The main reasons behind the dissatisfaction of job gameplay

People have been complaining about jobs for a while now, and I'm not going to get into an argument of how much of the playerbase it accounts for, it's not what this thread is for. I am also not getting into the battle system in general and what has been lost, although that definitely counts for a lot of the lack of substance jobs can actually feed on during gameplay.

However, the dissatisfaction for a lot of jobs stems from multiple axes:

• The lack of filler gameplay: while we still do have relatively engaging burst sequences for most jobs (but healers...) overall, and while those burst sequences also have their own issues (see next points), the main problem is that once the burst is done, the filler sequences of most jobs but a few are not truly mechanically engaging and tend to consist of simply pressing 1-2-3, sometimes by keeping up something.
• Compounded by the 2 min burst design: Every job must adhere to it strictly, which not only generate homogenization, but also dramatically moved a lot of jobs from a 60s burst gameplay to a 120s one, which egregiously reduced the pace of executing their rotations, and left a lot more empty space only occupied by their filler sequences.
• The slow shift away from resource management: this point is trickier to explain, but most of the design tends to move toward a gameplay where actions are gated behind long cooldown buttons that the player presses every 60 or 120s, which then lights up the big attack without any other consideration. This mostly impacts the burst sequences of each job, but not only. One of the immediate consequences of this type of design is that it tends to systematically remove failure states, and by doing so, completely destroys skill expression.
• A good design shouldn't rely on long cooldowns: as a corollary to the point above, I do strongly believe that a job where most of its recasts are instant or on the GCD is infinitely better designed, because what will gate the use of abilities is the job's resources (gauges, mp, etc), as well as its internal mechanics. This generates a lot more points of failure, which in turns introduces skill expression, and a rewarding experience when pulling it right.
• A rigid design forcing players into following a script to a T: recently put under light with the new BLM changes, this in conjunction with the 2 min meta and rigid "press a button, you get your 2min nuke", seems to indicate that the dev teams wants to keep an increasing amount of control over their rotations that can now be unfolded into a rigid piece of paper with a list of actions to do after another. The most egregious example of this is SMN, which is a rigid list of summons to cycle through by spamming the same button. I do not feel that this type of coercive design is beneficial to job gameplay at all because it removes all freedom and expression.
• The constant removal of player agency: one of the most rewarding elements of job gameplay is the amount of agency it gives to players, and the choices that stem from its toolkit. The problem with the current design philosophy of XIV is that agency is constantly being removed. One simple example among hundreds is found in some of the rphys roles where rotations are strictly regimented behind long recast GCD weaponskills that need to be strictly used on cooldown, which not only makes the jobs inflexible for downtime in some cases, but also require players to follow their script even more not tolerating any variations and choices resulting from encounters and context. It is, in my opinion, infinitely better when abilities can be delayed or moved around more freely, and when using them within the frame of the job's rotation rewards choice and brings agency, within laxer constraints tied to the job's resources like the gauge or other mechanics.

All of these points might be with the intent of designing the jobs around dps checks - that aren't present in the majority of content. If this is the case, I don't know that I'd say it was worth it.

Really couldn't have said it better, thanks for this :cool:

The thing that makes it boring is lack of flexibility or diversity.

Your rotation is the same in this fight as it is in that one and same again for the next one. You press the exact same buttons in every burst with little to no thought or consideration for anything...

If it wasn't for the fact queuing skills doesn't work you could macro entire rotations and be done.. if you went third party you probably could anyway. My keyboard let me create and bind some long ass excel scripts and key sequences to keys. So an xiv macro would likely be a piece of cake.

It's all brainless design choices and it all stems from a fear that players might make mistakes and that's not allowed.

Bosses every fight is 98% the same. There may be the odd mechanic that switches. Like it could be a or b. But you always no if it's b now the next one will be a... no randomness or diversity. If bosses were random this game would be brutal because of the jarring disconnect between what players see and what is actually happening.. which ironically would probably go a long way to helping healers out because there'd be a ton more healing to do. As it stands now you can dodge a mechanic sometimes a minute before it even begins.

Just makes things tediously boring and repetitive.

I'll be honest, i think a lot of this dissstisfaction is in the heads of players. Yes, some thing could be better or diffrent, but its not that serious as some people in this game want it to be.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Silberzerox

I'll be honest, i think a lot of this dissstisfaction is in the heads of players. Yes, some thing could be better or diffrent, but its not that serious as some people in this game want it to be.

---

The thing is that people aren't asking for some fantasy that they made up in their head. They are asking for the skill expressions that we have already had in the past. Stormblood is the best the battle system has ever been and instead of looking back at what people enjoyed about the past, we are getting mechanics that double down on what players don't like.

It's not necessarily about specifics, it's about direction. I'm sure you've heard of the boiling frog analogy, well the water has been heating up since shadowbringers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by fulminating

All of these points might be with the intent of designing the jobs around dps checks - that aren't present in the majority of content. If this is the case, I don't know that I'd say it was worth it.

---

Even in the content that has DPS checks, a lot of them are so lenient that they might as well not exist even when the content is current.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Silberzerox

I'll be honest, i think a lot of this dissstisfaction is in the heads of players. Yes, some thing could be better or diffrent, but its not that serious as some people in this game want it to be.

---

Yeah yup. You're right. It's all in my head. I should be thankful that I'm going to be level 100 and spamming one singular button in broil or art of war again for another 2 years. Very fun and engaging for sure

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lambdafish

The thing is that people aren't asking for some fantasy that they made up in their head. They are asking for the skill expressions that we have already had in the past. Stormblood is the best the battle system has ever been and instead of looking back at what people enjoyed about the past, we are getting mechanics that double down on what players don't like.

---

The issue is that "players" is an enormous group of people. What any one of us personally considers the "best" or "enjoyable" others could find the complete opposite. We're getting mechanics that double down on what certain players don't like...but others do. Times change, the playerbase changes, and the dev team goes with what works best overall. It's impossible to please everyone, so they go with the approach that pleases the most.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Striker44

The issue is that "players" is an enormous group of people. What any one of us personally considers the "best" or "enjoyable" others could find the complete opposite. We're getting mechanics that double down on what certain players don't like...but others do. Times change, the playerbase changes, and the dev team goes with what works best overall. It's impossible to please everyone, so they go with the approach that pleases the most.

---

Will there be another CD key sold out?

So far there's no news about it, and the log in queues are so short for me and all of my friends.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Silberzerox

I'll be honest, i think a lot of this dissstisfaction is in the heads of players. Yes, some thing could be better or diffrent, but its not that serious as some people in this game want it to be.

---

It definitely hits harder when you have played long enough to remember times where those issues were less present, or absolutely absent. I'll not deny it.

I think its not so much job design (though theyre working hard to ruin that) and is more the battle content design. The only existing gameplay mechanics in fights are attack the enemy, and dodge aoes.

Mana never needs to be managed, aggro never needs to be managed, there is nothing but different forms and inversions of avoiding aoes.
On top of that, nothing in the game deals even moderate damage. Or in the case of savage, there is no damage, only playing perfectly or being dead.
Hell, maybe even removing stamina a long time ago was a mistake xD

Boss auto attacks arent real and you cant convince me they are, they are juat a filler animation to keep the boss from looking like its just standing there watching as you play DDR with ground aoes.
Tankbusters are a single auto attack.

Heal or dps checks arent fun even if they can be hard. Because its just, you have to press your buttons now. You dont do anything out of the ordinary to interact with the mechanic, its more just a break from aoes tbh. Dps still dps normally, and healers actually press something other than their single attack button. Its not hard, its just, actually use your abilities rather than standing there looking dumb glaring at the boss.

They need to change the formula. All dungeons and alliance raids are add pulls up to each of three bosses, and everything else is a boss. Some alliance raids just dont have adds.

I still do think that this job design would still bore me to death even within a better and more varied encounter environment. Adjusting to chaos and surprises sure can come from encounters, I'll not deny it, but if the the mechanics of my job aren't intricate anyway, what's the point? It's just one example of course but how can you make it even more engaging for a warrior to play around their self sustain if it's just a stupid button to press every 25s and it puts you back to full life? That's the kind of job design we have right now.

On top of it, if you bring more varied encounters and whatnot, jobs will start feeling absolutely miserable because their rotations have been rigidified to sky high so much to play exactly like the devs want and no other way at all that any significant variation on a fight structure will just make everybody feel awful because nothing fits their stiff rotation anyway. It's just going to be a pain. Even downtime those days is a absolute pain for some jobs and it's getting worse and worse.

Bumping this thread, since DT released in the meantime and the first tier of endgame encounters as well.

I do think DT still unfortunately compounds all of the points I made in the OP, but with the exception of the very last one, which seems to have been addressed with the two new jobs in the roster: VPR and PCT. And while VPR doesn't meet unanimous criticism for other reasons, PCT is generally praised for the freedom it allows players to have agency on what they want to use and when, which is helped by the way its resources work and how its moving parts aren't scripted to a T.

What a shame other jobs couldn't get a similar treatment.

Balance would still be an issue.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TBerry

Balance would still be an issue.

---

dude the game currently isn't balanced

One thing that is inherently tied to job design rigidity is the actual encounter design. It's made with almost total uptime in mind and that restraints things a lot. For example, imagine if we had side platform to the arena, and by the end a priority add spawned. Obviously some GCDs would be lost for some people to get there - and it would probably feel horrible with the current job design.

As long as they keep with their formula of mirrored mechanics, always predictable raidwidess, boss self centering to have symmetrical danger zones - heck, in Endwalker you could literally use the floor tiles to gauge the AoEs - this structure potencializes the 'stiffness' of job design.

That's why so far I've been let down by what we got in High End raids (fights are great, don't get me wrong, but I expected more substantial novelties) and the prospects of job changes that we might get in 8.0. I'm waiting to see what's going to happen with 7.1's High End duties, because according to some people this was never meant to be heavily featured with 7.0 duties, and I hope that my impression changes.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raikai

One thing that is inherently tied to job design rigidity is the actual encounter design. It's made with almost total uptime in mind and that restraints things a lot. For example, imagine if we had side platform to the arena, and by the end a priority add spawned. Obviously some GCDs would be lost for some people to get there - and it would probably feel horrible with the current job design.

As long as they keep with their formula of mirrored mechanics, always predictable raidwidess, boss self centering to have symmetrical danger zones - heck, in Endwalker you could literally use the floor tiles to gauge the AoEs - this structure potencializes the 'stiffness' of job design.

That's why so far I've been let down by what we got in High End raids (fights are great, don't get me wrong, but I expected more substantial novelties) and the prospects of job changes that we might get in 8.0. I'm waiting to see what's going to happen with 7.1's High End duties, because according to some people this was never meant to be heavily featured with 7.0 duties, and I hope that my impression changes.

---

It's 7.2 iirc, so next savage release. I'm kind of reserving my final judgement till then as well, DT definitely stepped things up in the normal mode encounters, but I think people are giving the first savage tier a little too much credit, when its more innovative mechanics are underused. We'll see what the next tier brings, but I'm also in agreement with the people saying that good encounter desing + boring job design is still a formula for failure.

They’ve also boxed themselves in so badly with the structure of the burst window, savage basically requires full uptime at this point because if it doesn’t burst heavy jobs are always going to pull ahead because you will always dump filler to move the burst window around around downtime

100% uptime no cleave fights are severely restricted in their innovation potential

Can you imagine the modern jobs playing in coils, coils feels like a different game entirely

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Can you imagine the modern jobs playing in coils, coils feels like a different game entirely

---

You don't even have to go that far back to see that the design is very limiting.

Look at Thordan Unreal. If you did that fight on any gauge job, you'd see how broken they can get with any sort of downtime. You can see it in DSR too, remember how all the RPRs suffered a major damage loss unless the party held damage until close to enrage so the RPR can build their gauge.

The design they went for in EW and continued in DT is unsustainable for any job except ones that function off cooldowns. Gauge jobs just do not function with downtime when faced with their rigid design.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aravell

You don't even have to go that far back to see that the design is very limiting.

Look at Thordan Unreal. If you did that fight on any gauge job, you'd see how broken they can get with any sort of downtime. You can see it in DSR too, remember how all the RPRs suffered a major damage loss unless the party held damage until close to enrage so the RPR can build their gauge.

The design they went for in EW and continued in DT is unsustainable for any job except ones that function off cooldowns. Gauge jobs just do not function with downtime when faced with their rigid design.

---

Which is part of the reason that I feel people say that PCT is too powerful, simply because rather than just generating the core of its burst via cooldown it generates literally everything relevant to its rotation independent of the presence of the boss

PCT just seems to be the logical endpoint of the current design and it only feels overpowered because half the rest of the game is still trying to pretend like gauge and CD jobs are equal

Worth noting that another limiting part of the design is that your burst cooldowns and such are all on rails (except PCT, who gets more freedom to choose where to use theirs).

And since job burst is on rails, that also means that no one actually wants to deal with any add spawns. After all, who wants to waste a big cooldown on an add instead of the boss? That means that interesting add phases are out for potential fight design too.

Agreed 100% with total lack of player agency; it's a big one for me. It's been removed from every facet of the game, basically, so that the entire experience is on rails now.

But even bigger is that there are too many buttons, and almost all of them do the same thing: some damage. The ones with any side-effects mostly just establish a proper button-pressing order. Since there is no room or opportunity for variation in combat, they have to artificially enforce "complex" rotations by throwing more and more buttons on the pile. Take the Machinist's Hypercharge, for example: you press that, and it then allows you to execute a ten-button combo in which all ten of the buttons just do a bit of damage. So it would be functionally equivalent to Hypercharge itself doing big damage and then locking all your other buttons for seven or eight seconds. But it has to feel "complex," so the game makes you press the ten extra buttons.

Almost every job is designed this way, where, if you think about it too much, you realize that you're just pressing extra buttons because the game wants you to press more buttons, not because you're doing interesting things with your class or frantically responding to dynamic combat situations. Like Continuation on Gunbreaker is literally "your previous skill didn't do all of its damage, but you can press this extra button to do the rest of it." It's silly. I know people argue that it's part of a FFVIII fantasy, but it's not the same, because it's just another boring button on a hotbar.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TemporalFruitsAndVeggies

Agreed 100% with total lack of player agency; it's a big one for me. It's been removed from every facet of the game, basically, so that the entire experience is on rails now.

But even bigger is that there are too many buttons, and almost all of them do the same thing: some damage. The ones with any side-effects mostly just establish a proper button-pressing order. Since there is no room or opportunity for variation in combat, they have to artificially enforce "complex" rotations by throwing more and more buttons on the pile. Take the Machinist's Hypercharge, for example: you press that, and it then allows you to execute a ten-button combo in which all ten of the buttons just do a bit of damage. So it would be functionally equivalent to Hypercharge itself doing big damage and then locking all your other buttons for seven or eight seconds. But it has to feel "complex," so the game makes you press the ten extra buttons.

Almost every job is designed this way, where, if you think about it too much, you realize that you're just pressing extra buttons because the game wants you to press more buttons, not because you're doing interesting things with your class or frantically responding to dynamic combat situations. Like Continuation on Gunbreaker is literally "your previous skill didn't do all of its damage, but you can press this extra button to do the rest of it." It's silly. I know people argue that it's part of a FFVIII fantasy, but it's not the same, because it's just another boring button on a hotbar.

---

Hypercharge is the epitome of artificially inflated difficulty through APM, exclusively relying on activity busyness to cover for the fact that it's just spamming the same buttons over and over until you get carpal tunnel. It's a remnant of their big new trend that showed up in ShB where every job suddenly had to become like WAR with Fell Cleave spamm (DRK Delirium, MCH Hypercharge, etc), because apparently it's funnier to spamm big moves instead of playing piano (like old Rapid Fire did with the main combo).

Now amusingly enough they've been moving away from this model a little by reducing the amount of Fell Cleaves (we went down to 3 instead of 5), and replacing abilities with new visuals like on the DRK Delirium combo or the PLD Blade combo, just to make it "feel different" and "less spammy". I don't know about you, but while I do appreciate the flavor in feel that it brings (this has to never be understated, even the new Blazing Shot feels great in comparison, it's snappy), it also hints to a somewhat bankrupt design behind that seems unable to find anything of actual interest to bring to the table.

But overall within their design that has tried to exclusively focus on encounters instead of jobs it only makes sense that they're trying to automate rotations by removing the thinking part of them as much as possible, to replace it with memory patterns and cranked up APM which are much more modern encounter friendly.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valence

Now amusingly enough they've been moving away from this model a little by reducing the amount of Fell Cleaves (we went down to 3 instead of 5), and replacing abilities with new visuals like on the DRK Delirium combo or the PLD Blade combo, just to make it "feel different" and "less spammy". I don't know about you, but while I do appreciate the flavor in feel that it brings (this has to never be understated, even the new Blazing Shot feels great in comparison, it's snappy), it also hints to a somewhat bankrupt design behind that seems unable to find anything of actual interest to bring to the table.

---

I generally care less about flavor; skill visuals are fairly meaningless to me (I know I'm in the minority here). What I want to feel like is either that my job brings something unique and beneficial to the table, OR that I have a cool set of tools for dealing with multiple potential combat situations. But FFXIV doesn't have multiple potential combat situations, and job uniqueness has been a major complaint of the community for several years now, so, yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head with "bankrupt design."

In so many areas of this game -- combat, open-world design, rewards design, the roulette system, inventory/glam systems, hell, even the generally clumsy UI -- it feels as if they've designed themselves into a corner and have no idea how to get out. And although we saw some early grumbling about it as far back as Shadowbringers (though, at the time, it was readily dismissed), we're now seeing it in earnest from a big part of the long-time player base. I have a strong suspicion that in the rush to go from 1.0 to 2.0, a lot of corners were cut, resulting in the entire foundation of modern FFXIV being a giant plate of spaghetti. And the devs are either unable to or unwilling to untangle it so that they can make fundamental changes to the game's core systems. That's why things like FATEs haven't been updated in a decade, and why job updates are so uninteresting, with most of them just being capstones that are like, "okay press this button again and it will do big damage again" -- looks cool, sure, but from an engagement perspective, is about the least interesting change possible.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valence

Now amusingly enough they've been moving away from this model a little by reducing the amount of Fell Cleaves (we went down to 3 instead of 5), and replacing abilities with new visuals like on the DRK Delirium combo or the PLD Blade combo, just to make it "feel different" and "less spammy". I don't know about you, but while I do appreciate the flavor in feel that it brings (this has to never be understated, even the new Blazing Shot feels great in comparison, it's snappy), it also hints to a somewhat bankrupt design behind that seems unable to find anything of actual interest to bring to the table.

---

It's been trending this way for a while, but very few jobs actually got anything that feels new. It's overwhelmingly potency upgrades, "new" abilities that are just animation changes for old abilities, or extra things tacked onto 1 or 2-minute CDs. Tanks also got largely unneeded mitigation upgrades and healers got more niche healing cooldowns that are rarely needed in most content. The other running theme is that most of these abilities sound and/or look terrible.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Daralii

It's been trending this way for a while, but very few jobs actually got anything that feels new. It's overwhelmingly potency upgrades, "new" abilities that are just animation changes for old abilities, or extra things tacked onto 1 or 2-minute CDs. Tanks also got largely unneeded mitigation upgrades and healers got more niche healing cooldowns that are rarely needed in most content. The other running theme is that most of these abilities sound and/or look terrible.

---

This ultimately makes sense within their own vision for the game since the devs have been quoted to say in interviews that they were quite happy with the current model they had for the pve game right now. I think that specific line was dropped just a little before DT or the media tour, so it's relatively recent still. Now they have finally noticed that it's not just a few disgruntled voices but it goes a long way to show the absolute disconnect they have created between 2 parts of the community: people that are on board with it either due to being newer players or just appreciating the shift, and people that just feel alienated by it like myself.

When you decide to change the core of your game like they have you have to expect that at some point you'll generate big fracture in the audience and community that are hardly reconcilable after the fact.

The solution of the current job design isn't only RNG element but also let's not forget this:

Choosing the right attack on the right time!.. with no CD on all of their attacks.. it is just 0 CD and mana cost to their skills

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TemporalFruitsAndVeggies

And although we saw some early grumbling about it as far back as Shadowbringers (though, at the time, it was readily dismissed)

---

People were so happy to dismiss any complaints as long as it wasn't affecting their main job. Like how you can clearly see people that don't even play melee jobs telling those who main the jobs that they should lose all positionals so the role is easier to pick up, for example.

Shadowbringers only massively simplified MCH and the entire healer role, so the majority of the community didn't care. "Nobody plays those jobs anyway".

Then Endwalker started on the DPS jobs. The SMN rework created a massive rift in the middle of the SMN playerbase, the SAM Kaiten removal got a lot of them angry. The DPS realise that their jobs aren't untouchable, so the grumbling started getting louder.

Then Dawntrail happened and the very well-received VPR got changes before most of the playerbase even got a chance to get better at it. Now the trust in the job design team is at an all-time low.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aravell

People were so happy to dismiss any complaints as long as it wasn't affecting their main job. Like how you can clearly see people that don't even play melee jobs telling those who main the jobs that they should lose all positionals so the role is easier to pick up, for example.

Shadowbringers only massively simplified MCH and the entire healer role, so the majority of the community didn't care. "Nobody plays those jobs anyway".

Then Endwalker started on the DPS jobs. The SMN rework created a massive rift in the middle of the SMN playerbase, the SAM Kaiten removal got a lot of them angry. The DPS realise that their jobs aren't untouchable, so the grumbling started getting louder.

Then Dawntrail happened and the very well-received VPR got changes before most of the playerbase even got a chance to get better at it. Now the trust in the job design team is at an all-time low.

---

I guess my issue personally is less with simplification (because I think any complexity we've ever had has been wholly artificial just for complexity's sake, maybe with the exception of BLM) and more with the fact that, complex or simple, job identity is basically gone, there's no player input or customization at all, and each job is so confined to its specific trinity role and fights are so meticulously scripted that there's just no...surprise in combat. Even if a fight is very difficult, it's still just automatically stale by the fact that it'll be exactly or basically exactly (accommodating small different permutations of mechanics) the same every single time. You never get the thrill of reacting to something unexpected.

For example, in GW2, Elementalists have a skill called "Rebound!" that negates the next lethal blow within five seconds for you and your allies and heals them instead. You don't have to be playing a healer build to use this skill; you can be full DPS and take it to help cheese a mechanic, or just save weaker players, etc. It allows for a lot of skill expression, and it's just one skill on one class. With the exception of maybe Rescue, FFXIV just doesn't have stuff like that, and it would be really cool if it did.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TemporalFruitsAndVeggies

I guess my issue personally is less with simplification (because I think any complexity we've ever had has been wholly artificial just for complexity's sake, maybe with the exception of BLM) and more with the fact that, complex or simple, job identity is basically gone, there's no player input or customization at all, and each job is so confined to its specific trinity role and fights are so meticulously scripted that there's just no...surprise in combat. Even if a fight is very difficult, it's still just automatically stale by the fact that it'll be exactly or basically exactly (accommodating small different permutations of mechanics) the same every single time. You never get the thrill of reacting to something unexpected.

For example, in GW2, Elementalists have a skill called "Rebound!" that negates the next lethal blow within five seconds for you and your allies and heals them instead. You don't have to be playing a healer build to use this skill; you can be full DPS and take it to help cheese a mechanic, or just save weaker players, etc. It allows for a lot of skill expression, and it's just one skill on one class. With the exception of maybe Rescue, FFXIV just doesn't have stuff like that, and it would be really cool if it did.

---

Complexity in Heavensward wasn't what I'd call artificial. Game knowledge carried you very far back then, skill expression was available and jobs had identity and nuance.

What we have now is completely artificial difficulty, I wouldn't even call it complexity. There's just 'do damage', 'increase damage', 'take less damage' and 'heal for X' abilities now, no nuance, no complexity, no skill expression, no gameplay. The whole game is basically on rails.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aravell

Complexity in Heavensward wasn't what I'd call artificial. Game knowledge carried you very far back then, skill expression was available and jobs had identity and nuance.

What we have now is completely artificial difficulty, I wouldn't even call it complexity. There's just 'do damage', 'increase damage', 'take less damage' and 'heal for X' abilities now, no nuance, no complexity, no skill expression, no gameplay. The whole game is basically on rails.

---

That's fair. I'll defer to you, then, because I honestly don't remember too much about Heavensward because it was so long ago. I mostly remember the Machinist's ammo system, since I mostly played Machinist, but I can't remember if it was meaningfully more complex, or just different.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TemporalFruitsAndVeggies

That's fair. I'll defer to you, then, because I honestly don't remember too much about Heavensward because it was so long ago. I mostly remember the Machinist's ammo system, since I mostly played Machinist, but I can't remember if it was meaningfully more complex, or just different.

---

Complexity is difficult to define as what one finds complex may be simple for another, so let's speak of nuance and identity instead. Let's use MCH since you're familiar with it.

MCH in HW had multiple abilities that interacted with the kit and had their own nuance on when to use them. Gauss Barrel increased your damage BUT also gave you cast times, Rapid Fire made every action instant for the duration, ammo affected your shot combo and Wildfire compiled damage instead of total number of hits. Already we can see that HW MCH had a kit that interacted with itself and had a strong identity as a gunslinger with a turret.

Now we see MCH in DT. All the tools are disjointed from your main filler, you don't even use your main filler during Wildfire anymore, there's no more ammo so you cannot manipulate your kit, Hypercharge is just artificially forcing you to single weave, and Flamethrower is just completely worthless. No nuance, weak identity, job on rails.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by noumen0nn

It's 7.2 iirc, so next savage release. I'm kind of reserving my final judgement till then as well, DT definitely stepped things up in the normal mode encounters, but I think people are giving the first savage tier a little too much credit, when its more innovative mechanics are underused. We'll see what the next tier brings, but I'm also in agreement with the people saying that good encounter desing + boring job design is still a formula for failure.

---

7.2? That's like at least 5+ months from now. That sucks... if 7.1 ends up being pretty similar to 7.0, I'll just let my sub run out late November and go find something else to play, really.

Also if I could choose, I'd invert things over and put the "job expansion" first, and then the "encounter expansion".

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raikai

7.2? That's like at least 5+ months from now. That sucks... if 7.1 ends up being pretty similar to 7.0, I'll just let my sub run out late November and go find something else to play, really.

Also if I could choose, I'd invert things over and put the "job expansion" first, and then the "encounter expansion".

---

My expectations are that 7.1 will be pretty much "7.0 part 2" in every way. The only thing that keeps me interested in FF14 currently is the PVP reword scheduled there, cause that may have me interested in playing until 7.2.

As for the other thing... their explanation is that they can't remold jobs without having an idea how content should look like. If that works or not, only time will tell, really.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raikai

Also if I could choose, I'd invert things over and put the "job expansion" first, and then the "encounter expansion".

---

This really. What they're doing right now is adjusting jobs to fit the encounter(ultimates) when it really should be more the reverse. The sheer number of jobs must be making it exponentially harder to do that, but I still don't see how it's worth gutting jobs for optional content that's reached by playing through the rest of the game, in ways that only really make sense from the context of said content

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TemporalFruitsAndVeggies

That's fair. I'll defer to you, then, because I honestly don't remember too much about Heavensward because it was so long ago. I mostly remember the Machinist's ammo system, since I mostly played Machinist, but I can't remember if it was meaningfully more complex, or just different.

---

HW MCH was considered the hardest DPS job for a reason. There was probably a lot of artificial difficulty in that it had literally 3 or 4 buffs with different recasts, and a crapload of damage ogcd that were doing different crowd control effects but ultimately were mostly used as ogcd damage spamm.
But then there was also just how wildfire bursts worked, and rng pattern recognition and management with ammo management, and this alone was a lot of decision making and agency, and was kept and improved on for SB MCH, while the excessive amount of obnoxious buttons was culled and the proc rate made a lot more bearable and less miserable. However it lost a LOT on the party resource support and turret management, but that's also on SB that already simplified the battle system on that front as well. But besides the loss in party resource support and interaction, which was big don't get me wrong, SB MCH as a rotational kit interacted with itself even more than it did during HW especially due to its unique gauge system.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Azurarok

This really. What they're doing right now is adjusting jobs to fit the encounter(ultimates) when it really should be more the reverse. The sheer number of jobs must be making it exponentially harder to do that, but I still don't see how it's worth gutting jobs for optional content that's reached by playing through the rest of the game, in ways that only really make sense from the context of said content

---

They're still kind of failing at it, too. Jobs that build a gauge to enter a burst phase, like reaper, had a hard time in DSR if the group didn't pace their damage in specific ways. They'd either overcap resources or miss the finisher because of downtime during phase transitions.