Quote Originally Posted by nuuhku View Post
I don't understand why black mage can't have a different difficulty level and playstyle to it.
Ignoring the specifics, there is a general argument to be made that in a class-based RPG, classes of a similar role should not be overly different in complexity, depth and efficacy. Multiplayer-games of course, in singleplayer this is almost opposite.

The reason is in the way you want to do balance. If say, Black Mage, is 25% more difficult to play, how do you balance it?
Does it to the same damage as an easier class when played perfectly? As in, there's no actual pay-off for playing that good?
Or does it do the same damage if played "the same", and at perfect play deals ~25% more damage to offset the 25% increase in player difficulty?

If you opt for the former, do you balance for the increased wipe-chance when bringing Black Mages in tough fights, since they struggle just as much with any DPS check but are more complex, hence it's easier to screw up? Or do you ignore it?
If the latter is what you do, do you balance DPS checks for "Oops, all Black Mages"? Or for no-Black-Mages? If it's the former, the fights are now factually undoable without Black Mages, and hence the 25% extra difficulty of BLM is in fact a requirement to being able to clear some fights. If not, the fight is far too easy bringing Black Mages, and you would need to also offset this with a complexity that begets a far greater wipe-chance, no?

None of these are unsolvable, they're just design decisions. But you need to decide on one, and it influences the entire rest of the game design as this would need to be a baseline decision to make, independent of any specific class. And that's why most multiplayer-games just won't do this. It restricts future design, in particular towards adding classes, fights, encounters or contexts.