Why are people calling it “casualbringers” now?

[JunseiKei]

Not really. they all play much the same. thats the problem for a lot of people.

if we use tanks and healers as an example. you have lets say a paladin and a scholar. it really doesnt make the slightest bit of difference what jobs the other 6 folks are.
so there's your paladin. whacking away at a boss. and oh look a tank buster.. pop a defensive cooldown. continue whacking away. scholar throws out a lustrate and lets a fairy / regen top off your hp while they go back to dps...

now lets say you swap out that paladin for a warrior. so this time there's your warrior whacking away at the boss. pops a cool down for the tank buster. scholar throws out a lustrate and lets fairy / regen top off your hp while they go back to dps... It's EXACTLY The same same.

oh wait that sch is now an ast.... warrior there whacking a way at the boss oh look tank buster. pop a cooldown. ast tosses out an ED and lets a fairy / regen top you off while they go back to dps..

What exactly is different? Absolutely nothing.. They all play the exact same way... it's not like each tank has a totally unique way of dealing with boss damage it's all exactly the same..

same for dps they all function in exactly the same way. if you dropped that dragoon in your party and got a monk instead. the fight would still be exactly the same.
ok sure the bard might lose a peircing debuff but it wouldn't change how they played in any way. it's not like they'd have to adapt a totally different strategy just because the dragoon left.....

Everyone is the same.... literally the only difference between one job and another is how big the numbers are. and that is why the devs struggle so much....

They could probably give WHM "mega benediction" fully restore the entire parties HP and what the hell make them invicible for 10 seconds.. with a 30 second cooldown.. and people would still take ast/sch because dps numbers are all that ever matters

A while back, SE said they wouldn't create a fight where a certain class was required. They want it so you can take any composition of jobs and complete their encounters and they also don't want players' mentality of 'this job has this and it makes them more efficient over that job' to bar another from being used. SE is favoring player preference for the job they like. A novel, maybe alien, idea, I know.

[Tempest222]

People: Omg 90% of the playerbase is terrible and does pathetic amounts of damage and I could out dps them by pressing one button on a healer. They are all lazy and can’t be bothered to figure out how to play their job.

Also people: How dare they simplify anything and potentially make it slightly easier for more people to properly execute their job to a level that doesn’t make me want to ragequit casual content?

Anyway it doesn’t even look like they are “dumbing” anything down.... Of. course they were gonna change things and prune some skills here and there only to replace them with other skills and other mechanics. I don’t think the sky is falling.

[RyuSaarva]

I actually like bad players, it's always fun to tank with dps and use skills like sleep/bind to survive alone.

[DumdogsWorld]

I have no problem with displacement of difficulty. The keyword is displacement, though. I don't want difficulty nullification.

If Square Enix wants to cut down on 'button bloat' to make things easier, then something else needs to become more difficult as a result.

[Hash_Browns]

How do you propose they gate them then? Cause by doing nothing the same thing is just going to keep happening as people have complained about since the launch of ARR with bad players, I see complaints but very few solutions being put forth.

By making story content/Job content require instanced solo-play that forces you to experience & learn mechanics and act as an end all door to those unwilling to learn so that we no longer have excuses to people who are horrible, and don't know what to do during group content? Removing PotD/HoH EXP, or at least nerfing the rates so you can't get carried though levels? Removing the job potions that give you gear & force the burden on your teammates of having to train you for your job in level 60 content?

[Kalise]

Meh, I disagree with the premise of making jobs easier or “simplifying” them simply because some people don’t put the time in to learn how to play them properly or optimize them. That’s the reason they gave behind simplifying BRD: some players struggled to play it as well as others and so they lowered the ceiling to make it better for those who couldn’t optimize the job.

Question:

Do we even know at this point if they've actually lowered the "Ceiling" of said job(s)?

Or is their talk about "Simplifying" and "Making less complex" merely talking about the skill "Floor" of the job(s)?

Since, those are 2 completely different things.

Given how bad players are actually pretty bad, it would make more sense for them to adjust the skill floor, so that them being bad is less well... Bad.

As opposed to specifically targeting the skill ceiling to make these bad players relatively less bad by simply reducing how well good players are doing compared to them.

[linay]

If you simplify jobs too much and make them all instantly rewarding, those who like things like optimization will get bored and quit. That’s not exactly win-win.

I don't think that's what's happening, though.

[HyoMinPark]

People: Omg 90% of the playerbase is terrible and does pathetic amounts of damage and I could out dps them by pressing one button on a healer. They are all lazy and can’t be bothered to figure out how to play their job.

Also people: How dare they simplify anything and potentially make it slightly easier for more people to properly execute their job to a level that doesn’t make me want to ragequit casual content?

Or the developers could put in tools to gate and teach people how their job works instead of making this Baby’s First MMO. Novel concept.

That said, the people that complain about the types of players you describe are describing lazy players—DPS that won’t AOE, tanks that won’t use cooldowns, healers that want to stand around and watch Netflix instead of participating in the content. Why should we change the way things work to reinforce these types of behavior? The game should honestly require more competence, not less.

Question:

Do we even know at this point if they've actually lowered the "Ceiling" of said job(s)?

Or is their talk about "Simplifying" and "Making less complex" merely talking about the skill "Floor" of the job(s)?

Since, those are 2 completely different things.

Given how bad players are actually pretty bad, it would make more sense for them to adjust the skill floor, so that them being bad is less well... Bad.

As opposed to specifically targeting the skill ceiling to make these bad players relatively less bad by simply reducing how well good players are doing compared to them.

The skill floor of BRD is already really, really low. It is probably one of the easiest jobs to pick up and play at a basic level. You can’t really lower it more than it already is. The two things I notice “bad BRDs” do the most frequently is:
—Not using their AOE
—Not using their songs (and thereby losing out on big chunks of their kit)

Should we automatically remove AOEs and songs because they won’t use them? No. The game should put them though a Hall of Novice-type piece of content that teaches them how to use these things and why they should be used.

They actually mentioned in the PLL that, in the case of BRD, they are simplifying its gameplay because of how some players said that they couldn’t play it “as good as” some of the higher-tier players. This isn’t about bringing down the floor; it’s about bringing down the ceiling to close the gap between the playerbase. And I don’t really agree with that sort of thing. If people want to see themselves like “the good players”, why not put in the effort to get there instead of having it handed to you?


They’ve done this with other jobs where they brought down the ceiling to close the gap between the “bad players” and the “good players” — DRG’s Heavy Thrust was nerfed from +15% damage to +10% damage because players were losing damage by not applying the buff. So they nerfed it to bring down the ceiling for those who couldn’t bother to apply Heavy Thrust.

[ForteNightshade]

How do you propose they gate them then? Cause by doing nothing the same thing is just going to keep happening as people have complained about since the launch of ARR with bad players, I see complaints but very few solutions being put forth.

There will always be bad players. And we're always going to complain when we're stuck with them. That doesn't mean you make it easier. What you can do is make content require more from players as a whole, which in turn, forces people to improve if they ever want to progress. Shinryu is a decent example of this for a story mode, especially you compare it to the laughably easy Thordan.

One thing I want to see if normal mode raids, trials and 24 mans to all have enrages. They did it once with Death Wing then never again. It's a bit silly people can fail every mechanic endlessly but if they throw enough bodies at the boss, it'll eventually die. Just need a healer to raise/lb3 and you're golden. That is one way of gating players behind improving. Another example is to introduce a new Hall of the Novice that better teaches players how to play their job, be it proper cooldown usage, a basic DPS rotation or practice DPSing as a healer. None of this needs to be too demanding nor should it be a full job rotation guide. Just the basics for a level 70 job. The caveat here is make this required. This certainly won't eliminate bad players—nothing ever will. But it will gate them to an extent, which is a better alternative than making everything easier and easier.

[linay]

They actually mentioned in the PLL that, in the case of BRD, they are simplifying its gameplay because of how some players said that they couldn’t play it “as good as” some of the higher-tier players.

In which part of the live letter did they say that? During the job actions video, they only mentioned allowing bard to use their abilities while moving (which is strange to say as I feel that's already the case aside from maybe foe requiem). During the DPS role changes, they only mentioned about decreasing synergy and removing critical hit from bard songs.

They’ve done this with other jobs where they brought down the ceiling to close the gap between the “bad players” and the “good players” — DRG’s Heavy Thrust was nerfed from +15% damage to +10% damage because players were losing damage by not applying the buff. So they nerfed it to bring down the ceiling for those who couldn’t bother to apply Heavy Thrust.

So they decreased the gap. They didn't close it. Those who wanted to optimize will still benefit from doing the job right.