Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[Valence]

The problem I have with arguments like yours is the framing.

"Enjoyable" is "asinine". "Not convoluted" is "braindead". "Fun" is "boring".

You realize that literally nothing, in spite of what you like to pretend, is objective in that kind of "discussion", right? Everything you have pointed as "factually objective" was biased as hell. I won't pretend hiding behind such false premises in order to construct an altar of questionable moral superiority. We're literally touching to 110% organic, deeply subjective feelings and tastes, and you constantly gesticulating at trying to split the cake between what's objective and what's not is a losing battle.

Even stating that this job has X or Y buttons, while being objective and a fact, suddenly stops being objective as soon as you emit a critical judgement upon it. If you can't grasp that simple fact, you're only going to continue coming as condescendingly pedantic to everybody and with reason.

Moreover, there's no "ENFORCE simple/easy jobs arbitrarily", especially when your own position is to ENFORCE complex/hard Jobs arbitrarily. This is the part that's really confusing to me. Why is it okay for your desired Job design to be forced on all Jobs and players but not the contra? Moreover, the simple side proponents aren't even arguing for ALL Jobs to be made simple, just a few.

You're fighting against strawmen here. You have been the one in the very first pages of this thread to rail against the notion of skill floor and ceilings and designs including both. You have literally here argued, I remember, for some jobs to be easy, and some to be hard. I'm not making up anything. Where I have always argued to have accessible jobs with some depth in counterpart, no matter the job. You can have both, but you were arguing against that, which I took issue with.

Ergo, yes, you're arguing to enforce easy jobs down the throats of people.

Here's the question that would resolve all of this fairly quickly:

WHY must all Jobs have a skill high skill ceiling?

Case in point.

Not "so people can improve". No WHY? Why is that important? Why is that necessary?

I never argued for anything remotely close to people needing to improve. I actually loathe the literal doctrine that constantly shoves improvement down the throat of every casual player people don't deem "gud enough" to their tastes, like it's high end esports or whatever silly notion they have about having fun on a game. You're preaching to the choir on that specific point. I don't even know what prompted that to come into this argument to be honest, but considering the literal essays like this one, it's possible I missed it in all the noise.

In WoW, you can get a little (not completely, but a little) closer to that because of Talents, but FFXIV doesn't have that. You can't choose talents on SMN to give you some extra DoTs or make Fester into old Fester. Those aren't options. You likewise can't choose Talents on BLM to turn it into an Ice Mage. Those aren't options.

What are you even talking about..?

There's not a way to play BLM that's "easy" right now. You have hard and ultra-hard (if you want to go Infinite Paradox transpose lines and explode your brain with 100% movement uptime). But there's no way to play BLM that is at SMN level.

What the hell are you talking about. I've seen casuals play BLM at a baseline level that is horrifying but functional. They don't get the right amount of F4s in astral, sometimes they don't have umbral stacks, dot uptime is not there... so what? They still play the job and swap between ice and fire, and the results are obviously, not optimal. They still understand how the job clicks, that's literally what a floor is about. Meanwhile the gap between floor and ceiling on new SMN is abyssmal. At best what you can screw up is drop your fire dash continuation, or miss a cast. For the rest you just have to press the buttons that light up. The only floor there is is to understand how all the summoning works at low level, which is actually more obscure than it needs to be because a lot of new players look at the Actions & Traits and get a stroke. BLM suffers from the same problem with the fire/ice mechanics, but every job does. I'm not complaining about floors, but ceilings. Once you understand how to summon, there is literally nothing left with the rotation to optimize or push further.

There's no way to play MNK at WHM level.

I know that people meme a lot about green DPS and whatnot, but still...

So the options are mostly just making a Job complex or making it not-complex. EVERY now and then the Devs stumble onto something that lets a Job be pretty simple but with quite a bit of nuance to optimize for a higher skill ceiling.

So make up your mind? What is it then? No option to make an easy job to approach but with quite a bit of nuance to optimize for higher skill ceiling, or is this possible? Make up your mind?

Ironically, considering how often people call RDM simple, it's the perfect and RARE example of an "easy to play WELL but with a lot of nuance to truly master". The basic concept of how the Job works is very simple to grasp and play, and you can do respectable damage just alternating your short/long casts, then rolling into your melee combo at 50/50, using the opposite Holy/Flare then Scorch, then Resolution, and popping your two oGCD attacks when they come up. On a surface level, it's very simple to play.

...then you start looking into optimization and the opener. "Why do I use Acceleration AND Swiftcast? Wait, there's a priority system between the two? I'm supposed to fit HOW MANY melee combos in the burst phase?? What's the optimal use of Acceleration? How much White/Black should I have at what time? How should I be using Manafication vs Embolden?" It's surprisingly nuanced to play at a 90-100 on it, even if the basic concept of it is far more simple. As much as it's derided, WAR has a similar situation. So does New PLD - also derided. Kinda sensing a trend here... The thing with New PLD is more that the differences are so negligible it doesn't matter and that's probably true of WAR. RDM it's not quite as true of, but relatively so.

So then it is possible, if RDM is one such example? If this is possible, why are you arguing against it?

What is absent from these conversations is WHY no Job may be ALLOWED to have a low skill ceiling.

It's said this is bad, but not WHY. "Boring" is subjective and many people find low skill ceiling Jobs engaging and fun. So that's not an answer. "No room for growth" runs into the same problem, as (a) there's at least SOME room for growth anyway and (b) again, subjective, as both not everyone finds that engaging and enjoyable anyway and different people at different skill levels may not see the growth the same way, meaning the skill ceiling/growth may not even be perceived the same way. Someone may struggle to get RDM down while another may find it child's play to master even BLM.

Again, make up your mind? Is this about low skill ceilings, or is it impossible to determine difficulty because it's very subjective (I tend to agree actually, I've been the first one to complain about the second rate dps jobs being subpar damage because of assumed arbitrary difficulties), therefore making skill ceilings a fantasy?

So WHY is the question. Not "Why should there be a simple Job", since the answer to that is obvious - having a low skill floor and ceiling Job in each role makes roles more accessible to new entrants, be they new players, new gamers, or people just wanting to dabble in a role for the first time.

Ceiling has nothing to do with accessibility.

To me, having multiple levels existing is the no brainer.

SMN is easy
RDM is medium
RDM optimized is hard
BLM normal is hard
BLM transpose infinite Paradox is galaxy brain

In fact, of ALL the roles in the game right now, I think Caster is the one that actually nails this. For Tanks, GNB is a bit harder and DRK CAN be harder depending on how you look at it, but WAR is pretty easy (with a bit of nuance) and PLD is near WAR levels. There's not a galaxy brain option, and there's debatably not a hard option. Healers.......should I go into that one? Most people consider them to have, at best, super easy, easy, and maybe a medium (SCH and/or AST) option. Melee don't really have an EASY option. RPR is the closest, but is probably more of a medium, and all the Melee Jobs other than RPR have pretty high skill ceilings to really master them, with MNK being obvious but SAM also having a pretty high bar for high level play. Ranged is just weird since all three Jobs are pretty simple to pick up but medium-ish to master, with MCH being the worst to do perfect on because of how its CDs drift if not used perfectly.

Caster is the one role that has a Job at easy, medium, and hard levels of play, and BLM has the option of going up to galaxy brain level if desired.

There's nothing really wrong with this other than "hardcore players want more".

And they have BLM and FREQUENTLY avoid playing it when offered any other choice.

You realize that you said just above that it's too subjective to make any rulings about difficulty, yet you just went on a tangent to determine arbitrary difficulty levels to triage and sort every job into their neat little difficulty labels within their respective roles?

It's a question of WHY what you want is actually necessary to the point it must and should be forced on everyone when even hardcore players avoid it if given the choice.

Why what I want, being every job being accessible yet with some mechanical depth, should be "forced" on everyone? I mean, are you arguing to force on everyone your arbitrary levels of complexity and/or intricacy/depth instead? I don't know man, but between the two, I do feel that my model is a lot more inclusive.

And on top of it, your model introduces yet another contradictory statement of yours, which bases itself on the fact that even raiders will often follow the path of least resistance (true!), yet surprisingly you'd advocate for easy jobs to play in the same roles than harder jobs to play. Why is that, if not to double down even more into totally lopsided play ratios even at high level?

And for the love of Hydaelyn and/or Zodiark (whichever cult you ascribe to more, of course ) - stop using the term "braindead". If you can't see how that poisons the well of literally any discussion ever, sit back in your chair, consider how you'd feel if people incessantly called things you actually find fun and enjoyable braindead, and then realize that you should stop doing it.

I agree with this and I apologize for the few times I've used it.