Current classes/jobs are too simple

[Sylkis]

I like things the way they are. Not everyone likes overly complicated jobs that are make it harder to focus on mechanics.

See, this is what I mean. You don't want it more complex because it distracts you from focusing on something else. It's like playing 2 games.

I'm looking for something where you can respond to the mechanics not with your feet, but with your abilities. Not simply activating some tank damage reduction skill.

simple mechancis = harder rotations
harder mechanics = simple rotations

choose 1 , because easy easy is boring and hard hard drives ppl mad and away from the game...

some specs are worse than others , look a ninja mudras , annoying as hell if u have 200+ ping , infuriating at times.

Or remove rotations and just have harder mechanics. Rotations are something that stay the same all the time but keeps you busy, forcing the mechanics to be easier.
It's really only difficult now because no one can fail doing the simple thing in the whole party or the whole party fails.

I'm always curious at people who claim you hit only a few buttons to DPS

Yes there are more than 3 buttons. But when the order of the buttons and the timing between hitting them are about the same, it feels like one button.



I have tried out all the jobs. Rotations are boring, even if they are 30 buttons long because it doesn't change. There's more emphasis on pressing something every 2.5s than thinking about what to press.

You suggestions sounds.... eh

What do you mean? We already can't move after a limit break.

Because we have little RNG already. I'd quit the dungeon if I got paired up with a class that has the potential to be absolutely useless.

I'd rather not have my crossbars full of situational skills that I will use once in a blue moon. Repose bothers me enough already.

1. A skill that has a charge time which you can use more often instead of once a fight or never if you are not DPS.

2. When done right and played right, it is 90% skill/experience and 10% RNG. More poker/blackjack rather than roulette/slot machines.

3. Repose sucks because nothing worthwhile can be slept, and because sleepga is better. Think about a skill that you can use almost every fight but is situational. How about blood for blood in coil? It's situational because you can kill yourself yet it is still used every fight.

[WellFooled]

Increase defense???? They do not increase defense they decrease the damage you from hits by a certain % PLD has no abilities that increase defense its all damage negateing.

I was using the real world definition of defense, not in the FFXIV gameplay definition

Defense, a noun meaning resistance to attack, protection.

But I'm happy you got the point.

[Ryans]

Pushing buttons constantly doesn't make it a more involved system. I'd rather have the combat system of FFXIV 1.23 back. It has a lot more depth than the system we have now, in my opinion. Weapon skills costed between 1,000 and 1,500 TP and weapon skills each had individual cool downs. The first skill of a combo made the next skills have no cost so TP management and landing your weapon skills had a huge impact on your performance. TP was regenerated by your auto attacks and it topped out at 3,000. You could save up to 3,000 TP and then use two or three full combos for a burn phase or use your TP as you got to 1,000. On top of that, you had to factor in things like what to do if the third weapon skill of a combo was on cool down but you had 3,000 TP. Do you wait for the finisher to be ready or do you use the first two weapon skills even though it costs just as much TP as a full combo.

It was slower paced and required more thought. There were still rotations that you could do in ideal situations, but you had to consider that every second you aren't hitting something is that much less TP generated. If a boss was off doing a special then you weren't automatically restoring TP like we do now, but your cool downs were still ticking down. That meant that by the time the boss was targetable again you might need to be using a different combo than what the "rotation" would dictate. The boss could also interrupt a combo by going off some where and you are sitting there having used 1,000 TP but only used one weapon skill of the combo. It really allowed for players to excel as an individual because of how much performance was based on timing and knowledge of your job rather than memorizing a rotation and avoiding bright red boxes on the ground.

[Sylkis]

Try doing the Clockwise motion with your right hand and counter-clockwise motion with your left feet

Yes, I forgot to say "with your right hand and feet or left hand and feet".

To OP (and really anyone who is curious about these things): You should try playing Tera. It's a free-to-play MMO, and I'm not suggesting you stay with it at all, because it fails on so many levels. But it did one thing EXTREMELY well: combat.

-Balls

I did play TERA for a while, the combat is quite nice. I like how you had a dodge skill that did an attack at the same time (I played warrior).

But the other aspects of the game are lacking. Those lacking parts are done well here in XIV which is why I'm still here. But I really do enjoy the combat over there and wish it was here.

Perhaps we are still here for the same reason.

Pushing buttons constantly doesn't make it a more involved system. I'd rather have the combat system of FFXIV 1.23 back. It has a lot more depth than the system we have now, in my opinion. Weapon skills costed between 1,000 and 1,500 TP and weapon skills each had individual cool downs.

I personally enjoyed 1.23 combat, but many people hated it because of the engine it was running on. Animation lock was a system limitation(though it did add more depth to combat but in an unpolished way). They were hating the wrong thing.

The key that made it enjoyable was that you could not just use a rotation because when you are interrupted by the mechanics, you cant go back on that rotation and had to do something completely different, due to individual cooldowns. You had to think.


Had it been given a better chance... The complaints about it (which were in fact toward the game engine) probably lead to it being scrapped for what we have now.

[Kiara]

There's definitely some truth to the OP. As Warlyx said:

simple mechancis = harder rotations
harder mechanics = simple rotations

choose 1 , because easy easy is boring and hard hard drives ppl mad and away from the game...

While it's nice that we have Boss Fights / Raids that are beyond the traditional Tank 'n Spank, the fundamental issue of going with the current is that with Harder Mechanics (Gimmick-heavy, Team Jump Rope stuff), and Simpler Job Rotations...

1. It's more about watching YouTube and Learning the Gimmicks each Fight, than it is about going deep into your Job.

2. After the initial "buzz" and newness wears off, it becomes extremely boring. I've seen people fall asleep in Titan Extreme (they do the same dodging / avoiding, they know what's coming next, and then eventually fall asleep get knocked off, and apologize after, LOL).

Vs.

Something with Simpler Mechanics, but Harder Job Rotations / Skill Trees allows each Battle to be more interesting, like a Street Fighter match. No 2 matches ever have to be the same. You can pull off various combos and react to situations differently.

One way to possibly get this is via Skillchains (Renkei) or some way to Chain Individual Limit Breaks together (like CHRONO TRIGGER's Triple Tech System), where you can string certain Weaponskills (or if we have Individual Limit Breaks) string those together in a certain order to create "Custom Combos" (and Bonus Effects).

Something like that would add some interesting layers to Combat in FF XIV.

[Ryans]

I personally enjoyed 1.23 combat, but many people hated it because of the engine it was running on. Animation lock was a system limitation(though it did add more depth to combat but in an unpolished way). They were hating the wrong thing.

The key that made it enjoyable was that you could not just use a rotation because when you are interrupted by the mechanics, you cant go back on that rotation and had to do something completely different, due to individual cooldowns. You had to think.


Had it been given a better chance... The complaints about it (which were in fact toward the game engine) probably lead to it being scrapped for what we have now.

That is exactly it. They trashed a great system because people complained about, to use a construction analogy, the ground the structure was built on even though the building was beautifully crafted.

[kyuven]

I'm looking for something where you can respond to the mechanics not with your feet, but with your abilities. Not simply activating some tank damage reduction skill.

So what you want is something, like, if everyone gets frozen by shiva, the BLM has to cast Fire II to break everyone out?
There's kind of a big problem with having mechanics reliant on abilities: It needs to be an ability usable by all classes. This is why t4's soldiers and knights were nerfed, and why that particular mechanic doesn't show up in later encounters. For example, Leviathan has one part that's meant for physical and one part that's meant for magic/the tank. They share the same HP so as long as you have 2 tanks and everyone attacks the right target, you can win.
SE has stated in no uncertain terms that they want to make absolutely sure that it's possible to do any given encounter with any given class so long as there's a tank, healer, and DPS present. They don't want one class excluded from content because the content does something that class can't handle.
Thus, for this reason, we'll never have something that responds to a unique ability. The only thing every class HAS in common is our feet, so the mechanics are designed around them.There are a few cases of using your abilities to handle/mitigate mechanics, but it's mostly via damage prevention. For example, in FCOB, MNKs and SCH/SMN are used to reduce the damage output on bosses to increase survivability, NIN's have to time their trick attacks to meet with DPS bursts (or vice versa) and a SCH's entire shtick relies on timing their adlos/sacred soil to deal with hard hitting mechanics.
But it's still possible to do the fights without them by design, because not everybody can think this way. It's also reserved for endgame content for this reason.

Or remove rotations and just have harder mechanics. Rotations are something that stay the same all the time but keeps you busy, forcing the mechanics to be easier.

Rotations aren't EXACTLY something that's created intentionally. Combo strings are, but those were purposefully created so we can't just spam one ability and neglect the rest. The design intent is to get us to have all of the abilities at our disposal have value. This is also why we don't have very many compared to a lot of other games, even compared to 1.0. Rotations are creations by the player to maximize their usage of abilities to get the best out of their class. Not everyone uses the same rotation. It's why the class forums have rotation threads and why there are multiple play guides to begin with. Honestly for many classes if you're using the same rotation all the time, you're kinda doing it wrong.
For example, a NIN may have a different rotation when working with a warrior than with a paladin. A BRD should definitely be playing different when teamed with a BLM and/or SMN vs. teamed with 3-4 melees. Hell the BRD even changes when working with the NIN!
While you can get away with just doing the same rotation over and over, you're also not really paying attention to your situation by doing so.
Basically, rotations won't go away even if they remove combo chains. Even the oldest of the old MMOs, like EQ1, have a rotation system. It's just a lot slower because of cast times. "CH (complete heal) rotations" were a thing back then.

[Ryans]

One way to possibly get this is via Skillchains (Renkei) or some way to Chain Individual Limit Breaks together (like CHRONO TRIGGER's Triple Tech System), where you can string certain Weaponskills (or if we have Individual Limit Breaks) string those together in a certain order to create "Custom Combos" (and Bonus Effects).

Something like that would add some interesting layers to Combat in FF XIV.

I've personally wanted this for a while now. Make the combat less about individual dps and more about group actions. Instead of having dps bring the bosses HP bar down faster the better they execute their rotations, have a personal limit break bar that fills up based on your individual performance. The better you personally do, the faster the bar fills up. Then you can use that limit break individually or combine it with other players to do combos. I'm not saying have DDs stop doing damage, I am saying have bosses with increased defense against actions or huge HP pools that require limit breaks to really make dents in them. Regular adds would still be the same and taken out normally.

You could still whittle away a bosses HP bar without any kind of team work, but it would die significantly faster with proper limit break combo executions.

It would sort of merge together the current system with the 1.23 system. You still have to hit buttons constantly, but you get a slower, more deliberate system on top of that.

[Cynfael]

Today I've experienced BLMs in DF who do things like open with Flare (no AF) and start casting Freeze once in UI. Also had DRGs spam RoT (without HT, mind you) on 2 targets.

Please do not make basic job gameplay any more difficult for these people, because the rest of us are already suffering for it.

Please do continue to add fun and beneficial utility to classes so that those who want to play a little better or find creative solutions to mechanics can have more actions to choose from, though. BLM Aetherial Manipulation is a great example of such a skill that good BLMs learn to use, but very casual BLMs can pretty much ignore outside of end-game without giving anyone a huge headache.

[Sylkis]

So what you want is something, like, if everyone gets frozen by shiva, the BLM has to cast Fire II to break everyone out?

1. No, that would be pointless. Definitely not something where you have to use a specific skill to advance.
Instead of roadblocks that must be cleared to advance, it should be opportunities that can be taken.
For example...say that a DPS has a highly damaging attack but it puts them at the top of the hate list. There are times where the boss will not auto attack (e.g. Turn 10) . That would be a good time to use it, but certainly not the only time that it could be used.
It's hard to come up with a good example when the encounters are 100% scripted and the optimal thing to do has been worked out for any job at any time.

2. There's a core rotation with each job, and the variations are small. A bard sings a song and goes back to whatever in 3 seconds. A NIN/WAR party is just "ok I will/won't have this 1 skill in my rotation" and they still do their normal thing with that slight variation.

Comparing to say 1.23. You couldn't use certain skills in certain situations for certain encounters, so you replace it with something else. But once you have moved that skill there, you can't use it later at the "usual" time because all skills had individual cooldowns, so you replace it again with something else and so on... By that time you don't really have a rotation anymore. Also, the time that situation happens can be different each time you fight the boss, and so the skill you swap out can be different. What made a player do better DPS depended on their choices much more than how they kept up with button presses.

You still had a perfect rotation to use on a dummy, but it ends up nothing like it. Compared to here, you have a perfect rotation on a dummy and it's mostly like that in a fight. If you get interrupted by a mechanic or party setup, you just go back to it after doing your thing.

A rotation didn't exist, only general knowledge about which decisions were better.