Quote Originally Posted by W00by View Post
This isn't a thread entirely about Viper or changes to Viper, though, so regardless of your feelings about Viper, I think we can confidently say that Samurai, Black Mage, Monk, and Dragoon have both Job identities and design directions that have existed in the past.
Errr... no?

I mean, Black Mage kinda, yes, don't lump them in with the others tbh. Yeah their identity is IMO really really bad, but at least they have a somewhat unique one with their ebb&flow gameplay that actually has a relevant effect on your decisions and moment-to-moment play.

The others? In particular the melee jobs? They all lack design direction, it's just that Viper also lacks a design concept, they're just a demo job for how superior autocombos are (which they are, but that's not the point and doesn't make a dent in job identity either way). Melee jobs are utterly generic, with the exact same concept applied to every one of them, and gameplay so similar that like tanks you can find "equivalent" keyboard layouts when swapping between them as many abilities have correspondent abilities in other jobs that while sometimes different in effect are used in the exact same way as far as moment-to-moment game flow goes.

That's in fact the big thing here: There was no point adding a sixth melee DPS when the existing 5 ones have only enough ideas for maaaaybe 2 jobs. Where is the random proc chance based melee? Where is the melee without positionals? The one with all positionals? The melee with an extended ranged phase? The pet-job melee like the old EQ1 beastmaster? The melee healer? Nothing. They're all just "have a side and a rear positional and maybe a raid buff, and a strict rotation because we hate people having to think during combat". 6 melee jobs should all have utterly different designs, but as it stands, they have the thinnest different color veneer over the same brittle drywall.