Concerns Regarding DPS Balance: Physical Ranged, Red Mage, and Summoner

[Valence]

Not gonna lie, reading what people find gratifying and enjoy in the game makes me feel like an alien. Maybe that's why I play rphys.

I'm with mao.

[BabyYoda]

I feel like FFXIV devs do not have clear vision on how role/sub-role should have.

Like I remember when RPR released they added it as Maiming because now DRG can share gear with other job and this is the problem with it.

VPR is an exception, it does feel like similar with ninja, so it is logical that it share gear with it.

casters are suffering, it is now casters with rez vs casters without rez.

PhyR is the worst of it.

healers failed so hard with pure/shield

I feel like tanks was about to go heal vs block but it didn't work so it is 100% homonigized.

[BabyYoda]

I feel like FFXIV devs do not have clear vision on how role/sub-role should have.

Like I remember when RPR released they added it as Maiming because now DRG can share gear with other job and this is the problem with it.

VPR is an exception, it does feel like similar with ninja, so it is logical that it share gear with it.

casters are suffering, it is now casters with rez vs casters without rez.

PhyR is the worst of it.

healers failed so hard with pure/shield

I feel like tanks was about to go heal vs block but it didn't work so it is 100% homonigized.

--------------

I remember they balance blackmage as a higher DPS because of "hard" to play, is this a professional way to balance the game? all jobs should be harder than what we currently have.

the problem with easy jobs it will always ruin the balance like how phyr jobs are in horrible state.

the other misconception is how they balance the game around high APM which is not professional at all.

jobs should have a close range of APM if medium is 40 all jobs should be 38-42 APM it will reduce the issues of people having high ping (thanks for great server structure).

Most games specially PVP games they are masters of balance, it is way easier to balance PvE game than PvP.

in summary:
1- Do not balance jobs around difficulty but balance them around functionality. (what they can do)
2- Keep APM for all jobs similar and add uniqueness to it.

one thing that I like in DT is how they make BLM easier but it was too much easier than before, it should be a bit harder and keep all jobs at this level of difficulity.

[Lyth]

Mechanical design and job fantasy are great incentives to get people to play a role. But if one job is unambiguously better than the alternatives, then those jobs might as well not exist. That's why DPS parity is so important, especially within role categories. On tiers with tight DPS checks, players can and will lock out jobs. And even if you're not explicitly locking jobs out, I can guarantee that at least a few people in your PF week one enrage attempt party are sighing in frustration when a RDM shows up for the Caster slot instead of PCT. They don't need the raise, they just want the DPS to get them through that last percent.

DPS parity should be the starting point. This has nothing to do with homogenization, gameplay, or lore, because all those can be unique without changing that number. It's just a fundamental point that lets everyone compete on a level playing field. I acknowledge that there will be limitations around this. If tanks or healers had DPS parity with DPS, you would run an all support party. If ranged had DPS parity with melee, you would run an all ranged party. That's why fights are designed on a 2/2/2/2 principle. But if you balance well, then ranged will sometimes be better than melee, and melee will sometimes be better than ranged. Burst will sometimes be better than sustained DPS, and sustained DPS will sometimes be better than burst. That's what I mean by parity.

You can be as creative as you like outside of this. But it just comes down to letting everyone have their moment to shine. And by levelling the playing field for DPS, other gameplay elements take center stage. That's why it's so fundamentally important to get this right.

[Carighan]

DPS parity should be the starting point. This has nothing to do with homogenization, gameplay, or lore, because all those can be unique without changing that number. It's just a fundamental point that lets everyone compete on a level playing field. I acknowledge that there will be limitations around this. If tanks or healers had DPS parity with DPS, you would run an all support party. If ranged had DPS parity with melee, you would run an all ranged party. That's why fights are designed on a 2/2/2/2 principle. But if you balance well, then ranged will sometimes be better than melee, and melee will sometimes be better than ranged. Burst will sometimes be better than sustained DPS, and sustained DPS will sometimes be better than burst. That's what I mean by parity.

As you state yourself here, true DPS parity is impossible.

You can have "equal opportunities", basically. You can have fights where bringing maximum melee DPS is optimal, because uptime is high and melees are designed to output more at full uptime. You'd balance this with a fight - ideally in the same tier - where melees have to constantly disengage, so ideally you'd bring 0 melee.

That's how most old MMORPGs did their balance, btw. Importantly this is the same balance by which you balance a support-centric-but-lower-output job in the same role as a no-support-but-pure-DPS job: Some fights ask for extra support from DPS, and hence the former is optimal there. Others do not, and naturally the latter is optimal. The underlying balance is the same.

Namely: Individual moments aren't balance, but expansions and all opportunities and fights in them balance out "overall".

This is the opposite of "proper" parity, where fight design is not inhibited to account for all the differences in job design as jobs have been balanced to be equal down to the moment-to-moment gameplay, and hence fights can be designed ~whatever they want to be, DPS will be equal anyways. This is where FFXIV is headed, and is mostly there if we discount the two new jobs, because all underlying combat design has been equalized and most unique aspects have been eroded. We currently only have two "camps" of DPS, one sits lower and I suspect if the devs were to balance the numbers a few more times they want the support-centric jobs like Dancer, Bard and Red Mage in that lower camp, and the DPS-centric jobs like Samurai, Viper and Black Mage in the higher one.

But it just comes down to letting everyone have their moment to shine.

You mean, like having those moments where Red Mages get to save the day by spam-rezzing 3-4 people?

[SoloWingMetatron]

I created a new alt the other day and started leveling Summoner from scratch and going through all the story again...Summoner is the main job I play on my main character and leveled it exclusively back when I first started playing FF14 during the 2.0 beta.

Since the Summoner rework I've been intending to go through the Summoner story again on an alt for quite some time, in order to gauge how the rework effects the job at lower levels...I am currently level 33 on my alt and have unlocked Summoner and the Ifrit-Egi...Already I can see a vast difference in game play at these low levels...Unfortunately the majority of these differences are a downgrade in my opinion.

Back in 2.0 or even up to before the job rework, Summoner and also Arcanist had much more of a presence/identity...Your Carbuncle/Egi actually took part in battle and you were able to micro manage it's abilities alongside your Ruin/DoT casts...This gave the class a very unique gameplay loop that was quite enjoyable during the leveling stages (especially at such low levels where you already had so few abilities available).

However since the rework I feel the Summoner leveling experience has been totally gutted of any identity or fun/unique gameplay elements...It feels to me like it's missing a whole portion of a class/job - That being the Carbuncle/Egi taking part in battle...Now all a Summoner does is spam Ruin over and over. On the odd occasion we get to pull out a different coloured Carbuncle for a brief moment, only for it to do a single quick attack and then it's back to the Ruin spam...At least before the rework Carbuncle or the Egi was constantly fighting alongside you and you always had the option to either issue it commands or allow it to do it's own thing!...Furthermore, because leveling is so fast now you way out level the point you are in the story, so in battle mobs often die before you even really get to do anything with your Carbuncles/Egi!....Again, at least before the rework the Carbuncle/Egi could get some auto attacks off before a mob dies...

I can't help but feel the current Summoner rework only works from a certain level onwards (70+) but anything lower than this and the job/class is just incomplete and offers a dull leveling experience when compared to other more complete jobs/classes at those lower levels...I know there was a reason for the devs to move away from pet management. Specifically the delay on issuing commands to Egi during endgame content...however I feel removing the Carbuncle/Egi auto attack/commands all together was the wrong move.

I think at the very least auto attack should be brought back to the Carbuncles/Egi, and if that causes delay issues again then I think it would make more sense to simply have the Gemshine/Demi summons be separated from the Carbuncle/Egi. That way we can have a pseudo pet in the form of the Carbuncles/Egi, that has at least the ability to auto attack (if not it's full ability set from 2.0) and the Gemshine/Demi's that can be summoned independently and no longer tied to the Carbuncle/Egi...I feel that this would make for a more fun leveling experience from start to finish because in the earlier levels you can play the job as a watered down version of the 2.0 Summoner and then as you get into the higher levels it starts to add those extra layers through the Gemshine/Demi's.

[Lyth]

It depends on what you define as 'true' DPS parity. This game ultimately uses a 2/2/2/2 role system in its fight design, so individual elements are not truly interchangeable for balance reasons. The problem is that Ranged is currently split into three different subcategories, each of which gets different treatment. We currently have the role split into Damage Casters, Raise Casters, and Physical Ranged, each of which have 2-3 jobs each. The latter two are at a DPS disadvantage compared to the Damage Casters, on the basis that the other jobs bring Raise or a 1% damage buff. This was less of an issue when BLM was just an outlier in the Damage Caster category, but with the advent of PCT dominating the charts you have players asking what the point of these other sub-subroles are.

I think that it's fine to have variety in support actions that jobs bring to the table, but you can't really ascribe a 'DPS equivalence' to them. Raise on RDM is a lot of fun, especially if you're doing content without enrages. It's fantastic in CLL/Dalriada, as well as 24p content. In raid content, less so. You're bottoming out on MP to get those chain Raises off, and the resulting DPS loss from the deaths and downtime probably will cost you the enrage, if there isn't a body check that gets you first. MCH has some fantastic kiting options and interrupts in Deep Dungeon content. But can you assign a DPS value to that in raid content? That's why DPS really needs to be balanced independently of support functionality.

Once you establish that level playing field, you're free to come up with whatever support concepts that you like. I think this is an underdeveloped area in the game, especially when you consider that the most creative concept that we've seen in a while is Expedient.

[Aco505]

on the basis that the other jobs bring Raise or a 1% damage buff.

The developers balance the physical range to deal less damage because of their continuous and consistent uptime. They said so themselves by declaring that doing damage at close distances is harder in previous patch notes commentary on job tuning.

The 1% is a thing all roles have. It's players who comment that the p. range are a glorified 1% buff but that's not why they're balanced as such.

The problem is that the damage gap is too large and SE is painfully slow at balancing. They will only do job tuning on major patches and some minor patches, such as those in which they release content like Savage or Ultimate. Thus, the amount of times where they will balance jobs is quite limited per expansion. This is why MCH and other jobs were only remotely "balanced" near the end of EW after trailing behind for a while.

[AmiableApkallu]

I think that it's fine to have variety in support actions that jobs bring to the table, but you can't really ascribe a 'DPS equivalence' to them. Raise on RDM is a lot of fun, especially if you're doing content without enrages. It's fantastic in CLL/Dalriada, as well as 24p content. In raid content, less so. You're bottoming out on MP to get those chain Raises off, and the resulting DPS loss from the deaths and downtime probably will cost you the enrage, if there isn't a body check that gets you first. MCH has some fantastic kiting options and interrupts in Deep Dungeon content. But can you assign a DPS value to that in raid content?

Absolutely.

In a game where the win condition is, generally, "Drop the {target}'s HP to zero," the (default) reason to push a button A over button B is because you believe it will make it more likely than not that you'll achieve that goal. If you believe that there's no meaningful difference there, then you choose based on which button you believe will achieve that outcome more quickly.

Thus, all you have to do is compare the DPS in the possible futures arising from pushing Ye Olde Support button versus the possible futures arising from not pushing it. The difference between those two sets of futures is the DPS value of the button.

[Carighan]

Once you establish that level playing field, you're free to come up with whatever support concepts that you like. I think this is an underdeveloped area in the game, especially when you consider that the most creative concept that we've seen in a while is Expedient.

Well, to this I'd say: "Good luck with that then", should you ever become a game developer.

See, even ignoring support tools and how they may or may not be factored into DPS (after all, if one of your support tools is a way of becoming faster, there can very well be situations where that increases your DPS and others where it does not), sheer mechanical difference in just the DPS tooling will make true DPS parity impossible.

Source: Every MMORPG ever. Seriously, it's not like this wasn't attempted before. We can, lacking any evidence to the contrary, probably assume that it is an inherent function of "classes" that it is impossible to balance their damage output. Hence it's safe to rethink your approach. Do not assume DPS parity can be achieved. Find a workable solution for your approach that does not require DPS parity in the first place.

But it gets more problematic than that. It's not like other MMOs, notable WoW in the post-Cataclysm era when it replaced talent trees with triplet-choices and then later GW2 with its completely radical approach to class balance (everyone is DPS+xyz, but always DPS first and foremost), have not attempted this "Everything to differentiate is tacked onto a balanceable DPS core". Now, as above, so far not a single MMORPG has ever managed to show that said balanceable DPS core can actually be balanced. It seems to not be possible. But even ignoring that, looking just at the tacked-on part, the two examples we have promptly broke their DPS balance with it, if in radically different ways.

Which, if you think about it, is bleedingly obvious: If DPS were equal (or well, within 3%-5% of each other, which is the closest anybody ever got which means people just stack the better class anyways) then naturally who stack whoever has the strongest non-DPS tools. Why wouldn't you?!
So in summary:

* Balancing DPS output is utopian, nothing supports that it is possible to do this.
* Balancing an optional tacked-on non-DPS set of abilities on top will naturally imbalance classes again. We had two games showing us that this happens, and zero that this will not happen.

MMORPGs aren't a new genre. We can just look towards what worked and didn't work for other games.