Job simplification

I feel that jobs in this game are becoming oversimplified and homogenised. This has been stated before of course, but given the VPR changes it’s more apparent.

Supposedly SE is planning on making jobs have more individualism in 8.0 (yippee 2/3 years wait), and that they want to focus more on making content harder _first_.

Then what is the point over continuing to simplify jobs? With these changes you’re only thinking about decisions to a casual audience whilst giving no job substance to higher end players (or even casual players looking to improve). They’re also locking themself into this to only potentially walk it back in 8.0 (or just make it harder again?)

MNK and BLM were perfect examples of this job design in endwalker.

MNK had optimal drift which wasn’t necessary to learn, but provided further substance for players who wanted it, and players who didn’t follow this could still perform well with basic class knowledge.

The changes they have made to monk have almost entirely stripped this by removing timers and made it simplified to the point where it’s only pandering to casual players.

BLM also had a similar thing with non-standard. Again this was supplementary knowledge for players who wanted to improve and learn more about the job.

Neither of these rotations were required by more casual players as they were ultimately small damage improvements to jobs that _anyone_ could do well with, and could clear any content with.

VPR, a job that has only been out for ~1 month has now has undergone this treatment, and much like MNK has had its buffs stripped and a “bootshine” added.

It seems as if the “difficulty” of these jobs is just bad explanation of the systems they implement and then they overcorrect in the opposite direction and make it even more simplified. (VPR having a “confusing rotation”, but is just poorly implemented, or BLM having mana ticks and changing it to only ICE spells that give mana back).

Not every job has to be for everyone, what’s the point in having the main selling point of your game being the ability to change jobs if you try to make them all the same.

These changes give me conflicting views of what they even want with their own game. You want players to have a bit more trouble with content but still proceed to hold their hand through any tribulations of their own job.

To clarify all this. I don’t want jobs to be entirely difficult. I want the room to HAVE difficulty. Jobs should be easy to pick up and hard to master, and at the moment SE is doing neither of those things.

I believe their current standard of "job balancing" is to keep the gap between skill ceiling and bottom as close as possible, so we don't see "very good players" who overperform everyone else. Cause if there are "very good players," somebody will naturally become "very bad players," and people will complain.

Job homogenization and fixed rotation/burst window not only help with such design, but also make further adjustments easy as pie. Just see the recent "job changes". All they have to do is to give some ±potency, and done. Imagine if every job is unique like we dreamed, then doing balance work will be hell.


This is a PvE game though. I do hope to see some unbalanced but fun ways to play, instead of the current stagnancy. I've been hoping for something like a talent tree since long ago.

Now, I can't express anything further towards whoever's doing the job designs without being rude. So I'll shut up.

Part of me wants to go full scorched earth, pull an ARR on the job design, and design it all from the ground up with a new design ethos, using only remnants and base ideas from the previous iteration.

Yes I know just how much of a monkeys paw wish that would be, I really, REALLY don't trust Square with such a task.

As someone who has played healers, I kind of want to go full scorched earth and encourage them to keep going with the simplification. Every Job should be reduced to just 2-3 buttons.

The idea is they don't get it when simplifying jobs

Healers should get simplify healing kit not DPS

They got it wrong all this time

It's maddening. A few months ago Yoshi-P said that they were done with oversimplifications, and now, about a month after Viper was released, they already simplify it and removing core gameplay parts of its identity. I feel like I am dropped in Bizarroland where nothing makes sense anymore.

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Originally Posted by Inputnamehere

I believe their current standard of "job balancing" is to keep the gap between skill ceiling and bottom as close as possible, so we don't see "very good players" who overperform everyone else. Cause if there are "very good players," somebody will naturally become "very bad players," and people will complain.

Job homogenization and fixed rotation/burst window not only help with such design, but also make further adjustments easy as pie. Just see the recent "job changes". All they have to do is to give some ±potency, and done. Imagine if every job is unique like we dreamed, then doing balance work will be hell.


This is a PvE game though. I do hope to see some unbalanced but fun ways to play, instead of the current stagnancy. I've been hoping for something like a talent tree since long ago.

Now, I can't express anything further towards whoever's doing the job designs without being rude. So I'll shut up.

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I feel like this could be addressed with just more experimentation. Or even an actual viable way to get job feedback without needing to wait for the publics reception. Maybe instead of a media tour a closed (or open) beta test. I agree the balance work would be terrible, and it's not that easy to implement jobs that inherently have optimisable aspects (except timers/DoTs which they apparently are vehemently against).

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Originally Posted by ovIm

It's maddening. A few months ago Yoshi-P said that they were done with oversimplifications, and now, about a month after Viper was released, they already simplify it and removing core gameplay parts of its identity. I feel like I am dropped in Bizarroland where nothing makes sense anymore.

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I believe these statements were probably made when job design for DT was already locked in and unable to be course corrected. That's the general feeling I had when he made those comments: this feels too late in the development cycle to be reflective of the experience we'll have in Dawntrail.

Edit: Completely unrelated, I love your miqo's aesthetic, Dax.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

Part of me wants to go full scorched earth, pull an ARR on the job design, and design it all from the ground up with a new design ethos, using only remnants and base ideas from the previous iteration.

Yes I know just how much of a monkeys paw wish that would be, I really, REALLY don't trust Square with such a task.

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It's really a wet dream and a big risk that I'd love to see.

I mean, given their plans, in theory, the best time to do this would be in 8.0 since they'll focus on job play.

But then, can we really expect anything drastic to happen? I don't think. But I'd absolutely love to be surprised.

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Originally Posted by Inputnamehere

I believe their current standard of "job balancing" is to keep the gap between skill ceiling and bottom as close as possible, so we don't see "very good players" who overperform everyone else. Cause if there are "very good players," somebody will naturally become "very bad players," and people will complain.

Job homogenization and fixed rotation/burst window not only help with such design, but also make further adjustments easy as pie. Just see the recent "job changes". All they have to do is to give some ±potency, and done. Imagine if every job is unique like we dreamed, then doing balance work will be hell.


This is a PvE game though. I do hope to see some unbalanced but fun ways to play, instead of the current stagnancy. I've been hoping for something like a talent tree since long ago.

Now, I can't express anything further towards whoever's doing the job designs without being rude. So I'll shut up.

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Cannot upvote this enough.

People sometimes overlook that some people just "aren't good" at the game; and the level of practice needed to meet the standards of others often takes longer then the content is relevant. Sadly the idea of job balancing is a constant act when you add new job interactions/actions. Part of the issue with the Healer strike is everyone thinks that every tank runs a dungeon without a healer because a hardcore warrior player did it. Reality is there are quite a few Warriors that can - and part of that is due to how "vanilla" the warrior job is - its the summoner of tanks and doing that with a DRK for example is likely a far smaller subset of players that meet that bar.

But yeah its fun when you go and realize you can sync your class design with all other classes in the same role - see Tanks.

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Originally Posted by Ayan_Calvesse

People sometimes overlook that some people just "aren't good" at the game; and the level of practice needed to meet the standards of others often takes longer then the content is relevant.

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I'm sorry, and this is going to come off rude.

Stop destroying the fun of others because the absolute bottom tier players can't figure out how to hit the glowing buttons.

At this point I'm just waiting for the 7.1 PvP information, if it falls flat I'm out until they do big changes.

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Originally Posted by ThaCa

At this point I'm just waiting for the 7.1 PvP information, if it falls flat I'm out until they do big changes.

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You know it's bad when people prefer the combat in FFXIV's PvP. At least the jobs have unique play styles there

I genuinely don't think we're going to see meaningful changes to any of the Jobs until something is done about the 2 minute burst meta.
Mechanics and difficulty are being balanced around it, Jobs are constrained into it, and when all the Jobs have to be able to fit in it, there will always be some homogenization by necessity.

Counter argument with monk. They funny enough made the job more complicated on the release of DT. Since the rotation went from a 1-1-2 pattern with the dots to a 1-2-3 patters. Changing the core rotation to go from 6 chains before looping to 12...

And then they walked back on it before letting it try out Savage.

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Originally Posted by ovIm

It's maddening. A few months ago Yoshi-P said that they were done with oversimplifications, and now, about a month after Viper was released, they already simplify it and removing core gameplay parts of its identity. I feel like I am dropped in Bizarroland where nothing makes sense anymore.

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The conversation you linked straight-up says it's talking about "7.2 and beyond", not 7.0 at the start.

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I'm sorry, and this is going to come off rude.

Stop destroying the fun of others because the absolute bottom tier players can't figure out how to hit the glowing buttons.

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Vote with your wallet. I could just as easily say stop destroying the fun of many of your typical gamers today because you want the one MMO that designs itself for them to change, when you have a variety of other games you could choose instead to get the "challenge" or "complexity" you desire.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

It's really a wet dream and a big risk that I'd love to see.

I mean, given their plans, in theory, the best time to do this would be in 8.0 since they'll focus on job play.

But then, can we really expect anything drastic to happen? I don't think. But I'd absolutely love to be surprised.

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I don't expect more than a token gesture unless the game starts hemorrhaging players and money, and even if that happens they're tone deaf enough that I could see them double down on dumbing it down.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

The conversation you linked straight-up says it's talking about "7.2 and beyond", not 7.0 at the start.

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This article has some mistranslations in it. When speaking of 7.2, he spoke specifically about gameplay content, which would come before any big rework to existing classes.
That however is not the criticism here - its that Yoshi-P acknowledges that they have gone too far oversimplifying classes, and wanted to do less of that. Only for whoever is responsible to do exactly that with such a knee-jerk gameplay nerf that I fear I am getting whiplash.

At this point just reduce every class to a single button.

Tanks get a "Tank" button that does room wide AOES and applies provoke on all targets not currently targeting the tank and applies a party-wide defensive buff every 3 uses of the button and causes a bunch of magical shields and barriers to appear around everyone else.

Healers get a "Heal" button that casts a dungeon wide AOE heal at no MP cost that also applies a regen, a shield, and resurrects anyone hit by it if they happen to have died and casts a lot of holy themed sparkles and light effects around the party

DPS get a DPS button that casts a room wide AOE that produces negative aggro, does a ton of damage and reduces everyone else´s time to cast by 50% and causes a lot of explosions and slash effects to go around the room Demonslayer style.

Then 2 patches later make it so that the process is automatic and no longer requires pressing a button.

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Originally Posted by Ruruura

At this point just reduce every class to a single button.

Tanks get a "Tank" button that does room wide AOES and applies provoke on all targets not currently targeting the tank and applies a party-wide defensive buff every 3 uses of the button and causes a bunch of magical shields and barriers to appear around everyone else.

Healers get a "Heal" button that casts a dungeon wide AOE heal at no MP cost that also applies a regen, a shield, and resurrects anyone hit by it if they happen to have died and casts a lot of holy themed sparkles and light effects around the party

DPS get a DPS button that casts a room wide AOE that produces negative aggro, does a ton of damage and reduces everyone else´s time to cast by 50% and causes a lot of explosions and slash effects to go around the room Demonslayer style.

Then 2 patches later make it so that the process is automatic and no longer requires pressing a button.

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Don't forget they need to port it on mobile and put in a lot of NFT.

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Originally Posted by GrizzlyTank

Counter argument with monk. They funny enough made the job more complicated on the release of DT. Since the rotation went from a 1-1-2 pattern with the dots to a 1-2-3 patters. Changing the core rotation to go from 6 chains before looping to 12...

And then they walked back on it before letting it try out Savage.

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I honestly suspect they did this on accident and once they realized the mistake, they pretended it was intentional and rolled it back before it mattered.

The same team in the same patch also made formless dragon kick.

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Originally Posted by GrizzlyTank

Counter argument with monk. They funny enough made the job more complicated on the release of DT. Since the rotation went from a 1-1-2 pattern with the dots to a 1-2-3 patters. Changing the core rotation to go from 6 chains before looping to 12...

And then they walked back on it before letting it try out Savage.

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I personally don’t think about where I am in a rotation that way. Monk was and still is a class you just press a button to refresh buff (or fill ball in DT) when you need. There’s not really any instance where I’ve had to remember a full gcd rotation. The supposed length of this rotation also doesn’t remotely affect your burst windows at all.

For me, the problem with the removal of buffs comes with any reason to press solar in even bursts (outside of kill time to get another phantom rush). Right now our standard burst is just spamming opo GCDs (outside of specific kill times) since there’s no thinking required to refresh our buffs around (or during) our burst