Simplicity Vs Complexity

If theres one thing this game is really good at its bringing the noobs and the pros together. No matter your skill level and no matter your walks in gaming life, everyone is welcome here with love and affection.

However when it comes to the mechanics of the gameplay, the combat to be more specific, that's where issues start to arise and divide the base. This is an issue that plagues the game as a whole and it's a very debated topic.

To put it simply, many argue that some classes are to simplistic, "White Mage, Warrior, Dragoon" meanwhile other classes such as "Astrologer and Machinist" are to complex. How people come to these conclusions all comes down to the skill/spell tables and how the combat expects you to perform actions with said classes in order to obtain maximum potential.

Speaking as someone who has been a Machinist main since day 1, this class is not complex to me in any way. I find the skill chains to be easy to understand, the heat gauge system is a simple streamlined approach to encourage proper skill chains instead of just wildly shooting away, and the skills given to you all have their uses in numerous situations.

However many say the class is just to tough to master. To many skills to learn, obtuse rotation, situational skills, and to large of a skill table. In fact many say that the Machinist actually functions better in the pvp scene where instead of having a table of 1 2 3 skills that need to be set off in an order to achieve maximum damage output, they are instead all consolidated into 1 singular skill slot and you Chain the set rotation by simply clicking the singular box 3 times instead of going in a 1 2 3 chain.

For me, the Astrologer and the Machinist are my favorite classes because IMO they offer the most rewarding combat. With Astrologer you are more than just your parties healer, with your Tarot Time system, you can offer astronomical buffs to not only yourself but depending on how lucky you draw in your deck of cards, can buff your entire party. And with Machinist, you just have more skills to work with.

I am unable to adequately play a class such as the Scholar and or the Dark Knight as their skill/spell tables just do not offer enough complexity and diversity to make me enjoy their style of gameplay. Then again many people prefer these classes as they say the simplicity is what keeps them enagage and for them is the right amount of complexity for them.

So when it comes to combat, do you prefer a more simplistic streamlined approach or do you crave big spell/skill tables and long term rotations? Simple or complex?

Personally, I prefer more busy jobs - which is why BRD and AST have always appealed to me. I always feel like I'm juggling something, and that keeps me engaged. Of course, I also have moments where I prefer to not juggle so much, so I play a "simpler" job like RDM or WHM. I've also always liked priority rotations over a strict 1-2-3 rotation.

I've seen a lot of players say BRD is particularly difficult to play because of all the stuff you have to keep up with, but I've never thought that. However, I've been playing it since I started this game in early HW. I think when you've played the same job for so long, it becomes second nature to you, and you can't grasp how others who haven't played it for years find it "too busy" or "too complex".

I Personally think it depends on where the simplicities and complexities lie within the game itself.

When you look at the combat system over time it has generally be dumbed down and simplified a hell of a lot. lots of fun and interesting mechanics have been scrapped in favor of simplicity such as incapacitions and battle regimens. crowd control doesn't exist anymore its just round it all up and aoe it down.. and all of these things are gone and some players say complexity is bad.

but then you have boring aspects of combat that are dull and uninteresting like positional requirements on melee classes. which can generally be handled by 1 step left or one step right. and you often see players asking for them to be removed or scrapped because they're just not fun or interesting. but then you see the same players that just said complexity is bad turn around and say simplicity is bad and they should be kept because they add complexity to the system..

but then the battle system as a whole is incredibly simplistic in that your rotation never really changes from one fight to the next to the next so it's just mash the same buttons in the same order virtually every time.

the only real complexity is in mechanics and even then it's temporary at best. once you see a boss do a tank buster 70 seconds into the fight you know he's going to do that every single time you do that fight and it turns into another dull and uninteresting fight incredibly quickly as a result.

I'm not really a fan of making things complex for the sake of making them complex. i kinda feel thats what they did with the whole battle system. added actions andbuttons simply for the sake of adding actions and buttons they don't really add anything to a battle it's just more things to press because players apparantly get bored if they have to wait a whole second to press something..

but i would welcome some more involved complexity. melee positionals are boring and bland, but i generally found incapacitaions to be a fun system that could have had a lot of potential.

some other quick examples could have been the elemental wheel they scrapped. that could have made fights interesting and varied, have a boss randomly decide to throw fire attacks back in your face so then you switch to thunder or something instead.

or i don't know maybe have a boss sidestep all vertical slashes from a melee or something... not the greatest of ideas but just things thought up in a couple of minutes. but they would make the combat more interesting and a bit more complex because using basically the same rotation against every boss would no longer work. and if you randomised encounters the same rotation probably wouldnt even work on the same boss twice...

I think the better question is Complexity vs Clunkiness.

I personally, do like Complexity within a job. It makes the game more engaging especially when it has such a long GCD.

However, the game has a fair amount of Clunkiness that is trying to be passed off as Complexity.

By that I mean... Jobs like Bard, Astrologian and Ninja are complex. But they also flow pretty nicely. Like, Bard has approximately 1 million oGCD's to manage, but they weave into their GCD's seamlessly. Astrologian has some unfortunate annoyance via RNG, but the cards themselves fit into the job seamlessly. Ninja occasionally has to deal with some Mudra lag, but otherwise, they can easily weave their Ninjutsu between their attacks.

This allows them to be complex, just because of the extra inputs they require or how many skills they will fire off, or managing an atypical resource (Cards).

However, you also have jobs like Machinist, Monk and Dark Knight which create complexity through clunky mechanics.

This is stuff like how Machinist's oGCD's have animations that prevent double weaving (Also, the awkwardness that is Overheat duration ticking down the exact moment you reach 100 heat) this is compounded by the nature of them having specific 10 second windows to dump everything they possibly can.

Monk has Tornado Kick eating GL3 and RoF debuffing SkS that again, creates a situation where you have to do more complex series of actions, in order to deal with a negative aspect of using their skills (Most notably, having to try and regain GL3 as soon as possible so you can use your oGCD's and Demolish at maximum strength again).

While Dark Knight has the whole "Dark Arts Spam Dark Arts DA Dark Arts Before Dark Arts Every Dark Arts Action" thing as well as resource management systems that they don't have a ton of control over (Unlike say, how BLM can easily spend and regain MP very quickly. DRK requires spamming of a second stage combo skill to regain MP outside of Blood Weapon. They're also locked out of Blood Weapon when using Grit), which is again, not a nice flow.

So yeah, that's a thing. I personally would prefer it if more jobs were Complex but not Clunky.

That said, I don't mind playing a simpler job if it can have some fun feedback, such as landing big ol' crits when swinging an Axe around, or chunking into an enemy with Midare Setsugekka.

Heck, even "Simple" jobs can have a feeling of complexity. Such as how Red Mage is a very simple job, but it feels like a more complex one because of how it constantly makes you switch up what skills your using based on procs and their Mana resource.

Or how Black Mage is made more complex by its inability to move and cast so it becomes a skill to be able to position correctly to enable you to sling spells.

Heck, even Blue Mage can feel complex when you're doing stuff like weaving in 1 second cast spells to enable you to utilize your oGCD's without clipping.

I like complexity. What I don't like is a giant kick-in-the-nuts DPS loss if I screw something up for a few seconds.

MCH is a good example. Was I paying too much attention to the encounter mechanics? Uh oh, I went into Overheat when I didn't mean to. SHIT! I'm not ready for this. Do I go ahead and use Wildfire even though a couple seconds have passed into Overheat? Ahhhhhhhhh! Push all the buttons! I'm panicking! Is my ammo available? Ahhhh, just spam cooldown! SHIT! I just screwed up my burst DPS period.

I also feel like MCH's Hot Shot and Gauss Barrel is unnecessary and stupid. I'm already keeping track of an irregular combo system, ammo cooldowns, wildfire/overheat burst periods, and making sure my turret is out. I don't also want to have to keep track of a boring one-button-press damage buff every minute. These abilities are NOT interesting.

BRD makes me feel busy, but if my DoTs fall because I was too busy dealing with mechanics, my punishment is having to push two buttons to reapply DoTs instead of one.

I like complexity without redundancy. For example I am loving DRK but mechanics like DA which are just spammed every few seconds before key abilities to me is just redundant. DRK has enough decisions and resources management.

I think the perfect middle ground is something like the Bard. It's enough intensity with dots, rotations, utility but has the smoothness of no casts and less punishing positional requirements. And the balance/trade off not being overly complex is 1. It has huge RNG sunk into it's damage output and 2. It's damage output is moderate at best compared to other jobs.

I think they are doing a great job with effort vs reward in this game.