ARR or Heavensward Classic

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I still would like to try it I could care less if it had any of that stuff I would play it just for the story. You might not have liked 1.0 or the arr-hw period much but there are people who legitimately did enjoy it or have good memories or are curious enough who would like to try it. I don't see a reason why a classic server should be denied because people come into these threads and claim people like me and others are "blinded" by nostalgia or that we are faking our enjoyment of that period or our fond memories are fake or that it be a waste of time because you or some others didn't personally enjoy a certain period of a games history. There are aspects of modern ff14 Ilike but I also liked certain aspects of previous periods of the games life that I would like to experience again even if its just for occasional nostalgia.

The 1.0 story was less than 10 quests. It barely even started. And it's all on YouTube.



They tossed 1.0 in the can, as in, code is gone. 1.0 is never coming back.



And I actually enjoyed arr more than most if you see how people react when having to go through it. Same with heavensward. The problem with 3.0 is that people see certain aspects in a vacuum. Sure combat classes were more complex, great. Now look at 2.x raid vs 3.x. 2.0 was bustling with pretty much everyone I knew raiding back then. 3.x killed that, and that's where we got the raiding is only for the super hardcore mentality that persists to this day.
3.x raiding was so broken that it nearly died in XIV altogether, smaller casual groups broke completely and anyone who though they were good transferred to gilgamesh to try and get clears because "raid server"



Im not a hardcore raider, and I've done raids since launch.

[Doopliss]

And if we're being honest, not even Heavensward in general was complex for any job, let alone aggro management or otherwise. FFXIV has always been a relatively easy and forgiving game. It was less forgiving in Heavensward and had very punishing mechanics, like how vital positionals were, how much of a commitment Cleric Stance was, and other such examples, but so what? The game wasn't difficult to clear content with. Everyone was still able to progress the MSQ and clear all the major story questlines barring Coils of Bahamut (which no amount of simplified job design would help players clear until we got strong enough to solo them unsynched). So you occasionally wiped in a dungeon or alliance roulette every once in a while. You got up, and you did it again, and cleared it.

At the end of the day, the complexity of job design is and has always been largely optional for 95% of FFXIV.

This is going to sound sarcastic but you're like, legitimately the smartest person on the forums right now, lol. A lot of people really don't get this. I know there's many in current day FFXIV that haven't ever experienced HW (the expansion, not the story) due to timing, so it's not something they can really know, but even with the goofy jank present at the time, FFXIV was by far and wide the most easily understandable MMO my dumbass 17-year-old brain had ever seen back around 2014.

For all the "you're just nostalgic!" and "you're wearing rose-tinted glasses!" remarks, I feel like nearly the opposite phenomenon is happening to those who seemingly can't stand the idea of HW-esque job designs. They're imagining it being way worse than it actually was...or had perhaps some unfortunate run-ins in party finder, I guess.

Now, I don't actually think they'll ever bring the game back to that level of job "complexity," but I honestly feel like it's just a hard truth that they've steered way too far into the opposite direction. They need to be less scared about raising the skill ceiling. Compared to now, it was rare to hear somebody in full earnestness claim the endgame was too boring throughout A Realm Reborn to Stormblood...which I think is telling.

[Arkdra]

This is going to sound sarcastic but you're like, legitimately the smartest person on the forums right now, lol. A lot of people really don't get this. I know there's many in current day FFXIV that haven't ever experienced HW (the expansion, not the story) due to timing, so it's not something they can really know, but even with the goofy jank present at the time, FFXIV was by far and wide the most easily understandable MMO my dumbass 17-year-old brain had ever seen back around 2014.

For all the "you're just nostalgic!" and "you're wearing rose-tinted glasses!" remarks, I feel like nearly the opposite phenomenon is happening to those who seemingly can't stand the idea of HW-esque job designs. They're imagining it being way worse than it actually was...or had perhaps some unfortunate run-ins in party finder, I guess.

Now, I don't actually think they'll ever bring the game back to that level of job "complexity," but I honestly feel like it's just a hard truth that they've steered way too far into the opposite direction. They need to be less scared about raising the skill ceiling. Compared to now, it was rare to hear somebody in full earnestness claim the endgame was too boring throughout A Realm Reborn to Stormblood...which I think is telling.

People aren't hating on HW job designs for being too complex. HW's game balance was disastrous. 5 of your raid slots were basically set. Warrior, ninja, scholar, dragoon, and 1 of the ranged phys. Could you deviate? Sure, but at no other point in the entire games history would you putting your raid at such a massive disadvantage for disregarding the meta. Ninja and the ranged phys specifically had just such game changing utility.

Even setting aside raid meta concerns, ast and dark were panned. Ast eventually recovered after 3.3 but it came at the expense of shunting whm into the suffering zone. People hated cast time bard so much.

[Arkdra]

Also, saying hw jobs are more complex is not consistent ANYWAY! It's a subjective claim but here's my list

More complex in hw: Sch, pld, drk, mch, smn, war.

less complex: drg, nin, bard

Debateable/I don't remember them well enough: whm, ast, blm, mnk

[rawker]

When Noct Sect was buffed, it actually put some dent to the number of SCHs unlike WAR + DRK for optimal dps from tanks. there's a reason PLD underwent reworking.

[Doopliss]

People aren't hating on HW job designs for being too complex. HW's game balance was disastrous. 5 of your raid slots were basically set. Warrior, ninja, scholar, dragoon, and 1 of the ranged phys. Could you deviate? Sure, but at no other point in the entire games history would you putting your raid at such a massive disadvantage for disregarding the meta. Ninja and the ranged phys specifically had just such game changing utility.

Even setting aside raid meta concerns, ast and dark were panned. Ast eventually recovered after 3.3 but it came at the expense of shunting whm into the suffering zone. People hated cast time bard so much.

I love how people keep trying to use this exact predictable argument on me. I've played so many MMOs that calling HW's balance "disastrous" is honestly just funny. Yeah, those raid sets were locked for people who only cared about playing the numbers game. The "massive disadvantage" people were really whining about was getting a DPS loss for their FFLogs upload. You could still easily clear these fights on any job, it just required you to know what you were doing...which was also true when using the meta people desperately relied on.

I still fondly remember just bringing in random friends constantly into A12S after clearing it, still during the peak of its relevancy, on whatever roles they felt like. We did it with 2 BLMs sometimes, 2 MNKs another time. Would have a BRD without a DRG. Sometimes did it with the supposedly crippled and dying PLD, or without any Physical Ranged support at all. Did Healer combos with SCH+WHM, AST+WHM, etc, with no problems.

Also DRK and AST were "panned" even though, before their busted buffs like 20% Balance, they were still seen as requirements for Alexander raids? Which was it? I know their outputs were lowballed on release, but that was definitely still fixed "enough" before 3.3. Job designs that are still inherently fun but have bad numbers can be fixed a lot more easily than job designs that are dreadfully boring with good numbers.

Anyway, sorry for being petty, but, skill issue.

[Rekh]

I'd choose ARR over HW any day. Mainly because at that point jobs lost nothing; almost every job had dots and you had some control over where you allocated stats, as superficial as it was; for the majority of players (non-raid population) it was fun semi-building your job differently from others. I don't know, overall ARR felt funner, even if I still liked HW.

[OgruMogru]

I love how people keep trying to use this exact predictable argument on me. I've played so many MMOs that calling HW's balance "disastrous" is honestly just funny. Yeah, those raid sets were locked for people who only cared about playing the numbers game. The "massive disadvantage" people were really whining about was getting a DPS loss for their FFLogs upload. You could still easily clear these fights on any job, it just required you to know what you were doing...which was also true when using the meta people desperately relied on.

I still fondly remember just bringing in random friends constantly into A12S after clearing it, still during the peak of its relevancy, on whatever roles they felt like. We did it with 2 BLMs sometimes, 2 MNKs another time. Would have a BRD without a DRG. Sometimes did it with the supposedly crippled and dying PLD, or without any Physical Ranged support at all. Did Healer combos with SCH+WHM, AST+WHM, etc, with no problems.

Also DRK and AST were "panned" even though, before their busted buffs like 20% Balance, they were still seen as requirements for Alexander raids? Which was it? I know their outputs were lowballed on release, but that was definitely still fixed "enough" before 3.3. Job designs that are still inherently fun but have bad numbers can be fixed a lot more easily than job designs that are dreadfully boring with good numbers.

Anyway, sorry for being petty, but, skill issue.

HW job gameplay was really held back by HW structuring and the lack of QoL that has since been implemented. There were missteps in job balacing ofc but I still think all the frustrations with the jobs were made much much worse by other barebones systems like no PF, No cross server, the unbalanced party buffs forcing certain comps [which has nothing to do with how the jobs themselves functioned - it was just an extra numbers bonus] even waiting between pulls for cooldowns was a pressure point. I'd love to see how gen pop would react to HW job design today if it wasn't also paired with godawful infrastructure and a stagnant pool of raiders making the mood awful. I mean that last one is inescapable but yeah -_-

[ty_taurus]

People aren't hating on HW job designs for being too complex. HW's game balance was disastrous. 5 of your raid slots were basically set. Warrior, ninja, scholar, dragoon, and 1 of the ranged phys. Could you deviate? Sure, but at no other point in the entire games history would you putting your raid at such a massive disadvantage for disregarding the meta. Ninja and the ranged phys specifically had just such game changing utility.

Even setting aside raid meta concerns, ast and dark were panned. Ast eventually recovered after 3.3 but it came at the expense of shunting whm into the suffering zone. People hated cast time bard so much.

Okay, so... rebalance them. I don't really understand why we're roadblocking at this. Action parameters are a completely different piece to the gameplay than the actual rotational flow of each job, yet your statement implies that Heavensward job design is defined by its imbalance. I think you're severely misunderstanding what is actually being asked here.

What is being asked for are things like tanks having more defined play styles, healers having more attack spells, MP management and aggro management mattering, summoner not being a job with a macro-able rotation... I don't understand why you would think restoring qualities like that can only be accomplished by reverting to the exact state of balance that existed back then.

[Doopliss]

HW job gameplay was really held back by HW structuring and the lack of QoL that has since been implemented. There were missteps in job balacing ofc but I still think all the frustrations with the jobs were made much much worse by other barebones systems like no PF, No cross server, the unbalanced party buffs forcing certain comps [which has nothing to do with how the jobs themselves functioned - it was just an extra numbers bonus] even waiting between pulls for cooldowns was a pressure point. I'd love to see how gen pop would react to HW job design today if it wasn't also paired with godawful infrastructure and a stagnant pool of raiders making the mood awful. I mean that last one is inescapable but yeah -_-

Yeah, I do agree that the QoL was definitely bad in HW unfortunately. I can see your point in that part having an effect on peoples' views, and for good reason. They at least did fix the no cooldown reset thing for the final tier of Alexander, but it was super grating on all the earlier bosses. A6S made me feel the most insane about it, lol.

However I do sometimes miss some things like actually having to meet up beside the raid entrance to get started--but I know THAT is actually just nostalgia speaking. It just felt more lively in a way, and I still remember the names of people I met outside of the Coil spots, since I could just chill out and talk and suddenly be invited to join, haha. That's just a novelty, though, and I know I was particularly lucky because I've always been on Balmung; an active legacy server. Would still love to have job and encounter design closer to HW but with current QoL...though even I know that's a pipe dream.