Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[Vinal211]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Homogenization is NOT a bad thing. It can be a useful tool for streamlining and balancing so as to not make certain classes the “obvious” choice in most content. The issue that comes with it is doing homogenization in moderation. And right now, the game design is heavily leaning towards streamlining and making everything play the same without giving us anything to make jobs feel different from one another. There needs to be things shared between classes, yes, because having everything play 100% different would be a hassle for balancing issues and for people who want to play everything, it runs the risk of too much to remember. But on the flip side, there still needs to be identity, something that makes the class stand out from others like it. And with the loss of certain actions, broken gauges that don’t mesh with one another, and the ever eternal push towards a 2-minute burst shared between everyone, there’s barely any job identity at this point besides the in-game lore and what weapons they use.

[Lyth]

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The degree of 'homogenization' really depends on what your balance constraints are. Players want equity in damage output, burst profiles, defensives, self-sustain, and utility. The more constraints that you add, the fewer unique solutions that exist which meet those constraints. If uniqueness is important to you as a player, then there eventually comes a point where you have to be willing to accept that you'll be stronger in some areas at the expense of others. Some things naturally aren't negotiable (everyone needs parity on damage output, or else we just migrate to the jobs with a dps advantage). But would you trade off a bit of extra mobility in exchange for stronger self-sustain and knockback resistance? That's a bit more difficult to answer, and allows for more job variety.

Yet we've seen historically that players then start complaining about the differences. Where's my missing mobility tool? Where's my missing raise spell? It's a nice idea in theory for jobs to all have their individual strengths and weaknesses, but it only works if there's community buy-in to it.