The design formula and job difficulty segregation are on brand

[Valence]

This is directly taken from this reddit thread. Please make sure to peruse it in its entirety and keep in mind that it has gone through translations.

Nothing new to me under the sun, but I still find it interesting to get the game's producer say it in such clear terms:

- They do balance jobs according to an arbitrary rating of difficulty and complexity. Surely that's why RDM can't outpace a SMN in damage output, or that a BRD/MCH is unable to do better than a DNC, for example. The premise being flawed in nature, I could at least attempt to comprehend it from their side if it actually made any sense in what we have in game in the first place. But no, you'll enjoy your jobs sucking because some devs arbitrarily decided that "it's ez". I'm sure that's why tanks are so overpowered, because surely they're the hardest thing to play in the game.

- They follow the same process to design every encounter in the game. Now you have confirmation that everything is formulaic by design. No surprise, always the same things, the same bosses, the same mechanics. They probably think that the visuals and the inevitable initial tank buster or party wide showing at 30s instead of 15s is making a fight different. So enjoy your circular arenas with a boss always doing the same thing in the middle, and your 2 packs > boss > 2 packs > boss > 2 packs > boss dungeons because this ain't about to change, no matter how we were promised new and exciting encounter design for 7.2. Hell, even the devs when surveyed say they do not want to work with people asking for harder and more complicated things to make.

We more or less knew about this, but it still somehow hurts to read, at least for me.

[Jeeqbit]

I remember there was evidence that they rated Dark Knight has way more difficulty than other tanks at some point. It may have been Shadowbringers? And obviously it was one of the easiest tanks in terms of rotation. It just didn't feel that way for the first 5 minutes or day of playing. Once you're used to it, it's not very difficult at all, but I doubt the developers play it for more than 5 minutes. Hence the difficulty rating.

They should just scrap difficulty ratings because difficulty depends on the person and how much time they play it for.

[Raikai]

This is directly taken from this reddit thread. Please make sure to peruse it in its entirety and keep in mind that it has gone through translations.

Nothing new to me under the sun, but I still find it interesting to get the game's producer say it in such clear terms:

- They do balance jobs according to an arbitrary rating of difficulty and complexity. Surely that's why RDM can't outpace a SMN in damage output, or that a BRD/MCH is unable to do better than a DNC, for example. The premise being flawed in nature, I could at least attempt to comprehend it from their side if it actually made any sense in what we have in game in the first place. But no, you'll enjoy your jobs sucking because some devs arbitrarily decided that "it's ez". I'm sure that's why tanks are so overpowered, because surely they're the hardest thing to play in the game.

- They follow the same process to design every encounter in the game. Now you have confirmation that everything is formulaic by design. No surprise, always the same things, the same bosses, the same mechanics. They probably think that the visuals and the inevitable initial tank buster or party wide showing at 30s instead of 15s is making a fight different. So enjoy your circular arenas with a boss always doing the same thing in the middle, and your 2 packs > boss > 2 packs > boss > 2 packs > boss dungeons because this ain't about to change, no matter how we were promised new and exciting encounter design for 7.2. Hell, even the devs when surveyed say they do not want to work with people asking for harder and more complicated things to make.

We more or less knew about this, but it still somehow hurts to read, at least for me.

That comment about job difficulty felt crazy to me.

Why RDM dps is so low then, if current is the hardest caster to play optimally? Verraise? I think the value of that spell became so low nowadays to justify it.

BLM, the top tier child, became so easy that the only thing easier is SMN. I'd say it's even easier than DNC and BRD, and the only actual point of BLM difficulty nowadays is dealing with extended movement periods, but it's just a matter of knowing when it's coming and saving the Triplecast for it, since even that barely has any dps impact anymore.

The amount of fail points to the RDM compared to the almost not existent on BLM says a lot. Heck RDM even still has an actual skill ceiling with the oGCD alignment thing.

[Gwenkatsu]

Meanwhile, I want to build a story where the player is the protagonist.

Was he even involved with DT?

[Bitmoar]

The job difficulty thing has always annoyed me. So they absolutely neutered summoner and the reward for long time summoner fans is that their job is now undertuned? And as you've already pointed out, this policy doesn't track because some jobs that are objectively simpler to play well do more damage than jobs with more intricacies and execution requirements.

[Valence]

I remember there was evidence that they rated Dark Knight has way more difficulty than other tanks at some point. It may have been Shadowbringers? And obviously it was one of the easiest tanks in terms of rotation. It just didn't feel that way for the first 5 minutes or day of playing. Once you're used to it, it's not very difficult at all, but I doubt the developers play it for more than 5 minutes. Hence the difficulty rating.

They should just scrap difficulty ratings because difficulty depends on the person and how much time they play it for.

You know what's funny to me? There was a PLL with Q&A just at the release of Stormblood (36 or 37 iirc) where the answer is to a question is that they used to design job power around difficulty but decided to stop.
Yeah right.

[FuturePastNow]

I already said all this in that reddit thread, but there are some obvious problems with balancing jobs around "difficulty." First of all the difficulty is a subjective thing. But mostly I don't think very many players choose their job based on difficulty. Some do but for most players I think the biggest factors are either aesthetics, or where the job falls on a DPS chart. Someone who loves the Samurai aesthetic is gonna play SAM, regardless of their ability, they'll just play it badly. And it's not just raiders who care about DPS, low-info players constantly ask "what's the best job" and make choices based on that.

Worst of all they don't even follow their own rules. No one thinks Pictomancer is hard to play, but it isn't balanced like an easy job.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't mind balancing around difficulty, in theory.

If you have both extremely easy jobs and extremely hard jobs (not that we do anymore; everything's been pushed towards center-low) and balance them identically, then the only people who have the full range of jobs available to them at a competitive level are your absolute most skilled players, while those who'd struggle to optimize the harder jobs for no reward really would, in effect, be sandbagging their parties.

That said...

1. it's a waste to develop an intentionally easy job, as that just means arbitrarily limiting the gameplay depth and performance, both, one can reach via a given set of EXP and gear, and
   
   
2. for any actual improvement to job selection, that "difficulty" would have to be based on something rather more objective, such as alpha tests for a given job experiencing a far wider or narrower standard deviation than others across a given phase, fight, tier, or expansion.

[brinn12]

There's no reality where CBU3 is balancing job DPS around difficulty. Maybe Yoshi-P is talking about roles, and not balance within the same role.

[Aidorouge]

At least this will help finally smash any delusions people had about "job changes in 8.0".

Mind you, we already had an idea of what's coming after seeing the mobile version's gameplay, but some people wanted to cope with "well that's two different studios!" Well now you're hearing it straight from Yoshi-P's mouth, that jobs will continue to homogenize as content difficulty rises and spreads outside of hardcore content.

I mean... did no one ever consider how coincidental it was that VPR got changed not long after Dawntrail launched but only AFTER Square-Enix saw people bringing up their struggles in the newly amped up normal content? Lo and behold what got "nerfed" to compensate. And one is welcome to look back across all major job patches over this last year alone and notice it always seemed to line up with the addition of a harder piece of content. The job is made to bend and budge, never the fights. (Which creates this morbid hilariously picture of all our roles being wage slaves to ever-stressful "workplace environment".)

Hell, even the Phoenix Down changes we got seem like they're a warning of things to come in 4-man content going forward...

And this is tinfoil hat here, but... maybe the reason they're putting such an emphasis on making content harder to clear is because it keeps people logged in/subscribed longer because they've ran into a hurdle they can't overcome easily (or at all), and that keeping the playerbase in a constant state of "us versus them" with their commitment to "friction" makes cooperating long enough to get things done a further flaming hoop to jump is completely intentional.

They NEED people slamming their heads into walls and screaming at each other for their game to work in their eyes.