Hot Take Inside: Remove raidwide buffs (2m) to explore new job design

(PART 1: Job Definitions)
The raidbuff window is probably the most restrictive element in this game. Even though jobs can build and burst at different rates, it's always optimal to have your highest burst phase at 2m, and with the change to Mug, it's abundantly clear that they're continuing to go down this path that forces a 20 sec burst -> 1:40 downtime.

So I have a suggestion. Burn them all.

Jobs bursting at their own intervals, though perhaps harder to balance, will make combat much more engaging for a variety of reasons for nearly all players involved.

I'll define a couple ground rule desires before we get into it:

- Dynamic Burst jobs - these jobs, like current BLM for the most part, have consistent damage output throughout the fight whose timings are almost entirely dependent on SpS. Black Mage can shift their GCDs to cover movement and react to procs.
- Personal Buff Window/Selfish Burst jobs - these jobs have set intervals where abilities or personal buffs come off cooldown (45 sec, 60, 90, etc) in an otherwise static rotation. These jobs are the most similar to today's job design, but each job having a different burst window timing might open up ideas laid out ahead
- Proc Jobs - these jobs are mainly proc focused, and their windows might shift due to RNG. They should still be powerful enough without variance, but the variance could add to their rotations.
- Support Jobs - jobs like AST and DNC that provide buffs to other party members might be in one of the other categories for their own burst windows, but their main draw (and difficulty curve) is understanding and optimizing around other players' burst windows.

(PART 2: Job and Fight Design)
Now, some design thoughts

1. Tanks and differing burst/buff windows
Tank design with a change in CDs for the burst window alone make them more interesting to optimize around fight mechanics, and fight design flourishes. GNB bursts at 60 while DRK bursts at 45, but the next TB is at 60? Let GNB handle it.

2. Selfish DPS and differing burst/buff windows
Differing burst phase timings allows for jobs to feel different. Most jobs could have their powerup at different times and it feels different to play from one another. Certain parties might have better or worse synergy, but as long as it is viable, this makes the combat fresh with new faces.

3. Support Jobs and their roles with Selfish DPS
Support jobs have a role that makes them feel fresh by virtue of the changes to Selfish jobs. For example, with a RPR that bursts at 45, a NIN that bursts at 60, and a BLM with dynamic bursts, shifting Dance Partner or AST cards for each burst window would be much more engaging. With more understanding of when each job bursts, it can foster skill expression and job knowledge without taking away identity, or you could place your procs on the highest ADPS player with no consequence.

I understand differing timers for moves (such as Delirium) were in the game in prior expansions, and a change like this may make support jobs feel clunky. However, I argue that the existence of raidbuffs' synergy with such moves are the real issue, because those differing bursts made the job itself "fun" to play, but in reality makes it feel bad when you have to wait 6 mins for your next Delirium to be caught under raidbuffs.

With the removal of raidbuffs, there could be a dramatic shift in job design and the way the game plays where jobs feel much more different than they do now. The game designed around a 2m burst makes it easy to know when you're on the right track as well as makes fights easier to design around (if they don't throw mechs at you during burst windows). However, I believe it's extremely restrictive to the variety of jobs, reduces player fight/job knowledge and optimization, and can be detrimental to future job design.

I generally don't mind having coordinated burst windows, I think it adds to tho cooperative element of the game. I just want them to develop more interesting things to do outside of the 2 minute burst, as most of what they've been adding is designed entirely around that window and a (now pointless) 1 minute window. Give jobs more rotational tools instead, like SAM's Shoha or BLM's Paradox, and less 60s/120s flashy cooldown crap.

I'd love to see the 2m window homogenization go up in flames, but I need to elaborate.

Currently, the 2m window informs (or at least should inform) fight design - this is probably worth preserving to prevent some jobs from getting screwed by downtime while others don't - having downtime timing that works for all jobs prevents jobs from being excluded from specific fights' rosters on those grounds.

However, the 2m window homogenization of job design could use variance - maybe some jobs do work on a 2m rotation, but instead of ALL jobs working based on that 2m window, maybe some could be on 1m rotations while others are on 30s rotations or 40s rotations - as long as they divide into 2m evenly, it works.

The problem with variable timing for raid buffs is that you run into anti-synergy between jobs that provide buffs on a shorter cycle and jobs that are on longer cycles, which would lead to concepts like 30s raid groups vs 2m raid groups, etc.

So I'd say that the important thing is to not have varying buff windows even if jobs have varying cycles, which means leaving the 2m raid buff window as-is is perfectly fine - they just need to stop acting like every job needs to be on 2m cycles - no reason you can't balance a 30s job to have the same output as a 2m job.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cjbeagle

I'd love to see the 2m window homogenization go up in flames, but I need to elaborate.

Currently, the 2m window informs (or at least should inform) fight design - this is probably worth preserving to prevent some jobs from getting screwed by downtime while others don't - having downtime timing that works for all jobs prevents jobs from being excluded from specific fights' rosters on those grounds.

However, the 2m window homogenization of job design could use variance - maybe some jobs do work on a 2m rotation, but instead of ALL jobs working based on that 2m window, maybe some could be on 1m rotations while others are on 30s rotations or 40s rotations - as long as they divide into 2m evenly, it works.

The problem with variable timing for raid buffs is that you run into anti-synergy between jobs that provide buffs on a shorter cycle and jobs that are on longer cycles, which would lead to concepts like 30s raid groups vs 2m raid groups, etc.

So I'd say that the important thing is to not have varying buff windows even if jobs have varying cycles, which means leaving the 2m raid buff window as-is is perfectly fine - they just need to stop acting like every job needs to be on 2m cycles - no reason you can't balance a 30s job to have the same output as a 2m job.

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I like this idea as well, and that definitely makes a ton of sense!

Actually, I thought about this some more, so here are some additional thoughts.

If the 2m buff window remained intact but jobs had varying cycles, you actually could/would run into a problem where stacking 2m jobs would be preferable since they'd benefit more from the buff window.

Balancing a 2m job with a 30s job is easy enough in any given situation, but not necessarily across multiple situations.

When you take the buff window into account, either the 2m jobs pull ahead because they burst higher or, if the shorter cycle jobs are balanced to be the same in that scenario, then the 2m jobs fall behind when the buffs in the burst window aren't as plentiful.

I'm not sure if the difference would be significant enough to matter, but it brings to mind something that FFXIV lacks that MMOs like WoW have, which is static/aura buffs.

Putting "window" buffs aside, static/aura buffs give players a reason to take a variety of classes instead of just piling on whatever is meta. The 1% bonus provided in raid finder (I think? I'm new, enlighten me if I'm wrong) helps with that, but afaik that doesn't apply to premade groups.

If FFXIV had those as well, that would alleviate any concern of stacking meta.

They could also avoid this problem by making sure the 2m jobs were the greedy dps so that stacking them to benefit from the buff window isn't an option since stacking only those jobs means no buff window in the first place.

I think the ship's already sailed on giving every raid buff a different timer, otherwise we'd still have various raid buffs and abilities still on 90 seconds like in ShB. I'd guess it's a balancing issue and it'd end up in the same spot as it is now if they tried that route. Agree that the jobs feel very restrictive with 2 minutes though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cjbeagle

I'd love to see the 2m window homogenization go up in flames, but I need to elaborate.

Currently, the 2m window informs (or at least should inform) fight design - this is probably worth preserving to prevent some jobs from getting screwed by downtime while others don't - having downtime timing that works for all jobs prevents jobs from being excluded from specific fights' rosters on those grounds.

However, the 2m window homogenization of job design could use variance - maybe some jobs do work on a 2m rotation, but instead of ALL jobs working based on that 2m window, maybe some could be on 1m rotations while others are on 30s rotations or 40s rotations - as long as they divide into 2m evenly, it works.

The problem with variable timing for raid buffs is that you run into anti-synergy between jobs that provide buffs on a shorter cycle and jobs that are on longer cycles, which would lead to concepts like 30s raid groups vs 2m raid groups, etc.

So I'd say that the important thing is to not have varying buff windows even if jobs have varying cycles, which means leaving the 2m raid buff window as-is is perfectly fine - they just need to stop acting like every job needs to be on 2m cycles - no reason you can't balance a 30s job to have the same output as a 2m job.

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Reminds me of polyrhythms in musical terms.

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Originally Posted by LauraAdalena

Reminds me of polyrhythms in musical terms.

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I had to look it up because I've never heard that term before, but after learning what you meant, that's exactly right.

The idea of having different cadences to fill out a timeline that overlap (thus the need to be different cadences - not just an offset) is commonly used in game design both literally, for system features like reward structures as well as figuratively, for gameplay beats themselves.

For example, a reward structure might give you something every 2 levels, something else every 5 levels, and something else every 10 levels.

Levels 1, 3, 7, and 9 won't have anything - maybe that's fine, maybe odd levels should have their own rewards - maybe not, whatever.

Players can look forward to every other level because of whatever that reward is, level 5 is presumably more exciting because it's something you don't get as often, but level 10? Level 10 you get the every 2, every 5, and every 10 all at once. That's quite a carrot.

As for gameplay, the concept of a downbeat is often used, but what isn't as commonly discussed is that downbeats generally only apply to intensity - there isn't actually a void there, or shouldn't be - that beat is just filled by something else.

For example the core layout of an FPS campaign level might look something like this:

Narrative----------------------------Narrative------------------------------------------Narrative-----------------------Narrative
--------------Spectacle---------------------------------------Spectacle---------------------------------Spectacle------Spectacle
-----------------------------Action---------------Action----------------------Action--------------------Action----------------------

Anywhere where there's a lack of action could be considered a downbeat, but you want to fill those moments with something else interesting to keep the player engaged even though you're not demanding anything of them at that moment.

Then, near the end of the level, various facets start to overlap into a crescendo, often ending on a downbeat.

Thank you for prompting me to learn what polyrhythms are - I'll remember that term!

It's a nice sentiment to try and fight off homogenization, but this isn't the way to attack it. A change like this would actively at most cause frustration on most levels or outright destroy jobs that's whole identity revolves around buffing the party's damage, the biggest ones being Bard, Dancer, and Astrologian. When you set up differing times on all burst windows the raid wide buffers like those three will instead just plan their whole raid wide burst windows around whatever catches the most buffs based on the jobs currently present in the party. That's how you create a hard set meta comp. Whatever selfish DPS, tanks, and healers burst windows line up best with some of the raid wide buffers will become 'the meta'. The ones that don't line up will be the ones left to the side that people will complain about here on the forums, leave out in party finders, and just feel overall dissatisfied about due to the public perception about their jobs.

We know this happens because it's happened before. The reason why timers got pushed down to 2 minutes is because players got very frustrated with how either some jobs struggled to line them up (ex: DRG, WHM), and other jobs who didn't line up were underperforming (ex: BRD in shadowbringers). Now of course the easy response to this is "Well we need to balance the numbers output to match." That's not so easy, as the more you differ the timers, the harder it becomes to balance out those numbers, as more variation in what can synchronize. It can take an entire expansion to get the balance right again, which will just get messed up again the moment a new expansion and set of abilities and number tweaks come out. Having easy to align burst windows is flat out just easier to balance overall.

The other thought to try and make this work would be to remove all raid wide damage buffs. Which would yes make balance in this hypothetical easier, but that would be one of the fastest ways to pretty much tick off the players of every job that has an identity centered around support. Ask how Dancers would feel if Technical Step was Removed, or how AST's would feel about the loss of Divination, or Bard's of Radiant Finale, Battle Voice and their songs. Heck with Bard and Astrologian mains, they don't even have to think of it hypothetically, they've already been there, when AST had it's entire card system thrown out the window, and when Bards lost Foe's Requiem for an entire expansion. Many AST players still miss the old card system and hate the new one, and Bard players spent an entire expansion giving the devs flack for taking away their support identity (which the devs relented with the return of Radiant Finale). It wouldn't go over well. And this is just talking about the jobs that's identity is tied into party support. Take away (or change entirely how they work to fit this hypothetical) Litany from Dragoons, Brotherhood from Monk, Mug from Ninja, Embolden from Red Mage, Searing Light from Summoner, and Arcane Circle from Reaper, and I'm pretty sure you're gonna get quite a few pissed off players.

It's just not the way to handle it. The chances for it creating unintended problems is just too high. I would also say from my own personal standpoint, the loss of party synergy and working together to create huge moments of burst windows, timing everything down to the second, calling out the window and everyone going all out is a very fun moment in game, that would be damaged. Making everyones rotation more unique would go a long way in making jobs feel different, but it would also take away from the co-operative aspect of the game.

Now this isn't to say I don't think what you're aiming for isn't a cause worth trying to fix, especially the downtime issues many jobs have in their rotation now. There are other ways to attack that though. Making resources more readily available, shortening cool down timers between primary burst windows. Having things like charges on abilities with short cool downs allows them to be spent outside of burst windows and then saved back up before the burst window (like Blood Letters on Bard, or fan procs on Dancer). Personal DPS buffs that have shorter cool downs then the super powerful raid wide ones can give jobs a feeling of a 'mini burst' that keeps downtime feeling a bit less boring (like Monk's riddle of fire). Pursuing options like these are a bit easier and don't have the ramifications of messing with the timers of, or removing, all primary raid wide buffs.