Balance, Homogenisation and Encounter Design: The Problem.

[PatronasCharm]

I know y`all been discussing job homogenisation and such, but to me, I believe gear is where this game fails at. You mentione Ohat in your post, man I remember spending weeks with my LS trying to get RDM / BLMs / WHMs Rostrum Pumps just because they added "Enhances Fast Cast" and that +3% (think that's how much it gave) to fast cast to me meant so much to me! Or stacking "Fast Cast" gear on BLM to cast faster, or Magic Attack Bonus to hit harder, I mean I miss that. Why couldn't FFXIV have a Merit system that lets you add more points to Intellegence? Add points to Determination without Melding to gear?

I just want cool loot to chase after, that's all I've always wanted from this game. Something unique / different / fun stats, cool perks, ANYTHING that will have me chasing after it until I get THAT item. Loot for your specific class that changes it a little bit, hey this Red Mage Relic hat gives you access to Verwater?! What! I want that, hey those boots there, they give you Spell Speed +15%, or this body piece here gives: Added Refresh Effect +5, Magical Critical Hit Rate +10%... But sadly, I don't see FFXIV's design changing, so I'll play this game, and sometimes hop on to FFXI on occasion, and in the near future, I can only hope we get a new FF MMORPG with a cool loot system.

[Acidblood]

When you remove the hard enrage you remove any reason to perform any mechanic except to the extent that you survive that mechanic and that mechanic alone. There is no interconnectedness. There is no lingering consequence. Survival in each mechanic becomes even MORE binary. There are no degrees of risk-reward. There is no need to find a balance between the two.

A hard enrage is precisely what makes it so you don't need only to survive to the end (hard enrage) or not. Running around like headless chickens simply will not get you through mechanics. You can have a party that's bad at one mechanic or two and have to completely divert their focus for it or come up with strategies that favor mitigating risk (survival) over facilitating reward (uptime) and a hard enrage will allow for that leniency on those few mechanics so long as you can perform the others sufficiently well.

Neither gameplay with or without a hard enrage will ever reward you for overhealing or overmitigation. Ever. You would need to incorporate a gimmick 'deep damage' mechanic or the like whereby players are temporarily crippled if reduced to critical HP or whatnot. The only difference you'll get from removing hard enrages is the ability to average out your performance check over multiple mechanics, to recover over the course of other mechanics what you struggle with on one or few particular mechanics.

Given the current state of the combat system, where the party effectively has infinite resources, and DPS loss (including death) is the only real penalty that mechanics can apply, I would agree. The downside is of course that the system inherently lacks depth*, and what little it may have will probably, over time, be removed in the name of 'balance' (see: this forum and the progression of combat in FFXIV so far).

Which is OK (I guess), but without any depth (e.g. a spectrum of party compositions) content gets stale extremely quickly and a constant stream of new, well designed and (hopefully) engaging content is required to keep the game afloat**.

* Don't confuse complexity (e.g. the current stat system, or a new boss mechanic) for depth (or simplicity for the lack of it), complexity will always get boiled down in time but if there is no real choice underlying it then there is no depth.

** Again, this is OK (I guess) but it means putting a lot of resources into constant content regeneration, resources that (arguably) could have been better spent elsewhere, such as making Diadem not so... umm, yeah. It also risks content becoming copy / paste (see: FFXIV dungeons, and even to an extent trials and raids).

If job identity causes one tank to deliberately sacrifice all but 1 hp, then let it die.

Otherwise, this tank uses a gunblade, that tank uses a sword and shield. This ranged DPS shoots arrows, that ranged DPS dances. This caster summons egis, that caster attacks from near and far. All these melee DPS use positionals differently.

Those differences are sufficient for job identity.

Wow, so are we really down to cosmetics and pushing buttons in a slightly different order?

[linay]

Wow, so are we really down to cosmetics and pushing buttons in a slightly different order?

In my opinion, as it should be. A job is not just a job. It has a role and role identity trumps job identity. A dark knight should be a tank first and foremost in its identity and utility in a fight while offering the identity of a dark knight in terms of aesthetic and lore and flavor text and maybe order of rotation.

[ForteNightshade]

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.

They know FFlogs exists, and thereby know most raiders will have this knowledge. There is no excuse for any jobs to have that large a discrepancy. It isn't player preference, it's basic pragmatism.

[linay]

It isn't player preference, it's basic pragmatism.

Pragmatism is why I said I don't blame people for being picky about jobs. But this is a video game, not a matter of life and death. Being pragmatic is still player preference. As you've said yourself, a group of friends could very well be cool with not having the best jobs. As long as people are skilled enough (to at least make some progress), they could still have a good time running any content.

[Shurrikhan]

Given the current state of the combat system, where the party effectively has infinite resources, and DPS loss (including death) is the only real penalty that mechanics can apply, I would agree. The downside is of course that the system inherently lacks depth*, and what little it may have will probably, over time, be removed in the name of 'balance' (see: this forum and the progression of combat in FFXIV so far).

Again, though, hard enrages do not enforce certain metas. Bad balancing does. While it is true that removing hard enrages outright would likely give us a different meta (e.g. defensive and curative utilities above all) when damage is not equally enforced for dps check mechanics specifically, that wouldn't really be any more varied, just dependent upon different imbalances to form said meta -- which would likely only swap one favored set of 4 with a new favored 4. When the jobs are properly balanced, the "meta" is only a vague notion or just a matter of which CDs are most easily aligned in a particular fight.

Since you mention infinite resources, I have to ask -- What additional depth is specifically gained by having finite healing resources? Is depth increased by no longer being capable of so many Raises? Is depth increased by no longer being able to AoE heal except in the most sparing of ways? I'd imagine those questions are hardly answerable on principle alone; it depends upon exactly what gameplay decisions are brought into what balance of each other, thus creating more or fewer options in a given scenario. Such is contextual. And almost none of it would be unique to making resources more finite.

For instance, there's little that finite resources could do to inflate risk that, say, Supplication (max HP down based on damage taken) could not. It's just that non-healers can no longer see the increased risk themselves (i.e. directly or intuitively) and other's mistakes now more directly affect their survival.

It's not that a hard enrage is removing available mechanical depth. It, again, is just a way to make individual mechanics not quite so overbearing while still keeping the fight at the same combined difficulty. We can still make mechanics even more cumulative in other ways. We already see this with vulnerability stacks. We see it with raid damage mechanics like Doomtrain's. We see it with Flare placement. We could easily see it with AoE overlaps where 3 would be fatal without shields, 4 fatal regardless, 2 an uptime increase, and 1 healing/vuln stacks spared.

T8 had us control the pace of long and short term risk in tandem against additional scripted raid damage. T7 had large ranges in safety based on player tactics. T6 had greatly divergent risk-reward strats, with short-term safety (worms/brambles) against long-term safety (the hard enrage). T1, albeit a soft enrage if you prefer that terminology, set risk of add management and resources wasted against boss damage stacks and healing.

There are plethora more opportunities to create interesting mechanics with a larger emphasis on survival. It's just about finding the right balance between stopping people at one mechanic until they've beaten their heads against it enough and giving them a little more leniency in individual mechanics in favor of the whole. Hard enrage is simply the easiest way to provide that flex, not that we don't have plenty of other examples (T1, T2, T6, and T8 most noticeably) of other means of bringing both short- and long-term risk.

Removing such varied elements of fight design wasn't done in consequence of 'stagnant metas that undervalue indirect contribution to clears' designs. Rather, it's what led directly to that state so many take issue with.

[Shurrikhan]

If job identity causes one tank to deliberately sacrifice all but 1 hp, then let it die.

Otherwise, this tank uses a gunblade, that tank uses a sword and shield. This ranged DPS shoots arrows, that ranged DPS dances. This caster summons egis, that caster attacks from near and far. All these melee DPS use positionals differently.

Those differences are sufficient for job identity.

Why? There's little to no additional risk to, say, Superbolide over Hallowed Ground when well managed -- save in that it has a shorter duration. Why should we, their party members, be denied these interactions with these idiosyncrasies? Why should those tanks themselves? I'm not about to defend Living Dead's design, but even it is something that I've learned to work around on any healer, saving Aetherflow, Emergency, and Recitation or Excog to burst heal the DRK back up in the last couple GCDs on SCH, holding every other Bene for it on WHM, etc., etc.

Differences, so long as they're not abhorrently designed (e.g. Living Dead), are generally fun to play with and around. Do not reduce jobs to simple reskins, relabels, and re-lores of Tank, Healer, Melee, Ranged, and Caster.

[Dzian]

I have no choice but to assume people like you are using homogenization as a buzz word as some kind of agenda to make one or more classes worthless,

People like you quoted are typically the people using the word correctly. The very definition of Homogenization is to make thinigs uniform or similar.

and when every job within a given role has an incredibly similar toolkit then that is homogenization. when every tank gets a 30% cooldown at level 38 that is uniformity. it is similarity. it doesn't matter that one tank might use a shield for that 30% cooldown and the other uses an axe. it's irrelivant. the point is they both have a uniform toolkit and similar capabilites, thus they are homogenized.

dps is the same it really doesn't matter that one class uses a polearm and another uses fists. there toolkits provide them with the same capabilites and a uniform set of skills. every dps has the same tools to stun or silence or use second wind etc etc. and once again it really doesnt matter if one stuns with a polearm and the other with a punch.. they both have the same capabilities thus homogenized.

[ForteNightshade]

Hard Enrages are one of the main issues with this game when it comes to endgame to be honest. Why everyone only cares about DPS. Just pure stupid game design.

Should make them soft enrages. 10mins or whatever hits. Bosses get a stack of dmg taken -10% and damage dealt +10% then an additional stack for each 30secs - minute after that, to the point where it is impossible to kill.

Not the oh well you are at 5% guess what though... you had a Ast, nin, and rdm in your party so you timed out. Do not worry though you can wait 3 weeks longer then groups of equal skill to clear it or play the meta jobs.

While I do like soft enrages, they functionally serve the same purpose. In fact, they're more likely to encourage a DPS focused mentality. After all, if you lose the DPS checks or fail a mechanic, the boss just became even harder.

Regardless, seeing enrage has nothing whatsoever to do with the job selection you pick. Your odds may be better with jobs like Monk and Black Mage but none are so bad they literally cannot clear.

Pragmatism is why I said I don't blame people for being picky about jobs. But this is a video game, not a matter of life and death. Being pragmatic is still player preference. As you've said yourself, a group of friends could very well be cool with not having the best jobs. As long as people are skilled enough (to at least make some progress), they could still have a good time running any content.

The difference being you know those seven other people, and know they can compensate for your preferred job's shortcomings. A random pug does not, which is why you see certain jobs being locked out, albeit not nearly to the extent people like to insinuate. No matter how you slice it, the onus lies with the dev team to make each job competitive within its own category. Player preference does play a factor, but that preference comes from how each job performs.

Wow, so are we really down to cosmetics and pushing buttons in a slightly different order?

To be fair, certain aspects of a job need to be uniform. Otherwise, people prioritize the superior option above all else. I mean, why wouldn't they? Case in point, when Paladin was the physical tank and Dark Knight magical. You saw less and less Paladins because practically the entirety of Alexander was magic heavy.

[linay]

Why? There's little to no additional risk to, say, Superbolide over Hallowed Ground when well managed -- save in that it has a shorter duration. Why should we, their party members, be denied these interactions with these idiosyncrasies? Why should those tanks themselves? I'm not about to defend Living Dead's design, but even it is something that I've learned to work around on any healer, saving Aetherflow, Emergency, and Recitation or Excog to burst heal the DRK back up in the last couple GCDs on SCH, holding every other Bene for it on WHM, etc., etc.

Differences, so long as they're not abhorrently designed (e.g. Living Dead), are generally fun to play with and around. Do not reduce jobs to simple reskins, relabels, and re-lores of Tank, Healer, Melee, Ranged, and Caster.

It's fun for some people and not fun for others. That's fine, but my point remains that a dark knight will still be a dark knight and not a paladin regardless if LD works the same as HG or not. Shared effects of certain skills would just point to the shared role between the two.

I'm not against differences, but I'd prefer that those differences are not for the sake of having a difference in fear of "death of job identity," but rather because those differences provide good alternatives. It can be hard to achieve because pragmatism dictates that if you can show one alternative to be better than another, then there is really no point to the alternative. That's when "job identity" should not be used as an excuse to keep the worse alternative. Either improve the weaker alternative while still having it be different or make them the same effect-wise and stick to aesthetic/lore difference.

No matter how you slice it, the onus lies with the dev team to make each job competitive within its own category.

Hence, homogenization.