Is Dawntrail going to bring new things again?

[Valence]

Yeah. I only saw a part of the presentation of the first DT fanfest. I remember it saying "brand new battle content" or smth without further specification. A lot of fans take this as "Bozja or Eureka like area" but of course that could be completely wrong. I mean the variant dungeons are also "brand new battle content" or not? But i don't know if they already told us more about that

They mentioned a new field operation type of content (so Diadem/Eureka/Bozja like). We don't know more than this.

[Valence]

Or just don't do them. Which is what 90% of randoms do. But in saying that, I never do high-end, so grain of salt with the parsing crowd. I'm not saying removing them is some galaxy brain play. I'm saying that most people dont do them and don't care. And since none of them are tied to anything anymore, they exist only to make that crowd excited because number went up. So it really doesn't matter anymore.

This is probably because you've never set foot in high end then. Not doing your positionals in there is literally griefing, at least in the first weeks.

I love it because it just doesn't pass the smell test at all. Are we all really supposed to believe that a ton of people were going like "Whoah, they removed the DPS buttons from the healers down to 1 spam spell and a uniform 30s DoT! Time to start playing this MMO now, healers are fixed!"
Of course not, they didn't. You can apply this for any job that was changed going into ShB, the reality is that the other parts of the game are what drew people to it, and just as many of these ShB/EW players hate the way healers/tanks/etc play. The gameplay changes had nothing to do with its success.

I agree with the feeling, but as a counterpoint, I must point out that support roles have never been as popular. Queues were a lot more hardcore back then on DPS jobs. Tanks especially fare better, since they used to be THE job in need and today, it's more on healers although it's less clear cut.

[Ardeth]

This is probably because you've never set foot in high end then. Not doing your positionals in there is literally griefing, at least in the first weeks.

I do them. I find them pointless because I don't parse. Also, I have done Savage. Granted, it was back in Stormblood, but I did it. I was a tank back then. My dps mattered, but I also didn't give a shit about it. I told my group that much as well. And they never complained about it. You're assuming I don't do them because of my feelings towards them. You are wrong categorically. You're also assuming the run of the mill average player is going to think missing positionals is griefing. Shit most of them can't move out of aoe markers and run away with the stack markers at level 90. It's madness.

[Supersnow845]

This is probably because you've never set foot in high end then. Not doing your positionals in there is literally griefing, at least in the first weeks.



I agree with the feeling, but as a counterpoint, I must point out that support roles have never been as popular. Queues were a lot more hardcore back then on DPS jobs. Tanks especially fare better, since they used to be THE job in need and today, it's more on healers although it's less clear cut.

I’m not sure how swapping tanks as the “pls I’ll pay you to join my party” to healers really shows any remote improvement in the state of support roles, healers have worse satisfaction than they did pre 5.0 and they have never had as sustained length of time with functionally instant queues, tanks seem to have mildly improved but I’m not sure if it’s actual improvement on the tanks part or if tanks looks relatively better because healers have gotten so much worse

[Aravell]

I agree with the feeling, but as a counterpoint, I must point out that support roles have never been as popular. Queues were a lot more hardcore back then on DPS jobs. Tanks especially fare better, since they used to be THE job in need and today, it's more on healers although it's less clear cut.

Are you sure they're more popular now than they were before? It's very likely that people are more likely to casually play supports now because they're all roughly following the same mold so it's easier to swap within the role, also they made levelling a lot easier compared to the older eras so more people are likely to play more jobs. But if we're looking at people who main a role, I'd assume that a part of the people who main the tank or healer role would've left the role because of the massive simplifications.

Now, one can argue that the role is fine as long as there are people casually playing the role and replacing the vets who quit, but we have 2 DPS jobs that are pretty well-received coming. How many of the people who casually dabble in the support role would still play the support role after those 2 DPS jobs come out? And what would happen to said support roles if they fail to keep the newer players while also losing the older players?

[Valence]

I do them. I find them pointless because I don't parse. Also, I have done Savage. Granted, it was back in Stormblood, but I did it. I was a tank back then. My dps mattered, but I also didn't give a shit about it. I told my group that much as well. And they never complained about it. You're assuming I don't do them because of my feelings towards them. You are wrong categorically. You're also assuming the run of the mill average player is going to think missing positionals is griefing. Shit most of them can't move out of aoe markers and run away with the stack markers at level 90. It's madness.

You said meaningless, so it's possible we didn't understand the word the same way there. I only replied because they do indeed matter in challenging content, at least for a while.

If you meant meaningless in terms of design though... It's very divisive from what I've seen. Some people swear by them, some hate them (I do hate them, that's what does keep me in the rphys department for serious content).

I’m not sure how swapping tanks as the “pls I’ll pay you to join my party” to healers really shows any remote improvement in the state of support roles, healers have worse satisfaction than they did pre 5.0 and they have never had as sustained length of time with functionally instant queues, tanks seem to have mildly improved but I’m not sure if it’s actual improvement on the tanks part or if tanks looks relatively better because healers have gotten so much worse

I have never implied that support roles are faring better in terms of design. I think they are in a terrible state, healers especially, but tanks as well. I'm just saying the queues were more hardcore on DPS back in the days, which has to account for something (like Aravell said, more accessible, underlying battle mechanisms outright axed or simplified, less intimidating, etc).

[Ardeth]

You said meaningless, so it's possible we didn't understand the word the same way there. I only replied because they do indeed matter in challenging content, at least for a while.

If you meant meaningless in terms of design though... It's very divisive from what I've seen. Some people swear by them, some hate them (I do hate them, that's what does keep me in the rphys department for serious content).

I don't hate them. I just don't see your average player getting bent outta shape because they lost 60 potency on an attack. To me, at that level, it is completely meaningless. Sure, high-end people get their rocks off, but I don't see nailing a positional hard. And if you removed them, I could see the combat improving since that limitation is gone. You don't have to plan around them, and in most fights, they already don't. So why tow that line? They're basically irrelevant now.

[Supersnow845]

You said meaningless, so it's possible we didn't understand the word the same way there. I only replied because they do indeed matter in challenging content, at least for a while.

If you meant meaningless in terms of design though... It's very divisive from what I've seen. Some people swear by them, some hate them (I do hate them, that's what does keep me in the rphys department for serious content).



I have never implied that support roles are faring better in terms of design. I think they are in a terrible state, healers especially, but tanks as well. I'm just saying the queues were more hardcore on DPS back in the days, which has to account for something (like Aravell said, more accessible, underlying battle mechanisms outright axed or simplified, less intimidating, etc).

Nor did I, I said that the swapping tanks for healers as the role that’s always in need doesn’t show the support roles are more popular like you originally implied The queues have been roughly stable, fluctuating based on the recently released jobs, queues may have been proportionally longer because there were less players but it’s not like any changes made since about SB have suddenly flooded the queues with support roles

[Valence]

As a player that started in vanilla HW, I do remember having notoriously longer dps queues, whether it was for targeted leveling dungeons, or roulettes (all of them). Tank queues were always instant (like healers today), and healers were somewhere in between. My point is that I always felt the need for support more dire back then. Could wrong, I don't have SE's data. But the point provided by Aravell above don't seem like a huge leap of logic to me.

[Zaiekk]

The only thing I'm hoping for is that they don't dumb the game down further. I've been here since before HW launched, when we had "cross-class" abilities, and tanks had DPS and Tank stances. Back when aggro management was a thing. It's been sad to see so many features/skills/etc pruned away. SCH/SMN feels the most egregious; they removed enough skills/abilities to build a whole new class with it. I miss my DoTs. As a SCH, it gave me something to do during healing downtime, besides spamming Broil 60 times.