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

[CelestiCer]

I agree. Combo compression is good for the game if they are able to use the vacant keys to introduce more complexity, preferably with other actions that interact with the compressed combo.

Exactly. Heavy Emphasis on " If ", cause Square's history of so many simplifications to our entire roster of Jobs? Combo-Compression would just be another big " If " to throw on the pile of past stupefied changes, mhm.

You can repeat this a million times and people are still gonna be making posts about blindly removing things, at this point I'm convinced most job change posts are just self sabotage, or trying to sabotage other peoples fun thinking they know better.

True. Lots vouch for streamlining Jobs they don't even play. Good recent example were Friends discussing Job-changes two days ago in Discord with our Healer main believing I would love Combo-Compression and Cast-Time removal from my Samurai... To quote on quote " Optimally clean up the Job's kit " with the assumption that Dishing out damage easier with pressing as few buttons to do so would be more Fun. It felt like sabotage, but I knew they meant it which is sad and worth every facepalm I did...

Feels out of touch to look at a Job's kit and only analyze functionality. This shoves away how a Job feels to play, paving the path to deem everything unnecessary and the conclusion to make it all erasable. Bloat is one thing but killing how a Job feels to play is another. Imagine Square removed all Caster Job's Cast times, BLM incl... Not living up to the role of Caster but hey! it's at least all functional, right?

Margin of Error of Jobs gives a Good feedback loop. No matter how easy or difficult Job execution is, the Game gives numerous ways for you to mess up and it feels good to perform it as perfect as you can? regardless of it all because we don't play Perfect 247 we're flawed Humans after all no matter how mapped out our rotations are. Be it...

- Fat Fingering
- Slide-Casting
- Muscle Memory
- Resource management
- Hitting all positionals 247
- Proper weaving & never clipping
- Feeding Raid-Buffs
- Even impossibly miss-pressing Combo Buttons

All of which surface level = Easy and Basic, Yes. But deleting all of it for the sake of Optimized Functionality and more with no promise of it being replaced with anything better? robs players of Job execution having an ounce of reward feel to it.

Optimized Functionality doesn't default to Optimized Fun, at least not for me. And removal of anything is no promise that we get anything in return that gives anything other then making Jobs that much easier to play both in functionality and how it feels to play. So I am not so much for opposing Combo Compression? as I am against making Jobs dumber and me drawing the line at " Somewhere " for how much dumber Square can make Job-Gameplay vs " Nowhere ".

[Valence]

Because it's a skill to do said combos. You can already add more in, the combos being one button doesnt make it suddenly possible. Also if you're not playing content that makes you actually use your entire kit, thats a content specific issue and not a overall game issue. In Savage and Ultimate you have to use all those buttons and it's currently not hard to even do so. If you did add in anything New, it's still the underlying math thats the issue, not how it's executed. Because when we take a look at the math of the 2 min meta, it forces everything into ONE window, thats why is all feels samey, and boring, and simple, there is no theory crafting outside of who does what when, you can plan an entire fight down to the T, and most fights are now identical.

So the issue is simplicity right now, isn't from mechanical execution, thats just a symptom, it's from the math forcing us all into one space and there no room for agency and diversity. making it all one button doesn;t take us out of the 2 min window, all Cool downs must be used there, tanks will still have to use AOE mit or Reprisal At the same spots, healers will still have to hold their big damage button, for the 2 min, GCD healing will still be a no go. Nothing would change and it all just be more boring.

It's a skill to press 1-2-3? kek

I have also absolutely no idea what the rest of your argument has to do with what we were talking about (Math? 2 min meta? What?).

[Valence]

I agree. Combo compression is good for the game if they are able to use the vacant keys to introduce more complexity, preferably with other actions that interact with the compressed combo.

To me, the only reason combos could exist as separate keys are in the case of the branching ones, because that's the actual complexity of the system. A common 1-2-3 doesn't put your brain and decision making to work, it's just a test of your muscle memory.

It's the whole thing isn't it? The game had literally no basic 1-2-3 combo until ShB came out. All melees had branching combos, literally all of them, even if just by a key. Tanks had branching combos as well (aggro combo vs dps combo). RDM had same-ish proccing combos, other casters didn't have any. All rphys had proccing combos (full 100% procs at that, which DNC can't even boast to do, only bard still does those days).

MCH now has a 1-2-3 combo, Tanks with the exception of WAR (funnily enough) have 1-2-3 combos, RPR has 1-2-3... That's a lot of jobs that got their procs or branches removed, and the new ones don't even seem to bother which is quite telling.

[Colt47]

It's a skill to press 1-2-3? kek

I have also absolutely no idea what the rest of your argument has to do with what we were talking about (Math? 2 min meta? What?).

If you think that savage fights are about using 1-2-3 on a keyboard you're either making a joke, or have no idea what you are talking about to begin with.

[Raikai]

If you think that savage fights are about using 1-2-3 on a keyboard you're either making a joke, or have no idea what you are talking about to begin with.

Right now the complexity ('fun') of an encounter lies on its design and not on job gameplay... That does have a much more limited shelf life than if it was the other way around. You eventually clear the encounter and suddenly it goes from challenging to very easy (esp. for healers), because jobs aren't as engaging anymore. And then, moving on to the next fight, the amount of high end content is very limited, even if you decide to "go play Ultimates".

Ideally for the player engagement front, the job design and encounter complexity should be at balanced levels, but they are not.

[Valence]

If you think that savage fights are about using 1-2-3 on a keyboard you're either making a joke, or have no idea what you are talking about to begin with.

Are you moving the goalposts? I thought this was about the intricacies of playing combos and what they could bring for job gameplay. Hell, the whole thread is about "job gameplay", not "encounter gameplay".

Who spoke about savage encounter designs?

[strawberrycake]

It's a skill to press 1-2-3? kek

I have also absolutely no idea what the rest of your argument has to do with what we were talking about (Math? 2 min meta? What?).

YEah you're either a troll or missing the point.

[Colt47]

Right now the complexity ('fun') of an encounter lies on its design and not on job gameplay... That does have a much more limited shelf life than if it was the other way around. You eventually clear the encounter and suddenly it goes from challenging to very easy (esp. for healers), because jobs aren't as engaging anymore. And then, moving on to the next fight, the amount of high end content is very limited, even if you decide to "go play Ultimates".

Ideally for the player engagement front, the job design and encounter complexity should be at balanced levels, but they are not.

Additionally, Savage wasn't intended to be a broadly adopted mode play. It became that way due to the lack of other content, job simplification, and the DC travel system introducing more people to the culture of DCs focused on the content. And as you say, the simplification of the combat system (increase to mob speed so kiting isn't a thing anymore, lack of usage for old stun skills and Crowd Control, etc) leads to a linear style of play from the job perspective. One of the details that people seem to miss is that they sort of changed how the game worked after HW by separating out these extra facets from the main game and moved them to Bozja and Eureka. So by not having an exploratory zone in Endwalker all we had to work with was the base system, and I can say there were many times where I wished we did have eureka style extra job actions in main content.

[Quuoooote]

It's a skill to press 1-2-3? kek

I see this sentiment thrown out a lot, but yes, the general idea is supposed to be that maintaining the correct rotation while focusing on Extreme/Savage/Ultimate mechanics is a skill. If someone is capable of pressing their buttons perfectly even while they're being overwhelmed by unfamiliar mechanics they're just seeing for the first time and/or progging, that should indicate a level of muscle memory/job mastery that can only be attributed to player skill. Now, in Endwalker the focus has definitely shifted away from job complexity into mechanics dancing, so people take the combo gameplay for granted because of how easy it is to execute. But you can probably imagine a world (maybe in previous expansions, even!) where combos are more involved, or the rotation is harder with a heavy focus on oGCD management, or you have more individual responsibilities to juggle on your job (TP and MP management say hello) and more easily picture how even a 1-2-3 combo provides value in creating difficulty that allows for player skill to be expressed. At the end of the day, as minuscule as it is, even a 1-2-3 combo creates more of a skill floor and fail state than mindlessly pressing 1-1-1 over and over.

To tie this in to the topic of the thread, it's been a massive failing on Endwalker's part to shift all of the intricacies of combat into the mechanics dancing while leaving the players with nothing interesting to do. A lot of jobs can basically sleep through the majority of their rotation, because if it's not the burst window, you can bet they're doing bland 1-2-3 filler with maybe an occasional oGCD to dump gauge when at risk of overcapping. And that leads to the sentiment we have now, that "1-2-3 combos are so boring and bland and skill-less, we're better off making them into auto-combos!". Did people forget that healers have been tearing their hair out since Stormblood ended because they've been reduced to 1-1-1-1 gameplay for two entire expansions now? The solution is to move in the opposite direction: make jobs more involved and developed, give them more things to do, and the focus will be alleviated from the extremely barebones 1-2-3 combo gameplay we have going for us right now. Give players a skill ceiling that takes real time and effort to achieve, something to strive for, and people will actually want to engage with the gameplay to earn that mastery — that's hundreds of hours of content right there that EW is severely lacking because of how simplified the core gameplay has become.

[strawberrycake]

Did people forget that healers have been tearing their hair out since Stormblood ended because they've been reduced to 1-1-1-1 gameplay for two entire expansions now? The solution is to move in the opposite direction: make jobs more involved and developed, give them more things to do, and the focus will be alleviated from the extremely barebones 1-2-3 combo gameplay we have going for us right now. Give players a skill ceiling that takes real time and effort to achieve, something to strive for, and people will actually want to engage with the gameplay to earn that mastery — that's hundreds of hours of content right there that EW is severely lacking because of how simplified the core gameplay has become.

All this.

It's a skill to press 1-2-3? kek

I have also absolutely no idea what the rest of your argument has to do with what we were talking about (Math? 2 min meta? What?).

It's why the 2 min meta was bought up, it's why Savage was bought up. Healers are the exact reason why combo consolidation would never work and why the 2 min meta is INTRINSIC to this dicussion. Prior to it's existence, in ShB and SB, we had multiple burst windows to break up only pressing 1-2-3. And because of that It was and still is a skill so many have mastered to do while in content.

Sadly jobs like BRD, MCH and what not have been dumbed down to being near where healers are and healers are BEGGING to have better kits. It's why I said that the current state of the combo system is a symptom of the 2 min meta, the combo system is fine, the game needs to be better.

Like you honestly can't talk about the state of combat without the 2 min meta being bought up.