Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Sensui]

I remember playing Everquest and the community greatly appreciated Clerics and they were an incredible addition not only to the party but just for the tools they had outside of combat.

Yeah, other games have actual support / buffer /debuffer classes. 11 for example, skill chain and magic bursting. Could you imagine?

[SieyaM]

I actually really want to try out XI but not enough to pay another subscription for it, especially since I would have to figure out how to run the levelling experience solo with trusts and from what I have seen that game offers little guidance to new players.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

It's been my experience that when people say they "offered friendly advice" what they actually did was insult the player then told them to unsub or go watch a guide. Then they wonder why they got reported.

Being reported for insulting is well deserved. But suggested to watch a guide? Is that even an offense?

[Aravell]

Being reported for insulting is well deserved. But suggested to watch a guide? Is that even an offense?

I've unironically seen someone say that asking someone to go watch a guide is you disrespecting their time. I wish it was a joke.

[Shurrikhan]

Yeah, other games have actual support / buffer /debuffer classes. 11 for example, skill chain and magic bursting. Could you imagine?

Don't have to imagine how it worked there, but it was also far from great, and would more than likely work far worse here. Having to stick to just certain actions (and certain GCD speeds; Monk presumably gets told to get lost and SAM to equal NIN speed precisely) out of your whole kit per comp so that you could loop a multi-player-combo repeatedly is not an improvement to the gameplay, yeah that's the core of Skill Chains and Magic Bursts. Anything more productive would hardly be related to the original mechanics. Arguably, the fact that anyone using a weaponskill/spell out of combined party order and rhythm ruining the SC / MB... is core to those SC / MB mechanics.

Both mechanics were, in a nutshell, means of reduction (with other job/comp A, your viable choices become limited to X) for actual gameplay, replacing individual choice with pattern-matching and effectively making button bloat / narrowed and wasteful kits. It added an element of "party play", but in a particularly bloated/invasive/reductive manner. We can do better without it. Arguably even what we do now is still better.

(Neither had much to do with support/buffer/debuffer classes, either. Supports/buffers/debuffers didn't uniquely have access to the elements or attack types necessary to burst prior magics or chain off prior skills.)

[ForteNightshade]

snip

First and foremost, I think we need to look at Savage, Criterion and Ultimate all separately as they're asking very different things from their target demographic.

Nothing in Savage is all that demanding once you get in there and go through the typical trial and error one might expect. Ultimate, in my opinion, peeked with Dragonsong while Omega veered into "these mechanics simply aren't fun" territory. Naturally, that's subjective. I know several people who do enjoy TOP and plenty more who never want to see it again. I'm partially on the fence myself.

So what went wrong? Debuff vomit. You see a little bit of this in Savage and even Dragonsong but Omega constantly demands you keep looking at the party list, looking at other players, remembering symbols and etc. At some point you're so bogged down by the sheer amount of stuff you're tasked to remember and do, you're not engaging with the fight itself.

Criterion is where... it gets a bit odd. Ultimate is sort of intended to be the masochistic pursuit. At least if you're attempting it on content, or even in the expansion it released in. You kind of expect it even if some argue TOP went overboard. I have no clue who Criterion was designed for. While you might think the hardcore player. It's lack of rewards meant many of them where never going to look at it. While the difficulty is far high for more casual raiders.

Having never set foot in Criterion, I can't really comment on how I'd feel about Statice. At a glance, she looked like a complete cluster. Even the first boss is asking a lot from players. Despite that, I know several players who have killed and love the fight design for its sheer creativity, melee downtime notwithstanding.

I think the bigger issue isn't so much mechanics becoming too complicated but the near constant easing of every other aspect of the game has made it much harder for newer players to get their feet wet. The high end scene is an enormous step up from basically everything else. Granted, Extremes have arguably become more forgiving than they ever were.

Way I see it, why can't we have both? There's no reason some jobs can't be more complex than others provided they're rewarding to play. Black Mage isn't popular but ask any who main it and they're praise it up and down. Likewise, having some very mechanically dense fights, be they in Savage, Ultimate or Criterion isn't a bad thing. Just maybe lower the body checks a little or make visual cues more apparent? On the casual side, maybe bring things up just a notch. Especially if you're sale's pitch for the expansion is going to be yet another flashy healy spell they'll never actually press.

[LuciaMirain]

"Just maybe lower the body checks a little or make visual cues more apparent? On the casual side, maybe bring things up just a notch. Especially if you're sale's pitch for the expansion is going to be yet another flashy healy spell they'll never actually press."
The body checks have become a bit crazy tbh. We saw it already in shiva with Light rampant being the worst offender but then again with lions and so on. It never ended. I have raided since ARR and Ive never had to switch statics so many time as during the last 2-3 years due to the bodychecks making it impossible to get through a fight if not everyone knows exatly what to do. It is supposed to be fun, be recoverable. Yesterday my group went into P8S to get a clear for a friend for TOP and it was actually fun. Granted, we had echo and people were rusty as hell but things were recoverable, I got to use all my skills when shit went south and get the group up and the only real bad bodychecks were high concepts. We were actually laughing and joking. I havent laughed and joked during savage for a long long time. I think your sentenced summed it up pretty nicely. Casual contest is a snoozefest and savage is now a bodycheck and ultimate can be done without healers. Something went wrong somewhere.

[Supersnow845]

One thing I’ve never understood about more and more healing spells is the fact that unlike DPS and tanks which build on each other every healing skill you get is functionally a current healing skill you are going to press less to compensate

Like is getting pnuema equivalent 2.0 at level 100 really that exciting when it means you are going to be pressing actual pnuema less often than you do now

When was the last time any healer got a skill that felt like it was actively building off something else to give a coherent playstyle where you both enjoy pressing the new skill and also pressing older skills in order to get to said new skill (like how paradox makes the entire astral fire phase better or the spellblade combo made confitier better)

[Maltothoris]

So what went wrong? Debuff vomit. You see a little bit of this in Savage and even Dragonsong but Omega constantly demands you keep looking at the party list, looking at other players, remembering symbols and etc. At some point you're so bogged down by the sheer amount of stuff you tasked to remember and do, you're not engaging with the fight itself.

Not only that but we had quite the few instances in TOP where groups had reached the max buff/debuff limit that they weren't getting their buffs during certain burst phases and this was causing them to miss the dps check on p4 and the like.

[Saraide]

Not only that but we had quite the few instances in TOP where groups had reached the max buff/debuff limit that they weren't getting their buffs during certain burst phases and this was causing them to miss the dps check on p4 and the like.

They have to realize their mistake here finally right? Running into the buff/debuff cap happened with delubrum savage already but this time it happened in content jobs should be designed for.