What if Tanks were designed like Healers?

[Renathras]

Shurrikan said stuff better than I could...

Yeah, I have thought Zoe can work with E-Prog, though it's still...it works, but is kinda meh, and because Zoe itself has a moderate CD and you want to have it for Pneuma, it doesn't work as well. I'd rather Zoe JUST work for E-Prog/Diag and give Pneuma the boosted power to begin with.

And yeah, my issue with Krasis is that on paper, it seems like it could be a Protraction+Recitation+Adlo+Deply...

...except SGE doesnt' have Deploy. Sure, you can Krasis+Zoe+E-Prog, but then only one party member gets the boosted shield.

I agree that Krasis should be party wide. Half potency but for the whole party. That would make it usable with the whole kit. Even if it was just Magic, that would still make it useful for party super shields with Zoe and E-Prog.

You believe that a well-designed job is something that anyone can pick up and master by reading tooltips.

Oh, did want to nudge at this: Not quite.

I do believe that there are well designed Jobs that should work that way. But I also believe that well designed Jobs can be different. Note in that SMN thread, I praise both SMN's design and BLM's design.

My believe is that a well designed game will have both of those within it. See my post above where I talk about FF1 and stuff. I believe that a well designed game has both entry level and challenge level options available, so players can find the level they like best. What that is will depend on the game type. If I play something like Oblivion, I tend to go with stealth archer builds, with some healing and enchantment magic. Not the easiest thing but not the hardest thing. When it comes to something like Remnant: From the Ashes, I go with ranged and maneuverable (light armor) builds that deal damage from range and use dodging as the primary mode of defense. Something like Kingdom Hearts I tend to go for pretty simple, brute force power builds, with a hint of magic in my combat style. FPS games I'll either go with mid-ranged rifle configurations or close range either shotgun and heavy armor or light armor and sensor jamming with a silenced SMN "Sam Fisher" builds.

For MMOs, I often gravitate towards mid-complexity healing kit healer classes (like Holy Priest was for a long time in WoW), with minimal DPS interactions. When I play DPS or Tanks, I like rotations that have mostly rigid and the same all the time, but with a bit of flexibility. I like PLD now a bit more than GNB since it has the same "routine", but seems a smidge less rigid. DRK is just a crap ton of hyper burst then chill downtime (like NIN), and WAR is a lot like RDM without the procs the way you want to pool gauge and stuff. PLD hits the sweet spot between GNB's routine and WAR's flexibility where it's not too rigid while not being too not rigid, if that makes sense?

It's also why I can't get into DRG, because it's TOO rigid. I haven't actually found a single Melee I like yet (leveling each one to 80), though I haven't gotten to RPR yet. I also like SMN and RDM because both of them have patterns they follow, but there's room for flexing - but I DON'T like RDM because of the proc system; if every Thunder/Aero was guaranteed to proc Fire/Stone, or the proc system and Jolt were just removed entirely so you just always had Fire/Stone, I'd actually like the Job. And I don't like BLM because it's just too crazy. BUT, and this is the important but: I like that BLM is in the game so that people who do like that kind of thing have their avenue for it in BLM.

The point is, my view isn't as rigid as you suggest there.

While I think that there should be Jobs designed that people can pick up and master by reading tooltips - and it's a bit odd to me that anyone would thing this is a bad thing...like, I can't fathom why this would be bad, personally - I also believe that there should be Jobs designed where they have a lot of esoteria to them. Where you see a lot of people play it and just completely bomb out, but then you see that rare person who has mastered it and can get away with absolutely insane things.

Indeed, I think one of each of those should be in each of the roles the game has, and let players pick and play the ones they like best.

I'm not sure why this is such a Shibboleth with people, though.

My stance is that if someone can clear Savage now, they're of a skill level that means they can learn how to implement new buttons into their rotation,

I think the problem I have with this logic is that, from my experience, those aren't the same skills.

We've all known that one person that can go into a fight and within a few runs, has the entire thing memorized. These Savants can walk you through the entire fight in their head, typing it out in text before the fight or in Disc or whatever. They know the fight inside and out. They can execute it flawlessly from pull to Enrage...

...but they do sub-MSQ Jimmy levels of DPS and constantly whiff their rotation.

On the other hand, we also all know that person who has their rotation down to a T. A Master possessed of a combination of calculated science and powerful intuition, so well learned, the person can do it one handed while watching a YouTube video and not even having their screen up. They have absolute technical mastery of their Job, running 4 mans with them is a breeze, and they have a 99 in Agalia.

...but they can't execute Savage mechanics to save their lives.

Most people fall somewhere in between, but the point is that they are two different kinds of thinking. Two different skill sets. It's like comparing a mathematician and a physicist and an engineer. In theory, their knowledge bases overlap a lot, and in theory, each can do the other's tasks. But set a mathematician down and, with no instruction, ask him to do a structural analysis on a building made with building material A vs building material B, or sit the engineer down and ask her to derive a proof for Euler's Formula, and both are going to be stumped. Ask the physicist to do either task and they might have some idea where to get started, but are ultimately going to struggle.

While some skill sets may seem correlated, they aren't always. I feel that "fight execution" and "rotational mastery" are not the same skill. Moreover, I don't even think "rotational mastery" is one skill. There are three different types I can think of offhand - "metronome" or "how good can you do the same rigid thing over and over for minutes at a time without messing up" (DRG, GNB), "proc alert" or "how good are you at seeing and reacting to things conditionally activating in combat at random/not set in stone intervals" (RDM), and "upkeep plate spinner" or "how good are you at maintaining self-buffs and DoTs/debuff upttime on the enemy" (BLM between Enochian and Thunder, maybe NIN/WAR, since their upkeep buffs are not part of their rotation like SAM and DRG's are). Some are combinations (BRD is "proc" + "upkeep", for example), and some might SEEM to be one but aren't exactly, like SAM and DRG both having upkeep buffs, but they're naturally kept refreshed by their standard rotation, again, unlike NIN and WAR which have to go out of their way to refresh their buff.

In any case, I think that's part of my disagreement with you on that - I don't see them as the same skillset. So someone who is more towards the Savant and less the Master won't be able to make the change you want. Someone more towards the Master and less the Savant will be fine, but that person would be hard pressed by (and resistant to) changing encounter design (e.g. to require more healing) since that would call on skills outside of their preferred/stronger domain.

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Or, to use your martial arts analogy:

Some people are better at throwing punches, some people are better at grappling (grappling is exhausting and you have to be quick and precise, rewarding either speed or raw strength, and I personally hated it). The former might love boxing, find karate acceptable, be neutral on taekwando, dislike judo, and hate ju jutsu. On the other hand, some people prefer grappling and their list would be reversed. Still others have a mix of the two, and would like a style that mixes them, maybe preferring one in the middle over either of the ends. And still others might prefer a more defensive and less abrasive style, and naturally be pulled towards that while disliking all the others.

And further, some styles are easier to master than others. More direct, requiring far less conditioning, and with few techniques that the practitioner simply learns very very very well.

And I don't think your comparison between Jobs is correct. Firstly, because SMN, BLM, and RDM have very different play styles. They aren't the same "martial art". SMN is like boxing, RDM like taekwando, and BLM like ju jutsu. They aren't even the same realm of thing, and RDM definitely goes up into the black belt levels, as I've pointed out before.

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Also, I'm not sure you were reading that thread right:

I haven't seen anyone there argue to make RDM weaker. People have said if RDM needs buffs, just give RDM buffs, don't widen SMN's skill floor just because you want RDM to be better - simply make RDM's damage ceiling higher to compensate, like BLM's is.

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You are right about one thing, though: I don't care about parses.

Oh, I get annoyed with dicks (sorry for the language) like Gaius in General who constantly wants to point out anyone who has gray or green pareses as not being allowed to weigh in on conversations, and I don't mean me but other people who have made good points (and, amusingly, the guy won't post on his main so people can see his own record...), but that's pretty irrelevant to me overall other than how trolly some people are about it.

My concern is, though, with the people able to clear content now that won't be able to if some of the proposed changes were implemented. My personal view is an inclusive one, for better or for worse.

It's not. And that's my point.

But it is. That's my point...

So, your healer scenario? For me:

WHM - The Biggest of Big Bads has won. Fallen heroes are everywhere, some unconscious laying flat on their faces, some on a knee, gasping for breath and holding shut wounds across their abdomens or clutching broken arms. The heartiest of them is holding the line barely, both hands and all their strength on their sword as the Big Bad with one arm throws them back. The Big Bad says he's grown tired of this, and as he gathers energy in his sword to end it all, the Hero arrives. First few, but growing, light shafts pierce the overcast sky. The corrupted ground starts to brighten, green grasses straightening to life. The White Mage has arrived, holding his staff aloft with golden rays washing over his allies. The Big Bad, momentarily blinded by the light staggers back, reaching a hand to their eyes in momentary stunned silence as the very heavens erupt, pouring out healing light and like a torrent of rain. Everyone it touches is invigorated, bones straightening, wounds mending, consciousness returns. And one by one, the heroes stand, the most powerful warriors to the front, raising their shields with new energy, the archers and mages cracking necks, rolling freshly healed shoulders, and stretching arms, raise their weapons again. And the White Mage's staff glows once more, the battle rejoined.

SCH - Chaos has overtaken the battlefield. The Free Peoples retreat, reform ranks, hold the line, then are forced to retreat again. Foul magics streak across the battlefield, exploding on contact, sending men-at-arms back as they are peppered with the dark rays of magic. Vile warriors in armor inked with blackest knight slam into the lines, blackend greatswords smashing into tarnished shields. Onto the field steps the SCH. Straightening her glasses, she points, and her Faerie companion, with but a moment to nod, streaks to the battleline. She draws out her book and traces the sacred geometry inked across its voluminous pages, summoning the spells to turn the tide. As the black knights charge the newly pushed back and reformed line, a massive domed barrier forms over the defenders, blocking the dark warriors' path, slowing their footsteps, and sapping power from their swings. The tarnished shields radiate a bit more light, some of the tar fallen away, and the swords rebound. The glinting Faerie streaks from warrior to warrior, whispering mysterious words in the language of the Fey, restoring their vigor with a giggle before flitting onto the next. Their backs stand straighter, their shields held higher. The Scholar yells out an order, and the line advances, barriers of magicked light forming around the lead warrior, and immediately spreading out from that one, left and right, all the way down the line and across every soldier. The black magics come, but the barriers of light rise to meet them, clashing with them, and nullifying them. The Scholar shouts a command, and her Faerie closes her eyes, opening them with a giggle as magic feathers wash across her, then bursting out in radiating light as yet more barriers spread from her across the battleline. The Scholar shouts one more command, as green magicked winds pour from her book and wash out, pouring against the backs of her allies, quickening her steps: Advance!

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Those are the two I play, so that's how I see them both working in their "badass" heroic moments.

This is actually a good question, worthy of a thread itself...

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In any case, my vision of WHM really is "simple, straightforward, powerful". No frills, no nuance, it just does the job, directly and potently.

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The MSQ is not the game.

Apparently, we need to get over THAT conflict before we can move on...

Okay, so there's two things.

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Though I do agree a fundamental probably is that Healers have a lot of room for mastery...it's just in their healing kits, which aren't flexed nearly enough.

I know that Yoshi-P would probably sooner saw off his own legs and sell them on ebay before portraying the Warrior of Light as a healer in an expansion trailer, but given how we're concluding the 6.1-6.5 storyline, and also how this upcoming expansion will feature a fresh new arc after an apocalyptic one, White Mage does sound like it could feel appropriate thematically to be the featured job of 7.0--A new dawn on the horizon, or a new flower sprouts from the ashes of conflict from our last encounter.

Somewhat agreed. Though I think my description above would require a battlefield. That, or healing a cursed and blighted land itself - Asylum.

Golems I think.

With the whole Raid Series exploring the 12...

Correct me if I'm wrong but...I don't think this is quite right.

The Amdapori didn't have anything to do with the Elementals. If I remember correctly, Amdapor wasn't in the Black Shroud at the time. After the Fifth Calamity, the Elementals grew/marched the Shroud south, expanding it and enveloping Amdapor, placing both natural and magical barriers around it so no one would ever return. The only reason we do in the game is because the Sixth Calamity weakened the seals and unearthed parts of the city (and, separately, keep) that had been covered, and weakened the seals. The seals were then broken by the Lambs of Dalamud, who managed to get inside and ultimately break the seal on the powerful "nuke" Voidsent the Mhachi had sent there at the climax of the war. A Voidsent so powerful, the Amdapori couldn't banish it, instead sealing it - Diablos. One so powerful, even when we and 23 of our best friends fight him, he remarks how he's still weak from being sealed for so long (something like 1500 years) and is unable to overcome us, even when consuming the energies of the Queen.

In addition to White Magic (the art of healing and stasis), they practiced Golemancy (an art we haven't been introduced to in a playable form, obviously - though maybe it's akin to the arcane construct class they had planed in 1.X, I dunno). This is an art based on giving life to stone constructs in some way, though it's not at all clear HOW, and to date has never been explained. What we do know is that White Mages can, in theory, do it. Look up the Disembodied Head mount:

"E-Una-Kotor created this winged monstrosity using stone hewn from the very walls of the Palace of the Dead in an attempt to better understand the guardian golems which watch over the Lost City of Amdapor. That the face chosen for the design bears an uncanny likeness to a certain someone is one stone best left unturned."

E-Una-Kotor is the Padjal (presumably WHM) there in Quarrymill. But, to date, we haven't gained any such powers. Probably because they don't translate super well into the game's context since it would be more a familiar than a summon. Artifacer or something.

The Elementals are a different thing, and still pretty mysterious.

As far as we know, they're spirits of nature. Sometimes they've been seen (mostly in 1.X) as elemental colored little winged things, like the HW Anima weapon's spirit before it takes on the defined, Mamet-like appearance at the end. The kind of whispy thing. One of the fan theories is that they were wounded by the Cataclysm harming the land, and so have been in a more dormant state. The Tank Role Quests in EW also actually go into their lore a bit, mainly one that is and/or has possessed the old tree and about "The Hedge", which was a powerful protective barrier spell they all put up together around the whole of the Black Shroud.

The Elementals also seek balance, particularly after blaming the imbalance of the War of the Magi for the Fifth Cataclysm (though that was partly the Ascians' fault, and the Elementals seem not to be aware of the Ascians, though it's hard to be sure what exactly they do know, as they aren't forthcoming with their knowledge), and they regulate the use of elemental and white magic for fear of another Calamity, as well as regulate the balance of the Black Shroud itself, including the flora and fauna and hunting and gathering there. Quarrymill's lore is that it's the oldest town (on the surface - there was one underground, Gelmorra...) in the Shroud, and where newcomers present themselves for the Elementals to judge. Though "present" doesn't mean "see", and even only a few Conjurers are skilled at hearing the voices of the Elementals, much less seeing them in a manifested form.

Not sure they've said anything else about them since, though...

That's not true at all. I am completely aware that not all people are competitive, but if someone is not competitive, then they are not obsessed with trying to perfect their job.

This is what I don't think you're understanding, there is a class of people who do enjoy perfecting things, but only to a certain limit. It's why they'll work to perfect something like SMN or PLD or WAR, but if you expand the skill cap of those Jobs, they aren't interested and will grow upset. They absolutely want to master something, but they aren't competitive in that they aren't interested in being the best at the hardest things. They simply want to play something at capacity, and they choose something with a capacity they can manage. People who do get upset when on WAR they wiff their 1-2-3 or they hit -4 when they had 33 seconds left on the buff still and mentally facepalm over it. It's not that they suck or don't care or don't try, it's that they respect their limits and want a Job that matches their skill cap, which (since these are different people) run spreads from low to medium.

That was the point of the posts I linked from Eorzian, because she expressed that pretty well, I thought. Especially the part about Jobs A and B.

If there was a Job with say a damage cap of 5k, where the floor was 4.5k, and a different Job with a floor of 4k and a ceiling of 7k, many people would pick the 5k Job because it's at the level they feel like they can perform at its max, or close to, which is what they want.

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As for the quotes: It's not meant that way, note that I put quotes around "monk god" as well. It's more to specify specific terms. I guess I could just use underlines for that...? Might try that instead...

[Shurrikhan]

This is what I don't think you're understanding, there is a class of people who do enjoy perfecting things, but only to a certain limit. It's why they'll work to perfect something like SMN or PLD or WAR, but if you expand the skill cap of those Jobs, they aren't interested and will grow upset. They absolutely want to master something, but they aren't competitive in that they aren't interested in being the best at the hardest things. They simply want to play something at capacity, and they choose something with a capacity they can manage.

But the issue is that those things are all playing within the same arena.

You're at 2000 SR out of 5000. Are you the best of Bronze Tier or the worst of Silver in your PvE game? It does not matter. You're still on the same damn spectrum, and the games themselves weren't changed according to your SR; it just marks your relative performance. It's still 2000 SR, and all that comes with that.

The only time you can divorce those things from each other is in throwing any and all effort-to-reward balance out the window, which then effectively provides only a very narrow selection of truly competitive jobs to each player type based on the effort they're willing to put in as to exploit the greatest reward they can from it, rather than just having ALL those jobs equally available to them, with none providing a disproportionate imbalance in their favor but also none therefore excluding them.

(Yes, there will still be some mechanics that click more easily for this player vs. that player and therefore they'll tend towards some jobs over others, but that's a single incidental filter that may impact choice in practice, as compared to purposely reducing those choices and stratifying players by job -- "something for everyone" in the sense of "each in their place".)

[ForsakenRoe]

Everything should flow from the job's identity/aesthetic. Imagine the job gets, say, a two minute cutscene where it gets to be the badass in some scenario. What does it do?

SGE: hooded figure walking through a warzone, as people get injured around them, they keep walking past, but their nouliths 'automatically' heal up the person who needed the aid. Shielding circles automatically drawn around allies before hits can make contact, and when a big attack is about to hit the hooded figure, they don't even flinch. If you remember in ARR's cutscene, a magitek reaper is about to fire, until the BLM lights it up with a massive fire blast. So imagine, that reaper fires, and when the cloud of smoke dissipates, you just see the hooded figure still walking towards whatever they're walking towards, with the nouliths projecting the square shield Alph used in one of the final cutscenes when a planet was being thrown at him. Essentially, I figure something like this, but with nouliths instead of feathers

As for WHM, I imagine they'd lean heavily into the nature side of things. Decimating an opposing army with whirlwinds, earthquakes, tidal waves. The whole lightshow of holy magic is not great in terms of spectacle, if it's the entire show. Rather, using Holy as the big climactic finishing blast would be a lot cooler looking. It detracts from the supposed 'power level' of pure holy type magic, if that's the only thing the WHM were to fight with. Instead, if the battle is 'ended' because of one single cast of it, then it implies that kind of magic is incredibly powerful, perhaps prompting the viewer 'is there a reason they didn't open with it? is there a cost of some sort to it?' And then after the battle, I guess something similar to the SGE idea, where the WHM is effortlessly restoring their allies to health to imply 'hey this avatar of nature's wrath is also incredibly powerful at healing as well as destruction'. A great example of 'a healer taking the spotlight' can be found here. It even looks like an LB3. Actually, maybe that can be part of it, have SGE do the big digital tree, or an AST do Astral Stasis, that'd get people's attention

[EusisLandale]

SGE: hooded figure walking through a warzone, as people get injured around them, they keep walking past, but their nouliths 'automatically' heal up the person who needed the aid. Shielding circles automatically drawn around allies before hits can make contact, and when a big attack is about to hit the hooded figure, they don't even flinch. If you remember in ARR's cutscene, a magitek reaper is about to fire, until the BLM lights it up with a massive fire blast. So imagine, that reaper fires, and when the cloud of smoke dissipates, you just see the hooded figure still walking towards whatever they're walking towards, with the nouliths projecting the square shield Alph used in one of the final cutscenes when a planet was being thrown at him. Essentially, I figure something like this, but with nouliths instead of feathers

I feel like they'd be more likely to have the WoL Icarus out of the smoke cloud and slam the thing with a Phlegma sphere.
That or fire off a Pneuma in return, blowing away the cloud and revealing all the injured people in perfect condition ready to keep up the fight.

[Renathras]

But the issue is that those things are all playing within the same arena.

Three pieces to that:

1) That isn't a problem inherently. It's one thing if someone is making a hardcore game that is billed and executed as a hardcore game (Wildstar, say). But, if that's not the design intent, it's really not a problem. Especially as players aren't competing against each other. Smash Bros has a competitive scene, yet you still have simple characters in it, some of which are generally regarded as strong combatants alongside some of the highly technical fighters. This isn't inherently a problem. "Do more work, get more reward" is not always a design goal. Having a higher skill ceiling is not always, either. And it can be made available alongside options with a lower skill ceiling.

2) That aside, it's not like we have this in any game anyway. Every MMO in history has some classes with higher skill ceilings and some with lower. While you may comment that the gap between the two is what you find significant, every MMO in history has also had classes that have more narrow and more wide gaps between skill floor and ceiling. [u]Most[u] also have easy classes and/or easy roles. In some, one role or another is considered super easy. ...which is probably part of the origin of "DPS are a dime a dozen" since early MMO DPS classes and rotations were generally easy and not technical, the ones that were still pale in comparison to modern MMO ones - definitely in polish - and often, players didn't know what was optimal to begin with. For years, Hunter and Paladin in WoW were both considered easy classes. Holy Paladin's healing for a time (Wrath) literally was "Put Beacon of Light on the co-tank. Target the main tank. Press Holy Light. Repeat Holy Light until the encounter ends." 10 mans, you might do a little spot healing with Holy Shock, but especially in 25 mans, that was it. Retribution Paladin was "faceroll", and that was meant literally not figuratively, as while there was technically a very slightly superior rotation, the difference in damage was almost nothing and it was something ridiculous (something like a 49 button series), but the "First Come First Served" or "FCFS" rotation, which was literally "hit each button as it becomes available" (all of their attacks, even the sword ones, had short 6, 9, or 12 second CDs), meaning you could literally just put a ball or face or your knuckles across your hotbars and role back and forth and you were playing optimally. In Vanilla WoW, due to debuff caps and threat management tools being wonky and/or nonexistent (and the debuff limit was very tight early on), in the game's first raid, Molten Core, Hunters were literally there to autoattack. Using any attacks would draw threat and likely result in them killed, and using any of their poison/DoT shots would overwrite some more important debuff, like keeping damage dealt down debuffs on bosses or having an open buff slot for when something situational needed to be applied. Even when it could attack more, the Hunter class still generally had at least one spec that could good damage and was ridiculously easy to play.

The point is, while these led to insults of the class/spec name merged with the word for mentally slow...no one really cared, and the game was healthy as it could be for an MMO. There was even a song made of "It's fun to be a Hunter because my pet gets attack power...Woo! I'm makin' 12 bucks an hour!" that was joking about how easy it was to play. But again, while people mocked and joked, no one really cared and people kinda just went with it.

3) There are also ways to differentiate things that work well. Compare SMN and BLM. BLM's rotation is obviously quite a bit more difficult. It has a high gap between skill ceiling and skill floor. Skill floor (ice mage?) does pitiful damage. Skill ceiling is really competitive, though, and one of the top/leading DPSers. SMN, on the other hand, has a low skill floor and ceiling, a narrow gap between them, but also does less damage. "Why would anyone ever take a SMN?" Well, it makes up for this with some utility to boost other people's damage or help clears with a combat raise and some token healing, and because it's easy to play and master, players have a high level of consistency, which can be important.

But as much as people bemoan BLM numbers - part of that is because it's a difficult class. Low BLM numbers are not due to it being blacklisted, and groups are always happy if they have a skilled BLM among them. It's a solid Job and generally highly regarded by its players, even if people who don't play it tend to dislike it.

RDM, on the other hand, is in a weird place. It has a higher skill requirement than SMN, but doesn't have a higher damage output. In some cases, it has a lower one.

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To date, I've never seen an MMO that didn't have easier and harder classes. So there are really only two solutions:

1) Make all classes the same difficulty (this is impossible, but let's submit it for the sake of argument). The difficulty then has to be tailored the game's prospective audience. If we did this in FFXIV, then all Jobs would need to be SMN level - no BLM allowed - as the audience is very casual. Instead of making everything BLM level, we'd have the opposite and have no high skill ceiling Jobs. But let's say we set it at a medium point. That would be every Job at, say, RDM level. That means SMN has to be made harder, but also that BLM has to be made easier. It's obviously not fair that BLM is foreclosed to the playerbase, right? If it's not fair for there to be a simple Job, then by extension, it cannot possibly be fair for their to be a more complex Job.

2) Make classes variable, as they are in FFXIV, and let players gravitate to the one they like. While this does annoy people who want a specific aesthetic, this has been true in every MMO in history. There has never been an MMO that had no classes that some people who liked but didn't like its playstyle. Every MMO has classes that people liked but couldn't play or had to adapt to. Arcane Mage in Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria was a super easy class, possibly easier than EW SMN. And being the "Arcane" discipline, some people wanted it to be complex. But it wasn't. Warlock was commonly called "the complex Mage", and players that wanted that greater complexity played Warlock. Again, this is true in every MMO in history. FFXIV is not new in this way.

There's no case where every class in an MMO will be balanced with all the others, and every one have the exact same skill level of low skill floor and high skill ceiling or medium skill ceiling - and it can't be both, because then we'd have Jobs being different. Even the proposed changes like "Make SMN's skill ceiling and floor have the same spread" as RDM isn't even intellectually consistent - shouldn't they both match BLM? Or should BLM also be made to match RDM's? Surely we can't allow BLM to be different on the hard side if we disallow SMN being different on the easy side?

The position (like the "straightforward cannot be an identity but buffing can be an identity") is not consistent and requires arbitrary biases be injected to allow it to work (like defining buffer as an acceptable combat style but straightforward being an unacceptable one; who got to decide that extremely specific definition? It's like writing the definition of prime number to artificially exclude 1, since 1 matches the definition otherwise). The only way this could be consistent is if we forced BLM's skill floor to be lower and its skill ceiling to be much lower to match it to RDM's range.[/hb]

In any case, you are always going to be reducing choice. As every MMO does. You're just trying to pick a different form of restriction where one group of people have all options and another group of people have no options at all.

In my case, everyone still has a choice, but the options may be limited.

In your case, only some people have a choice, all options, every single one - for people like you. People who are different from you have no choice, and must quit the game, as all Jobs are restricted from them in your model.

I think this is what people are not getting...

For my part, I think a system - which every other MMO in history has used - that gives each group a slate of choices - is better than a system that completely forecloses all choices from one group favoring a separate group exclusively. And again, if FFXIV did this, you guys would be the ones left out; they clearly are aiming for a lower skill ceiling, more casual audience. So this monkey's paw could easily backfire on you.

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But here's the thing: There is absolutely no reason why my limit should be everyone's limit.

It's not.

There are other Jobs to pick, some which will have limits below your level, some at your level, and some above your level. Everyone, of all skills, has the same choice, just a different slate.

Again, every MMO I'm aware of has always done this. Every one I've ever played has had some easy, some medium, and some high difficulty classes. The only one I can think of that might not have (which I didn't play) was Wildstar, specifically because it was made exclusively for a hardcore audience.

WoW vaguely gets around this with talents, but we don't have those yet in FFXIV. But even there, there are some classes where no matter the talents you pick, it's still easy (or hard, in the case of the hard classes). So it's not even a perfect solution there. In FFXIV, we don't have that option, so this is what we get instead.

[Shurrikhan]

Three pieces to that:

1) That isn't a problem inherently. It's one thing if someone is making a hardcore game that is billed and executed as a hardcore game (Wildstar, say). But, if that's not the design intent, it's really not a problem.

In any place tight balance doesn't matter... this discussion is irrelevant from the start.

2) That aside, it's not like we have this in any game anyway. Every MMO in history has some classes with higher skill ceilings and some with lower.

Sure. Some variance is inevitable. But there's a hell of a difference between one having 90% the optimization effort of another vs. having only some 40% or less.

There are also ways to differentiate things that work well. Compare SMN and BLM. BLM's rotation is obviously quite a bit more difficult. It has a high gap between skill ceiling and skill floor. Skill floor (ice mage?) does pitiful damage. Skill ceiling is really competitive, though, and one of the top/leading DPSers. SMN, on the other hand, has a low skill floor and ceiling, a narrow gap between them, but also does less damage.

No... just... no. The latter is a bad thing. It means that now one is pushed towards SMN if at or below a certain level of willing effort, and then pushed away from it for anything above that.

You end up with hugely fewer real choices up to that point (X is overpowered), and one fewer real choice after that point (X is underpowered).

Building out kits organically from intuitive, accessible parts to a fairly high ceiling (resulting in nearish to the same skill ceiling, albeit it in varied ways) is always better for offering players breadth of choice than would be purposely stratifying the roster into S, A, B, C, and D tier jobs, where each is better than those above it up until a particular effort threshold and then worse past that threshold.

[AmiableApkallu]

There are other Jobs to pick, some which will have limits below your level, some at your level, and some above your level. Everyone, of all skills, has the same choice, just a different slate.

Again, every MMO I'm aware of has always done this. Every one I've ever played has had some easy, some medium, and some high difficulty classes. The only one I can think of that might not have (which I didn't play) was Wildstar, specifically because it was made exclusively for a hardcore audience.

WoW vaguely gets around this with talents, but we don't have those yet in FFXIV. But even there, there are some classes where no matter the talents you pick, it's still easy (or hard, in the case of the hard classes). So it's not even a perfect solution there. In FFXIV, we don't have that option, so this is what we get instead.

You're ignoring what I've said: Every player should be able to choose any class/job they want based on "identity"/"aesthetic" and find fulfillment in this game.

That's how this game is set up. At no point are you asked, "Would you like to play a hard job or an easy job? Would you like a large gap or a small gap between the skill floor and skill ceiling?" You are simply presented with a slate of jobs with various looks and feels and stories that you can choose from and play.

Or perhaps as someone else put it:

Building out kits organically from intuitive, accessible parts to a fairly high ceiling (resulting in nearish to the same skill ceiling, albeit it in varied ways) is always better for offering players breadth of choice than would be purposely stratifying the roster into S, A, B, C, and D tier jobs, where each is better than those above it up until a particular effort threshold and then worth past that threshold.

Every job in this game has a kit consisting of "intuitive, accessible parts" that, to varying degrees of success, aligns with the job's aesthetic and identity. The question is where the skill ceiling falls. And to some extent, that also flows from a job's aesthetic and identity. There is some intrinsic difficulty in being a glass cannon turret on an active battle field (BLM). There is some intrinsic simplicity in powerful, direct HP restoration (WHM).

But there is a problem when one confuses "intrinsic simplicity" for "the skill ceiling must be buried six feet under ground."

[AmiableApkallu]

there is a class of people who do enjoy perfecting things, but only to a certain limit.

Yes. That shouldn't be news to anyone. Heck, I'm in that class of people.

But here's the thing: There is absolutely no reason why my limit should be everyone's limit.

For example: I think AST is super pretty -- both in visual effects and in sound effects. I'd love to play it and no other healer on that basis alone. But f*** my life if I'm going to do some double-weaving constant-target-switching opener b.s. Sorry. I'll be the AST that single weaves everything, and if that's not absolutely perfect and optimal... I'm okay with that. I can take AST into normal mode content, get my dose of pretty, and clear that content just fine. If I'm not a good enough at AST for Extreme or Savage or Ultimate, so be it.

The people who want to take AST into that harder content can have their skill ceiling or skill expression or whatever they want to call it. I'm not so selfish as to deny them that. They, too, can have their super pretty class to play.

[ty_taurus]

The MSQ is not the game.

First of all, I have not stated it as just the MSQ. That is a misrepresentation of what I'm saying. You're brushing off everything from roulettes to alliance raids to normal raids to Eureka and Bozja to treasure map farming to PVP to wonderous tails and so much more by saying "The MSQ is not the game" which, also, it kind of is. It is largely seen as the main driving point of engagement by the player base at large.

This is what I don't think you're understanding, there is a class of people who do enjoy perfecting things, but only to a certain limit.

I would insert a quote of me saying "there should be a simple and forgiving job for every role" from each example of me saying it, but I'm too lazy for that right now. In short, I have been saying over and over and over and over and over and over again that there should be a healer who is easy to pick up and forgiving to the beginner--a 4 out of 10 on the difficulty scale--the Dancer or the Red Mage of healers. That is asking very little of someone who wants to be good at one job, but isn't interested in something overly challenging like Ninja.

And regardless of how you slice it, having a job with 32 actions on their hotbar (including role actions, LB, and sprint) but only needs to use 6 of them more than 5 times in a 7 and a half minute fight, with one of those actions being used 134 times--nearly 60% of their gameplay is unacceptably bad game design. I don't care if this is an exceptionally talented player, no game should enable this design to be possible.



And I'm totally fine with trying to make the act of healing cut into that Glare usage more. I'm 100% in full support of that, but you cannot convince me that creating a environment where turning that abomination into something like the following example, but with healing instead of damage, in all forms of group-based content including those dungeons, those roulette runs, those alliance raids, etc. wouldn't tear through a massive percentage of the casual playerbase like a sci-fi body horror parasite shredding scientists in half asshole first.

[Shurrikhan]

And I'm totally fine with trying to make the act of healing cut into that Glare usage more. I'm 100% in full support of that, but you cannot convince me that creating a environment where turning that abomination into something like the following example, but with healing instead of damage, in all forms of group-based content including those dungeons, those roulette runs, those alliance raids, etc. wouldn't tear through a massive percentage of the casual playerbase like a sci-fi body horror parasite shredding scientists in half asshole first.

Honestly... if you swapped out only the spells with "Ver" in them with heals (so, ~40% of the CPM here)... that'd still fall well short of the % of CPM spent on healing in min/lowish ilvl runs in ARR. And it was quite doable --seemingly often even preferred-- even with Cleric Stance's pathetically unpolished implementation/coding issues annoying the heck out of optimizers and casuals alike.

(Obviously, that'd have to be split differently among GCDs and oGCDs, but the comparison will be rough regardless as we had almost no frequent oGCD throughput back then outside of SCH.)

I see no reason we can't at least go back to the relative healing requirements of Stormblood by increasing enemy damage dealt (especially) outside of the existing bursts.

The largest factor that'd gate those who want to engage very little with their kits isn't the portion of time or CPM spent healing, but rather the amount of times reaction + basic blanketing (HoTs, shields) alone wouldn't be enough to keep people alive, requiring them to have memorized when incoming damage is coming and/or to keep oGCDs stored for emergencies. But given the amount of empty space between those bursts and that hits outside of Ultimate are typically either wholly survivable or wouldn't be survivable even with all possible mitigation saved for them... that's a non-issue.


Tl;dr: I think we need to improve downtime play and the (depth of) interaction available to healers with other forms of throughput regardless, but we can definitely increase relative healing requirements well above what we see today.