Skill expression and Evolved Mode

I'm very excited to see the new teasers from FanFest today about job battle design and Evolved Mode. I would like to express a hope that I have about the design philosophy between Reborn Mode and Evolved Mode.

Many of the Evolved Mode abilities that were shown in the demo today look very cool, very interesting. I am excited especially that they seem to be leaning into letting jobs have very different identities, and feel very different to play from one another.

I'm concerned, though, that you've higlighted Evolved Mode as "streamlined" and a modern experience for new players. This seems to imply to me that the interesting and different job identities are going hand-in-hand with a battle system that has less skill expression in it, compared to Reborn Mode.

Game balance is very difficult and I appreciate all of the hard work that goes into that. I do not envy the task of having to balance all of the Reborn Mode jobs and all of the Evolved Mode jobs at the same time. I trust that you will be putting quite a lot of care and thought into it, and I really appreciate that. I am also very thankful that you are removing party buffs to kill the "2 minute meta".

I just want to highlight that, as a player who very much enjoys difficult gameplay and difficult fight design, I am really hoping to be able to experience job designs that both:

• feel unique and different from each other
• have lots of opportunities for skill expression, like the current job designs do

Very much agree. I would've been fine with evolved mode doing same damage as reborn mode, 'cause I can emphasize with peoples desire for less buttons even though I don't think there's that many buttons.

However, I am very worried about the skill expression and skill cap of evolved mode, especially since reborn mode seems to be just a temporary stepping stone until it is permanently removed, since developing two different specs for every non-limited job seems like quite a bit of extra work. Besides, the removal of 2 minutes from reborn mode removes a massive amount of skill expression from those jobs, because you no longer need to time any of your gauge/resources/charges of oGCDs ... so there is really no reason to play reborn mode.

Ideally, they'd add more buttons to evolved mode, since it seems a little bit too barren, but otherwise they could try to add more punishing interactions like how with DRG missing a positional means you lose out on A STARDIVER. If DRG had something else going on, so that the pure focus wasnt just on a positional, then that would be ideal.

It will be incredibly difficult to fail damage checks with how streamlined jobs are going to be in evo mode, and I mirror the concern of the dev team using language of "ease of access" and attracting newer players ... "making WHM easier." This kind of rhetoric also makes me worry that there won't be an increase in difficulty in the content, because of the whole philosophy being aimed at making things more accessible and easier. Besides, making jobs too easy but the content hard isn't exactly super enjoyable either--the jobs should be engaging enough and require focus to the point that mistakes will happen.

It's going to be really sad if Bob that plays 4h a week will be able to do similar damage as week 1-3 savage and ultimate raiders, because those latter players can't distinguish themselves due to the limited kit and simplified rotation.

Evolved mode has more skill expression than the Reborn, genuine do not know why you are all wondering about it.

if you watched WHM footage, that no it is far less skill requirment. in fact they took the 80iq you need to play it and said here 10 needed for it.

Maybe because the snapshot we were shown was every job having 20 second resource generation to stack three blips to do a reaper/viper sickomode 1.5 sec cooldown fell cleave spam. Fams I dunno what all you are looking at that skill expression is more in this system if everything looks like carbon copies in mechanics just with different effects.

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Originally Posted by Brolucas

Maybe because the snapshot we were shown was every job having 20 second resource generation to stack three blips to do a reaper/viper sickomode 1.5 sec cooldown fell cleave spam. Fams I dunno what all you are looking at that skill expression is more in this system if everything looks like carbon copies in mechanics just with different effects.

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Funny because 'do a reaper/viper sickomode' is exactly what I have wanted for SGE for a long ass time, to accentuate the 'heal by doing damage' identity the Job tries to portray with Kardia, and yet because it's a Healer it's very unlikely that it will get one

what skill expression is there atm? you do an opener then a 2 min filler rotation until cds are up. everyone does the same rotation and prays for good crit.

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Originally Posted by seolhyun

what skill expression is there atm? you do an opener then a 2 min filler rotation until cds are up. everyone does the same rotation and prays for good crit.

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You have the job or syncing up buffs with a party for a nice burst window where you csn easily take 10% off the boss. It separates a group that plays well together and one that doesnt and there needs to be rewards for playing in unity in this co-op game.

Take bard for example currently skill expression is not drifting EA because its a 15s OGCD that gives a free song proc, looking at song timers, reacting to RNG and procs and generally just spinning multiple plates at once.

In the evo mode the showed us EA is now a GCD that procs from another GCD. No management, no punishment for drifting just hit glowing button and win.

Dots are gone and RNG is gone which is insane. There's no more looking at your dots with 5 seconds left and deciding if you should refresh early and miss a tick or risk a burst shot that could proc RA and if that does happen you then need to decide whether or not to risk dots falling off or risk refreshing them with an RA proc and overriding.

No more having 2 stacks of PP with EA coming up and deciding whether or not to send 2 stacks for less potency or risk waiting for EA for 3 and have the possibility of overriding if you get a tick. All gone.

Whm lost slidecating and the skill expression of managing damage and trying to balance OGCD heals and GCD if necessary.

PLD lost its combo which is skill expression because sometimes you just mess up or in prog you break a combo and you're punished with less potency and losing gauge.

Just because it isn't skill expression you like doesn't mean it isn't there. Evo mode is hit glowing button and win. Its a baby mode designed to get more casuals playing again.

Ngl, most of these 'skill expressions' sounds like less about your skill at the actual game and more about your skill at tracking the terrible netcode and its inconsistent tickrate and gcd drifts, which are like, the main things that the team is trying to get rid of because those are not 'skill mechanics', those are just shitty game mechanic design holdovers that are being cleaned up. Just because you and some others learned to lean into it and maximize your outputs through that doesn't make it any less of a bad system to have in the game. THat's where all the removals of dots and simplification of gcd/ogcd cycles are really coming from.

But again, one man's shitty outdated jank is another man's core job identity.

is this a ragebait are we really saying current jobs are skillful cuz idk you can fat finger and ruin your 2min or get bad RNG and do less damage??

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Originally Posted by Renaclock

is this a ragebait are we really saying current jobs are skillful cuz idk you can fat finger and ruin your 2min or get bad RNG and do less damage??

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RNG is fun for some people and having a fail state for messing up is important. Once again everyone crying 2 minute meta from my experience didn't interact with it outside roulettes and normals.

RNG had moment to moment decisions and makes things unique but once again people think getting rid of things they don't like suddenly makes a job good instead of accepting that every job isn't for them

If you want skill expression in FFXIV you are gonna need a time machine to go back in time 10 years to play HW jobs. The devs have intentionally destroyed all skill in this game so that the skill gap between good players and bad players will just be a crit rate.

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Originally Posted by echo78

If you want skill expression in FFXIV you are gonna need a time machine to go back in time 10 years to play HW jobs. The devs have intentionally destroyed all skill in this game so that the skill gap between good players and bad players will just be a crit rate.

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Yup and I fear Evo mode where you dont have to learn a rotation and there is no friction for mistakes will make this even worse

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Originally Posted by Hanzz96

RNG is fun for some people and having a fail state for messing up is important. Once again everyone crying 2 minute meta from my experience didn't interact with it outside roulettes and normals.

RNG had moment to moment decisions and makes things unique but once again people think getting rid of things they don't like suddenly makes a job good instead of accepting that every job isn't for them

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I'm all for fail states but holding everything to get to have fun every 2 minutes is garbage game design
I do hope they aren't just making evolved mode easy mode however.

And before you say, yes i interacted with the 2 minute meta this entire expansion, raiding every tier. it is not fun to play around. I had the most fun during the short period we ran a no raid buff team last tier

I think they did this for a simple reason, this is a way to nerf Tanks who already have too much self-healing and DPS classes that have too much sustain. These changes will make healers more required in gameplay going forward so there is a benefit to this. I imagine they were thinking "How can we restore the holy trinity of Tank, DPS and Healer without causing an uproar?"... we'll call it "Evolved mode!" I'm actually ok with that. I want to do less DPS and more healing, so I'm fine with Misery and Dia going.

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Originally Posted by ddwarbird

I think they did this for a simple reason, this is a way to nerf Tanks who already have too much self-healing and DPS classes that have too much sustain. These changes will make healers more required in gameplay going forward so there is a benefit to this.

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Did we watch the same reveal? BRD is gaining more healing, the chance that DNC or SMN are losing their healing in their kits is extremely low now that their damage buffs are gone. They are doing the complete opposite of requiring healers to heal more.

I am alright with Bard gaining more healing because its supposed to be a support DPS, similar to Red Mage and Dancer, so more support options for those classes at the cost of lower damage is an acceptable trade off. We have not seen what Tanks look like in Evolved Mode and they are the main reason that healers cannot do their jobs.

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Originally Posted by ddwarbird

I am alright with Bard gaining more healing because its supposed to be a support DPS, similar to Red Mage and Dancer, so more support options for those classes at the cost of lower damage is an acceptable trade off. We have not seen what Tanks look like in Evolved Mode and they are the main reason that healers cannot do their jobs.

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They arent changing the whole design of the game because people want to healbot. Thats not what healers in FF14 do and if you want everyone to lose self sustain so you can pump heals then other mmos exist. Once again another weird case of someone wanting FFXIV to be every other game but FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by Reimmi

I'm all for fail states but holding everything to get to have fun every 2 minutes is garbage game design
I do hope they aren't just making evolved mode easy mode however.

And before you say, yes i interacted with the 2 minute meta this entire expansion, raiding every tier. it is not fun to play around. I had the most fun during the short period we ran a no raid buff team last tier

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Thats totally fine. I'm not saying the meta should stay, personally I think I think we should have gone back to the SB/ShB days of 90s BRD, 180s DRG, 60s NIN, 120s DNC and allowed people to build comps around those buff timings for example a MCH would be great for 60s NIN. Or the party can choose if they hold to align buffs. Thats actual choice.

That being said even with buffs being gone and the meta broken losing OGCD management because everything is a follow up, losing RNG which is a huge part of bards identity and losing dots from healers and bard really isn't it and shows that evo is an easy mode

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Originally Posted by Hanzz96

They arent changing the whole design of the game because people want to healbot. Thats not what healers in FF14 do and if you want everyone to lose self sustain so you can pump heals then other mmos exist. Once again another weird case of someone wanting FFXIV to be every other game but FFXIV.

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Well that's fine but that just means that healers will continue to complain that they have nothing to do in fights, especially if all there is now is spamming Glare or Ruin etc... You could make the same argument for people desperately wanting to project their power fantasy where their class does everything and they can self-heal themselves. It works both ways. The declining player base and constant topics and complaints with job identity obviously indicates there is a problem with the game design, not even XI had this problem, is that game any less "Final Fantasy"? To be honest, I recently started playing Red Mage anyway so it doesn't really matter to me anyway.

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Originally Posted by Hanzz96

Thats totally fine. I'm not saying the meta should stay, personally I think I think we should have gone back to the SB/ShB days of 90s BRD, 180s DRG, 60s NIN, 120s DNC and allowed people to build comps around those buff timings for example a MCH would be great for 60s NIN. Or the party can choose if they hold to align buffs. Thats actual choice.

That being said even with buffs being gone and the meta broken losing OGCD management because everything is a follow up, losing RNG which is a huge part of bards identity and losing dots from healers and bard really isn't it and shows that evo is an easy mode

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I absolutely agree, bard should keep RNG procs, and i think more jobs should get rng procs for variance in gameplay.

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Originally Posted by ddwarbird

Well that's fine but that just means that healers will continue to complain that they have nothing to do in fights, especially if all there is now is spamming Glare or Ruin etc... You could make the same argument for people desperately wanting to project their power fantasy where their class does everything and they can self-heal themselves. It works both ways. The declining player base and constant topics and complaints with job identity obviously indicates there is a problem with the game design, not even XI had this problem, is that game any less "Final Fantasy"? To be honest, I recently started playing Red Mage anyway so it doesn't really matter to me anyway.

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Jobs don't have as much self heals are you imagine and only tanks which makes sense. Do you know how many times I've seen a WAR die in savage because the healer is eating glue and the auto after holmgang wears off gets them?

You have healers who only want to heal and healers who never want to heal and not everyone can be pleased. The difference is those who only want to totally blow their healing kit load and mp every chance they get are the vocal casuals who don't realise that dps checks are balanced around healers output too.

As for the game dying its so funny that people play this card whenever something doesnt go their way. This game has over 700k active players in NA, JP and EU alone not counting OCE, CN and KR. Covid inflated the numbers and now its being used for disingenuous arguments like this about why cure III is you're favourite button.