Balance, Homogenisation and Encounter Design: The Problem.

[linay]

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?

That's up to the players. From the game's perspective, it already doesn't matter now except in certain situations, like needing caster LB in a fight. As long as people feels the need to dictate what others play instead of accepting the diversity in choice that people have, what job you play will always be an issue. Balance is only needed as far as making sure all jobs are viable and nothing more.

[ForteNightshade]

That's up to the players. From the game's perspective, it already doesn't matter now except in certain situations, like needing caster LB in a fight. As long as people feels the need to dictate what others play instead of accepting the diversity in choice that people have, what job you play will always be an issue. Balance is only needed as far as making sure all jobs are viable and nothing more.

This is a very flawed approach. If one job is vastly outperforming another, why should be accept taking the weaker one simply for diversity sake? Case in point, Ninja. There is simply no reason to bring it outside of someone wanting to play it and your group being cool with it. If that happens to be the case, cool. But I'm not going to fault someone for passing when the remaining three melee are vastly superior.

[linay]

This is a very flawed approach. If one job is vastly outperforming another, why should be accept taking the weaker one simply for diversity sake? Case in point, Ninja. There is simply no reason to bring it outside of someone wanting to play it and your group being cool with it. If that happens to be the case, cool. But I'm not going to fault someone for passing when the remaining three melee are vastly superior.

I'm not going to fault people either. It is what it is, but that's the main reason why what jobs you play matter: the players. If all jobs are viable, then it doesn't matter except for player decision to make it matter.

[ForteNightshade]

I'm not going to fault people either. It is what it is, but that's the main reason why what jobs you play matter: the players. If all jobs are viable, then it doesn't matter except for player decision to make it matter.

That isn't on the players though. When jobs are this imbalanced, the fault lies squarely on the devs for allowing it to occur. The players are simply taking the jobs which best help facilitate a clear. You can argue Ninja is perfectly viable but when a 20% Monk is better than a 50% Ninja, well...

And just for reference sake. You don't see this happening with the tanks despite Warrior being clearly weaker than its counterparts.