Should the playerbase stop playing certain jobs?

[MrJPtheAssassin]

Snip

Ok, a few things I like to say as an SMN main since SB. First off please show me one fight this tier or in EW where melee cant get uptime on? I know a few Eden fights was kinda hard on melees but the fact is in EW has made the job for a melee easier and easier in terms of keeping uptime. So movement isn't really a good utility and beings nothing to a party and the tax phy range has to pay for that is way too high. Even casters have an easier time. SMN is closer to a phy range, rdm only has to cast every other spell, and blm now has a lot more mobility than what it used to have. So this excuse of phy range has to tax for its full uptime is full a bull in today's ff14.

Now to your comments about smn... I'm glad you can find some fun in a job that basically plays itself. The issue people have with the rework of smn is that you are not given any meaningful choice or anything to manage when playing the job. All you really do is press the buttons when they light up and look at the pretty light show. Most of the other jobs at least have to think a little when it comes to a fight and during their rotation. All smn has to know is what order to summon its primals and you can easily figure that out in one or two pulls. It's fine to have a low skill floor but the problem with smn is that it has no skill ceiling, its floor and ceiling are the same. That is not good job design and always leads to ppl to complaining and getting upset. Another issue of smn is the fact it plays like a lvl 50 or 60 job. The job feels hollowed and unfinished. It feels like devs ran out of time, which if you read the interviews and listen to Yoshi P talk about the job design leading up to EW you can easily come to the conclusion they did ran out of time for smn and maybe a few other jobs. Did I think smn needed a rework? yes but I rather had a finished rework and have a job that is well designed than a rushed unfinished rework that we got. Also the "promise" of we will get more in 7.0 isn't enough for me to believe. Mch said the same thing in 5.0 and look what they got this expac, an upgrade aoe button, one new queen attack, and one new button you press every 2 mins. SMN has always felt like the dev never cared about it. They put more time and thought into blm(yoshi p main btw) than they do smn. So I have no hope they will address the flaws and issues this rework has and till they show me something otherwise or at least talk about smn in a LL I'm not going to believe they will listen to us smn mains. By the way, I think it speaks volumes about the smn rework when the pvp rework is better and is a lot more fun to play than its pve version.

[Raezaiel]

Yes, PLD went from 3 button combo + flash to this much better rotation. Now classes like SAM get dunked on. Just play the latest expansion class or BLM and the game will be fine I guess...

[HyoMinPark]

I am a former physical ranged main (BRD in HW and SB, DNC in ShB), and a current healer main that has played the healers almost as long as I’ve played this game (SGE, primarily, but I play all four). So I am very well versed in salty rage and apathy. Here’s a bit of my own experience when it comes to FFXIV:

I unironically liked bowmage. Probably because it was the BRD I learned to play when I started this game in HW. I found it interesting, but I loved the SB changes much more. I had fun playing the job. And I feel like I was at least fairly decent at it. Then ShB came and stripped away the aspects I enjoyed, and I dropped it. Even now, I still think about the previous iterations that I enjoyed far more than the ShB version of BRD—and my EW play, while it has been more than it was in ShB, still leaves a lot to be desired.

Despite not touching MCH much (although I did enjoy HW MCH a bit), I’ve acknowledged that the job is the red-headed step child of the physical ranged. It seems like most MCH mains here and on other platforms have just descended into pure, self-deprecating apathy, and have accepted that their job is destined to always be in the shadow of the other two. Which is sad and should never be the case. That it has such little representation when it comes to high-end content is the only thing that might save it because I am positive the developers look at The Website That Shall Not Be Named, even if they don’t want to admit it. But there is still a part of me that is skeptical the site and what data it shows could save MCH.

The healers…well I’m an old AST boomer. Loved the job in HW and SB. Loved the card system. The Time Mage aspects. The dual sects even if Nocturnal Sect was always inferior to Diurnal. Loved everything about it. The only thing that kept me playing it in ShB after they butchered the cards and in EW is its healing kit. Otherwise, it’s a shadow of the job I loved.

WHM was my go-to healer for learning new stuff due to its low maintenance and high recovery, but that didn’t mean it didn’t have it’s problems in the past; the 6.1 changes, while some are appreciated, they are band-aids at best and do not address the real issues.

SCH is my healer I play the least, but I’ve always acknowledged the sort of anti-synergy its kit has, and the clunkiness of the Fairy. SGE is fun, but it’s no less interesting than WHM. I’m on auto-pilot when I play it—and that really goes for all of them.

All four healers are basically the same job with a different coat of paint. None require an extensive amount of thought outside of card optimization on AST, which isn’t necessary unless you want to chase leaderboards. We are healers in name only because we sure as heck aren’t spending most of our time in content healing. We spend it pressing our 1 damage nuke 100 to 150 times in a given encounter. And any requests to address the lack of healing we do or to improve the DPS gameplay aspects are blatantly ignored. I eagerly watched the Q&A PLL hoping they would answer one of the myriad of questions that was about healer gameplay, and I was thoroughly disappointed by the flippant and dismissive answer given. I’m even more abashed that my fears were confirmed, and healers in general are designed around players that struggle to progress through the simplest of content, since the good healer on the team was “replaced” because they did Extremes and were “too good”. Like what????

Healers are the only role in this game that rely heavily on their party being a clown fiesta to feel a sense of engagement, versus getting it from their gameplay. They are the only role that gets more boring and more unneeded the better one’s party is.

Why does that have to remain the case? Why do I have to basically do 24-man alliance raids on Day 1 to feel like I’m an actual healer? To feel that engagement and rush playing my role? Why can’t I feel that rush in Extremes? Or Savage (outside of week 1 progression)? I felt it a bit when I cleared UCoB on AST, but that was the first Ultimate I cleared on a healer, so it was to be expected. The reality is that I still spent most of my time dealing damage compared to healing.



I’m rambling a bit talking about my past experience in this game, so I’ll get to the point. I think everyone probably understands the full extent of my salt now.

Not playing a job has worked in the past. At least with regards to certain DPS jobs. 5.0 NIN had extremely low representation on The Website That Shall Not Be Named, and, as a result, it was adjusted in 5.1. BRD did receive a lot of backlash for its 3.0 iteration—but it still took the developers an entire expansion to rectify that. AST has always had low play counts, but they were the lowest after the launch of ShB when the AST playerbase was so divisive on the ShB job changes. Plus, its mana economy was absolute crap, and they still had to wait until 5.3 to get adjustments to that. The only credit I can give is that the developers at least upped the healing potencies prior to Eden’s Gate launch. ShB launch AST was so bad in terms of healing potency it bordered on HW launch levels of bad—where the job was literally unplayable.

However, other jobs such as DRK and the healers have consistently brought up issues in the past, and have been ignored. It took DRK 6+ years to get Living Dead addressed. Despite constant complaints about it from the NA side. Healers have been a pile of salt since SB, but they aren’t even acknowledged. When they are, the most they get are potency adjustments and mana cost adjustments. Since late HW when the SB Media Tour rolled out, WHMs expressed their criticism of the SB Lily System, and were promptly told to “just wait until the expansion comes out and try it”. Expansion comes out, Lilies still suck. “Just wait until Savage.” “Just wait until our new Ultimate mode.” “Just wait until Shadowbringers.” Even DRK got told in 4.3 that “major changes to it” would have to wait until ShB…

Meanwhile, there are jobs that have consistently always been designed well. It’s no secret that BLM is one of those, and the theories as to why seem more and more sound the more I consider them…



In all, I think the idea is a decent one in theory. If all healer mains suddenly up and left the role, I do think that they might finally get a chance to speak on the stage about what the problems are and be heard. It’s just not one that feasibly practical.

Too many people are either ignorant on the problems or simply don’t care enough to drop the jobs. I think this is one reason why WHM has suffered for so long: it’s always had high play counts despite the issues and complaints, and WHMs that don’t care to look into the job too deeply “fail to see the problem” with it. Even education doesn’t seem to help, with them usually still opting to play it. And who knows. Maybe they enjoy it. But I don’t think enjoyment necessarily means that the issues surrounding healers (primarily that we are basically gimped damage dealers and not healers) deserve to be ignored.

I’m honestly shocked that, despite the backlash surrounding the SAM and NIN changes that the developers still went through with them. I guess they were just “too finalized” to walk back, but there has never been an instance where all three regions were unanimous in their complaints. Even JP was demanding to know why these changes were made. It makes me wonder if they will be reversed in 6.2.


Anyways, TL;DR—sound idea in theory that has worked in the past. Just impractical. I wish it was simple to just drop jobs en masse to draw attention to the issues, but it isn’t. So I guess I have no choice but to either continue shouting into the wind my complaints, or just be like most MCH mains and drown myself in self-deprecating apathy while I spam Glare/Malefic/Broil/Dosis 100+ times in a fight until my X button on my controller breaks and I have to replace it again.

[Dxzstar]

Anyways, TL;DR—sound idea in theory that has worked in the past. Just impractical. I wish it was simple to just drop jobs en masse to draw attention to the issues, but it isn’t. So I guess I have no choice but to either continue shouting into the wind my complaints, or just be like most MCH mains and drown myself in self-deprecating apathy while I spam Glare/Malefic/Broil/Dosis 100+ times in a fight until my X button on my controller breaks and I have to replace it again.

Yeah. Honestly this is the main reason this started to just devolve into me only being half serious. Getting everyone on board with this is just completely impractical. I feel like I could repost this 10000 times and get nothing, not because it lacks traction, but just due to the conventions of the game and how I genuinely can't get a big enough portion of the playerbase on board. Which is a frustration. I like FFXIV a lot. And I want it to be it's best self. We are not in the best self state rn.

And for what it's worth, I fall under the SMN doomposters. I looked forward to them fixing the pet jank. Oh I got a fix alright. I got a lobotomy. They could have completely remade the job in any other way and I'd be pleased but current smn is just....lifeless to me. As others have said there's really no skill ceiling. There's no job complexity, no gauge management, no resource generation.... I can play the job with my eyes closed because over a 60s period I'll be pressing the same buttons with no resources to manage and like I said, I'm not a great player. So it's saying something that I feel I could pretty confidently play through my whole rotation. But it's been met with such resounding player numbers that I've got nothing. Maybe these are just people eager to dig into the job and check it out. We'll see them die down in a patch or two. Or maybe these are genuine enjoyers of the job which.... is a double edged sword. I'm glad that technically people are enjoying the job, but encouraging that design path... Big no from me.

[Soge01]

I stopped playing Samurai due to the 6.1 changes. Just got back into it a month ago after beating Endwalker and felt like I really got good at it. Now I'm leveling up Black Mage as a replacement to Samurai. I can't play a job class that's supposed to be all about kaiten usage to achieve big damage and now without it, hits like a wet noodle and feels terrible to boot. And the Shinten spam... *shivers*.

[EhvaTaco]

Ok, a few things I like to say as an SMN main since SB. First off please show me one fight this tier or in EW where melee cant get uptime on?

Rather mood question, when the first tier of every expansion is specifically designed to be easier, so everyone can get better used to the new changes.

[darkdyllon]

Rather mood question, when the first tier of every expansion is specifically designed to be easier, so everyone can get better used to the new changes.

not really, even the 1st tier of Eden wasn't the most melee friendly, the 1st 2 tiers were really rough on melees in general.
I'm all in for them designing fights and mechanics so that melee can get uptime, nothing more frustrating than having to disengage and wait for 2-3 GCDs because the boss decided to screw with you specifically.
That's why I kinda like the design around P2S, no positionals, an actual unique arena (still square, but it gets shrank down a lot) and it became more for mechanics than keeping the boss faced north at all times.
The main issue becomes when everyone justifies the physical ranged DPS tax because of their free movement (and i get it to an extent) but then we have fights where melee's generally don't lose uptime, which is the main driving point for the DPS tax.

Just hope they go somewhere with this instead of going into the same direction and be like "the 3rd fight is an prog stopper, please look forward to it" while e11s where he said that it was an prog stopper and the only thing that made it an prog stopper was the DPS check, it was basically an "see this mechanic? yeah, i'll be using that a lot" fun fight, but was called an prog stopper for the wrong reasons.

[CKNovel]

Rather mood question, when the first tier of every expansion is specifically designed to be easier, so everyone can get better used to the new changes.

The first tier are easier in the way they have a more lenient DPS check, not mechanic wise.
E10S was much easier than E2S, both being second floor of their respective tier.

Even Ultimate wise, bosses disappear then reappear between every mechanic.
In TEA, melees had near full uptime and ironically, the ranged had to do the most work.

[rewd]

"It's not a problem that SMN has a low skill ceiling"
"You have to find a right balance in all things"

Teehee, I like how braindead SMN is now, go cry somehwere else if you don't.

Balance

[MrJPtheAssassin]

Rather mood question, when the first tier of every expansion is specifically designed to be easier, so everyone can get better used to the new changes.

As few others have said that doesn't really matter when it comes to mechanics, only dps checks. I remember my static melees complaining about some fights in E1-E4s so just because its the first tier of a raid means nothing. Also, you sound a whole lot like yoshi p right now when he gave his answer to the healer question in the LL. Next, you will be telling us to just do ultimates if we want more challenging content. I will be honest I love yoshi p but he has always up saled how hard fights are and they never are that hard. He said endsinger ex was going to be closer to a savage level fight but it really isn't that hard of a fight, I saw all the mechs in one lockout last night. So I kinda doubt the next tier of savage will be that much harder than this tier mechanic-wise, dps check most likely be harder but not the mechanics.