How do you define (meaningful) choice?

[Mortex]

You can arguably claim that there was some skill gap there, even if it was overwhelmed by "ping/packet_loss gap", but... there was no more "choice" of whether to use Cleric Stance than was already had in the choice between using Glare and using Cure II.

It just let you choose which part of your kit you were allowed access to. It's the still the same kit; it is not enlarged by locking it out, nor are its nuances deepened through a mere single extra GCD of locking out a given tool's opposite part of the kit.

Apply that to any other role. You want to switch from a combo opener to a sequential/RNG-procced action? Gotta hit your Infantry Stance. True Thrust, Infantry Stance, Disembowel, Chaos Thrust, Release Infantry Stance, Wheeling Thrust, Infantry Stance, Fang and Claw, Raiden Thrust, Vorpal Thrust, Full Thrust, Release Infantry Stance, Fang and Claw, Infantry Stance, Wheeling Thrust.

Stormbite, Caustic, Infantry Stance, Refulgent Arrow, Barrage-Refulgent Arrow, Release Infantry Stance, Burst Shot, Infantry Stance, Refulgent Arrow.

Fail to make those swaps, and you lose the vast majority of your output.

Skill gap there? Sure. But choice? None. And you could have that exact same degree of skill gap, or more, by... being expected to type in a specified 4-digit code between each GCD, to note whether it's an odd GCD or even GCD, etc., etc.. It's bloat.


Yes, it's so bad that we... must add several 0s to our choice and significant clunk to our gameplay? Surely that'll fix it??

No "it's bad, so let's throw fecal matter at it," does not work.


None of which has to do with Cleric Stance, nor would be helped or complimented by Cleric Stance. By all means, let's bring back some of that degree of danger... but there's no reason to ask for clunk back.

:: That said, tanks are just 1 in 4 players. Given the increased prevalence of body-checks, it's not as if the rest are increasingly getting a free ride or seeing no consequence for their failure.

I mean you were still allowed to use healing spells in cleric as same as you can use combos without the step beforehand and I argue that you don’t have any choices either in any job in that regard except how much resources you take into a burst windows. Like a drg never using fang and claw or wheeling trust will never get raiden trust so I assume you could call these two attacks the raiden stance. Also body checks were always there they just became more (grand cross doing more dmg the less people you had or forsake having a set amount off mechs you need people for, biblio mech on o7 with light parties and etc).

Like you can do almost any content with just 1-1-1-1 combos so I assume every combo is just bloat. Because why press more when you can do it easy. When the most meaningful choice in this kind of content is how fast I’m through then i think the entire game in that regard is flawed.

[Shurrikhan]

I mean you were still allowed to use healing spells in cleric as same as you can use combos without the step beforehand

So, the same as... another non-choice?

Let's not mistake finger-traps with actual choices. If there is no use case, ever, for the given action, it literally cannot be a choice, only a mistake. The ability to make more mistakes does not inherently mean more choice.

Like you can do almost any content with just 1-1-1-1 combos so I assume every combo is just bloat.

You do see how purposely doing 10% output with otherwise optimal gameplay (same actions, but 10% the stats) is not the same as hitting only one button repeatedly (not that you'd have changed much for healer GCDs), yes?

The latter would have higher output, yes, than someone making the "choice", as you called it, to attack without Cleric Stance or heal with it on, but it's literally only that -- neutered stats. You have equal access to that "choice" now by just stripping naked upon entering the instance.

[Connor]

I mean, given Yoshi-P’s recent interview it certainly seems like the current design is only going to get ever more pronounced going forward. That includes removing decision making, because apparently having to think is too hard or something. I imagine it also makes it extremely unlikely healers will have any kind of additional complexity whatsoever relative to now. Whether it’s dps, support, or even just plain healing.

Oh but don’t forget, we asked for this in Stormblood . Apparently. I must have missed that.

Yes I am salty lol, making everything practically auto-activate at 120s is so boring to me…it’s not like we have anything to heal to distract us from spamming a single button. I want to have to plan out things like buffs based on the party composition and/or situation, not when the timer tells me to lol.

[Shurrikhan]

I mean, given Yoshi-P’s recent interview...
<snip>
Oh but don’t forget, we asked for this in Stormblood . Apparently. I must have missed that.

Well... we did. Not loudly, nor across what would necessarily appear to be a majority, but yes, we did.

People said they were tired of having their mains locked out of a given party just because it already had a <job or two with whom their job is less synergetic> was already in said party. And many did not feel like having to remember whether to do a 4th GCD, 5th GCD, or 6th GCD opener because of which composition they had to be in.

To that, many in turn said then, too, that it such wouldn't matter even as much as their Crit RNG in a given run, but alas...

[Connor]

Well... we did. Not loudly, nor across what would necessarily appear to be a majority, but yes, we did.

People said they were tired of having their mains locked out of a given party just because it already had a <job or two with whom their job is less synergetic> was already in said party. And many did not feel like having to remember whether to do a 4th GCD, 5th GCD, or 6th GCD opener because of which composition they had to be in.

To that, many in turn said then, too, that it such wouldn't matter even as much as their Crit RNG in a given run, but alas...

The job synergy thing was definitely an issue, don’t get me wrong. But I feel like if what they took from that was ‘we don’t like varied buff timers or control over usage’, they’ve kinda missed the point a little. As you say, the point (as I understood it) was that players didn’t want their overall performance to be heavily contingent on what they happened to have in the party. I.e Bard needing DRG, several jobs needing whoever gave the slashing debuff, I think Ninja or Warrior, etc.
Feels like a bit of a jump to go from ‘make our performance not be based on which jobs we take/exclude’ to ‘2-min meta everything, even the defensive’ lol

[ty_taurus]

The job synergy thing was definitely an issue, don’t get me wrong. But I feel like if what they took from that was ‘we don’t like varied buff timers or control over usage’, they’ve kinda missed the point a little. As you say, the point (as I understood it) was that players didn’t want their overall performance to be heavily contingent on what they happened to have in the party. I.e Bard needing DRG, several jobs needing whoever gave the slashing debuff, I think Ninja or Warrior, etc.
Feels like a bit of a jump to go from ‘make our performance not be based on which jobs we take/exclude’ to ‘2-min meta everything, even the defensive’ lol

It wasn't just concerns about synergy elements during Stormblood. There was still talk about wanting buff alignment during Shadowbringers as well.

Sometimes, as players, there are things we see that sound good in concept, but once we experience that thing in execution, we recognize flaws in that concept. That's not to say everyone looks at the 2 minute meta negatively, but there have been people who have talked about wanting buff alignment in the past who have since swapped positions. MrHappy, for example. I can even give an example myself. Long before EW, I had wanted some sort of way to generate damage positive resources on Scholar though Adloquium breaking and have discussed that on the forums before. I'm not sure specifically where since it's been so long, but that is something I've brought up before. Now that we have Sage, I realize what a terrible idea that was, and it was something I wanted that I no longer do.

Based on Yoshi P's Brazil interview, though, it doesn't seem like they're unwilling to move away from the 2 minute meta, but it depends on the community.

[TheDustyOne]

I had a friend of mine also who wanted the buffs aligned back in ShB, he instantly regretted it when he finished the first tier of Pandaemonium. He stopped playing after clearing DRS.

I myself didn't really care whether buffs were aligned or not back then, but now that I've had one of my favourite jobs reworked to fit into the 2 minute burst, I miss having them misaligned. The burst is just too potent that any job not taking advantage of it is deemed unviable, which in turn requires homogenizing them into a burst job to conform.

[ForsakenRoe]

which in turn requires homogenizing them into a burst job to conform.

This is the part that annoys me the most about the 2min design, everything HAS to burst at 2m to conform. If it doesnt, it has to be reworked so that it does ala PLD. Which means effectively, the devs write off an entire swathe of designspace (the 'sustained damage' profile), it's just needlessly limiting and means that we're ever more likely to hit 'we didn't know what to do with SCH', but on the other jobs too. How do you make each job gain interesting additions each expansion if so much of your damage is from the 2min window? Put more into the window? NIN's already unable to fit everything in there

[TheDustyOne]

Even some of the jobs that were already sufficiently bursty still had their cooldowns shifted to align better with the raid windows. It still bugs me that GNB Bloodfest isn't 90s anymore, same with BLM Leylines going from 90s to 120s, and BRD just feels off having the DoTs and songs be 40-45s long just to make sure that all 3 songs end up being 120s.

[ty_taurus]

I also just think we have way too many raid buffs on jobs that I don't really associate with buffing. While it might not change the meta all that much, you could make buffs less significant by purging many of them from the game.