XIV EW Job-Gameplay is Terrible... Why?

[ty_taurus]

I really do not care about players who have a negative amount of interest in the actual combat of the game and just want rewards. The games difficult is not and has never been defined by the complexity of the jobs—rather, it is defined by the lack of expectations set by the content itself, which barely checks if you’re breathing or not.

Kneecapping job design time and time again because some percentage of players couldn’t care less whether their job was literally 1 button is insulting. It doesn’t matter to them. It didn’t matter to them in ARR, HW, or SB, why does it magically matter now?

[Colt47]

I really do not care about players who have a negative amount of interest in the actual combat of the game and just want rewards. The games difficult is not and has never been defined by the complexity of the jobs—rather, it is defined by the lack of expectations set by the content itself, which barely checks if you’re breathing or not.

Kneecapping job design time and time again because some percentage of players couldn’t care less whether their job was literally 1 button is insulting. It doesn’t matter to them. It didn’t matter to them in ARR, HW, or SB, why does it magically matter now?

I don't think it is so simple as people just want rewards, because getting items is not really what makes something worthwhile as much as the journey to get the reward. Yoshi P. believes that players just want rewards immediately which is overlooking the value of the journey. This is unfortunately, a common problem when dealing with MMOs because by design they want people playing longer so they pay more money.

The first half of the problem is that the rewards they offer are often out of sight and out of mind. Orchestrions, housing items, and even outdoor housing items, tend to be unimpressive rewards because they never are available readily to display, so they should be relatively trivial to acquire. Dyable armor is also kind of a trivial reward because most of the aesthetic is determined by the base armor set, and on top of which dying armor is a basic customization system that should be available on all armors anyway.

So that leaves minions, mounts, and higher gear level items as the primary "long term" rewards, which pushes things in an aggressive performance related environment. What they are missing are the kind of special flare that games such as Path of Exile have on offer like special cosmetic glow effects, travel effects, weapon effects, etc, that people could earn from doing various things and have more long lasting value, thus making the tougher journey to acquire them worthwhile.

In the end the game is what the developers make, they just don't always know what they are making when they make specific choices like this. Glamour items they've added like the umbrellas and cosmetic wings are probably the start to these special flare items, but they got to work in all environments and right now they don't. They also need ways to turn them on and off just like weapon effects.

[ty_taurus]

You know what rewards I’d grind for? More attack spells on my healer. That something that will get me grinding Criterion. You want me to make my island sanctuary level? Give me another GCD attack on Sage.

[Colt47]

You know what rewards I’d grind for? More attack spells on my healer. That something that will get me grinding Criterion. You want me to make my island sanctuary level? Give me another GCD attack on Sage.

They already went on record saying healers are where they are going to be staying, for good or ill. Healer is going to be the dog of FFXIV both early and late game it seems. Albeit, at least at end game they got enough spells to work with for healing to keep it from going into complete boredom, but an extra attack on healer doesn't sound like it is coming. Not unless it turns into something like the Pneuma laser from Sage. The over all direction with the job design is more indicative of the complete lack of resources they have to support good interactive gameplay. We're basically a step or two above genshin impact levels of complexity.

[ty_taurus]

They already went on record saying healers are where they are going to be staying, for good or ill. Healer is going to be the dog of FFXIV both early and late game it seems. Albeit, at least at end game they got enough spells to work with for healing to keep it from going into complete boredom, but an extra attack on healer doesn't sound like it is coming. Not unless it turns into something like the Pneuma laser from Sage.

Well, the funny thing about declarative statements is that Yoshi P didn't sign a blood pact with a goatia demon to never add another attack spell to healers for the rest of FFXIV's existence. He is allowed to change is mind, as are the other combat designers. Just because someone says something one day does not mean they are forever bound to that. Which is not to say that the opposite is objectively more likely either, but rather, continuing to put pressure on the subject at least has the capability of swaying their stance. We have absolutely no clue how likely the continued discussion about healer design will be to forcing a shift in design philosophy, but we can say with certainty that it is a nonzero chance.

My favorite example of 'a director's word is not eternal' would be Masahiro Sakurai. When Super Smash Bros Brawl was released, he stated in an interview that Animal Crossing would never get a fighter because it wouldn't make sense. Fast forward to the very next installment in the series, and Villager was literally the first newcomer revealed.

I would rather spent time out of my day trying everything I can to convince the designers to pivot their perspective than actually play the game at this point. But at least for me personally, I'm just committed until we know what changes (if any) dawntrail holds. If nothing changes, then I intend to give up and leave the game forever, or until a future expansion does change things.

[Maltothoris]

Well, the funny thing about declarative statements is that Yoshi P didn't sign a blood pact with a goatia demon to never add another attack spell to healers for the rest of FFXIV's existence. He is allowed to change is mind, as are the other combat designers. Just because someone says something one day does not mean they are forever bound to that. Which is not to say that the opposite is objectively more likely either, but rather, continuing to put pressure on the subject at least has the capability of swaying their stance. We have absolutely no clue how likely the continued discussion about healer design will be to forcing a shift in design philosophy, but we can say with certainty that it is a nonzero chance.

My favorite example of 'a director's word is not eternal' would be Masahiro Sakurai. When Super Smash Bros Brawl was released, he stated in an interview that Animal Crossing would never get a fighter because it wouldn't make sense. Fast forward to the very next installment in the series, and Villager was literally the first newcomer revealed.

I would rather spent time out of my day trying everything I can to convince the designers to pivot their perspective than actually play the game at this point. But at least for me personally, I'm just committed until we know what changes (if any) dawntrail holds. If nothing changes, then I intend to give up and leave the game forever, or until a future expansion does change things.

Funny enough we already had a instance where he did do that. https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post3331508

In this little interview here he said that magic would never be blocked and then come 4.0, Plds could block magic.

[ty_taurus]

Funny enough we already had a instance where he did do that. https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post3331508

In this little interview here he said that magic would never be blocked and then come 4.0, Plds could block magic.

Yoshi P actually has a long history of saying something is "impossible" only to go ahead and do it anyway the next expansion. I mean just look at Viera and Hrothgar... The entire reason we've gotten new hairstyles, male Viera, and Female Hrothgar is specifically because people were not satisfied with Shadowbringers' approach to those those races. If no one said anything, and everyone just accepted that Viera and Hrothgar were going to stay that way, then they would've. That proves that feedback can do something.

[xbahax92]

Funny enough we already had a instance where he did do that. https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post3331508

In this little interview here he said that magic would never be blocked and then come 4.0, Plds could block magic.

I remember the same for magical and physical attacks, YoshiP wanted us to figure out if an AOE attack is one or the other.
One of the latest patch added the phys/magi icons to any enemy attack.
Opinions change quite a lot.

[iVolke]

I don't think it is so simple as people just want rewards, because getting items is not really what makes something worthwhile as much as the journey to get the reward.

Yet so many people defend the current relic design of teleporting to an vendor, buying 3 materials, turning them in, watching a cutscene, then receiving lore-wise a super special weapon that is really hard to make. Endwalker has completely removed the journey and there are people cheering for it.

[Colt47]

Yet so many people defend the current relic design of teleporting to an vendor, buying 3 materials, turning them in, watching a cutscene, then receiving lore-wise a super special weapon that is really hard to make. Endwalker has completely removed the journey and there are people cheering for it.

I don't like the way they stagger relic releases in general and I totally understand the reasoning that some people might like the current relic grind. The problem is their content design keeps pushing everyone towards having to do savage when the gear level should be achievable outside of savage at the exact same point savage releases. People should be doing savage for the challenge of completing it, not for getting geared up to be BIS, but the old design motto seems to keep burning with this team. The only reason they did this with gear level is because they lack any good customization rewards for beating savage. They literally stapled dyable raid armor as a savage reward: The very basic system we should have on all armor regardless of the situation. It is unbelievably stupid that they have not moved on from this.

But from what we have seen so far this expansion... they got problems implementing full features. Glamour items like wings couldn't even be used in combat for a long while and even though they can be used now, we can't use them in instances. The portrait system is a walking alpha test that is barely at beta stage, given that we have to constantly reapply the portrait with so much as a change in a ring slot item and it had to go through a second pass just to deal with people using positioning to make rather "creative" portraits to show to people. New races being released with a complete lack of support for helmets that has to be gradually introduced over time is another example but probably not as bad as the glamour and portraits. And then we got the DC travel which felt like a rather big social experiment, given the lack of almost all available content outside core content when one is on a different DC, let alone a different world on the same DC.

Again, we don't know what trials the developers are having to deal with, just these points are out there and it shows that they must have some rather considerable challenges going on.