zoning out/center extreme focus

The game's design choices, particularly concerning job roles, have sparked considerable debate within the community. A central point of contention revolves around the defense of "accessibility" often used to justify perceived shortcomings in job design. However, this argument falters upon closer examination, as the current implementation caters to a limited subset of accessibility concerns, neglecting other crucial aspects of player engagement and cognitive function. One significant issue stems from the extreme focus and zoning required by certain job designs. These designs often necessitate an intense concentration on a central point, leaving players vulnerable to disengagement due to a scarcity of triggers or stimuli. This can be particularly problematic for individuals with attention-related challenges or those prone to dissociation, where the lack of varied stimuli can lead to a loss of focus and awareness of the surrounding game environment. For players who experience dissociation, this intense focus can be akin to staring at a flickering candle, becoming completely absorbed in the flame and losing track of time and surroundings. The limited number of triggers in certain job designs exacerbates this issue, creating a gameplay experience that is not only unengaging but also potentially detrimental to players with specific cognitive sensitivities. Therefore, while accessibility is a laudable goal, it should not come at the expense of diverse and engaging job designs that cater to a wider range of player needs and cognitive styles.

The game's encounter design doesn't mitigate zoning out, and can even exacerbate it. This is because jobs lack complexity, relying on simple, repetitive patterns that require physical rather than mental skill. This absence of mental engagement fails to stimulate the brain, leading to disassociation during gameplay.

The repetition isn't a problem, for me personally. Sometimes I want something that repeats in a very braindead way like Warrior so that I can focus on mechanics, and when I'm used to the mechanics and bored of them sometimes I want something with a longer and more varied rotation even if it repeats (like Gunbreaker or Paladin).

I do agree that jobs could use more situational variety though, and I think how Dark Knight used to be able to transform almost all of its abilities into something else entirely was a good example of how that could work, because if someone doesn't know how to play then they just won't transform any of them and the defaults can be made to be "good enough, but could be better in some cases". By this I don't mean transforming the ability to do more damage, but rather to have alternative effects such as heals, AoE, extra mitigation, extra enmity, blindness, stuns, reducing recast time of another action, etc. Opportunities to show that you understand your job well. To an extent Sage currently has this and though subtle it feels better.

The truth is though, the extent of how busy DPS have often been in this game has heavily distracted from mechanics, especially with tight keep-up buffs, DoTs and positionals. They have resulted in tunneling mechanics and "zoning out" from doing them and the jobs being simpler have reduced this. I think that a lot of players like that.

Then there are players that don't, and want jobs to be infinitely harder so that there is a constant struggle between job mechanics and fight mechanics, so it doesn't seem like SE can win the argument when players aren't actually unified on this.

Yoshi-P seemed to start out being personally into the idea of challenging and distracting jobs and still says how he likes that himself, but you can see that his professional view as a developer has shifted to consider people other than himself and how a lot of players would struggle with these rotations or tunnel mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

The repetition isn't a problem, for me personally. Sometimes I want something that repeats in a very braindead way like Warrior so that I can focus on mechanics, and when I'm used to the mechanics and bored of them sometimes I want something with a longer and more varied rotation even if it repeats (like Gunbreaker or Paladin).

I do agree that jobs could use more situational variety though, and I think how Dark Knight used to be able to transform almost all of its abilities into something else entirely was a good example of how that could work, because if someone doesn't know how to play then they just won't transform any of them and the defaults can be made to be "good enough, but could be better in some cases". By this I don't mean transforming the ability to do more damage, but rather to have alternative effects such as heals, AoE, extra mitigation, extra enmity, blindness, stuns, reducing recast time of another action, etc. Opportunities to show that you understand your job well. To an extent Sage currently has this and though subtle it feels better.

The truth is though, the extent of how busy DPS have often been in this game has heavily distracted from mechanics, especially with tight keep-up buffs, DoTs and positionals. They have resulted in tunneling mechanics and "zoning out" from doing them and the jobs being simpler have reduced this. I think that a lot of players like that.

Then there are players that don't, and want jobs to be infinitely harder so that there is a constant struggle between job mechanics and fight mechanics, so it doesn't seem like SE can win the argument when players aren't actually unified on this.

Yoshi-P seemed to start out being personally into the idea of challenging and distracting jobs and still says how he likes that himself, but you can see that his professional view as a developer has shifted to consider people other than himself and how a lot of players would struggle with these rotations or tunnel mechanics.

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I mean yes what your saying would suggest Se can't win on either side if it wasn't for every role having 3-4 different jobs for different types of people.

How many hours and google double checks did it take you to create that post?

PS. getting your point across in plain words and simple sentences that even a non native speaker can readily understand makes you look more intelligent than that.

I have the opposite problem: the more complex the actions and combos are for a job, the less I tend to be able to play it adequately or even learn it... which in turn triggers a lot of emotional failure and "letting people down" responses in me. Aside from being neurodivergent I'm also aging, and I think both together contribute to this problem for me.

I think Jeeqbit raises a good point that with multiple jobs across a spectrum (eg. 4 different types of tank), the game can afford to offer a variety that meets both the needs of someone like you and someone like me. Jeeqbit mentions some former complexities of Dark Knight, so perhaps that would be the tank job for SE to focus for the kind of complexity that you're seeking. Just please don't take away the simplification of my Warrior, because of all the classes I've tried, I manage to play that one the best. I have a hard time keeping track of multiple things going on at once in a fight, so my actions and rotations being fairly simple helps me do that better.

So maybe the answer is for SE to have one or two jobs in a class that do what you're wanting with extra complexity in the actions, rotations, etc., one or two that are kept much more simplified, and then the rest being between those two extremes?

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Originally Posted by Nana_Bear

So maybe the answer is for SE to have one or two jobs in a class that do what you're wanting with extra complexity in the actions, rotations, etc., one or two that are kept much more simplified, and then the rest being between those two extremes?

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We had that. All of the complicated ones got reworked to the point that they're about as complex as healers because the savage/ultimate designers didn't want to account for the things that made those jobs what they were. This was stated explicitly by the guy in charge of battle content.

Jobs are the only variable and adjustable metric with accessibility floors and skill ceilings. This is a whole different story when it comes to encounters, and yet SE seems to have decided that what needs to be exacerbated are encounters out of all things.

i'll never understood how the game with EVERY job playable on a single character utilizes that barely anywhere.

i guess rolequests are the only thing.

but they could use it for so much more... making different jobs for different types of people is a very obvious one. no restart of the entire game if you realize in the lategame that your job is too difficult for you

Accessibility all across the board so that everybody can enjoy their favorite job, high-ceiling and optimization all across the board so that everybody that wants to go deeper into their favorite job can do so if they wish.
I don't know why this is so difficult to understand. The real reason is this cannot live in a world where encounters keep getting too overwhelming on the mental load except for a top crop of players.

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Originally Posted by Asari5

i'll never understood how the game with EVERY job playable on a single character utilizes that barely anywhere.

i guess rolequests are the only thing.

but they could use it for so much more... making different jobs for different types of people is a very obvious one. no restart of the entire game if you realize in the lategame that your job is too difficult for you

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Presumably because every job has to be "efficient" in high-end raiding, thus they all end up the same.

But I agree with you. The ability to play every job on the same character should be central to many aspects of the game, providing the opportunity for players of different skill levels to experiment with hard and easy jobs, or simply experience more obvious differences in flavor.

Job identity and arguably a difficulty spectrum across jobs is still preserved in PvP. A mode in which planning and strategic thinking is more important than rote memorization.