Quote Originally Posted by Mikey_R View Post
Define Job identity. This one I am curious about. I'm pretty sure people use this term to mean different things, so what does it mean to you and anyone else who wants to answer.
This wasn't directed at me, but I would love to answer it.

To me, job Identity is multiple things hence the confusion.

* Visual Identity - Does this job look like other jobs? Could you confuse its dress, style, or animations for another job?
* Thematic Identify - When describing this job to another person, (e.g., "Treasure Hunter", "Mage obsessed with destruction"), could it be confused for another job?
* Input Identity - How similar is the sequence of keys I have to press compared to another job? This is somewhat under the player's control, but mostly up to the job designers. Mudra input vs. Hypercharge vs. BRD procs all have different feel in how and when I press things.
* Mechanical Identity - If I were to describe the meters without visuals or names how easily confused could they be to another meter. E.g., meter that starts at 0 and goes to 100 in increases of 5, 10 or 15 based on user actions.

In all the above the sign of distinctness is how specific I can be and there still be confusion. This is our brain's attempt at grouping like things and removing distinctiveness in order to store the information more efficiently.

I think part of the issue is that there are jobs or parts of jobs that have gotten too close for some people in one or more of those areas. That's when they start to blend in their mind and feels same-y. The annoyance for the designers is that different jobs need to be distinct feeling in all those categories, not just one or two. The more jobs there are and the tighter the constraints around balance (more fights to balance around), the harder it becomes to maintain distinctness.