Red Mage: Potential adjustments

[Duelle]

Hell, if it did even half the things for RDM that Fracture did for Monk (adding soft-CD access to a non-positional skill AND a rotational +1 mod, atop a ppgcd bonus, per ~18 seconds), I think we'd be happy. But it's a matter of context. If it does nothing more than the ppgcd bonus, it merely makes RDM feel slower to ramp up.

Fracture may have been a boon for MNK, but was a waste of a GCD for the class that learned it (MRD/WAR), which is what I was getting at.

Again, though, is that fun?

So this is where you lose me. Fun is a subjective thing, and I consider it a cowardly way to try to justify a design (hence why I've taken umbrage with WoW's devs when they made changes to classes under the guise of "fun", as said changes often turn out to be anything but). Putting something together and expecting people to find it fun is like a professional wrestler that comes up with a gimmick and expects it to get over with the crowd. Neither is a sure thing, and to count on it is basically counting your chickens before they hatch.

The exact style of DoT I would want on Red Mage is one that allows it to use mana of one type now to gain more mana over time, without interrupting your regular dualcast sequences, giving you a reason to use it over Reprise. My concern with the idea is whether it should rely on two mechanics we don’t have use for currently: intentionally unbalancing your mana, and converting mana of one type into another. The unbalanced state just acts as a punishment mechanic at the moment, but granting access to an ability to immediately escape that state does give it a use case, and would also allow us to apply a soft cooldown to the use of these DoTs to limit their uptime.

Well, the issues to address are that a) you're currently not going to imbalance unless it's on purpose, b) RDM is already built with not having perfect parity between mana bars in mind because of how Verflare and Verholy are designed, c) messing with mana accumulated has the risk of delaying the spender phase which means lower DPS potential. That aside, it being an alternative to Jolt makes sense, though it might require some adjustments because of the rules RDM is designed around.

- Will a tick happen as I was about to use Manafication? If you're at 48/49 and you want to Manafication NOW, the DoT would overcap your mana when you Manafication.

Wouldn't the existence of this hypothetical DoT change how people approach Manafication? I mean in that context, instead of waiting to hit 47-49 mana, there's a chance players would adjust to lower numbers like 43-45 to account for the passively generated mana. At least that what I think would happen.

[Shurrikhan]

Fracture may have been a boon for MNK, but was a waste of a GCD for the class that learned it (MRD/WAR), which is what I was getting at.

It was a potency gain at 4-5 stacks of Deliverance, even at 3. Yes, they should have buffed it further with its MRD-specific trait, but the way it was used was far from a "waste of a GCD".

So this is where you lose me. Fun is a subjective thing, and I consider it a cowardly way to try to justify a design (hence why I've taken umbrage with WoW's devs when they made changes to classes under the guise of "fun", as said changes often turn out to be anything but).

Fun tends to apply from more-or-less objective factors, though, such as the average attractiveness of a job's skills executed and/or relevant to the chosen content. Such tends to increase with intuitiveness, cohesion, and sense of decision-making, and decreases with the opposite. "Traps", especially, fair poorly in perceived quality, whether that be in the skill's use whatsoever, or in likely pitfalls in relying on a particular skill.

To me, I cannot expect that there is anything inherently good about "same as normal, except it delayed and following a different pacing".

Such would not be intuitive (especially in that one's sense of time heavily forms around the GCD, which is far from a consistent 3-second server tick), would not -- especially if a frequently used or "maintained" skill, rather than one leveraged for its less direct effects, such as mobility or banking -- likely add to decision making. And while it's not necessarily incohesive, exactly, such is more likely than it feeling cohesive. Worse, the opportunities for it to feel like a "trap" if tightly leveraged (and if one's not doing so, then, it adds even less to the experience) seem like they'd be pretty significant.

And if fun isn't ultimately the goal, then, what's the point of one's game?

Neither is a sure thing, and to count on it is basically counting your chickens before they hatch.

Honestly, this smacks of "Stop saying the job's underpowered or likely to be clunky just because of its simmed performance and playflow. We won't know until we actually play it." Meanwhile, every time such complaints have surfaced from pre-patch notes, they've been echoed by the larger community almost verbatim with the job's actual release.

Wouldn't the existence of this hypothetical DoT change how people approach Manafication? I mean in that context, instead of waiting to hit 47-49 mana, there's a chance players would adjust to lower numbers like 43-45 to account for the passively generated mana. At least that what I think would happen.

Yes, it'd add resource per minute, but so too would increasing any other, less finnicky, source of Mana generation.

And imagine accidentally hitting (would-be Enchanted) Redoublement .2 seconds before your last per-3-seconds MP tick... Or, heck, just the awkwardness of having to wait for the DoT tick before you finish said combo.

[Duelle]

It was a potency gain at 4-5 stacks of Deliverance, even at 3. Yes, they should have buffed it further with its MRD-specific trait, but the way it was used was far from a "waste of a GCD".

Was this a conclusion reached retroactively? Pretty much everything I saw at the time pointed to not bother with Fracture and just use your GCDs on combo skills for stacks.

Such tends to increase with intuitiveness, cohesion, and sense of decision-making, and decreases with the opposite.

You're attaching metrics like cohesion and intuitiveness to something subjective like fun, which is something I have a problem with. Cohesion and (to a degree) intuitiveness can be measured because a design might end up being clunky (lack of cohesion) or make little sense at a glance (lack of intuitiveness in the design). Both of these are things you can (and should) design for. Fun, on the other hand, isn't because it is a highly subjective thing. You can have the most cohesive design in the world and still end up with something that won't be fun to a player.

To me, I cannot expect that there is anything inherently good about "same as normal, except it delayed and following a different pacing".

Which is a fair sentiment. Saying the hypothetical DoT would delay resource generation is a strong argument against it, or at least enough to prompt the suggestion be taken back to the drawing table.

Honestly, this smacks of "Stop saying the job's underpowered or likely to be clunky just because of its simmed performance and playflow. We won't know until we actually play it." Meanwhile, every time such complaints have surfaced from pre-patch notes, they've been echoed by the larger community almost verbatim with the job's actual release.

That's a stretch. Despite my not being a fan of sims (or designing classes to the point the only way to gauge performance or determine gear upgrades is to sim), even I can't deny that sims are based on numbers (inherently objective values) and whatever the design brings to the table. That's a far, far cry from using "fun" as an argument for or against something.

I guess the overall point is that one should design for cohesion and intuitiveness. Worrying about whether a mechanic or skill is "fun" doesn't help in the long run because it's not something you can really design around, much less predict from your playerbase.

[Shurrikhan]

Was this a conclusion reached retroactively? Pretty much everything I saw at the time pointed to not bother with Fracture and just use your GCDs on combo skills for stacks.

No, that was common knowledge among most Warriors I met doing Extreme Trials or higher.

You're attaching metrics like cohesion and intuitiveness to something subjective like fun, which is something I have a problem with.

Then you're effectively barring any meaningful discussion of good design. If aspects like cohesion, readability, intuitiveness, etc., cannot actually connect to whether a design is, on the whole, enjoyable, then they become worthless. There is no other point, ultimately, to design in a video game than for it to be enjoyable -- to be fun.

Saying the hypothetical DoT would delay resource generation is a strong argument against it, or at least enough to prompt the suggestion be taken back to the drawing table.

Honestly, that's one of the few things about it that would be nuetral. After all, every builder-spender system is merely a way to delay throughput. That RDM uses spendable Mana at all, instead of merely strapping a CD onto its melee combo (or, say, 4 charges each consumable by any GCD of the melee combo or Moulinet) is deliberately delaying a vital, iconic part of RDM's playflow.

That's a far, far cry from using "fun" as an argument for or against something.

I'm not pretending to know whether it will, for each person, be fun or not. But we absolutely can guess reasonably at likelihoods, based on what has been well or poorly received both generally and in this game.

Have you met anyone who actually enjoyed getting stuck (seemingly at random or otherwise outside of their control) with a full 2.99-second wait before their first Umbral Ice MP tick, back before Ice spells were made free during AF3 via the Aspect Mastery trait (lv.72)? That is very, very similar to what your MP-ticking DoT would likely cause, in that it uses a separate server tick that therefore does not scale with the GCD (and thereby punishes Spell Speed even more than usual), frequently forcing one among (A) a 3rd-party tracker and specific delays, (B) less-than-optimal play to stay safe, or (C) throughput per rotational string badly skewed any which way by issues of sync that felt outside the player's control.

Look at what people say they like about RDM in practice. Look at what they say they like about it conceptually. Does reliance on server-ticks to milk a maintenance skill align with any of those points of favor? If so, then it may be worth the effort of polishing to get around its likely issues. If not, though...

Worrying about whether a mechanic or skill is "fun" doesn't help in the long run because it's not something you can really design around, much less predict from your playerbase.

I fully disagree. You both can and should predict as much to a worthwhile degree, and both can and should design towards what will more likely be fun.

While you cannot judge the result for any particular individual, you can make reasonable predictions for large enough groups, especially among those with preferences in common. To simply throw your hands into the air and toss random mechanics into the mix, without proportionate regard for the aspects likely to contribute to their users enjoyment, because it "can't be predicted" is merely preemptive failure. It's a shit excuse that acts merely to let developers less understand their players or their designs produced.

[Duelle]

Then you're effectively barring any meaningful discussion of good design. If aspects like cohesion, readability, intuitiveness, etc., cannot actually connect to whether a design is, on the whole, enjoyable, then they become worthless.

A system can be recognized as out of place without having to factor anything other than the elements that compose said design. This is how you notice something feels clunky or doesn't fit in with other gameplay elements and/or the rotation.

That is very, very similar to what your MP-ticking DoT would likely cause, in that it uses a separate server tick that therefore does not scale with the GCD (and thereby punishes Spell Speed even more than usual), frequently forcing one among (A) a 3rd-party tracker and specific delays, (B) less-than-optimal play to stay safe, or (C) throughput per rotational string badly skewed any which way by issues of sync that felt outside the player's control.

Fair enough. I hadn't considered getting stuck waiting for server ticks the way BLM used to wait for Umbral Ice ticks.

I fully disagree. You both can and should predict as much to a worthwhile degree, and both can and should design towards what will more likely be fun.

Since we're disagreeing with each other, I'll share a bit of my thought process with you in hopes of showing you where I'm coming from. When I put any of my designs together, I never ask myself if something will be "fun" because, as I said, fun is a subjective thing. This is what I ask myself:

1) What's the concept of the job I'm trying to build?
2) Are there any precedents to how this class has been implemented?
3) Are there any solid foundations that can be used as a starting point?
3a) Are there any ideas/mechanics from other media/games that can be used as inspiration for this design?
4) How many additional systems (if any) should be attached to the foundation?
5) What do I want the final gameplay to look like?
6) Do the pieces I've picked come together into a cohesive whole?

This has been the thought process for pretty much every writeup I've done here and elsewhere. Do I hope someone will enjoy the design? Definitely. What I don't do is go into these with the mindset that it's going to be fun or that people are gonna love it; that would be delusional at worst and limit one's receptiveness to feedback at best. And as you may know, I like receiving feedback.

inb4 "lol you're not a developer so your methods don't matter"

[Shurrikhan]

inb4 "lol you're not a developer so your methods don't matter"[/HB]

Haha, nah. That's a pretty great procedure, so far as I can guess (as I am, likewise, not a developer).

I just tend to add onto it a fair bit more "in practice" stuff:

7) If I were to play this through fights A, B, C, D, E, or F (with these being about as different among serious content as I can imagine, and at least 1 of them adding very new mechanics I'd like to futureproof for)? What would its moment-to-moment decision making be like? What unique affordances might it carry, in practice?
8) Where/what are my major fixtures of attention? How does their prevalence affect what feels particular <job>-like about its playflow?
9) What are some iconic moments likely? How do those, too, influence the apparent "character" of the job as seen through its playflow?
10) What binds, "traps" or notable annoyances might tarnish its resultant playflow?

A system can be recognized as out of place without having to factor anything other than the elements that compose said design. This is how you notice something feels clunky or doesn't fit in with other gameplay elements and/or the rotation.

This is probably down to semantics at this point, but just to clarify....

The way I look at is that you can, but if you take out any respect (as in looking back towards X, or letting X influence your view) for those other areas as you suspect they will proportionately affect player enjoyment, you can easily spend a long time fixing something that won't really matter.

For instance, clunk(iness) sucks regardless, but there's a huge difference between -- to use pre-ShB BLM as example again -- clunk as a threat (chance of being stuck unable to do anything for up to 2.99 seconds) and clunk as something basically unavoidable (or, worse, only faced when optimizing, and with (unlike when you could more or less swap at will between B4 and straight-fire rotations on HW BLM, and could thus plan out when, in a mana tick, your fire rotation would end) little agency in countering the clunk itself, let alone in any engaging sense of said agency.

So, yeah, I'll target those areas of cohesion, identity, etc., separately, too, but I just try to keep in mind what I expect to what extent each is important for the particular thing in question. If big, meaty, deliberate hits is what 90% of players are looking for in a given class, I have to keep that in mind in my improvements towards responsiveness, etc., else the separate factors (responsiveness, cohesion, etc.) might total higher, but I'll have lower engagement overall, at least from my veteran players of that class.

[Gruntler]

Wouldn't the existence of this hypothetical DoT change how people approach Manafication? I mean in that context, instead of waiting to hit 47-49 mana, there's a chance players would adjust to lower numbers like 43-45 to account for the passively generated mana. At least that what I think would happen.

On the topic of fun, this is the opposite of fun. RDM already has a layer of doing 'quick maths' on the go to predict where you'll end up after the next pair of actions. It doesn't need a 'Balance Gauge Over Time' effect on top of that to make that more 'fun.'

I like knowing what my resources are, and how much hitting a button will change that resource, and seeing that resource change.

Having a BGoT will not improve that gameplay. And having a BGoT (something that is not fun) in order to justify the addition of a DoT (which is not fun) sounds like bad design that doesn't fit the flow of the job.

Shirrikhan nails the problem immediately:

Yes, it'd add resource per minute, but so too would increasing any other, less finnicky, source of Mana generation.

And imagine accidentally hitting (would-be Enchanted) Redoublement .2 seconds before your last per-3-seconds MP tick... Or, heck, just the awkwardness of having to wait for the DoT tick before you finish said combo.

To add to this. Whether or not your Redoublement is enchanted is based not only on server ticks but latency, because your client also has to know you're at the right balance guage in order to set up the right ability. So you have Server Ticks AND Latency as issues to contend with! You end up in a situation where you either risk the server tick or you potentially overcap.

This is just begging for 'feelsbad' gameplay. Heavensward Design died with Heavensward, let's not ressurect it, guys!

[Duelle]

On the topic of fun, this is the opposite of fun. RDM already has a layer of doing 'quick maths' on the go to predict where you'll end up after the next pair of actions. It doesn't need a 'Balance Gauge Over Time' effect on top of that to make that more 'fun.'

And so we bring the subjective back into the discussion instead of discussing changes to the design.

It'd be nice if we could move past nebulous terms and discuss mechanics. If a DoT is a bad idea (aside from trying to use "fun", the fact that it'd slow down mana generation and the issue with server ticks are solid arguments against it), then let's come up with alternatives. I have some in mind, but I'll let someone else make suggestions for this round.

PS: You know what's not fun to me? Seeing the sword & spell hybrid of the FF series spam magic most of the time. Since RDM is currently designed around only swinging its sword once an arbitrary resource milestone is achieved during gameplay (something I hope changes in the future), anything that reduces the number of GCDs spent spamming magic means the part I enjoy will happen more often. Of course, there are some issues that need to be hammered out related to this, on top of addressing how what one finds "fun" may not be "fun" to others. See why trying to use "fun" as an argument leads nowhere?

[Gruntler]

sword & spell hybrid

Show me a game in the series where RDM's melee attacks were a real 'thing' vs just 'they can use a weapon and their attack isn't completely useless. They weren't even that great at melee in FF1!

It's clear though their inspiration is from FF5's design, where RDM was more about spamming spells fast than being a stabwizard. (Contrast with Mystic Knight, the actual 'melee and magic job')

what one finds "fun" may not be "fun" to others.

And the argument isn't 'fun', it's in unnecessary convolution. The BGoT problem isn't one of 'fun', it's of annoying convolution. Turning RDM into a melee doesn't make it a better fit for the role it has, it makes it unnecessarily convoluted (and is detrimental to its place in savage content)

When I look at proposed changes, I look at how it's going to change how I do content. I look at things like Light Rampant, or Add Phase in E8S. I look at how this would feel trying to deal with hard mechanics--and a lot of it does not assist that.

RDM doesn't need a DoT to manage, because that doesn't help its gameplay. RDM doesn't need scuffed balance guage add-on, because that doesn't help its gameplay. RDM doesn't need a 6th burst combo, because that doesn't help its gameplay.

Instead, look at what painpoints actually exist in the class that are universal (not just 'I want a gish so change RDM to cater to me only') but things everyone agrees affect the job.

1) RDM needs a defensive cooldown other than Addle. If that 'something' is 'Titan-egi is deleted and manawall is now a role action' I'd be happy with that.

2) RDM could use (but not necessarily needs) a way to get out of the situation where it's overproc'd going into melee.

3) Maybe a resource that builds off your physical ogcds, that you can spend on a physical attack, kinda like a RDM-variation of Shoha. It'd do big potency and it'd look cool.

4) A nerfed version of Lost Chaincast, that ability is an RDM classic and way too damn fun. That's your level 90 keystone right there.

5) Upgrading Verthunder and Veraero in a trait at EW launch instead of waiting for patches that end up just doing that anyways... again.

[ICountFrom0]

RDM ... manawall

Chaincast, that ability is an RDM classic ... level 90 keystone

Upgrading Verthunder and Veraero in a trait

RDM with chaincast at 90, that would be so tasty.

And yes, it would only make sense that the mage that gets up close and personal sometimes, would want a touch of defence somehow, manawall or a reskin of it sounds wonderful.