And the slow death of the RPG based battlesystem

[SieyaM]

I've said this a lot and I will keep saying it, the job you choose and your knowledge of skills and how to use them do not matter in this game. All jobs follow a strict rotation that you will learn and execute without deviation. There is no player expression or skill expression and combat always comes down to learning the dance for the current boss and executing it. There is no boss, no dungeon, no piece of content in which you will want to deviate from the established rotation for your job.

[Commander_Justitia]

Disliking dots is peak bad taste

They removed dots because a target can only hold a certain amount of debuffs - I think its around 50. You ran into situations were at hunts or eureka, you had many healers and tanks trying to dot a target - but it resisted it due to the debuff cap. So if there was a lvl1 dot your lvl70 blm thunder 3 proc did do 0 dmg, worst case scenario. This was around lvl70 - for shadowbringers lvl80 dots were gone.

Like others said, I think most classes play the same, there is little variety, there is no proc, little to none rng, similar buffs, similar bursts. I really liked MNK in heavensward, it was fast and lots buttons to press - now it has become my least liked job to play I think. It is just not rewarding and slow, the moment they gave it a raidbuff and removed stances it wasnt fun anymore.

[HikariKurosawa]

I've said this a lot and I will keep saying it, the job you choose and your knowledge of skills and how to use them do not matter in this game. All jobs follow a strict rotation that you will learn and execute without deviation. There is no player expression or skill expression and combat always comes down to learning the dance for the current boss and executing it. There is no boss, no dungeon, no piece of content in which you will want to deviate from the established rotation for your job.

That's just how their combat philosophy is in this game. It's called good game design. You have the rotation of the job and you work towards mastering it. That is expression of player skill. Treat each job like a martial art system instead and you'll have a better experience. If you want improv, play a different game because that's not the design philosophy here.

[KenZentra]

That's just how their combat philosophy is in this game. It's called good game design. You have the rotation of the job and you work towards mastering it. That is expression of player skill. Treat each job like a martial art system instead and you'll have a better experience. If you want improv, play a different game because that's not the design philosophy here.

It is not good game design, actually. Also... really like a martial art system? I don't think martial arts have a combo system or rotations lmao
Mastering your rotation is just hitting a training dummy for hours on end. The. Exact. The. Same. Way. For. Hours. Its literally, press this button, then this one, then this one,then this one, then this one, .... .... ..., they might as well just consolidate the entire song and dance into a single button to have you spam forever.

PVP, of ALL things in this game, has deeper player expression and im not even talking about something like "the better player wins a mirror match", but that you have more options that you actually get to USE in gameplay, such as ways of disengaging from combat, escaping danger, Crowd controlling important targets, shutting down problematic targets, removing powerful buffs, positioning, foresight, and so much more.
A player being able to express their skill in their Job, like holding onto a specific cooldown to remove, say Guard, from a group of targets as that their team is on the way to pinch. Or keeping up with map awareness and enemy movements to position yourself and maybe others accordingly.

PVE is "Do thing, Same thing, Forever, Until Perfect". Its such a joke. Its a shame PVP isnt that great cause its depth in Job design is way better than PvE.

[Kazamaiya]

It's called good game design.

Sad to say it, but game design is always up to interpretation and as such is subjective. Many people are displeased with the game's current gameplay aspects for numerous reasons.

Job Design: Each Job continually loses mechanical depth. Believe it or not, people find importance in mechanical depth, how that manifests to each individual is up to their preferences. Samurai losing Kaiten and the slight mechanical edge there, Paladin being shoved into the already controversial 2-minute meta, Summoner becoming very simple comparatively to it's interpretation in Shadowbringers. Healers not having more Damage buttons despite Damage supposedly being the reward for healing well. Dark Knight losing all unique identity upon the Shadowbringers launch and sharing over half of it's mechanics almost unanimously with Warrior (another tank). etc. etc. We all have the jobs we enjoy, that we get attached to for one way or another, a job we can express ourselves through. So seeing that being neutered (Paladin), or taken away from us completely (Dark Knight and Summoner) it gets on people's nerves for one reason or another. In content that is simple to go through (Trials, Raids, Alliance Raids, etc.) the only things that keep some people going back to that current content is the job design themselves as the players get accustomed to the encounters and have an easier time dealing with the mechanics. If it lacks longevity due to both the encounter as well as the jobs being uninteresting to a person, especially so when they have played this game for a long time, it only becomes easier and easier to lose interest.

[Kazamaiya]

Cont.

Each job brought something unique and interesting to the table in the past. You can't say the same for the now. Dark Knight had heavy resource management, Paladin had DOT and MP management, Warrior had Buff Management on top of Aggro and stance management.
Bard had Sustain DPS and buffs for itself and other allies, Machinist had higher focus on a complex intricate rotation while still having an array of supportive mechanics as well. Dragoon had management of timers, buffs, debuffs. Samurai was focused on resource management and high DPS, ninja was the DOT Focused Job with party utility in both DPS, Defensives and Aggro management. Monk was the fast paced job with different stances for different situations and an aspect of support and managament of timers, effectively being the all-rounder.
Black Mage was the proc based easy to learn, hard to master job. Summoner was DOT focused and had a complex rotation that felt very satisfying to pull off and Red Mage was the all-rounder there with tons of utility that SMN and BLM didn't have while still playing very differently and having melee to it's rotation.
Astrologian was big on handing out buffs to party members, buffing the cards, drawing new cards, all while having two different sects that added tons of adaptibility to an already complex job with a greater emphasis on rotation.

Was it more complex and demanding than it is now? Arguably, especially considering Job changes. Was it perfect? Of course not, I can still think of plenty of issues with Stormblood, Heavensward and Shadowbringers.

Each role and job had their own roles withing their own already distinct roles. All the aspects i mentioned were things in Stormblood, that has largely been neutered or removed to the collective dismay of the people who adored those aspects of unique and interesting gameplay that made every job feel Fun and different from each other.
While the jobs currently have differences with each other, the continual shift in the direction of the game has changed and reduced the mechanical depth and uniqueness to the jobs. Case in point Dark Knight. Similarities it shares with other jobs: Blackblood Gauge/Wrath Gauge (With Warrior), Darkside/Warrior's DPS buff, Delirium/Inner Release (Warrior), Living Shadow/Automaton Queen (MCH). It feels very lazy and like the antithesis to what 'good game design' is. At least to me.

[Kazamaiya]

Cont 2.

Why did Bard have an MP drain ability and three versions of Troubador in Stormblood? why were Dots a big part of Ninja and Paladin gameplay? Why was Summoner so much more complicated in the job design previously? Because people enjoyed it and found it fun. People want to express themselves through the way they play and the jobs they chose. Having all these options of how to do so is a lot more enticing to people than following a strict 2 minute rotation every encounter.

Despite everything i keep coming back to Blue Mage of all things because it's FUN and allows me to express myself more and better than any of the other jobs get to do nowadays because of how much the other jobs have lost unique and fun abilities in favour of function over form or design. Is it good game design when everyone under the sun is asking you to change something they hated and then get no response? I would say no. especially in an MMO.

The jobs don't feel like they matter anymore outside of the functions they bring. Each job has a buff or buffs on a 60s or 120 second cooldown, and charges and such in their rotation to wherein they save as much of that as possible to throw into the 2-minute burst. Regardless of the difference in mechanics to jobs, it ends up making all of them feel samey because you're doing the exact same thing, sure the visuals are different, and the gameplay is different. But when you've mastered a job rotation, what then? It doesn't leave much room for expression and in turn longevity.
People dread any and all reworks nowadays because the track record of job Redesigns since (Shadowbringers) has been infuriating to people who played in the past before those points and it has stifled if not killed the engagement with the game as a whole and any hype people may have for Dawntrail because they're more worried the gameplay and job design of a job they love and adore will get messed up more than they are about anything else. This wasn't the case in Heavensward, Stormblood or even Shadowbringers for that matter. Job Design, job identity and job fantasy matters to people and is important. It is ignorant to think otherwise. If job design is stifled for everything else and people aren't having fun, they will either not engage with the content or they will leave. I know numerous people who haven't bothered doing the MSQ since 6.1 because of the changes to Job Design, Job Identity and Job Fantasy.

And to clarify further: The Job Design and complexity never affected encounter design at all in the past. Eden, Omega, Bahamut, Alexander. I could go on and on. There's a reason there are continual reuse of mechanics from ARR, HW or StB. Things like Limit Cut and Exaflare are mechanics introduced in those previous expansions from the encounter design that has continued to be reused in one way or another.

[Valence]

That's just how their combat philosophy is in this game. It's called good game design. You have the rotation of the job and you work towards mastering it. That is expression of player skill. Treat each job like a martial art system instead and you'll have a better experience. If you want improv, play a different game because that's not the design philosophy here.

Imagine a good martial arts game like street fighter where you'd have to execute the same rotation flawlessly without deviation.

Also proc jobs for instance make this comment not even relevant, it only works for fixed rotations. rng is our salvation yoshi, in procs we trust

[KenZentra]

Cont 2.

Just a little heads up, you can post, then edit that post adding all of the stuff it wouldn't let you cause of the character limit.

The forums have deeper mechanics than the game, crazy! This is a joke, please god no one take this seriously


But I agree. To (sorta) quote someone who had a similar problem with another MMO.

Perfect Balance = Reduced Depth (though i'd say NO depth)
If everything is supposed to be perfectly balanced, we'd all be grey blobs with 1 ability.
It gets rid of class identity, class niches, class specialization, class counters, unique buffs.

[Kazamaiya]

Just a little heads up, you can post, then edit that post adding all of the stuff it wouldn't let you cause of the character limit.

Perfect Balance = Reduced Depth (though i'd say NO depth)
If everything is supposed to be perfectly balanced, we'd all be grey blobs with 1 ability.
It gets rid of class identity, class niches, class specialization, class counters, unique buffs.

I knew there was a way to do that, i just didn't remember how to do it though. Thanks for the heads up.

As for Balancing. Ironically enough Stormblood had (Supposedly from what i've heard) better Role Balancing that Endwalker did (Bard, MCH and the casters were pretty even with the Melee DPS)