Too bad since its fallen back to ShB level if even lower on Steam side. Only 4 months after the launch. Same trend could be expected from the other platforms.
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Good lord man, have u never learned to stack mobs properly? Warrior main right here and the cone is a PITA. It also needs a target, another big PITA. Adds move while u constantly reposition for ur PITA cone. Have i mentioned that it is PITA? When SAM got its basic cone aoe replaced by a circle aoe, OMG that was like night and day. Im looking forward to this unexpected change.
I do largely agree with OP though. Kaiten removal is dumb, ninja change i feel less strongly about because i only have a rogue, but i will miss the 1 min buffs to play around with for sure. Dungeons should not be excessively difficult it is the most basic form of content that should be accessible to all and make no mistake, those less capable still struggle, it is what it is, but at least we can carry them w/o too much trouble.
For anyone having trouble pulling as warrior, just remember this: dungeon mobs are in packs. Packs will chase people down in a funny little line when they get arrgo'd. You have a ranged attack.
That's because the forums are a place for the community to chat with one another. They're not and never have been a direct line to the Devs.
People always seem to think that posting game change requests here will get them heard by the development team. This is literally just a place for players to chat with other players about the game without having to use third party websites like reddit.
The game uses a monthly subscription model to make money, so it's within their interests to try to keep players around. Their continued success is closely tied to their ability to retain players.
With their current 4 month patch cycle, players are potentially spending around $48-60 usd per major patch if they remain subscribed between.
Ah yes, Yoshida who has said things like "We will never force you to stay subbed for housing", "We're planning to add more egi glamours", or "Hrothgar and Viera will get additional race specific hairstyles over time". His entire job revolves around trying to create positive optics for this game, which in many cases is completely divorced from reality. Clearly people swallow it whole with how often this nonsensical talking-point gets parroted.
It's only really true because the developers don't seem to care; The forums are absolutely promoted as one of the primary places to give the developers direct feedback, by the development team itself. It ends up being nonsensical to shutdown people sharing feedback here in the hopes that the forums will fulfill their intended purpose.
No, I'm pointing out that things Yoshida say tend to reflect very little about the reality of running a game as a business. He says things about player retention not mattering because his competition in the genre are publicly known for being too heavy-handed in their attempts at creating retention systems, not because players taking breaks is a genuine objective of SE as a business. He wants to create the perception among potential and current customers that this game retains players organically, and is going so far as to publicly pretend it isn't a major internal objective.
It is absolutely not within this games interest as a business to have a decreasing retention rate. A game that makes 12-15 usd per person that is subscribed makes less money when there are less people subscribed. Regardless of what Yoshida tries to say, this game absolutely aims to hold onto as many players as possible. Housing demo, loot lockouts, tomestone caps, long relic grinds, expert delivery, etc.
Why exactly do you care so much about what this game does as a business? I don't care if that statement he made is genuine or not. It's a statement I agree with. I don't want a game that expects me to log in literally every day. I don't care for those kinds of systems and I don't understand why it's a problem that people sub when content comes out then unsub when they are done. You're making this sound like it matters more than it should.
Here are my thoughts as someone who started playing XIV a few months before the release of EW.
I played most of it as a BLM, without leveling any other job. I love how BLM is centered around movement: knowing when to move and where's safe to stand still so I can cast my entire Fire phase. The game gives me several movement tools like Xenoglossy and Triple Cast. Endwalker even fixed a minor issue I had, that at lower levels you have to use Fire I between both bursts of Fire IV to reset the timer, but Fire I didn't really FEEL like a proper intermediate skill... until they made Paradox. My only complaint is that Scathe is useless... That's it.
In Endwalker I decided it was time to try my hands at healing, so I became a SGE. It was fun when I was still learning how to heal properly, how to cycle through the names in the party list during combat and everything... but things started to get boring once I got the hang of it and realized that tanks barely needed my help and I spent most of my time just spamming Dosis and occasionally putting my DoT on the boss. Later I moved to Astrologian for the cards system... and it was basically the same thing.
The only times I ever have fun when playing as a healer are when my party is playing like crap. The tank not using his mit correctly, the DPS keep getting hit by avoidable AoEs and dying, so I have to rez them... That actually gives me stuff to do. But if my party is even slightly competent, I ask myself why I'm even there in the first place. WARs don't need me, and I keep throwing Celestial Intersection and Exaltation at them during tank busters for no reason just so I get something to do.
Then I moved to tanking, my choice being Dark Knight for the edgy aesthetics... and all I do is repeat the 1-2-3 combo, mindlessly weave anything that comes off cooldown and use TBN on tank busters. I don't even pay attention to my job gauge cause it's not necessary as long as I don't overcap on MP. Things got worse when I looked into the history of DRK and found how the job used to be focused around MP management, how Living Dead has been garbage for 7 years and they never fixed it despite the constant complaints from DRK players, and how many cool animations were removed from the job (Power Slash).
The only jobs I have fun with right now are BLM and RPR. Reaper isn't particularly complex, but it has some fun tools at it's disposal and the edgy aesthetics plus fast gameplay I was looking for in DRK. Arcane Crest is a nice little support that I can give my party during stacks, weaving Blood Stalk feels just right and fusing with my inner Grim Reaper with Enshroud feels badass, unlike the glorified DoT that is Living Shadow.
I thought very highly of the combat in FFXIV due to having played most of it as a BLM, but after trying other jobs and roles... I'm kinda disappointed. It's like only Yoshi-P's job has the right to be engaging and fun to play. I fear RPR will end up getting the same treatment SAM is getting now.
I agree with OP, FFXIV was my first MMO but it's been so dumb down and homogenized that it's no longer fun for me, I was searching for a another MMO that fit my needs and that is FFXI<3
I love the hybrid and support job system the game has more diverse jobs (support jobs like Red Mage, Corsair and Dancer, flexible hybrid like Blue Mage and Puppermaster), not just a simple holy trinity (tank, healer, damage dealer) system.
which makes combat very interesting, I'm A Dancer/Warrior main
I can't see myself playing this homogenized dumbed down game much longer
If the removal of Kaiten is the direction they're taking, soul crystals might as well be changed to blank, dull rocks.
I always do wonder what the game would be like if they stuck to the ARR method of cross-job skills. Such as how if you wanted Swiftcast, you would level a Thaumaturge to level 26 at least.
Some existing examples are
Blood for Blood: For 20s, you deal 15% more damage and take 10% more damage. 80s cd. Requires leveling Lancer to 30.
Internal Release: For 15s, your criticial hit rate is increased by 30%. 60s cd. Requires leveling Pugilist to level 10.
Raging Strikes: For 20s, you deal 15% more damage. 120s cd. Requires leveling Archer to 4.
Eye for an Eye: Target a member or pet. For 20s, whenever that target is struck, there is a 20% chance the striker will deal 10% less damage for 10s. 180s cd. Requires leveling Arcanist to 34.
Then just apply Dark Knight, Astrologian, Machinist, Samurai, Red Mage, Gunbreaker, Dancer, Sage, and Reaper for what spells and abilities they have that could be cross-job with other jobs.
I agree, it's like they expect us to have the brain of a monkey or something.
Jobs are slowly but surely losing their identity.
The NIN one is so confusing. Moving the raid buff to Mug is literally the same as having two Tricks. NIN felt impactful when it had a buff every minute, now it's just the same 2 min buff to gotta hard on CD.
Same with them moving Divination off of the seal system for AST. Now it's just another button with the same impact.
And the fact they said they're going back to HW complexity is scary. At least SB had some ideas left. They think that making the job easy to play makes more players will be happy when it's the opposite.
It isn't that they are trying to simplify it that I question. It's that they don't simplify what matters.
Most PS4, PS5 and a decent amount of PC players run this game on Televisions as display outputs. A high end monitor has a 1ms or faster response time. The average television has a 15ms response time. So room wide floor disco and 'the mob waved his right arm for 1.2 seconds' as a telegraph in all instanced content post ShB is what is butchering quality. Not pushing 3-9 keys on your controller or keyboard.
Same here o/
Besides, I have a very good group of close friends IRL.
Back in the days, we were playing WoW together at various occurences over the years and its different xpac. We never were hardcore raiders, but we enjoyed the leveling experience, and eventually we all left when the leveling in WoW became dumb and boring...
After that, I tried FFXIV alone. It was during Heavensward, and at that time, I tried many times to convince my friends to join me on FFXIV.
"Guys, there is a sync option is this game ! It's awesome ! Even the first dungeons stay playables and enjoyables for new players !"
Sadly, I never succeded (because of multiple reasons), but they seemed kinda interested nonetheless.
Today, when those friends ask me if FFXIV is still that good and how it is today for new players, I'm forced to tell them that it's easier than before during leveling, and that they will even add bots for low levels dungeons.
And now, all their interest is gone... :/
"it will end like WoW, they say..."
i want to answer this one because i see something super funny inside... making ikishoten into ogi, yes they can do it but we can already do it ourself, with macro.
merging shoha and shoha 2, they are two different skill with different purpose... like seinen and guren... one is for mono target and one for area dps... merging them have no point and action bloat don't happend because when i'm doing aoe dps i don't use mono target skill and end have something like 7 skill used... wow super bloated... same when i do mono target dps i don't used this action.
where the fact that midare getting a auto critical make the buff of critical less interesting? from memory the critical buff is a 15 second duration. the whole midare/ogi will be around 8.4 second... leaving us with 6.6 second of buff that can be used on everything else like seinen, shinten or our normal combo. yes samurai will be less dependant of this buff mostly because even with this buff the number of time where i land non critical of this 4 skill is more often than anything and i say this with dnc and drg buff... chance is chance...
since it's our hard hitter skill when it happend i feel like craps and feel like i did loose a massive windows of dps. and i'm sure other sam know what i means. do we will be less affected by the critical buff of the drg and sch... yes. do it's nullify them? hell no... i still taking it for seinen and other skill in this windows of damage!
i will repeat it as often as needed, the loose of kaiten is more like dealing with the less usefull of the button we have in terms of tool... it don't means the buff of potency is weak far from it... but at choose between skill to remove kaiten is by far the best of all since what it do can be done by increasing the potency of midare and ogi to the same level than when we was using it.
people are overeacting saying it's the cornerstone of our jobs when it's not... if the potency increase is the same as if we use kaiten... honestly it's a good change... because it was a in terms of tool a redundant action. worst it's a ogc skill meaning our cycle will not even change... we will have more shinten to add to the cycle... adding more activity to our toolkit instead to reduce it!
ps: i'm against oversimplification of a jobs, we are at the point where if you reach this level you need to know what you do and a bit of skill is welcome... some jobs change did make me hate jobs like what they have done with the dark knight that i found bland because too simple.
but i'm against too redundant action that create artificial gameplay and artificial feeling that we are doing something amazing... when is not the case!
I'd happily trade balance for more interesting job designs. The changes ever since ShB are just sad at this point. Like Eye of the Dragon and Earthly Star are just pathetic at this point. :(
I agree. Stop the oversimplification.
I've played this game a long time now and have not been happy with the job changes in many instances. I am old, like pensioner old, and had to switch to controller last year because I can't work the mouse for long periods any more. I don't do savage and I accept it's out of my reach, I certainly don't want anything made easier so I can play it.
I clear all normal content. I run the occasional extreme with my FC. I play several jobs at a mediocre level. I liked the old HW DRK when it actually needed some effort. I played SMN for years before it was EW cool and hated the changes to pets when we lost our tank for soloing. I agreed with the old fixes to BRD, so it could be mobile, that made sense, even though I don't main one. I like the L90 additions to the PLD rotation, but still remember how different it was in 2.0, back when it felt more like a holy warrior.
AST was complex. People wanted only one card to come out all the time, was that a reason to destroy the individual card system that you worked so hard to teach us in the job quests back in HW? People who want 'easy' always have other job options. That's why we have so many jobs, I thought. So some of them could be easy, some average and some difficult. They're all heading towards easy and I don't like it.
SAM does not need an easier rotation. A good rotation rewards players willing to make an effort and gives them a level of satisfaction when they achieve it. Take that away and you lose those players. I don't play SAM, but I'll stand up for SAM players who don't want it changed.
I have no idea what has happened to the design team here. I can only assume corporate greed has reared its ugly head and once again SE are going for the easy cash until it breaks the game as they have done with others in the past.
I hope I am wrong.
They have a great team but are maybe too comfortable, not challenging themselves or being allowed to. Over time the edge of the blade becomes dull.
The game now has too many good assets to waste on this boring direction. It needs a renewal to maintain subscribers into the end of the next decade. Transplant these lovely enemies, glams, music, etc into an overhauled engine with fewer limitations.
Job design is actually pretty good to be honest compared to other games. At least aesthetically the jobs are unique. Their performance is hard to manage because on the one hand people hate homogenous design, on the other hand all these people with parsers complain that they aren't identical in potential. Now there's also too many jobs for them to receive much individual attention and love. At some point maybe you have to stop adding jobs and start focusing more on expressing their individual strengths and utility.
I get wiped in normal dungeons sometimes but then again I'm still a sprout so who cares amirite?