Job design mindset need to change

[BabyYoda]

It is a bit of a misleading question as you have assumed I believe everything is already homogenised and therefore interesting. I do not. The problem I see with many people's viewpoints is that they look at things too broadly, and don't look at the nuances that makes things different. To use an extreme example, all jobs use the GCD and oGCD to perform actions, therefore everything is homogenised. Obviously, that is an absurd claim to make, but it is technically true. What we have to do is look at the individual skills and see how they differ, and this is where things tend to split between many people's view and mine. To give a clear example, if you had 2 GCDs, both do 100 potency of damage, but one had a cast time. They are obviously different, but there would be some that claim, well, the result is the same, therefore they are homogenised., whilst ignoring the fact one of them has a cast time.

So you think people who are saying that jobs are homonigized are overreacting?
but if that is true why Yoshi P raise the point that jobs require an identity agreeing on what people are asking same as this post?
Maybe Yoshi P is seeing things that you didn't.

Another one that comes up is Scholar's Sacred Soil and Sage's Kerachole. Functionally, they are the same, but they are different in how the resources needed to use them are generated differently and the benefit to the SCH/SGE are different, plus, they radiate from different places (SCH is ground target whilst SGE is from self).

They are functionally the same and SCH circle is big enough to cover 85% of any encounter and both of them block% of damage and give regen, but let give you that there is an innovation on this part that it is SGE come from self not as a circle.
What about tanks kit? how much are they homonigized? DRK and WAR? how they are different in gameplay perspective? if there is a difference how much? 10%? 90%? how much % is not homonigized?

What about healers homonigization? is that a thing?

Which brings me onto the next point. What would it actually take to make things not homogenous? A tank needs to be able to mitigate damage effectively, regardless of whether it is physical or magical (if you make them useless against one or the other, it prevents them from being taken into fights where that damage type is most used). Remember, every tank has to be able to clear every piece of content, so they need to be able to mitigate both sides well enough. What does this then leave you with? % mitigation and shield mitigation. There is only so many ways you can mix and match those concepts before things start to look 'samey', so how are we changing things to make then unique to the tanks? We have had suggestions of Parry/Block/%Evasion, but those are all just different names for a straight up % mitigation, with downsides.

so how you think Yoshi P and his team can make them unique?

Now, to prevent any misunderstanding, I do not think the system is perfect. As is a common theme, the 2 minute meta has destroyed a dimension of avenues that jobs can go down, the main one being damage profiles. With the 2 minute meta, every job is a burst job, even tanks and healers. It has necessarily killed off any sort of sustain jobs. My fix for this would be quite extreme, but zero temporary raid buffs. The damage stacking from raid buffs is what has ultimately caused this meta to form, so getting rid of it completely will change this dynamic. I do understand that some people like to be able to buff jobs and help others out, the caveat is that any damage buff has to be able to be upkept for the whole fight and not have periods where you can increase it higher temporarily. The other type I would look at is Brotherhood and Arcane Circle. Taking Brotherhood for a second, removing the damage component means the only thing is the Chakra gain for Monk. As long as your team mates are attacking, you benefit the Monk and help them out, but it also doesn't matter where in the rotation the party members are. Bursting or not, it doesn't affect anything. Similar concept with Arcane Circle and Plentiful Harvest.

While I agree 2MIN meta is worst idea when it comes to job design but your suggestion will kill an entire job identity,
so you are asking clearly to kill buff jobs like DNC and BRD, which has already a playerbase that they enjoys this type of gameplay.
This is already bad and not only that you are missing a core concept in any MMORPG which is support class, and removing this kit will make these jobs have less identity.

[Inputnamehere]

The 2-min burst rule should be removed. Any fixed, timed burst limitation that applies to everyone shouldn't exist. As long as this isn't fixed, job designs, boss designs, most stuff in the future, will not have much room for improvement.

This is a PvE-mainly game, instead of being obsessed with balancing (not like they did it right anyway), they should allow players to find broken ways to play certain jobs. Even if a job turns out ”weak“ people will still play it as long as it's fun and *unique*. Nobody should care if a job is weak in casual content. As for difficult raids... Surely players should prepare multiple jobs if they are going that way, right?

And man I miss the job synergy in old games. Like the Astro cards, Mana Shift and such. Felt like you were actually helping the team. Now? The fights have nothing to do “team” anymore. Everybody just minds their own business until the fight is done or somebody messes up. You press fixed buttons at fixed time points, go to a selection of pre-defined spots at intervals. No flexibility. No surprises. If something goes boom you wouldn't even care because oh that must be someone went to a wrong spot, let's just go again.

[AmiableApkallu]

Another one that comes up is Scholar's Sacred Soil and Sage's Kerachole. Functionally, they are the same, but they are different in how the resources needed to use them are generated differently and the benefit to the SCH/SGE are different, plus, they radiate from different places (SCH is ground target whilst SGE is from self).

I can keep going with things that seem the same, but are different, but that isn't the main point here. In my eyes, things ARE different, the problem is, those differences do not necessarily shine through and this is down to things that have happened. To provide an example, using the above from SCH/SGE again, when they massively increased the radius of all these effects, it stopped mattering whether it was a ground target or from self, as the range is so big, it doesn't matter. It isn't that they have directly made them the same, they have just made that difference not matter.

The relevant concept here, I think, is distinction without a difference.

Which brings me onto the next point. What would it actually take to make things not homogenous?

Encounter designs that leave room for different kinds of solutions. (The details are left as an exercise to the reader. )

[mallleable]

Might be a take, but I think the whole 2 minute thing is kind of a red herring. Damage is damage whether it's a party buff, personal buff or pure potency. These actions will be expected to be used on cool down no matter what their cool down timer is, unless it is not advantageous to do so as dictated by a fight's timeline. My biggest critique is that a lot of the big 2 minute skills are just not that interactive, but for for the most part I think that a lot of 2 minute discussions are very surface level, and just lead to dead ends.

Instead I think the real meat of job design discussion is in the filler rotations. Filler is where you spend the majority of your time playing a job, and where most of the moment to moment gameplay happens. This is where I think jobs need the most improvement -- especially healers. If filler is great, then standardized bursts shouldn't matter.

[ovIm]

Might be a take, but I think the whole 2 minute thing is kind of a red herring. Damage is damage whether it's a party buff, personal buff or pure potency. These actions will be expected to be used on cool down no matter what their cool down timer is, unless it is not advantageous to do so as dictated by a fight's timeline. My biggest critique is that a lot of the big 2 minute skills are just not that interactive, but for for the most part I think that a lot of 2 minute discussions are very surface level, and just lead to dead ends.

It really is not too much of a red herring, at least not when you look into it in depth. The reasons we have this meta is a combination of the following elements:

1. The goal is to reduce the enemy HP to zero. Because of that, the more damage you do, the better.
2. Many classes have huge potency nukes on a long, 60/120s cooldown. Other attacks do not nearly do as much damage.
2a. to get to those huge potency nukes, you need to always follow the rigid "to do" list of your class, no matter the encounter. The only variance happens in fights where things happen at a 60s/120s point.
2b. if you die, your work towards the end of your "to do" list often gets erased. Recovery usually won't be fully possible until the next 120s window.
3. Damage calculation in this game is multiplicative. Which means, combining damage cooldowns will always result in more damage than if you were to not combine them. The reason the cooldown times of those were adjusted to 60s/120s is because players actively asked for that.

-> that all means that to do the most DPS, you all sync up your damage buffs and high potency nukes on the same time. it just makes more sense mathematically.

This is the reason we have the problem of classes being designed around this very specific mold. This mold is what players usually criticize, and makes classes feel "same-y".

Instead I think the real meat of job design discussion is in the filler rotations. Filler is where you spend the majority of your time playing a job, and where most of the moment to moment gameplay happens. This is where I think jobs need the most improvement -- especially healers. If filler is great, then standardized bursts shouldn't matter.

Thats an important bit too, yeah. Its annoying when the real fun of playing a class only happens once every 2 minutes.

[mallleable]

It really is not too much of a red herring, at least not when you look into it in depth. The reasons we have this meta is a combination of the following elements:

1. The goal is to reduce the enemy HP to zero. Because of that, the more damage you do, the better.

And that's the crux of it, burst damage in games is really good at reducing HP bars to 0 -- like really really good at that. And that's why game designers gate burst damage behind things like low fire rates, limited ammo capacity, skill shots, charge up meters, cast times, cooldowns, etc. XIV isn't special in this regard. To me, the toothpaste is kind of out of the tube on this one.

[AmiableApkallu]

And that's the crux of it, burst damage in games is really good at reducing HP bars to 0 -- like really really good at that. And that's why game designers gate burst damage behind things like low fire rates, limited ammo capacity, skill shots, charge up meters, cast times, cooldowns, etc. XIV isn't special in this regard.

Except burst damage in FFXIV is... just that thing you do every X seconds. It's meaningless. You could get rid of all the 2min buffs, adjust the DPS check for the encounters accordingly (assuming there even is one), and you'd end up doing the exact same thing, sans one button.

The point of burst damage should be to kill something post haste, within seconds, not be that rote thing you do because there's a hard enrage 10min out.

[Colt47]

What happened in this game is that they went to a straight pattern mini-game about pumping numbers and put more of the distinctiveness into the fights. So effectively, people aren't so much playing different jobs as they are different cosmetic options for a role. The game is very much been gutted of tactical choices and that is why sleep and other status ailments have been moved into obscurity.

In order to have jobs be distinct, there has to be tactical roles each job fills that makes them distinct and the game has to support the use of those tactics. Things like out of combat healing, crowd control, magic support and frontliner would need to make a comeback, and they'd have to completely rethink how the move sets are designed. You'd get more meaningful actions in that kind of a system, but the trade off is that you'd also see "big numbers" kind of play fade into obscurity.

I'm going to be the first to admit that I do want to have those tactical choices in a more up-to-date package than FFXI. The new raid series made me remember what good tactical play felt like and they could have had it in FFXIV if the initial attempt wasn't such a disaster in 1.0 from focusing too much on the graphics engine. As far as how successful that approach would have been compared to this one, I'd say the current direction is the one that would give the most money. It's similar to how PF2e vs DnD 5e pans out: The more decisions someone can make the more invested a player likely will be. On the flip side, that same complexity in decisions is what repels many people as they run into decision paralysis.

[mallleable]

Except burst damage in FFXIV is... just that thing you do every X seconds. It's meaningless. You could get rid of all the 2min buffs, adjust the DPS check for the encounters accordingly (assuming there even is one), and you'd end up doing the exact same thing, sans one button.

The point of burst damage should be to kill something post haste, within seconds, not be that rote thing you do because there's a hard enrage 10min out.

Oh no, the shotgun/sniper rife/rocket launcher in my FPS game can only deal deal burst damage, and has a specific fire rate of x.xx seconds, FPS weapons are meaningless...

[AmiableApkallu]

Oh no, the shotgun/sniper rife/rocket launcher in my FPS game can only deal deal burst damage, and has a specific fire rate of x.xx seconds, FPS weapons are meaningless...

Imagine confusing FFXIV for a FPS game.

FFXIV's encounter design doesn't value burst damage in the slightest. There's no tactical thinking to when you should burst. There's no wondering whether you should hold your burst because a more valuable target might randomly appear in the near future. Just push your rotation like a mindless robot following a spreadsheet, and you're good to go. Such wow. Such amaze.