Focus on fixing jobs for the people who already play them

[znushu]

Job changes should not be based on trying to get more people to play them. It alienates the people who had already been actively playing it. People who have spent time learning it, perfecting it, taking it to harder content, gearing it, and optimizing to the best of their ability should not have that effort reduced to nothing on the turn of a new expansion now that they have to either relearn it or find that it's no longer the job they used to love. Job changes should be made with its current dedicated players in mind. Make it more enjoyable for THEM. More people will come around naturally if that happens.

Unfortunately I'm beyond afraid that this is what they plan to do to BRD and, to a lesser extent because of its current issues, SMN. Jobs should not be gutted or homogenized just to appeal to people who never liked them to begin with. The way to make more people play a role is to make its current players enjoy playing it more. That way, they talk about how much fun it is and inspire others to try it out.

So...Blue Mage Job Fix When?

oh right, sorry, I forgot. we don't exist as a real job still

[TaleraRistain]

I'd argue the point that they change classes strictly to get more people to play them. A lot of people have left healers because they say they're bored with the dps rotation now. Sometimes they're trying to balance within roles but they don't have someone on staff who plays the role so they make some very questionable decisions that don't make the role appealing to new or old.

[anhaato]

However I do like the current iteration of machinist since I can learn a simple rotation and go between jobs to keep my life interesting. The game shouldn't be about being stuck in one job because it requires all the energy in the world to run right, and that seems to be what people are actually advocating 90% of the time on the forums.

We're advocating that every job should take some level of thought to play. If you can switch between every job with little effort, turn your brain off, and expect close to top end play, that's not good design. We want jobs to be play differently, so people can choose a role and have something that fits their specific preferred playstyle. If all ranged are the same then what's the point of having 3 ranged? If jobs are braindead to learn and have little optimization what's the point of high end content? The issue you describe is more accurately phrased as the game not properly teaching jobs. Jobs should not be designed solely for casual play, because that makes high end content pointlessly easy and not "high end" at all.

[AngeliouxRein]

At this point I wish they would go the way of older MMORPGs, which was have giant skill trees filled with a variety of skills to choose or upgrade. This way SE can keep adding all the skills they wanted and players could pick the skills and combos they want to use. Also, it could bring the possibility of bringing back old skills and play styles that people liked. I remember old MCH and I’m kind of torn between which version I liked more. The old complicated style kept me awake and focused but the current version isn’t so bad either for me. Being SMN main, I fear it may get dumb down for people who only want nostalgia related changes to it or for the other crowd that’s just too lazy/can’t handle the business. I’m just getting really tired of ever expansion seeing overhauls of different jobs whether they need them or not.

[grinkdaboy]

i think the mch rework was good. ammo sucked and if you don't live within spitting distance of your dc's servers, you were pretty boned and forced to cringe in agony as you clipped each button after the next. ninja suffered from that, and the rework in 5.08 made it so much nicer.

and as far as monk goes, they should bring back old RoE. literally the only good thing it had going, and they went and cracked it in the knee with a pipe. i appreciate the mitigation, but, i'd much rather have to worry less about my positionals because you don't have to constantly move. sure, you're gonna be moving a lot on samurai, dragoon, and ninja for your positionals but not quite as fast as monk. it also suffers from a similar problem with needing very low ping. otherwise you're going to clip your forbidden chakra, and you're all but encouraged to be weaving in RoE when you can. i feel like i can get more out of samurai or dragoon with less effort than i would with monk.

[Jkap_Goat]

I use to main Ast up to 5.0. Now after all the changes they have done to it and now new changes there going to happen in 6.0. I won't ever be playing it again. I don't find it a fun job anymore and don't like play style to it anymore. Maybe they should leave the classes alone or take a survey to see if thats what players would want for changes.

Agreed, i stop playing ast at 5.0 as well, i loved the RNG cards and how every card was different instead of this crap we have now, i wish they would have left ast the way is was but i feel like they are going to dumb down and make everything more homogenized

[Jeeqbit]

Job changes should not be based on trying to get more people to play them. If people don't play them now, then it's because they don't enjoy the playstyle or they feel the effort put into it isn't worth it, and changing a job's playstyle to make more people enjoy it usually results in something extremely boring.

The MCH overhaul resulted in people actually playing and enjoying it where previously almost nobody was playing it. It's very popular on EU data centers.

I agree that MNK in general just does not appeal to a lot of people whatever changes get made, because they want to use a weapon rather than fists, but it also doesn't have fixed combos like other classes and that may be something that confuses people, which is unfortunate because if you read the abilities a bit you start to understand that there are effectively fixed combos and an effectively fixed rotation that makes sense.

[VirusOnline]

Back in ARR I loved MNK and exclusively played it as main.

Back in ARR.
The class still exists as if it's still ARR.

I think SE just has no idea how to approach its redesign even when there are some good forum suggestions.

[VirusOnline]

Job changes should not be based on trying to get more people to play them. If people don't play them now, then it's because they don't enjoy the playstyle or they feel the effort put into it isn't worth it, and changing a job's playstyle to make more people enjoy it usually results in something extremely boring.

Personally for me, it's ability aesthetics, the sense of it fitting a class, the lore of that class, and uniqueness.

MNK has those meaty feeling hits, but the aesthetics of the abilities lack visual impact compared to the rest of the melee - especially with Reaper coming. MNK lore is great. When compared to the rest of the melee, MNK feels uninspiring and basic.
I can't really figure out what bothers me so greatly other than the boring visual playstyle and the low return in effort vs skill, but if I had to take a guess it's GL and oGCD mechanics. Oh and Dragon Kick.

[Tint]

Yes please. It's annoying that they listen to feedback of people who quit the job 2 years ago...

DRK was awesome in HW and people loved it. Then they destroyed DRK in SB and people complained. But then a new generation of DRKs played and liked the SB version. And then they listend to the feedback of the first generation players, destroyed the SB version too and now you have two pissed generations of DRKs because of course neither the HW nor the SB DRKs like the ShB version. Meanwhile a third generation is already playing - and liking - the job now...