Balance, Homogenisation and Encounter Design: The Problem.

[linay]

Generally you kinda do. Socializing to many people means doing things with other people. and in xivs context that generally means being part of a group.

Seperating into multiple parties isn't really socialising either ts segregation. if you and 8 or 9 of your friends all got together and went to a restaurant for a meal would you split up into 2 or 3 groups or would you have 1 big table for the whole group?

XIV is much the same. if 5 of you want to go and do something together what do you do? do 4 of you go do expert and exclude the 5th? of you go with some random pugs to fill the group that might have there own agendas that dont mesh with your goals.

XIV is much the same this is why people have wanted FC content since early beta's. content that wholegroups of people can be a part of and take part in. that was one of the ideas behind the old concept of FC's having the power to summon primals. and it's that kind of group interaction and team work that people have wanted for a long time.

it's been a long standing complaint that it's impossible to include everyone in things because there's nothing to do. the closest thing to fitting content would be canals/aquopolis with its flexible party sizes but even thats limited.

It's not sociable if a player has to leave a group of friends in order to progresss in a quest. sociable would beif that palyer and his friends could actually go do that whole quest together. rahter than each of them having to do it alone...

how often do players leave free companies because they dont feel a part of the group? how can they when it's impossible to include them..

recent example of personal experience was when HoH came out and 5 of us wanted to static it.... ummmmm?

So it's only socializing if all the people get to do it together at the same time? What if HoH can be done with 5 people and there are 6 of you? What if raids can be done with 40 people and there are 45 of you? Sometimes some people will be left out unless every content can be done with flexible party size, but that doesn't mean the game is anti-social.

[linay]

To comment on the FC issue:

Free Companies in this game honestly do not function as guilds. They function as chat channels. There is honestly no guild content in FFXIV, literally 0.

The problem in Free companies is if you are attempting to building anything besides a social casual guild it is destined to fail, simply due to the game makes it impossible to really build a guild. FFXIV is one of the only AAA mmo games where this is the case.

Statics are the anti-guild honestly, a click within a guild almost always destabilizes the greater guild as people only want to do things with their group of people thus leaving out huge chunks of the guild making members not in statics leave. I had to kick a whole static of 8 ppl out of my guild in HW due to them wanting to Sell clears at a discount to the guild instead of helping them, because they did not want to "Carry PPL"..... This crap is the problem.

You do not have that feeling of a guild in ffxiv. It is I am in X static. Thing is I cannot blame the shift to static mentality, the game forces you to prioritize statics over guilds. The game actually punishes you for attempting to do endgame as a guild. Aka loot penalties for helping guild members clear content. In my guild even when it had 80 ppl in it... most static groups made their own discords and hung out there. So with 30-40 ppl online 6-7 would be on the guild discord while 20-25 would be on private discords. <= this is toxic as hell to the guild btw.

Guilds in mmos have always been the backbone of your social circle, what made mmos different then another online game. yes you can socialize in DF and such but it is not even close to the same as doing content with your guild.

Free Companies in FFXIV die or fail to actually grow because there is nothing for them to build on. They are not needed in this game. Honestly in the mmo world... FFXIV has the absolute worst guild system and guild support I have ever seen. At least from my experience from mmos I have been a guild leader in or officer in. EQ, WoW, FFXI, FFXIV, Archeage, RO, Aion.

I can agree to that in general, though I think it's interesting you exclude social guilds from those guilds that are destined to fail. As for the loot penalty, it is probably to prevent people from selling loot runs while content is new.

[Saidosha]

Matchmaking systems aren't really the evil they're touted in being. Rather, they just expose a lot of what already existed. Make no mistake, not everyone is going to like everyone. Sometimes those reasons are legitimate and others are going to be pretty petty. When someone has nothing to gain from a particular piece of content, the only real incentive to repeat it is either to help a friend or just because they're really bored and/or want a change of pace. And while I'd generally say SE has done what they could when it comes to roulettes, there are still encounters that you know people are also going to groan over when they pop into them.

That said, I favor expansion of the Trust system because not everyone plays at peak times where there's no shortage of people to queue into content in a timely manner. We also know that the number of DPS player exponentially outweigh those in Healer and Tank roles, where adding more of the latter isn't really going to shift the dynamic much when what's more likely is those who already like those roles would just ping-pong between them as mood strikes. I know I've had 50+ minute queues for things like certain primal fights or even something like MSQ roulette only to feel pretty blah about it when I just see the projected time creep higher and higher. While a manned party would be faster within the content itself, I'd often say not having to fight the queue would offset that. And who knows, maybe DPS players might get the "in need" bonus from time to time.

But in the end, I know I certainly don't sub to a game to not be able to play it when I'd like to. That's the curse of group content, and further so the more and more you jack up manpower requirements or introduce RNG like BLU spell learning. I've also done enough organized stuff to know that even if you set a time for things, you'll have people who show up late or are unprepared, sometimes to the point plans have to change if a missing body is integral. I'd also be remiss to not point out that XIV's faster paced combat doesn't really facilitate typing while playing, either. Some get around this with voice chat, but this also isn't something can't expect or demand of others even if some really think you should. Put another way, if I don't want to put with jerks, and subsequently aiding their own progress, for any reason, I shouldn't have to. It's not because I hate people, but because I hate wasting time waiting for the stars to align. And I can only imagine those with less time on their hands than I would hate it just as much.

[Granyala]

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.

The DEVs want people to be able to play any class and they want super tightly tuned raid bosses.
That and is the sole reason you see every class having the same tools and having roughly the same numbers because quite frankly, it's not fun to have a class with gameplay you love but that isn't strong enough to be useful in a raid setting. Homogenization is really the only answer here if you want to keep the difficulty in raiding.

The only other answer would be to move away from super tight tuning and accept that some classes outperform others to a moderate degree. Even then, you have to factor in the players: they will shun any class that is sub par because in their eyes it makes stuff unnecessarily difficult. So players w/o the FOTM classes will face hardships. Also, most peeps would cry pretty hard if SE made savage raiding significantly easier in order to accommodate moderate class imbalance.

If there was an easy solution to the homogenization issue, DEVs of multiple MMOs would have found it by now.

[Shurrikhan]

If there was an easy solution to the homogenization issue, DEVs of multiple MMOs would have found it by now.

It's not a matter of all or none. It's a matter of how much. And plenty of MMOs have found ways to achieve tighter balance than our DPS have with less homogeneity among them. Homogeneous classes isn't a fundamental or inevitable issue. It's contextual, dependent upon implementation of the exact toolkits and in the tier's fights.

No one is arguing that there shouldn't be anything alike between jobs, only that most jobs should have more distinct, compelling, and cohesive kits than they currently have.

[RyuDragnier]

It's not a matter of all or none. It's a matter of how much. And plenty of MMOs have found ways to achieve tighter balance than our DPS have with less homogeneity among them. Homogeneous classes isn't a fundamental or inevitable issue. It's contextual, dependent upon implementation of the exact toolkits and in the tier's fights.

No one is arguing that there shouldn't be anything alike between jobs, only that most jobs should have more distinct, compelling, and cohesive kits than they currently have.

The problem is that it then makes the playerbase do the homogenizing. If you want to raid in GW2/ESO, and you want to be healer, but you're not using X class, Y build or Z gear? You're not getting in. Homogenization will happen one way or the other. Either the devs take a hand in this to limit it so most classes can be taken without fuss, or they don't and then the playerbase causes the fuss and the classes are not wanted or won't be allowed into the content, punishing a small subset of players just for playing their class a specific way, homogenizing everybody into specific builds.

[Shurrikhan]

The problem is that it then makes the playerbase do the homogenizing. If you want to raid in GW2/ESO, and you want to be healer, but you're not using X class, Y build or Z gear? You're not getting in. Homogenization will happen one way or the other. Either the devs take a hand in this to limit it so most classes can be taken without fuss, or they don't and then the playerbase causes the fuss and the classes are not wanted or won't be allowed into the content, punishing a small subset of players just for playing their class a specific way, homogenizing everybody into specific builds.

Except there is no such need when jobs are actually balanced decently.

"Taking a hand" only necessarily equates to balancing, not to homogenizing. Replace homogenization with any other action we'd normally rather avoid. Should the law "take a hand" in theft to ensure there's nothing left for the people to steal (thereby "ending theft")? That's effectively the argument you're using here: by providing the worst outcome automatically, we won't feel bad about making things worst for ourselves.

You're conflating homogeneity and balance. Again. You can have balance without homogenization. Is it as easy? No. But should we submit to having only 4 classes in the game -- 1 for each Role -- just because the devs want the easiest means of balancing? No.

[RyuDragnier]

Except there is no such need when jobs are actually balanced decently.

Nothing is ever balanced decently when it comes to raiding. There will always be one move, one skill, one setup, that will be greater than the others. Weaken it, and another will suddenly become better. It's a neverending cycle, you cannot stop the playerbase from creating its own meta, you'll only be playing Whack-A-Mole. Or you do what SE is doing, and homogenize them to begin with, and get things just balanced enough to where people don't care if you bring X or Y class (like how it is currently with tanks).

You're conflating homogeneity and balance. Again. You can have balance without homogenization. Is it as easy? No. But should we submit to having only 4 classes in the game -- 1 for each Role -- just because the devs want the easiest means of balancing? No.

They stand in tandem, quite a bit. Look at GW2 and ESO, classes are not homogenized, and you have the problem with the playerbase homogenizing the setups to do things. It's wildly unbalanced and will never be balanced. Look at the tanks right now in FF14. They're homogenized quite a bit, but they're balanced enough to where nobody is wanting one job more than the others.

[Hatstand]

The problem is that it then makes the playerbase do the homogenizing. If you want to raid in GW2/ESO, and you want to be healer, but you're not using X class, Y build or Z gear? You're not getting in. Homogenization will happen one way or the other. Either the devs take a hand in this to limit it so most classes can be taken without fuss, or they don't and then the playerbase causes the fuss and the classes are not wanted or won't be allowed into the content, punishing a small subset of players just for playing their class a specific way, homogenizing everybody into specific builds.

I'd rather have to play GNB/BLM/MNK/WHM or whatever the most powerful jobs in each role are for raiding and be able to mess around with other jobs which have fun and distinct identities outside of raids (and maybe even raid with those jobs in groups that can accept being 5 seconds slower to finish the raid, or clearing a day or two later) than have a choice between GNB1,GNB2,GNB3,GNB4/BLM1,BLM2... etc. If the jobs don't each offer something unique and worthwhile (and I don't consider different animations or weapons unique and worthwhile) then there's no point in having multiple of them.

That's not to say that balance isn't good, and that we shouldn't try to make sure all jobs are close enough to the same effectiveness to be able to be taken by whatever group, but there have to be limits.

[Shurrikhan]

Nothing is ever balanced decently when it comes to raiding. There will always be one move, one skill, one setup, that will be greater than the others. Weaken it, and another will suddenly become better. It's a neverending cycle, you cannot stop the playerbase from creating its own meta, you'll only be playing Whack-A-Mole. Or you do what SE is doing, and homogenize them to begin with, and get things just balanced enough to where people don't care if you bring X or Y class (like how it is currently with tanks).

A rotation between 4 choices according to some prioritized capacity by which one ends up faintly superior for a given fight >>>> only ever having 1 choice, period.

Otherwise, what's your complaint? Even in incredible imbalance you have as many choices as you have under complete homogeneity.

Your "solution" to the worst thing that could happen (one choice) is to enforce... the worst that could happen (one choice).

They didn't need to homogenize to reach balance. All but the tanks were MORE balanced previously, despite LESS homogenization.