We have enough melee dps

I really hope they stop making more melee dps. I love the ones we have now and would like the other roles to get the same love the next few expansions. I'd also like melees that already exist to feel more fleshed out and not lose mechanics they have to put into a new job. Dragoon is the biggest victim of this. It used to be the dashing job, now all melees have a dash, they used to be the only job with a pseudo transformation with lotd then reaper and scholar got actual transformations and dragoon never got a winged mode. Dragoon only had being the weave heavy melee in endwalker and in dawntrail we've lost spine shatter dive, our eye buffs and now some nastronds. Also we lost our blue aura so viper and skybuilders tools could use it instead :p

Eh, I will say even the current ones are too many.

As long as Square insists on using only static-rotation-type gameplay for its jobs and only doing ballet-style combat encounters (either would be fine, but not the combination) then factually more than 1-2 per role is just a waste of resources, everything else could be done with skins and alternative weapons as mechanically the jobs largely do the same thing already. Even Viper, a job that had a huge chance to break the mold (seemingly bringing in heavy randomization with it's left/right lit-up combos) turned out to be the same do-the-same-learned-button-combination-until-you-fall-asleep boredom as all the other jobs. Even with it's shifting GCD, they had to add a haste effect so the difference is smaller so that the poor poor melee DPS won't be confused by their muscle memory having to account for two GCD lengths (nevermind that this is something Reaper and Ninja already do, so meh).

Such a shame. It just ends up wasting animation-, texture- and design-work on 0 added gameplay. That dev resources could be used for more content and encounters instead!

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Eh, I will say even the current ones are too many.

As long as Square insists on using only static-rotation-type gameplay for its jobs and only doing ballet-style combat encounters (either would be fine, but not the combination) then factually more than 1-2 per role is just a waste of resources, everything else could be done with skins and alternative weapons as mechanically the jobs largely do the same thing already. Even Viper, a job that had a huge chance to break the mold (seemingly bringing in heavy randomization with it's left/right lit-up combos) turned out to be the same do-the-same-learned-button-combination-until-you-fall-asleep boredom as all the other jobs. Even with it's shifting GCD, they had to add a haste effect so the difference is smaller so that the poor poor melee DPS won't be confused by their muscle memory having to account for two GCD lengths (nevermind that this is something Reaper and Ninja already do, so meh).

Such a shame. It just ends up wasting animation-, texture- and design-work on 0 added gameplay. That dev resources could be used for more content and encounters instead!

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If you complain about FFXIV job rotation simplicity other MMOs must make you scream out of boredom.

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Originally Posted by Atreides

If you complain about FFXIV job rotation simplicity other MMOs must make you scream out of boredom.

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Their entire point is that 14 uses lots of buttons to hide the fact it’s “rotations” are as shallow as a roadside puddle

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Their entire point is that 14 uses lots of buttons to hide the fact it’s “rotations” are as shallow as a roadside puddle

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I agree but at the same time those other bottons make jobs needlessly complicated. I know plenty people who swap without a second thought a job and WoW and have an easy time to perform at top levels, but casually swapping in FFXIV is a bit more of a struggle due to the punishing nature of not using the "lots of bottons" ideally.

People make it sound like it's waay too easy and you fall asleep playing any job in the game, I just can't agree with that because switching jobs is way more daunting in FFXIV than in any other game I have played yet.

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Originally Posted by Atreides

If you complain about FFXIV job rotation simplicity other MMOs must make you scream out of boredom.

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No, plenty other MMOs do it far smarter by not being static.

Complexity that adds no depth is, IMO, worse than not having any complexity in the first place. Just having 30+ buttons and 2 oGCDs to weave every GCD takes the same 0 brain cells as 1 button you press forever if it's a fully static rotation, it just gives you carpal tunnel faster (which is weird, you'd think the 1 button would, but that's not the case).

What other games do is that they:

* Give you a static rotation you want to do, but your resources are unreliable, and importantly never enough to actually pull that rotation off. But how much you're missing you cannot know in advance, so what portion of the rotation you can pull off is unknown.
* Base your ideal rotation of something that is fight and moment-specific, like gaining a crucial resource on a successfully timed dodge, which of course relies on having something to dodge.
* Proc-enable important abilities that are center to your design, or entire branches of rotations. Since procs are unreliable (even if fudged to be PPM like in WoW), this precludes having a static rotation, you never know when certain abilities can be used, and when they light up they might not be at the right time where you want to use them, or maybe you actually can't (if there's interreliance between procs and resources).

And that's 3 simple cases. Between procs, branching paths, resource capping, resource overcapping and unreliable resource generation, you can make brain-complicated rotations out of just 10-15 abilities max, usually 5-8 core ones would be enough.

The fact that FFXIV has so many abilities and does so little with it is just testament to what a failure it's basic combat design paradigm is. It hurts extra due to the amount of beautiful animations and visual f/x that are all just a wash of "cause X potency of damage" with virtually no identity or specificity.

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Originally Posted by Atreides

I agree but at the same time those other bottons make jobs needlessly complicated. I know plenty people who swap without a second thought a job and WoW and have an easy time to perform at top levels, but casually swapping in FFXIV is a bit more of a struggle due to the punishing nature of not using the "lots of bottons" ideally.

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This is a bit funny because in particular for Melee DPS, my primary problem is how similar they all play. They look so different on the surface, and yet you can make hotbar setups that work surprisingly similar in actual combat (a problem they share with tanks and healers, but less so with all ranged DPS). They're utterly homogenized but have a rather successful "facade" of differentiation that seems to trick quite a few people into thinking there's a difference.

Which is extra funny when you look at games where classes are actually different, and require extensive reading up to do something meaningful with it. And this can be something as simple as Guild Wars 2, which given it's plethora of stat combinations, skills and traits allows for multiple millions of character setups of which only a dozen are maybe optimal, and for different scenarios, meaning you need to know what wins against what based on context, which can swap frequently during a single raid or zone. And don't get me wrong, GW2 is not a good example because it's class system has a slew of its own problem, and it's not actually very good at deep combat anyways, being explicitly designed to be hyper-casual in its original release. And yet still, it runs circles around FFXIV's class design (only that, IMO, which is part of why I swapped from GW2 to FFXIV).

WoW is on a whole other level then, having more or less tried everything under the sun in it's long lifetime, and providing us with ample data about what works or doesn't work (and it's in fact the giant portion of why we know that all usable class design comes in four basic gameplay types: Static Rotation, Proc-Based, Resource-Based and Dynamic Branching). And again it has a slew of problems of its own, in particular in current class design, but it's a treasure trove of information on what to do and what not to do!

They justify having more melee because they have different gear sets which makes them totally unique wacky and interesting!

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

They justify having more melee because they have different gear sets which makes them totally unique wacky and interesting!

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If true I hate this xD

Carighan is on point, FFXIV combat system is extremely basic.
There's little to no interaction between players and bosses: you just do damage while bosses remain unfazed and do their assigned rotation.

A simple example:
Imagine a situation where a party is fighting a Garula.
This Garula will attempt to wild charge the group, however there's a tank action that if used successfully would topple it and create an opening for massive damage as the downed state opens up new and stronger attacks for all players.

Suddenly, tanks no longer need to have high DPS because their role allow them to create openings for increased damage, the game is no longer shackled into time awareness but you'll react to certain situations and move away from rigid rotations.

An enemy target a DRG for physical damage, perfect dodge Jump would make new powerful attacks available for a short period, so what that you have a brief invincibility? You're not doing damage if you don't use it correctly or maybe an enemy won't target you at all.

Of course this will never happen, but yeah, FFXIV is formulaic to a fault and no amount of skills and abilities will change its feel if all they do is become more flashy.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

No, plenty other MMOs do it far smarter by not being static.

Complexity that adds no depth is, IMO, worse than not having any complexity in the first place. Just having 30+ buttons and 2 oGCDs to weave every GCD takes the same 0 brain cells as 1 button you press forever if it's a fully static rotation, it just gives you carpal tunnel faster (which is weird, you'd think the 1 button would, but that's not the case).

What other games do is that they:

* Give you a static rotation you want to do, but your resources are unreliable, and importantly never enough to actually pull that rotation off. But how much you're missing you cannot know in advance, so what portion of the rotation you can pull off is unknown.
* Base your ideal rotation of something that is fight and moment-specific, like gaining a crucial resource on a successfully timed dodge, which of course relies on having something to dodge.
* Proc-enable important abilities that are center to your design, or entire branches of rotations. Since procs are unreliable (even if fudged to be PPM like in WoW), this precludes having a static rotation, you never know when certain abilities can be used, and when they light up they might not be at the right time where you want to use them, or maybe you actually can't (if there's interreliance between procs and resources).

And that's 3 simple cases. Between procs, branching paths, resource capping, resource overcapping and unreliable resource generation, you can make brain-complicated rotations out of just 10-15 abilities max, usually 5-8 core ones would be enough.

The fact that FFXIV has so many abilities and does so little with it is just testament to what a failure it's basic combat design paradigm is. It hurts extra due to the amount of beautiful animations and visual f/x that are all just a wash of "cause X potency of damage" with virtually no identity or specificity.

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Note that I do fully agree with your statement, but I do believe in the devs' minds it makes perfect sense because what they want their game to be is guitar hero where you don't play RPG combat but a musical instrument. The more buttons you have, the more you have to play it like an instrument. The unreliability or rng often gets in the way. The real goal is to execute your long string of button presses successfully like you'd play a set piano piece.