So Yoshi-P just confirmed jobs won't get a big rework in 8.0.

[Rithy255]

The idea is good but Square could never meaningfully balance it to the degree that the community at large would accept it. Square has struggled to balance three different healers and three different tanks, let alone fourth, let alone the DPS. This led to extremes such as HW nearly perma-banning PLD from PF and SB heavily excluding WHM/MNK. How could we possibly expect things to be different with 3x the job diversity? The community would never mesh well with it.

I'm going to be frank this fear of no job left behind has constantly been undermining uniqueness and pushing job design to become worse and worse degrading slowly, while they try to hyper focus on mechs to compensate it becomes this game where once you've done a fight on one job, you might as well have done it on all jobs, Everyone loses when jobs are so boring and samey, instead of playing the "warrior" you are now generic tank number 4. Because the devs are so scared to even try to give jobs more unique niches.

The "community" your talking about is a subset of raiders who play at the highest level 90% of people doing savage content isn't going to lock out a Job due to it being less strong, as long as the clear is reasonable then people will usually accept it.

Casual and midcore players shouldn't suffer because the top 1% of players will always follow what's meta, they do it still now despite the differences in jobs being so small and meaningless (outside of picto early expansion). We deserve stuff to actually enjoy, a more diverse job system that can cater to different playstyles is needed for the future of the games health, accepting our current system for jobs being so one note and generic has been one of the big reasons why people are losing interest.

I also don't get a "spec" system fixes everything I think job design in a baseline needs to be fixed... Though It can open a lot more of complexity to people who want/seek that out in the job system.

Most games with a multi job system realise that class/job design is just as important as encounter, when you only focus encounters you only got half of a system.

[RedLolly]

No matter what we want, Meta ALWAYS trickles down. This is just fundamental human nature to both figure out a meta and for everyone to adopt it. This will never change.

It's psychologically driven to want to play with what is deemed better and stronger, and it's amplified in multiplayer games. Certain players will go ”path of least resistance" by picking the best options, sure, but others often feel like a bad teammate if meta is ignored for whatever reason, and hard numbers can show you dragging

So, "no job left behind" is just the devs balancing it so that players can rely on personal taste and roleplay instead of meta because everything succeeds.

Machinist is really unpopular in most group content but is amazing in deep dungeon, so the devs have left it alone.

[ty_taurus]

No matter what we want, Meta ALWAYS trickles down. This is just fundamental human nature to both figure out a meta and for everyone to adopt it. This will never change.

It's psychologically driven to want to play with what is deemed better and stronger, and it's amplified in multiplayer games. Certain players will go ”path of least resistance" by picking the best options, sure, but others often feel like a bad teammate if meta is ignored for whatever reason, and hard numbers can show you dragging

So, "no job left behind" is just the devs balancing it so that players can rely on personal taste and roleplay instead of meta because everything succeeds.

Machinist is really unpopular in most group content but is amazing in deep dungeon, so the devs have left it alone.

Except the jobs still aren’t balanced and there is still a meta, so I’ll repeat my question: what’s the point of lobotomizing jobs for a balance they can’t achieve?

And even if they could, what’s the point of achieving perfect balance if no job is fun to play as a result?

[Rithy255]

Snip.

I'm sorry but this is wrong, Meta doesn't always trickle down White Mage is a massive example of this, It's been outside the meta for so long (like HW long lol) despite that it remains the most popular healer, because it's got a very strong archetype and history with ff14. People will actually play what sort of job they like over meta a lot of the time. Monks been good a lot in recent years, even offering bonus utility, despite that people don't really like it as much as other jobs, likely because thematically punching things in a game with cool weapons isn't gonna appeal to a lot of people, I'd honestly say machinist is likely just unpopular because most people don't find it thematically appealing (and sure theirs some people who wont play it for meta).

Not to say theirs no meta influence but overstating meta influence to the point where we should avoid meaningful job differences because someone is going to cry that their favourite job isn't as good as another job isn't a acceptable way to handle game design, If people are going to follow meta why not let have people like me who don't just pick based on meta have fun with playing something unique and interesting instead of something that just feels like the same job with small visual differences.

My point being even if meta has some influence on lower end play theirs way more factors then just "meta" that controls this, ease of use, archetype, gameplay all have pretty solid influence on what people will play, restricting us to 5 different playstyles (tank, healer, ranged, melee, magic) isn't the solution to balance.

Balance requires things to actually have meaningful difference If people are only playing for visuals we might aswell make jobs different weapon animations, maybe even further just by giving everyone one button that does damage and all they have to focus on is the dance fight, then we will finally have a "balanced game" though in reality you've just created a very boring game. I rather take inbalance and uniqueness even to the point of "your job locked out of pf" if it means we have interesting jobs, because at least then we actually have a job system over nothing.

Lastly I can understand the "roleplay" perspective of it but if your a top 1% of player you should understand that sometimes you can't just roleplay as a warrior if your team needs a gunbreaker to reach world first, 99.9% of us will be able to "roleplay" as a warrior in a savage content and get to feel like onem, have unique skills that reflect that in a gameplay setting instead of "generic tank number 4", if you care about meta effecting that. It's still not a excuse to take down the entire job system and make the game worse.

[ovIm]

No matter what we want, Meta ALWAYS trickles down. This is just fundamental human nature to both figure out a meta and for everyone to adopt it. This will never change.

Sure, but a good game designer can control that to a point by adjusting what is effective.

In this game, the mechanics "multiplicative damage calculation" and "buff stacking" paired with "high potency nuke skills" on classes caused this current meta of "sync cooldowns to achieve big dick deeps". The homogenisation of jobs could have been prevented if Square Enix had not taken feedback like "synching buffs feels bad" at face value, and instead examined how the aforementioned mechanics caused skills like Ninjas Trick Attack to become a black hole sucking in all the damage buffs, they possibly could have come to a different solution that is not "every class is now builder spender on the exact same timers".

[bic12]

Except the jobs still aren’t balanced and there is still a meta, so I’ll repeat my question: what’s the point of lobotomizing jobs for a balance they can’t achieve?

And even if they could, what’s the point of achieving perfect balance if no job is fun to play as a result?

The real question is why are you even playing this game?

The jobs have not been fun in years, other than maybe MNK or BLM in 6.x, which are now both gutted.

So literally why are you still playing?

[Avoidy]

That interview is so full of insane contradictions. In the same interview where he says that nothing much will change, he alludes to making changes that one could consider quite meaningful. On my youtube feed right now, there're videos from XIV content creators praising that interview for bringing new job changes to the game. Then I come here and to other places and people are highlighting the other parts where he says he won't change much at all. If I had a dime for every time I watched Yoshida go out in public and say something that left both sides of the fence coming away with different interpretations of what was said, I'd have like... 7 dimes. Which isn't a lot of dimes, but it's weird that it happens so much.

Frankly, I'm astounded any stock is put in this company's words at all after DT. These guys literally shilled the final cutscene in the MSQ as the hype trailer and gave everyone the false impression that this would be a fun vacation arc. They said the scions would have a schism and got people thinking there'd be a genuine ideological split, but of course that amounted to nothing as well. They implied, ages ago, that SMN's neutering process was to create a foundation for them to build on later, and people accepted that. Then DT came out and they got like, 1 new button lol. They promised a ton of content for DT and then backloaded it so hard that most of the people who bought DT with those promises in mind aren't even subbed anymore. If you're hanging onto this game because of future promises, and not because there's just something in the current game that you're enjoying instead, then you're gullible af that's all I have to say.

[bic12]

If you're hanging onto this game because of future promises, and not because there's just something in the current game that you're enjoying instead, then you're gullible af that's all I have to say.

There isn't even anything to enjoy in the current game LOL.

It's really just for ERP and RMT. And ERP was killed last month.

[Xapapetsu]

It's not that surprising, I was expecting changes to make the jobs more interesting, but there's only so much that can be done because of legacy content, specifically legacy ultimates. You also can't do a complete rework all at once, you need to do it gradually to gadge what the playerbase wants. I'd imagine many people would be thrilled if the job designed changes to be more like WOW, but I also know many players would complain about the changes as well. My opinion is to make gradual changes each expansion to improve job design while listening to player feedback.

[ty_taurus]

The real question is why are you even playing this game?

The jobs have not been fun in years, other than maybe MNK or BLM in 6.x, which are now both gutted.

So literally why are you still playing?

Funny you’re asking me that question. I haven’t touched DT at all. I haven’t even done the MSQ. I unlocked Viper, didn’t like it, did a frontline roulette twice, and quit on Day 2 because the job I want to play fails to live up to its job fantasy right now. I’m only here because I could log in for free. I logged in, then immediately logged out so I could add more feedback here.