Job Homogenization Good or Bad FFXIV Endwalker Final Fantasy XIV 6.45
Вставка
- Опубліковано 10 вер 2024
- There is one topic that gets players talking in Final Fantasy XIV, and that is the idea of Job Homogenization. In recent expansions the devs have taken steps to make each job more similar to one another. This is a very controversial topic, and one I'm very excited to talk about objectively!
Join our Discord!: / discord
Music used:
As the Sky Burns - Masayoshi Soken
Heroes - Masayoshi Soken
In the Belly of the Beast - Masayoshi Soken
FINAL FANTASY is a registered trademark of Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd.
FINAL FANTASY XIV © 2010-2023 SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD. All Rights Reserved.
I think we shouldn’t design jobs around one part of a game, all it does is makes the rest of game suffer and the developers unable to design interesting stuff outside of raids.
creativity but not taxing on them. Lots of jobs to put effort into(love and care). Role quests was a very happy medium for them not doing class quests for every single job. Hope they find a nice balance here as well.
Having every single job be designed around 1 and 2 minute burst windows is WILD. Basically everything plays the same now.
I would love more uniqueness to each job, at the moment playing jobs of the same role just feels like pressing buttons in a different order. Not very exciting or difficult. There is also like no choice when it comes building you character in any meaningful way, which is odd for ab "RPG". I do kinda like the fact that ffxiv is so on rails though it means someone like me that doesn't have a huge amount of time can play a few hours a week and and beat the tougher content because the bosses are always the same, just different order of mechanics. ^^
From my experience the people who enjoy these change were people who started late ShB or during EW. A majority of my friends dislike the changes.
As far as balancing jobs, previous xpacs have done much better keeping jobs closer than EW. I don't recall a time in ShB or SB where a job was shunned due to performance.
As far as uptime strats go for those who commented before me, hitboxes also use to be half the size they currently are and we have much more QoL improvements to the jobs that required the uptime ie more TN stacks, BLM has LOTS more movement than ever before.
I know the devs won't change from the two minute thing because its easier for not just the players but for them too now Its just ashame for those who enjoyed what we were use to.
I can imaging it's pretty jarring watching these changes go into effect slowly over time. For newer players like myself it's just the way the game is.
This is a good video, but it conflates several issues together. For context I have taken every role into high end content, and have most jobs at 90, with a few sitting at 80 because I've been lazy.
First homogenization itself. This is bad. Tanks and healers have it the worst, and for the sake of variety I think it's a problem. But if that's the not everything that was in the video, then what specifically is homogenization, where is it a problem? Sage and scholar is a good place to look for what is, homogenization. Both jobs are "barrier healers" with a filler and dot dps rotation, a resource stack that lets you do single target heal, aoe heal, or DR three times a minute, and I'd argue 80% of their practical kit is the functionally the same. The few places they differ are scholars getting punished for using their healing resource, guaranteed crit shields, a raid buff, and longer healing range. Sage gets a few stackable shields, an extra damage button, and no hard cast shields. They both have a second job gauge that does nothing, and are both very good healers. Where this becomes a problem is choosing which to play(ignoring aestetic for a moment.) You either go with the one that is easier to play, sage, or the one that gets better results... oh wait they both get the same results in 90% of scenarios, and when they don't it's still a crap shoot as to which one will be "better". I love scholars aestetic and the free crit shields, but nine times in ten I use sage because it just plays better. If they played differently then we wouldn't have to worry about comparing them, it would be an earnest question of "Which shield healer do I play" as opposed to "Do I want to suffer a little more than normal." For the tanks it's warrior and DK that are the twins, with gun breaker and paladin, especially post rework, playing vastly differently, but even then DRK has basically no sustain and a ton of damage, and WAR has all the sustain, and an alright amount of burst leaving the two feeling very different.
Lets talk about what isn't homogenized. Basically any dps. Sure a lot of them are build spenders, and all the melees have positionals and a dot(or equivalent for reaper), but they all build in drastically different ways. Reaper gets theirs for free, but their spender starts building a second gauge, sam's 1-2-3 splits off into three trees while they're collecting stickers. Ninja's 1-2-3 hardly splits, and their main resource is a stacking cooldown, but you need to do hand signs. All the ranges are vastly different to each other and casters are so unique, it's hard to justify them as a cohesive role, especially with how rare hard casting becomes at later levels. I do not believe "Having a damage spike at 2 minutes" is homogenization, not when everyone's burst looks different, not when everyone's build to that burst plays differently. That's a question of fight momentum and pacing.
So lets talk about the two minute meta as a unique problem. I hate it. As a concept it isn't bad, everyone line up your buffs and we do more damage, the problem is so many rotations are so rigid that drifting basically means you're screwed unless there's a big chunk of down time, or a long add phase. Even still it's not really the end of the world, for anyone but parsers. Paladin is a step in the right direction, where it's burst window basically has a lot of wiggle room since only the 1 and 2 parts of your combo are unideal to drop in it, while it's spell, it's 3 and the three stacks of sword spam all work just fine, and can be saved within 6 seconds notice of the 2 minute. Astro, ninja and bard suffer the worst from it, having to do so much to get the window to pop right, as well as any reapers to a lesser extent. All in all it's harmless but I don't think the devs should really be pouring so much focus into it. We need more jobs like black mage that just don't care.
So I played summoner in shadow bringers, and main healer now, so I feel like that's important to say when talking about dumbing down the game. The game isn't being dumbed down. Changes are being made to reduce bullshit. Current summoner is a bit boring before 90 because of all the instant casts, and only getting a hand full of GCDs, until you can invoke titan, but managing 2 dots with one on a hard cast wasn't better. Pressing all of your buttons in one tiny burst window than going back to spamming ruin wasn't any better than what summoner is now. A lot of the old "healer complexity" was about mana managment, and as mana as a resource has become less focused on, while tp was wholly removed, nothing in a healers kit has really stepped in to take it's place. Yes we lost the second dot a few of them had, but that was an aoe, you weren't supposed to be using it with the single target, the only reason you could was because you were managing your mana well enough to eat the cost. I'd rather the game be dumb than frustrating, and honestly I think if you look at sage, there's a bit of hope. It has a system where broken shields give you a resource for more damage, as well as pneuma for a situational heal and damage gcd, and finally phlegma, and extra damage button that can be used to optimize your burst window. Is it enough? No I'd like it if toxicron was actually damage positive for single target, or at least aoe, and there can be more, but it's a step in the right direction that might act as a guiding light for DT.
All in all, these are three sperate issues with three separate sources, and will all need different solutions in order to be fixed. I see ffxiv as a rhythm game. Your job is your instrument, the gcd speed is the bpm, and your buttons notes. Homogenization, I'm hitting the same notes in the same way no matter what I'm playing. Two minute meta, there's a complex part I need to hit, does it feel good to hit it, and how fucked am I if I mess up during, or before? Dumbing down, Is it easy to hit all of my notes, and is the challenge of hitting them fun in and of itself?
I would love more uniqueness to the jobs. My friend told me that Ast used to have a shield sect and you could switch between the stances.
Yeah, I heard a lot of Astro abilities got pruned in Shadowbringers
Lol you used to be able to give mana and tp generation, use to be able to use card buffs and make them aoe/double potency/double duration, but it was so much more button busy and AST in its current state is already very busy
shield sect was trash though seriously it was not a loss you could argue about the card system changes maybe
To be fair they still have it with neutral sect
I think the more jobs they’re going to add to 14, the more they’ll play the same. Which is sad.
Maybe this take is controversial. But we don’t need any more jobs atm. And definitely not another melee even though tmnt gear isn’t shared with any other class.
It all really depends on their philosophy, MMO's are always evolving and changing!
@@Ohshizzle Just like real life, sigh
I totally agree with you on the pros and cons.
Healer design is especially stale. While I appreciate how strong FFXIV’s job balance is, I would be willing to accept a bit of variability in balance if it could allow for a more engaging experience while piloting a job.
the only healer that should not really get touched is astro cus that job is very busy with cards and such but removing dots from whm and scholar was lame man
@alexmaganda5827 hah well, not sure if you're aware of this, but it's getting a complete rework in 7.0
Great vid! Personally, I find the homogenization of jobs to be a necessary opportunity cost to assuring the best possible balance. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love it if every job operated in a unique, uncompromised way to retain its own feel. But like many comments here say, that would likely lead to many players preferred jobs being excluded due to being “suboptimal” in high end content. I’m always going to bat for the pro-player choice team!
And eventhough the jobs are homogenised, War still manages to do everything Dark knight does but better now.
Yeah, Warrior is really popping off rn
It`s actually the other way around where DRK does everything WAR does but way worse. Looking at you Delirium.
Yup, DRK sucks...again. In 6.0 or 6.1 (can't remember) DRK was actually the top DPS tank. Now it's the worst or 2nd worst dps tank. WAR is just better DRK now.
The problem for me is homogenization makes balancing easier, but I don't think there should be super tight balance. SPECIFICALLY in a game like XIV (and XI) where you swap jobs with a click I enjoy the idea of being able to swap if need be, or struggle a little more in a bit of content or the other. As long as the job isn't total unusable trash everywhere, I think the uniqueness of each job at the forefront would be more fun. Like the man mentioned, no content is unclearable because you brought a MCH or something. To me Tanks are the blandest they've ever been and I had been a tank since ARR, so I just don't even touch them anymore. But hey, there's still more roles for me to play.
Really it's not a hill I'm willing to die on, though. It's just a small preference of mine.
Lastly I am no endgame raider nowdays but it feels like there's a lot of overlap in raiders complaining about having to adjust their bursts because of mechanic (like the example in the video) and the people quitting the game after a lot of raiding because they say endgame raiding is a strict dance and one you do it, and it's almost the same most times, it's repetitive and boring. Adjust bad. Static bad. They can't win. lol
I feel like part of the issue lies with MMO's in general. These aren't your typical games, these are seen as investments for a lot of players. These are players who want to see their characters grow, who want to do the hardest content, who invest hours upon hours into one game. The point I'm making is, when you're this invested into something, it's almost impossible to be happy with the product for any amount of time. If we weren't having a homogenization discussion, then I'm sure we'd be having a discussion on something else. Thank you for your comment!
Tanks have gotten so braindead to play like enmity management is not even a thing anymore i guess its good to get the noobies into tanking but it is kinda sad at the same time
the way jobs are designed, and how they are build to fit into a specific gamemode(bossecnounters) is what made me quit the game quite a while ago.... now and then i check reddit and you tube for the state of the game and if they plan to add something that feels like an "mmo"... i mean an open playfield where you can take your charakter and throw it the way you build it against bosses, solocontent, raids,dungeons, openworld, other players. without transforming the game into a arcade experience tuned around a very specific skillcheck. well i guess this video answered my question indirectly.... if this is a hot topic worth discussing for the community that means it has to be gotten worse and not better...... guess i wait another year and see if theres a shining light on the horizon..... or just homogenous darkness
Think about it like this. What makes Final Fantasy 14 unique from other MMOs? At the moment honestly nothing. Just that it's "good"
Was World of Warcraft popular because it was "good" or because it was doing something others weren't?
I think homogenization is fine up to an extend, because you can't help but overlap skills when all jobs fill the same role anyway, but healers specially are at a stage where they're practically all copy paste of each other and that imo is going too far. Sage for example was hyped as this dps oriented healer that heals through dealing damage...but it's literally just Scholar with the lily gauge instead of aetherflow.
Not really bacause now nobody wanna play scholar anymore since it's harder. Ppl say they want more variety, but then abandon the harder class.
@@SableBez Scholar isn't necessarily harder though, just clunkier.
@@SableBez scholar hard where 🤣
Music is a bit loud on this one in my opinion
Thanks for the feedback!
I miss damage stances for tanks and tp in general. Warrior used to be harder to heal than other tanks but did enough damage that if played well you could stay in damage stance the entire dungeon. Yes the healer would contribute less dps overall because they would need to focus more on keeping you up but you could deal more damage to compensate. And with tp limiting melee jobs actions you have to find a balance between doing enough damage to keep aggro without tank stance on while making sure not to tire yourself out before getting to the next boss. You have choices to make and that led to personal expresion at different skill levels. Only the best tanks could do massive pulls and get away with it, it was a mark of pride to survive massive pulls without dripping aggro or running out of tp. Now wall to walls are pretty much expected or your bad.
I feel like the whole conversation around “homogenization” is difficult to make work as a blanket statement. As someone who plays many classes at or above proficient levels, my experience is that playing Samurai feels nothing like monk which feels nothing like ninja which feels nothing like reaper. The same is true of my experience with all 4 healers and tanks. While yes their cooldowns and burst phase may line up mostly consistently and have overlap, playing all these classes doesn’t feel the same to me.
Also “just learning another rotation” is the most dismissive way to say “learn an entirely new class and its ins and outs”. Same could be said of literally any other game. “WoW mage and warrior are different? No all you have to do is learn a new rotation.”
The one thing I will say for healers and tanks is, yes, eventually those get kinda boring. As a healer eventually everyone learns the fight and you no longer are engaged as you have very little to do. Tanks eventually take so little damage that they barely need to be healed through their own self healing. This could be fixed by making bosses do more damage but that’s what happened with several pandemonium wings and healers were pissed that they had to heal so much/damage taken was so high, as I remember.
It feels like an argument on paper that removes all of the visual, tactile, and audio aesthetics from the equation which just doesn’t resonate with how I experience the game.
Not a fan, although I'll admit it doesn't really apply to me, as I don't raid Savage or Ultimate. I think your point about making each job feel unique hits the nail on the head. Variety is what keeps players coming back for more, and losing that is a major misstep.
Though I've become used to it now, I was really upset when they took away the Paladin's Flash ability for their tank stance. I get why Squeenix did it. Easier tanking means more tanks, shorter queues, and less players at each others' throats for not holding aggro well enough. Still, I really liked having that Blind debuff. Maybe they could bring it back just for that?
I think it's fine, but personally as a tank main, I just wished they have unique gimmicks to their 3min mit like Warr has with Vengeance. Coz really, DRK needs a lifesteal buff, also oblation is the laziest mit design 😢
Yeah I mostly agree :/ for me tanks are the worst when it comes to homogenization but that's probably just my bias.
@Ohshizzle nah I think it's a common thread by now with how tanks are a little imbalance with one another, specially last tier with Abyssos, that was their breaking point of how truly each class weigh against each other.
It's good. Otherwise people will complain endlessly about balance.
i'm personally fine with universal changes if it makes the game better for all classes but i feel like too many classes feel too much the same at the moment, i wouldn't mind more uniqueness amongst the classes
Meh. I'm in the minority but I don't really mind it. It allows me to play any role I want without pigeon holing me into a single job for that role. I can play based on which aesthetic of the job in that role I desire and still be fine. "Braindead" play and homogenization are two different things IMO. You could have each job be unique and still be braindead.
Healing is homogenized but that's not what makes it braindead. What makes it "braindead" is you only have 1-2 DPS buttons and no actual rotation. You could add actual unique rotations to healer jobs and still keep the role homogenized into shield and pure healers.
I absolutely hate job hlmogenization. Yeah it's easier to design around but it also means that designs of abilities and skills get completely shut out too, and that's what happened in FFXIV. No more elemental damage, weapon type damage, and no stat ailments. On top of that gear isn't interesting at all. It's all strictly vertical.
Some people might not like it but no game can ever have perfect anything because there is always a give and a take. What they should do is take some advice from their previous MMO and make different gear set types that mitigate that. On top of that it gives people more reasons to do side content, and makes pieces of gear more memorable. Like I have 6 jobs at level 90 and I couldn't tell you one piece of gears name that I even cared about. Not even the relics lol.
Maybe I'm alone in this but I'm not as bothered by the homogeneous nature of some of the jobs? Like, I've been playing since the PS3 ARR launch and while I may have many gripes about SCH, I much prefer how SMN works currently than it did previously. Same with MCH. I leveled that up pre-ShB and boy, that was a mess.
I also seem to be the only one who remembers that old AST spent 75% of it's time fishing for The Balance and maybe only using like, two of the other cards in certain situations if you got those instead. At least now every card is useful, if less unique. Does it take a lot of the challenge out of AST? I guess? With how fast the games moves sometimes I don't even notice.
I was also terrified of tanking when the game was younger, but as tanks have become more similar they have become more accessable to people like me who still want to level them even if they don't really want to use them for anything.
XIV relies on it's visuals to differentiate it's jobs, which for someone like me, is totally enough when added with the slightly different angles each job type takes but I know for others it's not. I get that too, I also played FFXI where character customization in terms of job, gear and what spells you've collected make a huge difference. I sometimes long for that too. But the community on the whole I think has grabbed less on mechanical identity than player identity through character expression.
Like, I will always prefer SCH to SGE even though SGE feels smoother to play and makes more sense mechanically because I made my adorable Lala girl with the idea of her being a nerdy archeologist, which SCH fits a lot more aesthetically. I feel like this conversation leaves this kind of role play out because that's how game analysis has been done for ages, but it's a bit silly to leave that out in a community focused game like XIV. Like, when you show someone the game for the first time you're not telling them how intricate the mechanics are, you're showing them how cool they look.
It's bad because it makes the gameplay boring and braindead. I miss Kaiten...
TL:DR Don't touch the hardcore content and be happy 😂
It do be like that sometimes LOL
Pretty much.
This goes for every MMO and most games in general.
Without homogenization jobs in a given role will be treated like builds or specs. Instead of playing whatever you feel like you'll be pressured to fill out the optimized "party loadout" for each fight. The boss has many adds and melee A and B have significantly better AoE than melee C and D. Boss jumps at 1:25 so don't bring 90s burst jobs. This popular uptime strat only works with tank A and tank C's invulns. If you happen to prefer a job that for whatever reason is ill-suited or even just disadvantaged compared to its counterparts, your enjoyment becomes a detriment in the eyes of some and greifing to others. Greater job diversity would indeed give us meaningful choices, but once the math is calculated, the spreadsheets populated, and the strategies saturated, those choices become an illusion.
That's definitely a fair point, and I think it's Square's main motivation. It's the fear of letting that Meta mindset take over, which you can even see in their decisions on add-ons. That being said, I think there can be a balance struck between making jobs feel more unique and meaningful and more homogenized.
Homogenization in class design is something you actually don't really see nowadays in Team Based Online Games. WoW has a surprising different amounts of playstyles for every Class. But FF14 you just focus on the bosses mechanics without much thought on your kit. Think about this what happens in FF14 in someone messes up in a raid? You all die. Compare that to moments in World of Warcraft where the best moments are because someone messed up and everyone can show off their knowledge and skill to change a bad scenario into a winning scenario. Notice that the only clips and content FF14 is able to provide nothing like World of Warcrafts. We don't have unique stories to tell in FF14 like WoW does. Matter of fact all we do is complain about how cringe other players are and that's about it. We honestly don't have that kind of community because the playstyles are all so homegenized that people don't even notice we're all just doing the exact same thing because of it. We will never have a single story as interesting as anything that came out of World of Warcraft and that's because of the gameplay allows storytelling to unfold in the world. That's why there's world PVP. Even though it could be unbalanced it provides the players to do something unique to their experience. The way a Rogue in World of Warcraft can run around invisible backstabbing players for fun. You don't have that equivalency in storytelling with FF14 ironically.
Best Xpac jobs were Heavensward. Roulette Bob may not care about the 2 minute window but a lot of players care that their class is just a reskin of another. Taking the entire lore and core concept of Astrologian as being the seer of the stars and changer of fates and then giving them one card, damage, turned a very interesting job into a 1 note snooze fest. I hear you like damage so here is some damage to go with your damage. ZzzzZZzzzz.... There is a very sharp double edged sword when you design a game around it doesn't matter what class you choose because it immediate tells the player their class doesn't matter. No one feels special. I am just one generic tank or generic DPS. We all do basically the same thing and I can be easily replaced so my character has no value. When you can answer the question, what makes your class unique and special by saying, my particle effects, someone missed the design mark.
I have never understood this argument. Okay, there is some baseline similarities, but ultimately, Jobs still feel different/unique. As a tank main, and having maxed all 4, they each feel different. WAR is the beefiest, and has better self mitigation with a relatively easy burst window. PAL is a quick runner up on defense, but their burst window is much different with divergent rotation paths that feel pretty different and complex compared to WAR. DRK is even more different being a lot squishier than either WAR/PAL, and their capacity to specifically guard against magic adds and extra layer of unique mitigation. Their burst window is also much larger as they have more moves and interweaving of abilities to make their damage output more sustainable over a longer period than either PAL/War. GB is less squishy than DRK, but also falls in the higher damage output category. They feel fast and quick with their ability to do lots of variety in their burst windows. With their flexibility for burst, I never feel like I am waiting that long to get to a point to do additional damage like I do with PAL/WAR. Their burst may not be sustainable like DRK, but they have more opportunities to employ it.
All this is to say, while there is some similarities, I have felt for a while now that all these tanks feel different on a core gameplay level. I always feel like when I swap it’s because I am looking for a different flavor of tanking. I do like that there is enough balancing that no matter what I pick it’s not going to impair me, or I am not picking “the meta.”
Depends. Do I see anyone complaining that melee classes can now sprint without being punishing, hence homogenizing the game? No, because it was unironically an awful mechanic.
People hate homogenization except when it actually improves the gameplay, then they don't include it as a homogenization example.
Its bad. Flat out. The excuses people use to say its better, arent actually better. Theyre iust easier solutions. I dont care what is easier for the devs, we should be getting whats better
Unpopular opinion here, but I like the two minute meta. I like that it requires a team to be aligned, and feels good when I can nail the timings just right. I like FF's fight design requiring consistantcy, and not spending hours trying to maximizing strats around black mage's positioning or some kooky job design. It would make party finder impossible if you need to know the paladin tanking mitigation strar with black mage positionals, and melee uptime relative upside nub strat... or whatever wacky crazy thing you need to do to cater to a job's non-homoginzed wacky stuff. At the end of the day, it's all about damage, and if you have to cater to someone's 96 second burst and force summoner's 2 minute damage burst to be scuffed since they aren't the 96 melee, you get some awful "suck it up lesser dps" stuff. It would make static even more important to be able to create unique and catered strategies, and some jobs unplayable in party finder.
The only downside to the 2 minute meta, and it's moreso a problem in general, is skill and spell speed. It really forces some specific tiers to maintain the rotation (and yes, even for the two button healer dps rotations!), so they need to make it more interesting or just do away with it.
That's totally fair! I don't think the ideas around Job design or the 2 minute GCD aren't completely good or bad. I think that having a tighter job design can have benefits but it can go too far. In the same vein, if you don't control the experience enough things go crazy! Thank you for the comment!
Homogenization is what makes this game so accessible and one of the best balanced games on the market.
Play any other MMO or online game that tries to make every job or class unique and you'll see how badly it effects the community and forces everyone into a meta.
People want the illusion of freedom more than real freedom. The freedom to swap between any job is what this game offers rather than being forced into a meta.
Also, if you don't play high end content in an MMO, you won't get bored or experience burnout. I've played a ton of MMOs (and games in general) and the one consistency among gaming is that if you work extra hard to min-max and squeeze every bit of talent out of yourself to complete a piece of content, everything else will seem boring and unchallenging in comparison.
Your like every player every where.. dps check only. Job balance = dps check. What's makes a tank good = dps check. What's makes a healer good = dps check. What makes good materia = dps check. What food is good = dps check. What's the best way to craft a shovel = dps check. The only play style that matter to players like you is how fast you can clear something. Your like wall street trader time = money only.
When I play tank I actually care about absorbing damage, keeping hate, and protecting parties. Dps is the last thing I care about.
When I play healer, its about heal, buff and keeping myself safe.
When I switch to dps, then by all means MORE dps.
Game mechanics really are pathetic and on easy mode. I really enjoyed tank and healer stances for those that could push alittle more dps and alittle more healing.
If they designed fights with more aoe boss hits, and stronger tank busters more quicker, tanks could actually feel tanky and healers would have to heal more and be quicker to move.
If the lower tanks enmity, dps would be scared again to pull too much hate and have to take more measured approach
honestly, the pros about the homogenization you mentioned are mostly wrong still, im not saying this out of spite and just because i hate the homogenization, just from my own experience from EW and ultimate+savage raiding in it.
Jobs are balanced better: yeah no this is just wrong, MCH was deadweight most of the expansion with RDM also still being just a worse SMN, and MCH still struggles to keep up with BRD and DNC because it still brings so little to the table, also when EW released jobs like DRK and WHM were clearly forgotten, WHM was literally almost unusable cuz SE forgot to change Miserys potency and had a lot of mana problems, the balance has been TERRIBLE.
Fight design: honestly this is also just straight up wrong, the job designs have almost no effect on the fight designs itself, people say things like DoTs and stuff should be removed because downtimes are getting worse and worse, those people are just stupid, PLD was perfectly fine with the buffs right before the rework, there was no reason for the rework really, the only reason why it was reworked was because of the 2 min buff meta, but that also has almost no effect on the fights itself, the fight design anyways is so boring now, things must be done oneway and doing a mech wrong means quaranteed death and usually wipe, nothing could be cheesed with mitigation and certain skills anymore cuz getting hit by something applies magic vuln which increases your damage taken by 500x, so homogenization has nothing to do with this really, people just pretend that this is the reason why 2 min burst is good and homogenization is needed
then the job design: while this can be somewhat correct, it causes a snowballing effect, now that everyone has AOE mitigation, bosses need to hit harder, when bosses hit harder players need more mitigation and the cycle keeps going, SE CANNOT add anymore mitigation to the jobs for example or this will just be madness in 7.0, the job rotations are also so perfectly looped that i have no idea what they gonna do to the job rotations in 7.0 if they dont remove 2 min burst for example, but the thing is what most people forget, is that not every job need to be good at every fight, thats how it works in every game, if you have played FPS games like rainbow six siege for example, if the map is huge with long hallways, youre not gonna take a shotgun with you and that is completely fine, this is how games should be designed, im not saying some jobs should be un-playable in some fights, i just mean that for example in some fights WAR would be the more preferred tank because its defensive options and healing, while something like DRK would be good against magic based fights, you could still win magic based fights with other tanks, but DRK should excel at fights with lot of magic damage.
also you mentioned jumping from job to job is easy this way, while this is correct its also boring for people who like to play omnitank for example, i used to love tanking but im starting to hate it because its too similar, also this statement in this game is so dumb, the popular saying is that "you can play whatever you want! if you want to play healer for this fight but DPS for the next one you can!" and while yes you CAN, you SHOULND'T since gearing in this game is ass, if you gear your healer, then decide to switch to DPS, you change your powerful geared healer to minimal Ilevel DPS and make the fights take longer and more annoying to the other players.
also you mentioning the "who was the 2 min burst and homogenization designed for" is what people need to say and question more, because who indeed it was designed for? for casuals? nope because they dont care about optimal damage, they dont care about doing their rotation correctly aslong as they can clear stuff thats enough for them, midcore and hardcore? no, because we did not ask for this boring 2 min burst meta that everyone despises, so to this day, with 7.0 revealed and 6.5 approaching and expansion starting to end, i still have no idea whos idea it was to have 2 min burst meta in this expansion.
still, really good video, always nice to watch your videos since there is so few videos about these things, like the state of jobs, homogenization, 2 min burst, gearing problems etc. keep it up!
You took the words right out of my mouth. I get that some jobs would be less desirable but c'mon. You can swap jobs at the press of a button. OR just use the damn job regardless. lol Crazy idea, I know. That aside, due to jobs being only balanced for savage and up now I have boring jobs while doing... literally else. Like 95% is not current yet I'm stuck with four tanks and healers who almost play identical so a few Ultimate raiders can... actually finish the fight with only tanks. 😂 Yeh, kinda not worth it.
@@TheOneGreat tanks and healers are in an interesting spot, SE tried to make tanking and healing easier so more people would play them, but in the process they made tanking super braindead and boring so people who enjoyed tanking and healing quit tanking and healing cuz they don't enjoy how boring it is and new people don't wanna play them because they still have the resposibilities of tanks and healers and they are more boring to play than DPS, so by trying to make the game easier and easier to access they are slowly killing the interest for combat
What a shame that you feel that way. I'm having a blast!
I appreciate you watching, and the comment as well! I definitely agree that balancing isn't perfect, and it's probably just my pre conceived MMO knowledge but I still feel that it's pretty solid especially right now. And you might disagree with this point, I'm assuming you've been playing the game longer than I have, but I feel like after a certain amount of weeks you end up getting so much gear that balancing isn't as big of a deal. With fights, I think we mostly agree. My point in the video is that, if jobs are mostly the same, then there isn't any outlier abilities that can break fights. If every job has access to a certain kit, then they can design the fight around said kit. And with Job design as well we agree. A lot of this video is me Steel manning the position, because personally I'm not a fan of a lot of these decisions. That being said, discussion like this are really enjoyable to me! Thank you for engaging!
@@Ohshizzle yeah i can see your point and im not fully disagreeing with it, but sadly there is no real solution to this, either keep the combat this dull or bring back some job fantasy that might break some fights with some jobs, you need to pick a poison, i would 100% rather take more unbalanced but fun experience than balanced but boring experience
i have not played game that much longer than you, i started in early/mid ShB and been playing ever since, but i have researched and watched a LOT of old content from stormblood, heavensward and even ARR, and unless im super wrong about this (which i might be) i dont think there has been a time where a job was "unplayable" there sure was some stronger jobs, the balance was more of a mess in early expansions, but things were more fun and unique but still usable i THINK, not sure tho.
so while you can say EW is now balanced and balance only affect the week 1 players and world first groups, i dont think its ever been completely horrible like WoW for example
"How dare roles be similar to each other??? they should ALL take 200 hours to learn SEPERATELY" basically is all i hear tbh...
Sage and Sch are the mitigation healers, and they paly very separately from each other... Ive been able to pick up the other tanks after learning TANKING with one...
I dont see the issue when I need a different mindset for even Mitigation healers and Pure healers.
Its actually good
Makes the work for the devs easier on jobs and fights
And Players can easily line up there burst.
Look at WoW where timers are all over the place so you will always struggle to line up the burst.
Its positive even when it feels a bit bland imo
Couldn't disagree more. It's the designers job to make the gameplay enjoyable. Something XIV fails to do more and more. I don't care if it's easier or harder. At the end of the day it's their job. And all I'm seeing is shortcut taking (homogenous joubs) and lip service (getting a new skill/trait that increases your potency by 5). Looking at you, Malefic.
But heres a question, why does burst need to exist? what if they removed all raidwide buffs and players relied on their own personal buffs? like lets keep astro cards, let those be the only shareable damage buffs, but remove EVERY raidwide buffs, wouldn't that make the job designs and combat miles better?
we don't need to rely on bursts and all that, just by removing stuff like battle litany, battle voice, technical step, embolden ETC. this 2 min burst "requirement" would be gone, you shouldn't rely on other people to maximize your own damage potential
@@Sebs-FFXIVYeah true. We should also remove healers. I shouldn't have to rely on others to keep my hp up.
@@MrCarlWax well TBH you really don't, did you see the no healers TOP clear? you find that funny? because that just proves how fucked this game is
@@Sebs-FFXIVI think that's an interesting point I hadn't thought about but I strongly disagree with "you shouldn't rely on other people to maximize your own damage potential" because I really, REALLY like teamwork. I love the thrill of saying "we won" instead of "I won" and the moment only my own performance matters they might as well let me raid with the Scions and fuck all other people.
Some uniqeness to a job is always fun, I do however feel that people in FFXIV are spoiled when it comes to balance.
Those complaining about the 2 min meta looks at all the negatives of it, like when a mechanic happens at the same time or that it takes away planning. But let's say we change the cd on some jobs buff, we now have some jobs getting screwed with their burst in certain mechanics and some jobs just aren't picked in certain comps or fights because they don't align with the others buff cd or the bosses mechanics. Some jobs will be completely put to the side and called dead (like monk used to be). It wouldn't even matter if the dps is balanced as some jobs just wouldn't be viable for most comps.
About homogenization, I can agree with the complaint to an extent, like with certain overlapping mitigations literally being the same button with a different colour (it would be more interesting if they did something different besides just being mitigations), but skills like anti-knock, rampart, second wind I don't think are homogenized skills, just like sprint isn't. Removing or adding to that would again make some jobs a worse pick or unplayable in certain cases. I do however want some new cool and unique skills. I wouldn't complain. But the homogenization does help immensely with balance, allowing more player choice. Something I feel people just wave off as a given that the balance will be unchanged.
Strategy creativity, I'm not sure what people want here. If we want challenging and complex fights then they have to be quite scripted and handcrafted. I can make a comparison to WoW where the fights do allow some creativity and different approaches, but that is because raid fights in WoW are very simple in design. A lot of the fights have a lot of downtime and some of them can be done by just a few people doing mechanics while the rest stand still and do their rotation and occasionally move to the side to get out of an aoe.
I'm not saying that you should leave and go to WoW or any other game, but I really recommend for the people that have these complaints about FFXIV to at least have a go at other MMOs and see how they are. Not to disprove your opinion, but I do feel that it really helps to form a more informed and experienced opinion when you try other games that do, do these things in the way that people are asking SE to do in FFXIV.
i dont think bursts are necessarily a bad thing, but then becomes the problem when balance comes in the way of fun, there is a line how far you can make the game bland for balance until it just becomes boring and dull for everyone.
EW is beyond that line.
Gamers will ALWAYS optimize the fun out of gameplay, thats why you gotta ignore it somewhat, not fully but embrace the fun more rather than balance, you can change the numbers but you cannot change gameplay design.
EW is at the point where some jobs were straight up trolls just because how underpowered they were, release WHM, MCH until 6.3, RDM currently, people straight up did not let these jobs into PF and statics just cause they were trash, so currently just cause the game is bland all revolves around damage, does your job do most damage out of your role? no? then youre not invited to the static.
TOP and P8s were really good examples, if you did not have DRK in the group for those fights, your group was basically trolling and you had no chance to compete with groups who did have DRK atleast the early weeks
i say ignore the balance to a degree and embrace to fun and jankyness of old gameplay more, there will always be meta in games, thats just how the world is
@@Sebs-FFXIV I like the current directon and I hope they go further with it.
@@MrCarlWax thats also one thing im worried about, how they can go further with it anymore? look at jobs like GNB or DRG, the rotations are so honed, so flawless, that you cannot give them anything else or you cannot change them without doing some major rework level of changes
@@Sebs-FFXIVits people like you who spread the idea that certain jobs suck or are unviable, which then causes people to not invite them. If you are have a redmage in your group and are unable to clear content then its just a skill issue at that point. This isnt a feral druid or survival hunter situation where some classes are doing less than 50% of what the top dps are doing. Ff players are spoiled when it comes to balance.
@@solar6142 Amen, sister!
Simple answer bad, takes away job personality, and unique rotations in my opinion, and just seems like lazy development through lack of creativity.
lost me on the "been only around 2 years" sorry gotta take a more experienced players take on this subject. Ive been around since ARR and If gone through alot of shit. I think the important thing here is to embrace change, dont ever feel like the game will stay the same always cause that is TRULY BORING if it does. we are only now going through this homogenization phase. I can tell you now THINGS BACK then too were sorta homogenized.cross class skills. *cough*
Fair enough, I really appreciate the insight!