNB isn't there?

In a scenario of vastly diverse jobs, it becomes a lot harder to define a value for each job because there's a larger swing on who can bring out the potential of each job.

[Lyth]

This is a problem that gets solved using the power of statistics. When you're looking at jobs that share the same gearset, there's going to be a lot of overlap in the players in those clears. For example, the world first clear of the most recent tier was progged as RDM/SMN, and then SMN was swapped out for PCT closer to the clear. It's not the 'homogeneity' of the jobs that lets you make a comparison, but the fact that many of the same players are common to both data sets because of that common gear set.

When you're looking at similar groups of players, player performance vs. mechanical difficulty will just come out in the wash. If a job is mechanically harder, then the entire bell curve shifts. It's unlikely that a player is going to go from the 5th percentile in one caster job to the 95th in another when there's a lot of overlap. So when you balance jobs in the same gearset at the equivalent percentiles, you will find that difficulty is accounted for in balance intrinsically.

The problem with ranged jobs currently is that there is a split between a higher and lower tier of ranged jobs. So you could be a 5th percentile SMN, swap over to being a 5th percentile PCT, and start outperforming better players in your old job. It's not that you suddenly became a better player. It's that you're being rewarded for higher damage for an equivalent performance.

Player comments are not a useful metric of whether a job is 'difficult' or 'complex'. People naturally rate what they do as 'more difficult' and what others do as 'less difficult.' You can also count on players to misrepresent their experiences in a way that lets them argue for more DPS, and you can count on SE to misinterpret those comments in a way that results in job simplifications. We'd all be better off if DPS balance decisions followed math rather than feelycraft, but you know how this goes.

[Valence]

Precisely this. Partial homogenization is bad design.

That is... the opposite of what I said. You're blaming this on design. I'm blaming this on balance and execution. I find the design/concept sound.

Saying that everybody having the same reprisal is not homogenization and keeps tank identities separate makes zero sense to me.

That's also a big part of the dissatisfaction felt by the 'lower tier' of ranged players (Physical Ranged and Raise Casters). People want to feel valued for the effort they put in, and one of the simplest ways to express this is raw damage. It's not hard to balance this, and then you can focus on the more interesting stuff.

If anything, rphys players have been complaining precisely because currently there is nothing else than damage to justify their existence, and damage isn't exactly fulfilling any promises in that department either. Rphys players wouldn't be complaining about damage if other metrics were not only there, but could be the niche where they do shine and feel valued. And I know that RDM and SMN have similar discussions going in comparison to BLM/PCT but this is fundamentally different since they do not have the protection of a 1% party bonus, but also have one actual valuable contribution (conditional, I know, but it's there) which is raise. This isn't about balance, this is about value. Nobody but parse brains give a crap about a couple of percents gained or lost depending on the fight and if anything it makes it actually interesting to have jobs shining in certain situations and less in others, but people also complain about that when it happens.

The truth is that the current battle system is NOT able to sustain any resolution of that issue because the metrics are too few. And since it only focuses on a single one or two, then the smallest differences immediately stand out and there is an immediate push to hammer them down back to uniformity, but doing so is hardly doable by design. Using the excuse of interesting things like cover or expedient to say there could be better tools, yes there could, but not at the core because those tools specifically do NOT feed into the single damage metric of the battle system.

The only thing that matters currently is whether a player can DDR while doing damage and that's it.

[Lyth]

That sounds like a terminology issue. True homogenization is when you create identical copies of the same action. It's balanced, but boring. Partial homogenization is when you create similar copies of the same action, but one of them is objectively superior to the rest. In other words, literally what you said here:

Having different tools with some clearly, objectively superior like SiO, isn't a proof of anything but bad balancing and design execution.

Most people try to frame this discussion as a trade-off between 'balance vs. identity', when such a trade-off doesn't have to exist in the first place. You don't need PCT to be locked in as the preferred Caster pick just so that it can have an 'identity'. The ideal is where every job brings something unique to the table that cannot be compared mathematically. I've provided several examples of these in my earlier posts in this thread. The main thing to avoid is partial homogenization, which isn't about 'identity' at all and is simply about players preserving their own self-interest.

On the subject of 'damage' vs. 'utility', I don't think you will get a consensus in this. It's worth remembering that you are, unfortunately, playing a damage role. Any support functionality that you provide will always be secondary to doing more damage to kill the boss faster. That creates a selection pressure that makes all jobs more DPS focused over time. You can retain some support functionality, but I think if it comes at the expense of damage output then you will find yourself phased out in favor of jobs that provide more raw damage. And if you think that's just an optimization issue on speed runs, then that's simply incorrect. Even people who never touch raid content have an awareness of DPS balance. Community biases around about what jobs are 'powerful' and what jobs are 'ineffective' rapidly propagate top downwards to all levels of play.

I think this has always been a longstanding issue with physical ranged as it has transformed over time from being a 'support job in a DPS slot' to being a DPS job. But with the advent of PCT, things have finally come to a head. You have a 'support-orientated' DPS role that offers less damage and less support functionality than a chart-topping 'damage caster'. Is it any surprise that people are questioning why physical ranged even exists in its current form?

There's probably more space to expand out support functionality as a unique selling point of support jobs, however.

[Supersnow845]

Things didn’t come to a head with PCT, things came to a head in EW when the melees were allowed to have utility with no damage penalty and when after 2 expansions if designing mechanics around the assumption that there will always be able to be 4 people in melee range at any one time with near no penalty people realised that physical “niches” just didn’t exist and they were getting punished for nothing

PCT’s individual position is neither here nor there because regardless of where you stuck PCT in the meta there are still 7 other classes out there invalidating physical ranged existence with their damage numbers and this is a problem that’s carried over from EW

There is physically nothing you can do to PCT that will fix this problem because it’s the same as targeting one specific melee and going “you are the entire problem”, tinkering with that one class does nothing. Physical ranged as a role have an inbuilt “advantage” the game doesn’t utilise then they are punished for having it anyway. WAR is example of role based problems being bent around a specific class, physical ranged problems aren’t traceable back to PCT

[mallleable]

And then there's the role bonus buff which strongly encourages groups to include a job from an invalidated role, and encourages players to play jobs from an invalidated role. The perfect recipe for resentment. So they could either change the entire game to revalidate phys ranged or change phys ranged to better fit in the game that has been built or do nothing, and let the problem continue to fester.