Can anyone clearly explain "job homogenization" in this game?

[HikariKurosawa]

Like... samba, tactician, and troubadour are reskins of the exact same ability and don't stack, but look different so not homogenization.

Rampart is a tank role action but the job does a slightly different animation so not homogenization

True they should remove role actions because it's homogenization.

I agree that there is "homogenization" in the game, I do not believe it is worth speaking about because it makes the game more balanced and viable. When people talk about it, they act like every job is becoming the same, when that's clearly not the case. It comes across as very disingenuous and it's good to know where people are coming from. I didn't make this thread to argue, I just wanted to understand what people meant when they said this game has a homogenization problem or jobs are becoming more and more similar.

I think a lot of the posts in this forums are just blizzard shills trying to criticize FFXIV for not being more like WoW.

[Valence]

Tell me how you never played XIV before ShB without telling me how you never played XIV before ShB..

[Gunz_Zbestest]

True they should remove role actions because it's homogenization.

I agree that there is "homogenization" in the game, I do not believe it is worth speaking about because it makes the game more balanced and viable. When people talk about it, they act like every job is becoming the same, when that's clearly not the case. It comes across as very disingenuous and it's good to know where people are coming from. I didn't make this thread to argue, I just wanted to understand what people meant when they said this game has a homogenization problem or jobs are becoming more and more similar.

I think a lot of the posts in this forums are just blizzard shills trying to criticize FFXIV for not being more like WoW.

General things have been removed as well. Tp and Positional attacks. Not saying these things are good but they might be part of the complexity people are saying they miss unconsciously.

[Carighan]

I agree that there is "homogenization" in the game, I do not believe it is worth speaking about because it makes the game more balanced and viable. When people talk about it, they act like every job is becoming the same, when that's clearly not the case. It comes across as very disingenuous and it's good to know where people are coming from.

Honestly, are you this standoffish IRL, too? :') If you just wanted to bait people to flame them, you could have done that on 4chan or so.

But hey, if you don't feel the amount of homogenization is irrelevant, more power to you. This makes for 20+ jobs you can play instead of what some others here (me included though maybe to a stronger degree than others) feel is more like 6-8 effective jobs, everything else is just variations of existing designs marginally pieces together differently. Like those mirror-characters in Smash Bros, Mario, Luigi and Dr Mario are all similar in overall design, with just variations. While they are differently for top-level play, the underlying approach to using them is the same, and that's what playing any tank after you played any other tank, what playing any melee after playing any other melee (except Viper) feels like. Casters and PRanged get huge bonus points for holding up the unique-implementation flags here, but they're the only thing doing that. Tanks, Healers and Melee are near-100%-homogenized by now, allowing a single button scheme to be used to elicit a near-identical flow of finger movement during your rotation. Healers in particular have it even worse because even the non-typesharing healers (Astro vs Sage vor example) share so many conceptual similarities (and a certain amount of homogenization is expected for an in-theory reaction-based class, don't get me wrong) that you can do the same setup!
Like in my case: Nuke on 1, Shift+1 is AoE nuke. 2 is the DoT, or Eukrasia on Sage because that's what it comes down to. 3 is the instant GCD heal. 4 is the casted GCD heal. Shift + 3 is the instant AoE GCD heal. Shift + 4 is the casted GCD AoE heal. G is the instant oGCD heal. Shift+G is the instant oGCD AoE heal. And so on, and so forth. Yeah sure the abilities are all marginally different but my brain can do the exact same decisions to play these jobs for virtually all of their existence, the only differentiation comes with something like Astro cards vs Sage Phlegma because the former is on a 1:1 burst cycle, the latter on a 2:1 cycle, the former also needs 6 oGCDs to resolve during burst, the latter needs 2. But that's as far as things get unique.

Then add all the non-job homogenization: Positionals are usually 1 per cycle-set now, for two per entire rotational loop on a melee (usually 1 side + 1 rear, Monk breaks the mold with a 2:1 here). Melee vs ranged has become near-entirely unimportant in bossfights to ease balance between the types of DPS. Utilize has been mudflated, with all melees having gapclosers even the tanks for example. Raid utility has been simplified into simple defensive boosts as boss fights have situations with forced mitigation requirements. Selectable archetype abilities have been - rightfully, no argument from me there >.> - removed. Emnity no longer really exists as a concept, leading to non-tanky tank gameplay. Mana is a non-concept on all but two-ish jobs (Dark Knight and Black Mage, and in ultra-rare cases Red Mage, granted).

You can make a far longer list than that, but post size limits...

[Commander_Justitia]

they act like every job is becoming the same, when that's clearly not the case

Know 1 tank, know all.

[Carighan]

It occurs to me, when you post them like that, that despite a strong visual cohesion in ability f/x, the icons in this game really portray no "theme" of any kind.

And you even leave a lot out of there. All tanks have a 1-2-3 ability combo that matches up 1-to-1. All tanks have a 1-2 AoE combo that matches up 1-to-1. All tanks have a post-burst move (two tack on a whole combo, granted, but the initial move is mirrored among all tanks). All tanks of course have Rampart and thingy, but they also all have carbon-copy 30%/40% DRs, and have an "extra" tank move that is gameplay-identical but thankfully, at least mechanically separate (Bulwark etc).

[fulminating]

Yeah but if they do have a shared visual theme it’s way harder to tell at a glance what’s there (see sge’s sea of blue and purple vs the superior sch (not that you should really be using the icons to see what you’re doing at higher difficulties))

[CNitsah]

Know 1 tank, know all.

Now do the same for ranged, magic and melee. Using the tank role where the problem obvious to tell ninja, samurai, dragoon and Reaper or Red Mage, Picto and SMN play the same is really bad faith. Reading this thread, I came to see some point of view on the general design I can understand even if I don't agree on the importance. But the 1 on 1 sill works only for tanks and maybe some healers.

[Supersnow845]

Now do the same for ranged, magic and melee. Using the tank role where the problem obvious to tell ninja, samurai, dragoon and Reaper or Red Mage, Picto and SMN play the same is really bad faith. Reading this thread, I came to see some point of view on the general design I can understand even if I don't agree on the importance. But the 1 on 1 sill works only for tanks and maybe some healers.

You can map the healers like this and you can also map VPR and RPR like this (the only difference is VPR has its whack condensed combos)

So you have 10 out of 21 jobs that can functionally be mapped 1 to 1 to at least one other job then of the remaining 11 you have 11 flavours of builder spender that all have no utility and very likely have a disconnected 2 minute raid buff with at least one nuke inside that burst and functionally identical AOE mitigation profiles to others within their role with minimal differences

[Carighan]

Yeah but if they do have a shared visual theme it’s way harder to tell at a glance what’s there (see sge’s sea of blue and purple vs the superior sch (not that you should really be using the icons to see what you’re doing at higher difficulties))

Oh haha, I should have been more specific. I meant per ability type. Like in some MMOs I've played, certain elements of icons were consistent to denote aspects of that ability, like weird claw marks in the corner (or sometimes as part of the artwork) for a multi-target self-prioritizing attack and so on.