Ultimates: Why the dumbing down exists

[Amnmaat]

Those who understand why Ultimates come down to very precise dps checks understand the fact that you can only really do that if the jobs are easy to calculate in a 15-30 minute fight.

For DPS:
1. That doesn't allow for conditional skills (skills you use depending on conditions and situations).

2. You want skills which pull enemies toward you, skills which add dots or bounce from enemy to enemy? You want a job gauge which has more than 1 use? Nah, that's too much balance for ultimates

Tanks/Healers:
1. Tanks all have to be designed the same way; they all have the same 123 into fell cleave, one way or another because any deviation or uniqueness to tank's dps skills results in balancing hell; you'll end up with 1-3 tanks that are you vastly inferior in Ultimates and flat out not used.

The trend land is clear:
1. Realm Reborn, Heavensward, and Stormblood: Most jobs were unique; these 3 expansions had the most complaint about job balance from savage raiders.
2. Shadowbringers and Endwalker: Least complaints from Ultimate and savage raiders.

So. When you cater to high end raiders you usually get happy raiders because all the jobs are designed around that content. But when you cater to casuals who want unique jobs and could care less about balance you get unique jobs.

PS. One word statement: All the crying about Bard and Dragoon being required for 3 expansions for high end content.

Until we confront this battle between whom the game is made for; for high end raiders or for casuals the game will remained dumbed down and the fun only exists in Ultimates raiding. That's why Yoship told us to play Ultimates if we want healers to be engaging.

[Semirhage]

And yet you see the exact opposite in practice. Self-professed turbocasuals are practically gagging on their tongues praising current homogenized simplistic job design, and people who actually do difficult content think they're designed like crap. Weird.

[Supersnow845]

Someone forgot that the expansion most of us old boomers collectively agree was the best balance and design wise for the jobs (SB) also gave birth to the ultimates

Well except for T7S the 6th ulimtate but eh

[Koros]

Ultimate players are not the ones complaining that they can't get a 99 by facerolling their keyboards.

SB had Ultimates, there wasn't an issue back then.

And really? There aren't any complaints right now? That's just wrong, RDM is in a terrible state and that has been the complaint since 6.0.

Until we confront this battle between whom the game is made for; for high end raiders or for casuals the game will remained dumbed down and the fun only exists in Ultimates raiding. That's why Yoship told us to play Ultimates if we want healers to be engaging.

It doesn't matter who the game is made for in this thread because you're going to have 3-year-olds who can't clear any Savage tier coming in and lecturing us all about Ultimates soon. Let's just wait.

[Amnmaat]

I might have missed the mark on player complaints, I concede.
But let's talk about how the devs themselves can't seem to create high end content without constantly dumbing down the jobs. That's the real crux of the problem. While 1 Ultimate did indeed exist in Stormblood, that's an anomaly, and it was just 1, as we saw. Square enix gets very sensitive when people says "job balance is so bad, I can't clear this on mch because Bard's unique skills are needed."

Yoship himself told us to play Ultimates if we want challenging content as healers. That's the biggest clue why the jobs are so dumbed down; they're designed around High end duties, most notably Ultimates. Why account for 20 something jobs when we can design 4 tanks to all be the same way? etc

[Renathras]

Someone forgot that the expansion most of us old boomers collectively agree was the best balance and design wise for the jobs (SB) also gave birth to the ultimates

True, but that's also when people started really harping on and demanding balance above all else. So probably a connection there.

Until we confront this battle between whom the game is made for; for high end raiders or for casuals the game will remained dumbed down and the fun only exists in Ultimates raiding. That's why Yoship told us to play Ultimates if we want healers to be engaging.

Yeah, you're right in your post overall, and this part in particular.

The hardcore like to blame everything on casuals, but the reality is, casuals tend not to care about these things much as long as they aren't being kicked out of groups, which isn't true for most of the content they do. Midcores are more worried about that. But the hardcore are the ones demanding everything be homogenized then complaining when things are homogenized. They're the ones who demanded Living Dead be changed, and they're the ones insisting RDM and SMN need their Raise taken away and that ResMage, Vercure, Clemency, and so on are bad abilities that should be removed - because they're bad if you're only concerned about balance.

On the other hand, casuals love stuff like that, and find far more use of it, either soloing or running the insanity that is 24 mans or casual 8 mans.

Casuals prefer unique and interesting Jobs.

Hardcores SAY they prefer unique and interesting Jobs, but then demand they be homogenized for the sake of balance whenever imbalances occur, and are among the first to demand that unique class flavor abilities like heals or raises be removed.

And yet you see the exact opposite in practice. Self-professed turbocasuals are practically gagging on their tongues praising current homogenized simplistic job design, and people who actually do difficult content think they're designed like crap. Weird.

Actually not at all. Casuals like simple Jobs but not HOMOGENIZED ones or BALANCED ones.

Casuals love RDM while hardcores hate it right now. The hardcore hates that it does (slightly) less damage than SMN, is harder to optimize, and think that the Res Tax is too harsh and advocate all the time for SMN to lose its Raise and for even RDM to lose its if that is what is required for RDM to do damage closer to BLM/Melee levels to justify a raid spot.

Casuals, meanwhile, just love the Dualcast life and chain raising people in a botched 24 man or 8 man normal pull.

So it seems not to be "the exact opposite in practice" at all.

Yes, casuals like simple Jobs. But they aren't praising every Job you call simple. They aren't praising SCH and AST, despite you insisting they're simple. They don't praise BRD or the Melee (aside from maybe RPR) as simple. And they seem to prize uniqueness in Jobs over balanced, which is the exact opposite of the hardcore which will complain about homogenization all the time, but then make the very demands that lead to homogenization.

[Supersnow845]

I might have missed the mark on player complaints, I concede.
But let's talk about how the devs themselves can't seem to create high end content without constantly dumbing down the jobs. That's the real crux of the problem. While 1 Ultimate did indeed exist in Stormblood, that's an anomaly, and it was just 1, as we saw. Square enix gets very sensitive when people says "job balance is so bad, I can't clear this on mch because Bard's unique skills are needed."

Yoship himself told us to play Ultimates if we want challenging content as healers. That's the biggest clue why the jobs are so dumbed down; they're designed around High end duties, most notably Ultimates. Why account for 20 something jobs when we can design 4 tanks to all be the same way? etc

Yoshi p has explicitly said they design around savage and that ultimate exists just because it does

Healers are not a mess because of ultimates

[UkcsAlias]

So. When you cater to high end raiders you usually get happy raiders because all the jobs are designed around that content. But when you cater to casuals who want unique jobs and could care less about balance you get unique jobs.

Usualy at the highest end content, players optimize every downside out of the game. So any job that lacks is getting significantly less playtime. But this is compensated by having certain job with better synergy, and the requirement to have a variety of jobs for better buffs.

Jobs being very similar here on its own doesnt say anything, if at the lower end that is also the case. Then balance wise this is good. But yes, it comes at a cost of variety. But only tanks and healers suffer here. The DPS classes provide enough variety in them that they feel very diffirent from each other, even if at the bottom line the values are effectively the same.

But even when being very similar, variety exists. And for healers this is mostly noticed between WHM,SCH and SGE which all 3 play quite diffirent. Its only AST and WHM that feel very similar in such way you can consider them as 1. Even though the card system is supposed to make it feel diffirent to WHM, the gameplay outside of that is very identical. And while SGE and SCH have a similar overlap in abilities, SGE covered that up by having a very diffirent button system.

The actual problem of all healers feeling the same is because the DPS button is used most by about 90% of the fight, and all jobs are equal at that. For tanks, while combos and some chains differ, the effective way to shield/block attacks doesnt realy change a lot. Its a similar situation to the healers. But at least the tanks have a big variety in the dps combo.

But do i care: not at all. I still think they provide enough variety within the jobs. Most of the issues we see are not job related, they are dungeon/trial/raid design instead. Things like: extra damage and adds do a lot for healers and tanks. But too often is just ignored as an option.

[Amnmaat]

Yoshi p has explicitly said they design around savage and that ultimate exists just because it does

Healers are not a mess because of ultimates

Potatoe, Potatoh.
You're proving my point, friend. I can change the title to "High End Duty" so we don't argue about semantics.

Ultimates and savage share a lot of the game design; ultimates just take longer and have more encounters in one, for the most part. We're just arguing about which brand of soda has more has more sugar in it.

[SaberMaxwell]

Premise is flawed from the start. They're not catering to raiders by making jobs into homogenous easy to play sludge.

While I haven't polled "Raiders" as a whole I can anecdotally say that no raider I know of is very satisfied at all with content or job design. Job design since 6.0 and content design post-DSR. Though my former tanks didn't like DSR that much, and TOP is considered fun by a few of them too.