Quote Originally Posted by Alhanelem View Post
This is what we call pigeon-holeing or cookie-cuttering and it's impossible to eliminate. Even if you achieved perfect balance, some players would see something as better than the others and people would bandwagon onto it. It's a problem that just can't be solved. You can minimize it to an extent the smoother you get the balance, but it will always be there. Just make friends with people who think like you do so you can enjoy the game the way you want to, confident in your knowledge that you can play the content on your favorite job and still win just fine. It's really not worth drastically changing systems to try to solve, because it's not realistically solveable. You will have people bandwagoning, you will have elistists declaring something to be better than another no matter how you design the game.
You need to look up the late Everquest Online adventures for the PS2. That job balance, and eve class was unique would love to give it's statement.

Wizard had Lightning Fire Ice spells, but also had several none elemental spells. Very powerful high damage. And it's Master class of Sorcerer had unresistable aoes, with short range so I could use a fire spell against any fire based mob as long as the mob wasn't made purely out of fire.

Necromancer- Their pets were the strongest of the petters, but they had very high DoT damage and could even spam heals if they chose the blood pact line for their epic quests. They were DD/Sub-healers. Wizard had to get a big boost because Necros were so strong.

Enchanters- the caster "bards" but it could also have "any" pet. Either beast/human. It also could have a suit of armor to be a tank. It could help regen MP/Hp very well.

Alchemist- Add later into the game, but it was more than welcomed at raids for it's master class called Transmuter which they had a pill called Ogre pill. It gave you a massive Stamina/HP/Strength boost and turned you into an ogre.

Mage- was the real elementalist over wizard, because they got all the elemental spells, and they had elemental pets. They were constantly in 3rd place to Enchanters, because Raging Rhino claimed by an enchanter would just mess crap up. What really pisses me off was this maghe got "Call of the Hero" Something FFXI failed so badly I want to slap them. Call of the Hero had a 5 minute recast, but wasted all MP to teleport one person to ANY location. Doesn't matter where they were, or if they had access, the mage could warp another player to them. FFXI stupid mantle they released after the 3 mini expansions sucked hard.

Cleric-Heavy armor or clothe, hell they could tank if they wanted to, we called them clanks. Their heals were the best and buffs were awesome.

Druid and Shaman- They had buffs that Clerics didn't have, their heals were not a great, but they could transform in wolves or trees to regen MP which could give time for the cleric to heal. Or they could DD.
No job was ever left out of a raid, and these new generation MMOs fail miserably at trying to balance out their job/classes.

One class being good for only one situation, even if you can be all classes, is stupid when you could just balance all the classes.

And no the fights were not strictly tank and spank you had fights like Nagafen, the fire dragon in Sulsek eye where you had to peridocially go behind a rock to avoid lava damage. Or Aurum Vales poison water? Done in Everquest onlien adventures in the Planes of Disease and gas that would infect you greatly reducing your stats to a- on-the-brink level. The only way to get rid of it was to die.