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

[KenZentra]

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.

I disagree. Just like with pirating, "Making games more difficult to pirate does not mean that those who would pirate the game are going to purchase it instead. They had no intention of buying it in the first place.", people who cheat to do their rotation, achieve a high parse, etc, had no intention of learning the job to begin with.

In terms of things being simplified, SE has made it a conscious effort to peel away complexity in the game ever since ARR, LONG before rotation bots came into play.

[Absurdity]

SE has made it a conscious effort to peel away complexity in the game ever since ARR, LONG before rotation bots came into play.

That really only started with Stormblood. Heavensward did the opposite and went too far into the direction of making jobs complex. Stormblood was the first time they made jobs easier to pick up and perform on at least a basic level, but since then they've continually made not only the skill floor lower but collapsed the ceiling along with it, to the point where we now have the opposite problem of Heavensward.

[KenZentra]

That really only started with Stormblood. Heavensward did the opposite and went too far into the direction of making jobs complex. Stormblood was the first time they made jobs easier to pick up and perform on at least a basic level, but since then they've continually made not only the skill floor lower but collapsed the ceiling along with it, to the point where we now have the opposite problem of Heavensward.

I think both can be true, I guess my mind was drifting off towards the whole of the game. I do remember rotations getting more complex in HW, so you are 100% right with that.

[Colt47]

I think both can be true, I guess my mind was drifting off towards the whole of the game. I do remember rotations getting more complex in HW, so you are 100% right with that.

It's not strictly FFXIV that was doing this. A lot of the newer games that have seen massive success are using vastly simplified controls (Genshin Impact being one of them). FFXIV might also have a bit of a development team size issue on making a more complex solution viable. All jobs really just have at max four things that they do, and of the jobs the only one that really does all of them is probably the healer (Cut damage through mitigation, create a temporary HP pool, inflict damage, or heal). The only thing that still sort of exists from the old game in some form is movement speed boosting, but snaring, slowing, and stunning are all removed or rendered redundant in most content. They also boosted the speed of monsters to make them easier to group together, removed cone AOEs, and also kind of killed kiting monsters around as a viable strategy.

The impact of the simplified design can be felt in the life cycle of the game as well. Part of the reason I was even going on about the need for echo in savage sooner is that people are growing bored of playing because of stalling out, and due to the pandemic patch cycle this is the longest wait we will have for an expansion ever so people are going to be quitting FFXIV out of boredom from lack of content.

[Aravell]

I disagree. Just like with pirating, "Making games more difficult to pirate does not mean that those who would pirate the game are going to purchase it instead. They had no intention of buying it in the first place.", people who cheat to do their rotation, achieve a high parse, etc, had no intention of learning the job to begin with.

In terms of things being simplified, SE has made it a conscious effort to peel away complexity in the game ever since ARR, LONG before rotation bots came into play.

The notion that "people would stop cheating if the game was easier" is a weird one. If people are already cheating, why would they stop? They're already doing it, nothing is stopping them from continuing to do it, and they gain no benefit from stopping, so why would they stop?

Honestly, simplifying everything just hurts people who want something more complex, it doesn't really help anyone in the long run. People who want to do the bare minimum would continue to do so, no change to the game would change their mentality, it just ends up blocking off the ceiling for the people who want to improve.

[ForsakenRoe]

All I know is healer stuff, and a bit of tank stuff because of playing a tank back in SB. And what I can say, is that I don't remember these kinds of 'dungeons are boring' and 'there's no content' back in Stormblood. Maybe there was a bit, but never in the amounts we see now, and I definitely don't remember 'influencers' making videos about the state of things. Back in SB, DRK could do what WAR does now, with Dark Arts Abyssal Drain leeching your full HP bar back (at the cost of like 40% of your MP bar), it wasn't any harder to heal EX roulettes, they were still the same level of 'netflix on 2nd monitor'. So what changed? The rotations, and the skill ceiling of them.

I would rather have challenging jobs with easier content, than challenging content with easier jobs. The former is what we had in HW and to an extent SB, the latter is what we have now in SHB and EW. I think SB is the ideal middle ground to aim for, HW was too restrictive. But anyone who believes the latter, please consider: We have easier jobs, and the 'challenging content' is either non-existent (for stuff like EX roulette and some trials), is a swing and a miss (look at how boring P7S or P6S were, or P11S this tier is kinda bleh too), or is sometimes good. I would be fine with 'challenge is entirely derived from the content', if we could reliably get that challenge from the content. But we can't guarantee that, some fights will invariably flop, that's just how the cookie crumbles in MMOs. Not every fight can be good, even SB had stinkers like O1S (cleared in literally one pull for some groups) or O10S. So, where we couldn't get the 'fun factor' in those fights, we still were able to derive some enjoyment from playing our jobs in those fights.

When this topic comes up, invariably I and others ask for stuff to be fun regardless of difficulty level, and so the clapback of 'well you can't expect EX roulette to have challenge, it's not meant to be hard' comes out. With 'challenge is derived from content', this requires a certain 'level' of difficulty, to engage the player, based on their personal preference and skill level. It's not really sensible from a design perspective to tell someone 'oh you are only allowed to feel engaged with the game in Savage and above', imo. 6 fights per 8 months (4 Savage + 1 doorboss, then an ultimate 4 months later, then repeat) is a pitiful amount of content, and calling the other stuff 'not for you' just makes it feel more like 'chores' than actual content when higher end players have to do things like EX roulette to cap tomes. It basically communicates the sentiment of 'this content isn't for players like you, go back to your level of content and leave EX roulette to the people who do enjoy it'. I want to enjoy it, but I find it boring as hell to do it. I didn't back in SB, even when it was a sucky dungeon on the roulette (cough Hells Lid), because I still had fun playing my job's rotation. On the flipside, if we have something more SB inspired (especially for healers), where we have 'challenge is (optionally) derived from the job itself', we can derive our enjoyment from using our job's kit to the best of it's capabilities regardless of the difficulty of the content. Juggling SCH DOTs might not have been everyone's cup of tea, but it was a damn sight better than 'press Biolysis once per 30s' (and we had Bane). AST cards might have been imbalanced, but they were more fun than all 6 cards being '6% damage if you get the right person'

The key parts of this, is that A: the job should be the source of complexity to insulate the player against 'fight that fails to deliver on engagement', and B: the job's complexity should be an optional thing, ideally. No 'you didn't play the super technical rotation, -30% damage for you idiot', I look at that beautiful accident of SB, the TK rotation, as a sort of inspiration for what we could have. It was highly technical, very confusing to look at as a picture, and playing the 'regular' rotation still got someone I knew back then oranges at times. TK was there as something to further master about the job, giving it more depth and nuance even in a fight with as few mechanics as O6S.

[Mayhemmer]

Though I like DNC and DRK currently, and getting back into BLM and really enjoying it, I still feel like I've been looking for "that one job" to really grab me again. That one job used to be MCH in Stormblood; probably the most convoluted and strange job I've seen in this game. After really settling into trying to learn it, it turned into my favorite, because I could play it every single day and see that I was doing so more efficiently, and it just clicked with me every step of the way. It got the heavy hand of the butcher in ShB and it took me until EW to realize how much it just wasn't jiving with me anymore, partly because it just didn't feel like it evolved in any way whatsoever going into EW.

I don't even know what point I'm trying to make. I just want "that one job" again, and even though I'm hopeful with the two new dps we're getting in Dawntrail, I'm worried the list of jobs I enjoy is just going to get smaller yet again.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

We all obviously interact with the casual contents at some point but fewer of us actually stray into higher end contents. So why waste the resource to make a content that are quite likely to be left alone by certain playerbase? Why not put more effort into making a job that gives their player agency to be better or play however they want to? You can be a thunder mage—who cares? You’ll still clear MSQ dungeons.

If your job is horribly designed, then it will feel bad to play no matter which content you’re playing. except /gpose. You shove player to enjoy only a certain content, all you’re doing is to make this player hate every other content. Is that what they want to achieve?

[Renathras]

"?Por que no los dos?"
Why not some of both?

Very much agree with this, though:

Leave us some easy and accessible options so that everyone is able to break into harder content if they choose. WHM can still be an easy healer. MCH or SMN can be simpler DPS. WAR can be a beginner friendly tank. But for the rest, consider creating a wider spectrum of difficulty that players can choose to engage with.

We really need more of a spectrum across the Jobs and roles. The only role that I think does this well right now is Caster. You have SMN on one end, BLM on the other, and RDM as a happy medium in-between. Each also feels very distinct from the other two to play, no matter the content. I really like that and think there should be more like that across all Jobs. Some people like straightforward (I'm one of them), others like complex, still others like a balance. No matter what content there is, this will always be true. So having a straightforward Job in each role, a complex one in each role, and the others on the spectrum between is just a good idea. Further, having them all play different gives people more of a chance to find one that clicks with them, even if the others do not.

I do think it's a more extensive thing - for example, open world content is...well...we all know it's not fantastic (sad because then you have stuff like Eureka and Bozja which is basically just a modification to the open world that, even without the special Logos/Lost Actions are still more engaging somehow than the regular open world), so there's another issue itself, and of course encounter design. But on the Job side of things, I do agree with you.

WAR, WHM, SMN, MCH (or DNC?), and ??? (RPR, maybe? None of the Melees are really super straghtforward, but it's probably the most...) as a baseline, everything else a spectrum from there to the complex end of GNB, AST, BLM, BRD, MNK(?) of each role seems like a good design goal.

EDIT:

Easy Job design doesn't really appeal to anyone,

This is...very likely not true. There are people that like everything, even easy Jobs.

Even setting aside the Savage/Ultimate raiders that pick the "easy" Jobs but insist they don't like them and are only doing for the clear because of "greater consistency of the Job's performance" (read: easier), just looking at the rest of the playerbase, the easier Jobs are almost always the most played or second most played in every role, sometimes both.

Per the Lucky Bancho numbers, imperfect but the best statistics we have, the most played Tank is WAR, and while that is partly due to their kit, prior to 6.3 and the buffs, WAR was low in damage and Bloodwhetting is OP in 4 man dungeon trash packs, less so in Savage raids with just the single boss. Yet it was still the most played everywhere else in the game. That was BEFORE the buffs that made it OP.

WHM has long been the most played healer, and long been the easiest. And lest you try to say "well, that's just because it's iconic", SGE was introduced as basically the second easiest (most people consider it an easier to play SCH), it's the second most played in every region other than JP, where it's a close third.

RDM was the most played Caster in ShB, where it was also the easiest. With EW making SMN the easiest, SMN is now the most played Caster, with RDM somewhat behind it. BLM is pretty much always a distant third. Even when it comes to hard content, BLM isn't generally the most played until content is on farm. When it actually matters, one of the others is more played than it. And in the general playerbase, despite being praised by people that love complex things on the forums, BLM is the least played, and one of the least played Jobs in the game.

DNC is generally regarded as the easiest to play Ranged, and it's also the most played. And before you say "That's just because people like the buffing allies support role", BRD has that and is the least played...and also the most complex of the three.

Among the Melees, SAM is considered easy to pick up and do very well with, and RPR the easiest overall. They are also the most played. The least played? MNK. Even after the rework, which by all accounts went over well and people loved, but it's the most complex Melee and it's the least played, generally.

.

What is clear is that easy/simple/straightforward Jobs not only DO appeal "to anyone", they appeal to a lot of anyones. It's pretty clear easy Jobs appeal to more people than hard Jobs appeal to, in terms of ratios.

What's less clear is how each compare to people that like things in-between, or what flavors of in-between people find appealing. But what is certain is that having at least some of each category is probably for the best, as that way you cover your bases and ensure everyone has something they can enjoy playing on.

[Rithy255]

This is...very likely not true. There are people that like everything, even easy Jobs.

Looking back on it maybe I was misspeaking here. I think easyness can play a part in what people pick up especially for raids when they don't really have a "main"
I think that easy job design is more or less very popular in endgame raids because of how hard the fight is already, Taking a black mage in a harder fight rather then a summoner is just not worth the effort. I'm unsure about non-savage raid numbers but yeah popular jobs tend to be the more easier ones or the more Meta ones. I think a big reason why summoner is also popular is because it's more Meta, Warriors popularity spiked with buffs. I don't think Job's difficulty plays a big part in what people choose to main, some people tend to not main anything in general though and will just play what's easier/meta as they rather play for fight design and don't really care for job design (which is fine).

I still think that Jobs that are easy to pick up but hard to master would be a better approach to this, but what I actually want is some jobs to be easier some jobs to be harder. I'm fine with more easier Job designs I should have made that more clear and I don't think I did a good job of stating my opinion correctly here, I think what the game needs is actual difficulty Varity instead of making harder jobs more like the easier ones.

I think what people actually look for in a job is what is fun and flashy or what looks cooler, I think White mages Popularity is more that it fits the "classic healer" look, I don't even think white mage is much easier then other healers. (Astro seems to be viewed as clunky and not what it used to, so i can see why popularity is less in that case) Warrior I mean yeah it's easy but it's also just the best tank at everything with really good damage values now, Summoner is clearly the best caster for a raid group as they dont have to think about positioning often unlike other casters, it also has big summon animations. I think Samurai is a easy job but it's also actually one of the few easy jobs I genuinely enjoy.

I feel what plays the most part in a Jobs popularity is fun, iconic-ness, design/looks, Meta. More In depth jobs can/should exist along with some easy to pickup jobs, I just don't like how jobs are being forced into being easier jobs (such as Paladin) for the sake of appealing to other tank players for example, I think all jobs can have different playerbases.