Ranged DPS jobs - disappointing?

[Ramura_Sono]

if jobs are well designed and work, i.e. have a compeling "class fantasy" and smooth and engaging gameplay people will use it, if a job lacks these thing than things like damage will not change that.

Except people will absolutely ignore a lack of compelling class fantasy and gameplay issues if a job has high damage. 5.05 Monk attests to that. Even HW Bard itself while having gameplay that was hated by a vast number of people saw heavy usage due to it's high damage potential. The exact opposite is far more true. A job slightly lacking in damage will never be used even if it has a compelling class fantasy or engaging gameplay. Monk's gameplay in HW was highly engaging. You still almost never saw it due to it's damage potential being low. Players in this game have always cared more about the damage potential of a job than anything else. Look at the threads from 5.0 asking for Bard to get it's song buffs back because, "muh class fantasy". What happened when the buffs were reinstated? We had threads immediately following up complaining about the subsequent potency nerfs that were implemented to balance the rdps increases the songs brought. It was never about class fantasy, or compelling gameplay. It was an attempt to get damage buffs veiled behind "class fantasy".

If compelling class fantasy and engaging gameplay will see people use a job then why aren't Bards and ranged in general asking for improvements in these areas? Even when they ask for more support abilities, it is almost always for support of an offensive nature. Damage potential is where players have always put the most weight when it comes to job selection.

Bard has been top of the totem pole for nearly 7 years. They'll survive not being top tier for an expansion. Other jobs have survived being in a far worse place for far longer.

[Claire_Pendragon]

Except people will absolutely ignore a lack of compelling class fantasy and gameplay issues if a job has high damage.

Id say a significant portion, but not the majority.
ppl who prefer classes based on identity/aesthetics are more likely to be the players not doing endgame content. (which is the majority of players)
and the majority of endgame players are the type of ppl who pick classes based on effectiveness.
so if you look at those doing endgame content, and see a large number of ppl playing BRDs for effectiveness, its not reflective of the majority of BRD players as a whole.

This of course has always had its share of exceptions, but both casual players, and endgame players have different requirements from the classes they play. So in your example, its important to note that differences in DPS does matter, because the majority of endgame players care about DPS a bit more than aesthetics. (Also doesnt mean they dont wish aesthetics and performance wouldnt line up, cuz they obviously would like to have both.)

Not that this really means much in your conversation, but felt it should be clarified.

[Akiudo]

Except people will absolutely ignore a lack of compelling class fantasy and gameplay issues if a job has high damage. 5.05 Monk attests to that.

except monk even back than was the least played dps so i kinda fail to see where that worked. however even if it wasn't back than, it is clearly NOW, just take a look at the logs, there are 2,5 as many dragoons as there are monks, so what was won by that ? people still don't want to play monk, should we now make it 20% stronger than every other dps so players are forced to play it ?

A job slightly lacking in damage will never be used even if it has a compelling class fantasy or engaging gameplay. Monk's gameplay in HW was highly engaging. You still almost never saw it due to it's damage potential being low. Players in this game have always cared more about the damage potential of a job than anything else.

highly engaging to whom ? simply throwing out a statement like this doesn't make it true, also mnk back than had a way healthier population compared to nin/dragoon than it has now, looking at logs of alexander during the corresponding patches there mnk both during gordias and midas was about used at a rate of 0,65-0,7 parsed monks per dragoon, that did drop down to slightly above 0,5 during midas but at this point the synergy meta was going at full gear for the first time, something which luckily and rightfully has been broken down. btw you know whats funny ? theres no super duper synergy meta going on right now, yet at current dragoon outparses monk at a rate where we have about 0,4 monks per dragoon, even though dragoon in itself is way weaker (or not nearly as meta ) pick today than back than.

Look at the threads from 5.0 asking for Bard to get it's song buffs back because, "muh class fantasy". What happened when the buffs were reinstated? We had threads immediately following up complaining about the subsequent potency nerfs that were implemented to balance the rdps increases the songs brought. It was never about class fantasy, or compelling gameplay. It was an attempt to get damage buffs veiled behind "class fantasy".

bard asked for "support capabilitys" back, mind you that was in a patch where physical ranged actually where promised buffs . what it than got was a completly passive buff, one that did nothing but raise dps while at the same time their personal dps got nerfed so hard they are now weaker than before in any content other than max level raids and even then the "damage buff" (which again, all physical ranged were promised during the ll before) they received was so small bards in fact got weaker if you look at parses in relative terms.

if you use the "aggregate using normalized scores" setting on fflogs you will see that bards actually DIPPED the literal day the patch happened. so yea, bards are totally just entitled, complaining when you are in fact promised buffs and when it happens everyone but the one class outperforming literally everyone get in fact buffed more than you do leaving you off (in competitive terms) weaker than before is totally unreasonable. sorry but yes, bards asked for support capabilitys back,you know, maybe a button you actually have to press like foes requiem, or even utility support like palisade. heck, as refresh would be redundant with the amount of mana people have today how about we finally get the hp regen song our bard teacher used during the level 40? class quest things like that, that is support (and actually usefull to the group outside of just dealing more dps) , a pure "dps aura" is just that, dps, and therefore completly worthless if personal dps can't keep up.

If compelling class fantasy and engaging gameplay will see people use a job then why aren't Bards and ranged in general asking for improvements in these areas? Even when they ask for more support abilities, it is almost always for support of an offensive nature. Damage potential is where players have always put the most weight when it comes to job selection.

aside from "they totally do" ? dancer is pretty much beloved by everyone who plays it and has a very healthy playerbase, even though aside from speedrunning its actually also pretty weak, mch actually only got a lot of plays out of it with the current rework, the second major rework it had mind you because before that it just didn't click with the playerbase and they made this clear. and we have another "make bard a BARD" or "split up bard into bard and ranger" thread once every two weeks.

aside from that , support has to be meaningfull to be worth something, its the very nature of the game this mostly boils down to damage. take redmage, while smn clearly benefits from overperforming right now (and redmage works the worst with double caster due to embolden) still a lot more people play redmage than blackmage right now, even though dps wise blackmage performs better at basically every level, however its support works out to make them close enough paired with redmage seemingly simply being more liked.

Bard has been top of the totem pole for nearly 7 years. They'll survive not being top tier for an expansion. Other jobs have survived being in a far worse place for far longer.

the only class less used right now than bard is monk, a class thats rightfully screaming for a rework since early-mid stormblood and that is both in a "general" aswell as a speedrun environment, pair that with the fact that bard gameplay is generally still on the level of "well received" and maybe even you can see that theres a difference between "not being top of the totem pole" and "being so far behind you can't even find a real niche where you can justify being taken over anyone else"

also, to get back on the original argument about gameplay. i never said you absolutely can't get people to play a class by making it op, i said the effect is less than people assume (and it is, otherwise we wouldn't nowadays have a higher dragoon/monk ratio than back when the synergy meta first kicked in) paired with 90% going away the moment a class is not clearly over or underpowered anymore. the player who only switches a class to play the strongest will just do the same the moment this new class isn't strongest (or so much stronger the gap to his chosen class simply can't realistically be bridged) anymore.

theres also the question of "whats the use?" who wins if you "force" people to play say monk by making it the clearly strongest melee? all that happens is that people now play monk, complain even louder that it sucks to play and jump ship the second it gets brought down to normal, you really think this is a desirable design goal for anyone ? yes, getting people to play a class to basically test it out does make some sense, but that doesn't change that if the core is lacking that will not help in the long run, you can see this clearly with monk numbers over time and to a lesser extent with blackmage currently.

If it did hit BRD harder than the other DPS, then it deserved it. BRD was overpowered.

except i never denied that, it still hit (and therefore nerfed) bard harder than the rest, paired with buffing of the other dps classes at other points leaves me with what i wrote about drk, that the net result of nerfing one class or buffing every single competing class is the same in relative terms. if i buff everyone but you i may aswell hand you a nerf, you may feel worse about the nerf as you would feel about the buffing of everyone else, but in a competitve sense it would change nothing.