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!
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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.
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!
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
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. ^^
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
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.
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.
TL:DR Don't touch the hardcore content and be happy 😂
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
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.
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.
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
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.
Homogenization is what killed the game.