Making jobs simpler is a mistake, let players fail.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

You're not making a sensible argument here. You say that balance is better now and every job is viable because they changed the jobs, but when shown an example of balance being bad, you say that people should change to another job in order to clear if their job is weak? But I thought you said every job is made viable now, why do people still have to change to another job to clear?

What is your argument anyway?

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Thats always been a thing in MMOs. Its okay for some classes to just be quite a lot better at certain things. If you want unique gameplay and variance in jobs in XIV they're going to have to heavily increase enrage timers.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

I think the P8S-on-release situation is instructive here. SE wanted to set a tight enrage. They can't do that, and support all jobs and comps being viable, unless they make it so that the differences are sufficiently small.

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Then they should give up their desire to have tight enrages. It's an ill-considered aim with bad knock-on effects. Having the DPS checks be so tight that W1 players are struggling against them adds a smidgeon of tension for 0.01% of the playerbase for a week while turbo-fucking job and encounter design for everyone for years.

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Originally Posted by Raim

Thats always been a thing in MMOs. Its okay for some classes to just be quite a lot better at certain things. If you want unique gameplay and variance in jobs in XIV they're going to have to heavily increase enrage timers.

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That’s not aravells point

The person she replied to has spent this entire thread saying “the current job design is good because it’s so well balanced” aravell and I presented P8 as an example of when the balance is bad that didn’t happen in SB or ShB and their answer was basically “well swap jobs” which completely contradicts the point they’ve made this entire thread

I think this depends on where you think the balance discrepancy was. Did groups find the P8S checks difficult because WAR was behind other tanks by 50-100 rDPS (I know there's a long tangent on Everburn and aDPS numbers in here, but that doesn't factor into the screening doorboss), or was it because you had a Caster job that exists in an entirely different role category from the competition?

I get the impression that everyone cited P8S in the name of getting themselves buffs, but not all of these were actually balance problems. Some actually were, however.

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Originally Posted by GoatOfWar

Yeah, we already know they will be simpler.
But people are too busy admiring all the flashy effects to look into the actual substance.
Rotationally, most jobs will just be simpler. But the buttons you were already pressing are now glowy, which apparently is enough for this community.

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It's the same spiel as every expansion for the last 5+ years, they release a new trailer that shows off pretty sparkles and people go "ooooh aaaaah" like their brain suddenly bluescreened, conveniently forgetting that none of the actual issues have been adressed.
But hey, big new flashy effects...for an ability that's just "press this button to make big number appear, 60 seconds cooldown".

You have to define what it means for you to "simplify" a job. I ask this because for everyone this means different things and in some of those cases, the simplification comes due to a technical problem that can only be solved through simplification methods like consolidating 2 buttons into 1 in order to make more room for new buttons. So the discussion really depends on what things you consider "simplification".

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Originally Posted by gansita

You have to define what it means for you to "simplify" a job. I ask this because for everyone this means different things and in some of those cases, the simplification comes due to a technical problem that can only be solved through simplification methods like consolidating 2 buttons into 1 in order to make more room for new buttons. So the discussion really depends on what things you consider "simplification".

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For me, simplifying is reducing the thought process and skill ceiling. At this point, they've practically removed both of those things entirely in EW, and it looks like they nay finish thenjob in DT. In STB, you had to actually learn your job if you wanted to do well. You had to know the fight to optimize around it, and there was a lot of skill expression and thought involved in how you played your job. There was also a lot of room to try to align your resources with a large amount of buffs depending on your party comp. Tanking was still interesting because we jad thoughthul tank stances. Now on EW, all every job does is press buttons when they light up, and only use resources we have to to avoid overcapping until the next 2 minute window, and it's beyond boring. So much so that i don't see any reason to raid or even play the game at all in DT after i finish making an assessment of it as i play through the initial patch. The combo consolidation is not simplification, hitting 123 instead of 111 did not add any layer of depth, challenge, or fun.

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Originally Posted by Sqwall

I think it's way to early to be calling that isn't it?

We know nothing of the things they changed, or the tooltips.

Everything is still subject to change. They did the same thing to MNK in Endwalker right before the launch.

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Specifically on the matters of DRK...

People said "it's too early to tell before media tour".
Then "it's too early to tell before launch, changes can happen".
On launch when the predictions were true "they will listen and rework it don't worry".
As major patches go by when other jobs had full blown reworks for them "DRK clearly will get changes on X.0 expansion release, they need time".

This sequence started with the lead-up to Shadowbringers, has continued full tradition with Endwalker and based on what we got told and what we saw is very likely continuing with Dawntrail.

In all these years, the single actually significant thing they have changed was Living Dead, after not touching it for a total of 19 major patches since 3.0, or 3 full expansions and an expansion launch patch. It took immense criticism leading into 6.1 with DSR's release for them to finally adjust it.

On top of that, they probably axed Plunge, the original tank dash, for the new Shadow Step when they probably could have reworked Plunge and kept both, while WAR retains Onslaught and Primal Rend as two separate dashes.

They have yet to address the following:

• skillspeed and spellspeed not being merged for spell AOEs
• Delirium being an unimaginably boring skill since 5.0+, which from what I can tell they are going to only give some animation upgrades
• the removal of any and all skill and resource interaction like we had with Bloodweapon, Delirium, TBN, Dark Arts and Blood skills and having absolutely nothing take its place (every single ability we have is exclusively gated by either cooldown OR MP cost OR Blood cost with zero interaction)
• replacing the GCD-enhancing playstyle with spamming magical Shinten/Kyuten (hello SAM players) and non-interacting ogcds [EDIT: and by proxy killing off speed build viability entirely]
• Dark Mind being dead on arrival as soon as encounters do primarily physical damage when the opposite isn't true with Camouflage
• The complete dumbing down of recast timers being aligned with 60s, 90s (rare) and 120s when we had 30s, 40s, 45s and 80s as well to break monotony

I have seen this crashlanding-in-slow-motion go on since 5.0 after having the greatest fun with Stormblood DRK and other Stormblood job designs. Pardon my words, but I am sick and tired of player comments like your's being made over valid concerns and criticisms me and other DRK players have provided since Shadowbringers, especially after having endured 4+ years of exactly what we predicted happening.

Enough with the "they will listen, just wait, it's too early to tell".

Well the real answer is they wont change anything, the game is selling like crazy right now so they're going to quadruple down on the formula that is making Square Enix money. I don't think you'll see real change until the game starts to decline in sales.

At the end of the day this is still an eastern mmo, and like every eastern mmo you get content regurgitation and not much else. They're not going to listen to your feedback.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

Lots of hardcore and casuals alike still play SMN despite the job being known as "braindead".
Lots of people plays WAR and find the job fine.

I join you there, I don't think it will affect anyone.

Plus, I find it funny that some casuals complain about jobs being too simple while they never tried any content that actually needs you to master your job and know how to optimize.
My point isn't that casuals intake shouldn't be taken in account, someone who claims "cooking is simple" as they only boil pasta should go beyond their comfort zone before complaining about cooking being too simple.

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And how would you know what content us "casuals" have tried?

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

And how would you know what content us "casuals" have tried?

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Profiles are public.

The point isn't to make a "ha, unfortunately I looked at your post history", the point is to get the profile of those players feedback.
Before disagreeing with an opinion, I feel it's better to understand where it comes from.

I don't understand who these changes are supposed to benefit.

Hardcore players don't benefit, because we dislike how job simplification lowers the skill ceiling and kills the replayability of high-end content.

Casual players don't benefit, because most of them don't play their jobs to levels that make these things matter anyway. Living Shadow losing its blood cost doesn't matter to someone who doesn't press their abilities on cooldown in the first place. Ask any random duty finder player what "overcap" means and 9 out of 10 won't know or care.

So who does that leave? The only category I can think of is sort-of-good players who would rather complain about aspects of their jobs being hard to master (lmao) than put in effort to improve. And again and again they get their way. "Oh, you're frustrated that you keep overcapping resources because you got distracted by that tough mechanic? Well that's ok, we'll just remove meter management from the game entirely so that you feel better!"

(I wanna make it clear I hold no grudge against casual players, not everyone cares about playing super well and that's perfectly fine. My issue is with the devs being under the illusion that ripping every bit of complexity and thought out of the jobs is benefiting that section of the playerbase, who in reality largely don't care or even notice.)

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Your argument rings a bit hollow when it basically amounts to “I’m willing to sacrifice healers at the alter of balance as long as it means my role; which is not healer; is balanced enough that the job I like is never not viable

Square enix has shown in the last 3 expansions they can’t balance anything unless they make every job play exactly the same and EW over ShB showed that homogenising the jobs even further around the 2 minute window ironically made the balance worse compared to ShB, considering every job except PIC basically got “1 more finisher in the burst window” this is liable to become even worse

In the “balance vs homogenisation” argument we are losing on both fronts

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I found it interesting folks comment that Yoshi does not force the meta.
I disagree on that point - the meta is all that matters - this is why enrage timers exist to stop folks from trying full clears with certain group comps; likewise the 2-min buff window and the % bonus for having different classes. What they want is to design encounters with no class introducing a "suprise" to the encounter - such as the fact that Hippo could be tanked by 1 WAR due to Holmgangs shorter CD.

Many people do not understand or get it but people DO FAIL. Even on easy content. The casual Girl or Guy who can only play 1-3 Hours a Day if even daily fails at the normal Job quests. I have seen people who die in ESO's overland content which is so easy that others grind it while watching Shows or Movies.

When my Wife started this Game she died to her Job quests and needed to do them on easy mode. She has gotten better since then but Extreme Trials would be a No Go for her while they are pretty easy for me.

The Problem FFXIV has is not that its general Gameplay seems to become easier, it is that there is to few difficulties. There is only Very Easy and Very Hard. Nothing in between. THIS is the issue that needs to be adressed. At least in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Araxes

Many people do not understand or get it but people DO FAIL. Even on easy content. The casual Girl or Guy who can only play 1-3 Hours a Day if even daily fails at the normal Job quests. I have seen people who die in ESO's overland content which is so easy that others grind it while watching Shows or Movies.

When my Wife started this Game she died to her Job quests and needed to do them on easy mode. She has gotten better since then but Extreme Trials would be a No Go for her while they are pretty easy for me.

The Problem FFXIV has is not that its general Gameplay seems to become easier, it is that there is to few difficulties. There is only Very Easy and Very Hard. Nothing in between. THIS is the issue that needs to be adressed. At least in my opinion.

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These issues are directly linked. The reason that the gap between normal content and high end content has widened to such an extreme degree is specifically *because* jobs are so simple now, that making mechanics blindingly difficult is the only way to maintain the difficulty at all. And take it from someone who runs ultimates a lot: even they become easy with enough repetition, at which point we should be able to rely on optimization to keep them interesting- and we can't with decisions like these.

Also, if someone is failing their job quests, it is not because of any dps check or lack of mastery over your rotation. Removing and/or simplifying things like resource management, positionals, combos, etc. isn't going to help someone who struggles to like, avoid AoEs or simply pilot their character and press buttons in the first place.

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Originally Posted by noumen0nn

I don't understand who these changes are supposed to benefit.

Hardcore players don't benefit, because we dislike how job simplification lowers the skill ceiling and kills the replayability of high-end content.

Casual players don't benefit, because most of them don't play their jobs to levels that make these things matter anyway. Living Shadow losing its blood cost doesn't matter to someone who doesn't press their abilities on cooldown in the first place. Ask any random duty finder player what "overcap" means and 9 out of 10 won't know or care.

So who does that leave? The only category I can think of is sort-of-good players who would rather complain about aspects of their jobs being hard to master (lmao) than put in effort to improve. And again and again they get their way. "Oh, you're frustrated that you keep overcapping resources because you got distracted by that tough mechanic? Well that's ok, we'll just remove meter management from the game entirely so that you feel better!"

(I wanna make it clear I hold no grudge against casual players, not everyone cares about playing super well and that's perfectly fine. My issue is with the devs being under the illusion that ripping every bit of complexity and thought out of the jobs is benefiting that section of the playerbase, who in reality largely don't care or even notice.)

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Highly disagree that high ceiling in job mechanics doesn't matter for casual content. The difference between a highly technical and skilled tank/dps/healer really showed in ARR, HW, and SB. And yes, it did matter in terms of fun; not that the content required it but it's what made casual content fun for those of us who could care less about raiding.

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Originally Posted by Rekh

Highly disagree that high ceiling in job mechanics doesn't matter for casual content. The difference between a highly technical and skilled tank/dps/healer really showed in ARR, HW, and SB. And yes, it did matter in terms of fun; not that the content required it but it's what made casual content fun for those of us who could care less about raiding.

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Oh no I agree, I think jobs having high skill ceilings also boosts the fun of normal mode content, even for non-hardcore players. What I'm talking about when I say it doesn't matter is there are no hard consequences. I'm sure it was different back in previous expansions, but in the state of the game since Shadowbringers, a lack of skill and knowledge will not prevent you from clearing normal mode content. Your roulette might take forever and be annoying because your DPS doesn't know their rotation and your healer is spamming cure 2, but you'll get there. The reason drawing that distinction matters is that trying to make rotations easier and more thoughtless for casual players' benefit at the cost of skill ceiling, is not only unhealthy for the game, but is a vain effort because a.) no amount of simplification will help players who can't be bothered to learn the basics, and b.) helping casuals deal more damage in content that has no dps checks or skill checks shouldn't be a priority over making the game fun and interesting.

I prefer all jobs being approachable and manageable because if something is too complicated and annoying to play, most people are going to ignore playing it, or even want to avoid bringing it along for harder content because the failure-rate is too high.

I've seen what happens in other MMOs when developers go too hard into thinking some classes require piano skills to play effectively (or at all), it results in player choice becoming homogenized anyway because most people, especially the hardcore crowd going for their world first races, are going to pick what gets the job done the quickest, not the one that can spin the most plates, and in general you don't really want to create a sense of "wow, this job sucks to play compared to this other job that performs the same function" given that unlike most MMOs, you can just change your job instead of being forced to reroll entirely, meaning people can and *will* leave certain jobs to wither if the extra effort isn't worth it because we aren't required to be over-committed to the one character with the one class we picked at creation.

The idea of "job fantasy" is a different beast altogether, given that for Final Fantasy specifically every job has had different variations throughout its history and they don't always come over intact or have parts borrowed from other jobs. I mean, there's *still* people who complain that certain jobs ended up tank/healer/DPS instead of some other role. Though, that just makes me wonder if jobs could "moonlight" as a 2nd role (but never all 3) with alternate skills and everything to make it work. Duty Support/Trusts already do it, so why not us? If nothing else it would be amusing to watch, would finally be a valid excuse to break down some role-specific glams, and they would be kinda forced to make jobs more uniquely engaging because they need to sell people on the idea of this "side role" concept otherwise nobody will be impressed and curious enough to try it.

I think ff14 is a good example of what happens when you try to balance everything to be so safe that it becomes boring and unsatisfying.

Drinking water is good for you, but drinking too much is bad, Balancing is good for a game but hyper fixating on perfect balance leads to a boring sanitised experience which leads to a bad game.

FF14 needs to find balance in balancing between job enjoyment and meta balancing if it doesn't find that balance the game is going to generally be worse off.

This feels like 2 separate types of conversations bumping into one another, dropping their identical handbags, and each one picking up the opposite handbag by mistake.

Simplification of the increased amount of skills we get expansion after expansion does not null out or negate failure in understanding the content a person is playing; so please can we separate these two concepts and give them their correct handbags back?

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Originally Posted by noumen0nn

I don't understand who these changes are supposed to benefit.

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I've said before in another thread but these changes aren't made for the casual player or the hardcore raider.

These changes are made for the above average players who think that certain aspects of a job are preventing them from being perfect, they often refer to these aspects as "clunk", they then demand the removal of all things they deem "clunk" so that the skill ceiling crashes down onto them with zero effort spent climbing on their part.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I've said before in another thread but these changes aren't made for the casual player or the hardcore raider.

These changes are made for the above average players who think that certain aspects of a job are preventing them from being perfect, they often refer to these aspects as "clunk", they then demand the removal of all things they deem "clunk" so that the skill ceiling crashes down onto them with zero effort spent climbing on their part.

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100% agreed

My anxiety comes first so every job needs to be even easier than now.

1 or 2 bottom max, infinite HP and probably auto-play system.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I've said before in another thread but these changes aren't made for the casual player or the hardcore raider.

These changes are made for the above average players who think that certain aspects of a job are preventing them from being perfect, they often refer to these aspects as "clunk", they then demand the removal of all things they deem "clunk" so that the skill ceiling crashes down onto them with zero effort spent climbing on their part.

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I wouldn't call Expert Mains above average players but I do think it's funny how casuals are getting majorly fugged by Body Check Trailwalker raid design.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I prefer all jobs being approachable and manageable because if something is too complicated and annoying to play, most people are going to ignore playing it, or even want to avoid bringing it along for harder content because the failure-rate is too high.

I've seen what happens in other MMOs when developers go too hard into thinking some classes require piano skills to play effectively (or at all), it results in player choice becoming homogenized anyway because most people, especially the hardcore crowd going for their world first races, are going to pick what gets the job done the quickest, not the one that can spin the most plates, and in general you don't really want to create a sense of "wow, this job sucks to play compared to this other job that performs the same function" given that unlike most MMOs, you can just change your job instead of being forced to reroll entirely, meaning people can and *will* leave certain jobs to wither if the extra effort isn't worth it because we aren't required to be over-committed to the one character with the one class we picked at creation.
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I couldn't disagree more. Throughout HW and STB, when jobs were at their hardest, drk was the hardest tank to play in what many considered to ne an already difficult role at the time. Despite this, drk was still overwhelmingly popular with both casual and hardcore players alike, because it was fun and a spectacle to look at. Plenty of casual people played it, and it was what initially drew me to tanking when i started, and it was my first mmo, so i didn't fully understand the trinity role system at the time. I learned it and got good st it because it was fun and facilitated thinking about my actions. Then on the hardcore side, there was a drk/pld combo involved in the world first for both ucob and uwu, despite warrior being both better performing and easier to play at the time, just because those players liked those jobs.

There is still a stigma about blm amd ast being hard to play, despite neither of them being hard to play for 5 years. People still think of blm as a turret in spite of the fact that it has more mobility than rdm now. Yet people still play those jobs, just as they did when they were actually hard. So no, i would heavily disagree with the notion that homogenization and simplification of jobs in this game specifically serves any purpose other than taking the fun out for people who did enjoy that aspect. As it stands, i don't think a single job in the game currently is fun or interesting, and I'll probably quit because of it, but i wanted to give my feedback because i want to enjoy the game again, and i know my feelings aren't unique to me.

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Originally Posted by Neoyoshi

This feels like 2 separate types of conversations bumping into one another, dropping their identical handbags, and each one picking up the opposite handbag by mistake.

Simplification of the increased amount of skills we get expansion after expansion does not null out or negate failure in understanding the content a person is playing; so please can we separate these two concepts and give them their correct handbags back?

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You're taking the title as standalone and not interpreting it in context of the contents within the post. Obviously people still fail content. By "fail" i mean failing to plsy jobs to a competent degree. You just hit buttons when they light up now. If you miss a positional? Oh well, you only lost 20 potency. Didn't refresh fire before it fell off? That's okay, you only lose a bit of potency, just go back into fire or ice and enochian is right there waiting for you. I've been talking solely about job design through the entirety of my post

This game was at it's prime when the roles and processes were complicated. Similar to the discussion regarding Dark, Astrologian was the most fun and challenge with the original cards. Healers, DPS, and Tanks were great when they were distinct and challenging. I also loved the process with two classes for the jobs and the cross class skills, it was unique. Not only do these changes destroy the fun of the jobs and the unique aspects of pairing up with different teams, but original job stories revolved around skills and make no sense in some cases. Stop expecting everyone to be perfect. If you want perfect players to do all content then join an FC with other like minded individuals. Some of the most fun I have is healing for a group where people make mistakes even before healing had been so dumbed down. I enjoy working with someone who is struggling in a dungeon/trial/raid to help them complete the first time. The whole point of MMOs is to play with others, but people here get so obsessed with everyone hitting their damage mark, etc. The fun of MMOs is playing with other people and the challenges and fun that comes from that. Jobs should not all hit the same mark, it is most fun when they have strengths and weakness instead of trying to make them all similar, losing their unique qualities and challenges.

I will fault the general encounter design.

The scripted nature of most fight strongly discourage any form of varieties of plays as well as eliminated many varieties of mistakes. Since you only can pass the mechanic in one or two fixed way, and fail the mechanic in 1 or 2 fixed way with 1 or 2 fixed reason

It doesn't help that high end encounter also added enrage on top of heavily scripted mechanic fight which further demand the consistency of job/class's skill expression, as the consequnce, it eliminated a lot of deriative class/gameplay as well.

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

I wouldn't call Expert Mains above average players but I do think it's funny how casuals are getting majorly fugged by Body Check Trailwalker raid design.

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The demand for these changes isn't coming from expert roulette mains, it's usually coming from people who do savage and care very much about their performance (most likely their logs as well) but in a rather self-serving way.
They want to be seen by others as great players, but they don't actually want to deal with the extra work that they would have to put in.
So all the little job intricacies and difficult optimizations get labeled as "clunk" that is totally the reason they're not achieving their full potential.