DPS jobs lacking utility?

[dezzmont]

In game design 'utility' can be really hard to codify, because it comes in two flavors: Tangible (Ex: Trick attack, dance partner, regens, leylines), and Intangible (Ex: En Avant).

If utility is something that is adding to a numerical value that your constantly comparing, it is easy to design but can often feel either invisible (Ex: Bard songs), helpful (regens when they won't ever be a difference maker in even getting the healer one more cast), or overwhelming (old trick attack or piercing/slashing debuffs for example). Its also hard to make even really strong ones feel good or to make them noticeable for your teammates. A few feel REALLY good (Leylines) because they both are a meaningful DPS increase AND are visible in how they are helping you (It isn't an accident many of the 'fun' utility is a speed increase, because casting more is very visible), but overall even when these are good they lack any real 'highpoint' compared to a big attack with a flashy animation.

Intangible utility is easier to make feel impactful to some degree, and as long as their use cases come up remotely often (ex: Aetherial Manipulation and Between the Lines are very frequently useful to maintain uptime), but they can be much harder to keep relevant (Ex: DPS Esunas, heavies, stuns) because they can break encounters, and its harder to overall design them because by their nature they are introducing entirely new mechanics to the fight. Most of the ones that 'work' in XIV are movement, and tank damage reduction effects, though "rez-mage" gets a special mention. XIV used to have more of these, but most were considered bad (ex: Ewer cards) or frustrating to use (manashift) and the game pushed away from these.

XIV tries very hard to push away from 'meta' comps and so complicated ability interactions between players are de-emphasized. In some ways this is good (Its nice to not be locked into DRG+BRD super hard) in other ways it limits the design space for utility a bit. Visible, impactful, offensive utility can have serious implication for other kits. Despite the fact most 'fun' self buffs we see are either a total transformation of abilities or attack speed increases, there is a reason attack speed increases went away. Likewise, defensive/healing utility is rough because the very concept of healing is strange in game design overall, because all healing that doesn't directly save the target is 'wasted,' so unless healing can get so demanding the healers alone can't cover it, or unless your heal effect is so powerful it saves a healer GCD, healing or defensive buffs are 'worthless.' And intangible benefits require fight design complicated enough for your intangiable utility to meaningfully alter it, which is hard without creating fights that 'require' certain types of party members, so we tend to only see intangible utility when they are very 'internal' to the character and accomplish something that naturally fits into how the job plays anyway (like BLM).

[Shurrikhan]

What would be considered "good utility"?

Good utility is utility which allows for multiple but deliberate and impactful means of approach. It therefore requires not only a good kit but also appropriate contexts.

In game design 'utility' can be really hard to codify, because it comes in two flavors: Tangible (Ex: Trick attack, dance partner, regens, leylines), and Intangible (Ex: En Avant).

If utility is something that is adding to a numerical value that your constantly comparing, it is easy to design but can often feel either invisible (Ex: Bard songs), helpful (regens when they won't ever be a difference maker in even getting the healer one more cast), or overwhelming (old trick attack or piercing/slashing debuffs for example). Its also hard to make even really strong ones feel good or to make them noticeable for your teammates. A few feel REALLY good (Leylines) because they both are a meaningful DPS increase AND are visible in how they are helping you (It isn't an accident many of the 'fun' utility is a speed increase, because casting more is very visible), but overall even when these are good they lack any real 'highpoint' compared to a big attack with a flashy animation.

Agreed, though I'd argue that if a parser is required for a given utility to be visible, let alone a comparison of multiple runs, it's not remotely tangible. (Dance Partner, for instance, would fall among those, at least outside of Devilment and sometimes its stacked AoE heal.) Opposite, a skill with situational value (such as En Avant) is a tangible gain when pertinent situations arise. The main problem is crafting situations to allow for pertinence enough for tangible utility without constraining means of successful interaction to that utility.

Consider, for instance, a would-be lethal AoE. If the AoE has no fall-off over range and movement skills are relevant, the fight becomes constrained to those movement skills. Alternatively, if the AoE has linear fall-off over a considerable range, the difference of a mere 10 yards may not be quite as noticeable as one would like. The perfect solution, then, is likely one which allows for but softly punishes or constrains preemptive movement, such that laggy players can skill escape with Sprint alone (and that Sprint would have no need to be on cooldown), but in which the AoE nonetheless feels timely and punishing enough that those movement skills significantly aid safety and/or uptime.

[AnotherPerson]

-"Good" utility is anything that restores your resources i.e. HP, MP, TP, job gauge. Things like equilibrium, lucid dreaming, goad, infuriate, etc. that immediately benefit you and is almost always a DPS increase because of ease-of-use and flexibility.

That's the joke. We already have those tools. Some jobs have a couple more than others, but we have those tools at our disposal. In that regard, DPS is not "lacking" good utility. And yet people say we lack 'good' utility, which means good utility is not simply related to numbers.

In game design 'utility' can be really hard to codify, because it comes in two flavors: Tangible (Ex: Trick attack, dance partner, regens, leylines), and Intangible (Ex: En Avant).

If utility is something that is adding to a numerical value that your constantly comparing, it is easy to design but can often feel either invisible (Ex: Bard songs), helpful (regens when they won't ever be a difference maker in even getting the healer one more cast), or overwhelming (old trick attack or piercing/slashing debuffs for example). Its also hard to make even really strong ones feel good or to make them noticeable for your teammates. A few feel REALLY good (Leylines) because they both are a meaningful DPS increase AND are visible in how they are helping you (It isn't an accident many of the 'fun' utility is a speed increase, because casting more is very visible), but overall even when these are good they lack any real 'highpoint' compared to a big attack with a flashy animation.

Intangible utility is easier to make feel impactful to some degree, and as long as their use cases come up remotely often (ex: Aetherial Manipulation and Between the Lines are very frequently useful to maintain uptime), but they can be much harder to keep relevant (Ex: DPS Esunas, heavies, stuns) because they can break encounters, and its harder to overall design them because by their nature they are introducing entirely new mechanics to the fight. Most of the ones that 'work' in XIV are movement, and tank damage reduction effects, though "rez-mage" gets a special mention. XIV used to have more of these, but most were considered bad (ex: Ewer cards) or frustrating to use (manashift) and the game pushed away from these.

Exactly. This here is the real kicker. Everyone here has been complaining about lack of useful/good utility when in reality we have plenty of utility that affects numerical values. Support healing buffs? Mantra, Nature's Minne. AoE Mitigations? Shield Samba / Tactician / Troubadour / Feint / Addle. Resource sustain? Second Wind, Bloodbath, Lucid Dreaming. Damage increases? Pretty much in every toolkit, Chain Strategem, the current AST cards, Divination, Dragon Sight, Technical Finish, Dance Partner, Trick Attack, etc. The list goes on and on. These support skills are certainly useful utility.

What people have been feeling when they say lack of utility is the intangible benefits that the utility gives in relation to how it can change your avenue of approach without affecting encounter design. The most obvious example is always Black mage - properly using Aetherial Manipulation and Between the Lines is the fastest ways to increase your DPS and stay safe from avoidable AOEs - all the while not giving an actual DPS increase on its own. How? By forcing the player to move and reposition, in other words - Utility for Encounter design. Situational Utility for Situational Value.

In other words, the lack of utility stems from the unchanging feel of encounter design. This comes from the obvious problem of a DPS-centric meta. Everyone looks at utility at whether we would lose potential DPS tradeoff. We have plenty of situational utility - Heavy + bind + sleep. However, we don't ever use them because there's rarely a need to necessitate their usage as requiring them would start locking specific role/job compositions, and that's not always applicable when you go into Duty Finder with a bunch of random players whose jobs might just all be red mage. In other words, the readily available situational utility is usually focused internally on the job itself. The main difference between good vs. bad situational utility is how applicable is their usefulness on a general consensus in the variability of their intended purpose. That is what makes utility feels 'unique' and dependent on the player using it itself giving a notable impact on the fight.

In this case, mobility is always useful because we use it to dodge AoEs or gap close and resume our DPS rotation. That's mainly because encounter design has a lot of avoidable mechanics that require players to move. Black mages benefit more to mobility since their situational utility's effect can drastically change per party whereas other jobs gap close for the purpose of re-engaging/disengaging and a lot less so for dodging AoEs. Their mobility serves a very static goal, but it's still better than having no gap closer at all (PLD before intervene).

Situational utility with variability is mainly what AST's old cards did because you can never guarantee what you drew, instead you used what you got to its best effect. People loved this side of AST cards. At the same time however, the card you drew was very situational on whether it could be useful, so it suffered when fights became heavily scripted. It was also what led to people 'fishing for balance' since damage increase is always useful and Spire isn't. In other words, AST's original situational utility could be very off its intended purpose.

I have a feeling that situational utility is what led to Monk's Shadowbringers later toolkit, except the difference in the general utility is that the usage of those skills are very static - disengages and transitions don't add a lot of change, it just keeps things flowing. There's not much variance to make it feel different so their situational utility was very much so inapplicable to most of the fight.

[Lucyfurr1988]

And that's not neglecting a majority in favor of a more vocal minority, whilst being disingenuous as to whether the given concept was workable or desirable?

I jest. But I feel this has applied to more than just job changes alone. Whole paths of content as they could have been or how the parameters on content have formed speak to similar problems.

casual players are the majority of players in the game, honestly i want more complexity back in my jobs

[Lucyfurr1988]

I have to agree with Wereotter here; if the opportunity costs for using a skill for its utility is almost always in excess of the actual (e.g. healer damage) gains possible from using it, it's not a utility action so much as utility capacity, which is then more a group constraint/allowance than an individual decision.

Worse, if it doesn't time out (or its affected inputs/outputs aren't tuned as) to be frequently useful, it's not utility of any sort, but instead only flavor.

it saves a gcd heal almost every time its up and can be trusted to keep people alive keeping rescources in situations. utility might not be its main focus but it does have utility attached to it

[dezzmont]

Agreed, though I'd argue that if a parser is required for a given utility to be visible, let alone a comparison of multiple runs, it's not remotely tangible. (Dance Partner, for instance, would fall among those, at least outside of Devilment and sometimes its stacked AoE heal.)

I would actually call Dance Partner one of the few 'good' team DPS buffs in the sense that it is very visible that your partner is your partner and is helping you, you get animations, and there is a feeling of connection and prestige for being 'chosen' as dance partner among pickup groups.

Ultimately I think a good support/utility skill is about making the players feel a connection to other players.

A good example of another game that did this very well was LoL. Sona was a character who had BRD like group buffs that were extremely relevant to total DPS but were entirely passive and represented just by a buff icon. They updated her to have her offensive aura work differently, where you moving near an ally after casting a certain spell caused their weapon or hands to glow blue and their next attack shot out a little 'magic missile' in a quick burst of damage, which despite being lower overall DPS felt WAY better and made it far more clear how helpful that character was.

Mobas in general are really good at this: Io from Dota is another great example of how to make what is essentially a trickle regen to an ally and a small attack speed buff feel mystical and cosmic just by having a fancy beam shooting space energy at them.

Obviously MOBA fight design is a bit different, but that may be a good angle to look for helping out lackluster abilities and utility. A LOT of popular jobs in XIV are popular not for mechanical reasons, but because the animation and flow of the job sells its fantasy so well. A raw DPS increase is a raw DPS increase, but 'I now cause my allies to shoot musical notes with some attacks that makes them get a cool bonus animation and for me to get some benefit' is SPICY and lets both a hypothetical bard feel great for tossing out a buff and lets the party 'see' the damage increase, even if it is in fact still just a 1% damage buff.

Utility is less about actually being necessary or game changing and more about allowing players to define themselves by connecting with their teammates. Its more a fantasy of being a team player who is helping everyone rise to a challenge. In a sense, despite a combat Peloton in theory being less useful in 99% of encounters than the AOE damage resists ranged DPS get, it would probably be far more popular with most of the playerbase for better fitting in with this 'I want to make a connection with my team and be seen doing it' model of utility.

[Shurrikhan]

I would actually call Dance Partner one of the few 'good' team DPS buffs in the sense that it is very visible that your partner is your partner and is helping you, you get animations, and there is a feeling of connection and prestige for being 'chosen' as dance partner among pickup groups.

It's one of the better as far as mostly "simply moves numbers around" buffs go, but for me that has only to do with the additional expectations that may then be placed upon me, like tracking the CDs of their heal and Crit buff, since I'd be using them simultaneously. It hasn't nearly the presence that, say, Io has, imo, as I don't feel the passive effect whatsoever.

It's one of the main reasons I don't enjoy playing Dancer. That core skill just feels like a matter of finding who's likely to do the most damage and forgetting the skill exists until they die or badly betray your expectations. Heck, there's more to it, even, from their PoV than ours, given the attached CD that doesn't quite allow us to shuffle it around with each renewed burst phase (if/when staggered from one another) or switch between a target of higher burst during their burst and one of higher sustain outside those periods.

[Duskane]

personally i love support roles but the ranged dont really cut it for me and most of ninjas stuff is gone due to enmity changes.
really a big reason i like tanking because of all the tools they have to help the party.

[Payadopa]

I think SE just programmed themselves into a corner with the whole DPS/tank/healer segregation to make the DF work. Classes need to fit a certain role or it doesn't work (looking at you, BLU). Combine that with static boss encounters and of course everything will devolve to number crunching. I'm not disputing that fact. I'm just saying I could see the writing on the wall ever since the system was implemented and I was hoping it wouldn't come to this. ShB brought the worst job changes by far. No job is allowed to stand out and [press button to make damage go up/down] is just no fun to use.

[Anya_Synia]

I play Dancer at end game, I am happy with Dancer's utility, we have mitigation, a good heal if stacked with dance partner, a heal buff move at lv 80.

I also used to play Summoner back when we were the only class that could rezz that wasn't a healer. I was pretty happy with the job back then because if a tank left I would just summon Titan and we would take it slow until another tank joined.

It depends which job you play some jobs are more focused on buffs while others will be more focused on pure dps.