Is it fun?

[SieyaM]

This is a natural consequence of Squeenix's job design philosophy. If all party comps are supposed to be viable, then nobody's exclusive capabilities are mandatory. If you make specific mitigation, debuffs, or what-have-you points of distinction between jobs, then those things will never be required/make clearing an encounter significantly easier due to point number one. The only thing that everyone can do is DPS. It's the only metric that ends the encounter faster, and the only metric that (with the occasional exception of weird boss behavior when you phase early) doesn't have a cap on its usefulness. You're basically always rewarded for doing more damage in FFXIV. That's why the community values DPS. It's the only metric that makes a difference after you've covered your bases.

Edit:
To be fair, this is also a common design problem in other single player Final Fantasy games. There comes a point where...why would you Silence or Slow an enemy? Just kill them. You can one or two shot them anyway. Don't waste MP on crowd control, etc etc.

That is what makes balancing a support class much more difficult then just raw DPS numbers, you need to make their abilities do enough to warrant their inclusion. EQ was a very different game itself, I don't remember combat following such a rigid script. Enchanters were also desired for things outside of active combat. They had mana regeneration buffs that were sought after and since they lasted at least 30 min you could get one before setting out with your group. The reality of this situation even as it is now though is that there will always be a composition that is better than others no matter how slight, and that will be what people end up trying to use. If any composition of jobs can clear content then that should be the only goal. Players will try to enforce a meta comp even if it only nets them 100 or so more DPS.

[ItMe]

The reality of this situation even as it is now though is that there will always be a composition that is better than others no matter how slight, and that will be what people end up trying to use. If any composition of jobs can clear content then that should be the only goal. Players will try to enforce a meta comp even if it only nets them 100 or so more DPS.

Thus far though, with FF14 we've only seen that with world's first runs.
Anything beyond that... not really. That 100 DPS isn't gonna make or break a run (and if it does your team had much larger issues to worry about), so outside of racing for a clear (the only time where light parties are more directly competing with each other) players are just playing whatever jobs they like the other 99.9% of the time.

[CupOfIcedCoffee]

See, I find healing fun when me and my friend run a tank/healer combo, and we're seeing just how many mobs we can pull before I can't keep up anymore because 3/4ths of his health is gone every second. Other than that, healing is alright. Maybe not as fun as playing DPS classes, but still enjoyable at times. If I want to consistently have fun though I play a class like BLM or MCH. Less brain, more button pushing.

[SpiralMask]

@OP: since two of the three were pretty openly kneecapped, not really all that fun for them compared to the fun they were having even last expansion. for the third? it's been a problem since ARR that they aren't fun to play (now they just do Bigger Number but still suffer from the same lack what, eight years at this point?).

[SieyaM]

Thus far though, with FF14 we've only seen that with world's first runs.
Anything beyond that... not really. That 100 DPS isn't gonna make or break a run (and if it does your team had much larger issues to worry about), so outside of racing for a clear (the only time where light parties are more directly competing with each other) players are just playing whatever jobs they like the other 99.9% of the time.

I would say the jobs being made so similar now, especially healers, is a result of people trying to force a meta comp in the past for other content. Even now people change jobs every patch almost to try and be the highest DPS ing healer. The fact that people do change jobs so readily is also an indicator that the jobs themselves aren't all the fun or unique, since people are so willing to drop one and play another. Most healers I have seen here keep all 3 max level and do so because they know they might have to change to another if one job has a lead on another, again no matter how slight.

[Semirhage]

It's why I advocate for balancing overall DPS contribution and differentiating flavor basically everywhere else. DPS is the god metric. If that number is the ONE point of homogenization, you can play around with a lot of flavor outside that.

[Rilifane]

I would say the jobs being made so similar now, especially healers, is a result of people trying to force a meta comp in the past for other content. Even now people change jobs every patch almost to try and be the highest DPS ing healer. The fact that people do change jobs so readily is also an indicator that the jobs themselves aren't all the fun or unique, since people are so willing to drop one and play another. Most healers I have seen here keep all 3 max level and do so because they know they might have to change to another if one job has a lead on another, again no matter how slight.

I don't doubt that some people do that but what I usually see is that healer mains play all 3 healers simply because they're healer mains, want all on 80 and a general overview of what they can do. And they quickly get bored of one healer and end up switching it up every few weeks/ months with most gravitating towards WHM even though it's currently the weakest (again).
Many dps mains also tend to level several to max because they like having options but they usually stick with their preferred one longer even if it's currently not the strongest. There is still some fluctuation towards the stronger ones, like everyone and their grandma played SMN last tier and some PFs were even locked to SMN for caster. But several others had the highest number of parses throughout the entire tier even though they were weaker than others, e.g. DRG was behind NIN until the most recent buff and was still more popular. BLM is ahead of SMN and RDM but both get played far more often.
Dps jobs are unique enough to make people stick with them even through bad times, healers are not. So they don't care enough about their class to stick with it and simply chose whatever is still left, fits their current mood, is the strongest or is the easiest to handle.

[Liam_Harper]

I would say the jobs being made so similar now, especially healers, is a result of people trying to force a meta comp in the past for other content. Even now people change jobs every patch almost to try and be the highest DPS ing healer.

Actually, WHM is currently the most popular healer at nearly all levels of play, including Savage, despite having the worst dps. AST, the strongest healer in healing, mobility, versatility and dps is the least popular. In Stormblood however, WHM became the least popular Savage healer. Dancer is also currently the most popular phys ranged but the worst dps in the game and BLM the least popular caster and the best dps in the game.

The community really isn't that meta driven outside of cutting edge World First. Generally when a class becomes unpopular it's because it's complex (which is actually fine, for example BLM is considered perfect) and more often clunky, lacking tools, too rng driven, excessively simple or punishing to play in certain fights. For example with WHM in Stormblood it had no utility, poor mobility, subpar dps and its lilies made no sense while SCH felt great to play, so it's not surprising players preferred it regardless of meta. Nowadays, as bad as WHM may be, it feels straightforward and effective to pick up and play but SCH's a ghosting mess with tons of oGCD's that it's punished to use, so it feels bad.

[Grimoire-M]

Nowadays, as bad as WHM may be, it feels straightforward and effective to pick up and play but SCH's a ghosting mess with tons of oGCD's that it's punished to use, so it feels bad.

I still don’t get why people complain about ghosting on SCH so much. It’s actually rather intuitive apart from specific interactions with Summon Seraph that are frankly avoidable. What sucks is clipping for DPS gains, and I suspect most of those complaints stem from that exact interaction. I have way more issues with Potions and that’s because those don’t queue.

[Semirhage]

Actually, WHM is currently the most popular healer at nearly all levels of play, including Savage, despite having the worst dps...Nowadays, as bad as WHM may be, it feels straightforward and effective to pick up and play

And this right here is why I have zero hope for them actually making WHM a good class next expansion. It's currently the best of the worst. I assume they're going to buff the hell out of SCH and AST and bring us back to Stormblood, where WHM is the worst healer in basically all categories. Then we'll get to watch AST and SCH (and now SGE!) mains tell WHMs that being the worst is actually a good thing because newbies like it, and "somehow", "someday" they'll give WHM something interesting to do. But it had better not be utility, or damage, or debuffs, or an interesting rotation because that's Scholar's identity. *eyes rolling out the back of my head* *gagging noises*