Am I the only one who prefers simpler jobs?

Tl;dr does anybody else not like very complex burst focused jobs and prefer things like WAR or SMN specifically because of their simplicity?

I have only been playing for a little over a year, so maybe I am just not good enough at the game, but I feel like I am the only person who likes simple jobs over the more complex and busy jobs. I do not like juggling a lot of stuff like buffs, DoTs, keeping my combos going, using ogcds on cooldown, etc. However I feel like I only see stuff about how much people dislike how simple and homogenous a lot of jobs feel.

Currently I main SMN, but I have spent a lot of time on all the casters. For the other two I feel like I am not putting out their max damage because they have procs or a lot of buffs/support that I just am not being efficient with. Now there are things I like about them, like RDM having on demand gap closer/back step or BLM focusing on sustained high damage over big bursts. I am definitely most comfortable with SMN, but a lot of people (or maybe just YouTubers) seem to think it is boring or missing something.

This became most obvious to me as I learned more about what the viper job will be like, because I was really hoping for a less complex job with the kind of sustained damage by just switching between high damage and recovery phases that I do enjoy in BLM. However it is looking to me more like viper is a new blend of stuff we already have in the other melee jobs while still being unique. That is fine as RPR is simple enough for me to enjoy playing from time to time, and maybe DRG will be reworked into something I can enjoy more, but I can't help but feel there is a niche in melee that is not being filled.

They're good in small doses, I leveled SMN specifically because I wasn't very good at the game after coasting into Endwalker never getting punished when I had zero situational awareness.

Every role can have a simple job, but over time I need a job with more to chew on so it doesn't get monotonous. SMN is fine when I'm going into a new fight blind but when it's Myths of the Realm in roulette again I find it really dull, some people also get mad with SMN because the job they used to enjoy simply doesn't exist anymore.

You're far from the only one. The most vocal players — like us on the forums — tend to lean towards the hardcore end of the spectrum. But never forget that the overwhelming majority of the player base is casual, and broadly speaking their preferences will lean towards the more simple end of the spectrum.

That's one of the reasons that I think SMN is such a great class: it's very simple, very straightforward, and thus it's a great class for casual players, players with certain disabilities, or even just players who don't feel like more of a challenge after a hard week. An MMO is at its best when it has a diversity of classes that allow both casual and hardcore players to play and enjoy the same game together.

Generally I like BLM, because it's one of the more involved classes, and I find that really satisfying. But I definitely have my days when I don't have the energy for that, and in those times, SMN is a great way to still play effectively in spite of that.

Simple jobs is absolutely fine.

The problem is when you combine simple jobs with simple content. And simple mechanics..

There's no engagement. Every job has a strict rotation you could essentially macro the whole thing if the devs didn't intentionally cripple the macro system. Every encounter heavily scripted and because brainless. And every system that added some depth to the game has been butchered and removed to the point that dps is literally everything.

Simple jobs would be fine if it wasn't combined with simple everything else... (as long as it didn't mean simple jobs were miles behind more complex jobs)

I'm am older player who is new to this game. I tried it out years ago but at the time the game wasn't for me. I've never been into the whole 50 different skill mmos, even though I have played many. As I have been mainly playing ESO since it was in alpha, I am getting reacquainted with the joy of mile long rotations.

I prefer more simple jobs,
because i play to have fun
not to have a second job. :)

Nothing is wrong with simple jobs, but with 21 jobs, and that number growing every expansion, there needs to be more to jobs then just having all of them be simple. Especially when it’s a job with depth to it, that gets changed into something simple.

Personally having simple jobs itself isn't a problem, simplifying jobs that were originally complex into simple jobs is the problem as there are players whom enjoyed that job and its complexity. For example the SMN rework was quite controversial by this reason but you don't see many people complaining about the simplicity of DNC as it is implemented as a simple job (at a mediocre level) from the very start.


As a player who started the game with Arcanist in Stormblood, I do miss the old SMN, and all the buttons such as Miasma, Bane, Shadowflare on SCH; I suppose it was partly our fault that we the players who liked the jobs didn't show enough appreciation on the forum back then and let the players whom couldn't handle the jobs or didn't even play the jobs complaining on how difficult those job were.

At the end of the day, I am still a SCH main, I feel disappointed with the new changes in DT but I probably will continue playing SCH.
(not that I care but since I am playing on JP, that weird strike won't affect me anyway haha)

As others as said, within a role there should be a spectrum of playstles and difficulties. Having simple jobs around is good, but there needs to be the complicated ones to

Simple is fine, but "Simple**" is where I think jobs should be. Jobs should be intuitive to play, and relatively jank free, but they do some funk, and a little bit of bite to them -- the asterisks, and quotation marks. What makes job 'funky' needs to be obvious, intentional, and intertwined with the job's identity. To me, mechanics like Continuation, Dual Cast -- along with mana balancing, and Iaijutsu, are good good examples.

Not sure what OP's definition of simple is but I'm guessing this is referring to like SMN/RPR/DNC. Low-paced, straightforward rotations with less points of failure. Like what others have said I think it's good for each role to have a job like that, an entire role being inaccessible would be a problem, but I just don't want every job to be that way.

I tend to run through several different jobs when running roulettes for tomestones/second chance points and I really enjoy the variety. I like using the current SMN and I was terrible at ShB SMN, but I still really miss the latter and wish we had both somehow. There's clearly jobs that aren't catered to me and that's fine. I'd rather the devs not make major changes and risk alienating the folks it's made for.

Simple and braindead are two different things. For example, I find Dancer simple but extremely fun, while the healing jobs are braindead boring AF.

The problem is that there's almost only simple to medium jobs left. The entire healer role plays the exact braindead 11111 playstyle, every tank burst except GNB is just WAR's Fell Cleave unga-bunga in disguise (and GNB is hardly complicated either). For casters RDM was supposed to be the simple easy caster-lite job, then they just made SMN into a glorified physical ranged with none of the complexity. And mind you physical ranged does not have a lot of complexity to begin with - And you'd think it would when they don't have to worry about movement downtime. As for melee, DRG, which used to be considered a good middle of the road entry point, is now considered only below Ninja in complexity (and it's not that DRG suddenly became complex).

You really only have Ninja and Black Mage left if you want to play a "complicated" job (and it seems they are trying to kill any kind of rotational wiggle-room for BLM, something that won't make it even easier to play but definitely simpler and less expressive, forcing you to stick to a strict unchanging rotation no matter what, even if fight mechanics make it more intuitive to adjust your number of Fire IV casts from time to time).

So no, liking simple jobs isn't bad. Asking that every job should cater to you would be, rather than having a gradient of complexity you can enjoy regardless of what kind of player you are. Or what kind of day you might be having. Unfortunately right now the game skews hard one way and is trending only further.

@OP: yes. i try not to play things with the expressed purpose of boring myself, since there's a lot of other games fighting for what free time and money I've got.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

Simple jobs is absolutely fine.

The problem is when you combine simple jobs with simple content. And simple mechanics..

There's no engagement. Every job has a strict rotation you could essentially macro the whole thing if the devs didn't intentionally cripple the macro system. Every encounter heavily scripted and because brainless. And every system that added some depth to the game has been butchered and removed to the point that dps is literally everything.

Simple jobs would be fine if it wasn't combined with simple everything else... (as long as it didn't mean simple jobs were miles behind more complex jobs)

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This is the essence of the problem...I don't mind a semi actiony playstyle of simple classes....I despise that all the classes are more and more just feeling like reskins and the content doubly so...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

The problem is that there's almost only simple to medium jobs left. The entire healer role plays the exact braindead 11111 playstyle, every tank burst except GNB is just WAR's Fell Cleave unga-bunga in disguise (and GNB is hardly complicated either). For casters RDM was supposed to be the simple easy caster-lite job, then they just made SMN into a glorified physical ranged with none of the complexity. And mind you physical ranged does not have a lot of complexity to begin with - And you'd think it would when they don't have to worry about movement downtime. As for melee, DRG, which used to be considered a good middle of the road entry point, is now considered only below Ninja in complexity (and it's not that DRG suddenly became complex).

You really only have Ninja and Black Mage left if you want to play a "complicated" job (and it seems they are trying to kill any kind of rotational wiggle-room for BLM, something that won't make it even easier to play but definitely simpler and less expressive, forcing you to stick to a strict unchanging rotation no matter what, even if fight mechanics make it more intuitive to adjust your number of Fire IV casts from time to time).

So no, liking simple jobs isn't bad. Asking that every job should cater to you would be, rather than having a gradient of complexity you can enjoy regardless of what kind of player you are. Or what kind of day you might be having. Unfortunately right now the game skews hard one way and is trending only further.

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This.

Right now the problem is that on top of having extremly simple job (hi SMN) most class fall under the ''simple'' side of complexity. It not that we hate simple job, but that they often just changed job we loved to make them simple and now it hard to find a good job unless you enjoy one side of the spectrum. There BLM and NIN being complex, will the rest are simple and there not much in-between those two.

I wouldnt have a problem with SMN if it kept this level of accessibility but also offered more depth and things to play with on top of it. Almost every job in the game is as approachable as SMN or close to it by just pressing buttons in succession, which is also what SMN does, but SMN however doesn't offer more things to do than to just press the same buttons again and again.

When I read enjoying simple jobs, what I truly read is "I enjoy reaching the skill ceiling of the job because it's literally on top of its skill floor". No expansion before EW has stopped very casual players to just take on the jobs they wanted and play with them perfectly fine in any casual content whatsoever even though we had no EW SMN back then.

The "Action Change" option is extremely good choice. It can satisfy people who want challenging inputs and people who wants satisfaction from simpler inputs. There are games that give player "input option" and they succeeded in doing so. I believe that FFXIV is going in right direction with "Action Change" feature and it should be expanded to more skills and abilities.

here's the thing, i enjoy simplar jobs, but whats simple to me might not be simple to someone else, I think Red Mage and Dark Knight are simple jobs, it's easy to figure out how to work all their abilities into a combat situation, however jobs like Black Mage and Gun Breaker seem overly complicated, there will be times where you wont even think to use certain buttons in those jobs and that's weird to me,

Right now in Dawntrail Ninja is the perfect balance of complexity and simplicity, you can play it in a simple way and still be effective and helpful to the party, or you can make it complex and work in every ability and get your own form of satisfaction doing it while, still benefiting the party, you have to actively suck to play ninja bad.

People keep saying Black mages skill ceiling has been lowered, listen I barely remember half the abilities they get let alone want to do the finger gymnastics to play it "good" by other peoples standards, f-that.