Can an expansion survive without a DPS?

[Arkdra]

I don't understand the sentiment that we are reaching a point where fewer new jobs can be added. I generally feel like the only reason for there to be any difficulty when adding any new jobs is lack of imagination or lack to tropes to fall back on. Which is just not really possible.

IMO they should have stopped adding jobs in stormblood, and I am saying that with rpr being my current preferred dps and gnb being my current preferred tank. It is super obvious that their capacity to iterate on the jobs as is just isn't really there. I don't even mean this from the asinine perspectives that the people on this forum endlessly bang on about like homogenization or dumbing down or whatever. I mean things like Samurai just keeps getting more midare's stapled to their kit instead of something new or interesting. Here is a spoiler for the red mage portion of the DT combat preview: they're going to get another ender bolted on after Resolution. Everyone do a little cheer for glare 4, an ability we can be as certain is coming as the sun rising and setting.

I legitimately don't know if it's because the amount of work required for the number of jobs we have has bloated past the teams ability to handle it, or if they do things this way because they worry they're going to rock the boat if they get too creative. If everyone already thought rdm was perfect in stormblood (and that was a frequent refrain back then), it does make sense to not want to change it much. But I find it a little boring personally. Either way, it at least seems like they are out of ideas for the jobs they have, so why add more jobs?

Well besides the jobs being the biggest back of the box feature obviously.

[Themarvin]

It has nothing with the jobs to do... in fact it would be better if they cut off 3-4 of the current jobs and not adding anymore jobs at all.

[Supersnow845]

Square enix seems to excessively cater to feedback without really understanding why it’s given

How many of the SB jobs modern iteration is basically just “the entire job is now the thing everyone loved from SB but you can do it more often and the job no longer has a fail state”

RDM melee combo, WAR fell cleave, SAM midare, BLM fire 4

And almost every other job has been gutted since then

They really don’t seem to know what feedback to actually take to make the jobs actually feel better

[Oizen]

Nothing about the current design of tanks or healers makes me want them to add another one

[Zeastria]

too many jobs and the quality of each job drops.

Better improve the ones they have and add more content !
I prefer MORE zones/quests/lore/dungeons/raids over new jobs

[SerMicha]

My guess as to why they introduce a new DPS every expansion is just that DPS is the most approachable role. A lot of players don't want the responsibilities of tanking or healing (whatever is left of those responsibilities anyway), so I'd imagine there are a lot of people who wouldn't even try out a new job if it wasn't under the DPS role. I think adding a DPS job is just a fail-proof method to get the maximum possible amount of people hyped.

Like others say, there are a lot more DPS players than Supports, so if they added a new Tank and Healer, there probably wouldn't be as much total hype around the new jobs.

[Derio]

Next expansion needs to be ranged physical and start the trend of one job per expansion so they can focus on making existing jobs better. Some new skills and traits are simply cosmetic and some perhaps even useless( looking at you enhanced unmend).

They need to fix healers before they add another one and balance tanks before they add another one which doesnt look like they will have that in 7.0

[Absurdity]

We will eventually get to the point where it is no longer feasible to add new jobs due to job dilution and the limited resources of the dev team.
How soon that will be, we do not know but I would guess that its probably sometime around 8.0 or 9.0.

We've already passed that point long ago, their job design team hasn't increased in years and having only 4 people for 19, soon 21 (22 including Blue Mage), jobs is already showing it's problems, and has been for arguably two expansions.

It is not feasible for so few people to create satisfying designs for all of these jobs, so you end up with a bunch of "palette swaps", a whole lot of different flashy sparkles and no substance.

[GoatOfWar]

Look at how hillariously bad they are at designing tanks.

There's Warrior.
Worse but cooler Warrior with dark magic and a greatsword.
Worse warrior with a sword and shield.
Worse warrior that can do 100 more dps for much more work.

What would be next? A worse warrior with a shield and spear that can run 1% faster?

I don't want a new tank. If anything, i want less. Because balance and design isn't done in good faith to begin with.
Just give me more dps jobs.

[AmiableApkallu]

It is not feasible for so few people to create satisfying designs for all of these jobs, so you end up with a bunch of "palette swaps", a whole lot of different flashy sparkles and no substance.

I imagine that in an alternate reality, here's one way things could have played out:

For jobs introduced in ARR, HW, and SB, they're designed to have some core, cohesive kit and identity at Lv.50. They pick up a new aspect (mechanic, gimmick, gauge, something along those lines) from Lv.51-60, and another new aspect from Lv.61-70.

To go along with all that, the jobs have quest lines from their starting level (Lv.1, 30, or 50) through Lv.70.

Then, like many other features of the game, the jobs are effectively frozen at Lv.70. These jobs never step foot on the new expansion treadmill of, "What new button do we add this time? / What button do we remove to make room? / What if we totally redesign the job because reasons?"

Instead, for ShB, all the effort goes into making two new jobs, with kit thresholds being at Lv.60/70/80, and job quests from Lv.60 through Lv.80. And we do the same for EW, except using Lv.70/80/90.

Compared to what we have now, new jobs would be getting 20 levels worth of quests rather than 10, and those 20 levels would include the expansion they were released in. Presumably, the new jobs would be better designed than they are now because they'd be getting almost all the design effort. SE still gets to hype up new jobs each expansion.

Older jobs might feel stale, but they'd continue to fit in the era they were originally released, which is important because everything else from that era is also not receiving updates, and doing content synced is a thing.