What are your thoughts on FFXIV's combat?

[Rilifane]

I'll take oGCDs as long as they're impactful and require thought. I'm not a fan of the glut of oGCDs we already have that require no decision making: Is the cooldown timer done? Press it.

I usually like high APM classes but I'm in the same boat and the overabundance of meaningless "press on cooldown, yay!" oGCDs annoys me.

Transpose is a good example of something with risk vs reward and decision making. Transpose lines can be a nice dps gain throughout the fight - or backfire big time and you lose a lot more than you could've gained while also serving as an emergency button for Eno upkeep and allowing to switch to UI to use US during downtime/ between pulls. It's not a button I press that often but when I do, it's a deliberate decision I made based on filler spells available, MP ticks and upcoming boss mechanics. Sharp and Triple have a bit of decision making to it because while it's a dps loss not catching Despair with Triple, it's a much bigger dps loss to lose GCDs so it's mobility vs slight dps gain. Sharp is similar.
Amplifier on the other hand is just another "press on cooldown" button. Boring.
RDM had a bit of decision making with their backflip vs that other thing only cowards used Engagement and of course SE took it away like several other buttons that had some risk vs reward tied to them.

[Sebazy]

Healing issues aside, IMHO the biggest issue with FFXIV's combat in general is that SE are too cautious with it to the point where they've allowed things to get rather stale by keeping to the same formula that was laid 6 years ago with patch 3.4.

In terms of gameplay, Endwalker is barely worth being called an expansion. It's an extensive story DLC with a soft reset on raid progression.

Without more transparency from the developers, it's difficult nail down the exact reasoning behind the way things are heading, but IMO it boils down to SE being unwilling to invest back into the core design team which has been significantly outgrown by the game they relaunched some 8 years ago. I'm not under the illusion that hiring experienced game designers with the sort of experience that an established MMO will require. Rather it's going to take quite significant money to lure Japanese devs away from the lucrative mobile market and that doesn't appear to be money that SE is willing to spend.

[vetch]

Healing issues aside, IMHO the biggest issue with FFXIV's combat in general is that SE are too cautious with it to the point where they've allowed things to get rather stale by keeping to the same formula that was laid 6 years ago with patch 3.4.

In terms of gameplay, Endwalker is barely worth being called an expansion. It's an extensive story DLC with a soft reset on raid progression.

Without more transparency from the developers, it's difficult nail down the exact reasoning behind the way things are heading, but IMO it boils down to SE being unwilling to invest back into the core design team which has been significantly outgrown by the game they relaunched some 8 years ago. I'm not under the illusion that hiring experienced game designers with the sort of experience that an established MMO will require. Rather it's going to take quite significant money to lure Japanese devs away from the lucrative mobile market and that doesn't appear to be money that SE is willing to spend.

Stifling cautiousness in game design is also frequently the result of an obsession with profits at a publisher's upper levels and, ironically, usually leads to a loss of profits as management fails to react in time to players losing interest in a formula.

[SargeTheSeagull]

Combat is still fun but it is definitely worse than its been since I started playing back in 3.3. This is the biggest issue with the game honestly. Everything is better than it's ever been except job design. Warrior no longer has a mitigation tied to inner beast/fell cleave so you just hit it whenever it lights up. Warrior's gap closer and upheaveal don't consume gauge so it's just the fell cleave gauge and you don't get to manage anything. Healers are absolutely indefensibly bad right now. Seriously if you think healers aren't all awful in terms of design you don't know what you're talking about. Overall I'd say there are maybe five jobs that are better now than they've been in the past. Black mage, red mage, paladin (sorta), ninja (sorta) and dragoon. Every other job is inferior compared to how it was in previous expansions. Two minute buff windows are already stale, no procs or additional effects on most actions (like inner beast before 5.0), heal checks being laughably easy, rotations being 100% static with things like assassinate being removed, most jobs having a personal damage buff to maintain just because, bard's dots not doing anything anymore making them feel useless. The list goes on and on honestly.

[Arrhin]

I've been playing since 2.0 launched, generally I think it's "OK". I do think many of us long term players probably view ARR through rose tinted glasses but I do think the feel was better, but that could just be because everything was new. I mained SCH and I remember all the cool DPS stuff we could do, but I also remember writing macros for queue interrupts to get Eos/Selene to do what I wanted WHEN I wanted lol. I think button bloat has mostly been dealt with, even though there are a few outlier skills that in normal situations are pretty useless (varies by job). As a PC player I never found it bloated but my partner on PS kinda did, so I understand the sentiment and to be honest I don't feel much was lost in the fat trimming process. As a still mostly healer main I will have to mention the state of healer DPS. SE, pls, just give us an AoE DoT....pls, something, anything. It smooths out healer DPS and allows us to throw in some healies whilst still doing some stabbies. Anyways, I'm just a filthy casual now who mostly crafts so it's all just fine..

[AnnRam]

Unbearable until level 80, then at level 90 it just add 1 or 2 additional skills. Right now to me PVP > PVE, like seriously if SE continues with their " remove to improve " soon PVE jobs will be easier than Genshin Impact, Healers are already at 2 skills

Just wait when SE remove mundras or maybe Tank stances, or take away No Mercy and add it as a permanent Trait, SE it's capable to ruin jobs even more.

[Striker44]

In terms of gameplay, Endwalker is barely worth being called an expansion. It's an extensive story DLC with a soft reset on raid progression.

Except the game is actively promoted as a Final Fantasy game first and foremost (hence why it's often called an RPGMMO instead of an MMORPG). The immense amount of new story in EW is most definitely an expansion. A post-patch is the equivalent of a (free) DLC.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Considering that EW is the current biggest in terms of main story content compared to previous expansions. What the hells did we call base Heavensward, Stormblood and Shadowbringers then? Small downloadable add ons? What a stupid take. It's stuff like this that absolutely gets me irritated with this game's community sometimes.

I'm gonna go calm myself down lol

[Sebazy]

Except the game is actively promoted as a Final Fantasy game first and foremost (hence why it's often called an RPGMMO instead of an MMORPG). The immense amount of new story in EW is most definitely an expansion. A post-patch is the equivalent of a (free) DLC.

Note the 'In terms of gameplay', this is a thread about combat after all.

Endwalker has changed very little in this regard. I'm pointing out that in the context of combat, it's IMHO the least impactful expansion of them all. 1.0 to ARR was a complete reboot, ARR to HW drastically switched up both the content and gameplay, Stormblood finally got the side content ball running successfully and was another fairly significant shift in class design and philosophy, Shadowbringers was a solid refinement of side content concepts such as Bozja and for better or worse, brought with it an across the board pruning as well as making typical content easier and more accessible across the board.

Meanwhile Endwalker added a few impactful new keystone abilities, gave healers a 1.5 nuke across the board and has called it a day so far. Put the MSQ to the side for a moment and there's really very little else to differentiate the gameplay loop from what we had in Shadowbringers. It's the same recipe in a different coloured box.

Considering that EW is the current biggest in terms of main story content compared to previous expansions. What the hells did we call base Heavensward, Stormblood and Shadowbringers then? Small downloadable add ons? What a stupid take. It's stuff like this that absolutely gets me irritated with this game's community sometimes.

I'm gonna go calm myself down lol

This is a thread about combat sir. By all means once you've calmed down a bit, come back and let me know what ground breaking gameplay changes Endwalker brought along with it.

The best I can think of would be two of the MSQ quests 'A Frosty Reception' and 'In from the Cold'. Both are unlike anything we've seen before IMO but a pair of unique MSQ quests doesn't really alter the core gameplay loop.

[kpxmanifesto]

Combats ok. There's a delay between pushing a hotkey and when the ability actually happens in this game, and it can be a huge annoyance in PVP.