Breaking the Majority’s Silence: A Job Criticism Thread

[Connor]

What worries me is that there’s never any definitive way to prove that the silent majority isn’t the one saying ‘everything in FFXIV is fine’. I don’t think that’s the case, but how would we ever know lol

[NekoMataMata]

What worries me is that there’s never any definitive way to prove that the silent majority isn’t the one saying ‘everything in FFXIV is fine’. I don’t think that’s the case, but how would we ever know lol

This is true too. Someone is always complaining, and most of SE's stats don't really get too specific. If SE sees participation/subscriptions at good positions then they likely assume everything is fine. It's not like there's specific polls and surveys being handed out, and honestly most of the active regular playerbase is too addicted to the game to ever quit and cause a major drop in numbers.

[Jeeqbit]

The issue with complaining about homogenization is that people also complain when it's not homogenized ie. when Paladin did not have a gap closer like DRK, people complained and when Warrior's gap closer used gauge unlike other jobs, people complained. Now their gap closers are all the same. When Paladin blocked physical attacks and Dark Knight was good against magic, people complained so now it blocks both. There are plenty more examples like that.

The game has always had some level of homogenization to it ever since ARR so it's not like things were super unique back in the day either.

This is so true. Everyone wants to pretend tanks in ARR did not both have: an enmity combo, a stun, a ranged enmity attack, a short cooldown like Rampart/Inner Beast, job identity cooldowns like Bulwark/Thrill, a long cooldown like Sentinel/Vengeance, an invuln like Hallowed Ground/Holm Gang.

What worries me is that there’s never any definitive way to prove that the silent majority isn’t the one saying ‘everything in FFXIV is fine’.

I agree. That is the problem with the OP's claim. If they are part of this "silent majority", there is no evidence to support that they are, especially when the "silent majority" usually don't come to the forums to complain.

What SE has said before is that they listen to their veteran players "too much", which was around the time they stopped listening to them as much. Because we have to be honest that it is normally veteran players that come here to complain.

It's a feedback forum. It doesn't matter what anyone is assuming. Say your think and leave.

That is what I think though.

[Renathras]

OP: Saw that as well. Might edit to put the link into the OP? Then again, people will probably badmouth you for it...hard to say with this crowd.

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For my part, I enjoy the game as it is right now for the most part. I REALLY miss there being a Bozja/Eureka to work on when there's a lot of downtime, though. Would really love to have one of those again. Stuff like Island Sanctuary doesn't work well for that since you can't really work on it - you mostly let the Mamets do everything, and doing things yourself (a) is less efficient, (b) you can't even get all the stuff from gathering (the rare mats), and (c) you don't even have the option to craft the handicrafts yourself. Deep Dungeon doesn't quite scratch that itch because you can't pop in, work as little as 5 mins or as much as 3 hours, and pop out again. If you leave a few minutes into a party, you're screwing the other 3 people, and if you leave or DC in the middle of a solo run, you forfeit that ENTIRE run.

I like an "all of the above" approach. I get it takes more Dev resources, but surely FFXIV has a larger team with how successful it is now AND a lot of systems are in place now to make developing content quicker (e.g. any new Deep Dungeon should be far faster to develop than the original PotD was). Having lots of different stuff means lots of different types of players are happy.

I also think this should extend to Job design. Some people WANT things as convoluted and Frankenstein monster as old SMN was. Some people love Jobs they don't have to read out of game guides for but can just work out in game, like new SMN. It's good for each role to have at least one simple and one complex option, with a spread in between for players to find what they like best. IDEALLY, these match the Job fantasy as well (e.g. WAR being kind of unga bunga makes sense). Likewise, you have some players within roles that want different things, so it pays to have a spread there as well. BRD, DNC, SMN, and RDM all appeal to players who like to DPS (or are DPSing for friends when all the Tank/Healer spots are full) with a more support feel. Some people want Healers that are basically damage dealers while others play Healers because they want to HEAL and have DPS Jobs if they actually feel like DPSing. So have a healer that entirely heals by dealing damage (call it Sage, perhaps) and one that has few damage buttons and is mostly about throughput healing. Have the others be kind of in between in various ways. We have 4 healer Jobs, after all. In fact, no role has less than 3 Jobs in it at this point.

The important thing is to give people options. Then people will gravitate to the things they like best. I think how we got into this mess was trying to simultaneously please everyone WITH EVERY THING, which just isn't possible. It results in the Devs doing something because they were asked, but that alienates a different set of people who then ask for it to be changed back, while another group that was content with the first way but didn't really like it is now speaking up saying they want it changed in yet ANOTHER way.

Better to offer a lot of different stuff and let players pick from there.

These things can still be balanced decently - that's just potency bumps here and there - but balance shouldn't be an argument for blandness.

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Oh, and speaking as a non-raider (RARELY do Savage fights, and haven't enjoyed Extremes this expansion due to all the Savage mechanics and body checks): Can we PLEASE have the actual content (non-Savage stuff) come out in the X.Y patch? Like 6.4 came out and I had nothing to do other than run the normal mode raids once per week (due to lockouts) and that was it. All the ACTUAL content I enjoy and do - Relics, Tribal quests, etc - was 2 months later. Meaning I got almost nothing out of the patch for 2 months. I'm not saying bump the Savage to the X.Y5s (though that would technically make more sense as Savage raiders tend to do the other stuff, too), but can we have the GOOD, ACTUAL content that more people do (Savages are done by a small portion of the playerbase overall, around 1/4th to 1/3rd) come out AT LEAST with the Savages? This is that "all of the above stuff". The way it is now, everyone who isn't a Savage raider is treated as a second class citizen.

"But the Savage raiders will feel overworked!" (a) no one's making them do it, (b) if it's so bad, we can bump the Savage fights to X.Y5 to make them happy. I suspect they'd rather NOT that latter option.

Oh, and that other thing:

Stop having constant body checks in Extreme fights and stop putting Savage mechanics there. That's what we do Extremes instead of Savages to AVOID. GolbEx was the worst at this. Depending on how you count, there's something like 7 body checks in that fight, and some are back to back, meaning if someone dies to any of them in the chain, guaranteed wipe. ZeromusEx was a WAY better and more fun fight. More like that, please.

It's bad enough there's no difficulty between normal and Extreme, we don't need to turn Extremes into Savage as well making that gulf even wider and removing some of the little midcore content the game has!

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What worries me is that there’s never any definitive way to prove that the silent majority isn’t the one saying ‘everything in FFXIV is fine’. I don’t think that’s the case, but how would we ever know lol

I think the problem is, no one understands the "day crowd/night crowd" effect.

People used to ask a theological question "In the Bible, everyone seems to love Jesus and think he's a great teacher, yet all of a sudden, they all are asking for his death even if it means freeing a murderer/-apist. How does this make sense?" And the counter-argument used to explain this was "Two different groups of people. The 'day crowd' followed him by day and liked his teachings, but the 'night crowd' was made up of the religious/etc leaders of the day that feared him and goaded their followers into demanding his death."

Basically, there are different groups of people. The problem is assuming there are not. "People asked for the 2 min meta/no Bozja or Eureka/homogenization/balance/etc and are now upset when they get it?" No, it's different groups of people. This is the first thing that must be understood.

The second thing is this: In a parliamentary system of government, where there are more than two parties, often NO PARTY is the majority. Take the UK. Labour and Tories are the two main parties, and always the dominant party when the left/right (respectively) come to power in their coalitions, but they HAVE to form coalition governments with like-politic/ideology parties. For example, Labour may coalition with the Greens and Democratic-Socialists. Why? Because it's EXTREMELY rare for either Labour OR Tories to get an outright majority (>50%) such that they don't have to join with others.

How's this relevant?

There may well be NO majority. It may be a bunch of minority groups. Some may have similar goals (able to coalition with each other easily enough) while still having differences of opinion or exact ideal they seek. There may be no majority at all, just a lot of silent minorities and a vocal (rotating as changes are made) minority group(s).

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I feel like Feanor with the Silmarils, lol. I've rewritten this a dozen times and can't recreate the sentiment that got me here.

But to me, what I look for in classes is simple systems that I can understand quickly. I find some classes have button bloat, but honestly, if a job works and there isn't a community uproar, why change it? I think by that metric, a job like Red Mage or Summoner is more up my alley. Something that, while easy and simple, allows me more freedom to do harder things.

So, for me, at least something being simple is a lot better than the alternative in almost every case. In life and in video games.

I'm with this.

More complex/harder Jobs exist. They are among the least played (BLM, MNK, DRK, etc). That doesn't mean we shouldn't have them (the people that DO play them obviously prefer them), but it's why we need other Jobs to NOT be that. For all the flack it gets, SMN is probably the only DPS Job in the game right now you can play more or less optimally without going to any third party website, Discord, reading guides, etc. You can just put it together from how the abilities work. Some of the tooltips are a bit convoluted, but it sets up the basic pattern early, and by level 90, it's easy to understand "use big summon, use its abilities, use little summons and their abilities, use Ruin 3 if you have time with nothing better up before the big summon is ready again, repeat", with the only nuance being that you ideally want to use Energy Drain every minute, but save the Festers for every 2nd minute when you use Searing Light.

But the point is, while never going outside of the game, players can more or less figure out how to play it more or less optimally just using the tooltips and playing it based on how things fit together. You do need to understand burst (but only in the "use Searing Light then all your big hits/long CD stuff and don't use Ruin 4 during your big Summons" way), and you do need to understand oGCD weaving (but this is true of every Job). But as far as rotation and opener, it's not convoluted and is straightforward enough MOST anyone can figure it out.

Contrasting that, you get stuff like MNK, BLM, high end SAM, etc that have a lot of very nuanced and sometimes counterintuitive things they need to do in order to be played optimally, and in some of those cases, not playing optimally leads to huge gaps between you and someone who is.

Again, some people love that - "all of the above" is my approach - so we should have some of those. But we should also have some of the others. And some of the in-betweens.

I like that WAR, WHM, and SMN are all straightforward Jobs, and there's one for each role. Arguably DNC as well (Melee doesn't really have one). It do think it a bit odd that SCH and SMN are such a disconnect (seems RDM should have been the non-complex one or SCH the non-complex healer), but whatever. Close enough for now, and SCH is still pretty approachable if you let it be.

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Not every Job needs to be terribly complicated, and having some - dare I say one of each role - that isn't complex/is straightforward is good game design. "all of the above".