Doubts over Square Enix design philosophy for fights and job design.

First and foremost, dawntrail job design is boring.

Yoshi P has notably mentioned that there will be change coming to 7.2 to provide change to the jobs we currently have. But considering the changes they have done as of the 7.01 patch wherein they removed small optimization that both Warrior and Pictomancer can do, I can only harbor doubt over what it is they will really do. To add to that it has not even been a full month since Dawntrail releases and Yoshi P mentions in a lodestone post saying that they will address Vipers busyness by "improving" upon it via "easing direction requirements and changes to the effects of serval actions". If making a brand new job, that the community has not been able to test for even a month, easier is considered an improvement. Yoshi P stated that a game should have an element of stress, and while I do agree with his point that the angle in which they handle and go about implementing that stress is difficult, buckling down, stating directly they are "easing" a job is an "improvement" in their eyes, how are they implementing that stress? One may say that it's the fights that bring the stress.

The game specifically wants you to reclear fights since that is how you get gear in any content. You like a piece of glam from a dungeon? You go grind for it. You want the highest iLvL? As of right now, that would be through grinding the extremes and getting the iLvL 710 weapons & Accessories, while also grinding to get the newly added Allagan Tomestone of Aesthetics in order to get iLvL 700 armor. In just one week we will be asked to clear and reclear the newly added savage week after week to get our bis.

One issue is that once you have solved the content, well, it's solved. Reclears become something you just do in one pull and move on. There is no deaths, there is no stress, it's just go in, get the gear, get out move on to the next thing. As of right now I can't really think of a way they could address that aspect, but something that could help in making reclears not boring is if they had interesting job design. For instance the optimization from Warrior and Pictomancer that they recently removed. The hotly talked about and removed Non-standard blackmage where if you look at two players, they can have insanely different rotations, and yet yield similar damage. There is a lack of expression, everyone casts the same thing at the same times, once you figure out how your rotation lines up with the fight you just go on and do it on repeat for infinity.

I myself would compare myself to other Paladins to see how they are doing more damage than me back in Endwalker only to find that we were both doing the exact same thing, just that they had higher crit than myself, which led me to go from excitement and wonder over what I may be doing wrong or differently, to "Oh, it's just crit luck again." There is no discovery in new or unusual rotations. Just play what the developers have prescribed you and run it forever. Ex2 for example makes half the team get downtime for a small amount of time during a 2 minute burst which I believe to be fine. But that's all it does, it's a minor inconvenience. Sure there are jobs like Pictomancer who has to make the decision of putting down their starry muse on coolddown or a little later if they want to use up all 5 stacks of starry muse to get their instant cast rainbow drip, but for just about every other job it's just oh, one of my buttons might not be in the burst window. Can we really call that stressful?

To end I quote someone I know dearly.
"i can't even say im excited to play the ultimate because i don't think id like it and im not excited about any of the jobs to get a weapon or do a bunch of reclears
if you asked me in endwalker, i would've told you that i want to get every single black mage weapon ever and i want to get a bunch of reclears and do really well and get big numbers
but that game doesn't exist anymore
if you asked me now how i feel about ultimate, it sounds exhausting and like a chore"

That's all if you read all this, go drink some water, stretch, take it easy. Have a nice rest of your day or night, wherever.

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Yoshi P has notably mentioned that there will be change coming to 7.2 to provide change to the jobs we currently have

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This was a mistranslation addressed in the last liveletter before DT launch. These "job changes" he talked about are still scheduled for 8.0

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Originally Posted by rewd

This was a mistranslation addressed in the last liveletter before DT launch. These "job changes" he talked about are still scheduled for 8.0

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Funny enough, what he was actually saying, iirc, is that 7.2 is when the "new combat design" stuff will finally show up, all the DT combat until then (so, first Savage tier and maybe first Ultimate) will still mostly follow the EW mold.

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Originally Posted by Galvuu

Funny enough, what he was actually saying, iirc, is that 7.2 is when the "new combat design" stuff will finally show up, all the DT combat until then (so, first Savage tier and maybe first Ultimate) will still mostly follow the EW mold.

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I'm curious what that means. Because the DT battle content right now is some of the best they have put out. It actually requires you to be awake, and play your job! The normal raids are honestly amazing even if the rewards are iffy. And we got that comedy firehose threads of "Dawntrail's combat is too hard"

Do i think jobs are in a severe state of neglect and bordering on systemic failure. Absolutely

Do i feel Yoshida/SE make a blunder fixing the "Content" rather then "The decayed things you use to engage in said content" Also yes

But the problem the community has is that it wont matter how good your content is if all the jobs feel awful or outright cancerous (BLM/MNK) to play. The game might not have much of a playerbase if we have to wait 2+ years to be able to fully enjoy the new content because that's when they "scheduled" the time to start fixing job.

Speaking of that Yoshida only said they would START working on the jobs in 8.0. He was purposely vague. Imagine an expansion where only Phys ranged or Casters got their "update" but everyone else got the EW/DT of "Here's a few buttons, some extra potency and a sprinkling of new bugs/anti-synergy"

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Originally Posted by Skellydawizard

I'm curious what that means. Because the DT battle content right now is some of the best they have put out. It actually requires you to be awake, and play your job! The normal raids are honestly amazing even if the rewards are iffy. And we got that comedy firehose threads of "Dawntrail's combat is too hard"

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It's anyone's guess, but no mechanic in DT is really groundbreaking. I count three "new" mechanics, but the rest is standard FF XIV fare. Maybe he wants to try completely new mechanics, or just how we interact with the boss? It's really impossible to tell, at this stage.

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Originally Posted by rewd

This was a mistranslation addressed in the last liveletter before DT launch. These "job changes" he talked about are still scheduled for 8.0

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hasn't he been saying there'd be meaningful changes since before endwalker? I'm getting pretty skeptical that anything's coming at this point.

Though it's good to know it was a mistranslation so I don't get my hopes up that I'll see anything before the next expansion, at least.

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Originally Posted by Galvuu

It's anyone's guess, but no mechanic in DT is really groundbreaking. I count three "new" mechanics, but the rest is standard FF XIV fare. Maybe he wants to try completely new mechanics, or just how we interact with the boss? It's really impossible to tell, at this stage.

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Yeah DT's encounters are better and feel less lazy, with a bit more spice in normal modes as well, but it's hardly groundbreaking. Curious to see what they want to bring for 7.2, but to be honest, I'm also scared because the more we go and the less RPG-ish it feels, and the more DDR we get. Its all about solving fast visual puzzles by now, which sucks. Not exactly what I had in mind when they announced better encounter design. It's pushing me away from the content.

I think we need rework same as stormblood rework to combat design and jobs in general example:

1- stats
2- CC and debuffs

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Originally Posted by Tunda

I think we need rework same as stormblood rework to combat design and jobs in general example:

1- stats
2- CC and debuffs

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Stats is really overdue.

The only cool stat is Speed (sks/sps), because that's the only stat that actively affects your gameplay, and the irony is that is a terrible stat for most jobs because it causes many actions to drift out of the "precious" 2min burst windows.

But then, with the foundations as they are, is even possible to think about new stats? I wonder if "Luck" (a common stat in many FF games) would make up for a good one - a stat that affects certain proc rates (individual per job basis) beyond the baseline.

One change I'd love to see is splitting melds into Offensive (left side) and Utility (right side), so you wouldn't have to choose one over the other. As for the utility stats, I'd think about stats only obtainable through materia melds: Piety affecting just MP, Tenacity being a defensive only stat for everybody, Leech introduced as a stat and meld, Haste (movement speed), and even a new one called Resilience, which would reduce the impact that Brink of Death has over your character.

Direct hit needs to be replaced is my only opinion on current stats. Mini crit is dumb.
Would of been better if it was crit chance or something.

If you separate crit into crit chance and crit multiplier stats/materias we'll still end up with those two as the main ones everyone uses.

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

If you separate crit into crit chance and crit multiplier stats/materias we'll still end up with those two as the main ones everyone uses.

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Probably but direct hit is so dumb that id take anything over it.

Maybe if direct hit was something to reduce variance in other ways. Like reduce the range between low and high rolls for damage. Or raises the minimum amount of damage on crits or something.

If we still had more party wide damage taken up debuffs, direct hit being something that adds extra damage cap to buffs or debuffs would be interesting but with the current raidbuff meta it would be terrible and forced. The job design is way too rigid to add any extra stats that aren't just deal more damage. (No way we would get faster movement stat for example because of how BLM is designed.)