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

[HikariKurosawa]

Like... samba, tactician, and troubadour are reskins of the exact same ability and don't stack, but look different so not homogenization.

Rampart is a tank role action but the job does a slightly different animation so not homogenization

True they should remove role actions because it's homogenization.

I agree that there is "homogenization" in the game, I do not believe it is worth speaking about because it makes the game more balanced and viable. When people talk about it, they act like every job is becoming the same, when that's clearly not the case. It comes across as very disingenuous and it's good to know where people are coming from. I didn't make this thread to argue, I just wanted to understand what people meant when they said this game has a homogenization problem or jobs are becoming more and more similar.

I think a lot of the posts in this forums are just blizzard shills trying to criticize FFXIV for not being more like WoW.

[Carighan]

I agree that there is "homogenization" in the game, I do not believe it is worth speaking about because it makes the game more balanced and viable. When people talk about it, they act like every job is becoming the same, when that's clearly not the case. It comes across as very disingenuous and it's good to know where people are coming from.

Honestly, are you this standoffish IRL, too? :') If you just wanted to bait people to flame them, you could have done that on 4chan or so.

But hey, if you don't feel the amount of homogenization is irrelevant, more power to you. This makes for 20+ jobs you can play instead of what some others here (me included though maybe to a stronger degree than others) feel is more like 6-8 effective jobs, everything else is just variations of existing designs marginally pieces together differently. Like those mirror-characters in Smash Bros, Mario, Luigi and Dr Mario are all similar in overall design, with just variations. While they are differently for top-level play, the underlying approach to using them is the same, and that's what playing any tank after you played any other tank, what playing any melee after playing any other melee (except Viper) feels like. Casters and PRanged get huge bonus points for holding up the unique-implementation flags here, but they're the only thing doing that. Tanks, Healers and Melee are near-100%-homogenized by now, allowing a single button scheme to be used to elicit a near-identical flow of finger movement during your rotation. Healers in particular have it even worse because even the non-typesharing healers (Astro vs Sage vor example) share so many conceptual similarities (and a certain amount of homogenization is expected for an in-theory reaction-based class, don't get me wrong) that you can do the same setup!
Like in my case: Nuke on 1, Shift+1 is AoE nuke. 2 is the DoT, or Eukrasia on Sage because that's what it comes down to. 3 is the instant GCD heal. 4 is the casted GCD heal. Shift + 3 is the instant AoE GCD heal. Shift + 4 is the casted GCD AoE heal. G is the instant oGCD heal. Shift+G is the instant oGCD AoE heal. And so on, and so forth. Yeah sure the abilities are all marginally different but my brain can do the exact same decisions to play these jobs for virtually all of their existence, the only differentiation comes with something like Astro cards vs Sage Phlegma because the former is on a 1:1 burst cycle, the latter on a 2:1 cycle, the former also needs 6 oGCDs to resolve during burst, the latter needs 2. But that's as far as things get unique.

Then add all the non-job homogenization: Positionals are usually 1 per cycle-set now, for two per entire rotational loop on a melee (usually 1 side + 1 rear, Monk breaks the mold with a 2:1 here). Melee vs ranged has become near-entirely unimportant in bossfights to ease balance between the types of DPS. Utilize has been mudflated, with all melees having gapclosers even the tanks for example. Raid utility has been simplified into simple defensive boosts as boss fights have situations with forced mitigation requirements. Selectable archetype abilities have been - rightfully, no argument from me there >.> - removed. Emnity no longer really exists as a concept, leading to non-tanky tank gameplay. Mana is a non-concept on all but two-ish jobs (Dark Knight and Black Mage, and in ultra-rare cases Red Mage, granted).

You can make a far longer list than that, but post size limits...

[Commander_Justitia]

they act like every job is becoming the same, when that's clearly not the case

Know 1 tank, know all.

[CNitsah]

Know 1 tank, know all.

Now do the same for ranged, magic and melee. Using the tank role where the problem obvious to tell ninja, samurai, dragoon and Reaper or Red Mage, Picto and SMN play the same is really bad faith. Reading this thread, I came to see some point of view on the general design I can understand even if I don't agree on the importance. But the 1 on 1 sill works only for tanks and maybe some healers.

[Supersnow845]

Now do the same for ranged, magic and melee. Using the tank role where the problem obvious to tell ninja, samurai, dragoon and Reaper or Red Mage, Picto and SMN play the same is really bad faith. Reading this thread, I came to see some point of view on the general design I can understand even if I don't agree on the importance. But the 1 on 1 sill works only for tanks and maybe some healers.

You can map the healers like this and you can also map VPR and RPR like this (the only difference is VPR has its whack condensed combos)

So you have 10 out of 21 jobs that can functionally be mapped 1 to 1 to at least one other job then of the remaining 11 you have 11 flavours of builder spender that all have no utility and very likely have a disconnected 2 minute raid buff with at least one nuke inside that burst and functionally identical AOE mitigation profiles to others within their role with minimal differences

[Carighan]

Now do the same for ranged, magic and melee. Using the tank role where the problem obvious to tell ninja, samurai, dragoon and Reaper or Red Mage, Picto and SMN play the same is really bad faith. Reading this thread, I came to see some point of view on the general design I can understand even if I don't agree on the importance. But the 1 on 1 sill works only for tanks and maybe some healers.

Viper and Reaper are really easy, as they have so many similarities. They both have a CD-based combo breaker that enables two more moves, one side and one rear positional. They both have a resource based mode switch that swaps out abilities. They both have finishers for these modes. They both have a 120s CD that interacts with these modes and re-enables them.

They have more similarities, but these are the big structural ones. Viper was very clearly derived from the very successful Reaper-skeleton. This is why you can have *extremely* similar hotbar setups for both.

[Commander_Justitia]

Now do the same for ranged, magic and melee. Using the tank role where the problem obvious to tell ninja, samurai, dragoon and Reaper or Red Mage, Picto and SMN play the same is really bad faith. Reading this thread, I came to see some point of view on the general design I can understand even if I don't agree on the importance. But the 1 on 1 sill works only for tanks and maybe some healers.

Sadly not everyone can play damage dealer. Some poor souls have to play tank and healer and have fun with that. Healer feeling useless, because often their "healing" is not required. And tanks feeling bored because 90% of the content they cannot die easily even when stacking 8 vulnerability stacks.

[Mikey_R]

I wasn't going to comment in here, but now I have to.

Using the above, yes, you could say, look, they are the same. But some commonalities between jobs is required. Just using the graphic, a ranged attack, gap closer and basic AoE is going to be needed for all tanks.

Going onto defensives. It is, again a necessary evil. Make ones that are stronger than another, since the aim is for every job to be able to clear all content, the 'weakest' one still has to be able to mitigate the damage, with the higher mitigation ones only helping if it actually saves on healer resources. I could go more in depth, but having the tanks have similar defensives for similar situations should (in theory) help out fight design. Again, necessary evil. Same is true for raidwide mitigation (how often is PoA actually useful in changing how a healer would have healed if the PLD had not been there?)

So, going back to the graphic (which I suspect is going right back to ShB), Fight or Flight, No Mercy, Inner Release and Delirium. Fight or Flight and No Mercy are the same (even down to procing another GCD), however, Inner Release and Delirium are different to both of those and they are infact different to each other. Yes, they both provide free access to Fell Cleave/Scarlet combo, but Inner Release helps build to Primal Wrath and allows access to Primal Rend/Ruination, the Scarlet combo gives the DRK Blood and MP, with no way to spend Blood during it, meaning you need to be careful before you press it. It also does not give access to a stronger attack like Primal Rend/Ruination or build up to an oGCD like Primal Wrath.

Talking about the spenders (both ST and AoE), first, I find it funny the graphic for Chaotic Cyclone was used, when the equivalent would be Decimate, however, they, again, are used differently and have different considerations. Holy Spirit can only be used with the Divine Might buff once per combo and you have to use it before you complete another combo, otherwise it gets overwritten, Burst Strike, whilst you can use it once per combo, you can also store the charges and the charges are used with other actions, then, Bloodspiller and Fell Cleave, both use gauge, which builds up at different rates dependant on the job (DRK is a constant 20 per combo loop and Warrior is 10/20 for Storm's Eye/Path), DRK also builds gauge in their burst via Delirium, whereas Warrior just straight up gives 50 gauge and upgrades it.

We can continue this thought with the rest of the kit where, you can say you can line up buttons, but do you actually press them in the same way, do you have the same thoughts and considerations when you press them. Each tank has different burst phases with different nuances and things to consider, which does go back down into the filler aspects. To me, making a blanket statement that knowing 1 tank you know them all, undersells the differences in the tanks.

The same can be said for melee. I've already made a long post about how Monk and Ninja are different, but to see people claim Viper and Reaper are the same baffles me. My cross bars are setup differently and they have a different flow to each of them. But then, if all melee are the same, are they the same as Samurai or Dragoon? I suspect if the question was asked, how are the melees the same, I would get the response that normally follows. They all have a 120 second burst and a mini 60 second burst. They also all use combos, therefore they are the same. Of course, this completely misses everything else about the jobs. A simple question would be, if you took a melee and made it a 45/90 second job, would that then make it not homogenised, or would it still be homogenised because it has a mini burst and a big burst?

Healers are the jobs that I can say are the most homogenised, with Sage and Scholar being the closest to each other. But again, healers need a basic suite of healing and damage to perform their job at a basic level, would it then be fair to count these towards homogenisation where it is a necessary evil? As an example, imagine if all healers were in the perfect state, would all of them having a single target heal, AoE heal, ST damage spell, AoE damage spell and a raise work against that ideal? Would changing them to have HoTs and shields added make them less homogenised?

I also don't like the argument saying, you can just map similar things across the jobs. Well yes, that is human nature. Doesn't matter how different you make things, you are going to have a plan as to where you put things. This button is my tank invuln, this is my short defensive cooldown. Doesn't matter how you fancy it up, if the main goal for that action lines up well enough with something from another job in the same role, chances are, they are going to be put together. That is just common sense. Even if you made a job's 123 RNG like old MCH, you are still going to put them in the 123 slots of that other job where it is a guaranteed combo, because that makes sense. All that to say, button placement does not mean job homogenisation.

[Commander_Justitia]

I wasn't going to comment in here, but now I have to.

Using the above, yes, you could say, look, they are the same. But some commonalities between jobs is required. Just using the graphic, a ranged attack, gap closer and basic AoE is going to be needed for all tanks.

Going onto defensives. It is, again a necessary evil. Make ones that are stronger than another, since the aim is for every job to be able to clear all content, the 'weakest' one still has to be able to mitigate the damage, with the higher mitigation ones only helping if it actually saves on healer resources. I could go more in depth, but having the tanks have similar defensives for similar situations should (in theory) help out fight design. Again, necessary evil. Same is true for raidwide mitigation (how often is PoA actually useful in changing how a healer would have healed if the PLD had not been there?)

So, going back to the graphic (which I suspect is going right back to ShB), Fight or Flight, No Mercy, Inner Release and Delirium. Fight or Flight and No Mercy are the same (even down to procing another GCD), however, Inner Release and Delirium are different to both of those and they are infact different to each other. Yes, they both provide free access to Fell Cleave/Scarlet combo, but Inner Release helps build to Primal Wrath and allows access to Primal Rend/Ruination, the Scarlet combo gives the DRK Blood and MP, with no way to spend Blood during it, meaning you need to be careful before you press it. It also does not give access to a stronger attack like Primal Rend/Ruination or build up to an oGCD like Primal Wrath.


etc.

Sure you can say they are necessities for every job of that role, and that the differences are the nuances like if a skill has a cc effect or a different combo end. I think it could be more creative than that though. I also don't think mitigation skills have to be that similar on similar cooldowns. But is also boils down to fight design being made in a way that supports these cooldowns and mitigation % required.
I also think "balance" is bad for fun. This game is usually very very balanced, down to a few % or sub %. It really doesn't matter to the average player if 1 job would be stronger for 1 patch or addon. It just matters for the few % who raid and want to have it easier. But they impact the "fun" of all others then.

[Mikey_R]

Sure you can say they are necessities for every job of that role, and that the differences are the nuances like if a skill has a cc effect or a different combo end. I think it could be more creative than that though. I also don't think mitigation skills have to be that similar on similar cooldowns. But is also boils down to fight design being made in a way that supports these cooldowns and mitigation % required.
I also think "balance" is bad for fun. This game is usually very very balanced, down to a few % or sub %. It really doesn't matter to the average player if 1 job would be stronger for 1 patch or addon. It just matters for the few % who raid and want to have it easier. But they impact the "fun" of all others then.

CC like? You cannot do anything that will disrupt the bosses patterns as you could potentially break a fight, same with anything that slows down cast times. Heavy could be something, but that could also disrupt boss movement if they every give it back to tanks to control more, so, what can you really do that could be classed as CC that, if it affected bosses, wouldn't completely break fights?

Different combo end? Warrior already does that, wouldn't that just bring things closer to the fabled homogenisation just in a different way? Make them all have different effects you say? Well, don't the combos already do that? What are we really gaining from this? I would argue PLD and GNB have no room for a second combo and if you were to give DRK one, doesn't that just bring it even closer to WAR than people say it already is?

The problem is, people have favourite jobs and if SE decides its your turn to be the black sheep, what do you do? You could say play another job, but I want to play this one. But people don't want me because of the job. There is also the whole thing of balance can be measured objectively and fun is measured subjectively. These are things you cannot really use to shape job design around. Some might find it fun that their job is overpowered this patch and hate it the next when it is under-tuned, whereas someone else would prefer all jobs to be more balanced so they can more easily mix up their play experience without feeling like the job they are playing is impacting the run as much. This isn't just a raider vs everyone else, everyone has to be taken into account.