Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[Kaliesto]

I think what is missing from the Jobs is all jobs not having unique non-combat traits or used for combat that make them special, like say for example its worked like this:

Ninja is given a unique ability to steal items from monsters, other than that I think Ninja is good.

Dragoon is given a passive ability to jump higher in any zone, might be good for those sightseeing stuff that requires a lot of practice. It would be kind of cool though if Dragoon was given the ability to turn into some kind of Dragon-Man for some seconds that buffs your stats temporarily.

Monk able to Jump-dash to locations really fast (Dragonball Z style)

Red Mage allowed to transfer Aether to BLM or WHM to replenish their Aether (though this costs all of the Red Mage's Magic), might be good for Savage Raiders that are in a dire bind though at the cost of DPS loss.

Gunbreaker allowed to switch to Physical Ranged with its own moveset to use their Gunblades from a distance, it would make it a even more unique Tank and also make it the first Hybrid Physical-Ranged Tank of FFXIV.

Warrior allowed a new set of Weapons called War Hammers that allows different variations of Warrior Combat Skills that Giant Axe Weapons cannot do, I know some War Hammers already exist in the game, but giving Warriors more Identity here would definitely help.

Dark Knight's Esteem ability should be a permanent effect in combat, but it ends up doing half the damage of what you can do to balance it out without risking of being Overpowered and unbalanced with the rest of the tanks.

Machinist, same thing with the Dark Knight, let the Robot Guy be a permanent effect.

White Mage, allow White Mages to cast a LB3 version of Holy as a alternative to the complete revival spell in case its not needed.

Astrologian, allow ASTs to cast a LB3 version of the Lord of Crowns & Lady of Crowns to apply to all members of the party for 10-15 seconds as a alternative to the All Revival LB3.

Scholar, allow SCHs to cast a LB3 spell that creates the ultimate Fairy Summon Spell that hits all enemies, and applies beneficial status effects for the party for maybe 6-7 or so seconds.

Summoner, I think its perfect as it is honestly, no comment.

Bard, perfect, no comment, it already has really good identity.

Paladin, The staple job of the Warrior of Light, I think what it needs is a alternative LB3 where it does a Signature FF1 Warrior of Light Style Attack (just to note I think all tanks need their own LB3 Attack as well).

Sage, should be given a alternative LB3 that has a unique shielding ability similar to a tank, not as strong as a tank's LB3, but comes with some beneficial effects?

Black Mage, its fine as it is I think, but I think it should not be forced to cast magic while standing still considering the complexity of Raids lately (just my opinion).

[remiff]

I miss the pve period of stormblood, just because the jobs were so much more fun to play, even if all the changes they made are not bad, there is a limit not to reach in the simplification of the content and jobs
what they start to do (personal opinion) since endwalker I find that the majority of jobs and content have become tasteless. it's certainly not an opinion that everyone shares, but I find the current state of the game a shame compared to what it was before, even if the format of the updates has not changed.

[Sparkthor]

That's strange because to me it's precisely at SB when job tend to get rid of easy global mech to nearly all jobs :
- Some kind of dommage buff to keep up.
- A dot on single gcd which break combos.

But this period was a mess transition between past concepts of the game and epured new one, getting rid of - to me - boring thing in practice. Aggro management could be cool if the way it was solved it SB was : DPS/Heal use you aggro reduction on CD. Or team ressource gestion for mana and TP, if TP wasn't just a think to prevent physical jobs to spam AOE and MP just a Bard Foe-Requiem duration (Mana restore tools were only targeting bard for more dommage).

I prefer when job kit seems fluid, but its a really personal opinion.

[CelestiCer]

For plenty it goes to far at the cost of Fun.

There's an audience that loves Job complexity. To spend hours to see results. The satisfaction of having mastered a Job they enjoy or love because it's Fun to execute. Job complexity benefits us players who love playing their Jobs endlessly to just play the Jobs. Simplifications stomps that passion out of players...

Raiders who love complexity through content, are more likely to favor homogenizations because Job complexity is viewed as restrictive to develop new unique/harder fight designs. I disagree, since I believe players demanding their rotations to be more easily executable and unbroken, with the 2 min buff windows to be more restrictive then Jobs having any ounce of depth.

As for Parsers who love rotations made easier to execute to get their crayons more easily... Why would you want your colorful rainbow numbers to devalue by making it any ounce easier to obtain by any other player? I thought the ladder was supposed to be competitive or something? making it any easier means... yeah idk about this one...

There's also a big portion of players who do not want anything " Pre-Extreme Trials " to be made any more difficult. Different, unique, more flavorful content? sure... but not more difficult. And that's fine since most content there can be cleared while not mastering any job to any degree. Any optional complexity that is taken or given? doesn't affect them.

As for the Yoshi's complexity argument? Just go play Ultimate?
I couldn't give 2 (peeps!). Keep my Job fun and I will do any content. Once my Job's fun is not the focus? At that point any content is less Fun to me. You can tell me to solve a Rubik's Cube with my tongue, while juggling Circus pins with my right foot, while playing DDR with my right hand, simultaneously executing my simplified rotation while doing Ultimate or any content for that matter to satisfy any ounce of complexity... it wouldn't matter cause the Jobs is made dumb and unsatisfying to play...

My problem with Square's direction, is that the focus is on making Content bearable and clearable. Not how fun a Job can be or was. All players will not do All Content that requires PvE combat... but all players at least have to play 1 Job at all times to do so. Make the Jobs have depth, complexity and a sense of satisfaction to execute as the priority. I will not agree that Jobs being made more fun? comes at the cost of any content in any manner.

[NullPointerException]

For plenty it goes to far at the cost of Fun.

Raiders who love complexity through content, are more likely to favor homogenizations because Job complexity is viewed as restrictive to develop new unique/harder fight designs. I disagree, since I believe players demanding their rotations to be more easily executable and unbroken, with the 2 min buff windows to be more restrictive then Jobs having any ounce of depth.

As for Parsers who love rotations made easier to execute to get their crayons more easily... Why would you want your colorful rainbow numbers to devalue by making it any ounce easier to obtain by any other player? I thought the ladder was supposed to be competitive or something? making it any easier means... yeah idk about this one...

I think this is a huge simplification. Most raiders that I know, me included, would sincerely hope they give classes MORE skill expression. Homogenization in classes also leads to homogenization in fight design, putting damage or mechanics at 120 seconds to mess with buff windows, 120s tank busters, all that. All one optimizes for now is just "can I use 120s at 120s," isn't that boring?

Speaking of harder or unique fight designs, I very much disagree that the homogenization in EW has really led to anything. P1S and P6S were target dummy practices. P7S was 8 minutes of sleeping + 1 semi-fun mechanic that a well-geared and skilled group can just skip now. P2S was interesting but again - the one downtime that messes with your 120s cool downs. Massive hit boxes mean that casters now have to run circles around the entire arena.

IMO the key issue to parsers isn't the complexity themselves, since coming up with optimization for different fight timelines is a part of the fun. People are more concerned about the insane RNG variance thanks to crit, dhit, and just the 3% damage rolls. Also, homogenizing everything at 120s windows have introduced balance nightmares. By having a re-opener every 2 minutes instead of 6, Square has effectively made the variance even more disparate between classes.

[Renathras]

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 ".

I think the problem with this is it's one of those designs that's fantastic on paper but doesn't work in the real world. ANYTHING related to damage will never be "optional" in a realistic sense. Utility, sure. A RDM that can throw in Verraises seemlessly in its rotation is great. A RDM that only uses Jolt (not Fire/Stone) is not, because in real terms the latter is hampering the party while the former MAY (situation depending) be providing redundancy (generally speaking, Healers get the first two KO's per minute, RDM/SMN should get the third or get the raise if it's one of the Healers that went down, or more than 2 people went down)

We see this a lot where people propose ideas of low skill floors and high skill ceilings, but because the skill ceiling adds significant damage, people who aren't reaching somewhat close to it are unable to clear content, or are considered to be harming other players due to their lower personal skill.

The problem with "Optional to master" is when it's never optional. No one requires perfect 100% gameplay, but players are still not allowed the "option" of significantly lower damage in content that is based around Enrage mechanics.

This is also the problem with the Job idea. For example, if we make all four healers play like SB SCH, many people would quit the role since they'd have no viable choice anymore. Whereas leaving one or two closer to what they are today fixes that problem, where players so inclined may pick which of the two they like better. This is especially true when it actively plays into the Job fantasy. For example, while one could argue for GNB or PLD to be skillful, technical combatants, WAR being unga bunga actually fills the Job fantasy of playing a raging berserker.

I do agree with you on the "less can be more" thing with buttons. A number of Jobs have extra buttons that largely just...exist to exist. Like Goring Blade on PLD right now, or Sonic Break in GNB. They don't add anything to the rotation, have no resource basis, and don't interact with any other mechanics other than they're used on CD in a buff window (but what isn't?), leading them to just be clutter that doesn't achieve anything useful.

[CelestiCer]

I think the problem with this is it's one of those designs that's fantastic on paper but doesn't work in the real world. ANYTHING related to damage will never be "optional" in a realistic sense. Utility, sure.

I'll clarify what I meant with what I wrote.

SkillFloor = barrier of entry to clear any content before Extreme difficulty. Examples: Using DutySupport NPC's to clear Dungeons while you eat a Sandwich in RL or Pressing 1 skill even though you have 15 skills available to clear 90% of all MSQ quests. The bare minimum to clear that level of content is the SkillFloor to me. The SkillCeiling is pushing Jobs to their limits, even in content without any Enrage.

Content without DPS checks makes complexity of any Job " Optional ". Any complexity that is optional is there for not goin to harm the players who are trying to clear this lvl of content. Because complexity can be added without lifting the skillfloor. Only where DPS checks matter is learning jobs properly mandatory i.e anything above Extreme Difficulty. Here adding depth to Jobs shouldn't make clearing this impossible by having Square allow a certain margin of error. Heck... as weeks go by in Savage we have players who can't find the Feint/Addle button while parties have 15 deaths in a singular pull and still clear the fight...

The appeal of complexity is to be able to do it better then it is necessary. That extra stone you're allowed to carry that another didn't. Doing dungeons and never casting Phlegma or any other AoE skill, that's the Bar Square sets. But, when someone comes a long that actually practiced their Job well? its day and night. And I wish that to be highlighted through available optional depth available for every Job.

Instead its all taken away...
Reworked, removed... every uniqueness/trait/resource interactions/simplified/homogenized/every nuance, every...everything. It becomes so Streamlined that making Content clearable becomes the priority over making Jobs as enjoyable to play.

[Renathras]

...to clear any content before Extreme difficulty.

This is the problem.

Extreme difficulty is the end-game content for most players. Savage raiders are a growing percent of the community (somewhere between 35-40%) because it's been made more accessible, but that's still a minority, while Ultimates are a minority of a minority. Extreme content is very likely the main endgame for something like 60-70% of the community. When you're proposing a change that affects that many people, it becomes a problem because - again - it isn't optional. As people constantly say, no matter how bad it's become for the game, damage is the only metric that counts. As long as at least one party member has at least 1 HP and the boss has died, any extra healing, mitigation, or utility is irrelevant (so people say), "damage is mitigation/healing because it prevents damage" (absurd in a realistic sense - you can't outdamage a boss before a party member on the verge of death is dead unless the boss is below 3-5%), etc etc.

In short, the community has decided damage IS NOT optional. Meaning any skill expression tied to damage, unless the gap between skill floor and skill ceiling damage is microscopic in % terms, isn't optional at all.

So that can't be how we allow skill expression in the game anymore, since the community has spoken and said that it isn't, in fact, optional, and never is, unless you're doing content with no Enrages, in which case Job balance and skill expression is arguably irrelevant.

To me:

The skill floor is the level of skill needed to reliably clear Extremes.

Anything less than that is irrelevant - a dipping bird on your keyboard with autorun going could clear it - and extremes are the majority of the community's end-game, either as an entry into Savage or as their stand-alone end-game source of weapons and replay-ability farming mounts. And so the "floor" is Extremes.

Thus damage is not optional in a realistic sense unless, again, the difference between floor and cap is vast and/or Extremes have ridiculously lax Enrages. (Granted, they have lately, so who knows? But you still have to have marginally competent players, even with Ex5 letting you blow a Healer LB3 [or possibly 2] and still make it. Seriously, Ex5's Enrage itself is actually appropriate, it's more a check of if your party can get at least one Healer through the stack/spread/cross/cleave/stack-spread combo and/or Limit Cut - if you can just get through all that, unless people are asleep at their keyboards, the DPS should be sufficient...but that's not always the case, as it wasn't in the earlier Extremes.)

Anyway, this is also why I'm a huge proponent of the "different complexity JOBS" (not skill floor vs ceiling) model. It's fine if a game has several easy classes, several moderate classes, and several hard classes. harder classes can be rewarded with feeling good about themselves, or possibly with non-damage utility stuff. But until the community decides to change its collective mind on the damage >>>> all thing, DAMAGE cannot be the thing hugely tied to skill ceilings, because it will NEVER be optional under that paradigm.

Homogenization is such a bad idea, what's the point in having 20+ jobs when the do the same thing as 5. Personally I'd like them to take the FFXI route a bit more, there's a reason why that game is still going strong. The reason behind making everything the same is so that nobody feels left out? Left out of what, high tier raiding groups? No disrespect but aren't they like 5% of the player base? Don't they play for the challenge rather than what job? Maybe just me but I don't care that my PLD may do 8% less damage as long as its true to an identity and becomes a brick wall. Warrior - go for it do you 10% extra damage than the other tanks but be a squashy piece of meat. That's my balancing. If some jobs fall off certain content, that's fine. Players can then just swap job to have a new experience. I feel they are really screwing this game by making it damage damage damage. Going back to FFXI that was a true role experience, they need to do that. I'd argue the majority of people play XIV for story and lore which includes role-playing not the weird stuff but getting in to character. Sword shield defender or an axe wielding maniac. It's all good.

Somewhat agreed. FFXI's Job design and identity are (largely) SO much better.

I think everything should be able to clear content in a general sense, but content should be tuned down to allow that, not Job identity. And there should be complex and intricate Jobs for people that want them, simple for those that want them, and a spectrum in between.

WHM is pretty simple (relatively speaking) while SCH is more complicated, but each are competent and functional, and it's up to the player what they like, with some in-between options available for people that want something in between.

There's no reason FFXIV can't do something like that - and the great irony is, it already did in its past, and in some cases, actually got it to work.

[ForsakenRoe]

Knowing the community already I'll play devil's advocate: I can already feel that even in casual content you'd see a lot of scorn and elitism suddenly dropping down on everybody daring to use the simple versions, because "tHeY aRe wAsTiNg mY pReCiOuS gAmEr tImE aNd tHeY nEeD tO gIt gUd".

And on the flip side, there's people who would demand that the 'simple, non-master' version can also be used to clear Savage and Ultimates, and if SE doesn't let them 1-button SMN Macro their way to a clear they will be very angry about it on the forums

But yeh, we can see what would happen if there was a 'Mastery version' of a class with more reward (even with more risk attached). We HAD it. It was Simple-mode WHM, and Mastery-mode AST, in SB. And WHM was getting locked out of PFs, not every PF, but enough for it to be a glaring (heh) issue, because AST was just better. This would be no different. Better to just have classes have 'low skill floor, high skill ceiling', and different levels of content demand different levels of mastery of the class from the player. BLM's a good example, starting out you have 'use fire spell for damage use ice spell for MP restore' and that's enough to get by for most stuff. I could probably clear EX trial with BLM (and I HATE BLM) with the foundation level knowledge I have of the class. But going for a 99% looks like astrophysics to me, and I'm glad they get to have such a high skill ceiling to shoot for. Would that every class had skill ceilings as distant from their skill floor, as the theoretical 'perfectly optimized BLM'

[Valence]

It's fine if a game has several easy classes, several moderate classes, and several hard classes.

I won't develop more on my thought pattern since CelestiCer already pretty much nailed it above for me. But this point in particular, I hate it. Like, I really hate it. It's already kind of what we get and it's literally what has RUINED rphys for the past two expansions.

I'm sure you'll find some players at the raiding end of the spectrum that never cared about job flair and aesthetics at all, and I know some of them, but that's not the case of most people: there is classes that I'm sure you love for their flair and feel more than others, and being shoved a braindead model down your throat on a job you love is one of the worst feeling I've had the displeasure to experience, and I've been wandering around looking for other jobs that 110% click with me since then with no real success. I'm pretty sure the opposite would also be true, where you're a player that struggles more with difficult rotations, and get shoved a complex model down their throat with little accessibility... Fortunately that latter case is less and less possible because accessibility of most jobs has been really eased over years (which is a good thing).

This alone is why not even entertaining the notion of skill floors and ceilings is a path to nonsense. I'm not saying that they should be a cardinal virtue in every design ever, but they're literally what makes your casual and hardcore players tick.

But until the community decides to change its collective mind on the damage >>>> all thing, DAMAGE cannot be the thing hugely tied to skill ceilings, because it will NEVER be optional under that paradigm.

See, the community really has a problem with the damage and performance mindset (fortunately nowhere yet near to WoW, but it's following the trend), especially in casual content where it's always about "carrying bad players" and "bad players wasting muh time", you'd literally be preaching to the choir here. But not tying your job performance and results to damage, especially at least on DPS jobs, is absolutely unrealistic and wishful. That's literally THE satisfaction you can take out of playing them well.

Well, at least that's the satisfaction I take out of them. Executing interesting and complex enough mechanics and witness the results.

If you were saying that healers should take satisfaction in a well planned or executed healing, or clutch saves, or whatever makes them tick, then I'd be inclined to agree. I don't play healers for their DPS rotations (especially in their current state lol). I know a lot of healers that enjoy healing, and when they meet some savage content, they're left flabbergasted by the lack of healing skill expression, where their kits are literally 90% about healing tools.

But that's not DPS jobs.