Please stop alienating the playerbase with job total reworks

[strawberrycake]

Given the fairly consistent direction with Dragoon over the years i've been some what content, that being said it does need changes, the job is too smooth and the lack of heavy hitting moved mixed with the lack of there being something that upsets the flow makes the job very easy to go smooth brained with in most content. Throughout Pandemonium the fights have been okish enough to have enough ups and downs to make it feels fun. However I wish the job did this naturally.



A good example if you don't get my point would be looking at Ninja, you have a few distinct phases within your rotation, from the beginning of your opener into the actual burst, and then preparing your secondary burst before the full rotational reset. It's Diverse enough to keep you engaged but consistent enough to not feel bloated or overly full. DRG needs something similar and to say "just make it like reaper" feels reductive. I want DRG to stand on it's own identity and do better with what it had and now has to create a much more consistent feel and identity for it going into DT. And I hope they can deliver.

[Nadda]

I have to agree with what the OP is saying.

Jobs getting completely gutted and replaced with something completely different is a bit too much of a rework.
I believe those jobs had their rough edges of course maybe edging towards the overwhelming for some but now they've been smoothed out to the point of being underwhelming for everybody.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

The fact that there are considerable amount of players who actually face worries at the prospect of their job getting 'reworked/revamped' instead of excitement is pretty telling lol.

A brief look at their track record tells so much.

[ty_taurus]

meanwhile here I am hoping for a complete rework of Sage to give us an actually new 4th healer instead of the "scholar but smoothbrain" we were given.

[Burmecia]

I'm still in process of trying to learn to love new PLD, it's going so so slow...
124123555 or whatever the old rotation was was comfortable for me, smooth brained, just what I always loved.
Maybe it's the pinch of autism in me or something but having to not use that last atonement before new twirl of holy magic spam is still sending me to shadow realm.

[TheDustyOne]

About the only jobs I'd be 'okay' with total reworks would be the healers, but before that can be done it requires Square completely rethinking how healers should be played in content and accepting that we will have time to DPS (or otherwise fulfilling non-healing duties), and that those times should also be engaging. If they can't accept that, then any healer reworks will be in vain.

As for the reworks we've gone through over the past couple of expansions, I can think of only 2 that I liked; Ninja and Monk, and even they had changes I thought were bad. Ninja is a bit of a selfish reason in that I disliked oGCD mudras with the connection I have to the servers, as well as the fact that mudras became much punchier after converting to GCD. However I disliked the change to its combo DoT becoming a standard cooldown whose sole purpose was to be used under Trick (and has now been removed anyway). Current Monk has carved out something fun with the Blitz mechanic and I think all it needs is something to make Chakra a more interesting mechanic. Monk overall still feels like previous incarnations; it's super-fast and kept its unique combo system, and my only major complaints are the removal of most of its positionals and Riddle of Wind being an underwhelming skill.

As for the other reworks, I either dislike them or loathe them. I can't speak on MCH because I never played it pre-ShB.

DRK at the launch of ShB became a shell of its former self after people complained about Dark Arts spam. I've seen people praise the changes despite the fact that we changed from spamming Dark Arts to spamming Edge instead. When pressed on this, it really turns out that their problem was more around button frequency than just simply what button it was, something that could've been fixed with tweaks to MP generation and ability cost rather than losing all the choices that Dark Arts provided. DRK is now a job that has a glut of mostly uninteractive oGCDs that exist purely to bloat out bursts, and outside that burst it plays worse than the healers.

Like Ty, I liked the visual change to SMN, but that still doesn't excuse just how different the job feels as a whole. Summoning Bahamut used to feel like a ritual you built up towards after a couple of Dreadwyrm trances, now it's a standard cooldown. Pets used to fight alongside you with Egi-Assaults, now Carbuncle sits there, looks pretty and sometimes tosses you a shield. There used to be DoTs and cooldowns that interacted with them (Bane, Fester, Tri-Disaster), instead there's nothing. Aetherflow is a wasted mechanic and exists as filler, nothing more. Even if I agree with the visual change to SMN to play into its fantasy more, it should've kept some of those older interactions and ideas in the rework; Egi-Assaults that built ruin stacks, DoTs could've been replaced with summons providing those effects, etc.

I miss old PLD dearly; it was my main job and I still dislike what it's become, even after getting used to it. It now feels like a slower GNB, with its only positive being it doesn't have Double Down disrupting the rotation after a while. Goring Blade is just filler, MP has no purpose outside Clemency, and Requiescat is just Confiteor fodder rather than a BLM-style Despair burst. The defensive changes were nice, but considering the standard for tanks now is near-immortality, those buffs are the result of power-creep, tank sustain needs nerfing.

[Aravell]

The fact that there are considerable amount of players who actually face worries at the prospect of their job getting 'reworked/revamped' instead of excitement is pretty telling lol.

A brief look at their track record tells so much.

It's because they haven't once gotten a full rework done in a way that didn't alienate the original playerbase. The best they've managed was a lukewarm reception for the PLD rework.

Almost everytime, the people praising a job rework are the people who only started playing the job because of the rework.

[Zofian]

I will never play Summoner again until it is restored. It was my second class/job that I took on before even reaching the praetorium (which I also will never play again along with meridianum since their identities were ruined- they should be restored to being 8 players at the very least- these 2 duties are/were the first time a player sees/saw 'Full Party', it's kind of a big deal with the story- thus I have also 'lost' MSQ roulette from my game and actually miss doing these) and used Summoner the vast majority of the time up to and through Shadowbringers, then it got deleted from the game and replaced with a joke that bears no resemblance. Ever since the replacement there has been a hole in my character's story, like my character has amnesia and only a few fragments of memories of what happened before Endwalker. The game itself will never be whole for me again until Summoner is brought back.

Also, Gunbreaker, which I also don't play anymore because it was ruined by increasing Bloodfest's recast from 90 seconds to 120, meaning you now have to do 2 or 3 more full cycles of 1-2-3 slash during that 30 extra seconds to build cartridge fills, making the job a whole lot more boring and grindy. Essentially Gunbreaker was turned into Red Mage without the magic.

Machinist was apparently already ruined before I started playing it, as I found out during levelling that the animations get replaced with ridiculous stuff. I loved Machinist before that started happening. Machinist is another job I don't play, but mostly because Reaper has taken over as my 'lazy job' that I use for smashing roulettes and other duties on cruise control/chill time. I liked the workshop/brown leather/factory work vibe that was going on in the early MCH days, hopefully MCH can be changed and maybe split into two different jobs, with Machinist going back to it's roots and more of it with tool-based skills and basicer technical stuff- then the crazy animations can be taken out and put on a new and different job.

Astrologian I am still new to, but stopped playing it around level 50 because I don't feel or see a connection between the card skills and the rest of the skills. I appreciate the distinction of Astro's 2 regen skills also giving some instant hp aswell, which WHM's doesn't do, so that's something good. Other than that though, I feel it's a modified white mage that needs more frantic button presses more often for no visible benefit (and the buffs are only 15 seconds!). I cannot see the extra damage my buffs are doing so it's like working overtime for no pay (or someone else getting paid and credited for my work!). Keyboard and mouse users probably don't experience this factor the way controller users do- it's harder and irregular to have to constantly target the right type party member for an extra reason than usual on controller (for a healer). I'm hoping that whatever rework is coming, gives Astrologian what I feel would be a proper identity, but I doubt it. I like the idea of using cards, but it's difficult to chew and flavourless in it's current form. It doesn't really matter if you apply a card to the wrong player, it's all the same really and virtually a placebo. However I respect that some people may like it as-is and may hate a potential full rework, so there's that.

Sage is good but I already read ahead and found out that the attack skills change colour from red to blue almost instantly, at level 72, so I won't be levelling mine at all ever (and in a game where you don't get to make many choices at all, choosing to not level a job has thus become a decision I *can* make, that gives a character some identity). Why would you make the job more bland? In a game where most of the effects are already blue. Will settle for a change where they now become purple, green, orange, yellow, pink. Anything but blue or white really.

Every other job is 99% fine don't mess with them. Be wary of continuing the path of ripping out the game's foundations (any part of the game) as longer term players will indeed become increasingly alienated by the game as a whole. The graphical rework by itself may have unintended consequences, but I am optimistic that it won't.

[Supersnow845]

^if you liked SGE but don’t like the fact that all their skills are blue then try SCH, quite a similar class (though more complex) but SCH’s primary colours are yellow (GCD’s) and green (oGCD’s) with some orange thrown in there

It’s probably the most visually distinct healer compared to “you took your name too literally” WHM, “if I was green I would die by Effiel 65” SGE and “someone forgot to tell me that the sky is blue because of the sun and space is actually black” AST

[Merrigan]

It's because they haven't once gotten a full rework done in a way that didn't alienate the original playerbase. The best they've managed was a lukewarm reception for the PLD rework.

Almost everytime, the people praising a job rework are the people who only started playing the job because of the rework.

I'm asking sincerely, not to be sarcastic, and recognizing without question that many jobs could use a little extra thought in terms of design, but isn't that the sign of a successful rework?

I mean, from experience with MMORPGs: NO rework is appreciated. If we listen to the MMO fanbase in general, the job needs to retain its identity (which can mean anything and everything; Zofian talks, a little above, of colors for example as being an important identity base. Something I personally don't understand at all); but still undergo changes so that you don't die of boredom after playing the same character for 3 expansions. That's... Complicated. In fact, if we're honest: the original playerbase would certainly grumble no matter what they did, because beyond the design, there's also an attachment to the character that goes far beyond the rational appreciation of a rotation.

In the case of the summoner, it seems to me (and I could be wrong here) that the class is played more now. So it's rather a success from their point of view, regardless of whether the old-timers are angry or not.

Anyway, in relation to the original post: on the contrary, regular reworks (every two expansions) wouldn't be unwelcome. It would probably mean changing hands, but that's not dramatic in a game where you can play all the jobs. Not accepting this is tantamount to asking for what's currently happening, i.e. the more or less clumsy addition of new stacks in rotations, new powers that have no real impact or synergy (SAM, Shoha) because the overall dynamism of the job has already been drained for ages... And that it should be renewed in depth to find new avenues for improvement.