Balance, Accessibility, Diversity

[Wayfinder3]

the problem is the endgame when it becomes "raid or die". when you have the "savage" raiders coming here complaining that X class does more DPS than Y class. if you open up the "endgame" to more playstyles less people would care about balance.

look at a game like Path of Exile sure there is balancing but there is never a focus on "this class does too much, buff my class to match"

It’s funny how people are ignoring this stance because this is THE reason balance gets held to such a high standard. If there were alternative methods of high end content designed to challenge people that weren’t so DPS heavy by designed. You’d see jobs that aren’t very dps friendly but still contribute to an alternative setting take root there.

Say we get a exploratory raid like content similar to eureka where it’s not a bunch of isolated fights, but requires exploring and clearing certain objectives and killing difficult targets to navigate the duty. RDM would be very much viable in that field as opposed to BLM who is viable in the current landscape of raiding. Food for thought really, should we complaint about jobs being the same, or should we complain about the content not being diverse and challenging enough to bring out their diversity.

[Vendalwind]

Thinking on what wayfinder just said. Subdivided mechanics in raids that didnt require, but incentivized certain Classes would be really interesting. Shot in the dark idea but

(Scout mobility mechanics)What if dancers speed was enhanced in raids by 25% and same as ninja. Have a mechanic that is only completable by a ninja or dancer because of distance. that when completed grants a dps or alternate boon to the party.

(Heal check tank coop mechanics) mechanics where a healer has to heal an object to grant the party a dps or alternate boon, only completable if they are given significant focus time to do so via the team applying mitigations with perfection.

(Jumper mechanics) mechanic that can only be completed by a drg, brd, or sam via their backwards jump. Requires landing on a new platform via targetables that also has an eye mechanic so that you cant face it while jumping or you die.

Its off topic but would be a fun diversifying aspect to some fights. That could also be used with specificity to bring up some classes value in at least some of the fights in a tier.

[Vulcann]

give us alternate end games besides just savage raiding.

things like Mapping from Path of Exile or Rifts from Diablo 3. playable with others or trusts. then you can really diversify the classes instead of trying to fit them all into the raid scene.

[ForteNightshade]

give us alternate end games besides just savage raiding.

things like Mapping from Path of Exile or Rifts from Diablo 3. playable with others or trusts. then you can really diversify the classes instead of trying to fit them all into the raid scene.

The issue then becomes how do you offer rewards worthwhile enough for people to do that content? If it's equivalent ilvl to Savage, then people will opt for whatever is the easier of the two.

[Vulcann]

The issue then becomes how do you offer rewards worthwhile enough for people to do that content? If it's equivalent ilvl to Savage, then people will opt for whatever is the easier of the two.

make savage content drop items or give more currency toward items instead of the other content. and give savage items unique and interesting looks so that people will want to run it for glams. its shown that people will do content for glams with copied factory.

[Satarn]

give us alternate end games besides just savage raiding.

things like Mapping from Path of Exile or Rifts from Diablo 3. playable with others or trusts. then you can really diversify the classes instead of trying to fit them all into the raid scene.

While it would be nice to have more varied content in the game, this issue has nothing to do with the topic. Balance in savage isn't detrimental to the diversity of job gameplay, it might be to diversity of capabilities, but this can also be achieved with asymmetrical balance.

You also can't compare balance and gameplay of games like PoE and D3, which aren't even the same genre as FFXIV. You're talking about loot-based aRPGs with tons of different build options, completely different gear progression and no trinity roles. Nothing from those games translates into FFXIV. Hell, "gameplay" in D3 isn't even about actual gameplay per se, because that is just spamming one or two skills most of the time - it's about theory-crafting your build and collecting the gear for it.

Rifts in D3 were one of the most boring things I had the displeasure of playing. You know why? Because they're not meant to be engaging - they're just masses of mobs to test your build on and the fun part of the game is making that build and seeing it shred things.

We're talking about diversity of gameplay in an mmorpg with a trinity system and linear gear progression - if you want to play a looter aRPG then play one, instead of trying to turn a completely different game into your preffered genre, because you don't understand how different types of games could work.

Fun is relative, even though I can see your point. My priorities when gaming are, for example, probably vastly different than yours as I couldn't care less about "overcoming challenges" or consider difficult (or only difficult) content as "fun".

You are overestimating what I mean by "challenge" here. Not everybody wants to do the most difficult content obviously, but whether consciously or not, humans naturally enjoy problem solving and that's why games are considered a fun activity. The thing to overcome might be as simple as stacking three icons of the same color together, but it still requires your input and therefore certain effort, no matter how small. Even the simplest of games require certain limitations to be enjoyable, because they need to be a problem to solve.

That's also why majority of people dislikes grinding one thing for a long time - it quickly becomes repetitive and boring, because there's no new challenge to overcome.

[Vulcann]

this issue has nothing to do with the topic. Balance in savage isn't detrimental to the diversity

actually it is, when a game's only endgame is raiding every class needs to be "raid viable" and the easiest way to make every class "raid viable" is by making each class in a specific archtype very similar yet with maybe a couple special actions that lets them be a bit different. this has been happening in every game that goes the "raid focus" route.

game starts off with a unique and diverse class lineup
game introduces raiding
raiders complain when specific classes are more useful than others
developers start removing the uniqueness from classes to satisfy raiders
raiders complain more
rinse and repeat.

you open up other ways to acquire gear besides raiding and you can start adding unique and diverse classes.

[Satarn]

game starts off with a unique and diverse class lineup
game introduces raiding
raiders complain when specific classes are more useful than others
developers start removing the uniqueness from classes to satisfy raiders
raiders complain more
rinse and repeat.

Your obvious raiders-hate-boner aside, this doesn't even make sense when you look at the history of the game.

FFXIV had raiding pretty much from the very beginning in ARR(1.x doesn't count). I think most people will agree that jobs were at their most diverse back in Heavensward - when raiding was very much there and at its most hardcore to boot. The HW era had something else to it though, specifically in the jobs department - they weren't just diverse, they were also very complex and therefore not all that casual-friendly.

The homogenization of jobs wasn't for balance - it was for accessibility. The more casual part of the playerbase complained about things being too hard, too "clunky" as people often say and in order to appease them, SE started dumbing things down, simplifying and cutting out each job's unique mechanics and as side effect making them less diverse. Then those complaints continued in Stormblood and 5.0 dumbed things down even further.
Those "raid focused" games you speak of - were they not also more and more casual-friendly as the time went by?

Interestingly Eureka - which is as far away from the raid-style content as XIV ever got - came in 4.x and somehow the expansion after adding this new, "refreshing", original, non-raid content, things are getting less and less diverse. We are going to get more Eureka-style content in next patch series and somehow SE didn't give us more unique options in preparation for that, how come? By your logic, Shadowbringers should be when the jobs are at their most-diverse, but alas here we are.

I've said it many times and I'll say it again: balance(and by extension raiders) are concerned with numerical outcomes, which can be equally achieved with as diverse rotations and job mechanics as you could wish for.
Balance and raids are not the issue - that is unless you're really hell-bent on playing a job that's solely focused on non-combat utility like Peloton or decreasing people's fall damage, in which case you should probably look for a different game.

[Vulcann]

Your obvious raiders-hate-boner aside, this doesn't even make sense when you look at the history of the game.

yeah yeah i forgot the egos of raiders can't take any sort of criticism or else that person is dubbed a raid hater. i have raided for 20 years from eq1 all the way to the latest expansion of WoW. so yeah i know how raiding works and i know the effects it has on games. when you focus solely on raid progression when it comes to character balance you can throw the uniqueness of class out the window. its happened in literally every game that has a focus on raiding. sure the "casual" base effects its as well but the larger driving force in every single game with raiding is the "elite raiders"

[Mahoukenshi]

Games are about overcoming challenges and solving problems - if there's nothing to overcome or solve then what is there really to have fun from?

Fun is relative, even though I can see your point. My priorities when gaming are, for example, probably vastly different than yours as I couldn't care less about "overcoming challenges" or consider difficult (or only difficult) content as "fun". This may make my mindset not compatible with some single-player games or the "generally accepted" MMO mentality of end game, but also doesn't make it wrong per-say. With MMOs appealing to the emtional side of players with powre fantasy, self-insert and wish-fulfilling tropes, stuff like "fun", flair etc do, of course, collide with the hard cold side of numbers. Or else, damage jobs wouldn't be as abundant and massively "overplayed", compared to tank/healer or support jobs, even though the numbers would theoretically be the same.