And the slow death of the RPG based battlesystem

[HikariKurosawa]

Mechanic based difficulty is always going to create more unique and engaging encounters compared to rotation based difficulty. I love the direction this game has been heading in personally, and can't really relate to those who want more complex rotations back.

Maybe it's because I refuse to use third party tools and actually have to figure out the mechanics on my own. It would make a lot of sense for people who are cheating at the game to find it boring. When rotations are the difficult component, mechanics have to be simplified and homogenized. Then boss fights have little to no identity or are extremely simplistic.

It's much better this way, the solution is to just uninstall all the third party tools(cheats) that most people complaining about the direction of rotations have installed.

[Rithy255]

Mechanic based difficulty is always going to create more unique and engaging encounters compared to rotation based difficulty. I love the direction this game has been heading in personally, and can't really relate to those who want more complex rotations back.

Maybe it's because I refuse to use third party tools and actually have to figure out the mechanics on my own. It would make a lot of sense for people who are cheating at the game to find it boring. When rotations are the difficult component, mechanics have to be simplified and homogenized. Then boss fights have little to no identity or are extremely simplistic.

It's much better this way, the solution is to just uninstall all the third party tools(cheats) that most people complaining about the direction of rotations have installed.

Not everyone is looking for mechanic based difficulty, Alot of people like MMORPG's for the RPG aspect feeling that their build (class in this case) brings something to the team and has a different sort of feeling to the rest of the other classes.

You can argue that we should all care about fight design only, but that's not what everyone wants.

I actually think this sort of class Varity and RPG aspects helps fight design be more repayable personally but that's just my opinion I guess.

[HikariKurosawa]

Like dance partner, ninja trick attack, samurai dps, black mage dps, bard songs, dragoon eye, rdm and smn revive, smn consistent dps and flashy summons, the list goes on. I don't see a problem at all with what jobs in this game have to bring to the table individually.

I think tons of players in this game just use third party addons that take away so much from the experience that they have become unable to actually assess how the game feels anymore. I'm not saying you do, but too many people abuse cheats in this game.

[Rithy255]

Like dance partner, ninja trick attack, samurai dps, black mage dps, bard songs, dragoon eye, rdm and smn revive, smn consistent dps and flashy summons, the list goes on. I don't see a problem at all with what jobs in this game have to bring to the table individually.

I think tons of players in this game just use third party addons that take away so much from the experience that they have become unable to actually assess how the game feels anymore. I'm not saying you do, but too many people abuse cheats in this game.

I barely touch harder content currently, I did used to but not my thing currently as fight design to me feels kinda meh.
I think people who are wanting more class design and jobs to be more interesting actually are the reverse. People who want more RPG aspects and interesting job design are not high optimisers who might be using said tools.

I'm more of a casual/midcore player who just wants classes to feel different from one another personally, I think the funny thing you didn't list is whats my key issue is you didn't list a tank/Healer here because I think those designs are what hurt the game a lot in Varity and DPS seems to slowly be going in the same direction that tanks/healers already are in, which has caused people to actually speak out... mainly the whole "2minute meta"

The game isn't the same game as it used to be and for better or for worse some people don't really like that and others don't mind it, Usually I find it's the people who complain about their job not doing "top damage" is the reason why a lot of things get changed and Not the people who want to enjoy class Varity.

[HikariKurosawa]

I barely touch harder content currently, I did used to but not my thing currently as fight design to me feels kinda meh.
I think people who are wanting more class design and jobs to be more interesting actually are the reverse. People who want more RPG aspects and interesting job design are not high optimisers who might be using said tools.

I'm more of a casual/midcore player who just wants classes to feel different from one another personally, I think the funny thing you didn't list is whats my key issue is you didn't list a tank/Healer here because I think those designs are what hurt the game a lot in Varity and DPS seems to slowly be going in the same direction that tanks/healers already are in, which has caused people to actually speak out... mainly the whole "2minute meta"

The game isn't the same game as it used to be and for better or for worse some people don't really like that and others don't mind it, Usually I find it's the people who complain about their job not doing "top damage" is the reason why a lot of things get changed and Not the people who want to enjoy class Varity.

I don't have enough experience with tank or healer to remark on them. Sage and white mage in my experience are extremely different though. Same with gunbreaker and the other tanks I have played.

What kind of differences would you want really? Visually speaking every job is extremely unique, the pace of their rotations is also unique, the tools they have are all very different, can you please elaborate on what is so similar and what you would do differently? I don't really see this problem. 2 minute window just makes sense, it doesn't define the way a job plays. It defines the pace of the encounters.

[Rithy255]

I'll just list the Issues I think a lot of people seem to find in (tank/healer/dps) design.
Tank:

• In Terms of tank's DPS you generally just press your main combo (that usually just being the first three buttons) and gain resource Gunbreaker is most likely the most defined tank currently, War/Drk pretty much borrow the same offensive play style from one another DRK just feeling more visually.
• In terms of defensives, in the core of it Tanks all have very similar mitigation value, which was not something in previous expansions such as Shb/SB where tanks at least felt differently defensive wise
• Aggro management, while this wasn't only the tanks job a lot of players feel like tanks have generally gotten less to do specific to tank which goes back into them not feeling that very different DPS/Defensive wise so in general tanks just feel like boring DPS without aggro management, this also with stances on how tanks used to have ways to get more risk vs reward.

Healer

• The core gameplay of healer is currently focused on DPS most the time and throw out a ogcd heal, which all healers share pretty much the same rotation, Sage has phlegma that stands out but that's about it, A lot of people want to actually have more damage buttons as a healer because a lot of that time spent is not actually healing.
• On the other side you have healer players who want to Heal a lot more, which again the current gameplay of healer is very similar even if it may feel different to you, as your job is to keep pressing your damage button and to throw out a heal, all healers share this same fundamental design so to someone who mainly only plays healer they will feel like they're just playing the same job with new visuals.

DPS

• They fit into the same burst each and every cycle, a lot of DPS gameplay revolves around the burst phase, some like ninja will fit into a 1minute cycle with a slightly stronger 2 minute cycle, some will more focus on that 2minute cycle, This leads to a lot of people who play DPS feel that the Jobs kind of have the same purpose and cycle.
• Ranged jobs, others like ninja as well, don't really feel like the utility/dps hybrids they used to be they used to bring a lot more then just damage buffs and a extra raid wide defensive. They used to be a very team based role which a lot of people enjoyed.

I think the Main issue is while yes some jobs feel different, the core gameplay loop is all the same, all DPS are meant to fit one box and purpose in a group, same with tanks and healers, Beyond that The variety of the rotations and damage buttons is slowly being made easier as well which creates people to really not like the direction that the games going in.

I also want to feel like my job choice matters, if not that at least that my job choice feels different which I really don't feel as a tank player anymore.

[HikariKurosawa]

I'll just list the Issues I think a lot of people seem to find in (tank/healer/dps) design.

Yeah I can't relate to all of this personally. Every job plays very differently even though they have similar core functions. What you're describing is just cohesive and balanced game design. FFXIV plays like FFXIV basically.

Ninja is nothing like samurai or any other melee dps, just like all the others. Black mage is extremely different from the other casters. SMN as well, RDM as well. All tanks play very differently too. It turns out that in order for the game to be balanced, the healer and tank roles need a specific toolkit for things to work. No healer feels the same to me, no tank feels the same to me, no dps feels the same to me.

Saying that everything is homogenized because it falls into a 2 minute window just doesn't work for me as an argument personally. Timing doesn't determine the gameplay. Ranged dps jobs should feel like ranged dps jobs.

"The variety of the rotations and damage buttons is slowly being made easier" can you explain how variety is made easier? I get that rotations are becoming more polished and smooth, but this is necessary to enable boss fights that don't feel like a training dummy with how many abilities we have currently. Rotations used to be a lot less complex anyway so I don't get it. Buff timing and upkeep was maybe more complicated sure, but the amount of skills used was extremely simplistic in comparison to what we have now. Even ShB feels simple compared to EW.

Your job choice does matter, choose the fantasy that appeals to you most. If I want to be an bard because I like bow and arrow gameplay, I shouldn't be reduced to a support member of the team. Play the job that suits your taste most and change your priorities I guess. I think people get too caught up in the systems parts of mmos lately and not caught up enough in the fantasy of it all. I hate to say it but it sounds like you don't appreciate the great game you get to play.

[Valence]

Mechanic based difficulty is always going to create more unique and engaging encounters compared to rotation based difficulty. I love the direction this game has been heading in personally, and can't really relate to those who want more complex rotations back.

Spoiler alert: people that think that rotations used to be a lot more complex or whatever fancy tale they like to tell themselves to cope with how people have gotten better at the game are living with pink tinted glasses. It's never been about more complex rotations, and in fact, the OP I made specifically took great lengths in talking about the game battle system, and not job rotations. I'll agree that I mentioned them in one item, but the point was again, a paradigm on cast times and tactical choices, not on specific job rotational mechanics.

Also, this is not a binary problem as you make it sound, and again I tried to put forth that it's not about having 100-0 mechanics to rpg systems or 0-100, but a good blend of both. The point of the OP is raising the issue that it's slowly but surely gliding towards the 0 to 100 ratio those days, and it's worrying.

Maybe it's because I refuse to use third party tools and actually have to figure out the mechanics on my own. It would make a lot of sense for people who are cheating at the game to find it boring. When rotations are the difficult component, mechanics have to be simplified and homogenized. Then boss fights have little to no identity or are extremely simplistic.

Maybe it's because I refuse to use third party tools and actually have to figure out the mechanics on my own. It would make a lot of sense for people who are cheating at the game to find it boring.

When rotations are the difficult component, mechanics have to be simplified and homogenized. Then boss fights have little to no identity or are extremely simplistic.

It's much better this way, the solution is to just uninstall all the third party tools(cheats) that most people complaining about the direction of rotations have installed.

Who said that the fights or mechanics are boring? They do a great job in introducing new things. However things have become extremely formulaic and as somebody has pointed out, even if mechanically the coils raids are less stunningly intricate than some of what we have today, the bosses on their own, I'm sorry but they feel a lot more unique and varied throughout the whole series, for the very reason that they're not trying to focus 100% of the time on the same unique thing: having super nice boss mechanics that ultimately always boil down to pair/spread/donut/tethers/etc.

Are you accusing somebody of cheating? This isn't about nasa mods and finding mechanics boring...

I think honestly that you completely missed the point.

Like dance partner, ninja trick attack, samurai dps, black mage dps, bard songs, dragoon eye, rdm and smn revive, smn consistent dps and flashy summons, the list goes on. I don't see a problem at all with what jobs in this game have to bring to the table individually.

I think tons of players in this game just use third party addons that take away so much from the experience that they have become unable to actually assess how the game feels anymore. I'm not saying you do, but too many people abuse cheats in this game.

Individually being the keyword here.

But I do honestly feel that you're trying to push another agenda with another subject with your third party obsession... I'm sorry but that's completely beside the point. You're throwing wild accusations then saying you're not accusing me or the people here of doing it... Then, what is the point behind this?

[Shurrikhan]

Mechanic based difficulty is always going to create more unique and engaging encounters compared to rotation based difficulty.

Compared to rotations in isolation, sure, as those are what you do against striking dummies. Compared to a fight that requires significant adjustments to both the overarching rotations (2-minute loop) and to or within smaller strings, though? Not necessarily; the mechanics, if the kits so permit, can easily create more rotational complexity and the kits in turn make the fight feel more fulfilling (but generally in a way that, unless tuning is extremely tight, also doesn't come with the lesser accessibility of forming that engagement from [body-check] mechanics).

Personally, I'm fine with there being content in which mechanics are 80+% of the gameplay. My issue is that there's no difficult content for which all else isn't (almost) wholly eclipsed by the simple ability to perform mechanics. Arguably, there is only even one genre we'd consider crafted "content" (rather than mere mob-grinds) outside of that. We have MobGrinds, TrivialHallwaySprints... and then TrialsV1, TrialsV2 (Normal Raids), TrialsV3 (Alliance Raids' Raid Bosses), and TrialsV4 (Savage Raids), and TrialsV5 (Ultimate).

The short of it is that rotations (be they overarching rotations, tactics, or fine adjustments) can only be as varied as content allows, but in the pursuit of making the content's own mechanics as clear as possible, content has increasingly failed to give rotations anything to vary or be varied by, which in turn makes a fight feel that much more similar between runs, between a job's place among different players/compositions and consequent strategies, and in playing the fight across different jobs.

When using the same rotation for every fight, yeah, rotations would quickly lose their novelty. But, lacking much interaction between kit and the given fight, the various skins of in, out, left, right, clocks, cardinals, etc. also lose their novelty that much more quickly, making fights increasingly feel same-y.

I don't know what the perfect solution here is. Doubtless, fights would take up some constraints in efforts to better leverage kits. But without that, fights and kits both take far less time to lose apparent depth and uniqueness.

That being said, those constraints are nowhere near what you seem to be imagining.

[Valence]

Compared to rotations in isolation, sure, as those are what you do against striking dummies. Compared to a fight that requires significant adjustments to both the overarching rotations (2-minute loop) and to or within smaller strings, though? Not necessarily; the mechanics, if the kits so permit, can easily create more rotational complexity and the kits in turn make the fight feel more fulfilling (but generally in a way that, unless tuning is extremely tight, also doesn't come with the lesser accessibility of forming that engagement from [body-check] mechanics).

Personally, I'm fine with there being content in which mechanics are 80+% of the gameplay. My issue is that there's no difficult content for which all else isn't (almost) wholly eclipsed by the simple ability to perform mechanics. Arguably, there is only even one genre we'd consider crafted "content" (rather than mere mob-grinds) outside of that. We have MobGrinds, TrivialHallwaySprints... and then TrialsV1, TrialsV2 (Normal Raids), TrialsV3 (Alliance Raids' Raid Bosses), and TrialsV4 (Savage Raids), and TrialsV5 (Ultimate).

The short of it is that rotations (be they overarching rotations, tactics, or fine adjustments) can only be as varied as content allows, but in the pursuit of making the content's own mechanics as clear as possible, content has increasingly failed to give rotations anything to vary or be varied by, which in turn makes a fight feel that much more similar between runs, between a job's place among different players/compositions and consequent strategies, and in playing the fight across different jobs.

When using the same rotation for every fight, yeah, rotations would quickly lose their novelty. But, lacking much interaction between kit and the given fight, the various skins of in, out, left, right, clocks, cardinals, etc. also lose their novelty that much more quickly, making fights increasingly feel same-y.

I don't know what the perfect solution here is. Doubtless, fights would take up some constraints in efforts to better leverage kits. But without that, fights and kits both take far less time to lose apparent depth and uniqueness.

That being said, those constraints are nowhere near what you seem to be imagining.

You actually touch to a point I completely omitted in the OP, which is the total homogenization of fight models. Everything today is a variant of a trial, be it raids, criterion, or actual trials. Most pve today boils down to beat the crap out of a boss in a battle arena. Trash mob on the side is always the same, in the same amounts of packs between each walls in the case of dungeons. There is so little variation that when you actually get hard content with trash (criterion) it immediately feels like a breath of fresh air, and yet, it follows the exact same patterns between every criterion. When one thinks about it, why do they feel so constrained and forced to constantly have every piece of content following the same overused model down to a T? Having patches following a formulaic pattern is one thing, but fight models?


Just imagine the face of players the day we get a dungeon where the first boss waits for your immediately? And then you get completely different trash mob patterns, perhaps even randomized a little, some "gate bosses"? That's not a lot of variation, but even such a tiny thing would suddenly feel like playing a whole different game already, and it goes a long way showing how much the current formulaic, rigid patterns are oppressive. Why does every dungeon have to be 2 mob packs > boss 1 > 2 mob packs > boss 2 > 2 mob packs > boss 3? Criterion tried to backpedal a little and revisit the concept of trash, which is cool, but what do we get now? Interesting trash 1 > boss 1 > Interesting trash 2 > boss 2 > boss 3, every single time.

What the heck?