I don't know what can honestly be done for Final Fantasy XIV at this point.

[Sebazy]

I would absolutely hate this approach.

So I have to specc my WHM for content A, AST for content B, SCH for C and SGE for D and switch the job depending on the content I want to play?

But I only ever want to play WHM. And a reskill before I start doing content is cumbersome at best.

Bad wording on my part sorry.

I don't mean that the different healers are required for specific content, but rather each healer brings a niche with different content taking care to reward said benefits of the different jobs within a role.

Midas did a pretty good job of this. Plenty of mechanics forced healers to split from their group, often for a pretty significant chunk of time. This gave Medica II really quite significant worth as you could generally still reach the group with it. Meanwhile AST's 3.2 cards weren't as broken as 3.4, but it still offered a noticeable DPS benefit, however this had to be weighed up with the likelihood of requiring more healing from your co-healer to compensate for AST not being quite as good at dealing with jail time etc.

Switching between the two jobs as I progged through the tier was super enjoyable and something I miss doing in recent times.

One thing I think you are overplaying though, what is there to reskill as a healer? Min maxing melds? Or do you mean reacclimatising to each healer nuances? If it's the later, then that's entirely the point. It really does keep things fresh.

[VelKallor]

Okay you can only play 25% of the content, want the other 75%? Play the other 3 healers too. You dont want that? Thats on you.

How is forcing players to use classes they dont like, or dont want to play in the first place, in any way a good idea?

[Tint]

One thing I think you are overplaying though, what is there to reskill as a healer? Min maxing melds? Or do you mean reacclimatising to each healer nuances? If it's the later, then that's entirely the point. It really does keep things fresh.

I thought we were talking about "custom job building" - like skill trees. The common cencept ist that everyone will put their points into the same tree anyway because meta.

When there is no meta which works for every content but there are different builds good for different content - and then the FF14 job system comes into play...

Then of course you can skill every job differently and you have to change the job depending on the content you run, so you will always play with a meta build.

----

But yes in general I am all for having strenghts and weaknesses for different jobs. Overcomming a weakness of your job and clear the content anyway was fun on DRK back in the day. But being excluded from content or being forced into a specific build / job is not.

[Payadopa]

Job custom building would be meaningless. People will just figure out the optimal build and everyone will just use that. I'm pretty sure that's literally the reason this kind of thing doesn't exist in the game.

And yet XI did that. The last MMO from the same company. Personally, I think having balanced jobs for week 1 savage is a very poor excuse to have everyone else play boring jobs. Just my 2 Gil.

[Saraide]

Wouldn't be surprised if the most relevant metrics behind some decisions were at the cash shop and not subscription numbers.

A good point but I would be shocked if sub fees dont make up a significant part of the money SE makes from the game. Cash shop stuff is low effort aswell so that doesnt really detract from the work on the game itself.

[Payadopa]

I'm gonna respond to the point I feel most strongly about. Criterion has given us dungeon mobs that are actuall threatening (I often joked how the tree mob at the start hits harder then the P7s tree). And still to me those parts were by far the least interesting bits of the dungeon. A combat system like ff14 shines with boss encounters, I'm fine with trash mobs being trash mobs that die quickly because it gives me quicker access to the parts of dungeons I find more fun.

I see your point. I just wonder why we even have trash then. Because it's an RPG staple? Kinda hollow. In my opinion mobs should not be called trash in the first place otherwise you're doing it wrong. lol But that's just me. Also, I love the "trash" in Criterion. Give me more of that, please.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

If steam chart numbers are to be believed that's not exactly working out for SE.

I think that's more indicative of Steam players having access to & frequently using y'know...steam. A titanic storefront where new games to go play are literally 1 click away, especially for a game like FF14 that's not designed to ultra skinnerbox the player like plenty of other MMOs are. People heavily invested on that platform will naturally drift without some sort of skinnerbox technique forcing them back.

The lucky bancho census numbers on active characters patch by patch has painted a much different picture than the steam metrics, where the active character counts (characters past level 60 who have had changes to their character page since the last census) keeps going up over time. (After the initial drop after EW launched of all the MSQ peeps leaving, but that's the same drop you see every expansion)

Even their fiscal financial reports year over year has had FF14's profits have growth each time, even in the past two years this forum has been dooming and glooming about. Game's still an ever increasing profit generating machine for SE, with trends showing its only continue to go up as we approach the next expansion and that mass of initial drop people coming back. There's a reason the gaming industry as a whole has been shifting towards casualization and simplicity in game design - because that's where the money is.

People can gloom and doom all they want about FF14's current state, but Square's struck a goldmine with their game design and target audience and they're laughing all the way to the bank.

A good point but I would be shocked if sub fees dont make up a significant part of the money SE makes from the game. Cash shop stuff is low effort aswell so that doesnt really detract from the work on the game itself.

You would be quite surprised.
First off, since the mogstation items are developed by an entirely separate team as the FF14 devs, it already has zero impact on the development of the game itself besides creating a new entry in the item database table and linking text / thumbnails /etc to the item that would take all of about 1 minute for any database worth its salt.

But given how heavy people whale, or the amount of players that are fantasiaholics, I have zero doubts the profits of the game are at least 60/40 in mogstations favor. As a lowball estimate. it's the whole ethos behind why games like fallout 76 will slash their prices so ridiculously hard if they're underperforming purely because it drives more players to potentially lay their eyes on in-game cash shops, where the actual margins of most games these days are to be had. One of the games I had worked as a coder on back in 2018 or so cut its digital price on steam by half (about $15), because of the fact that once that price was cut, profits were seeing roughly a $60 increase per game download due to the extra whales that were now playing the game.

[UkcsAlias]

For 7 and 9 i see overlap. As most of the emtpy areas are used for special boss fates. Having any story related content might be an issue as these fates can disrupt heavily there (insta kills are normal - which you dont want when talking to an npc). A/S ranks are on that already a similar issue, but unlike those fates also dont need such large area anyway.

I think that to make both the fates better, and get those places used more often, we just need more special fates. And on that having 3 grades of boss fate (standard, special, ultimate) could work (ultimate is what ixion and chi already are). These special fates on that cannot be solo'd and do require a party. But do not need a lot more (4 players is essentialy enough).

But most important: better rewards. Bicolor gemstones are mostly useless for special rewards. If we for example would get tricolor gemstones, which require such special bosses to be killed, it can get more attention again. But this goes together with another aspect: rewards. The reward pool of these shouldnt dry out too fast. For bicolor gemstones we have the 50k items, but at the same time those are also instantly excessive. More casual rewards could work better. Which is where i think we could add some use: Relic weapons. Instead of relying on the tomes, it could be that these gemstones now also work towards relic weapon progress.

In the end, dead areas are often dead for a good reason. Even if thats only for 30mins every 3 days.

[dspguy]

1. Jobs: As stated numerous times, the jobs are becoming cookie cutter. They are designed to fit into a 2-min burst window. Many of the DPS jobs do have just enough flavor to make them different. Tank jobs are pretty much all the same job just wielding a different weapon. I don't have too much excitement about whatever new job they release.

3. Normal enemies: Most of this game is just "flyover country" now. When we do have to engage enemies, it isn't like an on-level mob poses a threat when solo. I was pleasantly surprised with Eureka though. There was actual danger getting to certain areas of the map without a full group. And experiencing experience loss is something I haven't seen in this game.

4. Crafting has always been about finding a build/rotation that gets you to 100% HQ, nearly always with the ability to get to 100% HQ from NQ materials. I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of crafters out there don't understand the crafting system beyond checking a website or discord for what rotation they need and copy/pasting it into macros. I sort of wish expert recipes were more prevalent - maybe make some crafted gear require expert recipes.

[Sebazy]

I thought we were talking about "custom job building" - like skill trees. The common cencept ist that everyone will put their points into the same tree anyway because meta.

I see the job system as an superior version of said skill trees TBH. It gives you a bit of flexibility to get a different flavour of gameplay along with bringing a unique niche to the party often without the need to re-gear.

SE just doesn't seem to want to take advantage of it, quite the opposite with the recent trend of homogenisation sadly.