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

[Carighan]

Isn’t this pretty much exactly what we have now anyway just with even less player engagement/involvement for the supporters? Either everything would be auto-buffs (which as primarily a support/healer class player makes me want to cancel my subscription and never look at this game again) on a 120 second cool-down or we’d go back to Stormblood and lock out anyone whose timers didn’t fit with the party.

If they somehow managed to give all 22 classes in the game completely unique timers with no overlap, I’d have to ask why the hell they’ve been acting like it takes 8 months for them to change a lightbulb when they can do things like this in a patch cycle

Ah I feel I should have worded this better.

I didn't mean that all jobs get such buffs they can toss onto 1-X other people. Rather that some jobs can have "buffer" as their identity in a less homogenized setup, where they deal some of their damage by empowering somebody - or multiple - other people. Like Dancer does with their partner right now, they get another buff on the partner ever 120s in addition to the near-passive one.

But to prevent a situation like we had before where multiple such buffers align their buffs on one or more people who are a burst-type or ramp-up type damage dealer and cause non-linear damage gain, these buffs would be intentionally unable to keep synced with the burst window, to a degree where using them more often is better than aligning them.

That is, burst-type damage dealers get their burst window every 120s. Like now. The CD happens to be that. But the buffers no longer have 120s on their buffs, and those buffs are also very rare and only on jobs whose totaly DPS is something like 60% personal / 40% buffs or so. True damage dealers, but only dealing barely over half the damage themselves. hence they need to toss out those buffs on-CD (keeping them misaligned with the burst job's burst window!) lest the total damage loss becomes very bigly very quickly.

I would not foresee many such jobs though. Dancer would definitely need to be one. Incredibly small but near-permanent effects can also work, basically current-bard, as their own damage can cleanly be scaled down to compensate and as the buffs are just-about-passive, all types of damage profiles gain equally from it.

[Carighan]

ALL new boss fights now DDR

Huh? That's always been that way, and is in fact what people tell you about FFXIV before you pick it up. That it's raids are very different than other MMOs, because instead of being about personal per-class performance, they're about an 8-person "ballet" around 8-15 minutes of continuous movement- and setup-heavy ability handling.

[Supersnow845]

snip

Like you basically said “you need to be more clear and not ramble about things I didn’t ask about” then you proceeded to ramble for 3 paragraphs that almost exclusively agree with what I said but opening said agreement with a statement that you don’t agree

Like you wrote that a noticeable problem is that the jobs don’t have different profiles that you would support reworking the jobs to fit those profiles (which has basically been my point from the start) but then you also say that I didn’t articulate how I would make the jobs feel different when my original point was that you can make the jobs feel different by returning them to their old profile because that’s a good chunk of what makes them feel different. There is no diversity and no nuance because you know the cadence of your job for every fight the second you zone in. So no I don’t think that’s an overgeneralised statement against the jobs because like I said the problem is not the 2 minute meta itself, it’s the fact every job was forcibly designed to have to burst, whether you blame that decision on the jobs or the encounter it’s still the route of the DPS homogenisation problem

Edit sorry that was a bit overly hostile in tone, it’s not meant to be hostile

What do you mean 'now'? Boss fights have always been DDR, even back in ARR. You know what a boss is going to do and in what order. In that aspect, nothing has changed. Even if a mechanic has some RNG to it, whether it be in/out or stack/spread, it is still predictable when it happens.

If you disagree, please, provide some examples of past fights that did not feel like they were a scripted DDR encounter.

T2, 7, 7S, 8, 11 and 12 are good examples as are A2, A6 and A10 I can also think of Levi extreme

[Connor]

quote

I understand better now.

In terms of stacking buff classes were they to become more exclusive they could have the abilities give a standardised ‘buff effect’ as opposed to a unique one for every single buff. E.G Battle Voice and Devilment giving a ‘DHR buff’ instead of giving two separate buffs. Or if Samba/Troubadour/Tactician gave a standardised ‘reduced damage taken’ buff. Then they could just have them work like HP shields where using one of the same/lower strength has no effect, but using one of higher strength will overwrite the lower one.

It’d potentially make the classes that do ‘support’ feel more similar which isn’t great, but it’d have a lot of benefits for balancing those jobs and would even make things easier on the buff/debuff cap.

[Mikey_R]

Like you basically said “you need to be more clear and not ramble about things I didn’t ask about” then you proceeded to ramble for 3 paragraphs that almost exclusively agree with what I said but opening said agreement with a statement that you don’t agree

Like you wrote that a noticeable problem is that the jobs don’t have different profiles that you would support reworking the jobs to fit those profiles (which has basically been my point from the start) but then you also say that I didn’t articulate how I would make the jobs feel different when my original point was that you can make the jobs feel different by returning them to their old profile because that’s a good chunk of what makes them feel different. There is no diversity and no nuance because you know the cadence of your job for every fight the second you zone in. So no I don’t think that’s an overgeneralised statement against the jobs because like I said the problem is not the 2 minute meta itself, it’s the fact every job was forcibly designed to have to burst, whether you blame that decision on the jobs or the encounter it’s still the route of the DPS homogenisation problem

Edit sorry that was a bit overly hostile in tone, it’s not meant to be hostile

Don't worry about hostility.

The main issue is you don't answer my question at the end, specifically my hypothetical. I'm cautiously sceptical about the 8.0 job reworks as I don't think they are going to change as much as people suspect they will. This is why I ask what I do to see what level people would deem acceptable. For example, is keeping Monk as it is now, but changing the burst phases to 45 and 90 seconds, would that be enough for it to feel different. Or, with the example I posted to you, would powering up an action based on number of DoTs or based on number of buffs feel different enough, despite the fact they are, almost, functionally the same.

On your comment about no diversity and that you can map every GCD, you could do that in the past as well. When I used to raid more consistently, I could tell when the DPS was a bit higher or a bit lower based on when the phase transition happened in my GCD rotation. I knew when certain mechanics were happening, because they came at the same point in the rotation. So this point, to me, isn't valid.

I should also note that every job had some sort of burst phase, how pronounced it was compared to the rest of the rotation is what was different.

You seem to have a view of past expansions that is different to how it actually was. My comment above about mapping every GCD is proof of that. Going back to builder spenders, as of HW, most DPS and tanks were builder spender jobs, SB just gave you a graphic to follow rather than a buff. And I think this ties in nicely to the comment below:

T2, 7, 7S, 8, 11 and 12 are good examples as are A2, A6 and A10 I can also think of Levi extreme

Are you sure? If you went into each encounter with the same group and the same strategy, would you not see the same mechanics in the same order every time? There might be some variations as to where attacks come from, Levi's body slam, but he still does it at the same points every time. As a caveat, we do have to be weary of phase transitions, but that is not the boss not following a DDR pattern, it is just you pushing into the next DDR pattern faster.

I will admit, I'm not always the best at articulating my points, so I hope you can see where I am trying to come from when I say what I do.

[Carighan]

In terms of stacking buff classes were they to become more exclusive they could have the abilities give a standardised ‘buff effect’ as opposed to a unique one for every single buff. E.G Battle Voice and Devilment giving a ‘DHR buff’ instead of giving two separate buffs. Or if Samba/Troubadour/Tactician gave a standardised ‘reduced damage taken’ buff. Then they could just have them work like HP shields where using one of the same/lower strength has no effect, but using one of higher strength will overwrite the lower one.

Oh like GW2 with its standardized buffs and debuffs. That'd be smart, yeah your're right.

[Eraden]

What do you mean 'now'? Boss fights have always been DDR, even back in ARR. You know what a boss is going to do and in what order. In that aspect, nothing has changed. Even if a mechanic has some RNG to it, whether it be in/out or stack/spread, it is still predictable when it happens.

If you disagree, please, provide some examples of past fights that did not feel like they were a scripted DDR encounter.

Mao maybe misspoke. Mao should has said that new boss fights is so full of mechanics-barfage that ability to play DDR even more necessary now than ever before. Lots past fights felt more open because thems not so massively filled with mechanics-barfage that it made constantly dancings necessary.

[Connor]

Oh like GW2 with its standardized buffs and debuffs. That'd be smart, yeah your're right.

It’s been ages since I played it but I think ESO does something similar. Buff/debuff abilities give a standardised buff e.g Minor/Major Courage I think was a general attack buff

[Commander_Justitia]

Been a bit busy, but I don't want to over inflate this post unnecessarily, so I will link the original post just above.

Commander_Justitia
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6638256

You never actually addressed any of the points I made. I asked what CC you could add that didn't destroy boss balance, you never answered. You also made a comment on having different combo enders, which you now claim you don't like? Conflicting statements where I think I'm missing something here.

....

You assumed I mean bosses be affected by CC, but I thought of mobs. The problem of your thinking is that you can't imagine boss fights with adds/mobs I guess, at least not those that are not totally immune to all sort of CC?! It was more often the case in the past that you had to silence certain adds or stun them, or even just slow them to kite them in a proper position, while being out of range of them. These mechanics have become increasingly rare I think. Some reason is that they are enforcing trusts on most of the more casual content, so every dungeon has to be clearable with NPC bots - so by design - the fights are constrained and limited in how they can be made interesting.

Regarding different combo ends I said - "I think it could be more creative than that though." - and later I said "I don't think having a different combo end is particularly entertaining, it was also more a negative example." - I don't think this is contradicting? Then I made examples of different combo variations and including dots, which often had a bit more meaning to it than just different potencies. In my eyes, those were more interesting at least.

I think once again you limit your creativity by how SE implemented these effects in the past. When I talk of poison, I am not talking about buying a poison pot that used to work at lvl50, which did 15dmg per tick or something, which clipped your rotation and was just awful to use. Jobs could have poison stacking mechanics, where your dots get more powerful the longer you apply the dot up to a threshold, potentially spreading them on other targets like summoner did in the past. Or limiting self heals from bosses by having it applied at the right moment. Eh, there are many ways to create more meaning and impact to skills than raw damage numbers.

20% executes were at least a variation of the norm, and you could press a button more when a condition was met. They would have been useful for situation with adds where you need to kill some immediately at a certain time, to create a temporary damage spike. They were usually on a larger cooldown.

Again with resistances, you think of how they implemented it before. And I think you care too much about damage balancing - it is not as relevant as many think for most raiders. Most raiders are not performing anywhere near of what is possible.

I think in the beginning of ARR raids, people often were in tank stances when tanking - only later and at lvl 60 especially people started stance switching a lot. And now aggro management is almost completely trivial. Why? We still had aggro reset mechanics in Neo Exdeath I think. Healer healing Almagest damage and overhealing leading too them potentially being high in the threat ranking. It is just another abandoned concept of RPG games that has been thrown out and deemed undesirable.

Well, at level 50 Rage of Halone was always used. You also had Shield Swipe as an extra offglobal for blocks. I think most good DRKs only used Delirium before raidwides or hard magical tankbusters, they didn't keep it 100% uptime as it did less damage than the normal combo. You say unbalanced again...why is it unbalanced to you? Because all tanks do not have the same rotation and the same effects on the boss? Isn't that exactly what the players are criticizing?

Yes traits are a way, but they probably don't want to balance for every 10 levels how the damage output should be. Maybe it would be easier to adjust monster stats in a certain level range, than each skill individually. I think damage taken should probably increase by 50-100% in very old dungeons/raids.

Whatever, they are doubling down on trusts. It just means we never get another dungeon with e.g. snowcloak 2nd boss with the growing snowball mechanic - these type of fun unique mechanics are all removed, so NPC can clear the content. It is the same with potential skills that could be fun.

[Valence]

Mao thinkings the root cause of all of this is boss fight design. ALL new boss fights now DDR. Is very predictable and is easy to add in burst phases. Only real requirements for such fights is good memorization skills and ability to do mobile DPS. Is borings and soulless. Is not what Mao considers adventures in spirit of fantasy RPG. What is needed in order for to keep jobs from continuing to becomes more samey is boss fights with lots random elements in thems.

It's definitely pretty evident that a lot of their aims to turn encounters toward their current model that started in late HW/SB, informed completely how they were designing jobs and the battle system over time.