Square Enix is stuck in a loop: they boost the DPS numbers of simplified jobs — be they new or reworked — which then boosts their popularity. This creates a feedback illusion where SE assumes that dumbing down jobs is healthy for the game. Of course, this is proven wrong when people move away from these jobs and the active player count drops.
Now the real question is: why is this policy being followed instead of listening to the community and creating a system where jobs are unique, rewarding and balanced? FFXIV needs a community manager addressing these concerns just as much as it needs an official translator for the Live Letters.
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04-17-2025, 03:16 AMbrinn12
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04-17-2025, 04:21 AMGwenkatsuJust a quick reminder: the 20 people discussing all the nuts and bolts of job design on this forum are *not* the community as a whole, just a very small fraction.Quote:
Originally Posted by brinn12
I for one am ok with the jobs as they are. I press glowing buttons, and colorful things happen on my screen. When I get bored with a job, there are lots of others, with different buttons and different colorful things. I like that.
Of course I can only speak for myself, not for some mythical entity as "the community", or the fabled "we" :D -
04-17-2025, 04:55 AMValenceI've always been a supporter of accessibility + high ceiling across all the jobs, so you're preaching to the church.Quote:
Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe
However I do not like the idea of such a silly low gap in numbers, but that's just numbers. I do think that reaching a higher level on your rotation should be part of savage+ and have an incidence on the result, and the gaps you mentioned are irrelevant for this to happen. Jobs used to have a higher ceiling and micro complexities to manage especially in HW, and it was a system that worked, even in casual where DPS checks were virtually absent, allowing for lower skilled players to go by just fine. The real issue is that their new encounter designs are making this a pipe dream because they suck all the available air (aka brain power), which is why everything is dialed down to a bland soup with different skins depending on the job you pick, which isn't far from picking your icecream flavor of the day. You will never have higher skill ceilings with those encounters in the way, and I feel it's 1) the direction they're pushing in anyway so I feel like ultimately we're fighting against windmills and 2) the rabbit is out of the bag now anyway.
You're okay with... what? I feel like I'm getting mixed signals.Quote:
Originally Posted by CidHeiral
With damage output being balanced around effort and complexity? Ew. I guess you'd see most PFs starting to lock out a lot of jobs unless they do bring something truly valuable and unique to buy in their place in a party, if they're braindead to play.. -
04-17-2025, 05:25 AMCidHeiralI was agreeing with you on damage being balanced evenly. My DRG comment was to illustrate that I don't care if I do superior damage for a complex job, I just want my favorite job to be fun again.Quote:
Originally Posted by Valence
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04-17-2025, 06:37 AMbrinn12I actually agree with you, SE should not listen to just 20 people. They should listen to this:Quote:
Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu
"Every expansion saw growth between x.0 and pre-x.1 censuses.
SB 663k -> 830k
ShB 943k -> 1.2m
EW 1.3m -> 1.7m
DT 1.4m -> 1.1m" -
04-17-2025, 08:22 AMlocalareanetwork
Given how many people I've experienced who just flat out did not roll GCDs in M5S, I feel like they are never going to make the jobs "harder" or "more unique"
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04-17-2025, 10:16 AMSouljacker
So, I picked up BLM again a bit and mind, this is my experience at level 90 where I left it, but I do feel like it plays more like classic BLM did. I see why folks are getting back on it.
These numbers might not be a mass exodus from the other jobs, it might be folks who always liked BLM better going back because it's more like what we're used to. The Enochian timer was absolutely, without a doubt, my least favorite nonsense timer to have to upkeep. I get it, a lot of higher end folks like challenge. Let's keep the challenges in the fights, not the job UI.
Someone else mentioned that jobs should have an accessible floor that can appropriately clear content, and then a ceiling that one may strive for in order to clear the hardest content. The changes to this job specifically feel like they were in this spirit. What I was able to work out after ten minutes with it got me through some trust dungeons with minimal issues. But, that's not going to get me into any hard content, I'll need to work out how to best use ley lines now, when to time triplecast, etc.
But gosh, I am definitely going to play this job again, so add one more to the tally. One more that was definitely not going to be interested in SMN or PCT at all. -
04-17-2025, 11:52 AMSupersnow845Maintaining ABC is not a skill ceiling for a caster, that’s literally the floor in savageQuote:
Originally Posted by Souljacker
These changes give a high skill ceiling…….if you consider ABC as the skill ceiling, which ironically is part of the reason new BLM feels so much like a healer -
04-17-2025, 07:07 PMFlorineCSpeaking for myself, I want interesting jobs, and Picto is an interesting job. I would personally say it's one of the more difficult jobs currently in the game so I guess take that for what you will, but it has a lot of flexibility and room for optimization that a lot of other jobs sorely lack while still requiring a good amount of planning for optimal play, and I find that engaging. I previously mained SMN from ARR through EW, and while I enjoyed the novelty of EW SMN for a bit, it got old fast for me not necessarily because it was easy, but because there was just so little decision making or skill expression in the class (whether there's a meaningful distinction between that and easiness there I'll let you decide), and it was/is extremely rigid on top of that. Your agency was boiled down to whether or not you could find ~6 seconds per minute to actually cast a spell, and then the class played itself otherwise. Conversely, I think you can have easy classes that are still interesting and engaging on some level, and have room for optimization. I think SB PLD was a good example of this. You followed a pretty simple rotation, but moves like Shield Swipe in conjunction with Sheltron and Bulwark gave you room to eek out some extra damage if you wanted to. Hell, Sheltron itself only covering a single hit made it a relatively small but skill testing move to fully take advantage of, and it felt really good when you timed it to catch a big hit and not the auto attack 1 second before that.Quote:
Originally Posted by missTori
At the same time, there's classes like Bard which is imo the hardest class in the game right now, but that I don't find very fun just because I don't feel like its kit meshes together very well. The dots feel so vestigial because procs are no longer based off of them and you refresh them both with a single gcd, the way procs change between songs feels awkward to me (thank god they made pitch perfect aoe so your song order isn't constantly fucked in dungeons anymore at least), and there's just too many separate little things to juggle that it doesn't feel like a cohesive class to me. I don't think it's as simple as people either blanket like or dislike hard jobs so why did they like X which was easy but not Y which was also easy, there's a lot of other factors at play in what we find fun or not. Sure, there's some level of correlation where if you're looking for something more active or with more room for skill expression, you may tend to like harder jobs more, but difficulty isn't the only, or even the primary thing factor for a lot of people. -
04-17-2025, 08:24 PMSouljackerIt's almost like you didn't read a single word of what I wrote.Quote:
Originally Posted by Supersnow845
But again - this is all coming from folks who say the word "healer" but really mean DPS, because in this game we can't actually have a true healer that focuses on healing so I don't know what I was expecting.
I absolutely stand by my opinion that the challenge should be in the encounters, NOT in the UI by tracking x number of clocks. Somehow, we had crazy difficult boss fights in FFXI and we didn't need any of the button-y\timer-based\500+ skill optimal "rotation" stuff that's plagued this game to do it. Time will tell if they are going to give us anything very interesting like that. I have a feeling it's just going to be more dancing around the telegraphs, but that's a discussion for another thread. -
04-17-2025, 08:31 PMSupersnow845Quote:
Originally Posted by Souljacker
You literally said “the change was in spirit of accessible floor and a proper ceiling”. Then used leylines and triplecast use as examples of the ceiling. That’s not the ceiling that’s literally just ABC which is the floor
You can’t blame the players for playing healers exactly like the game forces you to play them, it’s not the players fault you can’t play WHM like you can play 11’s WHM,
Regardless 11 is a terrible comparison as its raid and encounter design are completely different. You can argue that 14 has terrible raid design compared to 11 but you can’t also say that simple jobs are better in 14 because they are fine in 11 which has totally different raid design -
04-18-2025, 02:03 AMForsakenRoeM6S shows us pretty clearly: If we had 'Healer' as in 'one who spends the majority (as in, over 50%) of their GCD time pressing Healing actions', a vast swathe of the playerbase would quit on the spot due to the sudden difficulty. People ask for this to occur, without considering just how stressful every encounter would be to clear as a result.Quote:
Originally Posted by Souljacker
Furthermore, it doesn't consider the knock-on effects of such a change. Say we did have a healing paradigm where the incoming damage, even in an EX roulette boss, is high enough to force the Healer to press a Healing spell more often than their Damage spells. I crunched the numbers back at the end of EW and found that for the first boss of The Aetherfont (the axolotl thing) to accomplish this on me, a SCH at the time, it would have had to deal 20k damage to the party about every 15s, on top of what it already does, and that isn't even to reach 50% GCD heals. That is to make us use ONE GCD healing spell, because we have so many OGCDs to work through first. But sure, lets assume that the boss is now dealing raidwides of about, say, 15k, every 6 seconds or so, forcing the player to keep using things like Medica or Succor to keep up. Surprise, Medica, Succor, Helios and 'the SGE one' all cost 900MP per cast. You're going to be OOM in less than a minute
I'd be alright with 'the challenge should be in the encounters', if the encounters were always the challenge that is being talked about. But there's no guarantee of that. Sometimes, even a Savage encounter is boring beyond belief, such as E7S, P7S, P6S, P11S to an extent, etc. If the encounter is boring in previous expansions, the Job kit was there to 'carry' it somewhat. Notice how, despite being a very 'empty' fight mechanicswise, we never saw the amount of complaints about 'game is boring' when we were farming O6S, for example? If the encounter is boring in DT though, we're comparatively SOL, because the Jobs have been sterilized with the justification of 'oh but don't worry, the encounters will be the source of complexity!'. And this applies across different difficulties, not just 'oh this one Savage fight was not great'. Someone who does Savage, is not as likely to find challenge in something like EX roulette. Previously, they'd at least have had the Job kits to keep them entertained, practice Multi-DOT upkeep on old SMN, etc. Now, that is not possible, because of the shift to 'encounters should be the source of complexity!'. So, rather than all content being 'at least partially fun, because the jobs are fun', a very skilled player is now being told 'you get 5 fights per 8 months, which your skill level allows you to find 'fun', everything else we release is going to feel kinda mid to you because you're too good. Also, there's no guarantee that it'll actually be 5 fights, because we might do a P7S again and so it'd be 4 fun fights and a stinker'
And to make matters worse, it's LESS casual-friendly to do it this way. Look at two fights, which are directly comparable: The final boss of the first 24man from Heavensward (the 'way too complex this almost killed the game' expansion) and Dawntrail. So, Echidna, whose most difficult mechanic is 'dodge orange AOEs on the floor, do an add phase that requires tanks to split the adds apart, and 'literally just look away from her'. And on the other hand, Shadowlord, who has a phase wherein you must remember three cleaves, dodge them in sequence, watch the telegraph for an add who will do two cleaves of its own (while you're dodging the third cleave from the main boss), then dodge a half-room from the boss, and then a half-room from a different add. You could 'opt out' of the complexity in HW to an extent, because it came from your Job. Don't have perfect upkeep of your DOTs as a BLM, focus instead on staying alive and not standing in orange. You'd still clear the 24man, even if a little slower. Now, you cannot 'opt out' of the Shadowlord's cleaves. You do them, or you die. And even more ironic is, SE made these changes because they worried people would start being toxic to a struggling player, for 'why aren't you casting XYZ in your rotation?'. But now, not only is it more obvious that they're struggling/doing less damage (because they died), the game gives them a 'you messed up lmao' sticker called Weakness/Brink of Death to tell everyone that 'they messed up lmao'
Lastly, lmao and also lol, at the implication that FF11 didn't need 'button-y/timer based/500+ skill optimal rotation stuff that plagues this game'. FF11 has Subjobs, Merit Points for post-level-cap levelling, Equipment effects/bonuses, Set bonuses, Jobs can be played in unexpected roles due to certain bonuses enabling bizarre gameplay (such as NIN being a functional dodge-Tank), BLU has hundreds of spells to learn and isn't Limited like it is here. And of course, SkillChains are a whole thing. Sure, you used actions at a far slower rate (ie GCD speed) than you do in FF14, but GCD speed isn't the only metric by which we gauge complexity
The highest button count Job in the game right now (as far as I remember, I'm not going counting everything again) is PLD, and for me (including all Role Actions, LB, Potion and Sprint) I'm at 37 keybinds. Since this thread is about BLM, I decided to check BLM specifically. This wiki says that at max level, a BLM has 93 spells in its arsenal, more than double the FF14 PLD above, and approaching 3x. Now, a lot of them are duplicate spells for each element (eg Fire 3 and Blizzard 3 are identical in function, just one's used against enemies weak to fire, and the other on enemies weak to ice), but this also then introduces a new form of complexity to the Job: Remembering what each enemy is weak to (or remembering to look it up/use something like Libra to find out)
FF11 is quite possibly, the worst example you could have pulled out -
04-18-2025, 04:26 AMCidHeiralNot only is this an absurd false equivalence but it's not even true. Corsair alone flies in the face of your claim. You have to consider your 31 Phantom Rolls, Snake Eye usage, when to Fold, Lucky and Unlucky numbers, etc. People literally use an addon called Timers to keep track of the Phantom Roll buff times.Quote:
Originally Posted by Souljacker