Please decorrelate party support from party damage

[SilversLyu]

At this rate, I feel the best way to move forward would be simply create a new "dps-support" role and tailor the party composition towards it. Of course, it would require a complete overhaul of both the jobs elected to fit in this new category and the encounter design, and that's simply too much work to expect in one go, unless we'd get a xpac without new jobs.

I am curious what they will do the next expansion(s). As I said in another thread, they will probably equalise all roles eventually. Tanks and healers are in a pretty good spot for the devs (except some job balance issues), and the dps will follow I would assume. Endwalker is streamlining Melee (less positionals, bigger hitboxes, boss untargetable at times - easier uptime), The next expansion will tackle on another role, presumably Caster. By equalising I mean streamlining. Whether that is to simplify the jobs or to create some sort of balanced ground along the role identity, it goes hand in hand. People dont have to like this approach & homogenization, but this is where we are headed I guess.

[Raikai]

I am curious what they will do the next expansion(s). As I said in another thread, they will probably equalise all roles eventually. Tanks and healers are in a pretty good spot for the devs (except some job balance issues), and the dps will follow I would assume. Endwalker is streamlining Melee (less positionals, bigger hitboxes, boss untargetable at times - easier uptime), The next expansion will tackle on another role, presumably Caster. By equalising I mean streamlining. Whether that is to simplify the jobs or to create some sort of balanced ground along the role identity, it goes hand in hand. People dont have to like this approach & homogenization, but this is where we are headed I guess.

Jeez, I can't imagine SMN simplified even more, but I don't know... what there's even to streamline for casters without losing their identity? Zero cast times, so they can have the same uptime advantage as melee?

[SilversLyu]

Jeez, I can't imagine SMN simplified even more, but I don't know... what there's even to streamline for casters without losing their identity? Zero cast times, so they can have the same uptime advantage as melee?

Yeah stuff like that might be their intention. Essencially making everyone more flexible and mobile. I dont think they will change the jobs making them more difficulty anymore, but what they do instead is ramping up the challenge in fights and building the jobs around that. We can see that in Endwalker, the fights are getting more intense, dynamic and arguably more sweaty than previous expansions. But the difficulty is amped up artificially (via movement around the arena etc.), like for example the whole team needs constantly to keep everyone alive, or the fight is pretty much bound to be over, that is severely noticable especially in Endwalker and is sometimes taken to questionable levels. It's more punishing, but not in a healthy way. So in conclusion they simplify and ease the jobs (more or less) but increase the rythm of the fights so to speak. It's mainly the thing in savage, but extremes are also getting that "all or nothing" treatment more lately.

[Raikai]

Yeah stuff like that might be their intention. Essencially making everyone more flexible and mobile. I dont think they will change the jobs making them more difficulty anymore, but what they do instead is ramping up the challenge in fights and building the jobs around that. We can see that in Endwalker, the fights are getting more intense, dynamic and arguably more sweaty than previous expansions. But the difficulty is amped up artificially (via movement around the arena etc.), like for example the whole team needs constantly to keep everyone alive, or the fight is pretty much bound to be over, that is severely noticable especially in Endwalker and is sometimes taken to questionable levels. It's more punishing, but not in a healthy way. So in conclusion they simplify and ease the jobs (more or less) but increase the rythm of the fights so to speak. It's mainly the thing in savage, but extremes are also getting that "all or nothing" treatment more lately.

I can understand the logic... I just don't think it can be applied to XIV at its current state though, because it's something that works well when we actually have a more steady stream of content to play with.

We get 4 Savage fights every 8 months. 1 Extreme Trial every 4 months... If we don't account Ultimates (which is not for everyone due to a number of reasons), that's a really low delivery rate to justify the game simplifying classes in favor of more well designed complex encounters.

I would add Criterion to that mix if it didn't have the issues it currently does.

They could make a savage variation of the Alliance raids to help with the 'raid drought' during the odd patches. Or even turning that savage variation into a 8 or 12 man party to make it more accessible to statics.

[Valence]

Yeah stuff like that might be their intention. Essencially making everyone more flexible and mobile. I dont think they will change the jobs making them more difficulty anymore, but what they do instead is ramping up the challenge in fights and building the jobs around that. We can see that in Endwalker, the fights are getting more intense, dynamic and arguably more sweaty than previous expansions. But the difficulty is amped up artificially (via movement around the arena etc.), like for example the whole team needs constantly to keep everyone alive, or the fight is pretty much bound to be over, that is severely noticable especially in Endwalker and is sometimes taken to questionable levels. It's more punishing, but not in a healthy way. So in conclusion they simplify and ease the jobs (more or less) but increase the rythm of the fights so to speak. It's mainly the thing in savage, but extremes are also getting that "all or nothing" treatment more lately.

I do agree with that assessment, encounters have been made more gruesome since Abyssos and I do feel like they're dropping the ball completely on the job side to focus on encounter design. More body checks, less tolerance for deaths or failure, because those don't matter much anymore due to the slow disappearance of party resources like MP, etc. It's becoming less and less about the RPG side of things (stats, party resource management, etc) and more and more about executing a ballet without mistakes.

It pains me a lot to think about it.