2 minute meta: Rework or Remove?

[Kalaam]

Removing the damage raid buffs, yeah. Replace them by other buffs, outside of a few like bard songs or dancer's maybe.
And yes I do raid.

[Derio]

I think removing the raid buffs would completely homonogize jobs even more. However I do want them removed and replaced with something else. The biggest problem is if you die or do anything wrong in the 2 minute meta we have right now you are completely thrown out of line with rotation and your damage tanks tremendously.

I hope they remove it. But unless they have been working on it since 6.0 we can expect the same.

[Kalaam]

Without the need to align so many things it would leave room for more varied rotations that don't rely on bursting all at the same time to capitalize on common buffs.
Though of course fight design has to account for that too.

[ZiraZ]

I think removing the raid buffs would completely homonogize jobs even more. However I do want them removed and replaced with something else. The biggest problem is if you die or do anything wrong in the 2 minute meta we have right now you are completely thrown out of line with rotation and your damage tanks tremendously.

I hope they remove it. But unless they have been working on it since 6.0 we can expect the same.

What kind of magical system will allow dying to not completely destroy your rotation?
It was the same with 3mins, it will be the same with any system that doesn't turn combat into lvl 50 levels of complexity which I guess is what some people want from this thread? 3 buttons and a 1 min CD, repeat?


Can I get an in-depth and real example of these magical varied rotations that will fix everything?

[Rithy255]

Without the need to align so many things it would leave room for more varied rotations that don't rely on bursting all at the same time to capitalize on common buffs.
Though of course fight design has to account for that too.

Exactly the game is literally better without raid buffs design wise it would be way more free and have actually way more possibilities.
Some buffs can stay like the ones you mentioned but in general I don't think 120 raidwide buffs add anything to the game they just take away from the game at this point.

[Shurrikhan]

Can I get an in-depth and real example of these magical varied rotations that will fix everything?

^

"Literal nothingness would taste more flavorful than having this burger for the umpteenth time. Just imagine what new flavors could fill our mouths instead."

/until_an_actual_substitution_is_given_I'd_imagine_nothing_would_taste_like_nothing

[mallleable]

Removing raid buffs is an all or nothing solution that does not actually fix this problem. Let's take NIN for example. Ninja's rotation would barely change if Mug were to be reworked be a generic attack, and that any potential potency that it would provide as a raid buff were to be converted into raw potency, and spread out across the rest of its attacks. Ninja's rotation will still revolve around building gauge, and saving cooldowns for Trick Attack windows. A complaint that I hear often about Ninja is that its rotation is kinda boring until Trick Attack windows. Jobs like GNB, and DRK have the same rotational goals as NIN, and they don't have raid buffs, and they receive similar complaints as well. So if we want to completely remove the playstyle of 'do nothing until a buff window' then all damage increasing buffs would have to be removed including self buffs like Trick Attack, and No Mercy, and single target buffs like AST cards or DNC's Closed Position. This playstyle would persist even if bursts, and buffs were varied because it just moves the goal, and not the process to get there.

I don't hate the standardization of buffs, and bursts, even as someone who tackles high end duties, but I agree that burst focused damage profiles, and unsatisfactory jobfeel are problems that are intertwined, and need to be resolved. I think most of the solution actually lies in improving filler damage of most jobs. Filler damage takes up the majority of the moment to moment gameplay of a job's rotation. I think jobs will feel a lot better if complexity, and potency were more evenly distributed instead of being confined to burst phases. Jobs need fun valleys, and not just fun peaks. I think such changes would be possible even with homogenized raid buffs. To quote Doom composer Mick Gordon "Change the process to change the outcome." I guess this puts me on team rework. lol

[Kalaam]

Love how when someone points out a problem you guys just expect them to just be full on professional game designers, and not propose anything or entertain the idea. You just want to say "no".

[ZiraZ]

Love how when someone points out a problem you guys just expect them to just be full on professional game designers, and not propose anything or entertain the idea. You just want to say "no".

Yes I for sure will say no to ANYTHING that revolves around removing something blindly just to be replaced by IOU magical "FIXES everything I swear"™ systems
All you've said so far is "raid buff man bad!" "raid buff man bad!" "raid buff man bad!" on repeat

[Shurrikhan]

Imposing a rhythm in itself requires that all classes are similar to each other in order to all be synergistically compatible.
This is exacerbated when out of 19 classes 10 "buff" (aka press the button every 120 seconds). among these 9 without buff of which 5 are all tanks.

Yes and no. It's required for balancing them across highly varied contexts, since you cannot have balance both across different jobs and different contexts if both significantly differ.

• If only jobs' ability to exploit those buffs significantly differ, not the contexts, you can just increase the less synergetic job's outputs so their total contribution is still as competitive as that of anyone else.
• If only contexts differ, then every job is equally helped or hurt in each context and thus job choice is not restricted.
• If both differ, then some jobs become slightly preferred for certain contexts.

Though, that begs the question of whether that's even such a bad thing, especially when homogeneity would otherwise be a requirement and we are comparatively free to swap jobs around.

At present, our only differing serious context is a one-off content form (Savage Criterion dungeons), so we're far from being unable to simply compensate less bursty jobs for their being less bursty if we so wanted.

While I'd be happy to see future-proofing for more content forms in the future, for now it's more likely that jobs tend to be more bursty primarily because the devs see the average players as preferring to having that dynamism in their output over, well, not having it.

1) the 2 minute rhythm is limiting and forces all jobs to have synchronized burst phases, force all jobs to work with burst GCD with 1000+ potency. (Don't get me wrong, it forces the designer to force the job into a very routed rotation where everything has to coincide perfectly with the 2 minute cycles.)

It doesn't, though. The design goal remains the same as ever: jobs should be competitive. If they all needed to have the same raw damage, then those with the best exploitable damage density would produce the most output, but not even every jobs without raidbuffs needs to all have the same raw damage. There can be a range between higher exploitability/burst and higher overall raw damage.

Consistent targetable buffers like Dancer would optimally swap Closed Position between the two, while non-targetable consistent buffers would faintly prefer the latter group and low-uptime buffers would prefer the former group, but they'd still be held in decent parity with each other, just like buffers and non-buffers have tended to be when one looks at more than half the picture (e.g., more than just their rDPS metric, for which exploitation gets no credit).

(SAMs having equal rDPS to a DRG, for instance, would signal an inequality in in-practice output, given SAMs they also produce more rDPS for the buffers they exploit through more potency dealt under those buffs, thereby producing more party dps for the same amount of rDPS -- just in a way that's hidden from the jobs' individual single metric.)

2) the buff should be part of the fantasy of the job and that it heavily influences the gameplay and way of thinking. If I choose MNK it's certainly not because I intend to buff my party mates.

While I'm tempted to agree, since that sounds more fun than just %dmg buffs, I have to ask: in what way? Even a rough example would be appreciated.

3) Nowadays everyone does everything and there are no longer certain peculiarities that influence gameplay. Everyone mitigates, everyone buff. And they all (in general) do it at the push of a single button. (Because actually they are tools purely disconnected from the core or introduced rather forcibly)

I'd agree that is a problem, but because of that last part: Most of those additional tools do not come out of the prior kits interestingly, but are instead obviously just tacked on (isolated and un-interactive).

To me, it's not a problem that Monk has self-mitigation. It literally started the game with the only instant and complete threat generator, counter-attacks, and multiple mitigation effects allowing it to snap-tank (just long enough to take the edge off the 'real' tank) or even off-tank (usually after ramping up and just for large dodgeable attacks or against adds, but still). All that is fine. But that shouldn't be done in the same way on Monk as it is on NIN as it is on BLM as it is on RPR, etc.

While interactions that give a pretense of depth on paper can often actually reduce the nuance available to a given skill, and there's plenty that can go wrong... we haven't even seen any real attempt to integrate them thus far...

Instead, a capacity is added to one job and then the creativity-vacuum sucks that up to spit out, sometimes cleaner, sometimes more muddled, into each kit the first job's competed with. It's yet more templating, rather than an attempt at role identity.

4) There shouldnt be almost exclusively utilities that directly influence damage (inflicted -> buffs, received -> mitigations) but there should also be utilities that influence gameplay in some way.

Agreed. That's far harder to design for, but I feel it'd be worth the attempt.

If there's one thing XIV seems to have in excess, it's complacency.