Yoshida Press Interview with Dengeki Online (2/20)

[Viena]

I fail to see how a new job is a short term solution.

As Nama states, there's a very large fraction of players that prefer playing DPS roles compared to Tank/Healer/Support ones. This isn't something exclusive to XIV by any means. It's incredibly hard to significantly change the players' mindsets in that regard no matter how well designed the classes in the typically less attractive roles are.

Introducing a new tank class would likely lead to a temporary burst of tanks as people level it and try it out, but eventually most fall back to the role they feel more attached to. Rewards such as mounts help even to a lesser degree.

Also, the number of jobs available for each role isn't necessarily significantly related to how these will be distributed across the player base on the long term. As it is now we have 2 tank jobs, 2 healing and and 5 dps ones. This is quite close to the 1/1/2 ratio typically required for most of this game's content, however, it wouldn't take that long to find tanks (either on PF or DF) if the jobs of choice were evenly distributed within the player base.

It doesn't matter what the party setup or composition is if people don't play the jobs in the first place.

Um... it certainly does. Let's say that only 1 out of 10 players wanted to play regularly as tanks.

Would it be easier to find a single tank for every group of 8 or to find 2? (The rest of the group composition being non-tanks, of course.)

My point is, grouping becomes much easier the closer the developers manage to match the role ratios in their party design to what the players typically feel as playing.

[Elcura]

So? It doesn't matter if people like playing DPS as long as they are comfortable/capable of playing the tank job. More jobs make the role more accessible and adds more variety to the game. You introduce a new job, everyone rushes to try it out and/or get it to 50 and those who don't care will go back to their original jobs and those who do will continue to play the class. Those who tank anyway might find a job they like better and people gain something else to gear.

Also, the number of jobs available for each role isn't necessarily significantly related to how these will be distributed across the player base on the long term. As it is now we have 2 tank jobs, 2 healing and and 5 dps ones. This is quite close to the 1/1/2 ratio typically required for most of this game's content, however, it wouldn't take that long to find tanks (either on PF or DF) if the jobs of choice were evenly distributed within the player base.

I don't even get what you want or are asking for. If you have even spread of jobs nothing would change. There's a reason there are more DPS classes than others simply because it is the most played, therefore it needs the most variety. You'd still be waiting for tanks and heals more than DPS.

Um... it certainly does. Let's say that only 1 out of 10 players wanted to play regularly as tanks.

Would it be easier to find a single tank for every group of 8 or to find 2? (The rest of the group composition being non-tanks, of course.)

My point is, grouping becomes much easier the closer the developers manage to match the role ratios in their party design to what the players typically feel as playing.

You're talking crap now. How can developers design in a way that adheres entirely to a flexible playerbase? A player could feel like playing whatever they have at any given moment, whether it be tank, heals or DPS. Obviously it's easier to find 1 tank and/or 1 healer but then you need to design content around 1 tank and 1 healer, ignoring that the playerbase could choose (in a none DF setting) any setup they like which further skews everything. Then you're ignoring that with 1 tank, 1 healer, you reduce the amount of those roles needed typically and their numbers continue to drop. In the end, DPS still lose and the minority tanks and healers are still the most valued jobs because there just aren't enough people willing or needed to play them.

In the end, adding new jobs is a boon that lasts the entire game as every player (new or current) has more choices and in a game where leveling is flexible, might eventually reach the point where they can/want to tank.

[Viena]

Basically, I agree with your first couple of points, in the sense that it adds variety, but that won't help changing the fact that there will be more people interested in playing DPS than other roles.

You're talking crap now. How can developers design in a way that adheres entirely to a flexible playerbase? A player could feel like playing whatever they have at any given moment, whether it be tank, heals or DPS. Obviously it's easier to find 1 tank and/or 1 healer but then you need to design content around 1 tank and 1 healer, ignoring that the playerbase could choose (in a none DF setting) any setup they like which further skews everything. Then you're ignoring that with 1 tank, 1 healer, you reduce the amount of those roles needed typically and their numbers continue to drop. In the end, DPS still lose and the minority tanks and healers are still the most valued jobs because there just aren't enough people willing or needed to play them.

You seem to imply there's some self-balancing rule where people will start preferring to join in the roles that parties starve the most of. That's certainly true (I've leveled PLD because of this sole reason), but only to a far too limited extent to make a difference in the overall situation (the DPS queue times are hardly different today from the ones we had back when DF was introduced during the beta). The idea that altering the party setups to match the most likely demographics would suddenly result a positive feedback effect and make everyone quit playing tanks in a large scale to the point of them becoming equally rare to how they are today sounds as absurd to me as implying that the game should be over-saturated with people joining parties as tanks by now just because it used to be the most demanded role at some point.

SE is sure to have statistics of what people's more favored roles are (from XI, 1.0, beta and even estimates from non-SE games) and could have designed the game's content to closely require the most likely distribution of preferred roles among the player base. I sometimes get the feeling that the only reason why 4 man parties are a thing in XIV is that they just wanted to be different from both XI (parties of 6) and WoW (parties of 5), over sighting the problems 4 player parties would imply in terms of role ratios.

[Elcura]

You can't just change general party compositions without thinking about the content you're making as well as your player base. 2 tanks and 2 healers is infinitely less stressful than 1. Especially considering with only 1 healer you need to have ways for people to recover without one or it becomes a stressful role with a lot riding on it. People avoid playing tanks because from what I've seen they're terrible at it, and the hate swapping mechanics seem to boggle the mind. With 1 tank the pressure also increases which changes the design (or risks making the job boring), and increasing the pressure on these roles never gets people to play them. You design content with specific setups in mind, if players can get around that with more or less then good for them. If 2.0 were designed with 1 tank, 6 dps and 1 healer (or anything other than what they have now) the entire design of the game would be different. As such, the problems with job distribution would always remain and adding new jobs no matter what the circumstances are helps that.

So what good would using anything other than current data do? Completely different games with different designs for content and jobs, you're basically asking for SE to be psychic and predict the model that would give the best result given (more or less) irrelevant data that may or may not even hold up. There's so many variables it could go on but suffice to say that is unrealistic at best.

[Viena]

There's many variables indeed, but you sure can get the impression that most people prefer playing DPS from most MMOs. The difficult question would be how many more players prefer so, but making a rough estimate based on statistics from different games is viable, especially by carefully examining the ones that have design choices most similar to the ones you're basing your game on for other aspects. That's no futurology, that's market research.

I never implied that they should just change the party setups leaving the content as is, that would obviously be quite silly. I'm also not asking for them to re-work the existing content, to adapt it to other setups, as the resources this would take would be quite considerable. I'm only implying that with a strong research on the subject they wouldn't have designed the current content as it is in first place, or that in the very least, they should consider the issue in the new content they release to address the game's situation (i.e. ex primals and CT being examples of them doing the opposite, for instance).

[Elcura]

I still don't know what you're asking for. The research that happened came out with this, and if you can't see these party setups are designed with casuals in mind (2 healers 2 tanks reduces the stress on those roles) then you wouldn't get it. Your "solution" isn't even a solution. It's nothing, because what you're suggesting needs to be done before the game is made, not 6 months after release. If you're asking which is more viable then new jobs are, because what you're suggesting shouldn't even be a thing at this stage. If it was, then it certainly shouldn't be looking at other MMOs when all they'll tell you is that people like playing DPS. Helpful.

In the end, you aren't saying anything but you think new jobs are a short-sighted solution when compared to the long-sighted solution that is completely irrelevant? That's funny. A new job is a new job, no matter what party composition you have, what content you're playing or what setup you have to use. You make future content only require 1 tank, but you still got more than 2 to choose from, and you got more people capable or willing to play. That sure sounds short sighted to me.

[Viena]

Let's make it simple.

Most people want to play DPS, adding tank jobs won't really change that fact significantly.

Designing game content to accommodate the disparity between role choices instead would help in significantly improving the situation. If it cannot be done for existing content, at the very least, new content should be designed with that in mind (and so far 2.1 content hasn't).

I cannot really understand your claim about the 2 tank mechanics being intended to relieve their stress and cater to casuals. Having had quite a few Spiny explosions with PF Garuda parties or Mountain Busters pointing to the party I believe they accomplish quite the opposite.

[Elcura]

Let's make it simple.

Most people want to play DPS, adding tank jobs won't really change that fact significantly.

You don't seem to get that nothing you do will change that fact. Adding jobs is one solution, content design/setup is another. Jobs are always more robust.

Designing game content to accommodate the disparity between role choices instead would help significantly improving the situation. If it cannot be done for existing content, at the very least, new content should be designed with that in mind (and so far 2.1 content hasn't).

You can't do that without being psychic or super retrospective. If you have a bunch of fights with different setups how does that help the old fights? If all the new fights require more DPS, then more people are going to play them, if the new fights require more healers OH WAIT. Your content setup doesn't really include or allow having more tanks or more healers, only less. How diverse and interesting. You'd have to explain what exactly you mean but I doubt you even know. Doesn't matter though, because new jobs help all content design and setups throughout the game. A more robust solution when people eventually get bored of the same 9 jobs doing the same shit in a different arena. Unique mechanics/gimmicks that make individual fights fun will be fun no matter what the intended setup is.

Unless they start doing what you say literally right this moment (hell, they would've needed to start months ago) every patch will only make your solution worse in the long term. Not only in terms of past content, but future content including new jobs and level cap increases. Which is why I said it was stupid to think of this shit 6 months after release, that should be set in stone already.

I cannot really understand your claim about the 2 tank mechanics being intended to relieve their stress and cater to casuals. Having had quite a few Spiny explosions with PF Garuda parties or Mountain Busters pointing to the party I believe they accomplish quite the opposite.

What does having shit people in your party have to do with what I said? You'd think it would be less stressful with 1 tank and 1 healer? I fail to see how having more responsibility and burden isn't stressful unless the game is just ridiculously easy. But at that point, who cares about any of this? Crap players cause stress no matter what the setup is.

Keep in mind that it is more likely for them to add new jobs than to change their casual friendly party setups for a lot of reasons you don't seem to understand or consider. Most of which is a flexible character system

[Viena]

You don't seem to get that nothing you do will change that fact. Adding jobs is one solution, content design/setup is another. Jobs are always more robust.

I've been saying all along that nothing will change that fact. And that's precisely the reason why adding new jobs is not a solution to tank starvation. Stating that nothing will change that fact while at the same time suggesting that it's a solution is quite a contradiction to that. Do new jobs help in keeping things fresh? Sure they do. I never claimed I didn't want new jobs, I would most definitely welcome them. I'm just saying that it's not a solution to the lack of people playing tanks regularly and the issues this causes for other roles. It's something that needs to be addressed, but the solution to it won't come from new jobs.

As for the rest, what I've been suggesting, while implied, is pretty simple: designing fights for role ratios other than 1/1/2 to accommodate the role disparity and to even consider different party sizes to accomplish so. You are implying they should leave them as is, how diverse and interesting and how suiting to the majority of players who prefer playing as DPS. Let's keep them waiting in their casual friendly 30min-1hr DF queues or 2hr+ PF just because they prefer playing and gearing a DPS role.

I have yet to see a single tank claim to have less "responsibility, burden and stress" in any way in the fights involving mechanics intended to enforce the 2 tank setups. I'd certainly love to see it: "I love switching Spiny at 2 stacks, it soothes my brains out while tanking Garuda and Chirada". Seriously, I think you're just arguing for the sake of arguing with this ridiculous statement that somehow 2 tank fights are easier on the tanks just because there's 2 of them.

[Elcura]

I've been saying all along that nothing will change that fact. And that's precisely the reason why adding new jobs is not a solution to tank starvation. Stating that nothing will change that fact while at the same time suggesting that it's a solution is quite a contradiction to that. Do new jobs help in keeping things fresh? Sure they do. I never claimed I didn't want new jobs, I would most definitely welcome them. I'm just saying that it's not a solution to the lack of people playing tanks regularly and the issues this causes for other roles. It's something that needs to be addressed, but the solution to it won't come from new jobs.

So what, you're calling me out for saying there is a solution to help alleviate the problem (because solving it completely was the point right?) when you're also proposing a solution to said problem? Do you even realise what you're typing or are you just writing words at this point?

You're saying the solution won't come from jobs, I'm saying it will. You're saying the solution comes from new diverse content, I'm saying that it will too. They aren't mutually exclusive but doing one is definitely easier if you do the other first.

As for the rest, what I've been suggesting, while implied, is pretty simple: designing fights for role ratios other than 1/1/2 to accommodate the role disparity and to even consider different party sizes to accomplish so. You are implying they should leave them as is, how diverse and interesting and how suiting to the majority of players who prefer playing as DPS. Let's keep them waiting in their casual friendly 30min-1hr DF queues or 2hr+ PF just because they prefer playing and gearing a DPS role.

And I've already said why that is unrealistic and stupid, especially at this point, especially with no more new jobs.

I have yet to see a single tank claim to have less "responsibility, burden and stress" in any way in the fights involving mechanics intended to enforce the 2 tank setups. I'd certainly love to see it: "I love switching Spiny at 2 stacks, it soothes my brains out while tanking Garuda and Chirada". Seriously, I think you're just arguing for the sake of arguing with this ridiculous statement that somehow 2 tank fights are easier on the tanks just because there's 2 of them.

Are you just not thinking? Let's have a simple scenario. 1 tank, 1 heal, 6 DPS. Tank dies, leaving the healer or DPS vulnerable, depending on the boss and how much damage it does (which decides how worthwhile a tank really is) this could be a wipe for a lot of people unless the healer raises quickly. The tank may or may not regain hate control and may or may not die soon afterwards from whatever weakness he has. You have a single heal, the healer dies and no one else can raise. Fight over, unless you have other possible raises so now it comes down to the party to not die while the healer recovers. In most situations this results in a wipe as the tank dies (the harder the fight, the faster this is) leaving all your DPS to get slaughtered as the healer gets up etc etc.

Do I have to explain how adding an extra healer or tank alleviates the burden? The harder the fight, the more the players have to share the load. They aren't constantly in risk of dying, or constantly having to keep people alive. In most cases, having 2 healers or tanks allows for easier recovery if the other person of that job can hold their shit down until things stabilize. Even if you aren't recovering, the better player can cover for the weaker and it's easier to see what mistakes other people are making etc. It's always more chaotic with a single role. 2 tanks 2 heals is so fucking generous it's insane.

[Viena]

So what, you're calling me out for saying there is a solution to help alleviate the problem (because solving it completely was the point right?) when you're also proposing a solution to said problem? Do you even realise what you're typing or are you just writing words at this point?

I'm calling you out for accepting the fact that more jobs won't significantly change the disproportionate fraction of players that prefer to DPS while at the same time presenting a new job as a solution to the issue of tank starvation. These two claims are contradictory.

What I suggest is designing to accommodate that fact (rather than suggesting a futile attempt at changing player preferences while at the same time claiming these cannot be changed).

You're saying the solution won't come from jobs, I'm saying it will.

Yes.

You're saying the solution comes from new diverse content, I'm saying that it will too.

Nope. Diverse content is nice and all, but I never brought it up as a solution to the problem of tank starvation.

They aren't mutually exclusive but doing one is definitely easier if you do the other first.

Agreed, both things aren't mutually exclusive, but neither is an actual solution to the issue at hand. As you said, nothing changes the fact that most players will still play as DPS.

And I've already said why that is unrealistic and stupid, especially at this point, especially with no more new jobs.

Following that logic, I guess it is unrealistic and stupid for the game to have 8 or 24 player content at 50 while the game had 4 player content from 1 to 49. k؟

You missed the point too, a change in ratios could allow for more healers and tanks as well, as long they adjusted the group sizes accordingly. It seems that making content for 6, 10, 12 or even an unrestricted amount of members (Dynamis style) should be totally ruled out for some reason based on what the game has offered so far.

Are you just not thinking? Let's have a simple scenario. 1 tank, 1 heal, 6 DPS. Tank dies, leaving the healer or DPS vulnerable, depending on the boss and how much damage it does (which decides how worthwhile a tank really is) this could be a wipe for a lot of people unless the healer raises quickly. The tank may or may not regain hate control and may or may not die soon afterwards from whatever weakness he has. You have a single heal, the healer dies and no one else can raise. Fight over, unless you have other possible raises so now it comes down to the party to not die while the healer recovers. In most situations this results in a wipe as the tank dies (the harder the fight, the faster this is) leaving all your DPS to get slaughtered as the healer gets up etc etc.

Do I have to explain how adding an extra healer or tank alleviates the burden? The harder the fight, the more the players have to share the load. They aren't constantly in risk of dying, or constantly having to keep people alive. In most cases, having 2 healers or tanks allows for easier recovery if the other person of that job can hold their shit down until things stabilize. Even if you aren't recovering, the better player can cover for the weaker and it's easier to see what mistakes other people are making etc. It's always more chaotic with a single role. 2 tanks 2 heals is so fucking generous it's insane.

Apparently designing content to fit a different setup is a hard concept to grasp and that introducing abilities for other roles that could save the day in these situations is necessarily out of the question؟

Besides, there's plenty of situations already where having one of the two tanks die make for a pretty unlikely recovery as it is (pretty much anything when there's multiple mobs up: Garuda HM/Ex, T1, T4, Titan Ex... and people don't bring 3 tanks because of it). For the content that doesn't have a particular mechanic intended to enforce 2 tanks casual parties have long since used single tanks (Titan HM and more recently Ifrit HM as people no longer use them as stunners since the eruption patch) and it hasn't been the end of the world as far as I know because of it, as you seem to imply it would.

[Elcura]

I'm calling you out for accepting the fact that more jobs won't significantly change the disproportionate fraction of players that prefer to DPS while at the same time presenting a new job as a solution to the issue of tank starvation. These two claims are contradictory.

Shall we break this down again?

Someone mentions that more tanks are needed. I say that added new tank jobs would help, you call it short sighted, claiming that diverse content (yes, this is exactly what you were saying, otherwise you aren't saying anything at all) is a better solution. I argue that new jobs are not short sighted, and are a robust solution to getting more players to tank. You say it isn't, and that we need diverse content (again, you are saying this, because what else requires a ratio of DPS, heals and tanks?):

designing fights for role ratios other than 1/1/2 to accommodate the role disparity and to even consider different party sizes to accomplish so.

If this is not diversity, especially considering the game we're talking about at this stage, I don't know what is. Like you said, they aren't going to retroactively change existing content because that would be retarded.

What I suggest is designing to accommodate that fact (rather than suggesting a futile attempt at changing player preferences while at the same time claiming these cannot be changed).

Which is retrospective and utterly useless.

Nope. Diverse content is nice and all, but I never brought it up as a solution to the problem of tank starvation.

So you aren't saying anything then? Because if this isn't what you were trying to get at I'mma feel cheated.

Agreed, both things aren't mutually exclusive, but neither is an actual solution to the issue at hand. As you said, nothing changes the fact that most players will still play as DPS.

Oh, I see your problem. Trying to find an actual solution to the universal truth that swinging massive weapons is more fun and appealing that standing around in a skirt waving a wand to heal people or getting smacked around in a tin can while trying not to die. DPS is always going to be more popular, but you've seemed to completely miss the point that is getting people to play tanks as well. Did you think the point was to find some absolute solution that would make tanks and healers equally as available?

Because your so-called solution is completely retrospective (unless it isn't ^) and isn't guaranteed to hold up after a game is released.

Following that logic, I guess it is unrealistic and stupid for the game to have 8 or 24 player content at 50 while the game had 4 player content from 1 to 49. k؟

You missed the point too, a change in ratios could allow for more healers and tanks as well, as long they adjusted the group sizes accordingly. It seems that making content for 6, 10, 12 or even an unrestricted amount of members (Dynamis style) should be totally ruled out for some reason based on what the game has offered so far.

Which is redesigning the game, or adding in more diverse content (or jobs lol) that allows for different (or doesn't have set) ratios. It has nothing to do with your retrospective market research and everything to do with how the game is designed, intended to be played and how people react to it. You only seem to be thinking backwards, because if you were thinking forward you wouldn't have denied the diverse content thing. And as I've said, thinking backwards 6 months into release is stupid.

Apparently designing content to fit a different setup is a hard concept to grasp and that introducing abilities for other roles that could save the day in these situations is necessarily out of the question؟

Oh, but I thought you didn't want new content for your new ratios. I mean you said you didn't want to redesign the existing game, which is what you're asking for with new abilities (therefore new balance etc). Unless they increase the level cap, which is even more ideal.

Besides, there's plenty of situations already where having one of the two tanks die make for a pretty unlikely recovery as it is (pretty much anything when there's multiple mobs up: Garuda HM/Ex, T1, T4, Titan Ex... and people don't bring 3 tanks because of it). For the content that doesn't have a particular mechanic intended to enforce 2 tanks casual parties have long since used single tanks (Titan HM and more recently Ifrit HM as people no longer use them as stunners since the eruption patch) and it hasn't been the end of the world as far as I know because of it, as you seem to imply it would.

...why do you think they added tank switching mechanics to Ex primals? Because the game (yes, even Ifrit/Titan HM) was designed with 2 tanks, 2 heals in mind. People also used to have 3 healers in Titan HM but things change. I never said that having 1 tank would be the end of the world, but you're denying that having 2 tanks is safer. What's better than 1 steel shield? 2 of them.

[barber2006]

There is a shortage of tanks 1) because its more fun to punch something in the face than get punched in the face 2) to win the parse as DPS 3) Mistakes are less magnified on DPS and 4) Because people dont like the "feel" or look of tanks.

I think adding a new tank job would only address #4. It would help some. Not a lot. I really don't get the feeling that people don't enjoy playing pld.....they don't enjoy tanking.

Having said that altering future content to enable parties with fewer tanks would be hard. For starters it would be straight up impossible in 4 man raids without making mobs laughably easy. I could see it working in 8 man raids by encouraging a 1/2/5 setup but since one of the major components of tanking is hate swapping in many fights it would be difficult to make content that didnt make tanking even more boring if you had to solo tank it. Outside of positioning requirements it could turn the job into a straight gear check.

I think its a legit concern though. Eventually people are going to get tired of 45 minute Q times as a DPS and if the only options are wait, job change to tank, or quit......well that is just not an ideal situation for a subscription based game to be in.

[Obsidian]

If players don't like the responsibility or mechanics involved in tanking, I don't see how adding another tank job addresses either of those issues.

[Viena]

So you aren't saying anything then? Because if this isn't what you were trying to get at I'mma feel cheated.

If you want to call changing the de facto role ratios and party sizes "content diversification", sure, go ahead. I definitely do not see a necessary change that doesn't really have much of an impact on how people play their roles (outside of not enforcing hate swaps to suit some content for 1 tank) as such.

Obsidian and barber perfectly get the point I'm trying to make. You might prefer referring to their posts instead.

Having said that altering future content to enable parties with fewer tanks would be hard. For starters it would be straight up impossible in 4 man raids without making mobs laughably easy. I could see it working in 8 man raids by encouraging a 1/2/5 setup but since one of the major components of tanking is hate swapping in many fights it would be difficult to make content that didnt make tanking even more boring if you had to solo tank it. Outside of positioning requirements it could turn the job into a straight gear check.

Agreed 100% with your post. As for this bit, encouraging a 1/2/5 setup for new content would be the easiest way for them to go about it for now, but in the long term they should eventually migrate party sizes from 4/8 to something like 6/12 with ratios of 1/1/4 and 2/3/7.

[xopher]

Oh look another page-long tl;dr back and forth with elcura.

[Lyall]

I have friends who have never tanked in an MMO before but are semi-interested in trying in XIV. The most common statement I hear from them is "I want to try to tank X but I don't want to do it in DF in case I fuck it up." or some paraphrased version of that. The amount of pressure, real or imagined, on a new tank is definitely an issue. When there's 4-5 DPS all doing their thing it's easy to get lost in the crowd, especially on lower-tier content. There's some truth that a tank has to be familiar with every mechanic before encountering something - and so does everybody, don't get me wrong - and that's always going to be the player-killer: Not knowing enough and looking like a fool for it / wasting everyone's time.

Samurai might get more people to try tank jobs, but it's never going to outweigh the social pressures of not fucking up EX modes, it's just going to get more people grinding myth in i55 dungeons.

[Elcura]

There is a shortage of tanks 1) because its more fun to punch something in the face than get punched in the face 2) to win the parse as DPS 3) Mistakes are less magnified on DPS and 4) Because people dont like the "feel" or look of tanks.

I think adding a new tank job would only address #4. It would help some. Not a lot. I really don't get the feeling that people don't enjoy playing pld.....they don't enjoy tanking.

We've already gone through most of this.

1) We know, nothing is going to change that.
2) See 1.
3) See 2.
4) New jobs!

For 4, nothing would change that except for new jobs. If people don't like the look and feel of tanks, making content that only allows 1 tank doesn't increase the number of people playing tanks, just the number of tanks you need overall. It could work either way if your problem is trying to alleviate the tanking shortage, but Viena has no idea what they're talking about.

Having said that altering future content to enable parties with fewer tanks would be hard. For starters it would be straight up impossible in 4 man raids without making mobs laughably easy. I could see it working in 8 man raids by encouraging a 1/2/5 setup but since one of the major components of tanking is hate swapping in many fights it would be difficult to make content that didnt make tanking even more boring if you had to solo tank it. Outside of positioning requirements it could turn the job into a straight gear check.

Exactly, changing party setups is far more destructive to the game as a whole than adding a new job. The later you do this the more obvious it becomes. Naturally DPS wait times are long but unless you encourage players to try to tank and give them more options then nothing will get better. The alternative is reduce the number of tanks then make tanking easy and boring. I dunno why people would prefer that, when a new job could potentially make things more interesting overall. I'm so short sighted.

This isn't a problem you fix overnight, because if you could then everyone would be doing it.

If players don't like the responsibility or mechanics involved in tanking, I don't see how adding another tank job addresses either of those issues.

Easy, because new jobs require new and different mechanics. Like I said, there's no point if the new tank job is the same as the old because that won't change anything. With new jobs, players get to experience new mechanics and playstyles that may or may not click. I had my personal epiphany with SCH, I know many other people have too.

Oh look another page-long tl;dr back and forth with elcura.

Oh look, another post by Xopher where he doesn't say anything.

But either way, I'm pretty much done with Viena since there's nothing going on there.

[Lyall]

Easy, because new jobs require new and different mechanics. Like I said, there's no point if the new tank job is the same as the old because that won't change anything. With new jobs, players get to experience new mechanics and playstyles that may or may not click. I had my personal epiphany with SCH, I know many other people have too.

No amount of exciting mechanic in the world is going to address the fear of responsibility, though. There's only so much that your own buttons can alleviate when it's what the enemy does that defines a tank. Fear is the mind killer.

For what it's worth, I agree with you about everything else.

[OWS_Tonx]

I have friends who have never tanked in an MMO before but are semi-interested in trying in XIV. The most common statement I hear from them is "I want to try to tank X but I don't want to do it in DF in case I fuck it up."

I'm the exact opposite. I didn't start tanking for my group until recently but I studied the shit out of fights and did multiple DFs first to get real practice in so I didn't look like a total douche on my server.

I agree with Elcura, adding a job would be much easier/better than altering content. They can keep adding 4 man dungeons or fights like Titan HM where only 1 tank is needed. Hell, even now you can solo tank if your group is good enough except Ifrit EX. I haven't checked lately, maybe somebody has managed to solo tank this. Just add different ways of tanking. PLD is so so much different than WAR in terms of play style that when people take up WAR it's much more suitable for them. Maybe some kinda mage tank? Similiar to NIN sub RDM/DRK