Please Reconsider Splitting Main and Off-Tank Roles Based on Job

[Mukuku]

Get out of here with your actual information! We want to speculate based off of nothing and doomchant a bit! :P

Because it would be the first time that the devs' intent would not translate to reality, right?

Now to put some more fuel into the discussion... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2R1sHOWvQU

[Carighan]

Really?

Reply to post about actual dev information. Link to something by Xeno.

Or do you mean to imply that because Xeno, someone whose job it is to generate clicks for money, says something, there's a solid reason that it's inherently wrong? And hence there isn't really problem, only a problem with the discussion around it (since he can exploit it for money)?

[Mukuku]

Replies to post about actual dev information. Links to something by Xeno. Get out of here with that bumbling nothing of an influencer void, if your source is Xeno that never passes the smell test, no matter what it is about.

Are you arguing that dev's intent never missed the mark in the past? OK thank you for getting back to reality.

About the video, you might not like the messenger, but that doesn't mean the message is wrong.

[Carighan]

No the message might be correct, but not when delivered by Xeno. The idea that the work should be judged separately from the author is long discredited and no longer holds up, and Xeno is a very good example of that. Any opinion can become useless just by him delivering it, because you never know whether it actually hints at a real issue, or is just what sells the most clicks and hence makes the most income to somebody for whom it is their job to do exactly that. You have to re-evaluate that for every single line stated in every single video.

More generally, it's a business to Xeno. Not an opinion. If you think mass media say too much just to make money, that's what any and all influencers are, even habitually (that is, non-intentionally).

[Mukuku]

No the message might be correct, but not when delivered by Xeno.

That's a ridiculous argument. Regardless of his intent, the arguments should be addressed by their merits. Even if he's posting arguments with the goal of making money, that would not change whether the arguments have merit or not one bit.

What you are doing is textbook ad hominem: you are attacking the character or motive of the speaker instead of addressing the substance of the arguments presented.

As to your first part, no I don't argue that, and you would think that since you are reading posts by me you could figure out for yourself that that is not what is happening? Or are you argueing that you cannot read?

You were clearly and IMHO pretty callously trying to dismiss other players' concerns. While I appreciate the devs expressing the intent, there are good reasons players would still be concerned even after hearing that statement.

IMHO there should be more respect for other players' concerns, no matter how off-mark one might think they are.

I will tone down the discussion on my side from now on as I don't like where this is heading.

[Carighan]

No I am in fact addressing the substance of your argument, that is, linking to something Xeno said. Xeno's comments are inherently untrustworthy and not based on the content of what he is saying (it's a business, he says what drives clicks), hence as an argument for you to make, it's not a good argument.

You can make the argument you think Xeno is making (which he is not, even if the words are identical, he is advocating to give him ad income) yourself, and it might have merit. I agree that if I were critiqueing Xeno, it'd be an ad hominem. But he's not the one I'm replying to.

Much like the original worry was that one of the two roles would naturally be excluded is a valid argument to make as far as worrying about this split goes, to which an easy counter would be that both within FFXIV and within other MMORPGs we got counterexamples to this. We got examples for it, too, but they also apply to the current state of FFXIV (pre-evolved), meaning they're not in fact a result of such a split into subroles, they're based on something inherent in a non-split role, too (and hence, again, not a good argument to make in this context of the evolved subrole split). Context matters. A lot. Be it who speaks an argument lest it by hypocritical or vain or inherently insulting to the contextual audience, be it in whether an argument even applies specifically to the situation it is used on.

The bigger worry here is more general anyways I feel, and is the same reason why right now we already use certain classes more as MT or OT in high end pre-formed parties: Balance is never quite perfect, and any imbalance will be exploited by some players. Evolved being a tabula rasa for class design will naturally make balance worse (there's almost no way this cannot happen, this is just a given), and hence will augment this effect. But note that this has nothing to do with the MT/OT split. Whether Gunbreaker for example will not tank a boss because they're explicitly not meant to or whether they just are 21% less durable due to imbalance and hence groups want them to be in the blue DPS slot... that's irrelevant to the underlying worry. Which is a very real worry, and I share that in the opposite direction as someone who enjoys Paladin as a supportive tank which naturally means not being the tank but being blue DPS instead is an easier fit (and you'll note that right now, PLD serves best in that (sub-)role, not as the actual MT. In the live game. Right now!).

[Carighan]

I would further expand upon the general "I don't want to excluded"-worry that we have awfully little indication that this happens. It's not unheard of, of course. But if we look at the DPS forums, at plenty patches parts of the community - most recently Summoners - were certain PF parties will block summoners on their caster slots.

And while I only have personal experience for the Light DC (and indirectly Chaos, because let's face it their raiding population is on Light :'( ), this did not happen. As expected it wouldn't, because that's not how PF parties think. Their biggest worry is not "Oh damn we got a Summoner as our caster, we're doomed!", the worry of a PF part is "Can this please finally fiiiiiilll :/". They'd be making their principal problem worse by excluding specific jobs, more so because we know that for the third expansion in a row now your class is always overtuned for the content you're facing. Even if you are at the very bottom of imbalance, you are still overtuned for the content. Hence suboptimal play on the worst job easily gets it done, too. Is it easier on a more overperforming job? Of course, you can make more personal mistakes and so can others. But it doesn't outweight getting 10 more pulls in, which you can do if the group just fills.
A different perspective is high-end static groups. But here, a different argument can be made: These groups also do not care, but for them they don't care about the specific imbalance, they inherently exclude all jobs except ~8. Their players are somewhat expected to be flexible, and if you are high-end enough you'll have everything levelled anyways and be reasonably competent regardless. So unless top-end performance no longer matters, you'll want to bring the single most overtuned class at any given time even just for personal reasons, and you don't truly care which one it is so long as the boss is dead in record-time.

To translate this back into tank worries: PF groups won't exclude tanks because they just want the group to fill. I heavily suspect that unless SQEX forces it, PF groups will just have two slots for either MT or OT. If the performance is close enough (as per 4man dungeons and their explanation during the fanfest), PFs want to fill, not hyperoptimize. Meanwhile pro-groups exclude all but two tanks anyways, whether they are MT or OT is of no regard to them. Exclusivity is in hteir nature.

[SalamanderIX]

All these comments about various things of evolved being a bad idea because "PF will be toxic about it" don't fly with me. They shouldn't be making decisions based on bad behavior which is against the TOS and can get people suspended.
If people want to be elitist about MT/OT or reborn/evolved mode, they are going to do it at their peril. But those kind of people will always find something to be toxic about, like banning Machnist from their parties.