/r/ffxivdiscussion: Would you be excited for a top-to-bottom rework of all jobs?

[Swordsman]

I thought this was an interesting discussion to copy and paste over from the ffxivdiscussion subreddit to give it more visibility, and I'm curious to hear what other players have to say.

Full title: Would you be excited for a top-to-bottom rework of all jobs, even if you enjoy the current job design of your "main" job? Also, should 8.0 skip new jobs in favor of the rework?

Original Post: I'm coming at this as a Red Mage main that really enjoys the way Red Mage feels to play. With 8.x being the timeframe for a job rework would you be excited to see what they come up with or would you be trepidatious they might ruin the thing you like to play?
In addition should 8.0 skip new jobs entirely so the team can focus on rebalancing and refreshing older jobs instead? What are your thoughts?

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Notable comments:

"Yea I don’t really have a “main job” and I play whatever I feel like. So I’m not really attached to a certain job.
What matters the most to me is how different each job plays, so I’m excited for a rework."

"Burn it down and build it back up from scratch, if that's what it takes.
I tend to swap classes in other games around at my leisure as well, provided the systems permit it. What usually draws me back into those I could remotely consider my "mains" is their unique and engaging gameplay loop and XIV really doesn't provide that type of motivation for me as of right now."

"I just don't feel like the XIV design team has it in them. It's philosophically at odds with how they want jobs to interact with content. They want them to have deterministic rotations, have bursts at 2 minutes to align with buffs and mechanics, and to effectively the same DPS over the course of a protracted fight. There's just no way to have all that and have a deep, interesting job system on fundamental level.
The homogeneity between jobs is just going to be a fact of the game, going forward. 8.0 isn't going to change anything."

"Yes on being excited for a top-to-bottom rework for all jobs. We definitely need more flavor for the jobs, especially since all points of even potential friction get removed from jobs."

"Absolutely don't skip new jobs for it though. Selfishly, I'd be happier about reworks, but for the sake of this game's existence, new jobs are the selling point of a new expansion for most casuals. More main story is cool, but you play through it once for 20-30 hours and that's it. After you see that story, whether through you playing it yourself or seeing it played by a friend or streamer, that's it. The story has been experienced.
The new jobs though? Now that is something that could change how you interact with the game for forever. A new favorite job is a reason to keep playing the game and want to experience new content with. Sure, we can argue with recent job design that that becomes less and less the case and I wouldn't disagree, but this is in the hypothetical world that hopefully all jobs will get their uniqueness back for a big part with reworks."

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Personally, I'd be excited for it. I think it would be a great opportunity for SE to add in the much needed job identity that many players have been asking for. It would be nice if SE were able to both add in new jobs and rework current jobs for 8.0, however if they didn't have the resources/time to do both I'd be happier if they'd prioritize job reworks.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...tom_rework_of/

Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves below. Cheers.

[Tracewood]

SMN could use a rework, though it's more aesthetics. So far the reception seems luke warm as they're expecting Shiva, Ramuh, Leviathan, Odin, Alex, etc and not so much cyber Bahamut.

What if they gave SMN a stance to toggle to swap out the three summons with their aetherical counterparts? So where say Ifrit, Titan, Garuda shared actions with Shiva, Leviathan, and Ramuh respectively? They toggle an OGCD called say "Astral/Umbral Eikonstance" and they could swap primals without too much hassle, no cooldowns would be reset. Only concern is that it may result in them doing less damage over time for that extra millisecond to swap Eikon stances. They can keep the Phoenix/Bahamut in the latter part of the rotation though.

The swap would work like so:

Ifrit - Shiva
Titan - Leviathan
Gardua - Ramuh

These would be lateral swaps, so one rotation would go Ifrit < Umbral Eikon Stance < Leviathan < Ramuh (followed by Phoenix/Bahamut) then it resets to Shiva since we're still in Umbral Eikon stance. We then use Shiva < go back to Astral Eikon stance < Titan < Garuda. Players could toggle between Astral/Umbral Eikon stance to have whatever primals they choose. Their moves would be similar to their opposite counterparts, including damage. This gives SMN more aesthetic choices and feel more complete having the original six primals at their disposal.

Just a thought.

Samurai, maybe they should put Kaiten back as a passive buff that lasts 15 seconds or something.

Give healers some more damage moves, DOTs, something to help move battle content along. Even if it's a spell that leaves a Doton like pool that ticks health away from enemies.

[DynnDiablos]

Absolutely not. I main DNC. Why? Anyone with a negative IQ can master the rotation. I don't play the game for the dungeons, trials, etc. I do them for the MSQ or needed for things, but I mostly play for story, crafting, gathering, etc. So, no. I don't want a job rework. I enjoy not having to think.

[Roda]

All jobs? No.
Some jobs? Yes.
Most jobs? Possibly?
The job and encounter design philosophy as a whole? Absolutely.

Every job needs skills that are more mechanically significant rather than existing solely to fulfill their role duty.

Crowd control, mobility, group utility, hell, mechanical rp expression (Yes I like bard perform, yes I think it should give things like sub rank 1 FC buffs to the audience, yes I think other jobs should have that kind of fun, yes I liked dancer in SWG). Things that don't directly interact with which direction an HP bar is moving.

This isn't just on the job design team though, but on the encounter design team as well.
Did you know casters got the sleep role action? Why??? Not a single raid encounter had an instance where I was presented with a pack of monsters that I had to take out of the fight for a period of time.


Being tested for how well you can execute your rotation under pressure is fine and good, but WASD and my buff bar should not be the only tools I can use when a boss asks me to apply myself mechanically. Choosing a job should impact how you solve some mechanics that are charged to you just as much as it impacts your strategy for dealing damage.

Pardon my obsession with a corpse here but whipping out titan egi in a pinch to control a rampant boss while the healer gets the tank spatula'd felt cool as hell back in the day! Is that something that I want to do literally every pull I'm in? No! But the ability to apply my job mechanics in unconventional ways just feels good to do!


Oh and the 2 minute meta needs to go. It has compounding problems for balance and individual performance, where lower skilled players need to have their rotations practically automated for them, which leads to job design without player agency, and high skilled players can only compare their performances by how lucky they got with their crit placement which leads to automatic direct crit skills which makes crit a boring and less interactive stat. And it means that players who thrive in more sustained performance oriented niches are left out of having classes they can enjoy without being awkwardly stuffed into a burst niche. It also creates encounters that are either frustrating because "damn it this phase is happening during our burst!" or boring because "wow it's just gonna sit there and let us do our burst". And while every class in every game has a "Correct" way to play it, FFXIV's combat really feels prescribed vs the rest of the genre.

[LittleImp]

I can only describe my feelings as mixed. I'm not arguing for or against anything here, just rambling out some thoughts and feelings.

Flavor is cool and often has interesting consequences. If a community is ready to collectively accept those consequences, then it's fine. I am however not convinced that the 14 community in its current shape is ready or able to deal with those consequences in a healthy way.

When my main job had more 'flavor', I was repeatedly told I was "griefing" just by choosing to play it in certain content. I loved that iteration of my job, and am still endlessly bitter about its removal, but the community tended to make the consequences of its uniqueness frustrating. Why did it matter if my job was ever-so-slightly hampered by its design in content where the outgoing damage is non-existent and the boss was 'dying' a full trio before it enraged? it didn't matter, but I certainly ran into plenty of people who were convinced it did.

The truth is, many 14 players only pretend to like friction performatively because it's a buzzword. They'll post essays on twitter/reddit about job design and this and that, but turn around and immediately automate all of the friction out of the game using QoL plugins or outright cheating programs. I think people would be shocked to learn just how few of the people supporting 'flavor' and 'friction' in the game actually played the game during times where it had those things. A massive portion of the games player-base started playing the game in SHB, and are simply band wagoning onto streamer takes and parroting things they don't really understand. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying those streamers are wrong, just that a large portion of the player-base genuinely isn't equipped to know where they're coming from.

I think if I am trying to make a point, it's that the community in 'solved' games like 14 tends to kind of suck, and it makes having nice things hard.

[Teno]

No need for complete reworks, some jobs have solid foundations, which you can see expanded upon in pvp. Just remove YoshiP from having any say in pve gameplay design, and let the devs that did pvp do pve too (even should they be the same).

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I can only describe my feelings as mixed. I'm not arguing for or against anything here, just rambling out some thoughts and feelings.

Flavor is cool and often has interesting consequences. If a community is ready to collectively accept those consequences, then it's fine. I am however not convinced that the 14 community in its current shape is ready or able to deal with those consequences in a healthy way.

When my main job had more 'flavor', I was repeatedly told I was "griefing" just by choosing to play it in certain content. I loved that iteration of my job, and am still endlessly bitter about its removal, but the community tended to make the consequences of its uniqueness frustrating. Why did it matter if my job was ever-so-slightly hampered by its design in content where the outgoing damage is non-existent and the boss was 'dying' a full trio before it enraged? it didn't matter, but I certainly ran into plenty of people who were convinced it did.

The truth is, many 14 players only pretend to like friction performatively because it's a buzzword. They'll post essays on twitter/reddit about job design and this and that, but turn around and immediately automate all of the friction out of the game using QoL plugins or outright cheating programs. I think people would be shocked to learn just how few of the people supporting 'flavor' and 'friction' in the game actually played the game during times where it had those things. A massive portion of the games player-base started playing the game in SHB, and are simply band wagoning onto streamer takes and parroting things they don't really understand. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying those streamers are wrong, just that a large portion of the player-base genuinely isn't equipped to know where they're coming from.

I think if I am trying to make a point, it's that the community in 'solved' games like 14 tends to kind of suck, and it makes having nice things hard.

All you have to do to see this is what a certain ultimate raider had to say when they thought the game was getting optional pvp like combos in pve. Went off the rails on how bad a decision that was and how it was too much simplification. That same raiders team used plug-ins to make the game easier.


QoL for me, not for thee.

[LaylaTsarra]

No thank you.

Lets listen to the damage centric crowd and be sure everyone has to be like them. You guys never stop. It doesn't matter what they do. I got news for you if they reworked every job you would still not be happy and that's a guarantee.

[Jeeqbit]

I wouldn't be excited for a complete rework because big reworks are risky and can make a job not good.

They shouldn't skip new jobs entirely either. That's a strange thing. Adding a new job isn't going to prevent changes to existing ones. Yoshi-P dared to say creating a specification document for a dragoon action takes 1 hour or something really short like that and given they have 2 and a half years, I really don't think they need to give up new jobs just to make adjustments.

The part about the team wanting bursts at 2 minutes does ultimately stem from players wanting to align them in raids. They want to balance everything because they get attacked for them not being balanced and even slight differences in DPS get attacked by the players. When a job is less viable than another, people who main that job come to the forums and complain. So yes, they want to balance everything, because it's literally what players have asked for consistently going back to the start of the game when things were imbalanced.

I agree that with balance it becomes difficult to have a significantly different and interesting job system, but you can at least have subtle differences (such as achieving the same thing but in slightly different ways, such as shields vs heals vs raw mitigation vs regens) and gap closers that function differently.

[Rekh]

Job by Job basis
Start with not making Drk a War with a sword for example.