Focus on fixing jobs for the people who already play them

[Tsumdere]

MCH was an awful job pre-rework. It was an amalgamation of systems that did not interact with each other, had a clunky RNG-riddled rotation, was terribly punishing but had no real reward for playing well, and generally had no place at all in any group. MCH needed the rework more than any other job at the time.
It's not perfect now, but it's leagues ahead of what it used to be.

BRD tho... I have no idea what they are doing with BRD. That is a class that is in trouble if they keep futzing around and removing stuff from it.

[Rinhi]

I think monk's in a better place than it was pre-change/buff? but I'm also speaking from a strictly casual perspective and don't know if the endgame monk gods think differently tbh

[Dzian]

.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.

I dunno I think monks biggest problem has been the amount of positional for many players.

In a lot of mmos hand to hand combat classes are pretty popular as it's a kind of purity you don't get from a weapon. But over the years in xiv its been quite common to see comments along the lines of I'd play monk if it had less positionals or flowed more like its 1.23 counterpart or had combos or something else. People want to play hand to hand they just don't like the gameplay of monk.

You can go and find monk threads from way every expansion and see similar comments. Hand to hand combat is generally quite fun. It's just the way in which xiv does it that is the problem.

It's like many people like bow classes. But they don't like Bards in xiv because in more traditional mmos. The bow class is often what was referred to as the glass cannon. The highest dps but a leaf falling from a tree would crush them. But in xiv its more of an singing water pistol than anything else. Summoner is another one often a popular choice in mmos but in xiv often slammed because of the egis. Its like people like big bad battleaxes as well but don't like tanking so they don't play the big bad battleaxe class...

I've seen more people playing monks recently and while some say its because of the changes many say its just because so much of the more recent content ignores pistionals and thus makes the class more fun to play.

[CKNovel]

Damn, I'm really happy that many starts to speak about the job design.

I personally prefer the 5.0 direction of MCH, 4.0 MCH had too many problem.
I like how the job went from gunplay and gadget to actual machines and "bigger guns". But that's all the rework brought to MCH. The rotation is barebone and boring, way too many abilities are automated. Wildfire combo is no more, it's just an empowered Hypercharge phase. Flamethrower is press and wait. Automaton Queen is a glorified dot tied to a gauge. And all gauge are "fill to X and spend with Y ability". Don't have tools? Cycle 1 2 3.
SB MCH was annoying but it had results. ShB MCH is boring and is a terrible addition to a team.

Back in HW there was button bloat, in ShB it's a button starving.
Spamming a GCD 5 times in a row is not fun. More than 3 buttons with AoE variant is not fun.

I told myself that if MCH was in this boring state once again, I'd go Sage for the expansion but I got quickly reminded about the state of healers!
Job design needs love. And we really need informations about the job direction, not at the reveal when it's too late.

[Colt47]

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.

Unless the intent is actually to let people master more than one job, and the selection of those jobs are the customization one should have. The game has to work for controller players and there are some jobs right now that still have a LOT of buttons that don't need to be there.

[Jettinson]

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.

Demolition animation looks great until you realize it is a DoT.
Imagine Samurai's Shoha being a DoT, multiple hits and all.

But overall MNK gets less appeal due to constant animation cancels, POSITIONAL for every GCD which for many it can be a major turn off.
Later fights requiring less positional make the class being played more though.

For real though, striking classes are so enjoyable to play, only monk that gets awkward in some places like True Balance and Dragon Kick + Bootshine spam which at the end leaves you with no form and feels off putting restarting your normal rotations.
Also Bootshine having no new meatier animation even at lv80 despite being the golden GCD is so weird. At least give something new when you have the buff Leaden Fists

[ReynTime]

They're not going to make design changes based on older players until the game actually starts to lose more than it gets.

They weren't thinking of the minority who liked the direction they seemed to be going in 1.23a when they made ARR. They weren't thinking of the players who liked character and combat pre Stormblood when they made changes in Stormblood. Shadowbringers handled pve content almost like an afterthought and it still made them break records with active players.

[Jeeqbit]

The positionals are part of what make MNK fun right now, but what I think a lot of people don't understand is you can spend 3-4 GCDs in one position then 2-3 in the next position so that the change of position is actually not as frequent as they think at a glance.

[VentVanitas]

I dunno I think monks biggest problem has been the amount of positional for many players.

Literally not even close. Positionals on MNK are not an issue with the job and the game in no way forces you to hit them, if anything it's more of a fault on the game's part on not teaching players enough about them. If people want to play a melee with less positionals then they can just play SAM or DRG. The real main reason why MNK fails to grasp any traction with players is because SE is completely ignorant to all feedback regarding it and give it the most tone deaf changes that in no way expand upon the job, making it stagnant. (i.e. instead of building off of Greased Lightning as a mechanic and making it more lenient like Enochian, they decided to give MNK a million different buttons that achieve the same thing.)

I think monk's in a better place than it was pre-change/buff? but I'm also speaking from a strictly casual perspective and don't know if the endgame monk gods think differently tbh

To put it simply, anyone who doesn't normally play MNK will notice that it's easier to play due to the removal of Greased Lightning as a job mechanic, so for casual players, sure. For MNK mains or anyone else who plays the job extensively, the 5.4 rework only exasperated existing problems. (Chakra still is the worst job gauge in the game tied with Oath, MNK still lacking any identity for itself, SE doing it's "remove a skill and add it later again" bullcrap by turning Tornado Kick into Steel Peak, etc.)

[Nanchi]

Maining mnk since heavensward and completed the savage thier then and now feels like night and day. Honestly the majority of people truly maining monk are just a bunch of masochist who can't let go of the one job that felt really unique and fun to play.
The changes they made were necessary but there is still SO much more they need to fix. It is still the least played job by a mile compared to anything else in the game and it's a shame.
One thing that always bugged me is how much the lore of monk provided for skills to be changed and expanded on, there is so much they COULD do but somehow refuse to do so. It's the only job that feels like it's regressing instead of progressing, isn't helped by how savage fights are designed. On a casual note I don't think many would find much issue with it, it falls in line with BRD which got gutted in this expansion but the king of being neglected is still MNK.