Lore-wise how do you explain your job's nerfs/inexplicable loss of skills/spells?

I know there's no basis for this in the lore (though some MMOs give tongue-in-cheek humorous lore reasons for rebalanbe patches), when your class gets buffed/nerfed or loses a skill from the expansion, how do you explain it?

The twelve routinely consume large portions of alcohol and roll heavenly dice on how to screw with the mortals below

Rhalgr, angry his ideas are not always added, despite not having gaming development experience himself... uses trick dice to ensure his changes to mch continue to spiral them down to hell.

Ther are not exactly "lost" per se, you just do not use them. Kinda like how red lotus blade is still a move, but not one used by the player.

Don't fighters change their tactics constantly? Surely constantly repeating yourself is a buff to your opponent. Changing your style is good.

What buffs? There are no buffs or nerfs, that's how it's always been. What is this..."stoneskin" you speak of?

If you fight someone constantly using the same tactics it is a buff to your opponent. You are predictable and vulnerable. A buff to them.

I accidentally lost my sheet music, and even though I made new songs and named them the same thing, I didn't actually remember my old songs.

It was never any different. It has always been this way, though next year it might have always been another way.

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

I know there's no basis for this in the lore (though some MMOs give tongue-in-cheek humorous lore reasons for rebalanbe patches), when your class gets buffed/nerfed or loses a skill from the expansion, how do you explain it?

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An evil wizard did it.

Tactics change and people figured out there's ways around it.

Take stoneskin... maybe one day the WoL decided that stoneskin was utterly useless, however through inspiration, they found a way to re-work through the newfound power of "lilies" which they self discoverd through their repeated trials and tribulation that grants instaneous and greater effect.

Originally their water spells like fluid motion used to hurt the enemies, but they decided to tone it down.

Surprisingly, there's many reference in the stories that seems to indicate that in most encounters, the WoL actually holds himself/herself back often.

If all else fails, blame Shinryu.

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

I know there's no basis for this in the lore (though some MMOs give tongue-in-cheek humorous lore reasons for rebalanbe patches), when your class gets buffed/nerfed or loses a skill from the expansion, how do you explain it?

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I don't. As far as I am concerned the game-mechanical abilities we have are at best an approximation to what the characters can/cannot do in-universe anyway.
So when then game designers change a job or class, that generally has no effect at all on what the lore says.

Despite wanting to keep my character's story as close to in game canon as possible, the continued changes to the ability system (mostly losing abilities and the scrapping of the cross class system, which do not seem to effect NPCs - NPC GLAs for instance are still seeing casting CNJ spells) mean I'm willing to evoke gameplay and story segregation here and have it that my character in character/story wise still uses scrapped 1.0 abilities like Red Lotus and War Drum, and can still cross class CNJ spells such as Cure, Esuna and Protect (and for that matter, even still use scrapped abilities and spells like MRD's Foresight and CNJ's Stoneskin), even though in game I'm no longer using them (because the game arbitrarily says I can't).

It doesn't harm the lore at all as ability changes are purely for gameplay and rarely fit into lore anyway, so it's a handwave I'm willing to accept in this case.

The abilities are just for gameplay reasons I reckon, I doubt anyone who actually fought using such a totally predictable rotation of moves would have made it to where my WoL is.

Interesting question. I haven't specifically wondered about it, but you've got me thinking now that you mentioned it.

My first thought would be that my WoL, a summoner, noticed quickly that, beyond Othard, his spells and egi weren't hitting as hard as they used to. It didn't take long to find out why: the concentrations and flow of aether were significantly lower than those of Eorzea.

Having identified the problem, he began to adjust his incantations, and experimented with ways to use the lower levels of aether more effectively. The very nature of his well-practised dreadwyrm trance had to be changed. His old routines (in martial-arts parlance, his "kata"), reliant on the wide-area disruption of enemy aether, were no longer mana-efficient. Instead, he focused his own aether into more intense and frequent applications of deathflare.

Smn Lv70 spoiler:

And the new knowledge revealed by Principia, allowed him to further manipulate his internal aether, and convert his egi into demi-Bahamut.

Hence his new "rotation". Some of Lyland's old spells became relatively weaker, but this was compensated with stronger bursts of flares, either from him or demi-Bahamut. More importantly, the new routine was just as effective outside of Eorzea as it was inside his native realm. And this was key to his overall effectiveness, wherever in the world he may be. ;)

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Originally Posted by Pomo

An evil wizard did it.

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The Lala's escaped the pentagram before the ritual was complete.

After numerous injuries to random citizens by stray bullets finally culminated in a noble taking a lead shot to the shoulder the Ishgardian government forbade the practice of machinists firing their weapons into the air. While they were at it they used their leverage to ban the use of grenades in combat and lower the number of bullets a firearm may contain at any given time. It is for these reasons that Joye left Ishgard, Steve planning to keep her out of sight until she can stop reflexively firing multiple rounds into the air every time she starts combat.

In order to compensate for these new rules and the sudden lack of cooperation with the lancer's and archer's guilds, Steve removed the safety device from the gauss barrel in order to allow the use of overheated bullets and improved the rate at which the aetherotransmitter manufactures wildfire pitch.

If I actually had to explain it to myself... Reality warping/teporal shifts, one minute it was there & the next it never was... you only think/know it was cause u have (as a mad scientist said once) a "Stiener" power, ie: "Echo", that allows you to remember reality as you origionally saw it & not how reality says you should have even if both are wildly different from another (alternate realities, world lines, etc.)

on a sub-note what we can do in-game & what we could do if FF14 was a real world with us stuck in it are totally different... I mean if we were in the "real" version nothing would stop us from mergiing any &/or all classes into 1 if we wanted

My THM used to use Physick, but as he grew more powerful he found it was too weak of a spell to suit his needs. He ended up ignoring it, and now isn't even aware it exists anymore, as if it was mysteriously wiped from his spellbook.

Keep em coming, I enjoy these

Can someone help me out with MNK? I'm at a complete blank because I can find 0 lore logic in making everything you do weaker. Maybe our supple flesh turned to butter from shoulder tackling gods all day.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If I were writing a story per say, these things would never be lost. That being said, as Dragoon for example, I like to think (ironically) that the WoL optimized, his DoT is missing because he/she can place it in one attack, he/she no longer needs to mentally or physically prepare for a stronger jump as it'd now be natural, etc.

Personally, I like the idea that the WoL has just evolved and developed new tactics. The spells aren't lost, they're still there -- evidenced by the fact that a lot of NPC's still use skills that have been removed.

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Originally Posted by Meng_Qing

Surprisingly, there's many reference in the stories that seems to indicate that in most encounters, the WoL actually holds himself/herself back often.

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That would be because there's a vast power level difference sometimes in the kinds of foes we battle. For example a primal slayer would surely have to hold back when he's fighting just some shmuck or he'd outright kill them with his attacks. The Warrior of Light isn't cruel :P

Lore wise is because an evil Troll named yoshida whom hides under a bridge somewhere and has the unique ability to alter those around it stats buff etc

Optimization... you don't use redundant skills in exchange for using new skills and combining older redundant skills to improve performance overall... start with easy skills and improve what you've learned from others after many countless battles... the WoL has developed and changed his skills based on experience against many foes

DRK 60-70 questline, crystal breaks in half due to another part of the WoL taking on a form of it own which is the desires of being forgiven as opposed to the first DRK trainer from 30-50 who is basically a manifestation of their true feelings (edgelords have it rough to begin) and logic dictates that we should have gotten those old abilities back but didn't... from a balancing standpoint should have given DRK more abilities to work with but make it feel more complete at 70 like PLD but they failed to do that... DRK nerfs were really unjustified in my opinion and should have made DRK better by giving them more damage mitigation debuffs as well as parrying magic damage... and let them keep their 3rd combo finisher...

A lot of it probably has to do with a mix of equipment and Aether use. It might be extremely difficult to channel Aether through your Chakra while using Inner Beast for example, or worse, it could potentially cause injury. I remember when we get the crafting Soulstones the guy says you cant use more than one at a time because the differences in Aetheric usage is potentially harmful. There is also the fact that a lot of equipment is tailored for using Aether in particular ways and will likely be far less effective, or even detrimental, if used with other techniques.

"Y'know, it doesn't feel like I'm dodging stuff with Featherfoot at all. This is the third time this week that Cruise Chaser slaps me even when I'm trying to dodge. Might as well not use it. And since I can't dodge that well, Haymaker's gonna be pointless too."
One-ilm Punch got optimized to have maybe some use sometimes.
I've got nothing on Touch of Death. If they'd buffed Demolish to compensate I'd just say we added the former to the latter for optimization but eh.

Well my summoner is really just bad with math and logic so she truly just copied all the spell from others...and made the mistake to lose one of the sides..she does not feel like asking one of her arcanist NPCs friends to let her copy the missing ones because that would totally show that she had no idea from the beginning. (She just bribed the Carbuncle with Cookies all the time to make it obey.) When she is asked why she does not use certain skills anymore, she just adjust her glasses and tells them that they dont pay her sub.

Also for derplander, he is simply called that way for a reason. Thanks to having a low attention span and because he often finds himself losing interest in a job, he likes to switch them (and Dragoon totally looked just cool with dragons). Thanks to that he starts to forget some of the attacks because there are simply way enough to remember. But who needs to remember all the skills if one has the echo right?

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Originally Posted by Kallera

Ther are not exactly "lost" per se, you just do not use them. Kinda like how red lotus blade is still a move, but not one used by the player.

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As you evolve as a warrior, you refine your skills and learn new ones. You are never static. You continue to grow and evolve - or you die on the battlefield. So for me, when skills get stronger or simply disappear, I imagine I have just refined my way of waging combat. I have developed a new technique, a new rotation, a new counter to utilize. It gets me through the day when no in-game narratives are presented. =)