Genuine Question about Job Homogeneity

[ZephyrMenodora]

If you havent yet, Shougun's thread is a good read to get a general idea of what it would be like to give flavour back to the jobs

If you were to remove the icons and animations from the jobs, and only were left with "attack 1, attack 2, attack 3" and so on, could you tell the difference between Scholar and Sage?, could you tell appart from Gunbreaker and Paladin? (Trick question, you could, because you have played them, but it would be quite hard for a casual)

Even if you don't know what the jobs are you are playing, it's easy to tell the difference that they are different jobs in your example. Continuation feels different than Paladin's burst period. GNB doesn't have access to the shields or burst heal you might want at times on a Paladin.

Your position that you use on some of the DPS skills on Sage and Sch differ. How the fairy operates is different than Kardia passive healing. The tools and how you use them still vary.

[Zeastria]

They share core design - yes
But doesn't feel the same to play!
--> Different weaknesses, flow and strength.

(I enjoy SCH/AST but i dont enjoy SGE/WHM)

[Moqi]

Most jobs are a variation of build gauge=> spend it on big attack and the way they increase the gauge isn't that different. You can map out similar abilities to the same buttons and you don't even need to know exactly what you're pressing as long as you learned how one job works.

You feel like they're different enough, lots of people don't. There's really not much else to get, it's not that complicated. There are many ways to deal damage and SE only uses one and a half.

If you were to remove the icons and animations from the jobs, and only were left with "attack 1, attack 2, attack 3" and so on, could you tell the difference between Scholar and Sage?, could you tell appart from Gunbreaker and Paladin?

This sums it up perfectly.

[kajv95]

The homogenity complaints are in part due to the fact that every single job is a "build gauge to spend during burst" job now. Yes, they have some flavor differences, and the way the burst builds can be different, but overall the goal is always the same.
It's a complaint because it *wasn't like that* before. There were tangible differences, such as BRD being defined by snapshotting crit buffs onto DoTs to gain rapid big attacks while providing a continuous buff cycle and acting as an MP/TP battery to the rest of the party.
Now, BRD simply builds up gauge to release it. Sure, it's technically different from its peers, but every job is effectively "filler until everyone releases together" and if you don't like that type of gameplay, well, there's really no job left that *isn't* designed in the same "build gauge to burst" style by this point.

What drove it home for me was during leveling in Dawntrail, I decided to actually set up my hotbars and as it turned out, I picked up every job pretty quickly and efficiently simply because I understood that they were all about the same thing. I build gauge, I spend for big damage. You do it on tanks, you do it on dps, and you do it on healers too.

[Gurgeh]

Though I'll probably regret making the thread, this has been sitting in my mind for a while, so I wanna ask genuinely about it. No funny screenshots or anything this time.

I keep hearing people calling the jobs "too homogeneous" or that they're all "the same" and as much as I try... I just don't see it, at least not in the way people talk about it...

Hmm ok interesting. Because I was was recognising the homogeneity that people were talking about, but not looking closely tat what part of that was what I felt vs what I recognised.

For me, I guess its lots of different things

* I love PLD now... but I still miss how its DoT made the job 'feel'. Would I go back? Yeah I would actually. And I'm pretty sure there was room for some of the current job plus the DoT.

* I never liked WAR but even I massively miss the unique feel that its Cleave shaped aoe gave it in dungeons. If I'd have been a WAR fan I would have been really fed-up by that. (Why on earth they felt the need to change that is still beyond me. Its only used in dungeons, where it only just .about matters if your stance is off, forget how optimal your aoe is, it didn't matter)

* I think the loss of the OLD SMN was a shame. If I'd been a SMN main, I'd have been fed-up. The job was in every meaningful sense just deleted. I'm not a good player, but I loved the challenge of being able to work hard on putting together most of the old SMN rotation most of the time. i could turn on hard mode for dungeon for example by trying to play it as best I could.

* Poor Astrologians. Just poor Astrologians. Why bother learning the job they are just going to blitz it again.

And it appears (to me at least) like the pressure giving rise to all this, is to make all jobs on a par with each other... which sounds like maths job... which means if your going to make tuning remotely feasible or effective, I start to suspect and be sensitive to anything in one job that looks like another. And I'm not wild about all of the above changes.

Surely most agree that there is now nothing like the massive differences between jobs that 'used' to exist in the past?

I mean ASTRO, yeah we needed 2 barrier 2 regen. But would it really have been the end of the world to end up with 3 barrier, and 2 regen?
ASTRO was great for alliances and Trials where you never new what the other healer would be.
Now I groan when you get 2 SCH on a level 60 alliance that starts to get a bit messy. I mean is fine, but I miss not having a bit more aoe regen sometimes. It just feels very sub-optimal.

[NegativeS]

I get the feeling that this thread was made partly because of our conversation in the other thread, so I'll offer my perspective:

I'm going to pick two random DoW DPS jobs and go over their rotation. Let's see... VPR, MCH.

VPR: 123 single target combo, or 123 AOE combo. With some variation depending on which button lights up. Occasionally, you can use a different ability that unlocks a separate, harder-hitting combo, and after filling a bar you gain a single use of your 'capstone' combo.
MCH: 123 single target combo. No AOE combo, just one ability plus another that you use off cooldown. Occasionally, you can use a different ability that unlocks a separate, harder-hitting ability, and after filling a bar you gain a single use of your 'capstone' ability.

Okay, two random DoW tank jobs. WAR and DRK.

WAR: 123 single target combo, or 12 AOE combo. Every now and then you hit a different button in your combo to increase damage dealt. You fill a bar to use a more powerful attack, or you use a different ability to use this attack anyway, and every 2 minutes you gain a single use of your 'capstone' attack.
DRK: 123 single target combo, or 12 AOE combo. Every now and then you hit a different button to increase damage dealt. You fill a bar to use a more powerful combo, or you use a different ability to use this combo anyway, and every 2 minutes you gain a single use of your 'capstone' attack.

I hope you understand where I'm coming from.

They can make jobs look as different as they want, and they've done a good job doing so. But, as a person who has played several years, if they stripped all the art and flavor off of every attack and only left the combos and damage, I wouldn't have a clue what job I was playing. Maybe the larger range would give away that I was playing MCH compared to VPR, but you get the point, I'm sure.

(Note: While doing this I did try this with DoM DPS jobs and noted that they are pretty unique, which is why I would guess they are so popular. So, one point for SE. No point in doing it for healers since a healer's rotation is not really set in stone because of healing being reactionary, but I would be glad to go over how similar their builds are if requested)

If I'm delusional, please let me know. But I've maxed all 4 of these classes and played them some besides, and I can confidently say they are homogenized.

[AmiableApkallu]

But jobs all "feeling the same"? I genuinely can't wrap my head around that one.

If the emphasis is on "jobs all", then I also don't understand.

If the emphasis is on "feeling the same", then I feel (pun intended?) that's 100% subjective.

My own perspective focuses on the tanks and the healers (sans Astrologian, because I simply cannot make myself like Dawntrail's card system), and I'm approaching this from the perspective of someone who's looking only at Duty Finder content:

All the tanks might "feel" different from each other, but if you can play one tank, I can tell you how to map 50+% of your buttons if you want to play another tank.

All the healers might "feel" different from each other, but if you can play one healer, I can tell you how to map 50+% of your buttons if you want to play another healer.

There are days when I feel like I shouldn't be able to so trivially map buttons between different jobs. That it's homogenization when every tank has a "40% mit." That it's homogenization when every healer has an otherwise-generic "oGCD single target heal."

[Jeeqbit]

I keep hearing people calling the jobs "too homogeneous" or that they're all "the same" and as much as I try... I just don't see it, at least not in the way people talk about it.

It depends largely on your hotbar setup, quite frankly. If you setup every job's hotbars different then it can feel different to you, because well, you're looking in different places to press buttons.

However, if you really go out of your way to setup your hotbar for each job similarly, you will start to notice things like:
GNB <-> PLD
DRK <-> WAR
SCH <-> SGE
MNK <-> SAM

But there are other factors only able to be noticed by old players. For example, WAR used to have a conal AoE which made it unique and required a degree of skill to aim correctly. This was removed. It was removed from some SAM actions as well, but not others - it's sort of inconsistent. RDM still has some conals.

Gap closers were not available to all melee jobs... now they are.

The animations of abilities like gap closers and stuns were more unique and to this day continue to erode and act the same. Like DRG and DRK's iconic leaps.

It's common for jobs to have a two-part or three-part combo, but many jobs weren't that simple originally, and whatever system they had was streamlined into a clear "two-part" or "three-part" combo that highlights properly on the hotbar so that new players understand it.

Often, there were unique consequences or times when you used certain GCDs or Abilities. Over time, these just became simple Abilities that you weave without consequence or thought.

Typically, you had to do various things to "keep up" a buff or meter on yourself, and this was removed and made into a trait on almost all jobs except... BLM? Which still sees ice/fire expire and still wants to stand still a lot and still wants to keep into leylines. Others still have buffs that expire but they are a joke to keep up compared to BLM, which still has actual challenge to it despite the Dawntrail changes. BLM is really an example of the sort of thing every other job has lost.

So I think this is mostly what people mean. They don't feel entirely the same to me either, especially DPS jobs, but I see what people mean.

[Mecia]

Its all the 30/60/120 CDs and copy paste 50 spender gauges for me.