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

[HikariKurosawa]

Are people really still in here taking this dude's bait? This forum sure is something else.

What's the bait though? I propose a question and they can't formulate an answer. The reddit post that guy referred to is like a 2000 word essay that literally says absolutely nothing. Just like most of the posts in this thread criticizing the game's level of "homogenization". It's not that hard to be succinct, if you have to write so many words just to say nothing, it's probably because you don't have any real position to state. I ask a simple question and nobody can offer a real answer. That's this thread in a nutshell. It's like gameplay politics, just a bunch of manipulative gishgalloping but no real substance or meaning.

I know you gaslight yourself into believing that you had this massive incredible "gotcha!" in this thread by "exposing" those that have a different opinion than you, but the reality is - your takes are as hollow as your choice of ignorant words, and everyone with half a days worth of knowledge about how game design actually works would never take your takes seriously.
But it is okay, understanding that you write these things because you are afraid that you will not be able to actually play this game unless everything is super simplified, means that we can take you as serious as you deserve to.

Thank you for this thread though, it allowed actual competent people to exchange some good ideas and expose actual issues with how the game is designed.

like this post for example hahahha.

Is job homogenization in the room with us right now?

Saying that the 2min meta is making burst more complicated is a little pushing it, especially when everyone just has one or two buff buttons to press when they come off cooldown every 2 minutes... Not exactly rocket science. It's something we tend to read from players that came during ShB or especially after. ShB didn't have the 2min meta yet and even in its extreme series of simplifications raid buffs still required some thinking in order to see what jobs would align with each other within each different party composition, and how to make the most of it. Even RDM actually still had a magic damage Embolden back then and it only affected specific jobs (casters) and not the rest (mostly), which informed specifically when to use it and for who.

And then we can go back in time and start looking at certain jobs that had completely unique and different buff patterns, like AST that had no divinitation or anything but cards, and those could be played at any time, giving it a lot of flexibility and rewarding actual skill expression for when to use them into buffs. It is still partially the case but the removal of systems like Royal Road have made it only a shadow of what it used to allow (namely big AoE party buffs of all kinds), especially in combination to other freeform raid buffs, notably, Foe Requiem and Hypercharge.

So what about Foe Requiem? Well, during HW and SB, Foe Requiem was a freeform raid buff with a very low recast (below 10-15s iirc?), because its main limiter was based on actual resources, here MP consumption as long as the buff was kept active, which depleted MP relatively fast. A good BRD could trigger this raid buff at 0s, then 60s again for a lower gain at half MP if it made sense for example. Or actually, the team could find clever synergies and give the BRD MP refreshes so that the BRD could use this buff in patterns like 0min, 1min, 3min, 4min, etc, trying to cover as many different buff patterns for different jobs (60s, 80s, 90s, 120s, 180s). It wasn't uncommon in SB to see the caster manashift the crap out of the BRD in order to refresh MP for more Foe Requiem, but then, you also had as a BRD to take into account that Battle Voice still doubled song efficiency back then, and finding ways to still get the most out of BV was also a thing. This was during Stormblood by the way, which had already simplified a great deal raid buffing on the role that was actually designed to play heavily around raid buffs. In HW Foe Requiem (and old Hypercharge on MCH) still consumed MP and could be refreshed by clever plays, but it was also possible to change the song and play for example Mage Ballad which was the MP party refresh on BRD (manasong), and that could be doubled by BV in effectiveness as well (and manasong was mandatory in the old battle system for prolonged fights). On MCH's side, promoting the turret to swap to MP/TP regen could also be doubled by Hypercharge.

Just to put things in perspective of how much the system has been pruned of in terms of job skill expression, uniqueness, and raid buff synergies and tactics, and this is just about 3 of the job roster. I didn't even bring Ninja and Smokescreen/Shadeswalker to the table.

This post is a good articulation, but it's also like "Wow I'm glad the game isn't like that anymore." It's also less about homogenization, and more about the gameplay becoming polished and refined rather than pedantic and offputting. To each their own, but I am truly glad the game has moved away from that direction. I don't enjoy the idea of having job meetings prior to pulling a boss over and over. That's not the complexity I like in gaming, and it's clear that the developers don't like it either. It makes the game unapproachable and way too niche to be successful.

If you guys want this niche type of gameplay, try making the game yourself. It's never going to be part of final fantasy xiv anymore.