Results of a reddit job satisfaction poll

[Mindiori]

Not that I want a 1-3 button rotation, but.... Did you play old mmos? I seem to remember them being quite slow.

The cooldown and pacing of this game, lends itself toward a deeper rotation and potential skill depth. I suppose some might view that as 'tactical planning' of a sort, as apposed to reflex speed. If you remove the rotational complexity in this game without giving back (as has been the case thus far) you end up appealing to nobody sans the candy-crush brigade.

I primarily came from a Korean PvP background. Naturally I shelved that competitively for this game, with no issue - as my free time is now split on various other endeavours (away from gaming). The speed of Aion Online in its day; is perhaps around comparable to what I am referencing although there are many others. Around 30 keybinds, some bloat yes and an older generation of game design but without the delay present in the majority of ff until end ex. I gravitated toward Monk somewhat in this game for its 'play pace'; so as you might imagine, its neglect bothers me. Most classes in this game leave me short on my APM. I'm waiting essentially for the game to keep up with me.

Don't misread however, I accept FFXIV for what it is. I don't expect it to match the pace of my prior experience. But there has to be some sort of compromise for challenge. Making it into the next WoW post streamlining; is exactly the reason Classic had its vast appeal. People disliked some of the old but having the depth of a puddle, doesn't leave you with much 'purposeful accomplishment' and people were sick of it. As I've noted other posters around here referencing, similar to yourself; you reach a point where simplicity reaches redundancy and reward becomes meaningless.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

The cooldown and pacing of this game, lends itself toward a deeper rotation and potential skill depth. I suppose some might view that as 'tactical planning' of a sort, as apposed to reflex speed. If you remove the rotational complexity in this game without giving back (as has been the case thus far) you end up appealing to nobody sans the candy-crush brigade.

I primarily came from a Korean PvP background. Naturally I shelved that competitively for this game, with no issue - as my free time is now split on various other endeavours (away from gaming). The speed of Aion Online in its day; is perhaps around comparable to what I am referencing although there are many others. Around 30 keybinds, some bloat yes and an older generation of game design but without the delay present in the majority of ff until end ex. I gravitated toward Monk somewhat in this game for its 'play pace'; so as you might imagine, its neglect bothers me. Most classes in this game leave me short on my APM. I'm waiting essentially for the game to keep up with me.

Don't misread however, I accept FFXIV for what it is. I don't expect it to match the pace of my prior experience. But there has to be some sort of compromise for challenge. Making it into the next WoW post streamlining; is exactly the reason Classic had its vast appeal. People disliked some of the old but having the depth of a puddle, doesn't leave you with much 'purposeful accomplishment' and people were sick of it. As I've noted other posters around here referencing, similar to yourself; you reach a point where simplicity reaches redundancy and reward becomes meaningless.

I dunno about this lack of complexity thing. Sure, rotations may be static, in a vacuum, but you have to adjust when the boss force disengages you. I have almost 36 skills slotted on my main. Maybe you are just playing the wrong job?

[ForteNightshade]

yeah.. thats not what i meant. but nice try.

Its super easy to generalize about things. See, what I meant was "we pull hate off BAD tanks all the time." You took that to mean, any and all tanks.

Thats why we have this lowest common denominator thing, where enmity isn't really a thing anymore. I can't count how many times I'd use all of my enmity dumps and STILL have hate. I'm glad I don't have to worry about that any more.

And this why people are complaining about job design; particularly healers. They've been designed for that lowest common denominator which makes for less compelling gameplay for everyone else. Instead of improving one of the few tank mechanics, they abandoned it entirely because some people can't be bothered to learn how it works. Likewise, healers are reduced to spamming a single button due to not wanting to make things "too hard" yet even Savage barely pushes their healing kit. Maybe the dev team should stop worrying about Timmy who thinks Cure III is a better healer than Cure II because three comes after two.

[dinnertime]

The problem with one-button attacks on healers is because there is nothing complex about healer jobs. Free healing is practically given like candy, and encounters don't exactly test healers in healing like the devs claimed. They've stripped the complexity of all the healers with how much they've reworked them.

They don't necessarily need a 3-button combo but a toolkit that works well with each other to make doing damage a bit more engaging. Old-school Scholar is a good example because you have Broil, two DoTs, Bane to spread those DoTs, Miasma III, Shadowflare and Energy Drain to use. Most of that is now stripped away and it's boring.

They can also be complex in other areas that isn't about damage. Astrologian's old card system while had its problems, had a lot of depth in it. The various effects you can use and how they can be applied (Longer duration, Double potency or as a party-wide effect) was engaging. Now it's all one predictable buff with no way to manipulate how it's applied, that's boring.

Even the simplest healer, White Mage, had complexity stripped away because of how many instant ogcd heals it has on hand. All of the healers do, actually. It trivializes healing so much especially when again, encounters in the game aren't exactly intense on healing.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

And this why people are complaining about job design; particularly healers. They've been designed for that lowest common denominator which makes for less compelling gameplay for everyone else. Instead of improving one of the few tank mechanics, they abandoned it entirely because some people can't be bothered to learn how it works. Likewise, healers are reduced to spamming a single button due to not wanting to make things "too hard" yet even Savage barely pushes their healing kit. Maybe the dev team should stop worrying about Timmy who thinks Cure III is a better healer than Cure II because three comes after two.

The game will never be super complex. It's not really the audience it caters towards. I've accepted that. I do savage, and most of the other content it provides. I'm glad I don't have to worry about some of that though, it let's me play other games, which I also enjoy.

I feel like a lot of people only want to play xiv, and while I understand that, I think the world is moving away from that kind of game.

[dinnertime]

The game will never be super complex. It's not really the audience it caters towards. I've accepted that. I do savage, and most of the other content it provides. I'm glad I don't have to worry about some of that though, it let's me play other games, which I also enjoy.

I feel like a lot of people only want to play xiv, and while I understand that, I think the world is moving away from that kind of game.

Yet so far in Shadowbringers, people are complaining about a lack of casual content. Very strange.
And the complaints aren't necessarily about adding more complexity into the game, but more about bringing back the complexity they stripped away anyway.

If anything, it's alienation to the people who are already used to it. I don't think most people like the changes because it's been such a hot topic ever since the expansion came out.

[Esmoire]

With regards to healer and buttons and stuff, while there is a debate towards the gameplay experience of the current card system, I think AST is on the right track despite its infamy: a little more to keep you engaged when the damage isn't coming in.

Basically, I'd like to see them do something to make the healers more engaging when you aren't healing. I think if it's too clunky like AST on Shadowbringers release, it will turn people off, so nothing quite that extreme. It can't be such that your job hinges on it, because it has to be able to operate in the hand of someone new to healing or under crisis. SCH in Stormblood was close to what I'd like: it was kind of like a "DPS Lite", with some DoTs to keep up and a trait with some forward feedback on your oGCD spell. I don't think Scholar in 6.0 has to have its Stormblood kit back, but I'd like if they could make it more involved.

WHM... not sure. I don't mind there being a super basic healer. I find it too boring to play, but as someone who mains WAR I respect there being a very simple healer for those who want one. Like if they did something to make lillies more interesting, like maybe if attacking would cause them to flourish a little more quickly.


On the topic of healers, I'd like them to maybe take another look at what MP means. MP and Piety are kind of meh design-wise. I like that in PvP they went with a direction of making your back attack spell and heal free and I think it could be applied to PvE; it could certainly help justifying the existence of the tier 1 healing spells if they were made free, and MP was made into a more exciting resource. Like if some of the oGCDs had a hefty MP cost in addition to their CD, it could make actually stopping to cast spells more enticing. Just something worth thinking about for the next expansion.

[wereotter]

2700 entries is more than enough. You'd only need about 400 entries to have a 95% confidence level considering active FFXIV population (using 600 000)

With 2700 entries you have a marginal error of about 2%, meaning the real result will be within +- 2% of the survey's result.

Not a single job met that 400 respondent threshold. This was 2,867 respondents across all jobs, with some jobs receiving more than 100 fewer responses than others. This makes the margin of error much larger, and not very representative of the population of the game as a whole, even when you consider that the number of responses they got was lower than the population of every server...

But to break it down by number of responses per job:

AST: 202
BRD: 153
BLM : 142
DNC: 159
DRK: 182
DRG: 169
GUN: 148
MCH: 163
MNK: 125
PLD: 167
RDM: 188
SAM: 150
SCH: 230
SUM: 163
WAR: 124
WHM: 250

[dinnertime]

WHM... not sure. I don't mind there being a super basic healer. I find it too boring to play, but as someone who mains WAR I respect there being a very simple healer for those who want one. Like if they did something to make lillies more interesting, like maybe if attacking would cause them to flourish a little more quickly.

White Mage needs an attack that consumes lilies because typically you want to consume them ASAP for Afflatus Misery, but there will be times where there's no need for the heal.

[Halivel]

Yet so far in Shadowbringers, people are complaining about a lack of casual content. Very strange.
And the complaints aren't necessarily about adding more complexity into the game, but more about bringing back the complexity they stripped away anyway.

If anything, it's alienation to the people who are already used to it. I don't think most people like the changes because it's been such a hot topic ever since the expansion came out.

People complain about everything everyday since the beginning of the world and they will never stop.

No matter what SE will do, there will be new party of users who will come to say their "Pah!". At the same time people who likes things or simply doesn't care and plays hovewer it's done tend to stay quiet because "Why say something if I like everything as it is?" mentality is common all over the world. Sooooo, no, just because some topic is hot doesn't mean that it represents what majority of players thinks. Let's take Male Viera thread, going away from actual gameplay. Is the topic hot? Oh yeah, it is - the main post even got 1800+ likes which barely happened on this forum (if happened before at all). Does it mean that majority cares? Nope, majority is okay either they do add them or not as long as they can play the game and wouldn't bother if this addition never happens because they don't lose anything. And I say it as somebody who is in "pro-Viera" camp.

Every time I see complains about the game in let's say novice network - they're from same 3-5 people and are so repetitive that I'm having deja vu every time I open the chat, and on top of that some tend to start yapping if somebody dares to say that they like some job's gameplay in its new form which... doesn't attract more people to say positive things, to say the least. Same goes to every other source of opinion - there is a very high chance that you will see same nicknames in comment sections. It doesn't mean that this opinion isn't valid or is meaningless. It's just that it's not represetantive, because the real majority simply doesn't talk because they like things the way they are and don't bother themselves to go out of their way to say it.

AST changes (as example)? Happened thanks to one minority asking for changes, just as any other job balancing change. Result? We see it on this forum - another minority is unhappy. Meanwhile, the majority just plays the game and enjoys their time in it. Also keep in mind that at least some part of the development team, including Yoshida, plays the game themselves, so they aren't blind to how things work in the final product.