Please stop simplifying and homogenizing the game. Please.

[Saraide]

I cant really comment on samurai or ninja changes but in my experience the warrior cone was more annoying than anything else. Literally one of the reasons I swapped to Drk when first playing through the game. I disagree that it adds any depth to the job, to me it's just annoying busywork. The searing light change was much needed, it's just the big Smn rework was far too much of a simplification.

Dungeons being super easy is something I'm fine with, I need those to level and farm tomes while having my brain turned off. The easier they are the faster you can burn through them with good players so that's a plus for me. Some alliance raids and normal raids could stand to be a bit harder though. I think P3N is a really well done normal raid. One of the few normal raids that actually acknowledge that two tanks exist.

I think what people need to realize is that the actual fail condition is when a dungeon, trial or raid takes much longer than it needs to. Wiping just sets you back at the start and often times people will just leave, which will sour the mood a lot in roulette content. Copied factory and world of darkness are good examples for this where I'd rather not have a wipe (did you know there is another mechanic after 5 Headed Dragon's Heatwave? That's when you know the group is a failure).

To me there is no functional difference between a legit wipe and dragging the corpses of half the party through the fight. It's just a bit of vindication and satisfaction when you are the one to drag them over the finish line because that makes for cool stories. Like warriors keeping the party alive when your healer is dead or when I managed to get everyone back up as healer at the last boss of aitiascope because curtain call is suddenly a mechanic we have to reprog.

[Nethereal]

From Yoshi: No.

[Recon1o6]

Variations in gameplay cannot come at the expense of job balance. Otherwise you end up with homogenized picks instead of homogenized jobs, which is even worse.

The real problem isn't homogenizing jobs. It's partially homogenizing them. If another job does everything else identically +1 extra thing, then you've created a mandatory pick. Either make the differences significant enough that players can't make a simple mathematical comparison, or make them identical.

they can come at teh expense of balance, providing the balance is small enough not to matter or it brings something else meaningful to the table that counteracts it. The obsession with balance is part of why the game has suffered so much in the job design department. Everything being stripped for numbers you cant see without a 3rd party program.

Example if whm was better than ast by a plentiful amount of damage you'd take whm, but since Ast can just negate p3s's check, then ast would be the better job for that fight. The battle designers don't take into account job strength when designing fights, thats why team jump rope is how the game plays.

+/-5% damage when played at top tier is not exactly unbalanced despite some members of the community thinking it is.
The lack of focus on job fun and identity is why the shb and ew changes are so unpopular and why this thread even exists. A lot of people don't care about balance, they just want fun and to be able to clear content, not neccessarily clear it faster for a log on a 3rd party website

[Demetri_Delethorn]

Warrior's AOE being simplified probably means turning overpower from a cone to a circle.

I certainly hope so. No reason for it to be a cone.

[EgilTheStressedMage]

I certainly hope so. No reason for it to be a cone.

And nothing of value would be lost.

[Xaphire]

Warrior's AOE being simplified probably means turning overpower from a cone to a circle. This is terrible for about a dozen reasons. Number 1 being that it teaches tanks how to position in the way a basic circle wouldn't. Two is job identity. Three is, well, who on earth wanted this of all things changed?? If it isn't broke, don't fix it.

I think most WARs have had this thought in dungeons, considering most of the players I know use the second attack of the AoE combo *without comboing* during dungeon pulls because the cone is clunky and unfun to use. It's why I primarily play any of the tanks other than WAR for dungeons, as well. The cone sucks and all three of the other tanks feel better in content where AoE is useful (in my, of course, biased opinion)

[Recon1o6]

personally I like the cone, both for flavour and for gameplay. meanwhile i find mythril tempest silly looking xp

[Demetri_Delethorn]

I think most WARs have had this thought in dungeons, considering most of the players I know use the second attack of the AoE combo *without comboing* during dungeon pulls because the cone is clunky and unfun to use. It's why I primarily play any of the tanks other than WAR for dungeons, as well. The cone sucks and all three of the other tanks feel better in content where AoE is useful (in my, of course, biased opinion)

Exactly. Dungeons are far more stressful than needed due to the cone. It's just artificial difficulty. Clunky =/= riveting gameplay.

[Teno]

My brother and I were on a good way to clear p4s after starting late into the tier with only pugs that take hours to fill. But after this joke of a LL, me seeing nothing for healers and him being disgusted about the sam change, we haven't launched the game back.
Wonder if I'll keep the sub active or wait for multiple patches (and be disappointed) like last xpac.

I'm bitter.

[Liam_Harper]

well then the game crashes and burns and then we move on to something else. can look back on it later say "hmm I guess I had some fun with XIV." oh well. life goes on. there are always other things to do/see/play. Games are ephemeral. Can't expect them to stay relevant/around forever at the level of player perceived anticipation.

Sadly true. 10+ years is a pretty good run for FF14.

It's a shame no new games have really taken over yet. I can respect that MMO design is rather complex, many developers get it mostly right, but mess up a few key points that end up dragging the game down. New World died, Lost Ark is pay to win, we don't really have an MMO with engaging gameplay and a director with Yoshi P's mindset of not turning it into a treadmill cash grab.

Personally I don't want a mega hardcore grindy complex game. I just want something fun and immersive, with things to accomplish, that treats me like I have a functioning brain. WoW probably came closer to that in the past than any other game, but most developers nowadays don't want to become a "WoW clone". They want to be unique and leave their mark and while I can understand it, it drags them down because many people just want some solid online-RPG fun without gimmicks or cash grabs.

Hopefully one day. Similar to how FF14 pulled in a massive number of ex-WoW players, there's an open spot in the market for a great MMO right now just waiting for a developer to take it.