Quote Originally Posted by Valence View Post
They're homogenizing the wrong things:
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- Skill floors and accessibility (which is good) but at the expense of skill ceilings.
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I agree with this. Jobs can be complex without increasing the skill floor with an avenue to express mastery over your favorite Job(s) with an increased skill ceiling that is entirely " Optional to master ".

Often the notion that gets brought up is " difficulty is limited to certain jobs you choose ". Example? Love SMN, the fantasy the aesthetics? want complexity? give up SMN that you love? and pick up BLM for complexity. And I don't think its unreasonable nor impossible to give every job that complexity or some as optional regarding improvement of Job gameplay.

Another POV sometimes from the Balance Discord is that " Stream-lining is necessary for harder Fights ". I just disagree. The view that Fight design restrictions are based on Job complexity forcing homogenization... I could say the same for players demand to be able to execute their rotation perfectly at all times on all jobs 24/7 is equally restrictive. Granted, I understand that if you have x job being easier vs x difficult job to perform better forcing a meta in x fights? But, I believe this is due to the 2 min buff direction more then anything else.

More buttons for the sake of more? is as meaningless as less buttons for the sake of less. I prefer less buttons then what we have now? as long as it has more depth. Square also needs to cater to console/controller players, less Button Bloat with Skill-Depth is better.

Being pessimistic, has my expectations at Square Simplifying everything and at best not simplifying BLM for obvious love-child reasons. If I were to be optimistic? Square will give some nuances/complexity/gauge-interactions anywhere from 7.0 to 10 years into FFXIV's future. Can't blame me for having my expectations be this low... mhm