New Missaphenchair video makes great point about the direction of job design

[darkdyllon]

4) It cuts both ways as well that skill ceiling can be raised without touching skill floor. Likewise (in line with the next point), it's fine if some Jobs have higher skill floors (BLM) and others lower skill ceilings (SMN). And there are enough Jobs in each role (the SMALLEST roles have 3) that you can have a easy, medium, and hard in each role and people can play the one they like best.

Me personally, I think 30 buttons is enough. If a Job needs more than 30 buttons, something's wrong. Think about how many buttons 30 buttons IS. In WoW, I had two line bars (1 to =, so 12 buttons per bar, I believe - been a while since I played) with buttons for most classes. That's 24. I had the side hotbars up for other things like mounts, teleports, professions, and so on. All those flavor/utility/field skills that FFXIV doesn't have outside of Bozja/Eureka.

29 abilities can fit on two sets of crossbars (easy tabbing between them with a single press of right bumper) leaving space for Sprint, LB, and Potion (which can be swapped for mount of your choice when not zoned into a boss fight)

That said, I have no trouble with Jobs that have more, I just don't play them much/at all. AST has massive button bloat, WHM and SGE can fit all their buttons just dropping Repose or something (which you can't use most of the time anyway, and can swap the spot on your bar between Rescue and Repose in the field). And I don't see a good argument for "If a Job has less than 30 distinct hotkeys, it's boring". That's like saying a musical instrument which doesn't have MORE THAN 3 octaves is somehow not a real or good musical instrument.

Again: Nothing wrong with having something for everyone. We certainly have enough Jobs to allow for that, do we not?

kinda funny how you mention that black mage has an high skill flooring, generally BLM is fairly simple in concept, but the ceiling (being encounter specific) is incredibly high (hense the high amount of bad black mages)

i'm on controller and most jobs can fill the vast majority of 2 hot bars (16 buttons each so 32 slots free, i generally use an 3rd for stuff like sprint and other things that i don't need in most encounters)
on controller you can even enable to just double tap L2 or R2 (the triggers) to access an 2nd hotbar, so honestly their excuse is just bland and doesn't work.

hope this bad trent will die soon, since it'll ruin the game for a lot, even some casuals are complaining about how each job is the same.

[Axxion]

its it wrong to say, that out of all the comments in this thread i found "says the elitist" the funniest out of all of them

[Sorzai]

I don't disagree. Someone noted (we did the math to verify) that the circle has a larger total area, but my conclusion was you still have to be in the middle of the pack. While you might have to dance around a BIT with a cone (because if you pull MANY enemies they tend to fan out and encircle your hitbox), but all you have to do is scoosh a little and you're still hitting most or all of them. But with the circle, you have to be pretty centered and can't snag those enemies a bit out of range.

but the thing about circle aoe is that tanks tend to not bother with positioning the mob since all they need is be in the middle of the pack. it is extremely frustrating when you can't hit all the mob with a cone aoe. As you said, i wish they give 2 cones instead.

[Shurrikhan]

but the thing about circle aoe is that tanks tend to not bother with positioning the mob since all they need is be in the middle of the pack.

This is laughably bad practice that I'm sure not a single caster (using enemy-centered circular AoEs) will ever appreciate.

[Ruminous]

What are you talking about? Final Fantasy is a single player series. XIV is no different.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Yeah, totally forgot I play this game with 7 other bots. Man, guess I need to upgrade if my progress is slow! Or git gud. I mean I have to but still...Wow. Didn't know this was a single player game.

[Renathras]

hope this bad trent will die soon, since it'll ruin the game for a lot, even some casuals are complaining about how each job is the same.

I've tried using the double-tap and tap-and-hold, and it just feels like total trash. No thank you.

Again, we have AT LEAST 3 Jobs in each role. And further, if we had some with just 29 buttons (which is already A LOT OF BUTTONS - I'll note you didn't contest the actual point) while having others with 35-40, this WOULD make the Jobs seem less similar, wouldn't it? Whereas making all Jobs 35-40 buttons would run into them all feeling the same s the Devs just copy and paste abilities between Jobs to fill out the mandatory button quota. "Oh, this Job needs two more buttons..." "Well, did we give it a 30 second DoT and an attack damage upkeep buff yet?" "No! We can totally do that! Yay, now we've filled out their hotbar!"

Doing what I'm suggesting - which I should note is already what we have in the game to some extent - could actually make Jobs more distinct. Having an arbitrarily high button count quota for no good reason has no real benefit, a lot of detriments, and likely would make Jobs overlap far more.

[Imora]

Most jobs are fine. What I dislike is needing a completely separate hotbar for aoe as drg.

Usually keep ST and aoe on right and left triggers respectively.

[Kolsykol]

I picked up MNK again after abandoning it in EW and I feel like it's pretty unique and plays really well with Optimal Drift.
On the other hand I also feel like there's something missing and that it's too repetitive outside of the PB burst phases.

Then again...
People seem to have genuine issues even learning Optimal Drift altogether, I really dunno why it's not that complicated but I've read so many people say it's borderline impossible.
Which is kinda sad because I feel like this kind of design makes MNK feel incredibly flexible and makes you feel like you actually know what you're doing and are making actual decisions.
But if people are already struggling super hard with it I doubt they'll add more on top of it...

But I think the overall philosophy of MNK makes it well-designed and I'd like to see other Jobs designed that way too.

[darkdyllon]

Says the elitist.
Some people can't or handycap, and yes want easy. Not everyone going be a pro at games.

Good day.

all i'm hearing from you is "waaah, game too hard, please pamper to my specific needs waah"
some jobs could easily be made harder and then be like "if you don't like this difficulity, too bad. while still maintaining the status quo of only needing the bare minimum to clear any casual content (MSQ/alliance raids/normal trials/normal raids)
go back to your corner since you apparently need to be spoonfed at all times, anytime you have to think even in the slightest you yell it's too hard. (because if you think learning an rotation is hard ... oh boy, just don't anything in life then)

[Marxam]

hope this bad trent will die soon, since it'll ruin the game for a lot, even some casuals are complaining about how each job is the same.

They aren't totally off the mark. A lot of the jobs, tank and healers specifically, are really carbon copies of their job role. For example, All healers deal with a "3 resource" system, i.e. 3 lilies, 3 aetherflow, 3 cards, 3 addersgal. Don't forget they each have the same dps buttons. The tanks all have the same enmity trait and tank stance. In addition to same 30% def cd and access to rampart. While each job does have its quirks to make them unique in a sense, all the jobs within the roles for tank and healers play about the same. It's not long before the "feel" of the jobs starts to feel the same and that's where you start getting issues with gameplay depth.

Good or bad its up you to decide. Personally, while I prefer the 2.0-4.1 design I cannot deny that 5.0+ homogenizing of jobs has introduced more ppl into the game and has benefitted FFXIV as a whole (though that could also be timing with current market optics on other games in the same genre). Ultimately, making the game easier removes the aspect of learning. If you don't learn, you don't improve.