What makes a good Job mechanically?

[Renathras]

Yeah, I know, an open ended question. But I'm curious for the answers. I'm not entirely sure the best way to word it, though.

So setting aesthetics aside and breaking it down to purely mechanics, rotation, resources, flow, and utility (if any); what makes a good Job to you, personally?

[Turtledeluxe]

Ideally in an MMO jobs all bring something unique to the table. But in this game it feels like everyone is a dps.

But I guess to answer the question, I think jobs are fun when they gave a core loop that leads to the higher ceiling of whatever (dps, support, healing, defensiveness, whatever) with a mix of secondary skills and damage dealers. That's why I like BLM because it's a loop of ice and fire with sprinkles of thunder or xenoglossy or whatever. I think some jobs should be selfishlessly about one thing and others should be hybrids.

[Cilia]

Having a mechanic no other job uses.

Back in the olden days DRK actually functioned uniquely among the Tank jobs by, believe it or not, requiring MP management since Darkside (the DPS boosting stance) could be used in conjunction with Grit (which, at the time, lowered your DPS output) to achieve not quite standard DPS while still tanking, something no other Tank could do at the time. Unfortunately they've since reworked it and it now runs on a meter like 3/4 of the Tanks, but it was special.

Nowadays the "special functioning" Tank job is actually GNB, which instead of being a meter maid runs on charges and has one of (if not the) longest combo attack(s) in the game.

Ideally in an MMO jobs all bring something unique to the table. But in this game it feels like everyone is a dps.

Always have been.

[Turtledeluxe]

Always have been.

It's a pretty big L imo when the game has so much potential with all its jobs to have build diversity and true specialization. Even though BLM is my favorite job it's kind of a letdown in the sense that fire is the main damage dealer by default and my build options are crit or spell speed. It's fun to play thankfully but the game keeps things a tad too simple imo just by design. It's funny that they push you to level all classes when mostly what separates them is cosmetic. At least we have different base stats.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Non-convoluted rotations for me.



Monk is annoying because it has optimal drift windows. All the jobs are currently annoying because of how strict the rotations are for optimal dps due to the 2 min buff windows. Get slightly out of alignment and your dps tanks.



That's just not fun. I don't want to make sloppy play good, but it shouldn't need to be this strict either.

[Palladiamors]

Honestly? Tough question. I know the ones I enjoy, the ones that are white noise, and the ones I actively hate. I enjoy Samurais build up to it's three different attacks. I enjoy Ninjutsu and it's supporting skills. Red mage and it's black and white mana buildup are pretty fun too. I like the flow of dark knight balancing it's self buff, mp usage, and it's buildup. The simplicity of Gunbreaker is kinda nice too.

Most of the jobs that are just bar building are just white noise to me. Doesn't mean I don't like them, I consider Machinst to be my main since the removal of summoner. I just have to like the rest of the style to make up for it.

I actively hate Nu summoners style. Across the board. I don't know how much of that is spite out of losing the job I played from day one of ARR to be honest. But I know that in games where that's the general play style I tend to drift away pretty fast.

So in summation, I think systems that require more than just numbers go up are more engaging to me and no systems at all set my head on fire.

[Renathras]

Yeah, it's a hard question. There are a lot of things that are related to good design, but aren't mechanical/something that can be programmed directly, per se. There's also a lot of subjective feeling, min-maxing stuff, hot big a gap between playing well and playing perfectly, etc that will involve things like numbers tuning and how one feels playing it, but may not EXACTLY be design. So it's kind of a hard question, just one I've been thinking a lot about lately.

"all Jobs must have a Job Gauge" + 2 min meta + proliferation of builder/spender systems = Jobs feeling samey

I'm not even sure that design is BAD, it's just bad when every Job pretty much uses it. It also makes every Job a "burst" Job. Some other MMOs have things like "sustained damage" and "cleave/AOE" strengths, but we just have all the same across the board and every Job is a burst Job. Even BLM, praised for not submitting whole to the 2 min meta, has bursty potential and does so with raid buffs in optimal play.

I think the Jobs I like best in terms of design right now are probably PLD and SMN. Yes, I know, hot take, but the REASON is what's important.

I like that the rotation is kind of broken up into modules that you can move around. For example, say you need to raise someone as SMN. You can without totally borking your rotation. You have one (and some change) Ruin 3 casts per minute that you can substitute. Say both healers go down and you have to raise both. That's about 10 seconds of time. But you could do this and then before your next Demi, you just use a Primal, maybe only get off one of its attacks, then roll into the Demi, cutting it short but keeping your rotation in line with raid buffs. The key here is that the rotation is flexible and allows this.

PLD is similar with Holy Spirit and Atonement, and even non-Holy Might Holy Spirit casts that you may be inclined to use in some situations (extended disengages, for example).

Note this isn't an argument of difficulty.

The key here to me is, mechanically, the Jobs allow choice and allow you to tweak and bend your rotation on the fly in response to situations, to push or pull in response to party needs or boss mechanics.

Contrast with very rigid Jobs, like say GNB or DRG, which are much more punished if they drift or fail to maintain their rotation. There are also Jobs in the middle, like WAR, where it needs to upkeep its Storm's Eye buff, but otherwise has a lot of flexibility in when it can use things other than Inner Release clockwork.

Other than maybe BLM (and some healers, maybe?), we don't really have any sustain Jobs anymore, and even BLM and WHM get in on the 2 min burst business. And it's not bad to have rigid Jobs...as long as they aren't ALL that. But for me personally, I think good Job design allows for flexibility and choice on the player's part. I think that's also where real skill expression comes from. Not from having one "right" answer and a bunch of "wrong" answers, but from having several "right" answers and the player is rewarded for thinking through how to use them, what else the encounter does, planning around that, and reacting to party needs.

I DO think it's good and healthy for a game to have a lot of different types, though, since different players like different types. There have been points where I enjoyed really rigid classes since I could kind of "learn/get it" then do it consistently. Some people love proc based ones because it means they never have the same encounter twice. For me, I think the kinds I like best are those that have some "anchor" points, but flexibility in between them. SMN's anchors being Demis, PLD's being FoF/Requiescat, but what you do in between is much more a matter of player choice and skill expression.

[Eraden]

Job is only good if fights designed with job in mind and vice versa. Is likes lock and key. If key nots fit lock, key bad. EW fights been gettings more and more mobile. Is makings harder for BLMs to do well. BLMs well designed but EW leavings BLMs little bits behind.

[Shurrikhan]

Low floor, high ceiling.

Since the first often inadvertently helps the latter, that's not as hard as it might first seem.

Or, another way to put it, it's a kit where (A) the cost of any single failure is low enough, (B) the net reward for more complexity (itself a risk) is high enough, and (C) optimal actions are contextual enough... that most players aren't phased towards a singular or rote understanding of the job's intended playflow despite its components all being quite intuitive.



What I think a lot of people miss is that difficulty in terms of stringency or rigidity often harms (lowers) the ceiling as much as it harms (raises) the floor, despite there typically being a greater "skill gap" (or, variation in performance from successfully avoiding the most punishing fail conditions).

Personally, I don't mind a person flailing around getting some 60% of the throughput of complete mastery on that given job. What I mind is simply when the rewards of engaging with the minutia are so low, despite the much greater complexity in optimizing them, than the core elements that a player trying to actually optimize some part of those is likely to perform slightly worse (at least at first) than those following a painfully oversimplified/rote idea of what the job should do. We should feel encouraged to go that step more, but it's fine for it to have rapidly diminishing results.

:: Yes, there are some obvious analogs here to the "2 minute meta," prior to which there were a greater number of precise timings to match (your separate 1:00 and 1:30 raidbuff recasts, etc.) and therefore slightly instances of / opportunities for optimization, but the costs of failing each or especially the largest overlaps of raidbuffs were far less. While we want some performance gap, certainly, it shouldn't come all from something so simple or, especially, with little ability to be salvaged.

Of course, any discussion of kit is generally incomplete without also having a discussion of encounter design. Without some degree of stringency (without also being too stringent), and a total number of mechanics across the instance, enough for different job features/profiles/etc to see different results... kit differences and their affordances end up paper-thin.

[Rithy255]

Ideally in an MMO jobs all bring something unique to the table. But in this game it feels like everyone is a dps.

But I guess to answer the question, I think jobs are fun when they gave a core loop that leads to the higher ceiling of whatever (dps, support, healing, defensiveness, whatever) with a mix of secondary skills and damage dealers. That's why I like BLM because it's a loop of ice and fire with sprinkles of thunder or xenoglossy or whatever. I think some jobs should be selfishlessly about one thing and others should be hybrids.

I'll agree and extend to why everyjob being a burst JOB ruins the game. As DPS right now seems to be the only way jobs can have some uniqueness

Ontop of that everything being hyper DPS focused, where nothing support wise matters as long as a job can squeeze out a tiny bit more damage then the others that's what makes it "meta", makes Tank/healer have to be so close to each other in everything that they've become different flavours.

Personally I want the game to put more importance on utility, skills so that Tank and Healer can bring unique things on the table, heck even phys ranged is meant to be somewhat utility focused. Not to say that would just be a easy change to make that one person could solve over night, but I think balance goes beyond making every damage number the same and making every job play the same.