Red Mages need some love

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Originally Posted by maestroanth

It's because FFXIV is an over-simplified MMO. No customization whatsoever. So if you don't like your RDM out of the box, too bad because all RDM's are the same....

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Unfortunately for your mindset, we're in a different era of MMOs than the age of user-hostile, complex for the sake of complexity time sinks that massively enforced an attitude of git gud vs have fun.

Even in FFXI and early WoW, customization was heavily scrutinized and treated as a science, to the point that players created metas on the absolute most "efficient" builds as possible without thinking about the way it'd be treated by other players. Or rather, how jerks would try to limit other players based on the meta.

And yeah, I've constantly been the person who's had to say that Raises are absolutely useless outside of progression and 4-mans because they are. You can't complete a fight if you raise too often due to rez weakness, lost threat or lost healing. To balance Red Mage around a situational at best, actually harmful at worst utility is one of the most bone-headed moves the dev team has done. So Dualgunner's posts highly resonate with me because someone else finally sees the real issue with this.

Red Mage does not have the DPS contribution to justify having the lowest DPS of any DPS in the game. Perhaps if Embolden had a smaller cooldown and had a 20% initial damage boost, things'd be different, but as it stands, we are arbitrarily weaker than anyone else without having the ability to make up. And since DPS is king in FFXIV, balancing our DPS contribution or our actual damage around Verraise is 100% counter intuitive.

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Originally Posted by Sunako

If vercure would be ogcd heal with small cooldown, RDM could support healers without dps loss like ninja can support tanks with extra enmity generation. I think that would be pretty cool idea?

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The issue there is, RDM would then lose a valuable tool for proccing Dualcast in transition phases.

EDIT: Since I didn't get to this earlier:

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Originally Posted by Neela

i don't think people care the number of utility-skills but the flexibility/mobility/insta advantage of an int based heal

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You realize Vercure is about the same as a WHM's actual Cure 1. Now tell me how many WHM actually see Cure 1 as a viable endgame healing spell to fall back on.

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and if needed a 4-5x instant res in a row.

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By 5x, it's no longer valuable, it's a wipe. By 3x, you get just as much taking a SMN (who outclasses RDM hard on damage), because you'd have 3 instant cast raises / minute. So 4 deaths per minute is the optimal "RDM is helpful here!" version; aside from, perhaps, "Both healers just died!" and while it's possible to recover at that point...there's really no point, wiping it up would be smarter there as well.

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since rdm is still the only cls which owns the necromancer title its more than good to go in balancing...

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Okay I'll bite. Yes, RDM players are the sole people with Necromancer as a title. Of everybody who's managed to get it, they're all RDM.

All...two of them, as of this post.

Is there any reason another job *couldn't* try it? It's not like either of these two players breezed through PotD. They put a lot of hard work and effort into it that I'm sure another job could do as well if people put enough effort into it.

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its the only cls who acquired this title so far so what do u need more to see how "powerful" rdm support utility can be in direct comparison - its not always about dmg, dmg, dmg q.q...

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Neela, you know the game you're playing. FFXIV is always. Again, read: ALWAYS. Damage, damage, damage. PLD and WHM in 3.x were trash. Why? They didn't have good damage output, and their utilities were functionally useless when the stronger damaging jobs could survive through the fight just the same. Red Mage is in the same place as 3.x PLD and WHM now: they do frankly weak damage, and their support is middling to useless.

If you're so obsessed with Necromancer, go get it. Be the third person ever to do it, and the first person to do it on SMN. You never know if you can until you've tried, and it's not like it's a total breeze for RDM either.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

snip

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White Mage damage output was fine in 3.x, it was mp issues and the 30% balance which caused people to drop it in favour of astrologian.

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Originally Posted by CorbinDallas

White Mage damage output was fine in 3.x, it was mp issues and the 30% balance which caused people to drop it in favour of astrologian.

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Sure WHM had decent personal damage output. But as you just said, it was outclassed heavily by its competition due to AST simply offering more to total party DPS.

We have jobs like that today. Rhymes with "Amurai".

EDIT: To clarify, when I say damage, I mean all damage that the job offers the party. Personal DPS and Raid DPS offered through buffs.

Aye fair enough, from the way you worded it, it seemed like you were talking about personal DPS. ^^

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Originally Posted by CorbinDallas

Aye fair enough, from the way you worded it, it seemed like you were talking about personal DPS. ^^

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Yeah, on looking back I realized that I was vague about it. Most important part in any discussion is making sure terms are defined after all!

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Originally Posted by NewAgeDoom

...And what other MMOs have you played, exactly?

Look at endgame for WoW, for example. Literally EVERY class plays exactly the same in Antorus as well, with no deviation in talent builds whatsoever, and if you do, you're either treated like a troll, or someone completely new to your spec.

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Rift and DDO....

I'm actually playing Rift again because they have a new Prime server and it's fricken awesome. They have a talent tree now for a warrior to shoot lightning like some storm titan! And you can have any 3 trees active at once as a sort of pseudo multi-classing. And yes, a warrior, not a mage, lol.

And TBH, I've never really had any problems whining too much if I diverted from a pre-determined spec with those two games. I remember this was more of a problem in old school WoW. I think Rift and DDO passed a complexity boundary where it becomes a headache to ask other's their exact spec and fighting about it becomes pointless whereas WoW never quite reached that boundary.

Just have to make sure the auto-payment is off now on this game lol.

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Originally Posted by maestroanth

Rift and DDO....

I'm actually playing Rift again because they have a new Prime server and it's fricken awesome. They have a talent tree now for a warrior to shoot lightning like some storm titan! And you can have any 3 trees active at once as a sort of pseudo multi-classing. And yes, a warrior, not a mage, lol.

And TBH, I've never really had any problems whining too much if I diverted from a pre-determined spec with those two games. I remember this was more of a problem in old school WoW I think. I think Rift and DDO passed a complexity boundary where it becomes a headache to ask other's their exact spec and fighting about it is pointless whereas WoW never quite reached that boundary.

Just have to make sure the auto-payment is off now on this game lol.

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Congratulations?

You claim to dislike this game, yet you still seem to spend quite a bit of time on the forums for it.

If it acts like a duck, quacks like a duck...

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Originally Posted by EllieShadeflare

Unfortunately for your mindset, we're in a different era of MMOs than the age of user-hostile, complex for the sake of complexity time sinks that massively enforced an attitude of git gud vs have fun.

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Such a better era.....no customization = no fun. Bring on the science and make this shit interesting once again!

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Originally Posted by NewAgeDoom

Congratulations?

You claim to dislike this game, yet you still seem to spend quite a bit of time on the forums for it.

If it acts like a duck, quacks like a duck...

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Kills time at work, what can I say ;P

It's not like players had any hands in killing that era

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Originally Posted by Remedi

It's not like players had any hands in killing that era

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Complexity =/= Depth, though. You can have relatively simple gameplay, but being able to get a lot out of it if you invest the time in mastering the class (See: Samurai, once it gets a bit of numbers tweaking, which it is).

Another good example outside of FFXIV would be Subtlety Rogue in WoW. It's relatively simple to break down in terms of mechanics, but it still ultimately requires skillful play to be truly effective on.

I actually agree, KH2 combat is not complex, yet is probably the most beloved and balanced KH gameplay there is, because it works it's well balanced and it has depth if you want to take your time mastering it

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Originally Posted by Remedi

I actually agree, KH2 combat is not complex, yet is probably the most beloved and balanced KH gameplay there is, because it works

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I'm actually going to be the odd one out, and say Birth by Sleep was my favorite.

KH2 is probably my favorite game in the series in terms of story (a few areas weren't really necessary in my opinion, but I see why they're in the game), but I feel like Birth by Sleep had the best overall gameplay.

The loss of Ars Arcanum is a grievous affront I haven't forgiven to this day.

I don't really want to derail the thread but I'll just say that KH BBS is a good example were customization doesn't really mean a better product, since you have plenty of customization but there are some aspects of the game that are simply much better then others to the point of overshadowing the rest and it shows in higher difficulty settings (same goes for DDD aka Ballonga spam) whereas in KH2 it's more well balanced to the point each part of the combat can be used.

sry for the Ot again

I approve greatly of the last four posts, though I cannot decide if I like KH2's or BBS's combat better, as both have their strong points.

Speaking as someone who got RDM to 70 almost immediately and did O1S a couple days after its release, and recently came back to the game, I'd rather not see straight potency buffs for RDM, but rather accelerate the cycle a touch. Here's what I propose.

Verraise placed on 30s cooldown
Impact grants Piercing debuff and grants 5/5 mana
Fire/Stone grant 10 of their respective mana
Thunder/Aero grant 13 of their respective mana
Flare/Holy grant 25 of their respective mana

Personally I consider Impact a useless ability and a waste of slot, since realistically speaking you'd rather not use it unless you want to keep your mana to a certian point, but even so I'd rather it overtake jolt II on the bar, but who knows maybe in the expansion there'll be a complete new proc off impact and w/e.
However the mana adjustments you bring seems interesting, could be a different way to buff RDM in making their melee rotation coming more often, it could be a way to buff them imho

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Originally Posted by Remedi

Personally I consider Impact a useless ability and a waste of slot, since realistically speaking you'd rather not use it unless you want to keep your mana to a certian point, but even so I'd rather it overtake jolt II on the bar, but who knows maybe in the expansion there'll be a complete new proc off impact and w/e.

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Question for clarification, just making sure I'm not misunderstanding you: realistically you'd rather not use Impact? Everything I know about RDM is "Use Impact at the next available longcast you can, even if both fire and stone are procced." It's theoretical loss versus absolute loss-that absolute loss being if you let Impact fall off.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

Question for clarification, just making sure I'm not misunderstanding you: realistically you'd rather not use Impact? Everything I know about RDM is "Use Impact at the next available longcast you can, even if both fire and stone are procced." It's theoretical loss versus absolute loss-that absolute loss being if you let Impact fall off.

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Not quite. The only time you should cast Impact if you have both Verprocs is if there's less than 8 seconds left on Impactful. Otherwise, use Impact as a proc fisher when you have 1 or no procs.

From https://www.mooglemedia.com/rdm-guide/ (bolded emphasis mine)

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NEVER let Impactful fall off. Always use it to fish for another proc. If you have both Verstone and Verfire and Impactful has <8 seconds left, use Impact anyways. This will still result in a net DPS gain.

Inevitably, you will end up having to cast Jolt II at some point in the fight. Jolt II will grant you the Impactful buff, allowing you to use Impact. At first glance, Impact appears to be a “cast me instead of Jolt II” button when you run out of Verstone/fire procs. However, in most cases you’re actually going to want to prioritize Impact over Verstone/fire. Impact should be considered a “proc fisher” just like Swiftcast and be used as often as possible. Furthermore, you should NEVER let Impactful fall off. Even if you have both Verstone/fire procs up, it is still a DPS gain to use Impact. Ideally, you would want to use Verstone/fire procs until one of them falls off and then use Impact to fish for the proc that just fell off, but if you have less than 8 seconds left on Impactful, go ahead and use Impact, regardless of how many procs you have.

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The coles notes Impact/verproc priority from highest to lowest is as follows, but there's a much more in depth proc fishing priority list in the guide I linked above that goes into how other abilities and balance levels interact with it:
1. If there is less than 8 seconds remaining on Impactful then cast Impact regardless of the number of procs you have.
2. If you have 1 or fewer procs, cast Impact.
3. If you have 2 procs, cast your Verproc spells until you lose one of them or Impactful is about to fall off.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

Question for clarification, just making sure I'm not misunderstanding you: realistically you'd rather not use Impact? Everything I know about RDM is "Use Impact at the next available longcast you can, even if both fire and stone are procced." It's theoretical loss versus absolute loss-that absolute loss being if you let Impact fall off.

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I'm saying that Impact doesn't really feel good as an ability especially need it's own button, I'd rather have it take over Jolt II for the duration like Ruin IV does to RuinII.
In short I feel like something it's missing out of it

Things I'd personally do.

1. Remove Raise from Red Mage and Summoner.
2. Dual Cast increases Spell Potency (10-20%). This equates to around a 5-6% damage buff.
3. Embolden no longer decays. This equates to around a 2% personal buff and a buff to 2% Physical DPS overall.

Things I saw someone else suggest

1. Moving Vercure to the Ability type.
-I like this idea because it does become a bonus the Red Mage brings instead of a trade off. It'd either need a somewhat comparable cooldown (like 15 seconds) or maintaining the MP Cost.

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Originally Posted by maestroanth

Such a better era.....no customization = no fun. Bring on the science and make this shit interesting once again!

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It'd come out to the same, because people will always try to find the meta (which will be found quickly), and buttholes will always use the meta to justify keeping people out of their parties.

It changes nothing and you just get a clunky system that few people are actually gonna take full advantage of (except in predetermined ways discovered by other players).

Also, I saw something that irritated me (despite being from a user that I tend to agree with), so we're going to unpack this a bit.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

1. Remove Raise from Red Mage and Summoner.

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I don't think this is necessary, if only for the reason that there's lore reasons for the former and mechanical reasons for the latter to keep their Raises. Red Mage has it to emphasize that they're users of magic of both White AND Black, but they're not a healer so they only chose the most basic abilities from White Mage (other than the elements). Summoner needs their Raise because they're Arcanist, and I don't know if it's actually possible to replace one skill with another in its entirety from the base class set. Summon 1 and 2 don't exactly count because they only change the result, not the skill itself (you still summon something, but it seems to be a conditional "If Scholar then Fairy" kinda thing.

That said, you could limit these raises in various ways. For example, Resurrection (for Summoner) could have an absolutely unreasonable MP cost which is handled by a level 1 trait for Scholar, whilst Red Mage can't use Dualcast on Verraise (but could still use Swiftcast). It'd also help if we got more mages in the Caster Role to also show that Raise is simply a class/job lore thing rather than a role thing.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

2. Dual Cast increases Spell Potency (10-20%). This equates to around a 5-6% damage buff.

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This feels unnecessary, considering that Verthunder/Veraero are already higher potency than the spell you hardcast.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

3. Embolden no longer decays. This equates to around a 2% personal buff and a buff to 2% Physical DPS overall.

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This is something I highly agree with, since the decay was originally built for when Embolden was slated to be a whopping 20% buff. At 10%, it's about the same as Trick Attack, but with almost twice the CD and also decays. It's not at all good. As a result, I suggest either we go with your suggestion or bring Embolden back to its originally intended 20%.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

1. Moving Vercure to the Ability type.
-I like this idea because it does become a bonus the Red Mage brings instead of a trade off. It'd either need a somewhat comparable cooldown (like 15 seconds) or maintaining the MP Cost.

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I personally don't like it myself because Vercure had a bonus utility of ensuring a Dualcast in downtime, so we could get a proc when something finally happens. It also allows us to cover for our own mistakes as needed and removes some of that pressure from healers.

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Originally Posted by EllieShadeflare

Raise.

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I disagree. Caster Raise is currently an all or nothing affair with inconsistent stances on who has it, why they have it, and what they give up for having / not having it.

It doesn't fit the bill of an emergency raise when it's always available, but only on certain jobs.

It is 100% possible in any perceived framework of the game to remove a skill from a job, because as we've seen -they've already done it-. In fact, if you remember the transition from Cross Class to Role Action, the stuff didn't get removed from our bars. It was disabled. The Skills are likely still in the game, but access to them is cut off. It isn't a fancy Text change to your Job name, you are likely moving from one 'Job database' to another.

Also, "Raise" is hardly the 'most basic' of spells from a lore standpoint, and mechanically a Summoner is not a healer, so they don't even get that excuse for having it.

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Originally Posted by EllieShadeflare

It'd come out to the same, because people will always try to find the meta (which will be found quickly), and buttholes will always use the meta to justify keeping people out of their parties.

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That's a very pessimistic viewpoint IMO, but I do get it. In reality though, I only faced your "butthole" problem in WoW. I think it's mainly because Rift and DDO attract players that share my D&D pov whereas WoW attracted a more generalized demographic of player. Plus, MMO's with how much repetition there is, needs stuff for players to f*ck around with to keep it interesting. Plus, with talent trees you get certain combos that derive naturally that are optimal at various levels which makes the grind much more fun.

I mean, I actually get excited when I level up in Rift and decide what to invest my points in, but in FFXIV, I couldn't care less.....

And plus too, even with the microcontrol of what abilities are used in PVP vs PVE by the developers with no customization from the players, the PVP in FFXIV is still inferior to many other MMO's especially Rift.

There is just no excuse for that.....

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Originally Posted by Remedi

I'm saying that Impact doesn't really feel good as an ability especially need it's own button, I'd rather have it take over Jolt II for the duration like Ruin IV does to RuinII.
In short I feel like something it's missing out of it

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The issue with this is when Impactful is going to fall off you can potentially create some dead time where there is nothing but 5sec spells or Vercure to cast.

If you've not got any procs, don't have melee up and have used SC recently you would have to stand there waiting for Impactful to fall off. No one wants to do that. Vercure would be on the table but Jolt II does still do more damage than nothing.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

It doesn't fit the bill of an emergency raise when it's always available, but only on certain jobs.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

It is 100% possible in any perceived framework of the game to remove a skill from a job, because as we've seen -they've already done it-. In fact, if you remember the transition from Cross Class to Role Action, the stuff didn't get removed from our bars. It was disabled. The Skills are likely still in the game, but access to them is cut off. It isn't a fancy Text change to your Job name, you are likely moving from one 'Job database' to another.

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You're forgetting to realize that in this case, Resurrection is a CLASS skill for Arcanist, who splits off into Summoner and Scholar, which is why I mentioned mechanics and I specifically included the Scholar's fairy as an another example. I also said this:

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I don't know if it's actually possible to replace one skill with another in its entirety from the base class set.

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Referring to the question of Resurrection in the ACN slot. And note, with the other skills that went from the Classes and Job skill lists to the Cross Role skill lists, the whole skill was removed from its original job and class. If you need me to be more specific,

We currently have no way of addressing Raise for Scholar before Level 30 if we remove Resurrection from Arcanist and by extension Summoner.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Also, "Raise" is hardly the 'most basic' of spells from a lore standpoint, and mechanically a Summoner is not a healer, so they don't even get that excuse for having it.

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Raise in the FFXIV term isn't bringing something from the dead, you realize. It's merely curing the knock out status, or bringing them back from the cusp of death, not specifically true resurrection or revival. Nybeth Obdilord specifically mentions that our Raise spells (which, by the way, is univeral enough among classes with healing potential that Astrologian and Arcanist both have their own incarnations of the spells) cannot actually raise the dead.

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Originally Posted by Nybeth Obdilord

The art of true resurrection... a challenge even in this world, it would seem. The Trader's Spurn seemed promising, but inevitably renders the subject undead.

The magicks of Gridania proved equally ineffective, only pulling souls back from the brink of death, unable to reach beyond the veil.

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As for mechanics, I already stated that it might be physically impossible for the devs to remove it from Summoner without removing Summoner from the Arcanist skilltree entirely. This might be why the 60-70 SMN quests hint that there's ways of using Summoning that doesn't involve tomes.

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Originally Posted by maestroanth

That's a very pessimistic viewpoint IMO, but I do get it. In reality though, I only faced your "butthole" problem in WoW. I think it's mainly because Rift and DDO attract players that share my D&D pov whereas WoW attracted a more generalized demographic of player. Plus, MMO's with how much repetition there is, needs stuff for players to f*ck around with to keep it interesting. Plus, with talent trees you get certain combos that derive naturally that are optimal at various levels which makes the grind much more fun.

I mean, I actually get excited when I level up in Rift and decide what to invest my points in, but in FFXIV, I couldn't care less.....

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That's a you problem, to be honest. The "illusion of choice" seen in other MMOs have crashed and burned massively, and are only really maintained in very niche MMOs (RIFT being a good example of this, since it's very top-heavy and players are complaining about balance issues).

And while some players will find talent trees with unique combos, getting those combos will cause people to harass them for not taking the "optimal" build, because people are inherently toxic.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

The issue with this is when Impactful is going to fall off you can potentially create some dead time where there is nothing but 5sec spells or Vercure to cast.

If you've not got any procs, don't have melee up and have used SC recently you would have to stand there waiting for Impactful to fall off. No one wants to do that. Vercure would be on the table but Jolt II does still do more damage than nothing.

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What you mean? if you have no proc you should fire off impact anyway

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Originally Posted by EllieShadeflare

We currently have no way of addressing Raise for Scholar before Level 30 if we remove Resurrection from Arcanist and by extension Summoner.

As for mechanics, I already stated that it might be physically impossible for the devs to remove it from Summoner.

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Except it isn't. I honestly don't understand this viewpoint. -We've had skills removed from jobs, added to jobs, changed while in a job, still existing in the game but removed from jobs, effects changed by temporary buffs provided by a job-.

This is an entirely speculative argument, but the fact is -they can do it-. The difference is how much work goes into it, which honestly, in the worst case, isn't much (Cutting off access, and adding it manually to Scholar 22), and at best, is a database edit (Removing it from Arcanist, since Scholar's already has it)

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Originally Posted by EllieShadeflare

That's a you problem, to be honest. The "illusion of choice" seen in other MMOs have crashed and burned massively, and are only really maintained in very niche MMOs (RIFT being a good example of this, since it's very top-heavy and players are complaining about balance issues).

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Blah, I'm so sick of this "illusion of choice" term tossed around. You can stretch that term out enough to qualify anything with variety and turn it into bland applesauce for that very reason. Hell, I can even stretch that out to say even class choice is an illusion since only proven, optimal classes are viable for the respective roles.

In most MMO's there are really 4 roles = tank, healer, single-target DPS, and AoE DPS, so the perfect MMO with absolutely no illusion of choice should only have 4 classes. I.e. war, priest, rogue, mage, and all pre-determined. Any deviation from that will only add an illusion of choice. And there is no clunkiness whatsoever with that! Thus, the perfect MMO...or is it?

Sounds kinda boring though if all MMO's did that no?

So maybe this so called "illusion of choice" and clunkiness is needed to keep some things interesting? No?

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Originally Posted by EllieShadeflare

That's a you problem, to be honest. The "illusion of choice" seen in other MMOs have crashed and burned massively, and are only really maintained in very niche MMOs (RIFT being a good example of this, since it's very top-heavy and players are complaining about balance issues).

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I love imbalance in games TBH, so I don't complain ;)

However, I am a proud niche video game player, so I do defend them to the death against the tyranny of the majorities ;P

Damn capitalism....

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Originally Posted by maestroanth

I love imbalance in games TBH, so I don't complain ;)

However, I am a proud niche video game player, so I do defend them to the death against the tyranny of the majorities ;P

Damn capitalism....

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I too enjoy the occasionally horrible game.

I believe they should remove the ability for Vercure from proc’ing dualcast; only have Verraise accessible via Swiftcast ONLY, and not dualcast.

Bump DPS on Verspells by 10-20, and then do everything I want for RDM 5.0 And rdm will be golden!

Regardless of what they do, I’m happy with rdm, sole purpose i resubbed to ffxiv, and it’ll
Be the job I lean on until they introduce BLU or any other unique iob.

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Originally Posted by Remedi

What you mean? if you have no proc you should fire off impact anyway

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If Impactful has <2.5 or so seconds remaining (effectively 3 since we can't see fractions of seconds remaining) then you won't be able to get the cast off in time before the proc drops. Currently we can cast Jolt II, Verfire, or Verstone instead to account for this if we know we won't have time, but if Jolt and Impact become a single button then if we don't have either Verfire or Verstone procced we lose that option and would have to either wait that up to 3 seconds before being able to cast Jolt or resort to casting Vercure.

It's not likely to happen if casting Impact properly, since you'd need to get 100% procs for ~25s and miss casting it at the ~8s remaining mark, but it does introduce that bit of potential clunkiness.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Except it isn't. I honestly don't understand this viewpoint. -We've had skills removed from jobs, added to jobs, changed while in a job, still existing in the game but removed from jobs, effects changed by temporary buffs provided by a job-.

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Not the same thing as entirely removing a skill from a class's moveset before you can get the job, and expecting that skill to be in that job's skillset. (And before you try to use it as an example, Miasma II is after level 40. It does not support your argument).

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

This is an entirely speculative argument, but the fact is -they can do it-. The difference is how much work goes into it, which honestly, in the worst case, isn't much (Cutting off access, and adding it manually to Scholar 22), and at best, is a database edit (Removing it from Arcanist, since Scholar's already has it)

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How do you know that it is as simple as you think it is? It makes sense that Sustain and Miasma II could return, they weren't entirely removed from the game, just dummied out. However, not only would they have to remove Raise for Scholar (and who knows if they could put it back starting at level 22) but Summoner would need to gain a new skill to replace it. You have to think through the implications of what you're suggesting.

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Originally Posted by maestroanth

Blah, I'm so sick of this "illusion of choice" term tossed around. You can stretch that term out enough to qualify anything with variety and turn it into bland applesauce for that very reason. Hell, I can even stretch that out to say even class choice is an illusion since only proven, optimal classes are viable for the respective roles.

In most MMO's there are really 4 roles = tank, healer, single-target DPS, and AoE DPS, so the perfect MMO with absolutely no illusion of choice should only have 4 classes. I.e. war, priest, rogue, mage, and all pre-determined. Any deviation from that will only add an illusion of choice. And there is no clunkiness whatsoever with that! Thus, the perfect MMO...or is it?

Sounds kinda boring though if all MMO's did that no?

So maybe this so called "illusion of choice" and clunkiness is needed to keep some things interesting? No?

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wow, that's a complete misrepresentation of that term as it applies to the issues of talent trees and how toxic players use those to bully others, and it's honestly word salad. But you know what? I'mma try to dissect it. (also, fun fact, you can edit your posts to include more characters inside of them. Double posting is generally a no-no)

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Blah, I'm so sick of this "illusion of choice" term tossed around. You can stretch that term out enough to qualify anything with variety and turn it into bland applesauce for that very reason. Hell, I can even stretch that out to say even class choice is an illusion since only proven, optimal classes are viable for the respective roles.

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Not my point, or anyone else's when they bring up the term of "illusion of choice". The point of the term is to refer to the fact that no matter what sorts of skills you put onto a class/job/whatever, there will always be that optimum build that people will want. This wasn't a problem when the oldest of MMOs were hyper focused in what they did and had one-note classes that did a job and did them well. In fact, WoW, FFXI and certain other MMOs that attempted more free form ways of handling builds came as a middle time, and we're kinda returning to those older days.

And the kicker? No matter how broad you can make your skillsets or talent trees or whatever, you're still gonna be stuck with jerks who will demand your builds be a specific way. Hell, RIFT gets that issue too, and it's even WORSE if the article included is to believed, as the illusion of choice actually is so broad that if you want to play how you want but also play optimally, you literally have to focus on a single build based on specific skills or else you're not doing competently. In a weird sense, the more free a system is, the more limited it is for players who still want to raid, do PvP or other forms of high-end content. https://www.mmorpg.com/columns/illusion-of-choice-1000007617

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In most MMO's there are really 4 roles = tank, healer, single-target DPS, and AoE DPS, so the perfect MMO with absolutely no illusion of choice should only have 4 classes. I.e. war, priest, rogue, mage, and all pre-determined. Any deviation from that will only add an illusion of choice. And there is no clunkiness whatsoever with that! Thus, the perfect MMO...or is it?

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actually kirby team clash deluxe is really fun and only has four roles, i feel so attacked

In all seriousness, your assessment of the roles is usually false and you clearly are trying to make a strawman out of the complaint of the illusion of choice. But firstly, we generally use the trinity of Tank, Healer and DPS. That said, DPS is then usually classed as either support or pure damage, though some MMOs do have the differentiation of AoE and ST DPS that you point out, or some combination of the four.

But again, the oldest of MMOs and even FFXI to a great extent had jobs that did specific tasks and did them well. Add too much choice to a job, and you'll have wars between those who will demand specific specs and builds (See: the constant power struggles among mages and Fury and Arms Warriors in WoW). Having three broad roles with jobs that bring their own flavor to their roles seem to be the best choice as far as I can see.

At least then, the choices aren't fake.

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Originally Posted by EllieShadeflare

How do you know that it is as simple as you think it is?

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What makes you think it's so convoluted? For all the joking we make, they aren't incompetent programmers or organizers of information.

Your argument has the same foundation mine does, only I'm assuming competence when it comes to them. And when it comes to that, you aim for simple organizations over complex ones, especially if there isn't much a difference in the data usage involved.

[Arcanist] + [Change according to Summoner or Scholar or Null Stone attached]

or

[Arcanist]
[Summoner]
[Scholar]

How much of a difference is there really in storage size here? Minimal. Which one is easier to code around? The second.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

What makes you think it's so convoluted? For all the joking we make, they aren't incompetent programmers or organizers of information.

Your argument has the same foundation mine does, only I'm assuming competence when it comes to them. And when it comes to that, you aim for simple organizations over complex ones, especially if there isn't much a difference in the data usage involved.

[Arcanist] + [Change according to Summoner or Scholar or Null Stone attached]

or

[Arcanist]
[Summoner]
[Scholar]

How much of a difference is there really in storage size here? Minimal. Which one is easier to code around? The second.

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I'm assuming the worst ends because the FFXIV 1.0 team was incompetent under the original director, and A Realm Reborn is still a mostly rebuilt version of that, with some of the incompetencies that come with it. This included the highly flawed and broken split of Arcanist into Summoner and Scholar.

Also, once again, without the option of raising in the SMN's roster, what will replace it in the skillset? Can't just remove it and give nothing, that's bad design and players will complain about losing one of the unique aspects of Summoner.

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Originally Posted by EllieShadeflare

I'm assuming the worst ends because the FFXIV 1.0 team was incompetent under the original director, and A Realm Reborn is still a mostly rebuilt version of that, with some of the incompetencies that come with it. This included the highly flawed and broken split of Arcanist into Summoner and Scholar.

Also, once again, without the option of raising in the SMN's roster, what will replace it in the skillset? Can't just remove it and give nothing, that's bad design and players will complain about losing one of the unique aspects of Summoner.

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Nothing. Current Summoner may not be the easiest to play but it currently doesn't lack anything to make it desirable. Bad design is just as much giving a Job something it no longer needs, or should not have had to start. Sometimes you need to cut something out, especially when it has no bearing on the core gameplay of the job.

Oh, you know what.

They can have better spell animations.

Painflare: Demi-Ifrit blasting an area with fire
Fester: Demi-Titan punching someone
Bane: Demi-Garuda doing...stuff.