Can anyone clearly explain "job homogenization" in this game?

[NegativeS]

Yeah, it's no wonder the devs don't listen to this community lol. This thread is playing out exactly like I thought it would. Glad I made it because it's good to expose the "homogenization" angle for what it is.

Alright, well, considering I already had this entire conversation with another different inflammatory forumgoer (sorry diadeem mwah) in two separate threads, I'll just say I hope you find whatever fulfillment you were looking for when you made this thread, cuz I'm not doing it again.

[HikariKurosawa]

Alright, well, considering I already had this entire conversation with another different inflammatory forumgoer (sorry diadeem mwah) in two separate threads, I'll just say I hope you find whatever fulfillment you were looking for when you made this thread, cuz I'm not doing it again.

You didn't really do anything though you just quoted your own extremely disingenuous post that failed to elaborate or explain specific examples of homogenization. Good on you for knowing when to quit though.

[AlgernonBlackwood]

You're clearly not interested in arguing in good faith, but the question is still worth answering for other readers.

Homogenization is a process/direction, not an absolute state. You could also call it "convergence". The opposite would be divergence, in which things become less and less alike over time, kind of like the process of speciation in evolution.

In your ice cream example, it's pretty meaningless to accuse an ice cream store of being "homogenized" without knowledge of their previous offerings. Maybe they always served a handful of basic flavors and have actually branched out over the years, maybe they started off with dozens of unusual flavors but discontinued most of them in an attempt to cut costs and appeal to more mainstream tastes.

So, when we compare the game's current job offerings to those of previous expansions, do we see convergence, or do we see divergence?

Let's just go back one expansion and look at some of the changes that took place between 6.0 and 7.1.

• SAM: Removed Kaiten, changed AoEs from cones to circles, changed subame-gaeshi from stacks to a proc.
  
• NIN: Changed their party debuff to 120s, removed movement constraints on TCJ, reworked their gauge.
  
• DRG: Removed Life of the Dragon, removed Dragon Sight, removed eyes/Geirskogul + Mirage interactions, removed positionals, removed Nastrond cooldowns and then Nastrond stacks, removed spineshatter drives.
  
• MNK: Removed their dot/buffs, which allowed for variable burst windows, and replaced them with a fixed "follow the glowing button" rotation that you just repeat forever.
  
• VPR: Removed their debuff and replaced it with a fixed "follow the glowing button" rotation that you just repeat forever.
  
• SMN: Removed pet management, removed dots, removed, well... just about everything.
  
• RDM: Removed the decay effect from Embolden, removed the multiplication effect from Manafication, removed Disengagement optimization.
  
• BLM: Removed almost all alternative spells lines, removed sharpcast, removed thundercloud in favor of a glorified (vilified?) healer dot, increased the number of instant-cast spells.
  
• PLD: Removed physical/magic phases, removed the dot, and completely reworked the rotation so it functioned as yet another 60s burst job.
  
• AST: Removed pretty much every mechanic involving your cards. No more redrawing, no collecting signs, no more RNG, period.
  
• WHM/SCH: reduced all offensive spell cast times to be 1.5s, like AST.
  
• DNC: Removed most of the RNG from your burst in favor of a mostly fixed sequence.

I'll simply ask you this: name a single example of a change that was made to an existing job in the past three years that made it play less like the other jobs in its role. I provided over 20 examples of convergence, so certainly it shouldn't be that hard to think of a single example of divergence (hard mode: no SCH).

[HikariKurosawa]

You're clearly not interested in arguing in good faith, but the question is still worth answering for other readers.

I'm not interested in arguing about this period. This thread is for you to explain to me and state your case about homogenization. I personally do not believe this game has homogenization, I am just interested in actually understanding where the people who believe it does are coming from.

It's also good for you to put it into clear words so it's out there in an organized thread.

[Carighan]

I personally do not believe this game has homogenization

Just like with many things IRL like whether the earth is flat or not, reality could not possibly care any less about what you believe. This is not a believe-based thing, it's an empirical science, you can look at something and check whether it has homogenization (not a single MMORPG currently on the market does not have homogenization) and if yes, which types and to what degree.

You can believe in a lot of things. You can believe in Santa Claus. You can believe you need another coffee. But you can just look to see how much homogenization is in a class design setup. Like, with your eyes and stuff.

[HikariKurosawa]

Just like with many things IRL like whether the earth is flat or not, reality could not possibly care any less about what you believe. This is not a believe-based thing, it's an empirical science, you can look at something and check whether it has homogenization (not a single MMORPG currently on the market does not have homogenization) and if yes, which types and to what degree.

You can believe in a lot of things. You can believe in Santa Claus. You can believe you need another coffee. But you can just look to see how much homogenization is in a class design setup. Like, with your eyes and stuff.

That's funny how you put it like that. I agree, saying there is any meaningful amount of job homogenization in this game is like being a flat earther.

[Carighan]

I agree, saying there is any meaningful amount of job homogenization in this game is like being a flat earther.

/shrug

I mean, sure. Depending on just how limited your experience with MMORPGs at large or FFXIV over its lifetime is (and I started in ShB, so I missed the worst homogenization-steps), sure, yeah, you'd not see a lot of it.

Alternatively if you never attempted to see the similarities between different jobs or how the vast majority can have equivalent hotbar setups, you might not have ever realized just how homogenized things are, although some structural steps such as the 120s burst focus of course remain.

Matter of perspective I imagine. Compared to DAoC in its early most-PvP-centric days, this game was extremely homogenized at launch, nevermind now which is just luducrious. Compared to the effectively inexistent variety in combat handling in something like say, Diablo IV (not an MMO but just to prove a point), yeah sure there's a lot of diversity here.

You're still going to have a very hard time convincing anybody that this excessive homogenization is not the central flaw in FFXIV's combat design right now, though. More power to you if you flat out cannot see it - makes the design less annoying - but it's still there. Again, it really does not care what you believe or don't believe, it just... is.