Quote Originally Posted by Nyastra View Post
I see what you’re saying, and put like that, the theory behind granular job-based difficulty does make sense ie. letting encounters remain the same while players’ effectiveness scales based on skill could solve a lot of the floor/ceiling issues. I get the appeal, and I agree it’s an elegant design concept on paper.

The catch, from a practical standpoint, is implementation. Adding that kind of granularity to every job across the entire game is an enormous design and balancing task, especially considering the millions of players with wildly different skill levels and playstyles. It’s the kind of thing that could easily introduce new issues while solving others, and SE would have to invest amounts of time and resources into testing and iteration.

So yes, it’s an interesting idea, but considering their track record with job adjustments, I’m not sure it’s a path they’ll go down? The other thing is — wouldn’t this also result in the thing they dislike? Further exclusion from Party Finders based on skill? I’m not an expert here, just thinking out loud. Who knows, maybe they surprise us and go this route.
I mean this is how the game worked pre ShB. Go back and look at SB savages. They are hilariously easy from a mechanical design perspective compared to the modern fights with a few notable exceptions. And that’s because the jobs held the majority of the difficulty. It’s not like “meta” picks were any more or less prevalent back then (before anyone quotes HW PLD at me let me remind you that that was for HALF of one tier and PLD still wasn’t even the least popular tank in the half a tier it was useless. WHM has been useless since 4.0)

I doubt their ability to return the jobs to anything approaching their old iterations but the fact remains the current design is unsustainable so they have to do something