Challenging Jobs + Easier content > Easy Jobs + Harder Content.

[Rithy255]

Easy Job design doesn't really appeal to anyone, To a extent a tank/healer role has to be "easy enough" for a casual playerbase, but in terms of maxium useage you don't really have to be a good tank/healer to clear the easy content, DPS don't really need to know anything, easy to learn hard to master job design or varied job design appeals to a wider margin of players.

I feel like what the game misses is that not everyone wants to play just for a different dance fight, A lot of people are actually interested in different class designs and those said class designs being more interesting. Also what makes those supposed dance fights more interesting would be more replay ability on more jobs.

Personally I just want the game to look more into Tank and Healer design, currently being boring "Blue" "Green" Dps isn't really that fun for me, It would at least be nice if their was more to do on those roles or even if they leaned in better rotations... DPS is fairly in a decent spot but It's been getting more and more samey and easier throughout time, Raid buffs obviously being the main example of that, or the removing on utility/support dps aka the ranged role just becoming more of a damage buff role instead of actual party utility.

[HikariKurosawa]

It's true that jobs have gotten extremely monotonous and lacks any sort of skill expression anymore. Asking people to simply play harder content to have fun on simplified jobs is simply not a good argument, some of the savage floors have widely been regarded as boring, simplified rotations and boring fight means zero enjoyment.

One major flaw with fight design being the only source of engagement means that if the fight is a flop, there is no fun to be had. This carries over to casual content, where fights are simple (which, if part of the MSQ, is understandable that it's simple), but that also means you have no way to have fun if you're looking for anything more than simple gameplay.

There's nothing wrong with jobs being simple at the core where they're easy to pick up, but at least have some nuance that you can master over time with more experience.

Then people install addons that automate the rotations with a single button press just to be optimal or impress others with their parse score. Maybe if they introduce an effective anti-cheat they should go in this direction, but until then I don't think it is healthy for the game. Cheaters ruin everything at the end of the day.

[Fourbestintoner]

Normal content wasn't that much easier in HW/SB, but it sure was a lot more enjoyable to do.

[Absurdity]

Then people install addons that automate the rotations with a single button press just to be optimal or impress others with their parse score. Maybe if they introduce an effective anti-cheat they should go in this direction, but until then I don't think it is healthy for the game. Cheaters ruin everything at the end of the day.

People who use 3rd party tools to automate their rotation have absolutely nothing to do with the job design being a dumpster fire. Jobs aren't made with them in mind and they would automate their gameplay whether the job was hard or actually only 3 buttons...besides the fact that 3rd party tools can't automate optimized rotations since those often change based on a specific fight.

They don't even matter in the grand scheme of things because who cares about their parse? What matters is whether or not you're having fun playing your job, and in Endwalker I'm not having fun in either roulette fodder or savage raids.

Normal content wasn't that much easier in HW/SB, but it sure was a lot more enjoyable to do.

We also already had a middle ground with jobs being approachable but hard to master and fights being difficult, it was Stormblood.

[IDontPetLalas]

Then people install addons that automate the rotations with a single button press just to be optimal or impress others with their parse score. Maybe if they introduce an effective anti-cheat they should go in this direction, but until then I don't think it is healthy for the game. Cheaters ruin everything at the end of the day.

Here it is again, these players that are optimizing and parsing with a single button press, plus now you're onto "Cheaters ruin everything"? This has been brought up a number of times by now by you- I'll just add that you're certainly free to think what you want, however I don't understand why this should influence a job design discussion).

If you're really concerned about this - why not post into the technical suggestions and tell Square that you want an anti-cheat added.

[KenZentra]

Then people install addons that automate the rotations with a single button press just to be optimal or impress others with their parse score. Maybe if they introduce an effective anti-cheat they should go in this direction, but until then I don't think it is healthy for the game. Cheaters ruin everything at the end of the day.

If you have a simple rotation, lets say bare minimum such as a 1-2-3 combo forever until your target dies, or an intricate, god forbid, 30 button rotation with several different procs, DoTs, and gauges to keep track of. Both can be automated. Saying or implying that jobs have gotten more simple because of cheaters is ridiculous. In fact, it'd be easier to automate a simple rotation as opposed to a complex one.

[HikariKurosawa]

If you have a simple rotation, lets say bare minimum such as a 1-2-3 combo forever until your target dies, or an intricate, god forbid, 30 button rotation with several different procs, DoTs, and gauges to keep track of. Both can be automated. Saying or implying that jobs have gotten more simple because of cheaters is ridiculous. In fact, it'd be easier to automate a simple rotation as opposed to a complex one.

Neither are difficult to automate, there is just far more incentive to automate a complex rotation in a game where a majority of the playerbase parses despite it being against tos. People love flexing their parses and automated rotations helps that.

I think square enix just caught onto how prevalent cheating is and stopped designing jobs to be so complex because it encourages cheating.

Nobody is going to bother with cheating and breaking tos if the rotation isn't overly complicated. It's not worth the risk. If you can't wrap your head around the rotation and have to cheat to get by, of course there are going to be more people willing to take the risk. Especially when the game has no anti-cheat system in place.

Honestly at this point, we really just should have an anti-cheat. Soon there will be one, it's only a matter of time until it becomes optimized enough to have a negligible impact on performance.

[Jeeqbit]

I disagree.

Easy Jobs + Harder Content > Challenging Jobs + Easier content

[mallleable]

To me, difficulty is entirely too subjective. What one finds easy, another finds difficult. So I think providing feedback on how to improve job identity provides the most direct path to changing job rotations than trying to address difficulty. 'I think XYZ jobs should be harder because optimization is fun' is a lot less focused than 'I think XYZ jobs should have these buttons or system to manage because feel/cool factor/etc.' This might be a contradictory take, but I feel like certain homogenizations, and unique job identities can coexist -- just look at pvp. Every pvp job has a the same handful of survival buttons, and a limit break, but they also have their job-specific buttons, and each limit break feels unique.

[Zairava]

Neither are difficult to automate, there is just far more incentive to automate a complex rotation in a game where a majority of the playerbase parses despite it being against tos. People love flexing their parses and automated rotations helps that.

I think square enix just caught onto how prevalent cheating is and stopped designing jobs to be so complex because it encourages cheating.

Nobody is going to bother with cheating and breaking tos if the rotation isn't overly complicated. It's not worth the risk. If you can't wrap your head around the rotation and have to cheat to get by, of course there are going to be more people willing to take the risk. Especially when the game has no anti-cheat system in place.

Honestly at this point, we really just should have an anti-cheat. Soon there will be one, it's only a matter of time until it becomes optimized enough to have a negligible impact on performance.

"there's people that cheat so jobs should just be as easy as possible and make a majority of the playerbase unhappy"

It does not matter how hard you dumb down a job. There's going to be cheating. You will absolutely never please every single person even at the lower end of the skill curve.

You know what other MMO streamlined jobs too hard? WoW, and it didn't go so well. They received mass complaints about it and were forced to start designing them better again.

Now for the reverse.

You know what other MMO started designing the game around 3rd party add-ons and started designing raids around actually needing them to know what the hell to do? Also Wow, also didn't go so well.

You're saying that they're designing jobs to be so simple because people cheat and that just simply isn't true; and people using cheats because they can't wrap their head around the rotation is a logical fallacy because they would actually still need to know how the job works to begin with, they would sooner just not play the job or play another game. There's no situation in normal mode content that requires anyone to have a perfect understanding of their job works to clear it because it's made to be a faceroll.

That being said, designing your core gameplay to be as simple as humanly possible bordering on mindless for no other reason than people cheat is not a good mindset. Not including graphical mods or other UI/system mods, you're satisfying a smaller portion of the playerbase and making everyone else bored as hell while running most content in the game. There's people that straight up do not care what they are supposed to do when playing their job or role and just play the content pressing whatever button they wish even without mods, and ones on the bottom of the barrel that play horrifically incompetent like not using aoe in dungeon content even at level cap.

There's a medium to be had, and the last time we had that was in Stormblood.

This is all without even saying they will never implement anti-cheat. There's far too many people that use mods and for some it's the only thing that keeps them playing the game at all, it is not in their best interest to essentially erase that portion of the playerbase due to loss of profit. To top it off, there will always be people that find a way around things. Always.