FFXIV Job Design Feedback

The total silence in regard to job changes started some time back in Stormblood (maybe early Shadowbringers). I think it was because the devs were annoyed by people giving feedback/complaints immediately after seeing the patch notes, so they opted for total silence from then on.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

The total silence in regard to job changes started some time back in Stormblood (maybe early Shadowbringers). I think it was because the devs were annoyed by people giving feedback/complaints immediately after seeing the patch notes, so they opted for total silence from then on.

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I started playing just in late ShB, but I keep hearing that job design was at its peak in StB and then it got worse and worse. What a coincidence.

Funnily enough, their changes lately have been so questionable, that patch notes are often enough to tell how bad they are. You really don't need to give 6.1+ SAM a try to realize that Kenki has no other use than just a Shinten spam. Their explanation for job changes didn't help them either, since they revealed that they unironically thought that PLD should have lower damage because he has range in magic phase.

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Originally Posted by Deo14

I started playing just in late ShB, but I keep hearing that job design was at its peak in StB and then it got worse and worse. What a coincidence.

Funnily enough, their changes lately have been so questionable, that patch notes are often enough to tell how bad they are. You really don't need to give 6.1+ SAM a try to realize that Kenki has no other use than just a Shinten spam. Their explanation for job changes didn't help them either, since they revealed that they unironically thought that PLD should have lower damage because he has range in magic phase.

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So, the "try it out and give us feedback" act that the dev team has been using for Kaiten has been done before during early Shadowbringers, SAM wasn't the first victim. The dev team changed GNB sound effects in patch 5.01, this spawned a large forum thread asking why they changed the sound effects, the dev team, of course, asked us to try it out and give feedback, then they never mentioned it ever again. Exactly what's happening to SAM and Kaiten right now. It's a method they've used before, and they'll keep on using it because complaints always eventually die down.

Over on the first page, I added some additional questions to my initial post, but I want to reiterate those questions here for anyone skipping ahead to this more recent page.

In the future, I plan on doing more feedback threads later when we get new job change information during the next media tour and again after 7.0 launches to see how people feel about the listed changes before release and compare that to after we get to try those changes out. Even though that's still a ways away, I'd like to gather some more info on what I can do better with my formatting next time around. With that in mind, I have a few extra questions I'd like to get some feedback on:

Do you think the 1 to 10 scale I used for the content satisfaction questions was good, or would it be better to run with a 1 to 5 scale? Do you think I asked the right amount of questions, or the right questions in general? Are there other questions I should think about next time around? For the "What do you want to see more/less of" sections, I already feel like I can do a much better job adding more specific options to gain more clear information, as the "other" option ended up making the responses fairly unhelpful and hard to turn those questions into graph questions. Do you agree with this? What are other "more of/less of" answers do you think I should add for each job or specific jobs?

In regards to the 1 to 10 questions and overall satisfaction question, I want to follow up with a bit more detail. Now, I do realize that the answers we've gotten on these feedback submissions is limited in some respects, so the scores we have currently on these spreadsheets should be taken with a grain of salt. That said, I'd like to know, what do you think is a "good" score out of 10? And what exactly does that mean to you? At what point do you think a score indicates some amount of investigation into changes? Is a 7 out of 10 acceptable? Is a 5 out of 10 acceptable? If you feel a 1 to 5 scale is better, how would you translate those responses to a 1 to 5 scale?

1. I think job homogenization is at its absolute worst right now and makes me completely uninterested in every single class in the game. When every class feels so similar to play within a role, what decision do I have to make beyond "what do I think looks the coolest?" I think it is at the worst point in the game's history but nothing leads me to believe it will change for the better. World of Warcraft doesn't have this problem. Every class and specialization feels unique to itself. They all offer something different in gameplay loop and theming so that you have a reason to play them all, or skip one or two in particular that don't feel good to you. In FFXIV, they all feel bland and cruddy.

2. I'll echo what so many other have and say Stormblood. They made Bard fun to play and every healer felt great. The tanks were doing alright too, but I think the simplification of Tanking had already begun to take place by then. I miss the days of actually having to work at tanking to be good at it. Now, anyone can do it by simple breathing and it makes me completely uninterested in doing the job.

3. They could I suppose, though I don't see much point in it. It's the forums and the subreddits that the developers need to be looking at. Threads like this one encourage people to provide productive feedback and conversations can be had on the points raised. Surveys in the game or whatever will not only be skipped by a lot of people, but some people will just fill them out without reading them(if there is a reward for doing it). You're also getting no conversation at all, so how the questions are worded will HEAVILY impact the responses and can lead the development team getting the completely wrong idea about what people want.

I think the main concern with job updates really is the duality of the situation. Let's take AST's 7.0 'rework' that is scheduled. If they're not going to ask the playerbase for feedback on what they plan for the future of the job, we're basically left in the situation that 'the people who put the job in such a state that 'it needs a rework so big, that it has to be done at expansion time', are the people who are the sole voices of how the design should go'. How's anyone meant to have any optimism in that situation? It's like having faith that the person who set fire to your house accidentally is going to be the one who can handle putting the fire out. Chances are they're gonna throw water on a cooking oil fire and flare it up even more, because they don't know what they're doing.

https://i.gyazo.com/403667d4300aca0d...938d35f318.png

Pretty relevant lines, I'd say

The job design of XIV is poor.

You can say that, and still be a fan of the game.....

Skyrim is the greatest open world game ever made....but people sink into floors & walk through walls like Kitty Pride.

XIV job design is a cluster f***.

Some jobs start at lvl1, some at lvl 50...others at lvl 70....

Some have hunting logs, others do not....

Some can do the STORY!!!!!!! One cannot.......

XIV's job design is like someone in the board room was throwing darts for ideas....and used all the ones that did not stick.

"What does not make sense...Okay, lets go with that"

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Originally Posted by MonsutaMan

Skyrim is the greatest open world game ever made...

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That's the biggest lie anybody could tell. That title goes to Dragon's Dogma.

Who can sincerely say that skyrim's great? Even in the same series morrowind is far superior as an open world game.

Blue mage stands as the only good job, presumably its inability to turn in msq is to avoid saddling the player with up to an 80 level grind when BLU hits the level cap.

Seeing how for Dark Knight most people ( 90%!!! ) ask for either a mini rework or a full rework, here are some ideas for the tank problem child:

->Dark Mind grants 10% damage. At level 82, upgrades to Oblation, granting an additional 20% magic damage mitigation.

->Dark Missionary should be obtained at level 66.

->Carve and Spit / Abyssal Drain moved to be GCDs with 20 sec CDs.

->Bloodspiller combos into 2 more actions, part of a combo, each action costing 15 blood.

->Living Shadow increases Darkside's damage bonus to 25% for 20 seconds. Fray merges with you giving you an enshroud like effect but suited to DRK fantasy.

->Delirium grants the Delirium buff for 10 seconds. During this time Darkside cannot be obtained from Edge/Flood of Shadow, they instead increase the bloodgauge by 20!

->Quietus removed. Bloodspiller combo can have AoE fall-off.

->To replace Quietus and Dark Mind merged into Oblation you can gain Blood price and Sole Survivor.

->Blood price: When around more than 2 enemies, getting hit increases the Bloodgauge. Should be obtained in Stormblood.

->Sole Survivor: Marks target for execution. If target is killed, gain HP and MP. If target survives, gain only HP. Should be obtained in Endwalker for sustain purposes.

->Salted earth gives a regeneration effect while standing inside it. Salt and Darkness heals the DRK instantly.

Idea of mini rework:
Minimize the use of EoS/FoS outside Delirium, but make sure you keep Darkside up.
Maximize the use of EoS/FoS inside Delirium to increase the bloodgauge.
Use the bloodgauge specifically to use the Bloodspiller combo as many times as possible under Living Shadow.
Play around with TBN's Dark Arts!
More GCDs.
Merge similar defensive CDs for easier weaving of defenses, add identity in the defensive / utility kit, solidify dungeon sustain.
Add more intensity to downtime periods: C&S being 20 seconds and managing Darkside more carefully.
Distance DRK's gameplay from WAR.