Homogenization and Simplicity in Tank Roles

[Karshan]

Some of you have to remember this is not a solo game. In that regard, META has existed, exists, and will always exist, and if the balance is significantly tilted, can lead to shunning entire jobs out.
Tis just the neverending tale of how originality meets its greatest foe : balance.

It's a matter of choice :
Do you want a job really pleasing, but a lottery to know if you can take that job you love so much in high end content or not, because people don't want you, and be condemned to dungeons with that job ?
Or do you accept some homogenization to play the one you want everywhere, although feeling a bit lacking ?

Because as someone said, the idea of maintaining balance not only on DPS rotation but also mitigation, enmity, and movement, while having original skills for all those aspects that work totally different, and on 4 classes, is delusionnal and requires tremendous creativity. The risk of failure is high. You don't take high risks for 5K people over 200k. Basic project management. Whether it's good or bad, the deciding board above the devs and Yoshi doesn't care, they only see 200 vs 5.
Quickly, one design will outshine the rest (or one will fall behind, and badly, like PLD in 3.0) and tada, seclusion begins.

I very much agree with those here who said it's more about the fight design of normal and extreme content that falls behind and fails to make you use those homogenized tanks to their limits, encompassing it only in week 1 3rd / 4th floor and ultimates.
I have tank & heal buddies staying on the game non stop since 6 years, they enjoy progging in their class on Savage and ultimate a lot, I'm most likely surrounded by intensive masochists then eh ?

[Awha]

I do wish they would add more complexity to tanks that is not strictly tied to the encounter. Having tighter timings that reward players using a defense cooldown at the right window akin to things like tbn but more so like reaper.

More ogcds for damage would also be nice. End of the day if FFXIV wants everyone to do damage may aswell lay into and give every job a more fleshed out gameplay loop.

[Mezzoforte]

(controversial hot-take warning) "Button Bloat" is a myth and it is not real, while the real problem is just bad job action design... The answer to solve the "button bloat" problem, is to solve the actual problem that causes it, and the answer to solve that issue is right there at the top in my signature...

Create in-"job" diversity, and cull the one-way only rigidity.

Take Blue Mage and its 104 actions... Why are 104 actions never complained about as "Button Bloat"? Because a mockery of in-class diversity exists for that "job". there are 104 actions, but the player only ever uses their choice of any 24 of them, so no there is no "Button Bloat", just the illusion of options.

The other 19 "jobs" in FFXIV need to be similar to this... If we count all deleted action ever removed from the game, the other "jobs" only have 30-60 actions, but if they had a mockery of in-class diversity like Blue Mage...Say.. a Limit of any where from 28-36 actions, then just pick 28 actions and do not attempt to use all 30 to 60 actions...
Still want to complain about "Button Bloat", any way? No person every said that any person is forced to use up to the limit. 28 actions too much for you? You only want 24? then pick 24 actions and only use 24 actions.

I doubt that FFXIV will ever see in-"job" diversity, but I believe that it would dispel the "Button Bloat" myth, if it was made a thing... There is no real limit, only the limitation that a person puts on to their self. button bloat is a self-made limitation, not a real limit.

Also, my apologies.. for this goes off of the thread's topic, I realize.

This sort of design ends up not working. Everything gets culled down to a optimized META setup and you will be kicked every single time someone sees you running one non-optimal skill. This also makes balance turn into World of Warcraft balance because they have a simpler version of what you are saying and they have inordinate amounts of problems stemming from it so much it is killing their game. You legit have classes that, for upwards of 7 years now, are unplayable in endgame content PvE and PvP.
Button Bloat is a legit issue but it isn't coming from where you think it is. It is coming from having redundant skills. An example is Red Mages melee combo. It has 3 buttons. These 3 buttons are never used in any circumstance, for any reason, except for going 1-2-3 while enchanted to start their finishers. There is no reason this should be more than a single button that changes as it goes through the combo. VerFire and VerStone, these buttons should overlap VerThunder and VerAero when Dualcast isnt up. So far we have saved 4 buttons. A lot of melee and some tanks have this issue too. Also, take into account controller players do have limited space for keys.

What they should do is cull redundant buttons into changing packs of buttons then add more unique and flavorful skills with those extra buttons.

[AziraSyuren]

Hot take: "You don't even do savage" is the new and hot excuse to dismiss peoples' opinions on job design, despite those jobs having the biggest issue in specifically the content those people do.


You're not bored out of your mind in savage/ultimate prog, there's enough mechanic vomit and dps optimization going on that you rarely have time for it.

You know where those homogenized 1 button spam jobs (obviously exaggerated) become an issue because they're just not fun? The other 90% of the game that you usually do almost every day, the content that can not be as complex mechanically. You know, the content those "filthy casuals" do.

I wouldn't say I'm discounting opinions outright. What I'm saying is that there's a reason my experience vastly differs from a lot of people in this thread. I still find the game and its jobs incredibly interesting, and see dozens of ways that the tanks are different that would probably be called nitpicky if I brought up in an argument. Not only that, but there was a pretty significant gap between when I last played seriously (mid-Sigmascape to late Eden's Verse+Promise), and I'm really not feeling like anything is lacking in between now and then, job-wise.

What people are finding boring isn't the jobs. It's the game. No amount of good job design can fix a boring game, and shit gets boring when you've been around long enough to complain about how things used to be better.

Not only that, content other than Savage and Ultimates where you don't even have to use half of your kit to get through and 3/4ths of it to get it done in a decent time always has and always will be boring, and I say this as someone who's been playing since HW. No matter how complex or interesting the kit is, a job won't be fun in content that doesn't challenge you to use it.

[Ultimatecalibur]

You're not bored out of your mind in savage/ultimate prog, there's enough mechanic vomit and dps optimization going on that you rarely have time for it.

You know where those homogenized 1 button spam jobs (obviously exaggerated) become an issue because they're just not fun? The other 90% of the game that you usually do almost every day, the content that can not be as complex mechanically. You know, the content those "filthy casuals" do.

Actually that high end stuff is where a lot of complaints originate. Most complaints about healer dps rotations come from the high end players who end up with logs that show them casting Glare/Broil/Malefic 90% of the time in the current end game raid. Most complaints about tank boredom come from tanks noting that they are hardly using their mitigation cooldowns and that most tank busters are being handled by invuls.

[Lyth]

There's a perception amongst FFXIV players that action/talent tree design doesn't ever work because there is always a meta pick. That's actually false.

There's a clear cut meta pick only if you can directly compare actions to each other. For example, if you were choosing between Shadow Wall and Vengeance as defensive options on an action tree, you can say that Vengeance is a better action because it has an offensive buff that the other doesn't. But what if you were comparing Shukuchi, En Avant, and the new Hell's Egress/Ingress (RPR) as movement abilities? That's a bit more difficult of a comparison to make, and player preference may start to enter the picture. In some cases, you may have choices between a marginally mathematically better option when executed perfectly and a simpler option that is much more forgiving. You still see a lot of variation in player choice when you lay out these types of options.

You only run into problems when your choices are partially homogenized, because you can do a direct comparison and a clear winner emerges. If choices are completely homogenized, then you have balance but it's boring. If you can't form a proper comparison between the choices at all, then you also have balance, but you also have variety. People are always afraid to try new things, but I really think it would be worth a trial of a simple action/talent tree to see if it works in this game.

Also, as an aside, your priorities during progression are completely different from farm. When nobody knows a fight or how mechanics works, players play a lot more defensively, because your goal is to see more of the fight to gather more data about it. So I wouldn't generalize across the two.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

Right?, and correct. In-class Diversity and game design styles like skill trees can work very well... I never attempt to argue about it, though...
People will believe what they want to believe, and any game that I have ever been to play, that had In-Class diversity in their classes(and/or subclasses), also had superior game design in combat systems and classes design, than the not so good or straight just bad design that FFXIV has; so it is fair to doubt that In-Class diversity would function in FFXIV, because even I doubt that it would function.

To be honest, I very much hate the "Holy Trinity", the Damager-Healer-Tank Trifecta... A combat system that encourages homogenization, which is also sort of the Antithesis of(the case of how the FFXIV "jobs" are extra rigid makes this worse), the superior game design of In-Class Diversity and styles like skill trees, so FFXIV would have to change and upgrade its awful combat systems from the roots, I think...

I hate to love FFXIV to the point that I care a lot about the game, and want to see it improve, but I also hold no hope towards if that will ever happen...

Even though I hate both, homogenization and simplicity seem to be the play of the game, so I do not see that either of these things would lessen, let alone stop... I can think of ways to change FFXIV, to make the game more varied, diverse, complex, and more of a challenge, but my thoughts have no worth to the powers that be, and hold no weight...

[Tarrick]

To be honest, I very much hate the "Holy Trinity", the Damager-Healer-Tank Trifecta... A combat system that encourages homogenization, which is also sort of the Antithesis of(the case of how the FFXIV "jobs" are extra rigid makes this worse), the superior game design of In-Class Diversity and styles like skill trees, so FFXIV would have to change and upgrade its awful combat systems from the roots, I think...

Game designers didn't just make up the "holy trinity" style and force it on everyone. It came out of the long iteration of multiplayer strategy games from tabletop, to BBS, to MUDs, to MMOs where players naturally progress into this sort of specialization. Human beings quickly identify that the most effective means of accomplishing a goal is generally through specialization (this is why min-maxing is a thing), so you would have to specifically design a game to prevent that sort of thing if you want to avoid it. However, that often leads to a different sort of homogenization where everyone is capable of DPS but also must have some defensive capabilities and self-healing at which point every class is mechanically similar with different flairs. At that point, a party is just a group of similar individuals rather than a group of players each coordinating different strengths.

[FoxCh40s]

I love how Tank Mains are arguing about homogenization, when you guys don't even know TRUE Homogenization. You guys argue over how boring tanking us getting, and then come into the Healer forums and tell us everything is fine.

So guess what? It's fine. All the tanks are perfectly fine and don't need more complexity.

Feel triggered?

Point made.

[Payadopa]

Having aggro management back would only benefit healers since I'd be forced to heal more if the tank loses it. That would be amazing.

The current state of affairs is sad, when you think about it.