Balance, Homogenisation and Encounter Design: The Problem.

[CapricaLangley]

The era of sandbox MMO has apparently come to an end. Despite the emotions many of us felt when exploring and living worlds like Vana’diel and the original Azeroth from WoW, we are now deep in the era of pure theme park, something which is not bad per se. Nonetheless, these days I tend to reminisce some nuances of that particular world: in between leveling parties, camping NMs and other amenities, the thing I miss the most is job “imbalance”. When there’s next to zero balance, or it just isn’t the main focus of combat designers, everything becomes unique, from Teleports being WHM exclusive to proper support classes, just like traditional RDM, from pursuing legendary items like Optical Hat/Scorpion Harness to the huge range of buffs and debuffs avalaible back in the day.

But I don’t want to plunge into memories, I know that XIV has never been like that. What I noticed is that, lately, a good 50% of discussions in this forum tend to gravitate around balance. Everyone is pursuing balance, players and devs alike: the vast majority of the people involved in the game constantly want jobs tuned up or nerfed, while at the same time keeping the gameplay experience simple, fun and interactive, which is a really ambitious objective. Does pure balance even exist? I don’t think so: min/maxers and hardcore dedicated players will always find a meta or compile a tier list; it happens in MOBAs with tons of different heroes, it happens in fighting games with 70 chars like Super Smash Bros, of course it will happen in a MMO. Shadowbringers 5.x is arguably one of the most balanced patch to ever grace FFXIV. What did we sacrifice for the sake of balance?

Identity was left behind in favour of homogenization which, again, is not bad per se. It’s the easiest way to pursue balance, make every job’s potential roughly the same, relegating the differences just in small numbers. If you think about it, the jobs currently struggling are the ones who coulnd’t be traditionally homogenised because they had the most unique identities: SMN, the only pet class, NIN, the first ‘pure support and utility’ class, and DNC, which basicallly stole the balance problem from Bards. Again, I don’t think homogenisation is necessarily a problem, but we learnt from other MMOs that it’s somewhat dangerous, and it may hurt the ‘feeling’ of the game in the long term (think about WoW subscribers going downhill and the impact of the classic version announcement), because class identity is a big part of MMOs success. Either way, pursuing balance through homozenisation is the indicator of a bigger problem, a problem I think is crucial when thinking about the future of the game.

And that problem is the staleness of encounter design. Every single choice in terms of balance, class design and homogenisation was taken just because the devs sticked to the same encounter model from day 1. Imagine a different world: in a world with mob kiting, ranged jobs would be mandatory; in a world where healers are needed to separate ways from the rest of the group, RDM heals and actions like raise would be a hundred times more meta definining than DPS numbers. Don’t get me wrong, I like combat in this game, but I think the current system with circular/square arenas and (interesting and challenging) mechanics is basically gutting class design. Every class is tailored around DPS numbers because every activity in the game gravitate towards this dicretion. By patch 5.1 we will probably be playing 3 jobs instead of 3 roles, the differences being just in rotation nuances; the question that worries me is: what will happen in the next patches? Will we ever reach the desired “perfect and purely balanced” world, where in return it doesn’t matter at all which job you choose to play?

There are so many things that I’d like to discuss. We could talk about the loss of class identity that healers are living, being bloated with healing skills that are unable to find space in high end content because current encounters aren’t crafted with that in mind. We could talk about how much streamlined is the progression system, with no space at all for choices and nuances, or about how every utility and every job’s little shade is rapidly becoming nothing but a number. I don’t know if i’m living a sort of “middle playtime crisis” or something, I just wanted to share and know your opinion. Also, sorry for my poor english.

TL;DR: Homogenisation may seem the answer to balance problems, but instead it’s the indicator of a much bigger problem: the lack of variety and nuances in encounter and activity design.

[VictorTheed]

On the topic of balance I always thought that if there is this really good job and this really bad job then please don't bring goood job down to be closer to bad job but instead bring bad job up to be closer to good job.

I agree with u on homogenisation, that would suck, when I play DRG I want it to feel a lot different then when I'm playing RDM and the difference not being just melee/ranged, I want it to feel like a new experience and so far for me personally the game achieves that.

[MaraD_]

On the topic of balance I always thought that if there is this really good job and this really bad job then please don't bring goood job down to be closer to bad job but instead bring bad job up to be closer to good job.

I agree with u on homogenisation, that would suck, when I play DRG I want it to feel a lot different then when I'm playing RDM and the difference not being just melee/ranged, I want it to feel like a new experience and so far for me personally the game achieves that.

the "bring up, not down" is a good mentality, but it doesnt always work.
in fact, its the very reason tanks got so homogonized in the 1st place.
-X% dmg taken style mitigation, rather than +X% stat mitigation led to PLD being way more broken. (Not just simply better than WAR)
they uppwed WAR to match, but this now makes all tanks have to have -X% dmg taken styled mitigation.
Which, in turn, limited uniqueness options in tanks. There's still plenty of options, but SE doesnt seem to notice their pool of options atm.
But none the less, going by basic RPG/MMO standards, this eliminated many options that could have worked for tanks.

sometimes you do need to nerf down to another job.

[Dzian]

TL;DR: Homogenisation may seem the answer to balance problems, but instead it’s the indicator of a much bigger problem: the lack of variety and nuances in encounter and activity design.

Homogenization and over emphasis on simplicity and accessibility is the reason so many games franchises have died over the years, and also why so many newer games essentially flop or under perform. Players just don't want simplicity, they want depth and engagement.

Back in February or there abouts Yoshi even said the future of the Final Fantasy franchise needs to move away from trying to cater to mainstream audiences and go back to being made for the fans. Because virtually every game that tries to go mainstream ends up losing everything that made it popular in the first place. those engaging and interesting game play elements are lost in exchange for simplicity or accessibility.

Games like Tomb Raider where you have skill trees that are useless. Skills to conserve or recycle arrows from your bow that are ultimately useless because ease and simplicity means there quivers of arrows or boxes of bullets everywhere you look.

Or Dead Space where they simplified it by making every weapon use the exact same ammo and totally destroyed the sense of tension and fear for survival that made the first games so popular. Resident Evil again where the later games have moved away from survival horror can't waste a single bullet into run and gun kill everything that moves because ammo is practically infinite and that resulted in a massive decline in it's popularity. It's one of the reasons they went and did the remake of Resident Evil 2 to take the series back in that direction.

It's even more prevalent on the mobile side of things. Where Google and Apple wanted there platforms to be serious games contenders but most people just aren't putting the money into mobile games because they're virtually all so dull simple and shallow. Sure you can say 200 million people played angry birds or whatever. But for how long? It was a fun game for an hour or so but got boring incredibly quickly.

It's also why many of the so called underdogs take the industry by storm because they don't cater for mainstream audiences or over simplify. They stay true to what makes them great games and gamers love them for it. A recent example would be how God of War was so much more popular and amazing than anyone ever expected. Generally shunned as a fairly niche game by many media outlets and yet it blew everyone away with how successful it was.

But yeah so many games flop these days because people just don't want to spend there money on shallow and simple games that have no depth or are just not rewarding to play. There are more people playing games than there ever has been but on the flip side people are generally buying much less of them because it's all the same stuff and thus all those once deep and engaging franchises end up meeting a terrible demise because everything players loved about them gets taken out in favour of simplicity and accessibiltiy that no one actually wants.

Even 14 suffers from this. It can look nice and pull in players without too many problems. However it has always struggled to keep players engaged for any length of time as it really does get old and stale very quickly. This is because of over emphasis on simplicity and ease which comes at the cost of fun, depth and engagement.. There's no sense of fun, accomplishment or engagement in beating a fight that is borderline impossible to lose. That means players end up getting bored quickly or disengaged from the game.

It's also not gripping or engaging when the story tries to paint a picture of an incredibly dire situation where things seem all but hopeless only for you to faceroll through it and completely destroy the atmosphere and tension the story tried to create. has been a problem ever since ARR. the Garlean empire almighty and powerful yet an entire army cant even scratch a single player running around there castrum owning the place.. does not lend any merit to the story and instead often leaves players feeling disconnected from it and the game as a result.

But I think that's partly what Yoshi was referring to back in February when he said the franchise needs to go back to the fans.

[Edax]

Homogenization and over emphasis on simplicity and accessibility is the reason so many games franchises have died over the years, and also why so many newer games essentially flop or under perform. Players just don't want simplicity, they want depth and engagement.
.

And yet the Old School Runescape is still going strong and it's combat system is simplicity incarnate. Since I grew up with Runescape, I never saw the appeal over pushing dozens of buttons to do damage vs pushing one. When I played Halo PC, only 3 buttons did damage, shoot, grenade and melee and that game was a masterpiece. I don't see Homogenization as a big problem. Players do want simplicity and accessibility, but I also think players want more variety in the challenge levels. At the moment it's a bit binary on the difficulty, normal / extreme. Some players I think are willing to engage in more challenging content, without it being an extreme level fight.

[Nariel]

And yet the Old School Runescape is still going strong and it's combat system is simplicity incarnate. Since I grew up with Runescape, I never saw the appeal over pushing dozens of buttons to do damage vs pushing one. When I played Halo PC, only 3 buttons did damage, shoot, grenade and melee and that game was a masterpiece. I don't see Homogenization as a big problem. Players do want simplicity and accessibility, but I also think players want more variety in the challenge levels. At the moment it's a bit binary on the difficulty, normal / extreme. Some players I think are willing to engage in more challenging content, without it being an extreme level fight.

I think it isn't that binary at all. There is multiple layer of difficulty.

Dungeon are rollface easy, Primal are a bit toughter but still pretty easy, raid and raid 24 starting to be less forgivable but still safe, then you start on extreme who require to succeed at every mecanism to beat it, then you go savage where you really need to take your finger out of your ass and start git gud and then you get Ultimate where you get your ass handed to yourself evey single minute.

There is quite a spectrum of difficulty, there is not many of each maybe, but its not binary.

[Edax]

I think it isn't that binary at all. There is multiple layer of difficulty.

Dungeon are rollface easy, Primal are a bit toughter but still pretty easy, raid and raid 24 starting to be less forgivable but still safe, then you start on extreme who require to succeed at every mecanism to beat it, then you go savage where you really need to take your finger out of your ass and start git gud and then you get Ultimate where you get your ass handed to yourself evey single minute.

There is quite a spectrum of difficulty, there is not many of each maybe, but its not binary.

Well the Shadowbringer Raid is effectively a primal fight. Sure we'll probably get an Alliance raid eventually but that's not out yet for Shadowbringers, so it's normal Eden / Savage Eden at the moment.

[Stanelis]

You re bound to have homogeneization when the hardest encounters are designed to be played with merely 8 players and there are far more classes per group spot in any given role.

For the content to be completed with any class, then the jobs/encounters must be homogeneized.

That s why MMORPGs have been at a stalemate since blizzard invented the "bring the player not the class" of wow 3.0. It basically killed the depth of group play in MMORPGs.

TL;DR: Homogenisation may seem the answer to balance problems, but instead it’s the indicator of a much bigger problem: the lack of variety and nuances in encounter and activity design.

You are like 10 years too late for this debate because since then it is the standard of MMORPGs.

[CapricaLangley]

You are like 10 years too late for this debate because since then it is the standard of MMORPGs.

Maybe you are right. To me, it seemed the right time for this debate because in three days the MMO which arguably is the most popular of all time will relaunch its 1.12 version, a project run by a company that recently went full "shareholders revenue". An hypothetical success of the product could completely redesign the balances of the MMO market and influence future design choices.

[RokkuEkkusu]

It's an unfortunate double-edged sword we'll have to deal in FFXIV with the "High DPS" mentality in stuff that used outside of EX trials, Savage Raids, and Ultimates.