"I don't want to think while I play, so no one should be allowed to."

[Shougun]

I just want to say I don't envy whoever does balance in games lol. I think FFXIV is so insanely well tuned in terms of numbers you really can do whatever job you want... Yet obviously maybe a bit too similar as result (there are differences, just also a clear structural similarity). Then you've got WoW where there are many times throughout it's life where a spec was just pure garbage fire lol, but the differences in that game are pretty great.

To be honest I would be super conflicted if I was held responsible for such a situation. I personally love roleplay gameplay type designs, so to me I'd probably go out of my way making each job feel different.. sometimes to the point that some jobs just progress the game differently. "You, SMN, you get loads of primal choices and stuff.. but like you gotta go on pilgrimages if you want to progress- enjoy your primal Maat fights". Now some of it I think would be easier than others (minus budget.. lol). For example /to me/ if I can sell roleplay gameplay to players it is okay if SMN might get to level 90 later than Warrior that unga bonga, because of roleplay progressions and mechanics put in place.. Because these differences would create flavor but not so much balance concerns, in the long run I don't believe they're a big deal. To which like ideas I wish SE took a lot more, the roleplay gameplay that doesn't impact important balance like WHY IN THE WORLD does dragoon not have immunity to fall damage? Why can't I super jump in the open world, in spaces I've unlocked flying? This would be such a great non-balance damaging roleplay element. This to me is a major behind the scenes gripe (in that it's important to have good gameplay first, if you had to pick one) but like.. I don't want to 'pick one' lol, and I feel WoW for example does a great job with this (there are some issues here and there, for example given FFXIV is a choose a job on one character game I'd not recommend racial abilities that can touch the balance, or at all perhaps- but where are special mechanics for DoL/DoH/DoW/DoM?? You could do that).

This would likely carry over into actual balance, for me, making sure jobs were a bit more different, or like giving items special effects because I love to see a fire sword deal fire damage, or the great Atlas Shield doing something special shield related because it's a freaking legendary weapon!! DO SOMETHING /shakes shield lol. But... man... you can see how this will create balance issues, there WILL be moments where X job is just better at a said content than another. Like for example even in our own game when magic and physical differences were more meaningful, you could see Dark Knight bias'd for high magic fights. . .

What a difficult tight rope jump rope razor wire dance... Just hahahahaha, good luck /slap on the back... to whoever has to deal with that lol.

My.. "that's rough, here is some spaghetti ideas to throw at the wall" thought on that was shrug and continue to make jobs that have fun gameplay for different types of individuals (some will be easy to master, others not, non-purposefully better than the other but in certain situations that might happen and it's fine)... but then perhaps make gear even more shared (more akin to type than job, like healers can wear all light armor and stats become semi-transformative such that the stat that that increases attack speed and attack damage changes to spell speed and spell damage when used on a mage) or maybe even further leveling easier (though it's really not bad now), further empower the bring multiple jobs system (for those who don't pay attention you get buffs for job diversity), and have a mix of you expect players to change jobs for different content and the system is relatively aggressive on job diversity.. with perhaps a behind the scenes booster too such that like "Paladin is garbage for this fight, but the auto-balancer behind the scenes has boosted the job diversity buff by like 20% if we take them anyways... so it's fine we don't have a warrior this guy is coming in with echo essentially". So the less desirable your job is the more desirable your job is.. Or something.

Even then you'll still have moments where people are going to be like "do you not play healers? Do not have phon-- play Black mage?".. because stuff wouldn't always be balanced. . . . as a natural consequence of having people be more different.


Currently in FFXIV you can pretty much, if not literally, play anything you want and you'd always be welcome. That's a pretty interesting feat.

Another plate of spaghetti suggested before was perhaps MSQ / open world jobs are designed in whatever fashion is thematically fun (fun first), which doesn't mean it needs a billon buttons just does fun cool things. Then the harder content has it's own kit that doesn't really affect the roleplay values of easier PvE, this includes PvP. So you have a Savage-Ultimate-PvP kit, which ideally has some differences still but obviously put to a more rigorous set of rules for balance. Once content is 'echo'-able you can enter with your more weird kit.. Which means if you pick the right jobs you'd probably destroy the content (so this feature would be unlocked not right at launch of new content). Perhaps DF also coming with an aggressive variant of job diversity system (even if it's a 4 party group, if it detects there is an uncommon job or a job that has historically low output on the content it would automatically boost that player a bit and perhaps both the whole party and that job if people die).

I would still follow the rolling mountain concept as I like it a lot, so hard content initially would be more of a PF thing due to the challenge, but then as it goes into DF it would become far more approachable until after some time has passed you might see players solo-ing. with ideally a number of automatic systems, like during PF wave 1 the automatic balance system does't help too much, and lets players pick what is most optimized, then wave 2 PF would add more auto-support, then wave 3 DF would allow the more weird kits to join in and some players might do things like bring a mage killer job to a mage boss and rofl stomp it as a group, wave 4 where limited jobs can have fun or perfectly designed duo / solo (like you pick the perfect counter to the content), and wave 5 where it's very much solo-able with your epic echo on any job.

But oh my god I don't know how you could make everyone happy no matter what you do lol. What a nightmare responsibility .

Like for healers, in my mind a few things could help:

• Reduce power creep on defensive stats (sans epic echo which would likely pick this power creep up, ensuring strong solo opportunities way later when this option unlocks). This may include reducing healing power creep as well (but ensure healers are still getting damage buffs!). The overall concept here is to ensure healing at ilvl 500 in dungeon lvl 90 has similar demand of healing as ilvl600 in dungeon lvl 90. Currently that's not the case and this has an obvious and potent effect in making healing less valuable as you progress in content. Like a quick tip for healers right now if you want to heal more as a healer, just wear garbage gear lol- have your tank do that too if you really want to heal more .
• Bring in some more support skills, like when new skills are added, also potentially remove some healing spells or combined them into new support / damage (ensure healing output is 'enough' still though, it's important not to make healing so hard that you're on non-stop cure 2 spam because you ran through all your ogcd already and literally you could play no better)
• Return SCH's ability to have the fairy be a super healer in casual content, and bring back a lot of offensive DoT mechanics, this may include some offensive debuffs (like increase damage to target up to X potency, double % for SCH's inc damage- longer duration so solo you can use it up but in team play it's going to pop in like 5 seconds). I believe a lot of players really liked the idea of being what was essentially green DPS with a pet and DoT twist.
• Add more healing damage spells to Sage, non-dot non-pet green DPS
• Add more Offensive 'defense' team buffs / and add a few caveat opportunities to AST, add inbuilt balance like if there was a team buff that gave everyone 10% more damage it would be 'up to X potency' to prevent scaling running away with balance. Keep the easier DD boosting effects on cards, but also try to add more flavor to each card (return flavor)- like X card is ranged DD and ignore most CC 'esuna' + movement speed, another is a DD and a shield, etc (so you might have moments where you actively make the 'wrong' choice because it's the right moment to do that.. making cards still straight forward but adding some more skill ceiling- like you get ranged DD with movement speed and ignores movement CC like tempered will / sure cast and you give it to the tank who is currently being sucked into a boss votex). Consider adding some 'self' DD feedback to buffs as well, like a passive trait that each time a buff is placed on an ally you call a star down on a nearby enmity enemy, etc- so you get some really nice feedback in doing your specific theme (offensive support healer).
• WHM may have a few offensive and defensive support skills but they'd both be quite straight forward, still, and this job would continue to be relatively easy / new player friendly. Could enhance it perhaps with some growing mechanics (like take that flower idea we have recently and bring it through more concepts, sort of setting up passive moments of return- but this would probably push geomancer ideas out of healer fully, since early levels would likely relate to elemental magic.. if we're into that.. personally I like the idea of a Geoknight idea which would be DD or tank so I'm okay with it.. but I know some wanted a Geomancer healer). An example of a nice easy support skill for WHM might be bringing back Stoneskin, keeping in mind this is the 'easy job' so here you could have a oGCD skill that shields a target and when it breaks it deals X damage- however it if it doesn't break it will deal Y damage (being a small difference, overhealing not as rewarding but wont wreck your parse lol). Then at later levels it may become holy and gain even more mechanics like you get two stacks, or after using certain flowers you gain a stack. Other healer's shields could trigger the effect immediately (to prevent your friendly neighborhood healer from sniping your deeps lol), or instead of a generic shield it might be like reduces the next x instances of incoming damage by y% (which could be particularly powerful... and not conflict with shield healers).

• Consider tweaking gear in general, perhaps horizontal stepping (further decreasing defensive stat creep), and more weirdly may consider easy / hard mode gearing designs (basically easy is for new / story players, great defensive stats and decent damage stats, and hard mode for players doing high damage floor enrage content that are skilled, increasing their damage more than equal ilvl / horizontal stage easy gear, but also not giving them as much defense which punishes them for mistakes and maintains older content challenge for longer).

Ideally then you have more consistent healing demands throughout the life of an expansion, some more differences in healer jobs- with more damage coming from team opportunities (in some healers), with one of the jobs still being very easy to conceptualize as a new player if you wanted to heal but not have your ego smashed (White Mage), opportunities to further tune the game to your style (like I want to go EVEN FASTER, but I don't want to forget the mechanics of this dungeon because my gear makes them irrelevant), meanwhile the new players are not dropping like flys as embarrassingly in story driven content (stuff still hurts, just not like "Dear journal, noob died 12 times today cause their gear sux- I took less damage than the tank because my gear is the bestest").

I always find this type of discussion fun, like what could be added, why, why not... Just wanted to say I can only imagine the amount of voices in the head of someone that has to walk the line of interesting vs highly equitable / equal.