Yet another SMN thread: SMN is the only job that doesn't have a gauge/proc management

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Originally Posted by Aravell

This has always been strange. I don't understand why so many people hold BLM on a high pedestal when the standard rotation is so simple and easy to execute at a base level. Just rotate fire and ice, keep thunder up, don't overcap polyglot.

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Idk, community perception, people see high end optimization where some crazy 500iq dude has BLM planned out every single gcd for a fight and they assume this is the expected standard. Then it’s just trickle down effect.

SMN has been dumbed down to such a degree that you can macro the entire SMN rotation into 1 button, that's how bad it is.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

This has always been strange. I don't understand why so many people hold BLM on a high pedestal when the standard rotation is so simple and easy to execute at a base level. Just rotate fire and ice, keep thunder up, don't overcap polyglot.

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I agree honestly. BLM is the perfect example of "low skill floor and high skill ceiling". I just don't like using BLM as an example since the community perception of the job is that it's the "hardest job in the game". That perception is kinda in the same ballpark as LUL DRG from back when it would just instantly get one shot by a raid wide because of Blood for Blood.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aravell

This has always been strange. I don't understand why so many people hold BLM on a high pedestal when the standard rotation is so simple and easy to execute at a base level. Just rotate fire and ice, keep thunder up, don't overcap polyglot.

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It's because there's a slight misconception about why BLM is considered a hard job. Is not the rotation, which indeed is as simple as casting that static sequence, but the fact that fight knowledge serves as a secondary skill floor/ceiling for BLM makes it feel like I need to relearn the non-static parts of the BLM kit (that can be completely skipped if all you need to do is attack a dummy target) every time.

Is not like "I learned BLM now I can focus on mechs", but more like "I learned P9 BLM while learning the mechs / I learned P10 BLM while learning the mechs / etc".

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Originally Posted by Renathras

The problem with this is the justification used by people to increase the skill expression always seems to end up "the players not playing to the optimal level should be doing much less damage".

The implication isn't "we want a Job that allows for skill expression" from that. The implication from that justification is "we want to be able to very clearly dominate/lord over people who don't play at our level".

At best, it's wanting to look better at the expense of other people looking worse (that is "best" since in that case, it's not an active desire people do worse, it's just a requirement for one to look better).

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There's a lot to say about this, so I'll again "tag-and-bag" a lot of it for the sake of visual cleanliness and avoiding scroll-pollution.

As always when dealing with large populations, it's probably true that some examples of the type of player that you imagine in your quote almost certainly do exist.

However, I think that it's important to clarify — at least in my own, personal, anecdotal experiences — that the vast majority of "skill-focused" players really do not seem to have any motivation about imperiously looking down upon other players.

Even personally, I can say that, while I'm hardly anything close to a gold-parsing "elite"... as someone who finds current SMN underwhelming, my investment in seeing it become more interesting has absolutely nothing to do with wanting to feel "better" than anyone else — I'm just... really not having much fun with SMN's current state.

It's a personal and "self-contained" complaint — perhaps "selfish", in that sense, but not at all born out of a desire for self-aggrandizement and status-hoarding.

At least for me personally, I don't really care about "floors" and "ceilings" and other fancy terminology — I just want the rotation to feel more engaging and satisfying to me, because it currently doesn't.

Even if SMN became 20% more complex, but still did the same damage, I don't think I'd personally lose interest... rather, I'd probably gain motivation to keep playing it.

However, you are absolutely correct that most discussions about how to "improve" EW SMN inevitably end up turning into an elaborate plot to increase the damage disparity between the "low end" and "high end" of play.

But the reason for this, I think, is — in the vast majority of cases — not at all born from a desire to "feel superior" to other players, but rather that FFXIV's designers have stripped away basically any other way for people to differentiate between "playing correctly" and "playing incorrectly".

In other words: In modern FFXIV, what else can rotationally happen other than "lower damage" when a Job is performed non-optimally?

None of the following are "allowed" to matter by the FFXIV designers — either never properly-realized to begin with, or stripped-away over time:

• Time constraints
• Target priority
• Route navigation
• Boss positioning
• Boss facing
• Control tools like Sleep and Stuns
• Mechanical tools like Binds, Heavies, and Knockbacks
• Interrupting dangerous enemy actions
• Enmity management
• TP management
• MP management
• Party utility like MP and TP restoration, Enmity assistance, etc.
• Party enhancements and support (every form of "supporting your team" is either just "slap immediately at 2 minutes" now, or is essentially-mindless [Standard Step] )
• Managing when to use GCD heals
• (probably a lot of other things that I'm not thinking of off the top of my head)

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As a low-hanging contrast, if you look at World of Warcraft... there's an enormous number of reasons to bring a Class — and a player — to a party, for both Raiding and Mythic+ Dungeons.

Certainly, players want "acceptable" damage performance, but there are also so many other considerations — Battle Raise (only a limited number of classes can provide it), mitigations, off-healing, interrupts, control tools, kiting tools, aggro tools, speed tools, powerful enhancements (Bloodlust / Heroism / Augmentation Evoker buffs / etc)... the list goes on and on.

So, even if a WOW Class has "simple" gameplay, or does "mediocre" damage, there are still a lot of other ways for a player to "earn their place", "distinguish themself", "feel pride in playing well", and so on.

FFXIV has almost none of that remaining — so I think players have fled to their rotations as sort of the "last stand" in which they can still feel "rewarded" for studying the game, studying their Job, practicing / planning / playing well... etc.

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But the problem is, with no other forms of contribution remaining except damage output, the only way that two rotational executions can be differentiated is by measuring how much damage that they do.

If someone forgets to press a button like "Expiacion" or "Dream Within a Dream" or "Carve and Spit", what can the possible consequences actually be in FFXIV's system??

...Really, honestly, nothing... except either "not doing damage", or "deranging the rotation" (which itself really only has one possible consequence: "not doing damage").

You're not allowed to fall behind on Enmity.

You're not allowed to fall behind on party damage enhancements.

You're (basically) not allowed to fall behind on party HP / healing.

You're not allowed to to run out of TP.

You're (basically) not allowed to run out of MP.

You're not allowed to fall behind on helping party members regenerate TP or MP or manage Enmity.

You're not allowed to allow a dangerous cast to complete.

You're not allowed to let a dangerous enemy run rampant and uncontrolled.

You're not allowed to do anything except "do damage" or "not do damage".

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There's some minor exceptions remaining — like Feint / Addle / Tactician at the correct time, or mitigating potent Tankbusters adequately — but they're not really "rotationally meaty" (short of managing weave-windows during burst, I guess), nor really Job-specific... and they also feel more-or-less superficial / "tacked-on" in most applicable cases (and completely-irrelevant in most other content).

In other words, Feint — for example — is "Pass / Fail". You can't really "mismanage" it: you either press it at the correct time, or don't.

In no way do you ever "build up" to a successful Feint. In no way can you "fail" Feinting, as long as you press the button at the ordained moment. You cannot provide a "better" Feint by making skilled rotational choices or trade-offs.

That's the sort of thing that I mean when I call what "non-damaging contributions" remain "superficial, at best".

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...Thus, since "damage" is the only real potential "point-of-failure" remaining in FFXIV, players who are seeking to differentiate their performance — whether motivated as a socially-competitive action, or as a form of personal improvement and satisfaction — have absolutely nothing left to turn to except "doing better damage".

It is for this reason, I think, that "skill ceiling" becomes synonymous with "damage output differences" — because players who wish to be rewarded for study and improvement feel like they have nothing else left to turn to for validation.

...On the other side, however, you have players that want to participate with friends, or in the content that interests them, without feeling like they're "performing unacceptably" by not studying timelines, researching external sources, and practicing excessively.

And I think that it's too easy to divide players into simplistic groupings like "glamour casuals" and "elitist raiders", and that real people are far more varied in their feelings and motivations.

So for example, there are absolutely players that genuinely-enjoy the challenge, "thrill", or "puzzle" of difficult Extreme/Savage/Ultimate mechanics, but also genuinely don't really enjoy or take interest in moment-to-moment Job rotation optimization.

To those players, it's often said: "Well whatever — you'll just clear Week 5 instead of Week 1, after you and your teammates accumulate enough Tome pieces... so, get over it".

And that may be objectively-true, and appeal to a certain "school of hard knocks" or "meritocratic" mindset.

But... it doesn't mean that those players being told "just wait for Tomes to compensate your inability to do better" are actually "happy" with that.

This often gets mischaracterized as "wanting everything handed to them", "wanting to trivialize what Savage means", etc, etc — but I don't think it's usually so petty at all.

Instead, it's that they want to participate in the content, but they also don't want to feel like they're sandbagging their team for not plotting out every single GCD of Red Mage's rotation for 45 seconds straight.

They don't want to "parse green, but it's okay" — because the community, as a whole, likes to "speak out of two sides of the mouth": using low parses as a potent derogatory, while also constantly reassuring people "it doesn't matter, DPS checks are low enough that you'll clear anyway, don't stress about playing perfectly".

While it may be absolutely, objectively "rational" to consider the numbers that way, this is also a game, that people play for enjoyment and fantasy. They want to feel like they're doing well and contributing properly to their team, and consciously-knowing that they're constantly "underperforming" is extremely-discouraging, emotionally off-putting, and drives people away from Jobs that trigger that negative feedback too often.

...But then we circle back to the players who are being "emotionally harmed" (and that's not meant sarcastically — people are, hypothetically, all here to "have fun") by being forced to play through content with a rotation that's too simplistic and "not fun" for them.

These players exist too, and their feelings aren't irrelevant either.

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This is why I say it's a very sticky situation — it was a bit different in, say, the Heavensward era, when there was reasonable (debatable, but reasonable) "complexity parity" between Jobs... and so every Job would "fail equally", so to speak, and it was just accepted that "rotationally failing" was an inherent part of the FFXIV experience.

As FFXIV has increasingly pulled-back from that approach, however, the application of that shift in philosophy has been very "patchy" and "piece-meal".

This leads to the kind of roiling confusion that now exists amongst both "polarities" of the playerbase, because there's now "hot-spots" and "cold-spots" amongst the Job design... and different types of players find different "spots" to be the "objectionable" ones.

Therefore, basically everyone is getting upset when they try to eat this FFXIV-flavored Hot Pocket, because everyone keeps biting into mouthfuls that feel "wrong" and "unplesant" to them — either too hot, or too cold, and it's all over the place.

And that's where the backlash really starts, I think — because the entire "dining experience" is beginning to feel frustratingly "inconsistent" to both polarities of player.

Another huge issue is — as you and many others have correctly hit-upon — FFXIV refuses to allow "spec differentiation" inside Jobs.

Consider that, in most other ways, FFXIV allows "self-selection" into the content that a player is "comfortable" with, and can "complete" to their personal preference of success.

For example, there is no ambiguity about what one is getting into when pursuing Beast Tribe Quests, or Ishgardian Restoration, Island Sanctuary, etc — if it's too simplistic / unfun, it can simply be avoided.

Likewise, there is no ambiguity about what one is getting into when pursuing Extreme, Savage, Ultimate, Criterion, Deep Dungeon, etc — if it's too complex / difficult, it can simply be avoided.

To a large degree, Jobs do not allow this kind of "self-sorting".

The problem with Jobs is that:

• A Combat Job is mandatory and required to experience the vast majority of the content and Story in FFXIV.
• Each Job contains a distinct and unique aesthetic, story, lore, concept, weapon, fantasy, animations, graphics, gearsets, etc.
• Each Job has exactly one Action Set and one Rotation, and cannot be differentiated in any way beyond what it offers at baseline.

...therefore, it is really awkward, unintuitive, and uncomfortable for people to "self-select" into the correct Job difficulty — it's basically a trial-and-error process.

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Like usually, someone approaches a fantasy game like D&D or a single-player RPG and goes, "Ohhh, I like this, that looks cool, I want to be that!"

But in FFXIV, they swiftly end up discovering "that" is either "overwhelming and not fun" or "underwhelming and not fun" (depending on their personal perspective and preferences).

So rather than being able to "self-select" into the type of gameplay that they prefer within their chosen fantasy, they instead are forced to try to stumble around and artificially-select into the "best fit" that is, often times, a "kludgey" and "unsatisfying" compromise.

...Kind of like not finding what you really want on the menu at a restaurant, and just sighing and going, "Okay, I guess I'll have..."

...because you don't want to actually get up and leave the restaurant, because you're here to have dinner with friends and spend time with them. Or perhaps you're here alone, and the next eatery is way too far away, and you just don't want to starve. Or perhaps you simply prefer the decor and ambience here. Or... etc.

So you eat something "acceptable", but not because it's really what you wanted to order... it's just the best thing you can compromise on without leaving the establishment entirely.

I think it's the same thing for someone who really wants to be a Wizard, but realizes that they can only really handle Summoner in difficult content.

Or, conversely, someone who really wants to be a god-summoning shamanistic mage, but realizes that they can't derive any personal satisfaction from anything but the Wizard... even though they don't really care about Wizards.

And so on, throughout all the different "hot / cold" Job design space.

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This, in turn, means that FFXIV's Job Design is in a very awkward place overall.

...because everyone must play a Job, and everyone must use that Job's one single style and rotation.

So there is no way to allow everyone to satisfactorily "self-select" into their gameplay preference: any given Job is guaranteed to be either welcoming or off-putting to different segments of players.

So if you change a Job in one direction, it becomes appealing to X segment, and unpalatable to Y segment.

Change a Job in a different direction, and it becomes appealing to Y segment, and unpalatable to X segment.

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You can certainly say, "Well, but by having some difficult and some easy Jobs, then everyone can self-select into what makes them personally happy!".

And that may seem true "in a vacuum" — if we imagine a game where all Jobs are identical-appearing, faceless manikins... like 20 generic Amaurotine Shades.

But when you factor in that this is a fantasy game world, where people go to, at least to some degree, live out an imaginary experience that appeals to them...

...it's really not so satisfying to tell someone: "Sorry, I know you love the idea of shooting stars at people, but this is a Hard Job. You'll need to pick something else if you don't want to let your teammates down."

Nor, either, to tell someone: "Sorry, I know you love the idea of wielding the power of Light to heal allies and punish foes, but this is an Easy Job. You'll need to pick something else if you want a complex rotation that provides engagement-space for prolonged study and practice."

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For example, if FFXIV had even 2 specs per Job — "high damage, high difficulty, 'selfish' ", and "low damage, low difficulty, passively enhances everyone else" — and content was tuned so that neither one was "sandbagging" the party and risking Enrage timers, then there would probably be significantly less discord and dissonance about these topics.

I think a huge portion of the friction comes from the fact that people feel forced to choose between "what speaks to me personally (concept and fantasy)" and "what I actually feel comfortable or satisfied playing".

This issue is not unique to FFXIV, but I feel like it is severely-exacerbated in FFXIV.

For example, in WOW, if you want to be a bow-wielding, animal-befriending, wilderness-tracking Hunter fantasy-wise, but you also just want to chill, there's Beast Mastery spec.; however, if you want more complex and demanding gameplay, there's Marksmanship and Survival.

It's not perfect in WOW either, but I think that it works a lot better than the decisions that FFXIV forces people to make — and there seems to be a lot less tension in general between different "polarities" of players.

Then there's the fact that FFXIV's system just encourages people to be a lot "pickier", and keeps the design space a lot more "narrow".

Look at all of the factors that constrain what Jobs you want to bring to a party, and in turn, FFXIV's Job design-space:

• Potent stacking buffs (leading to terms like "cursed comp" to refer to bringing too many "selfish" Jobs at once)
• Ability to cram burst into the infamous "2m meta" (leading sustained Jobs like RDM and PLD to either fall behind, or just get smashed and reconstructed)
• Fixed comp slots ("Either bring 2 healers, or enjoy 'Mechanic Roulette' ", etc)
• Limit Breaks ("Bring at least 1 Melee, or throw away damage")
• Party Stat Bonuses ("Bring at least 1 Ranged Physical, because we bribed you to")

...Combine this with the fact that FFXIV constrains its difficult content to 4 or 8 players, and there's just not much breathing-room — not for Jobs to have "unique identities" or "unique roles", nor for players to feel like it's "okay" to "slack a little".

ie, People feel like they're under much more of a microscope (whether real or imagined) when they're 1 of 4 DPS, for example, than 1 of 10, or 12, or 14 DPS.

So there's an added sense of pressure that players want to "meet maximum output" — or, at least, "not fail dramatically" — when the party size is much more "intimate", and each player feels like a bigger and more obvious portion of the team.

That, in turn, leads to more panick / pressure / stress / hostility to Jobs having the possibility to "derail" in ways that are either disastrous, or outright-unrecoverable.

Then there's another factor — FFXIV has steadily-eroded the ability for non-Savage players to feel "challenged" or "accomplished" by completing "normal" content.

MSQ, Story Trials, Dungeons, Normal Raids, Alliance Raids... they've all been increasingly-"softened" in an attempt to...

...uh, honestly, I don't even know...

...and in turn, led more and more content to feel "disposable", "one-and-done", "uninteresting", etc — even to players that maybe aren't "top tier elite", but also do genuinely enjoy "trying", "failing sometimes", "being challenged", "triumphing / overcoming obstacles", etc.

When those players are displaced from "queueable" content, they end up spilling into previously "hardcore" content like Savage, out of a desperate attempt to retain their interest in the game.

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However, Savage+ is an environment where it's much harder to pay attention, execute mechanics, and perform a rotation well, all simultaneously.

So as more and more "in-between tier" skill/dedication players get "displaced" into Savage+, I think there's an increasing population that begins to find their Job's rotational demands no longer "fun" (as it might be in simpler content), but rather, "burdensome" and "distracting" — because now they're much more focused on the mechanics of the content itself, and trying not to burden their team by failing said mechanics.

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I think that this, as well, is another source of intense friction about Job design — between:

a) Players that want to focus on mechanics more than internal rotation (and may struggle to do both at once, leading to frustration and stress)

b) Other players that are capable of, and enjoy, doing both simultaneously (and thus find it disappointing and irritating to have one or the other factor simplified or scaled-back).

And again, this is something that would be much less of an issue if FFXIV both had more "space" (within a party composition), and more "options" (within Jobs), for players to self-select into a style that worked best for them, personally, to have fun in the game.

I'm probably still not touching on all of the factors that are "in play" here — but I really think that the issue is not-at-all as simple as it's often being made to seem in discussions throughout the FFXIV "community spheres".

The unhappiness on both polarities is very much real — but the reasons, and the solutions, are far more complex than the discussions (and/or personal attacks) properly-acknowledge.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

If everyone in this game really wanted skill expression, we'd be drowning in BLMs. They'd be everywhere. All those BLM players would be frustrated that some of them have to play BRD [...] or MNK [...], because they really just want to play on the super hard BLM because they enjoy the gameplay and skill expression so much, that even if BLM was the lowest DPS Job, they'd all still be playing it. We'd be looking everywhere to see someone who has "Main Class:" as anything other than "Black Mage Lv 90". Yet not even the people pushing for SMN change are BLM mains.

...we don't see that in the playerbase as a whole, either. We see the exact opposite, with even very highly skilled players swapping to SMN in a heartbeat.

That doesn't seem to show a playerbase - even of the Ultimate raider type - that wants this mythical high skill expression Job.

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As far as I can tell, this seems to be a pretty bluntly-true observation... albeit with a couple caveats that definitely need to be appended.

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First, you need to allow for the segment of the "skill-focused" playerbase that has any of the following issues:

• Cannot play a Caster due to team / static / comp needs
• Dislikes the DPS Role
• Dislikes Casting mechanics/playstyles in FFXIV (or games in general)
• Dislikes BLM or "wizard" or "magic" aesthetics
• Dislikes the BLM rotational style
• Dislikes the BLM story / fantasy
• etc...

...For "skill-focused" players meeting any such criteria, having "safe harbor" Jobs in other Role or playstyle categories is probably important, and something that they'll aggressively crusade for (and understandably-so).

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Second of all, there is "human nature" at play. I think sometimes, "skill-focused" players want SE's designers to "save them from themselves".

That is: by virtue of their more competitive and serious approach to the game, they ultimately do want to "win".

And by virtue of their respect for the game system, they also don't want to drag their team down during what is sometimes ridiculously-prolonged and tedious prog or reclear experiences.

Therefore, if a more efficient solution is made available, that has no real downsides, these players will feel pressured — either internally, externally, or both — to switch to that simpler and more efficient solution.

As a result, to some degree, the mere existence of SMN is a thorn in these players's side — something akin to, "Stop giving me this obviously-better option that I feel obligated to take in order to not grief my team / not make my life ridiculously-harder than necessary".

ie: I think some skill-focused players want EW SMN to "go away", because it's hard for them to say "No" to how tempting EW SMN is in high-pressure environments... even though they "want" to bring something that's more interesting to them.

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...But when you consider that, it's a bit interesting, in turn, to then ask if a lot of those players "truly" want "high skill expression" Jobs.

To be clear, I think that in some cases, the answer is definitely "Yes, I do — I play this game to be challenged".

And it's important to keep in mind that such players really do exist, and not to dismiss them — they're "high-functioning" within the context of FFXIV, and they feel like they're being "punished" just for being more skilled and capable, by having their fun toys (challenging and depthy Jobs, with a lot of space for both failure, and optimized success) constantly taken away from them in order to appease the broader majority.

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However, in other cases I honestly wonder if EW SMN might secretly be taking a lot of stress and pressure off of even many "dedicated" players... but it's just "taboo" for them to publicly-admit so in the sorts of "pride in the game" circles and communities that end up becoming their social networks.

In other words: perhaps a lot of more "upper-end" players feel obligated to vocally-dislike the EW SMN experience, and convince themselves that they hate it, because:

a) They've been conditioned to see overcoming FFXIV rotational challenges as a source of personal achievement and validation (which I think all human beings need, from some source, to not go crazy)

b) Their social environment is one in which they fear rejection or derision for showing open support for something perceived as being as "intellectually inferior" (or whatever) as EW SMN

...So any relaxation or joy that they might take from having a lower-pressure, less-distracting Job to use, instead turns into:

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"Wow, I assure you, I really hate this... I'm only eating it because it's the most calorically-efficient choice... but again, I assure you, I hate the taste of this... nom nom nom... oh, this is so gross... nom nom nom... ugh, disgusting... nom nom nom...".

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...To be very clear: I'm not trying to suggest that current SMN isn't severely-lacking "meat on its bones" compared to most other Jobs, both current and historical.

Rather, I'm saying that SMN's radical simplicity may be allowing a lot of players to realize that they maaaaaaybe... honestly... don't reeeeeally mind having other priorities in life than "mastering" an FFXIV rotation...

...and that they actually kiiiiiiiinda appreciate being able to just take a Job into even complex content, and focus nearly-entirely on the content itself, rather than constantly-fighting the encounter timeline and mechanics just to try to desperately-resist having their overly-elaborate and excessively-delicate rotation grotesquely-deranged, or otherwise have their attention constantly pulled between rotational details and encounter details.

...But, because FFXIV has, for so long, included a huge portion of its "player validation" inside "rotational challenge and execution", it feels... [weird/bad/embarrassing/confusing/wrong/etc] to "allow yourself" to like a Job that has so relatively-little to worry about or be distracted by, and enables you to focus almost-entirely on the content itself.

...Like, yeah, SMN feels completely-empty (to me, anyway) when practiced on a Striking Dummy.

But maybe it's just heralding a new era of FFXIV design, where the "challenge" is focused nearly-entirely on specific encounter mechanics, and the design focus is pulled aggressively-away from internal Job mechanics, to the point where you're not expected to find much "meat" in a passive Striking Dummy rotation.

And maybe a lot of people are... actually finding themselves completely fine with that approach — as much as it may seem like absolute anathema to the standards set during Heavensward and Stormblood.

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Originally Posted by BaconBits

https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/..._908223010.jpg

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It really feels like people just disagree with you automatically somtimes.

Perhaps the timer juggling sort of skill expression isn't that individual's cup of tea either?

But it's regardless fascinating to me that the people absolutely certain that skill expression is a Very Bad Thing are always, without fail, the people who never interact with it. The skill ceiling, the content that demands it, none of it. They just have Very Strong Opinions that YOU shouldn't be allowed to learn how to play a job with more skill than ten minutes on a training dummy will teach.

To which I continue to reply: nobody's forcing you to improve at this video game. But the demand that nobody be allowed to get better than you is very, very telling.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Perhaps the timer juggling sort of skill expression isn't that individual's cup of tea either?

But it's regardless fascinating to me that the people absolutely certain that skill expression is a Very Bad Thing are always, without fail, the people who never interact with it. The skill ceiling, the content that demands it, none of it. They just have Very Strong Opinions that YOU shouldn't be allowed to learn how to play a job with more skill than ten minutes on a training dummy will teach.

To which I continue to reply: nobody's forcing you to improve at this video game. But the demand that nobody be allowed to get better than you is very, very telling.

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It's actually mindboggling. I don't understand how this even remotely hurts anyone, and besides, every other job is plenty populated by people who don't want to do high end content, you don't see them complaining about this.

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Originally Posted by Minarisweet

It really feels like people just disagree with you automatically somtimes.

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"Don't mess with FFXIV Fans, we don't know how to read."

Took me only a few seconds of reading to see OP didn't want buttons for the sake of buttons, just for Wacko to immediately chime in...that they don't want buttons for the sake of buttons.

Motherless behavior honestly.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

...To be very clear: I'm not trying to suggest that current SMN isn't severely-lacking "meat on its bones" compared to most other Jobs, both current and historical.

Rather, I'm saying that SMN's radical simplicity may be allowing a lot of players to realize that they maaaaaaybe... honestly... don't reeeeeally mind having other priorities in life than "mastering" an FFXIV rotation...

...and that they actually kiiiiiiiinda appreciate being able to just take a Job into even complex content, and focus nearly-entirely on the content itself, rather than constantly-fighting the encounter timeline and mechanics just to try to desperately-resist having their overly-elaborate and excessively-delicate rotation grotesquely-deranged, or otherwise have their attention constantly pulled between rotational details and encounter details.

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Fair enough, but in that case SMN should only be putting out roughly what that level of effort would equate to on another job, with at most a slightly higher skew to reward-for-effort in exchange for the lower ceiling to both. No one should feel like they are obliged to switch to SMN simply because, for anyone not interested in "mastering" even a basic but not quite barebone rotation, it puts out significantly more reward for the amount of effort put in.

That's just imbalance, plain and simple, and I don't think it's worth pandering to that group of players (who want disproportionate reward for effort put in so they can perform higher than they otherwise would by abusing an imbalance) over the breadth of seemingly real choices available to the playerbase as a whole.

____________________


Aside/In General:

To my mind, SMN should have a below average button count but above average number of actions (across even just its current 3-5 summons/trances, depending on how you define them), below average complexity in any particular rotational string and in GCD-sync but above average complexity in macrorotation and utilization of utility.

I love the aesthetic. I just don't want to be bored out of my mind actually leveraging it. I don't particularly give a damn about any checklists of button count or standard elements (gauges, DoTs, duration-ed buffs, Leaden Fist equivalents, etc.) to track, but to my mind it definitely needs to flesh itself out. Tremendously.

SMN at 90 feels like a level 60 job. And so, I want the rest of its kit. And I suspect it'd take at least some arguably 'fundamental' changes to give it space enough to do that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

[...]

However, in other cases I honestly wonder if EW SMN might secretly be taking a lot of stress and pressure off of even many "dedicated" players... but it's just "taboo" for them to publicly-admit so in the sorts of "pride in the game" circles and communities that end up becoming their social networks.

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Well, also, remember that this is a team game. It's not just about my fun with the job or the pride I feel doing the complex rotation - It's also that I don't want to make mistakes. I am going to make more mistakes on mechanics and cause more wipes during our prog if I play the harder job. If I play summoner, I guarantee that I can just focus on the mechanics and never have to worry about a rotation, so I will hold people back less. It's hard to justify going for the harder option unless you're really confident you won't waste people's time. If it was a single player game I might try it from the start.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dels

Well, also, remember that this is a team game. It's not just about my fun with the job or the pride I feel doing the complex rotation - It's also that I don't want to make mistakes. I am going to make more mistakes on mechanics and cause more wipes during our prog if I play the harder job. If I play summoner, I guarantee that I can just focus on the mechanics and never have to worry about a rotation, so I will hold people back less. It's hard to justify going for the harder option unless you're really confident you won't waste people's time. If it was a single player game I might try it from the start.

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Semi-counterpoint: if you reduce the barrier to entry via smn being exceptionally easy, good luck finding a group with 1 caster slot available and far too many smn looking for groups.

I don't find more buttons equals player skill in this type of combat system (the way its setup mostly).

If we're talking actual player skill to me it would be more aligned to say how SE's Xenogears plays (if we remove the turn based function from it to make it pure action with combos) and translate that to FFXIV

or any of Capcom's Fighting Games or general Action RPGs.


I think FFXIV could have benefited in that direction, it clearly has limitations because of the engine they use, I think their next MMORPG would be their best which I firmly believe it will be since software and game engines have gotten so much better now.

FFXIV is quite old in comparison.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ivtrix

Semi-counterpoint: if you reduce the barrier to entry via smn being exceptionally easy, good luck finding a group with 1 caster slot available and far too many smn looking for groups.

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I mean, given how little contextual difficulty has been left to melee, that disparity needs to be addressed regardless. There's no reason for melee to stand so far above RDM.

If Verraise is truly considered the issue, then finally give it a real cost. At present, RDM can sustain 1 roughly every 72 seconds, iirc, so long as they neither die nor lose Lucid Dreaming potential uptime, but the largest issue is that it enters the fight with 3.33 charges of the damn thing via that 10000 starting MP.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I mean, given how little contextual difficulty has been left to melee, that disparity needs to be addressed regardless. There's no reason for melee to stand so far above RDM.

If Verraise is truly considered the issue, then finally give it a real cost. At present, RDM can sustain 1 roughly every 72 seconds, iirc, so long as they neither die nor lose Lucid Dreaming potential uptime, but the largest issue is that it enters the fight with 3.33 charges of the damn thing via that 10000 starting MP.

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I vehemently disagree with the developers theorized reasons why all ranged aside BLM do 10% less damage than melee in current fight design, but people in here have and will argue that it is a good thing and I am tired of beating my head against a wall.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ivtrix

I vehemently disagree with the developers theorized reasons why all ranged aside BLM do 10% less damage than melee in current fight design, but people in here have and will argue that it is a good thing and I am tired of beating my head against a wall.

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It's plenty fair to consider that BLM, having a higher skill ceiling than other ranged (or even most melee), should also have that much higher a damage ceiling than other ranged (or, again, even most melee).

Doesn't mean Red Mage needs to be a noticeable tier behind Reaper, though, or that BRD and DNC should be behind MCH (even if only minutely).

Summoner should have its ceiling increased, roughly, to that of RDM or even both increased that bit further towards that of BLM (RDM is in some cases not too far behind already), rezzes should probably be constrained a bit more (less of an impact of/from entering combat with 4 minutes worth of Raises' net MP costs [in net gain from Lucid Dreaming while rotating]), physical ranged actually allowed a decent bit of ceiling in turn and brought up very near to the rest, etc.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

No one should feel like they are obliged to switch to SMN simply because, for anyone not interested in "mastering" even a basic but not quite barebone rotation, it puts out significantly more reward for the amount of effort put in.

That's just imbalance, plain and simple, and I don't think it's worth pandering to that group of players (who want disproportionate reward for effort put in so they can perform higher than they otherwise would by abusing an imbalance) over the breadth of seemingly real choices available to the playerbase as a whole.

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Breaking this into Spoiler tags to cut down on visual clutter / scroll-torment.

First of all, I want to make clear that I respect you as a cogent and intelligent theorycrafter, and that none of the following is meant as a personal attack or in a condescending tone. I'm just trying to be bluntly realistic.

That said, what's quoted here comes across as, for lack of a better word coming to my mind, a bit "pompous" and "sheltered" in perspective.

Your perception of what "the playerbase as a whole" even "is" seems heavily biased/skewed towards what you personally prefer, but that perception is not realistic based on way too many years of evidence.

The "playerbase as a whole", honestly, probably wants another two heaping scoops of EW SMN / RPR / WAR... not any of the high-concept "PhD in Game Design" stuff that grognard forum discussions tend to effusively praise and "Mhm, mhm" to each other in closed echo-chamber discussions like old men on a Southern USA porch.

——————————————————————————

What you derisively label "pandering" is very much "in the eye of the beholder" — for example, if you were to flip the mirror, then continuing to create excessively-convoluted Jobs just to please a tiny sliver of the community would be "pandering" to players who "take the game way too seriously".

A lot of posts from "high-functioning" players on this sort of topic seem to carry an edge to them that has an undercurrent of derision towards players who approach the game differently than they do.

For example, statements like:

• "No one should feel like they are obliged to switch to SMN simply because, for anyone not interested in "mastering" even a basic but not quite barebone rotation [...] "
• " [...] pandering to that group of players (who want disproportionate reward for effort put in so they can perform higher than they otherwise would by abusing an imbalance) [...] "

...But this is coming from a very specific perspective: basically, if you can personally "handle it", then it's "good", and anything "below" that is "obviously" poor game design that's only enjoyed by low-effort players who want "disproportionate reward" by "abusing an imbalance".

And I think that it's not a good-faith perspective to discuss things in language that makes a large portion of the playerbase sound like opportunistic petty criminals, rather than people legitimately playing a game using the legitimate tools that the developers have openly offered them.

——————————————————————————

But I also think that a lot of "high-functioning" players simply do not realize — maybe cannot fully-internalize, due to how their minds function and see the world — that something like Summoner does require "mastery effort" for a lot of players.

What you see as a trivial hour of investigation on a Striking Dummy, followed by having no surprises left to explore, can instead require some genuine amount of consideration for people who don't dedicate themselves to FFXIV the same way, don't seek external resources, or... etc. It's an entirely different standard to be judged against.

For a lot of players, especially when playing content that's already complex and punishing like Savage and Extreme (again, try to temper your own biases when considering how this content "feels" to the broader, average player), details as simple as:

• Adjust whether or not to precast Ruin 3, Searing Light, etc, based on later mechanic alignment
• Adjust your opener based on the Jobs in your party
• Make sure to get 6 GCDs out of every Bahoenix
• Don't spend Festers inside Phoenix if you can bring them into the next Searing Light
• Don't forget to Akh Morn / Revelation inside Bahoenix
• Don't forget to Deathflare during Bahamut
• Don't waste your Ruin IV, but also feel free to put it where it fits best
• Remember to insert 1-2 Ruin 3 hardcasts between "loops", or more if your party is intentionally drifting CDs and it's deemed productive for you to do so as well, rather than intentionally-desyncing; or if you're progging and trying to hold either damage or Phoenix for a specific segment; or if things are just buns-up and you'd rather hold burst until recovering; or etc.
• Make sure to choose your Gem order so that problematic casts (Ruby Rite, Slipstream) don't collide with movement pressure; Ifrit doesn't collide with bad times to pollute the melee zone; the boss doesn't move out of Slipstream; etc.
• Exploit the ability to move Ruins around to help manage problematic Gem phases
• Balance trying to keep Titan's high potency inside raid buffs vs. using its high mobility to manage encounter phases
• Use Radiant Aegis to help your healers / help survive mechanics, and don't get locked out of it at a bad time
• Try not to waste your Rekindle during Phoenix, if it can help your healers
• Weigh the trade-offs carefully if downtime forces you to choose between finishing Gems or leaving Bahoenix sitting off-cooldown
• Consider the possibility of truncating Gems without finishing them
• (etc.)

...are already plenty enough "meat" and "details" to track and adjust around, and feel like they have a "ceiling" to work towards "mastering" on any particular encounter.

It may not be enough for you, but you need to realize that what's "enough" for you may be uncomfortably over-the-head of the wider population.

——————————————————————————

I think that there's no need to belittle people as being "stupid", "lazy", "conniving", or any of a wide variety of synonyms (not accusing you, specifically, of doing that, but rather saying, "in general, there's no need to..." ).

Broadly, when speaking about any given Job being handled by the mythical "average player", in many cases it's hardly a lack of ability to "understand" the rotational concepts (or at least, that the "higher concepts" exist), and much more that the average person instead reaches their tolerable limit for how many different considerations, timers, and relationships that they can juggle and keep track of mentally while also performing complex spatial, sequential, or timer-tracking encounter mechanics.

This is constantly mischaracterized by high-functioning players as their "lessers" having some kind of bizarre, scheming "greed" — as if their "foes" are trying to steal a sports trophy without playing the game, via language like "wanting to perform better than you should be allowed to".

However, from the perspective of the wider playerbase, I think that it's more akin to feeling like they can finally "enjoy" the goal of performing well, rather than approaching their rotation as a stressful, exhausting, or unpleasantly-distracting experience, and/or something that they eventually just apathetically give up on due to it feeling inaccessibly complicated.

——————————————————————————

Based on these observations, it's beginning to seem to me like the "problem" may actually exist from the other direction — that Jobs end up having overly-detailed design expectations once the average player is placed in difficult content, and that change would actually more productively be initiated from the top down, rather than from the bottom up.

I think that Summoner (and Reaper, and similar) clearly demonstrate two things:

a) A Job doesn't have to be reduced to "Glare and Dia" to be appealing and accessible to a majority population.

b) However, the threshold of "how much is too much" may also have been severely-overestimated for a long time now.

——————————————————————————

And, to be clear, I am not trying to say that your concerns are objectively invalid; I don't think that they are.

If you take your points and place them in a game where "rotational execution" is the fundamental core gameplay sold to prospective players, or the design is inherently and intentionally more performance-competitive between players, then your reasoning would make sense.

Instead, I'm arguing that I'm beginning to think FFXIV's "fundamental core gameplay" is no longer actually centered on excessively-depthy Job rotational execution, and that the "prolonged, difficult mastery" approach has grown wizened and outdated for this environment.

——————————————————————————

And also to be clear — my personal favorite design era was Heavensward, and is definitely... not Endwalker.

Looking back now, the game was ridiculous in many ways back then.

I think that it was much more of a "personal passion project" for Yoshida and crew, accepted as much more of a "niche" and "boutique" experience by its designers, and clearly attempting to follow the old-school WOW model of targeting the "raiding" / "hardcore" base in design, and letting everyone else just kind of figure out their own place within it as best as they could.

However, the Job designs also felt like they were at their most sincere, robust, and flavorful, and I just found most Jobs far more satisfying — and interesting — to both "be" and "play".

Yes, in practice, it was often a complete mess... but since everyone was, more-or-less, "failing roughly equally", it didn't feel particularly "bad" to play any specific Job and make a mess of it; I think that performance expectations were broadly lower, and egos seemed far more tempered.

——————————————————————————

I am also of the — perhaps unpopular — opinion that it doesn't really work to apply such a broad design philosophy as Job rotations "unevenly", because then some Jobs feel "especially punishing" and others feel "unusually forgiving", and in turn, everyone begins to feel frustrated... because the Job that they like falls into the "wrong" category for them.

I don't think that the "buffet table" method really works, even if it's "commonly used" in "choose your class" game designs, and that the better solution — especially in a game like this, where people become heavily-invested in a specific fantasy experience — is to design everything to either one standard, or the other.

Basically: I think that someone is always going to end up unhappy in either approach. So I personally favor "broad design consistency" over "targeted niches".

——————————————————————————

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I love the aesthetic. I just don't want to be bored out of my mind actually leveraging it.

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Also to be clear, I feel this myself, and personally-agree — I can't even exactly explain why, but I can't get through even one Bahamut-Phoenix loop without already feeling like the entire thing feels stale and tired.

It's odd, too, because even other "simple" Jobs like Reaper or Dancer don't at all give me that same "nibbling on a three-week-old stale cookie" feeling that EW SMN's loops do. I really struggle to identify exactly what it is about SMN's current design, in specific, that feels so "uncompelling".

So the arguments that I make in favor of EW SMN are not out of an attempt at personal benefit, but rather that I'm just not sure anymore if my "personal" concerns are actually that important to the game as a whole, nor in-line with what the broader playerbase actually prefers / enjoys.

And from that perspective, I'm not really sure anymore who should be "forced to move" in this standoff — certainly, if I was a developer trying to produce a marketed product, I'd be hard-pressed about what decisions to make when the majority of the population clearly seems to favor designs like EW SMN, and in turn, motivated to reconsider whether the entire paradigm has been misaligned to begin with.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

Also to be clear, I feel this myself, and personally-agree — I can't even exactly explain why, but I can't get through even one Bahamut-Phoenix loop without already feeling like the entire thing feels stale and tired.

It's odd, too, because even other "simple" Jobs like Reaper or Dancer don't at all give me that same "nibbling on a three-week-old stale cookie" feeling that EW SMN's loops do. I really struggle to identify exactly what it is about SMN's current design, in specific, that feels so "uncompelling".

So the arguments that I make in favor of EW SMN are not out of an attempt at personal benefit, but rather that I'm just not sure anymore if my "personal" concerns are actually that important to the game as a whole, nor in-line with what the broader playerbase actually prefers / enjoys.

And from that perspective, I'm not really sure anymore who should be "forced to move" in this standoff — certainly, if I was a developer trying to produce a marketed product, I'd be hard-pressed about what decisions to make when the majority of the population clearly seems to favor designs like EW SMN, and in turn, motivated to reconsider whether the entire paradigm has been misaligned to begin with.

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One thing I can say for sure... Dancer has the best "gimmick-resource-gauge" of every job, because there is a sense of dynamicity to it because you always have to be attentive to see which sequence you get for the Steps. Also the whole proc based fillers and ogcds add up slightly to that feel.

That's why it is very simple, but feel fulfilling somehow.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

For a lot of players, especially when playing content that's already complex and punishing like Savage and Extreme (again, try to temper your own biases when considering how this content "feels" to the broader, average player), details as simple as:

• Adjust whether or not to precast Ruin 3, Searing Light, etc, based on later mechanic alignment
• Adjust your opener based on the Jobs in your party
• Make sure to get 6 GCDs out of every Bahoenix
• Don't spend Festers inside Phoenix if you can bring them into the next Searing Light
• Don't forget to Akh Morn / Revelation inside Bahoenix
• Don't forget to Deathflare during Bahamut
• Don't waste your Ruin IV, but also feel free to put it where it fits best
• Remember to insert 1-2 Ruin 3 hardcasts between "loops", or more if your party is intentionally drifting CDs and it's deemed productive for you to do so as well, rather than intentionally-desyncing; or if you're progging and trying to hold either damage or Phoenix for a specific segment; or if things are just buns-up and you'd rather hold burst until recovering; or etc.
• Make sure to choose your Gem order so that problematic casts (Ruby Rite, Slipstream) don't collide with movement pressure; Ifrit doesn't collide with bad times to pollute the melee zone; the boss doesn't move out of Slipstream; etc.
• Exploit the ability to move Ruins around to help manage problematic Gem phases
• Balance trying to keep Titan's high potency inside raid buffs vs. using its high mobility to manage encounter phases
• Use Radiant Aegis to help your healers / help survive mechanics, and don't get locked out of it at a bad time
• Try not to waste your Rekindle during Phoenix, if it can help your healers
• Weigh the trade-offs carefully if downtime forces you to choose between finishing Gems or leaving Bahoenix sitting off-cooldown
• Consider the possibility of truncating Gems without finishing them
• (etc.)

...are already plenty enough "meat" and "details" to track and adjust around, and feel like they have a "ceiling" to work towards "mastering" on any particular encounter.

It may not be enough for you, but you need to realize that what's "enough" for you may be uncomfortably over-the-head of the wider population.[/HB]

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I really dislike the infantilizing of the casual player. These are core functions of the class that can and will be picked up within an hour of actually playing the job. I view this on the level of thinking you have to gently remind a SAM that they needs to cast midare when they have 3 stickers. Almost everything you listed is intuitive reading the ability descriptions and actually playing the job.

edit: smn buff is 30 seconds you literally just pop it gcd 1 after you summon bahamut. your opener is always going to be summon bahamut and searing light. your opener NEVER changes

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

Your perception of what "the playerbase as a whole" even "is" seems heavily biased/skewed towards what you personally prefer, but that perception is not realistic based on way too many years of evidence.

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That's not even a comment on player preference. I'm talking about simple sense of obligation that comes with playing a multiplayer game. If one job has the same damage at far greater ease and reliability, allowing people to do just as well without party adjustment and with quicker learning of mechanics, many or even most players will feel some obligation to take that over the thanklessly riskier option.

Imbalances, including in reward-per-effort in the contexts where tight parity would matter (e.g., Ultimate and Savage before overgearing), are bad for breath of choice.

Quote:

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What you derisively label "pandering" is very much "in the eye of the beholder"

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I call it pandering because it disrupts larger balances and thereby reduces breadth of choice. Unless that group is so large and brittle that appeasing them is worth more than the game's balance, yeah, that's pandering. You're hurting the whole for the part.

Quote:

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— for example, if you were to flip the mirror, then continuing to create excessively-convoluted Jobs just to please a tiny sliver of the community would be "pandering" to players who "take the game way too seriously".

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First... what excessively convoluted jobs? Stormblood MCH? Even Shadowbringers Summoner doesn't fit that descriptor.

Secondly, though, never have I ever pushed for jobs to be unintuitive or otherwise have a high knowledge requirement just to feel like they're being utilized roughly correctly. I'm pretty sure you know full well that I advocate for low floors and high ceilings.

:: Hell, I'd reduce the floor on a few existing ones, if only by way of polish/QoL (auto-Meditation over downtime, bonus Leaden Fist UI component or Bootshine upgrading to Leaden Fist [new icon] under Dragon Kick, removing the need for a Formless Fist button; leaving LotD after the 3rd Nostrand and Stardiver so that Gierskogul can be properly queued and doesn't desync; etc.).

But there's a difference between having satisfying gameplay that still leaves about 50% of the total amount of optimizations* / cognitive load, each optimization giving increasingly less value per effort put in if taken up, so that a job has a lot to offer... and purposely truncating them. One still has gameplay enjoyable by those who like EW SMN as is but also supports more. The other is just EW SMN.

*Almost all of the points on your list above are general skills, with optimization habits likely already picked up from other jobs. Even without that, they're very quickly learned and capped out. Which is fine to have, obviously... but it shouldn't be where job mastery ends.

Quote:

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if I was a developer trying to produce a marketed product, I'd be hard-pressed about what decisions to make when the majority of the population clearly seems to favor designs like EW SMN

---

But do we even really have evidence of that people favor designs like EW SMN, as compared to simply playing whatever is overpowered if that imbalance is left there to be exploited.

I have trouble thinking of anyone who enjoys doing 4+ Expert Roulettes per week for that content itself, yet it's apparently the most played roulette. The 90 weekly tomes for just 12-15 minutes of Netflix and basic performance might have something to do with that.

We have no way outside of haphazardly via polls here and elsewhere of determining how many people play EW SMN because they actually like it. There's a vital divisor that stands missing between that data (how many SMN parses, or worse, how many lvl 90 SMNs) and actionable information.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

For a lot of players, especially when playing content that's already complex and punishing like Savage and Extreme (again, try to temper your own biases when considering how this content "feels" to the broader, average player), details as simple as:

• Adjust whether or not to precast Ruin 3, Searing Light, etc, based on later mechanic alignment
• Adjust your opener based on the Jobs in your party
• Make sure to get 6 GCDs out of every Bahoenix
• Don't spend Festers inside Phoenix if you can bring them into the next Searing Light
• Don't forget to Akh Morn / Revelation inside Bahoenix
• Don't forget to Deathflare during Bahamut
• Don't waste your Ruin IV, but also feel free to put it where it fits best
• Remember to insert 1-2 Ruin 3 hardcasts between "loops", or more if your party is intentionally drifting CDs and it's deemed productive for you to do so as well, rather than intentionally-desyncing; or if you're progging and trying to hold either damage or Phoenix for a specific segment; or if things are just buns-up and you'd rather hold burst until recovering; or etc.
• Make sure to choose your Gem order so that problematic casts (Ruby Rite, Slipstream) don't collide with movement pressure; Ifrit doesn't collide with bad times to pollute the melee zone; the boss doesn't move out of Slipstream; etc.
• Exploit the ability to move Ruins around to help manage problematic Gem phases
• Balance trying to keep Titan's high potency inside raid buffs vs. using its high mobility to manage encounter phases
• Use Radiant Aegis to help your healers / help survive mechanics, and don't get locked out of it at a bad time
• Try not to waste your Rekindle during Phoenix, if it can help your healers
• Weigh the trade-offs carefully if downtime forces you to choose between finishing Gems or leaving Bahoenix sitting off-cooldown
• Consider the possibility of truncating Gems without finishing them
• (etc.)

...are already plenty enough "meat" and "details" to track and adjust around, and feel like they have a "ceiling" to work towards "mastering" on any particular encounter.

It may not be enough for you, but you need to realize that what's "enough" for you may be uncomfortably over-the-head of the wider population.

---

For a lot of Plants Vs Zombies players, especially when playing content that's already complex and punishing like "Adventure mode, mission 5-9" and puzzle "All your brainz r belong to us" (again, try to temper your own biases when considering how this content "feels" to the broader, average player), details as simple as:

• Adjust whether or not to pick Hypno Shroom to counter super tough zombies, like football zombie
• Adjust your plants depending on map
• Make sure you plant Sunflower immediately at the start
• Don't use Garlic if you don't use plants with good AoE
• Don't forget to pick up generated sunlight from Sunflower/Sunshroom
• Don't forget to use one time use plants at final phase
• Don't waste your Squash plant, but also feel free to put it where it fits best
• Remember to insert Spikeweed infront of Wall-Nuts or Tall-Nuts, depending on your garden's composition
• Make sure to choose your plants order so that problematic plants (Snow Pea) don't shoot through torchwood; Regular non-ice peas will get enhanced, but Torchwood will negate ice peas; Cabbage-pult will shoot over it; etc.
• Exploit the ability to plant Puff-shrooms for free to help manage problematic early phase
• Balance trying to put up as much Sunflowers/Sunshrooms, without losing/wasting your lawnmovers in early game
• Use Cherry Bomb to help your plants survive tough zombies, and don't get locked out of CD at bad time
• Try not to waste your sunlight on Grave Buster, graves which are on very right side of the map don't limit you that much
• Weigh the trade-offs carefully if downtime forces you to choose between planting your plant now, without knowing which lane will have more zombie, or waiting until zombies arrive, so you can plant it at that lane
• Consider the possibility of using Doom Shroom
• (etc.)

...are already plenty enough "meat" and "details" to track and adjust around, and feel like they have a "ceiling" to work towards "mastering" on any particular encounter.

It may not be enough for you, but you need to realize that what's "enough" for you may be uncomfortably over-the-head of the wider population.
——————————————————————————

This is not supposed to be mockery, just to show that you can make anything seem complex. Just as Ivtrix already pointed out, most, if not all core functions can be learned in first hour. Considering that leveling takes quite while, everyone is given enough time to gradually learn the job. Even though SMN and SCH are anomaly in this regard, since you don't even need to play one of the jobs to level it all the way to 90. But even then, you still spend few hours catching up to job quests to unlock everything.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I can see your point, but the other side also has a point. Skill expression should have a gap, perhaps not a huge one, but it should at least be there.

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And it does; there are Jobs with wide skill gaps and those with narrow.

Moreover, damage isn't the only way to reward people for mastering more difficult Jobs - and in a game like FFXIV, it can't be used, since that's the only "must have" metric. There are other "nice to have" but not "must haves" that can be used instead. You can't have a Healer without a Raise - that's a "must have" - but you can have a more difficult Healer give a movement speed buff - that's a "nice to have".

I also take issue with people demanding/deciding themselves they want to play a "harder" Job that requires "more work" and then demanding to be rewarded. It'd be like if one person digs a trench with a backhoe and another was offered the backhoe, refused and insisted on using a shovel instead, and then demanded to be paid overtime since it took them "more work" to dig the same thing. When you literally ask for more work, there's something wrong with you then demanding a leg up over other people for you doing the thing you literally asked for, and even insisted you'd be bored without.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shougun

I think there can be complex jobs, for players who like that this is important, but I don't think those jobs should get inflated damage by default.

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Exactly. There are other forms of expression besides "more damage".

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deo14

snip

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You're going to have to tell me what "snip" means.

As for casuals - depends on the type. But generally speaking, if people are min/maxing, they aren't casuals. That's kind of the only true dividing line between "casuals" and "hardcores" (most of the rest are subjective).

Where did I say RDM should be made easier? I said that's what your argument supports.

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Originally Posted by Tanis_Ebonhart

No, they're asking to change the job to give it more pointless busy work and making it more complicated for no good reason. Summoner is being played more than ever because it has less busy work and is less complicated than other Jobs. Why should Summoners, the majority enjoying it as is, be told that the Job they like is "wrong" and should be made just as complicated and full of busy work as other Jobs? It isn't fair to them at all. If players want more busy work or more complicated jobs then they have options. Don't take this away from those that enjoy Summoner just because the more complicated/busy work jobs have issues that the Summoner doesn't have.

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This.

It'd be one thing if there were many other simple and many complex Jobs. But there aren't. There are mostly very complex Jobs, moderate complexity Jobs, and then a handful of low complexity ones. SMN is one of the few, not one of the many.

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Originally Posted by VentVanitas

you know whats also unfair? players that enjoyed pre-EW SMN being alienated by the rework and having no near-equivalent job to turn to. lmao

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That's fine and dandy if you were asking for a Job to be added that has old SMN's gameplay. That's a different ask than "make SMN harder". Moreover, even if you wanted old SMN back, that's unlikely to happen (the Devs seem to hate DoTs for some reason), but even so, it doesn't require the removal of the current SMN.

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Originally Posted by Ivtrix

You seem to be taking issue since you so strongly cling to the current summoner that you’re taking this as a personal attack. Chill out. The job is going to be changing in less than a year anyways with the coming of 7.0

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To be fair, many people in this thread have said anyone who likes current SMN are lazy, babies, cockroaches, etc. Pretty sure taking those as personal attacks is the correct way to take them. And yeah, the Job will change with 7.0, but there's a difference between "Your second set of SMNs are now Ramuh, Leviathan, and Shiva but are just a different set of VFX but play the same as Garuda, Titan, and Ifrit" vs "You now have to play like BLM". There's a wide gulf between those two things.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

As far as I can tell, this seems to be a pretty bluntly-true observation... albeit with a couple caveats that definitely need to be appended.

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Fair points.

But note that if a person meets the metrics of that list - can't play a Caster, dislikes DPS, dislikes "wizards", etc - then why would they be asking for SMN to be the Job given the high skill ceiling, when they won't be playing it anyway?

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

Therefore, if a more efficient solution is made available, that has no real downsides, these players will feel pressured — either internally, externally, or both — to switch to that simpler and more efficient solution.

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...which is fine, but we have a similar situation: Why argue for removing the thing, since removing it means they'd be just as prone to being a failure to their team and etc. I get that part of it is "force us to not do this", but they'd just pick the next easiest thing and then the next and so on until they got everything removed from the game but the single hardest one. Then many of them would just use cheating add-ons, defeating the whole point again.

And yes, if that's the case, it's fair to ask what they truly want and why, since if it truly was just a high skill option, then we'd, again, be drowning in BLMs. That we aren't indicates that isn't what people are really wanting. Sometimes, people say they want something they don't when they are unsure themselves, but sometimes they do it because they think they really want (e.g. suppose for the sake of argument it was to "lord over other players") would not be a popular or sympathetic position, and they recognize that and so don't want to expose their true motives.

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I think the issue is that there aren't a ton of players that choose the more difficult option when given the choice. And so SE removes or simplifies the Jobs over time. That, and people actively asking for homogenization (always insisting they are not) by asking why their Job doesn't have a certain thing or has to work harder at a thing than another Job. The end result is SE looking at the Jobs, seeing the ones least played, and attempting to make them more appealing to the masses.

Me personally, I have three general rules with game design stuff.

1) Don't take things away from people in general. If you absolutely MUST, explain why clearly, and try to give them something to compensate. Nothing makes people more upset than losing a thing they had, even if it makes no sense or doesn't fit in the game.

2) Have something for everyone as much as possible. This includes having different levels of difficult, complexity, etc. One of the most common questions asked of any given game, and definitely of MMOs, is "What is the easiest class/Job?" People ask that because there's a general desire by people to start with what's easy. Some people work up to whatever difficulty suits them personally, some never move passed that first step. But an accessible and inclusive game allows for this without issue. To me personally, this also means each Role should also be divided that way, as well.

3) When making new things, look at what's working/what people like, and try to do more of that. If people aren't jumping on complex Jobs, then the obvious conclusion is that it isn't what "the people", so to speak, want. In line with (2), you still want to have some complex Jobs, but that shouldn't be what you make every Job if people are largely actively avoiding them. I think we can all agree that if the bulk of players were rushing for the complex Jobs, SE should make more of them, but clearly that isn't what's happening, and even so, subject to (1), it would be while leaving the complexity level low for Jobs that were low complexity to begin with. A lot of people have moved to SMN because RDM has become more technical and difficult. If RDM had remained at its SB/ShB level of difficulty, more people might be playing it now instead of SMN. RDM got harder, SMN got easier, and we see more people have chosen SMN. But it's not just hardcore raider/skill focused players seeking to make runs easier for their party, but seems to be large portions of the general playerbase as well.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

And it's important to keep in mind that such players really do exist, and not to dismiss them — they're "high-functioning" within the context of FFXIV, and they feel like they're being "punished" just for being more skilled and capable, by having their fun toys (challenging and depthy Jobs, with a lot of space for both failure, and optimized success) constantly taken away from them in order to appease the broader majority.

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Hence my above position.

I wouldn't even mind the people asking for old SMN to come back if they were also asking for old (easier) RDM to come back as well as old (easier) versions of other Jobs like NIN or BRD...but they aren't. The arrow of "sacred" only seems to run one way, always towards more complex, with such people, since that meets their self-interest of having more Jobs available for them, but not caring about other people or actually caring about "how things used to be" as more than a convenient excuse.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

However, in other cases I honestly wonder if EW SMN might secretly be taking a lot of stress and pressure off of even many "dedicated" players... but it's just "taboo" for them to publicly-admit so in the sorts of "pride in the game" circles and communities that end up becoming their social networks.

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This may be true as well. It wouldn't be the first time people badmouthed something in public but it was their "secret indulgence" when behind closed doors. That's happened through Human history, and for far less benign things, to be sure.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

...To be very clear: I'm not trying to suggest that current SMN isn't severely-lacking "meat on its bones" compared to most other Jobs, both current and historical.

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I think one problem is people forget just how slimmed down Jobs were in ARR. Some were more complex, true, but...a lot really weren't. BLM was FAR easier in ARR, partly because it didn't have all the add-ons that have been tacked onto the Job over the years, and partly because fights weren't nearly so movement heavy in most cases, meaning BLM didn't have to have the thorough fight knowledge that is the basis of its now-famous difficulty. SMN had several DoTs and oGCDs to juggle, but a number of these were merely "use on CD/refresh on duration", which isn't terribly complicated compared to the current iteration. ARR SMN was very definitely not ShB SMN or SB SMN or even HW SMN. It didn't have the two minute cycle, the 3 Tri-Disaster DoT refreshes, the cramming 8+ GCDs into Bahamut/Phoenix windows, or managing Further Ruin stacks with Egi Assaults. Literally none of those mechanics existed in ARR SMN, which instead had 3-4 (5 only in patch 2.0-2.1, which was the only period Thunder was Cross-Class, no matter how people try to pretend it was the whole time) DoTs to manage, Shadow Flare to throw down, and AF was used on Fester (just like now, only it had a 5 sec CD, I think, so you had to alternate it), and in between, you spammed Ruin 1 and weaved oGCDs as they came off CD...just like now. There were a few things you could try to do, but many of the advancements came with HW and SB.

Many Jobs back then consisted of a relatively simple combo system, a handful of situational utility buttons, and that was mostly it. PLD had a 1-2-3 combo and spammed Flash for AOE. It had a reactive button if it blocked with the shield and it had Shield Bash and the same tow oGCDs it has to this day. The alternating Royal/Atonement/Goring combo thing was from ShB, the upkeeping Goring was from either HW or SB, during both of which Halone was used for agro (or avoided when you didn't need agro). Its AOE "rotation" in ARR was literally spamming a non-damage AOE spell until you ran out of MP, then using 1-2 Riot over and over to get more MP so you could spam more Flash, because it didn't get its agro stance until level 35 or 40, so spamming Flash was actually necessary. Sure, 6.3 PLD is simpler than 6.2 PLD, but so was 2.0 PLD.

In a way, the game started off with most Jobs being simple, and they had complexity tacked on over time, robbing the people who liked the simple of their toys. "The chicken or the egg?", which came first. The people who want complex Jobs aren't the only ones who can complain that they had something taken from them...

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

Rather, I'm saying that SMN's radical simplicity may be allowing a lot of players to realize that they maaaaaaybe... honestly... don't reeeeeally mind having other priorities in life than "mastering" an FFXIV rotation...

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Perhaps.

So you think it's that cognitive dissonance that makes them...upset and insulting to those who openly express like towards things like SMN?

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Perhaps the timer juggling sort of skill expression isn't that individual's cup of tea either?

But it's regardless fascinating to me that the people absolutely certain that skill expression is a Very Bad Thing are always, without fail, the people who never interact with it.

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And this is everything wrong with these conversations:

VERY FEW people say "skill expression is a Very Bad Thing". Look at most of the people here praising SMN. Look at few of them are saying "skill expression is a Very Bad Thing"? Most of them are saying "You have your high skill expression Jobs and we have our one low skill ceiling Job". They aren't saying "skill expression is a Very Bad Thing" at all. They're saying it's fine, as long as not everything is forced into that mold. Literally nobody is "demanding" that "nobody be allowed to get better than you"; if they were, they'd be demanding the REMOVAL of complex Jobs, not COEXISTENCE with them. The only people demanding removal rather than coexistence are the people who want all Jobs to be only the complex kinds and none favoring people who prefer straightforward designs.

This caricature is the biggest problem with these conversations.

The second worst is insisting people aren't allowed to have an opinion unless they're clearing Ultimates/Savage tiers - turns out, these SAME Jobs exist in all content, casual to hardcore; they aren't separate Jobs in hardcore content with separate kits.

And the third:

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Originally Posted by Zebraoracle

It's actually mindboggling. I don't understand how this even remotely hurts anyone, and besides, every other job is plenty populated by people who don't want to do high end content, you don't see them complaining about this.

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When other people quote and support the caricature, attempting to lend it legitimacy it doesn't hold, and insisting "no one is hurt" when people are clearly hurt by their proposed changes.

"Neither we who run this factory nor those we sell to are harmed by us polluting this river."
"But what about the families that live downstream and drink it?"
"I don't understand how this even remotely hurts anyone, besides, lots of people don't even drink water, so what does it matter?"

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Fair enough, but in that case SMN should only be putting out roughly what that level of effort would equate to on another job,

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Again: No.

If you're choosing to play a Job that requires more work because you find more work fun, then your reward is that you have fun. In some possible scenario, the reward can be providing more utility.

Moreover, the entire point of a "low skill floor, high skill ceiling" Job is that when it's played at a low level, it underperforms more moderate skill Jobs when they are played at a low level. A badly played BLM should absolutely do less damage than a badly played RDM or SMN, since the point of the wide skill spread is to be able to excel but also to fail; high risk high reward, but high cost of failure.

The game is not a job. The realization you need to make is to stop treating it like one.

No one's asking for a 20 SMN player to do more damage than a 90 BLM player. That would be silly. But as I've said many times and you've refused to accept or summon a counterargument to - encounters would have to be designed for that lower damage. If SMN did 1/3rd the damage of BLM, all Enrages would have to be made super lenient so that SMN could still clear the content, and at that point, any part with a BLM would find Enrages trivial. The game can't work that way and we all know it, which is why no one ever tries to offer a counter-argument when I point that out.

No one is "obliged" to switch to SMN. That's the point. At the end of the day, people doing it are choosing to do it, they aren't being forced to, as RDM (as you said yourself) still can outdamage SMN and out combat-raise it, and BLM clearly can outdamage it. People are choosing SMN because on some level they want to.

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Originally Posted by Dels

Well, also, remember that this is a team game. It's not just about my fun with the job or the pride I feel doing the complex rotation - It's also that I don't want to make mistakes. I am going to make more mistakes on mechanics and cause more wipes during our prog if I play the harder job. If I play summoner, I guarantee that I can just focus on the mechanics and never have to worry about a rotation, so I will hold people back less. It's hard to justify going for the harder option unless you're really confident you won't waste people's time. If it was a single player game I might try it from the start.

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Yeah, but that's the problem - then what you're arguing for, if you support making SMN more complex - is arguing to harm your own team, by your own metric.

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Originally Posted by Ivtrix

Semi-counterpoint: if you reduce the barrier to entry via smn being exceptionally easy, good luck finding a group with 1 caster slot available and far too many smn looking for groups.

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Semi-counterpoint: Then the answer is just having at least one Job in each role be exceptionally easy.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

Breaking this into Spoiler tags to cut down on visual clutter / scroll-torment.

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So much this entire post, but especially:

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

For example, statements like:
...
And I think that it's not a good-faith perspective to discuss things in language that makes a large portion of the playerbase sound like opportunistic petty criminals, rather than people legitimately playing a game using the legitimate tools that the developers have openly offered them.

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And...

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

But I also think that a lot of "high-functioning" players simply do not realize — maybe cannot fully-internalize, due to how their minds function and see the world — that something like Summoner does require "mastery effort" for a lot of players.

What you see as a trivial hour of investigation on a Striking Dummy, followed by having no surprises left to explore, can instead require some genuine amount of consideration for people who don't dedicate themselves to FFXIV the same way, don't seek external resources, or... etc. It's an entirely different standard to be judged against.

For a lot of players, especially when playing content that's already complex and punishing like Savage and Extreme (again, try to temper your own biases when considering how this content "feels" to the broader, average player), details as simple as:

• Adjust whether or not to precast Ruin 3, Searing Light, etc, based on later mechanic alignment
• Adjust your opener based on the Jobs in your party
• Make sure to get 6 GCDs out of every Bahoenix
• Don't spend Festers inside Phoenix if you can bring them into the next Searing Light
• Don't forget to Akh Morn / Revelation inside Bahoenix
• Don't forget to Deathflare during Bahamut
• Don't waste your Ruin IV, but also feel free to put it where it fits best
• Remember to insert 1-2 Ruin 3 hardcasts between "loops", or more if your party is intentionally drifting CDs and it's deemed productive for you to do so as well, rather than intentionally-desyncing; or if you're progging and trying to hold either damage or Phoenix for a specific segment; or if things are just buns-up and you'd rather hold burst until recovering; or etc.
• Make sure to choose your Gem order so that problematic casts (Ruby Rite, Slipstream) don't collide with movement pressure; Ifrit doesn't collide with bad times to pollute the melee zone; the boss doesn't move out of Slipstream; etc.
• Exploit the ability to move Ruins around to help manage problematic Gem phases
• Balance trying to keep Titan's high potency inside raid buffs vs. using its high mobility to manage encounter phases
• Use Radiant Aegis to help your healers / help survive mechanics, and don't get locked out of it at a bad time
• Try not to waste your Rekindle during Phoenix, if it can help your healers
• Weigh the trade-offs carefully if downtime forces you to choose between finishing Gems or leaving Bahoenix sitting off-cooldown
• Consider the possibility of truncating Gems without finishing them
• (etc.)

...are already plenty enough "meat" and "details" to track and adjust around, and feel like they have a "ceiling" to work towards "mastering" on any particular encounter.

It may not be enough for you, but you need to realize that what's "enough" for you may be uncomfortably over-the-head of the wider population.

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I don't think I've ever seen truer words spoken on these forums, and it continually shocks me that there are people saying "that's not true" when it's very much and entirely true.

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EDIT2: The pushback you're getting shows you've probably hit close to the mark/touched a nerve. "Thou doest protest too much" kind of a thing.

Though I applaud your effort...I fear it's a lost cause. From talking with people on these forums, Reddit, etc, I've found it's almost impossible to convince a skill-focused player that not everyone thinks like them. They will admit on some level that's true, but then deny it in every way when you mention specifics, and they'll insist that their insults and caricatures aren't insults and caricatures - as if someone could take being called lazy and entitled in a non-insulting way... <_< ...which wouldn't even be so bad, except for how quick such people are to respond negatively to perceived insults or caricatures of themselves.

It constantly shocks me that skill focused people believe they know what non-skill focused people are thinking and want, that only they get to talk about Job design, and that there's no possible way anyone else can understand what it is they really want. Double standards to insane levels...

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Originally Posted by Renathras

You're going to have to tell me what "snip" means.

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It means that original quote is too long or poster couldn't be bothered to post it whole, so if you want to see it, use the link in the quote to be redirected. Don't tell me you don't know how links in quotes work, you intentionally removed that link when you gave me that misquoted quoted back in the Gauius' deleted thread, trying to trick me and hoping it will win you your argument, thinking I won't bother to find original quote. Oh boy how it backfired for you.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

As for casuals - depends on the type. But generally speaking, if people are min/maxing, they aren't casuals. That's kind of the only true dividing line between "casuals" and "hardcores" (most of the rest are subjective).

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Generally speaking, casuals are players who play 1-2 hours a game, it's not neccessary related to the kind of content they do, or the way they do it. Sure there is more to it, but time spent is most universal and accurate way how to distinquish between casuals, midcore and hardcore players.

If you want to use minmaxing to identify casuals, you will end up with people who spend 10+ hours a day, but are still considered casuals, while players who spend 1.5 hours in game per week reclearing savage tier will be considered hardcore.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Where did I say RDM should be made easier? I said that's what your argument supports.

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Yes, and I said that there are 2 ways to fix SMN - give SMN more skill expression, or remove RDM's skill expression, and then I added how removing RDM's skill expression is horrible way to achieve this, so adding proper skill ceiling to SMN is the right solution.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

It'd be one thing if there were many other simple and many complex Jobs. But there aren't. There are mostly very complex Jobs, moderate complexity Jobs, and then a handful of low complexity ones. SMN is one of the few, not one of the many.

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I get that you're frustrated and want people to see your point, but you're overblowing the situation a little bit. For the skill focused players, there are only 2 real options for technical/complex jobs, Transpose lines BLM and optimal drift MNK. For simple jobs, you have SMN, WAR, WHM, SCH, SGE. BRD, MCH and RPR are simple but rigid. The rest are middling difficulty at best. 2 out of 19 jobs isn't them having mostly complex jobs. You may not agree with what I said, but the skill focused players can speak for themselves.

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Originally Posted by Deo14

It means that original quote is too long or poster couldn't be bothered to post it whole, so if you want to see it, use the link in the quote to be redirected. Don't tell me you don't know how links in quotes work, you intentionally removed that link when you gave me that misquoted quoted back in the Gauius' deleted thread, trying to trick me and hoping it will win you your argument, thinking I won't bother to find original quote. Oh boy how it backfired for you.

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What are you talking about? o.O

You mean when I provided the part he left out, you acted like I needed to include the part he already had, and then I went further and gave you a complete explanation for how you were wrong, only for you to vaguely grudgingly half-say you were wrong while insisting it was my fault you were wrong, before you went back to insisting the thing I proved was wrong?

Don't know about liking to threads, I either quote things or I copy things and manually use a quote tag.

Oh wait, is this more of your childish feuding? Moving on.

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Originally Posted by Deo14

Generally speaking, casuals are players who play 1-2 hours a game, it's not neccessary related to the kind of content they do, or the way they do it. Sure there is more to it, but time spent is most universal and accurate way how to distinquish between casuals, midcore and hardcore players.

If you want to use minmaxing to identify casuals, you will end up with people who spend 10+ hours a day, but are still considered casuals, while players who spend 1.5 hours in game per week reclearing savage tier will be considered hardcore.

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I mean, people that spend 10+ hours a day and don't min max are generally called casuals, yes. Seems like my definition checks out.

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Originally Posted by Deo14

Yes, and I said that there are 2 ways to fix SMN - give SMN more skill expression, or remove RDM's skill expression, and then I added how removing RDM's skill expression is horrible way to achieve this, so adding proper skill ceiling to SMN is the right solution.

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That's an either-or fallacy, and it's not even a true list of options.

There's no reason we have to EITHER give SMN more skill expression OR remove RDM's skill expression. Not only are their other options (making it an either-or/false dichotomy fallacy, as you present only two and act like they are the only two), but the two you paired together don't even make sense. Why would we remove RDM's skill expression at all? What's wrong with a more complex Job doing slightly more damage and having better combat utility raises?

RDM can keep its current skill level and just do a bit more damage - or even the same amount as now, but I'm in favor of slightly more. That's honestly the best solution.

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EDIT:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I get that you're frustrated and want people to see your point, but you're overblowing the situation a little bit. For the skill focused players, there are only 2 real options for technical/complex jobs, Transpose lines BLM and optimal drift MNK. For simple jobs, you have SMN, WAR, WHM, SCH, SGE. BRD, MCH and RPR are simple but rigid. The rest are middling difficulty at best. 2 out of 19 jobs isn't them having mostly complex jobs. You may not agree with what I said, but the skill focused players can speak for themselves.

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Okay, breaking this down by Role:

Tank:
Simple: PLD (PLD is easier than WAR, honestly)
Medium?: WAR?
Complex?: GNB?/DRK?
* GNB is super rigid, but whether complex or not is hard to say, it's more technical. DRK is talked about is "WAR with some things", but the resource management and burst is more like NIN, which is not an easy Job. "Outside of burst it's braindead" doesn't counter the burst being super high performance to properly execute, considering how much of modern Job output is from properly executing the opener and burst windows. As much as people meme on WAR, optimal WAR play does involve proper pooling, stocking, and spending resources, and maintaining a personal buff. While this isn't terribly high end gameplay, note that the resources interact with each other in somewhat complex ways. Infuriate generates resources and empowers spenders, spenders themselves reduce the CD of Infuriate so that it isn't static, and you want to pool resources to use them in burst, unlike PLD's rotation which barely cares and only gives slight improvements if you put the "best" CDs under Fight or Flight or not - that is, the ideal of having pressed 1-2 but having your prior combo's Holy Spirit ready, so after Goring and Confetior combo, you hit Holy Spirit, then Royal Authority, another Holy Spirit, and your high damage Atonement combo...but the difference between getting this right and not is negligible, compared to WAR getting theirs right or not. WAR's, by comparison, is a moving target where hitting it or whiffing it is somewhat significant.

Healers:
Simple: WHM
Medium: SGE
Complex: AST/SCH
* This one gets difficult to parse because it depend strongly on whether we're talking progression/new content or farming old content, where all the Healer DPS kits are pretty simple other than a bit of Energy Drain optimizing on SCH and correctly performing AST's burst (the DRK/NIN issue again). However, to look at the Jobs as their design skill cap, we have to be looking at the former of those two, and for progression in new and difficult content, fully optimizing AST and SCH's kits becomes much more complex. SGE is a medium point in this context, since it's abilities are more simple and effective than SCH's, but still require some pre-planning and resource management to function well. SGE's abilities are also more technical and its fallbacks aren't as powerful. Where WHM can salvage most situations by resorting to Cure 2 spam with some Thin Airs and Solace in the mix, SGE doesn't have that option and will run dry on resources quickly if not properly using its oGCDs well. WHM's, on the other hand, are all simple and direct, with only a few abilities with some nuance and indirect effects, namely Plenary Indulgence and Lilybell, with everything else pretty much just doing what it says on the tin, and even those two abilities aren't terribly complex. Even their "oGCD stand-ins" of Solace and Rapture are simple and direct, and the difference between optimizing Misery and not is RELATIVELY minor, all things considered.

Melee:
Simple: RPR (from what I understand, haven't toyed around with it yet)
Medium: SAM
Complex: DRG, NIN, MNK
* Here again, it depends on how one means it, but in a general sense, RPR is relatively easy to pick up and at least understand what the Job wants you to d and play somewhat optimally. SAM has some work to do to get there, but really for very high end stuff. DRG, NIN, and MNK are three varieties of complex, with DRG being very rigid and technical, NIN like DRK and AST has very busy burst phases which it is essential to perform correctly as well as the opener, but the downtime rotation is fairly chill while still managing one personal buff and some resource pooling/spending decisions, and of course MNK is MNK.

Ranged:
Simple? Medium? Complex?: BRD, DNC, MCH
* These are all kind of wonky to rank well. BRD is a proc factory, which many people do not consider simple. On paper, you maintain two DoTs with a single ability, but are punished with two GCDs if they fall off, you keep song's going, you use oGCDs roughly on CD, and you respond to procs. But there are A LOT of procs, and it's easy for players to be overwhelmed both continuing to juggle the plates they must continue to juggle (songs + DoTs) while responding to all the procs, and the rotation changes and branches - even the opener branches depending on what does and doesn't proc - all at the same time. What's more, BRD's optimal rotation isn't just to cycle through songs, but rather to use each one to a SPECIFIC number of seconds, and it has optimization decisions to make regarding Apex Arrow and Pitch Perfect usages. NONE OF THAT is "simple". At easiest, BRD would be a Medium Job, and debatably Complex, though this depends on the player. MCH has the DRK/AST/NIN issue again - super high octane burst (and among the highest APMs in the game), but a relatively chill downtime. Optimal rotation requires proper resource management and pooling understanding, and the burst is simple, but the Wildfire window is very tight, making it difficult based on latency, but also if you hesitate on a button press for even a moment while executing a mechanic. Again, that wouldn't qualify as Simple. DNC is one of those Jobs people only call simple until they understand how many decision points it has, and it's constantly variable. Like BRD, there's no set rotation, and like BRD, there are a lot of procs. Its Step actions both give you a Simon Says system where the penalty for failure is low, but it's also always different. And especially under buff and burst windows, there are a lot of branching decisions based on Fan Dance procs and Espirit. So again, this is probably a Medium Job at this point.

Caster:
Simple: SMN
Medium?: RDM?
Complex: BLM
* We've beaten this one to death. The only reason for the question mark on RDM is that truly high end RDM optimization actually IS much more technical and exacting, possibly harder than most BLM play, and that unless you're doing Transpose lines or Infinite Paradoxes, the rotation itself is theoretically not too difficult.

I think part of all this comes down to where people draw the lines between simple, moderate, and complex. You can say 2 out of 19 are complex, but I'd say at least 6 are, and at least one in each role (other than Ranged, because Ranged is weird). Likewise, you say 5 are simple with a further 3 being "simple but rigid", while I say only 5 are simple...but don't even have the same ones as simple as you do - you list WAR as simple where I might not, but don't list PLD as simple where it clearly is per my way of looking at it.

.

The skill focused players can speak for themselves, true.

...but so can the straightforward desiring players, whatever name we give them.

Neither side gets a monopoly on the conversation.

.

EDIT2:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aravell

Notice that I never once said that any one side can't speak on the issue, I'm only offering another opinion. You can take it as you will.

---

I didn't say you did?

I'm, likewise, offering another opinion. You can take it as you will, as well.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Renathras

The skill focused players can speak for themselves, true.

...but so can the straightforward desiring players, whatever name we give them.

Neither side gets a monopoly on the conversation.

---

Notice that I never once said that any one side can't speak on the issue, I'm only offering another opinion. You can take it as you will.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Renathras

What are you talking about? o.O

You mean when I provided the part he left out, you acted like I needed to include the part he already had, and then I went further and gave you a complete explanation for how you were wrong, only for you to vaguely grudgingly half-say you were wrong while insisting it was my fault you were wrong, before you went back to insisting the thing I proved was wrong?

Don't know about liking to threads, I either quote things or I copy things and manually use a quote tag.

Oh wait, is this more of your childish feuding? Moving on.

---

What a nice streak of derailing the whole point of your whole slidecasting argument. What's the counter at, octuple down?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Renathras

I mean, people that spend 10+ hours a day and don't min max are generally called casuals, yes. Seems like my definition checks out.

---

Now this is good signature material. Gaius don't steal this one from me, you already stole my "server side reshader".

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Renathras

That's an either-or fallacy, and it's not even a true list of options.

There's no reason we have to EITHER give SMN more skill expression OR remove RDM's skill expression. Not only are their other options (making it an either-or/false dichotomy fallacy, as you present only two and act like they are the only two), but the two you paired together don't even make sense. Why would we remove RDM's skill expression at all? What's wrong with a more complex Job doing slightly more damage and having better combat utility raises?

RDM can keep its current skill level and just do a bit more damage - or even the same amount as now, but I'm in favor of slightly more. That's honestly the best solution.

---

Whole point is that if those two things are not at least somewhat balanced, then SMN will always be preffered to RDM, because you simply get more for less effort. And if you want RDM to deal more damage, SMN will be getting out of content. Feels like me and others are just repeating ourselves, and others don't listen and don't even give real counter-arguments.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Semi-counterpoint: Then the answer is just having at least one Job in each role be exceptionally easy.

---

Both RPR and DNC have a lower barrier to entry compared to other jobs in their field, yet both have a surprising amount of skill expression. There are already player perceived “easy jobs” in all dps fields. But SMN continues to be the one without skill expression

the summoner has a strong visual identity and beautiful spells since the rework but in late game because below level 72 except dreadwyrm trance/bahamut the animations are all the same ruin spell without visual interest,
but on the other hand his spell rotation is totally tasteless and uninspired.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deo14

What a nice streak of derailing the whole point of your whole slidecasting argument. What's the counter at, octuple down?


Now this is good signature material. Gaius don't steal this one from me, you already stole my "server side reshader".


Whole point is that if those two things are not at least somewhat balanced, then SMN will always be preffered to RDM, because you simply get more for less effort. And if you want RDM to deal more damage, SMN will be getting out of content. Feels like me and others are just repeating ourselves, and others don't listen and don't even give real counter-arguments.

---

Holy moly one particular Lalafell bb just can't help themselves!!! Every time he posts we're blessed with the rains of Africa

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deo14

Feels like me and others are just repeating ourselves, and others don't listen and don't even give real counter-arguments.

---

Good gosh, that's my line! I say the same thing all the time and it's like you don't listen and don't give real counter-arguments.

We're talking past each other. You refuse to see a different perspective than your own, and my attempts at meeting in the middle are brushed off by you ad unfair or incomplete. Meanwhile, I'm sure you think "low skill floor, you just can't clear hard content because you don't deserve to" is a "middle" of sorts, so this is probably just as frustrating to you as it is to me. >_<

It's just frustrating to everyone because we're all stuck in this same problem.

For my part, I think I do understand your perspective, I just disagree with it. The only way to be sure would be to put it into words and say "Is this what you think?". "Seek first to understand, then to be understood" and all that. But that's not a bad start - if I do understand correctly, and disagree, there is room to find some common ground.

On the other hand, I don't think you understand the perspective of the people you oppose. You obviously disagree with them, but I don't think you understand what it is they want or why. Your repeated characterization seems to suggest that.

But let's test this, it might be a useful exercise for everyone:

In your own words, attempt to describe what you think the other side wants and feels on the topic. Let's see if we can reach an understanding by first understanding each other.

.

What I think you want/feel:

NOTE: This is written in, and intended to be read in, a neutral tone. There's no judgement passed, nor sarcasm or derision intended. This is , on the positive side, what I think your argument is based around:

I think what you guys want, if your words are accurate representation, is to have Jobs where you can both master them at a high level and push yourselves, and where that high level of mastery is visible in output performance. Not minor or easy to miss, but clearly noticeable and impactful, making encounters shorter and easier in a way that everyone can tell is different than doing them "normally" would be (e.g. with lower mastery levels). You also want achieving victory in difficult content to have some prestige to it, also reflecting the mastery that you have practiced and the skill you have to execute both your encounter and rotation at a consistently high level to clear it. That people who do not have that level of skill should be encouraged by both the content and others to grow and improve in order to clear it, and that those who refuse should just not be able to, and simply be content not doing any content passed the casual offerings like MSQ until such time as they are motivated to improve appropriately. That it is a game, but part of games is improving oneself and seeing visible results of that improvement, of rising to and overcoming challenges.

The skill ceiling needs to be high so you can continually push yourself to attain and maintain this level, where there's always room for growth, and you feel like you should be rewarded for that higher level of competence and capability, as well as continuing to operate and improve at that level and beyond it as Job changes and new encounters come with time. Finally, you want this to be on every Job in the game, because you like various, but specific, class fantasies and aesthetics, and you want those specific ones while also achieving your goal and fulfillment through that level of dedication and mastery you want it to require of you. That you think others are like you, and even though you may not like a Job's aesthetic, they may, so all Jobs, without exception, need this design. You recognize not everyone is as skilled, but you anticipate everyone who applies effort can reach at least a moderate level, and encounters should be designed around that...but that the true mastery should be noticeable above and beyond that, rewarding those who push themselves further. And that by there being no "easy" Jobs and encounters, everyone who truly deserves it can - and will - improve to the level you think is competence, being able to clear most content with time and as they are deserving of doing so.

And those who don't? Well, they refuse to do so, even though they are truly capable if they wanted to - they can, they just don't want to, and are undeserving, and that's fine. They have Island Sanctuary or other content to do that doesn't require it, or they could always try finding a different game to play that is more suited to their engagement level. That is, you don't hate or look down on these people, per se, you just think if they want to do the content, they have it within themselves to rise and do it on any of the high skill ceiling Jobs. If they aren't doing it, then maybe they aren't really motivated to do the content, or it's not really a big priority to them, as it if was, surely they would rise to the challenge, as surely they're capable of doing so, even if every Job was like BLM or DRG or whatever. So if they don't, they aren't really missing out, since clearly it isn't content that they really want to engage in anyway, so no one's hurt by this arrangement, because those people aren't doing hard content anyway, right?

That sound about right?

.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deo14

What a nice streak of derailing the whole point of your whole slidecasting argument. What's the counter at, octuple down?

---

No, I'm not playing your childish feud. I explained it all to you, you rejected the explanation because you just want me to be wrong because you don't like my positions on other topics and so you will insist to your dying breath I'm wrong about everything, it doesn't matter how wrong you have to be to hold that view. I'm done dealing with all the trolls here, and that's troll behavior. Get over it - or don't - I'm going to continue not engaging you on this topic because I gave you a good faith effort and you spit in my face and have been bad faith over the entire thing. The grand irony being, it wasn't even a conversation that involved you to begin with, and you even admitted that my overall position was correct, the wording just confused you and instead of asking for clarification, you jumped on the hate train.

No, I'm done with this petty forum troll clique nonsense.

[QUOTE=Deo14;6279422]Now this is good signature material. Gaius don't steal this one from me, you already stole my "server side reshader".[/QUOTE}

I guess. Expose to the world that you don't know what common use terms mean. Have fun with that. Btw, putting quotes of people in your sig to mock them is yet more petty childishness and PROBABLY also against the TOS.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deo14

Whole point is that if those two things are not at least somewhat balanced, then SMN will always be preffered to RDM, because you simply get more for less effort.

---

If your enjoyment of the game comes from putting in more effort, then RDM would be preferred by you over SMN. If SMNis preferred, it's because what your goal is in the game is the path of least resistance, not mastering a difficult Job's playstyle.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deo14

And if you want RDM to deal more damage, SMN will be getting out of content.

---

Nope, that's the point and what you're not getting. BLM does more damage than SMN and RDM. Yet SMN and RDM haven't been pushed out of content. Why not?

BLM clearly does more damage than they do. By your comments, that means no one should be playing RDMs or SMNs because BLM does more damage.

...but also based on your comments, no one should be playing BLM, because it's harder.

Which is it?

Clearly, the answer is that there are different players with different objectives who want something different out of a Job. People who weigh the cost-benefit of the two differently. And there may be some optimum points - like people are willing to do BLM's harder rotation because doing it right gives ENOUGH more damage to make it worth it, but if it only did the same as SMN, no one would play BLM. But the game is balanced around SMN's lower damage, most people aren't doing BLM perfectly anyway so this is still somewhat balanced, and SMN has some extra party utility to make up for the lower damage - the result being both Jobs are still competitive with each other.

Some want to master a Job and will push to do so, no matter how difficult, and the greater damage of BLM matches their greater effort in a way they find acceptable. On the other hand, there are some people that find SMN's damage sufficient and its plystyle matches their needs for complexity and mastery, as they're able to give a consistent performance at the required level which they could not on BLM, and so they find the trade-off acceptable. BLM's output is variable and SMN's is consistent, leading people to pick SMN who value consistency and BLM for those who value the high reward and can manage the high risk.

So: Why can't this work with RDM? A middle difficulty for a middle reward, but with middle variance so that doing it poorly is worse than doing SMN poorly, but doing it better is better than doing SMN better? BLM already does this, and it works. You could say less people play BLM (this actually isn't true in all encounters, but let's ignore that for the time being), but clearly you aren't arguing to lower BLM's skill cap "or it will be left off".

RDM's problem isn't that it's harder than SMN, it's that it's harder than SMN but does around the same damage. We can see this because BLM is harder than SMN, too, but actually does damage commensurate to its difficulty, but its difficulty is also high enough that people uncertain they can do it consistently - that is, who don't want to worry about that high variability and that if they play it poorly know they'll do less damage than they would on SMN - have SMN to fall back on instead if they feel like it. The system works.

Now, you might again note that not many people play BLM, but that's not a balance issue, that's because not as many people value high skill ceiling as people value consistency. In almost all polls of Humans, more people are risk averse than risk-taking, and BLM is a bit of a gamble. The issue there comes down to "apparently the people don't all want a high skill ceiling Job".

And that's okay. BLM should still be there - I believe - for those who do. But it does pretty hard counter your argument that all Jobs should have a higher skill ceiling.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ivtrix

Both RPR and DNC have a lower barrier to entry compared to other jobs in their field, yet both have a surprising amount of skill expression. There are already player perceived “easy jobs” in all dps fields. But SMN continues to be the one without skill expression

---

I'm sorry, but what? This may be an individual preference thing, but...

...DNC is the hardest of the Ranged Jobs to me. It's got massive amounts of procs and active adaptations, and there's no rotation or routine to get into. It's the single hardest of the Ranged Jobs to play at a high level, imo, because of it. Though BRD isn't much better. Other than the latency thing with Wildfire and Hypercharge BS, MCH is the easiest Job. You have a simple rotation, hit things on CD, the burst is pretty straightforward, and the Job's rotation is consistent and static.

And RPR I haven't played with too much, but reading it, it doesn't seem that easy. From playing around with NIN, it seems a lot easier to me. RPR may have a lower skill floor, but there seem to be more decision points. Then again...I don't really find ANY of the Melee particularly easy to get into.

I haven't messed with it much, but DRG seems easier as well - like MCH, the rotation's consistent and reliable, it doesn't change up and require active reevaluation of priorities.

I think this just goes back to "Individual people think and perceive things differently". For example, DNC is easy if you are great at reacting to procs, but might be the hardest Job in the game to you if you're a person who likes rigid "same every time" rotations like DRG's.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by remiff

the summoner has a strong visual identity and beautiful spells since the rework but in late game because below level 72 except dreadwyrm trance/bahamut the animations are all the same ruin spell without visual interest,
but on the other hand his spell rotation is totally tasteless and uninspired.

---

I do agree that the lower level elemental Ruin spells should do at least SOMETHING different. Like...could they not be bothered to make them Red/Yellow/Green, at least?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Renathras

Good gosh, that's my line! I say the same thing all the time and it's like you don't listen and don't give real counter-arguments.

We're talking past each other. You refuse to see a different perspective than your own, and my attempts at meeting in the middle are brushed off by you ad unfair or incomplete. Meanwhile, I'm sure you think "low skill floor, you just can't clear hard content because you don't deserve to" is a "middle" of sorts, so this is probably just as frustrating to you as it is to me. >_<

---

So what was you argument on "how is it fair that one job becomes redundant because other job"? Maybe you already said it, but it's hard to keep track of your essays.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Renathras

It's just frustrating to everyone because we're all stuck in this same problem.

For my part, I think I do understand your perspective, I just disagree with it. The only way to be sure would be to put it into words and say "Is this what you think?". "Seek first to understand, then to be understood" and all that. But that's not a bad start - if I do understand correctly, and disagree, there is room to find some common ground.

On the other hand, I don't think you understand the perspective of the people you oppose. You obviously disagree with them, but I don't think you understand what it is they want or why. Your repeated characterization seems to suggest that.

---

Yes, I do understand POV of people who want to keep SMN's skill expression same - they simply want to put less effort and deal same damage because they're lazy crybabies. If they actually like SMN, they won't oppose adding more stuff to it which will elevate SMN's skill ceiling, because that will mean there will be more stuff they can learn about their job. People in this thread were nice about wording this at the start, but it boils down to the self-entitled people who want their cake and eat it too. You put in less effort, you deserve less, if you don't meet some minimal requirements, you should not clear harder content, simple as that. Again, this does not affect people who actually like SMN, this is focused mainly on people who play SMN specifically because it's the path of least resistance.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Renathras

No, I'm not playing your childish feud. I explained it all to you, you rejected the explanation because you just want me to be wrong because you don't like my positions on other topics and so you will insist to your dying breath I'm wrong about everything, it doesn't matter how wrong you have to be to hold that view. I'm done dealing with all the trolls here, and that's troll behavior. Get over it - or don't - I'm going to continue not engaging you on this topic because I gave you a good faith effort and you spit in my face and have been bad faith over the entire thing. The grand irony being, it wasn't even a conversation that involved you to begin with, and you even admitted that my overall position was correct, the wording just confused you and instead of asking for clarification, you jumped on the hate train.

No, I'm done with this petty forum troll clique nonsense.

---

"I'm going to continue not engaging" he says, as he writes yet another paragraph about that. If you want to think that me calling you out on your BS is spitting in your face, then go ahead.

You had conflicting/incorrect info in your slidecasting argument or whatever it was, you got ratio'd by at least 5+ people (if you put any value into updoots) because it was factually incorrect, and instead of correcting yourself, you kept doubling down and eventually started calling others names because they were "dog pilling" on you. No shit we were, when you kept insisting and kept trying any kind of mental gymnastics so you seem right. But hey, why would I need to keep talking about that, everyone can just check that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Renathras

I guess. Expose to the world that you don't know what common use terms mean. Have fun with that. Btw, putting quotes of people in your sig to mock them is yet more petty childishness and PROBABLY also against the TOS.

---

Saying that definition of casuals is that they don't minmax is just factually incorrect. Defining casuals by their playtime is most accurate definition, but other factors should be considered too, of course. But minmaxing is 100% not a main factor.

Here you go, tell me what's more likely to be accepted as definition

Why do you think my signature is mockery? It presents quotes as-is. I don't tell people to "look at them and laugh" as Gauis did, I present quotes and nothing more, with link to original if people want more context. It's up to the eye of beholder to make their own image. If you perceive it as a mockery, than it seems that you acknowledge how dumb those quotes are.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Renathras

If your enjoyment of the game comes from putting in more effort, then RDM would be preferred by you over SMN. If SMNis preferred, it's because what your goal is in the game is the path of least resistance, not mastering a difficult Job's playstyle.

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I've explained this like 3 times already. Just check ShB raid statistics and EW statistics. RDM was slightly more popular than SMN, now SMN has like 70% more parses than RDM in last tier.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Nope, that's the point and what you're not getting. BLM does more damage than SMN and RDM. Yet SMN and RDM haven't been pushed out of content. Why not?

BLM clearly does more damage than they do. By your comments, that means no one should be playing RDMs or SMNs because BLM does more damage.

---

Because BLM is league on their own. It would make perfect sense to only allow BLM to join as caster, but BLM is perceived as so hard, that players are afraid of it. In other words, if PF allowed only BLM to join, it would take ages to find one, but that's not only problem. Even then, you're in no way guaranteed that player would live up to the BLM's name. BLM has a lot of skill expression, so party can choose to look for BLM, which might be good, might be bad, or just pick SMN/RDM, which will have more predictable damage. Bad BLM will deal just slightly more damage than SMN, and very bad BLM will be even worse than worst SMN, so in the end, letting people decide which caster they want to play is best solution. But then again, I don't play BLM, so there might be someone else who's more educated who could explain this phenomenom.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deo14

Yes, I do understand POV of people who want to keep SMN's skill expression same - they simply want to put less effort and deal same damage because they're lazy crybabies.

---

Wrong answer, McFly.

Try again.

EDIT:

Also, it appears I was wrong in my assessment of your position. My fair and even assessment was entirely inaccurate and wrong, and I apologize for ascribing honorable and well thought out notions to you. I will not do so again.

Quote:

---

I think what you guys want, if your words are accurate representation, is to have Jobs where you can both master them at a high level and push yourselves, and where that high level of mastery is visible in output performance. Not minor or easy to miss, but clearly noticeable and impactful, making encounters shorter and easier in a way that everyone can tell is different than doing them "normally" would be (e.g. with lower mastery levels). You also want achieving victory in difficult content to have some prestige to it, also reflecting the mastery that you have practiced and the skill you have to execute both your encounter and rotation at a consistently high level to clear it. That people who do not have that level of skill should be encouraged by both the content and others to grow and improve in order to clear it, and that those who refuse should just not be able to, and simply be content not doing any content passed the casual offerings like MSQ until such time as they are motivated to improve appropriately. That it is a game, but part of games is improving oneself and seeing visible results of that improvement, of rising to and overcoming challenges.

The skill ceiling needs to be high so you can continually push yourself to attain and maintain this level, where there's always room for growth, and you feel like you should be rewarded for that higher level of competence and capability, as well as continuing to operate and improve at that level and beyond it as Job changes and new encounters come with time. Finally, you want this to be on every Job in the game, because you like various, but specific, class fantasies and aesthetics, and you want those specific ones while also achieving your goal and fulfillment through that level of dedication and mastery you want it to require of you. That you think others are like you, and even though you may not like a Job's aesthetic, they may, so all Jobs, without exception, need this design. You recognize not everyone is as skilled, but you anticipate everyone who applies effort can reach at least a moderate level, and encounters should be designed around that...but that the true mastery should be noticeable above and beyond that, rewarding those who push themselves further. And that by there being no "easy" Jobs and encounters, everyone who truly deserves it can - and will - improve to the level you think is competence, being able to clear most content with time and as they are deserving of doing so.

And those who don't? Well, they refuse to do so, even though they are truly capable if they wanted to - they can, they just don't want to, and are undeserving, and that's fine. They have Island Sanctuary or other content to do that doesn't require it, or they could always try finding a different game to play that is more suited to their engagement level. That is, you don't hate or look down on these people, per se, you just think if they want to do the content, they have it within themselves to rise and do it on any of the high skill ceiling Jobs. If they aren't doing it, then maybe they aren't really motivated to do the content, or it's not really a big priority to them, as it if was, surely they would rise to the challenge, as surely they're capable of doing so, even if every Job was like BLM or DRG or whatever. So if they don't, they aren't really missing out, since clearly it isn't content that they really want to engage in anyway, so no one's hurt by this arrangement, because those people aren't doing hard content anyway, right?

---

...is, for the record, apparently completely wrong.

I apologize to anyone who read that and thought that the people arguing against SMN were or are doing so in good faith, as apparently, they are not. Well, at least one of them + the (6) likes (at the time of this post) is not.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Renathras

I think what you guys want

---

I speak only for myself, but you're off the mark here.

Yes, I want job mastery to have a visible difference, it may not seem fair to some, but the difference needs to exist, there should be an incentive to master a job. I don't think there's any prestige in clearing savage or ultimates, I clear them because I want a challenge. I firmly believe that if anyone wants the clear as well, they should be able to rise to the challenge that comes with it, whether that be job difficulty, encounter difficulty or both together. Skill improvement is a part of games, whether you like it or not, people who play more are usually better than those who don't.

I think every job does need a skill ceiling, but I don't think they all need to be a high one. I would rather see a spread of moderate to high skill ceilings, I always advocate for the design of low floor, moderate/high ceiling. I don't believe it's good design to have a job that someone can pick up and master in an hour. We have 19 jobs in this game, there's no good reason why we need to make it so anybody can master all of them.

Yes, people who don't want to improve and at least be decent with a job should have no business in savage or above, this may seem unfair, but it should be required. If this line of thinking is toxic to you, then so be it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Renathras

I'm sorry, but what? This may be an individual preference thing, but...

...DNC is the hardest of the Ranged Jobs to me. It's got massive amounts of procs and active adaptations, and there's no rotation or routine to get into. It's the single hardest of the Ranged Jobs to play at a high level, imo, because of it. Though BRD isn't much better. Other than the latency thing with Wildfire and Hypercharge BS, MCH is the easiest Job. You have a simple rotation, hit things on CD, the burst is pretty straightforward, and the Job's rotation is consistent and static.

And RPR I haven't played with too much, but reading it, it doesn't seem that easy. From playing around with NIN, it seems a lot easier to me. RPR may have a lower skill floor, but there seem to be more decision points. Then again...I don't really find ANY of the Melee particularly easy to get into.

I haven't messed with it much, but DRG seems easier as well - like MCH, the rotation's consistent and reliable, it doesn't change up and require active reevaluation of priorities.

I think this just goes back to "Individual people think and perceive things differently". For example, DNC is easy if you are great at reacting to procs, but might be the hardest Job in the game to you if you're a person who likes rigid "same every time" rotations like DRG's.

---

Lol.

Using the same arguing point, it’s clear that DNC is the go to physical job going by the level of engagement at the current savage parses. I don’t think it’s a controversial statement to say that DNC is far and away the easiest of the physical range jobs and if you looked up anywhere people asked for the easiest jobs to play, that DNC will command a majority of the physical ranged catagory.

I think it’s just you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aravell

[...]Yes, people who don't want to improve and at least be decent with a job should have no business in savage or above, this may seem unfair, but it should be required. If this line of thinking is toxic to you, then so be it.

---

This part sums up pretty much how I feel. To which, the discussion reminds me of an older quote from the past:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MintnHoney

[...]Let's use the theme park mmo moniker for a moment: you, as someone who goes to the theme park, may enjoy simply wandering the park. You might enjoy stopping to sit at a bench to people watch with some candy or food, and you may enjoy going on the merry-go-round, the ferris wheel, or would enjoy a slow ride that's meant to give you a certain vantage on the park (e.g. the Yoshi's Island ride at Nintendo Land), but avoid roller coasters and water-related rides, or virtual reality, bumper cars, etc.. No one's going to tell you that you're wrong for enjoying yourself the way you want and, on the off-chance that they do (and that you're not doing something actually illegal or indecent), they would be the assholes. But on the flipside, other people do enjoy roller coasters, water rides, virtual reality, and/or bumper cars, so those people will go on those rides. If you were to try to stop other people from going on those rides just because you don't like them, then you would be the asshole.

Even if you go with friends to a theme park, there will be times where said friends will want to go on a ride and you don't want to; if they do go, and you don't go, that's not the end of the world. They enjoy the ride, you can do something in the meantime, or just wait and watch, and then you meet back up, tease the friend who threw up, continue through the park, and life goes on.

It's the same idea here: you can go do whatever you want, yes, but if you want to play in certain kinds of content because you want to play a certain way, then you simply don't go to the content that demands you play in the way you don't like to. The opportunity cost is that you don't go to that portion of content. Curiosity can lead you to trying the content, but, if it's not to your taste and you really don't enjoy playing that way, then it's not for you and that's okay. You just have to remember that there are people out there who like the same game, but like to play the other content and play in such a way that the game was designed but not necessarily to your taste, and that's okay also[...]

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Having watched the FFXVI combat in the Live Letter, summoner's changes actually make a whole lot more sense now.

dragoon doesn't have one anymore either

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I speak only for myself, but you're off the mark here.

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That's fair, though it's pretty close to what I said, isn't it?

Visible difference, incentive to master, to get a clear people should rise to the challenge, skill improvement being part of games, and that people who "don't want" to improve (since you assume in that statement everyone has the capacity) shouldn't get to clear content...I said all those things, did I not? It seems the only point that I mentioned that doesn't fit your view point is the prestige of clearing content, but the rest...was pretty accurate, wasn't it?

I should also note that no one can master all 19 Jobs in the game in an hour. I'm not even sure they could master 1 in that timeframe (SMN and PLD probably being the easiest). And as for judging/toxic: The purpose here and now is understanding, not judgement.

Now, care to try your hand at this mutual understanding exercise? I expect you can better articulate - maybe - the views of the other side than Deo.

EDIT:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ivtrix

Lol.

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Oh, to play at a base level DNC is absolutely easier.

BLM is absolutely easier to play than anything in the game if you just press Blizzard 3 til your MP is full then Fire 3 until it's empty. Likewise, RDM just casting Jolt-Thunder-Jolt-Aero and using their burst combo as soon as they get 50/50. The main difference is DNC's gap between floor and ceiling is lower/narrower than on BLM or RDM, so not playing DNC at 100% doesn't matter as much. And if you have a decent team, you buffing their damage allows their skill to carry you better - Jobs like BLM are selfish and can't rely on that, and Jobs with less support like RDM can't, either. If you ignore or haphazardly spend your procs on DNC, and mess up your step input (which has no real failure condition since you can just press the correct button during Simon Says and the wrong button doesn't do anything other than waste a little time on input), you're still going to do more damage than an "Ice Mage". DNC's skill floor of "vaguely competent/good enough" is absolutely more accessible, to be sure. Though MCH is pretty close to that with "1-2-3, use other things on CD" level of entry play. It just can't paper over non-optimal performance as well with a good party doing the damage for them.