Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
It's not, though. It's the opposite. Visual and numeric force may be part of the equation, but it's not the whole of it. Gameplay ought be at least half the concern.

Take your two prior example means of upgrade:
Fell Cleave is now a reskin of Inner Beast. It adds no complexity. Gameplay is absolutely, entirely unchanged. It doesn't even adjust relative balance against other attacks in any way that would change how one plays, ever.
Inner Release removes any combo prep from Berserk. It reduces complexity apart from merely restraining SkS breakpoints and devaluing Direct Hit, which is hardly an enjoyable or gameplay change.
Inner Chaos is just a more powerful Inner Beast / Fell Cleave, except in that it restricts IR usage. The complexity added is entirely prohibitive, on the heels of two expansions of changes deliberately meant to reduce prohibitive or delaying interactions.

The burst each successive upgrade provides is tremendous (even assuming balanced rDPS as to make nothing of the added power over time), but compare that to other upgrades: Nostrond isn't a direct upgrade of Geirskogul (it adds macrorotational concerns to its gameplay), Kaeshi: Setsugekka isn't a direct upgrade of Midare Setsugekka (it adds new macrorotational interactions and massively adjusts internal balance), TCJ isn't a direct upgrade of Ninjutsu (and adds an odd-even minute-to-minute macrorotation to NIN), Enkindle Bahamut isn't a direct upgrade to Deathflare, which isn't a direct upgrade to Enkindle, etc., etc.

Now, which -- apart from auxiliary issues like flexibility or high death penalty (TCJ being immobile, DRG losing its eyes over death, etc.) -- are generally seen as the more interesting capstone skills? The ones that do something more for gameplay, or the ones that are direct empowerments of power, aesthetics, or frequency?
Despite being on the side against the sentiment of big gameplay changes being done as we approach level cap, I agree with this. While massive changes or rotational shifts should be avoided as much as possible, there still needs to be something other than just a numbers increase. Example, GNB gameplay changes little from 70-80, but they do get Bloodfest, which gives the class a much faster and cleaner pace during No Mercy windows, and Fated Circle, an AoE cartridge spender. They're smaller changes in the grand scheme of things, but they improve the experience with their inclusion. By contrast Warrior just gets a harder-hitting Fell Cleave and they get to generate rage from AoE, something that should have been there from the start. Nascent Flash is great, but it doesn't really help you feel like you're stronger, just that you can soak more damage.

Improvements aren't just seeing the numbers get bigger, it's -feeling- your job getter stronger as it progresses.