Balance, Homogenisation and Encounter Design: The Problem.

[Shurrikhan]

Truth be told the DpS focus of this game is more the result of all high end fights having tight hard enrage timers. Its hard to not be dps focused when completion of a fight is more determined by doing X amount of damage before X minutes are up than being able to repeatably do mechanics.

They're not that tight, though. They still allow for failure far more than the only other real alternative -- one-shot or crippling mechanics and limited rezzes. The dps checks could more aptly be called "effective average quality of mechanics management" checks.

They're not "dps focused" so much as having so few ways by which anything but healer shields and raid mitigation/absorption CDs can actually do anything to improve your chances of reaching the end of the fight except by... dpsing.

Making the classes more homogenized is a side-effect of them simply trying to lessen their workload, in my opinion.

Tfw that exact excuse, with the alleged trade of better balancing and more engaging fights, has been used in multiple MMOs I've played, only to then create worse balance and fights which the community generally rated lower than those made before the streamlining occurred...

[Ultimatecalibur]

They're not that tight, though. They still allow for failure far more than the only other real alternative -- one-shot or crippling mechanics and limited rezzes. The dps checks could more aptly be called "effective average quality of mechanics management" checks.

They're not "dps focused" so much as having so few ways by which anything but healer shields and raid mitigation/absorption CDs can actually do anything to improve your chances of reaching the end of the fight except by... dpsing.

Comparable to other possibilities they are tight. Titania EX is on an 11 minute hard timer. E1S is on a 10 min hard timer that shortens with every death. Also I've seen plenty of wipes over the past 5 and 1/2 years in EX and Savage fights where the group could do the mechanics perfectly but they just didn't have the dps to kill the boss, it is far to easy to hit enrage and often a fight will only go throw 2 final phase rotations before enrage happens. There is little benefit to greater tank survivability and healer longevity.

Getting to an enrage should be a test of tank and healer capabilities to survive and heal while killing the boss before then should be a test of the dps' output. Right now it is not hard to get to a fight's enrage once the dance is learned.

[Shurrikhan]

Getting to an enrage should be a test of tank and healer capabilities to survive and heal while killing the boss before then should be a test of the dps' output.

Isn't that exactly what we have now? Or do you want back the 5-tanks 3-healers Extreme Primal prog meta we had when dps checks lightened?

[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.

[Shurrikhan]

I want to tell you a bit about a game that released just over 6 years ago. It had the things you are asking for but due to various reasons things did not work out like you would hope they would.

The game had a fair number of uniquely shaped boss arenas with varied terrain. In fact the game's most difficult fight on release was set on the palm of a gigantic dragon's hand. These irregular arenas while cool had their fair share of problems; things like ranged classes being able to avoid a mechanic because they could stand on top of a pile of sand and players failing to dodge a fight's mechanics because the irregular terrain prevented them from moving away fast enough. From the second update cycle and on the designers ended up changing to flat arenas to prevent these problems.

How is this a flaw of terrain rather than a Z-axis in proximity checks? Or is the fact that even now I can be struck from 40 feet in the air by ground mobs still aggro'ed to me similarly an issue of (open world) zone design?

Kiting used to be a thing in some of the high end fights, but due to their only being one ranged non-caster at the time that class became a mandatory class to complete content.

Only T1 and T5 had kiteable adds (unless stall-stratting T4 briefly instead of doing full AoE), and I did the prior just fine on SMN and BLM with very little potency loss and the latter was doable on any and all jobs, seeing as you could just keep hitting the boss while everyone else dealt with the add focusing you. These weren't an issue.

Homogenization came about because the designers needed to insure that any balanced party composition had all the tools they needed to complete content.

The one does not necessitate the other. You can have balance without homogeneity.

The designers were originally doing what you asked but problems and complaints caused them to slowly stop doing them over the course of their first expansion cycle.

Problems and complaints should not to equate in each case to giving up and taking the lowest common denominator approach to the situation.

[IttyBitty]

Even you and I are mostly able to make examples based on things we know or remember; let's try to create something new: imagine a mechanic that marks the two tanks during an encounter, with both their health pools being reduced to one HP. Healers, then, have to heal them to full and prevent them to die to a debuff that hits for a set amound of damage every X seconds. If one of the tanks dies, you get a raidwide AoE that can kill the other one, hypothetically causing a second AoE which would lead to the wipe. Et voilà, we have an healer check.

We already have plenty of healing check mechanics. They're just not often in the more casual end of content (eg white hole, photon+eternal darkness, charibdys, hellwind+towers, flare+stack, allagan field).

[Acidblood]

Isn't that exactly what we have now? Or do you want back the 5-tanks 3-healers Extreme Primal prog meta we had when dps checks lightened?

DPS can still be important without hard enrages; and you can still have hard enrages, just set them at 15 minutes instead of 10 (assuming the fight is balanced around 10 minutes).

To do this though you need Healers to have finite MP, and have enough unavoidable outgoing damage from the boss that Healers will go OOM within 10 minutes... unless of course you use mitigation, and party MP regen abilities, and do mechanics well (death is a huge waste of MP), and debuff the boss, and kill the adds quickly, and etc.

This creates a much more even and natural balance between DPS and Survivability; i.e. if all you focus on is DPS then you had better do it damn well because you aren’t going survive for very long. If, however you focus on efficient survivability (and do it well) then DPS isn't so much of an issue because you can still beat the fight even if it takes you 14 minutes.

Note 1: This would probably require some adjustments to current Tank DPS (Healers should be too busy healing to do much), with Tanks having a greater focus on mitigation.

Note 2: This would require a redesign of Healers (which is probably needed anyway) as current Healer design is too focused on burst healing. Heals would need to be (generally) less powerful but more efficient, including via interactions (e.g. Medica II HoT increases Medica heals by 10%).

Note 3: Set DPS checks are still fine in small doses, so you could still build them in to prevent full Tank / Healer parties, just don’t make the entire fight a hard DPS check.

Note 4: Soft enrages could also be used, and start around the 10 minute mark, with each ‘rotation’ getting harder and harder to survive; this would create a ‘standard’ finishing point that you would want to aim for while still allowing variance in party composition and approach.


... Either that of SE needs to fully embrace the DPS nature of its designs and give Healers a decent damage / support kit.

[Shurrikhan]

DPS can still be important without hard enrages; and you can still have hard enrages, just set them at 15 minutes instead of 10 (assuming the fight is balanced around 10 minutes).

To do this though you need Healers to have finite MP, and have enough unavoidable outgoing damage from the boss that Healers will go OOM within 10 minutes... unless of course you use mitigation, and party MP regen abilities, and do mechanics well (death is a huge waste of MP), and debuff the boss, and kill the adds quickly, and etc.

This creates a much more even and natural balance between DPS and Survivability; i.e. if all you focus on is DPS then you had better do it damn well because you aren’t going survive for very long.

No, it doesn't. It would make no difference except that the dps check would now arrive anywhere between some 7 and 10 minutes based on how sparingly your healers used MP. Healers afking between damage intake would be not only viable but often required. (And I've no idea what to say to you if you could possibly think that a system which requires you to spend significant time doing nothing or almost only ever using the most modest and MP-efficient mini-heals is somehow a good thing.)

You'll have moved the enrage, in all likelihood, earlier, while demanding less activity or clarity of purpose from players. "Should I sacrifice uptime to further reduce damage taken from these flare mechanics?" "Well, how good are your healers and tanks, and did you forget to bring PLD-DRK and WHM-WHM to extend healer MP for as long as possible?" "I, uh, don't know, and we have AST-SCH." "Well, I guess enrage will be around 8 minutes if they're good?"

[linay]

Also I've seen plenty of wipes over the past 5 and 1/2 years in EX and Savage fights where the group could do the mechanics perfectly but they just didn't have the dps to kill the boss

That said, sometimes doing mechanics perfectly means doing it while keeping up high uptime. It's not really doing mechanics perfectly if you don't do anything (or do less than you should) while "doing" the mechanics.

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.

It is on the players when there is nothing in the game that tells the players to take that 20% monk over that 50% ninja. That is purely player preference. Sure, that preference is influenced by the state of the game, but it is still a preference rather than the game telling you that a ninja cannot work on so-and-so fight regardless of how good the player is.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Isn't that exactly what we have now?

Nope. Tenacity and Piety are in many cases considered less optimal stats because of this. Taking 10% less damage isn't helpful when content is easier cleared when you can clear with 0% mitigation from Tenacity. increased MP recovery is meaningless when natural recovery and Lucid is enough to prevent you from running out in a fight.

Or do you want back the 5-tanks 3-healers Extreme Primal prog meta we had when dps checks lightened?

I never said no dps checks. Add phases, meteor phases and "last 10% burn the boss before it finishes casting a You Lose" stuff is fine.

In my mind a fight should be designed such that a group should be expected to clear in 10 minutes at intended ilevel but if the tanks and healers are good enough it can take up to 12 minutes.

How is this a flaw of terrain rather than a Z-axis in proximity checks? Or is the fact that even now I can be struck from 40 feet in the air by ground mobs still aggro'ed to me similarly an issue of (open world) zone design?

I was referring to the problem with twisters in T5. The twisters required that you be X distance from them when the spawned or they exploded. Character movement followed the irregular terrain which led to twisters exploding because characters didn't move far enough from the twister over the irregular terrain even though they had enough time to move away on a flat surface. For example the character needed to move 2y away from the twister to prevent it exploding, but due to irregular terrain they only ended up moving 1.8y. This was one of the major reasons they flattened out T5.

Only T1 and T5 had kiteable adds (unless stall-stratting T4 briefly instead of doing full AoE), and I did the prior just fine on SMN and BLM with very little potency loss and the latter was doable on any and all jobs, seeing as you could just keep hitting the boss while everyone else dealt with the add focusing you. These weren't an issue.

Was referring more to T7's Renauds and the fact that a Ranged dps needed to kite them into position. They were pretty much designed to be dealt with by a Bard. SMN could possibly handle them but I heard that they often had trouble doing so.