Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[Renathras]

The whole point of an invuln is that using it stops you dying. Often as not, old living dead just delayed it for 10 seconds. Is it perfect now? No. Are you noticeably less likely to die? Yes. I don’t think there’s necessarily any skill in praying for a decent pf healer or just planning cooldown usage in a static.

Is it dumbed down vs what it was before? Yes.

Do people condemn it for being "braindead" now? No.

That's my point: People will defend simplifying as NOT simplifying if it's something they like, but attack it as "dumbing down" if it's something they don't. That was the point I was making and so well illustrated in the replies to it.

[Zairava]

snippy

In theory, how it works now would be less simple because it has another layer to it now. Which...doesn't really amount to much, but it's there.

What I'm trying to get at here an ability being easier to use doesn't always equate to dumbing it down. Living Dead is an example of making something more effective while keeping true to how it worked before.

Living Dead still works the exact same except the DRK can just do it themselves. You're still timing it the same way (that, being using it before you would die). You're also still dying without outside support if you aren't able to get the GCD's needed. If you don't get that healing totaling 100% of your maximum HP, you are going to die, that hasn't changed.

In fact, the main difference between then and now is on the healers rather than the DRK themselves. Groups would need to plan around it if they didn't have a White Mage to no diff it. They no longer have to time the expiration of the debuff as close to the end of the timer as possible, either, thanks to Undead Rebirth. In this sense, it's dumbed down for everyone except the Dark Knight using it, since the DRK in question would already being using their GCD's upon using Living Dead anyway.

The discussion for why the removal of Dark Arts is met with such negativity is because it was a part of the job at its core. It was a tremendous part of the identity that got rinsed and 'replaced' with something that feels half-baked.

Tanking CD's aren't really met with it mostly because it may be seen as a non-issue outside of the rare occurrence it actually is an issue. Take Paladin's recent rework for example. If I remember right, blocking doesn't work on bleeds, and that's why Holy Sheltron got changed and Bulwark came back. There's the base mitigations that every tank has (the role actions, Shadow Wall/Sentinel, etc), then the rest are more towards the tanks themselves (WAR's self sustain, DRK being more on the defensive side, etc).

We could just not be seeing eye-to-eye here, though.

[fulminating]

Something not working doesn’t make it complex - does the change to bard that allowed you to use your pp when another bard was playing something else count as dumbing down?

[Renathras]

/sigh

You guys are making my point for me.

But we aren't going to reach agreement on that, so continuing on is pointless.

But I think the argument does hold that people will not call simplifying THAT THEY LIKE "dumbing down". I think that should be obvious. "dumbing down" is a derogatory statement, and people simply won't use that about something being made simple which they like.

Old SMN was clunky as hell. It was "not working". Old PLD was also clunky and was "not working" in the modern combat design.

Both were changed, and both called "dumbing down". The difference between those and LD is (1) the changes were made to the rotations/GCDs and (2) the changes were ones the players deriding them didn't like.

Imagine, if you will, a change that made a Job simpler but which you liked. You likely would not call it "dumbing down" under any scenario.

[Semirhage]

It's entirely possible to differentiate between simplifications that remove clunk and simplifications which make jobs more boring in ways that are more nuanced than "it's just the difference between you liking it or not".

Simplification just to make things as failproof as possible are frequently -bad- simplifications. Simplification which removes gamey, arbitrary lockouts that don't add to engagement is usually good. Conversely, adding noninteractive cruft like a press-on-cooldown oGCD that has no further point is bad complexity. Additions which add to a job's flow, create choice, or allow more interaction with an encounter are usually good.

[Renathras]

...

And that's fine...until you get to asking the question "What is clunk?"

Many people though SB SCH was clunky. But there were many people who LIKED having Eos Embrace macros. Was that clunk or was that a nuanced mechanic for skill expression? It depended ENTIRELY on who you asked.

Old SMN had a LOT of disjointed systems that barely worked together creating a clunky mess of a Frankenstein's Monster Job. A lot of people felt the pieces didn't make sense together and were awkward and annoying to try and work around. That they were fighting the Job more than playing the Job. Yet, to others, that was what they saw as skill expression and intrinsic to their enjoyment.

Old PLD was a technically involved Job where you also were fighting the Job mechnaics. Let's not forget the cursed -17sec FoF opener. It lacked consistent self-sustain healing in its rotation, and there were clunky things like whether or not you dropped Atonements. Yet to some people, these were all measures of skill expression and removing them was dumbing it down.

Boring is ALSO a subjective consideration, as you can again ask the question of "What is boring?" and get a lot of different answers that don't even agree with one another.

Saying "when it removes clunk it's good" is another way of saying "if you like it, you see it as good", since a lot of things that WERE clunky people LIKED and so the clunk being removed is still attacked.

I do agree, though, that there are such things as good complexity and bad complexity (and corollary to that, bad simplicity and good simplicity). But part of what I'm getting at is how subjective that is.

[tearagion]

Old SMN had a LOT of disjointed systems that barely worked together creating a clunky mess of a Frankenstein's Monster Job.

It has the same disjointed systems then as it does now, except those systems work together less lol. New SMN still has a permanent summon, Demis, Aetherflow, and filler spells. Difference is they have all been sanded down to absolute simplicity, removing the synergy along the way.
Ruin 4 has no nuance in it's use, it's just the instant cast filler you get one of every minute, compared to before where it was generated by your Egi and necessary for optimal Bahamut damage.
Aetherflow interacts with literally nothing anymore, whereas in ShB it at least only maxed out on potency with both of your DoTs applied to a target, and before that was critical to using Dreadwyrm Trance.
Gameplay at the level of Ruin filler spam is now the whole rotation, and easier (except for Ifrit Dash and Slipstream.)
Carbuncle does fuck and all, they even took Searing Light off of it.
The shiny new Gem Summons don't really interact with anything other than themselves. They generate nothing. You get them for free from pressing your Demi button (which requires nothing).
Rework was a complete failure if the objective was to avoid piling together disparate systems that don't work together. It's as much of a "Frankenstien's Monster Job" as it's ever been.

[Renathras]

It has the same disjointed systems then as it does now, except those systems work together les

Oh?

ARR: Autoattacking permanent egi (that could die in combat, but also one could tank) with a special ability on a CD, Ruin and Ruin 2, 3 DoTs, Aetherflow, Fester, Bane, Shadow Flare.
At this time, the gameplay was maintaining 3 DoTs (no, not four, you didn't have Miasma 2 until basically HW and Thunder was removed from cross-class in 2.1; the only extras you got from Cross-Class were Cleric Stance, Aero, and arguably Blizzard 2 for AOE situations), using Aetherflow on CD, using Fester on CD with AF stacks (I think it had a 5 or 10 sec CD to itself in addition to the AF cost), using the Egi attacks on CD (I'm trying to remember if we had Egi Assaults back then or just Enkindle, but basically those), and filler with Ruin. Ruin 2 did the same damage but had a slightly higher MP cost for the convenience of no cast time.

HW: Using Aetherflow gives you corrupted Aether and DWT. The rotation was otherwise the same, but you used DWT after expending all your AF, I believe. Then you got to use a bigger pew pew and did more damage. At this point in time, I think DWT didn't make your spells instant, it just increased the damage your Ruin 3 dealt.

SB: Now you have Bahamut. Using DWT twice - not once, twice - gave you Bahamut. When Bahamut was out, he had a weird way of working where he did a Wyrmwave for every single one of your attacks, including oGCDs. And "attacks" means "thing that struck an enemy target". As such, the above was amended to every second DWT, summon Bahamut then move as little as possible (he'd prioritize moving to your new location over attacking) and spam out as many GCD attacks and oGCD weaves of anything resembling an attack as possible. Addle counted as an "attack" in this system. Oh, and you had two Enkindle Bahamut uses (I think it was) to use under Bahamut, one at the start and the second before he left. But not TOO soon on summoning him or dismissing him. You also wanted to make sure your first spell on summoning him was Ruin 3 not Ruin 2/Further Ruin 4 because he'd come in with "summoning sickness" and wiff that first attack if you did an instant. You also wanted to end with an instant if possible so he didn't wiff the final attack while departing.

ShB: Now with more Phoenix, the system was kind of the same, but you no longer needed two DWTs to summon Bahamut. Moreover, DWT didn't require burning AF stacks to use. There was also a major patch somewhere during it, but at the start of ShB, it still had the "cram GCD" thing going. Egi-Assaults were turned into GCDs at some point, and now were the source of Further Ruin (I don't remember what it was before, but it was something else, maybe procs from DoTs?), and the rotation became an odd combination of rigid and flexible, depending on how you were looking at it. The rotation was a strict 2 minutes before there was the EW 2 min meta (irony...). It opened with DWT (getting all your weaves in to set up for Bahamut), then Bahamut, a natural Bio/Miasma refresh, spending Egi-Assaults before the 1 min mark, refressing DoTs with Tri-Disaster before FBT (DWT and FBT now both refreshed T-D, which was an oGCD that applied both DoTs), then roll into Phoenix, then filler for ~40 sec, building up the 4 Further Ruins for the 3:15 Bahamut, using the T-D refreshed by FBT at the 1:30 mark then using the one refreshed by DWT as soon as you entered it to close the loop on that end.

The disjointed systems were that AF had nothing to do with anything else and wasn't tied to anything else, the Egis were just kinda...there...at this point, Phoenix had nothing to do with Bahamut, FBT had nothing to do with DWT other than relying on it to start its CD, DWT kinda had something to do with Bahamut, neither had anything to do with Egis other than you wanted 4 Ruin 4s for Bahamut (but not Phoenix because its 1-2 combo was entirely self-contained and used your Ruin 3 and...Outburst [whatever its name was at the time] buttons for...god only knows why the second hit was the AOE one...), and each sub-phase could be seen as a disjointed time capsule of the Job: Filler was ARR, DWT was HW, Bahamut was SB, and Phoenix was ShB.

EW SMN, on the other hand...has almost none of that. The only thing it has that's really disjointed from the rest of the rotation is Energy Drain/Siphon and Fester/Painflare. They could just give it Painflare as a 2 charge, 30 sec recharge and Ruin 4 as a 60 sec CD GCD (or have it be generated by DWT/FBT instead of ED/ES) and nothing of value would be lost, and "The last remnants of the Old Republic (er, 2.0 ACN) have been swept away."

There wasn't much "synergy" to the older SMN, it was just a convoluted mess that worked despite itself but had several things that didn't make sense with the whole. For example, you only used Bio and Miasma 1 time every 2 minutes. There was really no point to them. If summoning Bahamut had refreshed Tri-Disaster, those two buttons could have been removed, the two DoTs could have been consolidated into one debuff, and nothing in the rotation would have changed. Bahamut and Phoenix were disjointed. FBT and DWT were disjointed. Egi Assaults were disjointed from everything other than cramming 4 Ruin IVs into Bahamut.

The new systems may be streamlined and sterile, but they absolutely work together other than Energy Drain/Siphon/Aetherflow stacks, which are just kinda...there. The Demis work mostly like FBT did in ShB, and lead into the Primals. you can say they "require nothing", but one generates the other, and then using all three closes the 1 min loop. There aren't disparate systems; there almost aren't any systems at all. Ruin 4 is used as a movement tool if movement is required under Ifrit that Swiftcast alone can't handle or when it needs to be held for something else (Slipstream or a Raise). So the only piece that really is disparate at this point is Energy Drain/Fester. The rest of the kit makes sense with itself and isn't disjointed at all. If ED/ES/Fester were removed, DWT/FBT generated Ruin 4, and Painflare was a 30 sec CD 2 stacking oGCD on its own, the kit wouldn't have anything disjointed at all about it.

.

Note, this isn't saying New SMN is a good Job (I believe it is, but for different reasons), but it's not a clunky cobbled together Frankenstein's Monster like Old SMN was. I don't think ANY Job is like Old SMN in that respect.

[tearagion]

tldr

newSMN is by definition as, or more, disjointed as/than shbSMN and your colossal post doesn't change that.

[ty_taurus]

And that's fine...until you get to asking the question "What is clunk?".

There is no "right answer" in game design for how much is too much or too little for the player. But one way to look at things is to compare game design to your nails. Nail length is comparable to overall complexity in this example. The more complex a job is, the longer that nail is. How long or short anyone wants their nails is subjective, but there's also undeniably a state in which your nails can be too long or too short. In other words, there's a goldilocks zone that each job needs to hit in order to feel appropriate.

It's important to take care of your nails. Trim them before they get too long, remove hangnails, etc. This is comparable to pruning outdated or clunky mechanics from each job, but the problem that ShB and EW have is it feels like, for many jobs, the designers are aggressively filing away at the nail down to the flesh. They aren't just pruning clunk, they're eroding the healthy parts of the nail as well.

We are below the goldilocks zone in many ways, which is why there's so much unrest, and I don't even mean these forums. Everywhere you look, there's tension about SMN, about MNK, about the healers, about Kaiten... When you file the nail down past the skin, in hurts. There are too many people who feel an ache and soreness from the aggressive simplification many of the jobs are experiencing. It's like an unhealthy condition of OGCD, where someone is so aggressively cleaning the counter that they're causing damage to the wood, filing their nail down to the skin, washing their hair so excessively that they're drying the scalp. That is what EW feels like. There's not a right answer for where that line is. It's something you have to get a feel for, and that line may be in different spots for different people, but it's clear that we are below the goldilocks zone and have been for the last several years now.