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

[Ggwppino]

So, the question again becomes, what would it actually take for jobs to feel different?

Like one works with positional only, or another works with jump lock.

[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.

[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]

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.

[Valence]

The argument that all the jobs are being excessively homogenized somewhat collides with the fact that every fifth thread on these forums is someone either complaining about or celebrating how a change to a job makes the job feel different to play. If ask the jobs felt the same, people wouldn't be so invested in the specificities of certain jobs.

I'm not saying there is not a process of standardisation occurring across all the jobs, but surely it mustn't be so severe and detrimental given the material evidence to the contrary.

If we're after material evidences, even Yoshida has admitted it was a problem.

[Exmo]

[...] but surely it mustn't be so severe and detrimental given the material evidence to the contrary.

^

To my knowledge Yoshi-P has not said homogenization is a problem.

[Valence]

No, surely he must have said that they couldn't address job identity before 8.0 and brought up the issue out of pure academical curiosity. The bit about engaging jobs in a modern video game was probably just rambling and nothing more.

[Exmo]

No, surely he must have said that they couldn't address job identity before 8.0 and brought up the issue out of pure academical curiosity. The bit about engaging jobs in a modern video game was probably just rambling and nothing more.

You have two courses of action, my friend. Look up what "severe" and "detrimental" mean. Then reflect on why you're wasting time antagonizing people online over a topic you evidentially believe will be addressed in the natural course of time.

[Azurarok]

I mean, the real question from that is, if they can have different animations per job for a role skill, couldn’t they have different particle effects per job to match with visuals anyway? Maybe we could have both. Then skills like Troubawhatever could actually become something interesting that adds to the class itself. I mean it’s not like the role skills need to be super flashy either so I don’t see why they couldn’t do it.

[...]

I just don’t understand their idea of standardising jobs in so many but then completely ignoring the role skill category that was supposed to exist for the purpose of standardising certain crucial skills across a role I.E Swiftcast. Personally I’d rather they did that and actually developed each job with its own identity gameplay etc. Like I’d rather have Swiftcast shared between casters as the same skill if it meant they could get their own unique gameplay stuff lol.
But instead they just keep creating equivalents of so many abilities with extremely minor differences, instead of just putting those in the role skills and using the extra job ability space on reinforcing said job’s actual identity and gameplay.

[...]

That makes me wonder, what should be the line for when a skill should be a role action instead? I agree the physranged party mit should be a role action at least, since they're literally the same besides the level learned (which we also agree is irrelevant) and even overwrite eachother.

But with stuff like the healer dots and spam, cure/benefic/diagnosis/physick, or all the tanks' second defensive cooldowns? There's nuanced differences but their use case is largely the same, and that really can't change. They could add more differences to diversify them a bit more, but like you say perhaps it's just worth folding them into one role action to make room for more unique skills (not sure if I trust the devs to actually fill that room, though). Like the tank defensives could just be folded into Rampart by making it have charges and/or shorter cooldowns.

The mobile game seems to have gone ahead and just turned filler spells and combos into a single attack button on every job, even.

[Commander_Justitia]

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?

I just stated how it is at the moment, or was a bit more in the past. CC is mostly irrelevant in this game for some reason, I am not a fan of it. I think it is part of almost every RPG to have bleed/poison/stun/silence/bind/pacify-unarmed/resistances. Most our skills now just have potency...and bosses with big HP or small HP bars...And everything gets put out linearly, there is no snapshotting anymore with skills at below 20% HP Boss HP, there are barely any dots left, so there isn't anything to manage than doing your rotation over and over again in the same way. There is no piercing resistance or slashing down debuff, there is no tankstance swapping out to deal more damage for some time, but take increased damage. Did they adjust mob attack when considering that everyone has now a permanent tankstance as tank? No, probably not, enjoy 20% more mitigation over all content. In other games you need to kite adds, to delay the enrage for example, giving them a slow. You had structures in Alexander raids to use like the monkey/gobwalker things.
I don't think having a different combo end is particularly entertaining, it was also more a negative example. Paladin used to have Goring Blade as a difference side combo, but it was a as dot, now I am forced to use it whenever I burst as just another high potency skill to fit into the burst window. Warrior used to have a dot too. Darkknight had one, they also had delirium that decreased 10% int for aoe damage spells from the boss, also removed because it required the player to play smartly. Now everyone has a reprisal, why? Just even more mitigation on demand for everyone.

And somebody mentioned at the start what other type of job styles you could have. I don't think we have a real buffer class. We also don't have talent trees to mix up how one job could be played. And no, it is not really too difficult to balance. Imagine having a fire blackmage spec here. Or a Paladin that is focused on regen heals and reviving. Or a Warrior that can carry 2 Axes while sacrificing maxHP or something. Or a healer who can reduce his amount of heal skills permanently for more damage spells. This is what I mean with uncreative. You are arguing about nuances inside a mental cage, when devs could go wild with it like they do in Eureka or Bozja. But they are scared of it. Scared it could go wrong. So they probably never will and do the same like every year until nobody plays this game anymore.

If the toolkit is not enough for ultimate fights, then they should probably nerf the incoming damage a little. Instead of making every job so powerful that all older content becomes trivial, as it is now, because they want every job to perform as good as the other.
Let us say you want to balance skills, but the only way you balance is to buff every job over the years to the next damage level, instead of nerfing all or a few jobs a little. MCH for POTD is a good example for that. MCH may be balanced with other dps, but on lvl 60 it is now stronger than ever.