After nearly a decade, im giving this game another chance.

[DwightParkman]

By this logic the majority of MMO players are in fact spike players. I have yet to play one where even the casuals don't follow some meta guide, even in classless games. These are fundamentally unlike MTG where you can make jank work due to magical turn 1 draws and literally tailoring your play group to it. MMOs fundamentally are much less open to such with much fewer interactions and flexible rules and a static hard defined opponent.

this, i can promise is factually wrong as there exists a mmo called World of warcraft classic/tbc thats currently doing better then its modern retail counterpart, and classic/tbc has all forms of tinkering builds that work, yes there are definetly builds that do more damage then others but damage isnt always necessarily the only thing that matters. its this kind of thinking that ruins the genre as a whole.

[DwightParkman]

i dont really want to get into Spike vs Johnny right now, but in the long run spike players can just do their spike builds, and johny players can do their johnny builds if that added such features.

[Keoeson]

people that are known as those enjoy playing with homebrew concepts and builds tailored to them, theorycraft and for their own personal enjoyment.

How should this work in a large scale mmo context from a game play perspective? From a story perspective FFXIV has plenty to offer here, but you largely skipped that part...

[Nothv13]

this, i can promise is factually wrong as there exists a mmo called World of warcraft classic/tbc thats currently doing better then its modern retail counterpart, and classic/tbc has all forms of tinkering builds that work, yes there are definetly builds that do more damage then others but damage isnt always necessarily the only thing that matters. its this kind of thinking that ruins the genre as a whole.

this is factually wrong as there is such an mmo called World of warcraft classic thats currently doing better then its modern retail counterpart, and classic has all forms of tinkering builds that work, yes there are definetly builds that do more damage then others but damage isnt always necessarily the only thing that matters. its this kind of thinking that ruins the genre as a whole.

Even in classic, most people just follow the meta. The differences there however, are smaller since number bloat is as present. Further it still has specs that are just flat out kicked from groups, even casual groups, that are so bad.

BTW, Retail still has 4x the population and 2x the daily logins as classic does so I wouldn't say it is doing "better".

[DPZ2]

What im not enjoying:

I already knew what i was going to expect returning to the game as i did extensive research to what has been added since i stopped playing back in 2.0..
it seems not only did they not add any form of "tinkering" to playing as a job, but they even took that a step further by straight up removing the cross ability feature that existed back in 2.0

Welcome back.

With the addition of so many jobs starting at level 30, 50 and (now) 60, cross-class skills for some, but not for all, would become a problem. The 'good stuff' available from those skills was also a bit weak after ARR. And a number of players didn't really appreciate having to take up a second class. It was simpler to provide role-based skills and skip the "mandatory participation in another class" before you could take up your new level 30 job. Who really wanted to take up Archer and Thaumaturge in order to play a Summoner?

As far as 'tinkering' with builds -- this has never really been that sort of game. Even with cross-class skillsets you didn't have a choice. Bard, for example, couldn't take up Conjurer to get cross-class skills. The Role-based skills were included to provide uniformity between jobs while reducing the number of unique spells for each job.

I'm also a bit confused. i thought yoshida didnt like the idea of hybrid roles? didnt they outright outrule that they want to keep roles as "archtype" as possible? i feel like they kinda lied and passively made many of the jobs very much hybrids but didnt make an actual role called hybrid. things like dancers, red mages, and bards are all very much hybrid DPS, its really not a complaint and maybe this shouldnt be in this section but it does kind of annoy me on a design stand point.

TLDR? Im not enjoying Yoshida's philosophy take on core-mmorpg combat gameplay.

If Bards (one of the original 2.0 jobs) bothers you because you believe it to be a hybrid role, you probably noted that when you began playing 8 years back. Red Mages utilize both Black and White magic (think a combo of black mage for damage and white mage for non-exclusive Healer things). It could be considered a "hybrid" because it was all of that in other FF games that inspired the job. You want Red Mage in the game, it's going to be what it is because of that inspiration. And a lot of people wanted Red Mage.

Things haven't changed that much since ARR's launch. The triumvirate of Tank/Healer/DPS is the still the core of each and every class and job in the game. Combat has become more complex, with more skills, but if you didn't like the core combat gameplay back in 2013, you're still not going to be pleased with it in 2021, assuming you don't enjoy the breadth of skills that have been added over 8 years time.

[Ranaku]

How should this work in a large scale mmo context from a game play perspective? From a story perspective FFXIV has plenty to offer here, but you largely skipped that part...

I think like in WoW etc. different skills you can/could pick from and different talents and other stuff like specs and gear sets that give you also certain buffs and abilities and trinkets that do stuff. Which is a valid point, it's a nice concept but so is XIVs concept. It's just a different taste.

Also there is nothing wrong with giving the story a skip, if you don't say later the story is bad that is. If you only enjoy raiding and you want to get asap into ultimates etc. there is nothing wrong with skipping the story, as long as you are not toxic about the part you skipped and enjoy what you aim for i see no problem with not doing the things you don't enjoy.

[DwightParkman]

Even in classic, most people just follow the meta. The differences there however, are smaller since number bloat is as present. Further it still has specs that are just flat out kicked from groups, even casual groups, that are so bad.

BTW, Retail still has 4x the population and 2x the daily logins as classic does so I wouldn't say it is doing "better".

so you are saying we should promote a toxic enviornment of kicking people because they disagree? correct me if im wrong, but FF14 GMs even frown upon people that parse and use third party addons, i sincerely doubt this is an issue at all, based on that standpoint alone.

[Nothv13]

so you are saying we should promote a toxic enviornment of kicking people because they disagree? correct me if im wrong, but FF14 GMs even frown upon people that parse and use third party addons, i sincerely doubt this is an issue at all, based on that standpoint alone.

No, this is simply something that happens with free tinkering. The fact that you can make build so bad even casuals kick you is what promotes such an environment.

[DwightParkman]

with proper game design, there should be no such thing as a "bad build" and im sure yoshida's team have proven themself that they arent bad.

[DwightParkman]

also, if you dont like playing with johnny players, then dont play with them. if you dont want to tinker and make your own build, then stick to the current cookie cutter spike build decided by content creators on youtube. Everyones happy now