Encounters need to be designed to let people play the class they want to.

[Rydin]

This is ALWAYS going to be an issue in games that don't want to make every character made homogenized. There will always be some form of efficient setup as a result. Short of a debuff to power for overusing one specific class in a party, or requiring use of specific classes to do something, it's almost impossible to guarantee balance for any one thing.

Doing any of these things to prevent the "preferred" setup just makes the game overall less fun for everyone. Sure it'll get you into that event/fight/whatever easier, but it'll exclude others at the same time, almost to a degree of necessity. "Sorry, we can't invite you because we already have a <insert your class>" or "LFM need <least used class> so we can start the fight".

From the developers standpoint, you ask for the impossible when you ask too much. You don't want homogenization, you want there to be prevention of preferred setups that excludes your preferred playstyle (even though outside of the preferred, you still do fine), yet you still want them to treat things as though it were.

I would not be surprised if folks actually think it can be done in one days work to balance the game out. Thinking that it takes no thought at all for developers to, for example, make any fight in the game automatically adjust the difficulty according to party member classes, levels, gear, etc. That it's just a simple matter of typing "balance" in a single line of code. That'd be awesome, and probably would put a large number of people on an unemployed list, but that's not how it works.

What about something like this:
Taken from this thread

Imagine a boss who had a shield... and with that shield, he took very little damage. So you have a Lancer use the Vorpal thrust>Impulse Drive>Chaos Thrust Combo. If the chaos thrust is executed on the shield arm side, you get the message "Shield arm appears weak and shaky"
When that happens... a marauder uses Maim>Godsbane on the shield arm and the arm falls, Defense is reduced 40% but attack speed increases 10%
those are arbitrary numbers... The point is you make the fight doable but very difficult without completing the special objective... and easier but still tough when you do complete the optional objective
He still wouldn't be an easy fight with the incap but he'd go from being stupid hard to just Ifrit hard.

Then when his HP fell below 20% he'd put up a magic Ice paling. The only way to repel the magic paling is with a Battle regimen that had (in this order) fire, wind and then concussive blow
Fire to weaken the ice, wind to intensify the flames and concussive blow to shatter the paling
With the paling down... his defense and magic defense go down 25%
(again arbitrary number enfeeble, but you get what I'm saying)
You could make the debuff 50% decrease in defense... whatever....

At 10% HP, his regen increases. The only way to mitigate that is with Piercing arrow>gloom Arrow>Bloodletter combo
Once again... you can beat him without that. It is just noticeably tougher

The point is you could go into the fight with 5 of whatever class deals damage the best at the time, but without being able to complete the optional objectives, you're in for one hell of a fight.

Also by making multiple objectives in 1 fight... you allow for different parties to fight it their way.

You can say "We don't have a marauder for the shield incap... but thats ok, we've got the other 2 incaps covered.
Or "We don't have an Archer for the 'Final Blow' incap, but we've got a strong DPS team and we can do the Shield and magic paling incaps so we should be good.

This way, you could take a very mixed party and have fun on NMs
Instead of
/shout Ifrit party, 3/8, need thaums only

[Welsper59]

What about something like this:
Taken from this thread

While I would absolutely love to see something like that put in, for the fun of such an elaborate fight option, it would still bring about the whole "need A to do B" sort of mentality with class choice. As unfortunate as it is, it'd probably bring about a worse case of it, because the optimal setup would involve having to have a class the party lacks, which for most people will mean they'll need to have all potential classes leveled and available. My use of "optimal" refers to the quickest/easiest.

Sometimes, you just won't have that diversity available, and like everything else this game (and others) have, it's possible to do things without the preferred/optimal setup... you just end up having to take the harder route. People tend to just not bother if that's the case, which is the source of the complaint at hand. They'll look at it as though the default difficulty (currently the diverse party setup) is the "hard mode" way of doing things. It's unrealistic to expect balance to be 100% regardless of circumstance.

*Edit: Ugh confused myself. Trying to say that even with such a proposed change, the harder choice (which would be not having specific diverse classes) would be looked down upon. Thus "forcing" people to level multiple classes, just in case a party needs something, rather than the currently unwanted leveling of the one (or two) preferred class. Which I'm assuming is the hassle people are trying to argue about.

[prymortal]

I'm looking at all these "you can play any class & win" so i put this question to you & if you can post pics & video i'll accept your right!: (current patch)
What if everyone wanted to play "MONK" against ifrit. ~ just monk class
(i know you used to be able to play all lancer till a patch now u cant do it & win)
What if a party played moogles without any conj/whm/blm/thm.

I agree with the original statment they need to make it so you can play any class, also any class combo in these things, im not saying make it easier im saying balance it properly. Balance it for the classes that enter!

[Jeffdogg]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVlLSzCff_o

Nope you can use whatever class you desire to ,
above Video of "Doctor Mog" prove that it's possible to do all class run.
As i always say that "other people just prefer to use some certain classes because it's easier"
Yes , you can use DRG in AV , WAR on Ifrit , MNK on Moogle and whatever class on Chimera
but party leader and other people in the party may not welcome you if you're not in LS party
(pickup party sure want to use the best strategy & party for the success run)
I don't think this is a game nor content fault

I agree, its like on FFXI when it came to CoP missions. People get it stuck in their head that only certain jobs can complete certain missions when that wasn't true at all. All classes can do all fights and missions, the problem is people listen to others and read walkthrus that make people think it can only be done with certain classes which is complete rubbish..

[Rydin]

While I would absolutely love to see something like that put in, for the fun of such an elaborate fight option, it would still bring about the whole "need A to do B" sort of mentality with class choice. As unfortunate as it is, it'd probably bring about a worse case of it, because the optimal setup would involve having to have a class the party lacks, which for most people will mean they'll need to have all potential classes leveled and available. My use of "optimal" refers to the quickest/easiest.

Sometimes, you just won't have that diversity available, and like everything else this game (and others) have, it's possible to do things without the preferred/optimal setup... you just end up having to take the harder route. People tend to just not bother if that's the case, which is the source of the complaint at hand. They'll look at it as though the default difficulty (currently the diverse party setup) is the "hard mode" way of doing things. It's unrealistic to expect balance to be 100% regardless of circumstance.

*Edit: Ugh confused myself. Trying to say that even with such a proposed change, the harder choice (which would be not having specific diverse classes) would be looked down upon. Thus "forcing" people to level multiple classes, just in case a party needs something, rather than the currently unwanted leveling of the one (or two) preferred class. Which I'm assuming is the hassle people are trying to argue about.

Yes but this way I think people would be more likely to just go with a different setup
Like if you had no MNK... you might still go in with another class

But now... people will sit and wait hours if they can't find a BLM or whatever to go in a dungeon

[DoctorMog]

I'm looking at all these "you can play any class & win" so i put this question to you & if you can post pics & video i'll accept your right!: (current patch)
What if everyone wanted to play "MONK" against ifrit. ~ just monk class
(i know you used to be able to play all lancer till a patch now u cant do it & win)
What if a party played moogles without any conj/whm/blm/thm.

I agree with the original statment they need to make it so you can play any class, also any class combo in these things, im not saying make it easier im saying balance it properly. Balance it for the classes that enter!

1 of every class AV speed run:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVlLSzCff_o

[Jeffdogg]

1 of every class AV speed run:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVlLSzCff_o

You tell em DoctorMog!!!!

[DoctorMog]

1 of every class Ifrit, moogle, darkhold, w/e you name it.

It's not hard anymore.

[Wevlum]

Rather than punishing class stacking or forcing people to use specific classes to do various incaps (although that could be cool) they could try to just give us incentives to use diverse class combinations. We already have this slightly via the fact different classes have different skills but they could take this further.

The new battle regimens might do this but as another example how about group class traits;

Each class/job has a trait and that trait is given to all party members when partying. Stacking the traits would give no beneficial effect i.e. if mnk had a lowered weapon delay trait stacking 2 mnks would not give the trait twice or give a boosted effect. Therefor stacking multiple jobs can be done and you won't be punished for it but you'd get a greater number of traits from using a diverse class combination.

Just a suggestion but I'd sooner see rewards for being diverse rather than punishment for having classes stacked.

[Sortis]

Too many of the encounters or dungeons in the game are designed to encourage people to bring only certain classes. I can understand the need for a tank and a white mage but for damage dealers, there is an uneven skew toward certain jobs.

These changes should come along with the fact that paladin is being fixed to fulfill whatever it's intended role is. A lot of people cannot do content because they haven't leveled a certain class/job.

I agree with what you're saying, but I think your fight is with the community, not the dev team. XI and XIV communities are renowned in the MMO community for being close minded elitests.