It doesn't have to be so extreme. There isn't only "braindead" and "bull$%#@". We can have jobs with fair complexity and fights with fair complexity to match if the devs actually gave a damn.
There will be button pruning coming the next expansion to combat ability bloat and detangle some classes and their unnecessary high complexity - Especially on the healers, since need to manage a lot of buttons to perform decently on their role.
So yeah, they get heavily downsized as well. And put more responsibility to the DPS as nearly all healers now lose their interrupt/kick.
And I think that's fine.
As a DRG main this would be an absolutely horrendous change. The looping combo is one of the defining aspects of the job. DRG already got lobotomized this expansion, they don't need to remove even more from it.
So they've come full circle to another ability prune era. That worked out so well the first time I'm sure it'll be great! :rolleyes:
i've long been saying that all you'd need to make the perfect MMO is to mash the best parts of WoW and FFXIV together, both games are the best in the industry at exactly half of what they do. from WoW, the content diversity, engaging combat and class design, and gameplay customizability from races, specializations, talent trees, gear, etc. from XIV, the player expression, character-focused story, and casual prog. get a competent CS team from somewhere else and an artstyle to bridge the gap between WoW's timeless cartooniness and FFXIV's anime-realism, and you have the ingredients for an actual forever MMO
it seems like WoW has actually been making moves to fill in the gaps recently with the addition of player housing, a reasonable start to advanced emotes, and the introduction of higher level rewards through things like crafting and world activity... though still nobody at blizzard knows how to write a compelling story, apparently you have to be japanese or french to pull that off these days. regardless, i'm still honestly excited to see what comes of the IP after the end of the Worldsoul Saga, if anything
FFXIV is very much set in its ways though, and it will be the game's downfall. at this point they need to oust whoever is hiding in the corporate hierarchy yanking all the strings that keep the devs from implementing fun or interesting content in favor of max profit. despite how much i hate on him, i know it isn't yoshi, he's just the mouthpiece...
When it comes to button bloat and combo condensing discussions, it's always fascinating to watch both sides harping at each other without being unable to understand each other. One side sees button bloat as a problem of redundancy and a lack of mechanical purpose - pvp combos would work the same with less buttons because they're all used in the same scenario anyway. The other side sees the amount of buttons as part of tactile feel and memorization not too dissimilar to playing an instrument.
No it wouldn't be horrible. They can add different abilities that actual do stuff instead of Single target attack #1, #2, #3, #4,#5,#6. Are we really going to pretend this is engaging gameplay?
In WoW you have an aoe that does slow, an aoe that does pure damage, a quick single target shot, a slow single target shot, a slower but bigger single target shot, mechanics to proc instant casting or mobile casting, crowd control abilities, defensive abilities, debuffs, buffs, utilities like evasion or cleanse or buff steal, etc. You use them all as appropriate as the combat situation changes and as enemies take certain actions.
In ff14 you have 10 buttons that do the same exact thing and we want to pretend we 'defining aspects' or actual gameplay? I doze off running dungeons because all you do is walk forward and then spam 3-6 buttons in rotation and throw in a few oGCD in between every few seconds that generally do the same thing the GCD is doing. Rinse and repeat until you get to the boss and hopefully that boss is in later expansions and has interesting mechanics instead of the usual aoe/cone/tank buster that all the early game bosses do.
You know what's funny? Pvp only has 6 class skills and 6 pvp actions and it is more engaging and dynamic than regular gameplay. Each button does a unique thing. You decide to go in or dip out, block damage, heal up, stall, LB, regular damage, burst damage, etc. So few buttons but so much strategy and engagement. You can dive into a crowd and kill someone and somehow make it out alive by playing your cards right.
Believe me when I say that I've been advocating for exactly the same paradigm that you describe. But at this point I think that's not the game FF14 wants to be anymore.
See my reply just above. We want to be challenged intellectually, but the current audience of the game wants to be challenged on rote memorization.
WoW's closest analogue to DRG are the Arms/Fury Warrior specs, both of which center around hitting the equivalent of Lance Charge then spamming 2-3 single target attacks on cooldown until it's time to do step one again. The "combat situation" changes that very little. Of course there are classes with more going on than that, but the game isn't the universal paragon of deep class design that you're making it out to be.
I totally agree that FFXIV's job design is currently in an awful state, but FFXIV jobs don't need to become WoW classes, they need to return to their own roots. Feedback demanding jobs turn into totally different jobs is a significant factor in what got us here to begin with.
That is because you're fighting real people. Those same kits immediately become incredibly boring when you're playing Shatter and hammering 1111111211111111 on a block of ice.
The lesson SE should learn from the success of the PvP kits isn't that jobs should all have four buttons, it's that giving each job unique and engaging gameplay unlike all the other jobs is very fun. That used to be the case in PvE as well.
Ye but pvp has also turned into a big mess with recent changes and making certain classes stronger than others. Scholar is just dominating now and it's super easy to play it. Even with mega bad players, you can consistently shield them forever and they will do the job. Try doing same with whm and you will fail every single time because scholar outheals you by a mile. Same with Astro and sage, can do wonders with recent changes. This all makes many games stall and very boring to play with insane amount of heals + shields. It used to be better. Purify changes also that nobody asked for kek.