FFXIV Job Design Feedback

[ty_taurus]

Please no. WHM was the worst it's ever been in 4.0.

I think Roe, as well as many of us who frequent healer discussions, mutually understand that when discussing the high points of SB design in regards to healers, that we're referring to the overall feeling of Scholar and Astrologian while White Mage is more of a black sheep in this regard. Not every job was holistically superior in SB, but on a grand scale, more jobs had a much greater sense of identity and gameplay feel than those that didn't, and it's a quiet acknowledgement that we wouldn't want to return to White Mage, or perhaps a few other examples like Ninja. Rather, White Mage should take what it's gained from EW and expand on it moving toward the general feel of SB as a whole.

I understand that this may not be clear to the casual lurker, however, so it's worth clarifying.

I think the reason why SB is brought up is because, while it wasn't perfect, it seems like a good bargaining point--a midpoint between the more punishing elements of HW and the sterilization of ShB. "If you aren't willing to look at HW as a guide-point for the general feel of job design moving forward, than how about the less extreme SB that was more user-friendly without being completely railroaded?" And I think that talking about past expansions as a point of reference doesn't necessarily mean anyone is advocating to quite literally return to how those systems function or what tools the jobs had at that time, but rather, using that as a reference for where to gauge future changes on how much job complexity, flavor actions, and decision-making aspects to shoot for. And if that choice were to come out and be praised by the general player base, that could in turn lead the game down a much healthier design path.

[kaynide]

One of the joys of FFXI and older MMOs was the variety of jobs and what they were capable of both alone and in combination with certain other jobs. Certain jobs simp,y were better or worse and X.

The problem of allowing all jobs to do all things is not easy to fix, but in a game where every player can be every job it seems very odd to make them so homogeneous. There is only so much you can do until it feels like Smash Bros with everyone having near-same move sets.

This is ultimately the result of a game that puts too much emphasis on instanced content (dungeons/trials) and not enough on open world/exploration/niche content.

[ForsakenRoe]

I think Roe, as well as many of us who frequent healer discussions, mutually understand that when discussing the high points of SB design in regards to healers, that we're referring to the overall feeling of Scholar and Astrologian while White Mage is more of a black sheep in this regard. Not every job was holistically superior in SB, but on a grand scale, more jobs had a much greater sense of identity and gameplay feel than those that didn't, and it's a quiet acknowledgement that we wouldn't want to return to White Mage, or perhaps a few other examples like Ninja. Rather, White Mage should take what it's gained from EW and expand on it moving toward the general feel of SB as a whole.

I understand that this may not be clear to the casual lurker, however, so it's worth clarifying.

Yep, basically everything Ty said (thank you for clarifying). I said 'a lot of classes would say SB was the best', not 'all' because there are some odd ones out like WHM. Thanks to the obsession with parsing, and RDPS not really being as big a thing at the time, the effects of stacking 'raidbuff classes' and feeding every buff into one person to 'pad' them was also out of control in those days, leading to much wilder looking numbers. SB class design, with RDPS as the main metric, might have had some bizarre damage variances still, admittedly, but it'd be a better baseline to start balancing from than 'this is how much damage a BLM does. And this is how much a BLM does, if they have Trick, Litany, Dragonsight, Battle Voice, Chain Strat and every Balance card the AST draws (with singletarget royalroading, for good measure)'. And as Ty says, my aim wouldn't be to just rewind the clock and go back to exactly SB as it was in 4.5, rather, to take the parts that did work and expand on them.

So back to healers, the idea isn't to just go back to a 1:1 copy of SB as that screws WHM. Instead, we should take the parts that worked (converting damage spells to use MND instead of INT, changing Cleric Stance to be 'not a noob trap'), and build on that, and excise the parts that did not work (for example, we don't need to go back to the original Lily system). Also consider, thanks to certain other 'decisions' which you may or may not agree with, other jobs felt more useful. NIN was always in demand due to Trick yes, but it also had aggro management tools that were very nice to have. Not 'necessary', but 'nice to have'. Phys ranged are suffering atm, having a tax on their damage because of the 'utility' they bring, but not bringing utility enough to justify that tax. Back in SB, they had Refresh and Tactician, being the 'resource battery' of the party and being extremely crucial to the raid's success as a result. Now we have all the MP using classes being MP positive, or for healers, able to function at base Piety, so that 'utility' is no longer required.

Ironically, at the end of HW, I had an idea for SMN to have it's three summons be OGCDs, and Enkindle to have a 20 second CD that generated Aethertrail Attunement, the resource you needed 3 of to get into Dreadwyrm Trance. Basically, the current rotation, but fitting into the systems that existed in HW/SB times (Aethertrail and such). Current SMN would have fit well in SB, and been a good base to build from going into SHB and onwards. For comparison, look at how RDM was back in SB, barebones as heck. I find it ironic that we got a design for SMN that could have fit SB, 4 years too late to be in SB. If we had gotten it back then, we'd have had 2 expansions of additional kit to add to it, and it'd feel more 'complete' now.

The problem of allowing all jobs to do all things is not easy to fix, but in a game where every player can be every job it seems very odd to make them so homogeneous. There is only so much you can do until it feels like Smash Bros with everyone having near-same move sets.

I keep hearing that at the time, one of the main complaints people had about MOP (the expansion of WOW that this game took inspiration from when the rebuild happened) was that everyone could do everything. Feels like there's almost 'too much MOP' in this game now in that regard. The writing was kinda on the wall even as early as Stormblood, when they gave WAR Onslaught after they saw DRK had Plunge and got mad that they didn't have a gapcloser too. Now every tank has a gapcloser.

[MistyMew]

jobs are boring
all jobs feel weak in current and even old content which is bizarre.

blm original was the best
smn now is a complete joke
the rest are just copies of each other, different ability names but all basically the same.
nothing original or interesting tbh.

the game as a whole is very boring now. (sorry but it is imo)
i wish it wasnt but.....

[MonsutaMan]

XIV's job designs are the weak point of the game imo.

I noticed with devs of MMO in particular, the vision begins humble, subservient to the player. However, as the game grows, and their passion grows.......The vision shifts from the player to "Our vision of X job is for it to be, etc, etc...."

BLU would not be the most criticized class of all-time in MMO history, if it could do the MSQ....Just ban it from the crystal tower then lol......

It is so extreme with these folks. All or nothing. Let BLU gain XP from the MSQ, they don't have to be able to do every raid like the towers, simply the soloable ones. or better yet, make it a full job?????

It is just, there isn't $hit to do on BLU (Hey, that rhymed).

[fulminating]

Blue mage is the only fun dps precisely because it doesn't fit the incredibly rigid mold the others have been forced into. I also highly doubt that it is the "most criticised class of all-time in MMO history".

[Striker44]

jobs are boring
all jobs feel weak in current and even old content which is bizarre.

blm original was the best
smn now is a complete joke
the rest are just copies of each other, different ability names but all basically the same.
nothing original or interesting tbh.

the game as a whole is very boring now. (sorry but it is imo)
i wish it wasnt but.....

For you. In all seriousness, that might signal it's time for you to take a break. For me? The game as a whole is still a ton of fun and very exciting. I like the current feel of the classes, and the trend towards homogeneity while still retaining a few distinct flairs for each class gives someone like me with limited time to play the ability to try out a bunch of different classes without feeling completely overwhelmed whenever I'd like to try something new. And if they were all the same and bland, then I wouldn't have clear preferences for some over others based on their abilities (BLM and RDM play quite differently, for example).

[VentVanitas]

Homogenous job design doesn't benefit anyone in the long run and SE's methods of reworking/new additions is unsustainable. I can't be bothered typing up a whole post because I know it's just going to fly right over your head.

[ForsakenRoe]

For you. In all seriousness, that might signal it's time for you to take a break. For me? The game as a whole is still a ton of fun and very exciting. I like the current feel of the classes, and the trend towards homogeneity while still retaining a few distinct flairs for each class gives someone like me with limited time to play the ability to try out a bunch of different classes without feeling completely overwhelmed whenever I'd like to try something new. And if they were all the same and bland, then I wouldn't have clear preferences for some over others based on their abilities (BLM and RDM play quite differently, for example).

That's cool, and we're glad for you. However, the problem is this: I'm taking a break until next patch comes out. When I come back, I'll do the raid, get BIS and stop playing until next expansion, probably. Previous patches I'd play the whole way through, doing EX trial farming and such, I've not farmed Barb or Rubicante yet as I just don't have any motivation to play the game at the moment. If the point Yoshida made is that us vets should 'come back when there's something new', if the classes stay the same (cough healers) for another expansion, only getting token upgrades like 'Glare 3 is now Glare 4', what reason is there to actually come back? Another 10 levels of story where we press one button for 80% of the gameplay? At which point, those 'taking a break' players are likely to become 'have quit the game due to stagnation' players. The current design is unsustainable. We need low skill floor, high skill ceiling, classes, but SE insists on lowering the skill floor even at the cost of lowering the ceiling at the same time.

A good example of what I want designwise, from the game I'm playing more recently, is OldSchool Runescape. At it's most basic level, combat is 'you click the monster, and wait', and you both autoattack each other until one is dead. But you see the kind of stuff you have to do in high end content like the raids, and it is a whole other beast, despite still being that same familiar 'click to move, click enemy to attack'. Simple to learn, with depth to master. We've got 'simple to learn' but the depth keeps getting more and moew shallow.

I've said before in a previous analogy post: I'm tall as hell. Even as a kid I was tall. When our school class went to the swimming pools to learn how to swim, the instructors kept me in the smaller, more shallow pool, because I couldn't pass the tests to show I was capable of moving to the bigger, teen-adult pool. What they didn't realize, by trying to 'keep me safe', despite me explaining the exact issue I had, was that I was so tall even as a child, that I could not swim in the shallow pool, as my legs would hit the bottom of the pool. Standing up in that pool, the water wouldn't even reach my hips, even back then. I could safely stand upright in the shallow end of the 'real pool', there was no chance of me drowning. But because they had to stick to their rules, or maybe they just didn't believe me, I was not allowed to progress. Furthermore, the bastards decided I would 'get lonely' if I was the only one still locked in the babby pool, so they kept four of the other kids, who were competent swimmers, behind. They punished people who were skilled, because of someone they perceived to be 'not skilled', despite it being entirely possible that, given the chance in 'harder content' (the deeper pool), I'd have flourished and my skill would have shone. And I could feel the animosity of those poor kids, who were being kept in 'shitter jail' with me, because to them, it was my fault that they couldn't have fun learning in the 'real pool'. The whole ordeal had an effect on my mental wellbeing, as well as my learning. I did not learn to swim until I was age 15, and I taught myself (the highschool I went to had an arrangement with the leisure center next door where students could go swimming at lunchtimes).

This is no different, I think. To protect the hypothetical 'players who can't swim', SE's keeping everyone in the babby pool. Even though it's possible we're all actually really good at swimming, nobody's allowed to try the big pool. Because 'Jimmy will feel bad if everyone's good at healing, and he is the only one left in the metaphorical babby pool'. So SE keeps all the 'incredibly competent' healers in with the 'not so competent healers' by reducing what they can do to set themselves as being 'better'. Less damage buttons, less DOTs, more OGCDs, stronger heals, less damage to heal up.

Damn this turned into a healer rant again I'll end it here because if I keep going it'll be twice as long. Because I'll have to do the same length again, but with all the stuff Tank has gone and lost over the years

[Sebazy]

For you. In all seriousness, that might signal it's time for you to take a break.

Just don't take such a long break that your house gets demolished yes?