The problem with Tripling Down on Shadowbringers Job Design

[Supersnow845]

Since the only response I've had to my question on what actually would make a job complex is a sarcastic response, I think it is safe to say noone really knows what complexity is. The closest response I have got was in another topic, where the question I asked was slightly different. That question was on job difficulty and the only response I got was having multiple DoTs with different timings. Whilst this might seem 'difficult' at first, you will soon get used to when you refresh your DoTs based on instinct and also where you are in your rotation.

Which brings home the point. You cannot make something complex that stays complex once you master it. You can make a system where the resources you have form a web in how they interact, but there will still be one way that it seems to flow the best. Once you have this, after some practice, the underlying web becomes a non issue and intuition takes over. The complexity has now seemingly been taken out of the job.

This is why I ask, what actually counts as complexity, what makes a job complex and most importantly, why would your 'complexity' stay complex even after mastery?

You can’t really take the argument “once you get good everything is easy” because it’s a circular argument you can apply to the reverse as well

“What’s the point in complex encounters in which once you master them instinct takes over”

The sarcastic example of old SCH (I’m assuming that’s what you meant with multiple DOT’s on different timers) is more complex because there is more fail states and more moving parts, this can be applied to all content, not just savage

As to your wider question complexity is borne of moving parts, punishing fail states and forced adaptation to the design of the encounter

[Mikey_R]

You can’t really take the argument “once you get good everything is easy” because it’s a circular argument you can apply to the reverse as well

It isn't circular reasoning though as there is justification for me saying it. You start bad with no knowledge, you gain knowledge and practice, you get better at it and things become easier. So, you get better, things become easier. This can be applied to basically every aspect of live so it shouldn't be controversial.

“What’s the point in complex encounters in which once you master them instinct takes over”

If this was meant to be the reverse of what I said, then it failed. The reverse of what I said would be the worse you are, the harder things will be. Which, again, shouldn't be a controversial statement.

The mistake here is then that you have said fight complexity is the reverse of job complexity, which it isn't. How a fight plays out has nothing to do with job actions. They are however linked by how they interact with each other. However, it isn't a direct correlation.

The sarcastic example of old SCH (I’m assuming that’s what you meant with multiple DOT’s on different timers) is more complex because there is more fail states and more moving parts, this can be applied to all content, not just savage

As to your wider question complexity is borne of moving parts, punishing fail states and forced adaptation to the design of the encounter

I will provide a link to the exact post I was talking about, however, just like my question in this topic, it was just a general question not directed at any job in particular, but as a concept as a whole. There was no sarcasm against Scholar as I never named a job directly, I never even hinted at a job directly, so you just inserted your own opinion on that matter.

As for the rest, 'moving parts', I already addressed, once you know how the parts move, the complexity fades. 'Punishing fail states', is complexity now defined as how many times you can fail to do your job, or do something out of order? Is me failing to do 123 occasionally part of the 'complexity' because that is a fail state? How about Monk using Forbidden Chakra at max Chakra and potentially wasting chakra, does the fact Brotherhood can provide a ton of Chakra, leading to overcap and thereby wasting the resource for something out of your control count as complexity? You have still failed to not overcap your resources after all. Whilst these are ridiculous examples, they do highlight that making broad generalisations doesn't help the conversation.

Now, we get into the interesting part. 'Forced adaption to the design of the encounter'. Yes. This I do agree with. Having to change your rotation to output the most damage in an encounter should be something to consider. Whether it is forcing melee out of melee range, having a phase change during 'burst' so you potentially waste it etc. Unfortunately, a lot of people that say they want more complexity from jobs, dismiss the encounter in the equation. It is the encounter and how the jobs interact with that encounter, that makes your job fun, not just the jobs themselves.

[Supersnow845]

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You yourself said you were offered a sarcastic answer. I assumed you were discussing SCH because it was a multiple dot job, I didn’t provide input on that you are the one who said you were provided a sarcastic answer

And when I said reverse I didn’t mean reverse statement I meant the reverse argument. The idea that complexity exists on a balance between all in the job and all in the encounter. You are arguing that complexity comes from the encounter as the job becomes instinct, I said your own logic of instinct taking over can be applied to the reverse argument that instinct can take over on the encounter once you have done it as well. Therefore the statement “once you get good things become easier” becomes a totally moot statement because it can be used to argue both sides of a diametrically opposed argument

Difficulty has to come from both sides or you wind up on the healer situation. If every job pressed 11111111111 then you could make most savages as hard mechanically as TOP because there is no job difficulty. Encounters should facilitate differences in job complexity to lead to differing results. The best example of this is T7 (if anyone even remembers T8 at this point). The fight isn’t excessively mechanically challenging but it does challenge your kit and force you to solve it different ways which plays into what each job offered at the time. Your rotation wasn’t static and played into each other

There is also the question of casual content that must be included in the discussion as pushing encounter difficulty above all else makes casual content beige as hell for any job

[Mikey_R]

You yourself said you were offered a sarcastic answer. I assumed you were discussing SCH because it was a multiple dot job, I didn’t provide input on that you are the one who said you were provided a sarcastic answer

It was actually a jab at the one person who responded to my initial post who said 'Having more than 2 buttons to press'. Which was clearly not said in good faith and yet has 16 likes (as of this post).

And when I said reverse I didn’t mean reverse statement I meant the reverse argument. The idea that complexity exists on a balance between all in the job and all in the encounter. You are arguing that complexity comes from the encounter as the job becomes instinct, I said your own logic of instinct taking over can be applied to the reverse argument that instinct can take over on the encounter once you have done it as well. Therefore the statement “once you get good things become easier” becomes a totally moot statement because it can be used to argue both sides of a diametrically opposed argument

They aren't diametrically opposed, they are 2 sides of the same coin. They both need to function together to make something fun.

Difficulty has to come from both sides or you wind up on the healer situation. If every job pressed 11111111111 then you could make most savages as hard mechanically as TOP because there is no job difficulty. Encounters should facilitate differences in job complexity to lead to differing results. The best example of this is T7 (if anyone even remembers T8 at this point). The fight isn’t excessively mechanically challenging but it does challenge your kit and force you to solve it different ways which plays into what each job offered at the time. Your rotation wasn’t static and played into each other

I never said otherwise. In this case it is encounter design enabling the strengths and weaknesses of each job. You also have to remember this was in a time that jobs were much simpler and less emphasis was placed on pure damage. But more bosses with ways to change their behaviour, or more RNG mechanics. One thing I noticed throughout EW, if an extreme encounter has a mechanic that is either, say a donut or point blank AoE, the first time might be random between the 2, the next will always be the other. Why not make that second on RNG as well. Things like that. I've talked in the past about changing stuns/interrupts to change damage profiles of attacks rather than straight up stopping them etc.

There is also the question of casual content that must be included in the discussion as pushing encounter difficulty above all else makes casual content beige as hell for any job

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Job complexity and encounter complexity go hand in hand. Yes, you need fights that are easier so that people can get through the story, but no amount of perceived job complexity is going to make that encounter more exciting to do, especially if you are used to doing extreme/savage/ultimate fights.

As for job complexity, no, I'm not looking for something that's eternally complex, because that's not feasible. What I'm looking for is something complex to master that is also consistently engaging. A small example of an engaging mechanic would be RDM, the engagement comes from watching your Fleche/Contre Sixte timers and deciding whether or not you have to use Acceleration to prevent cooldown drifting at that moment. Reacting to RNG is also something consistently engaging.

As a RDM player who only plays it casually, I took this as a bit of an easy thing to look at. Assuming you do not have time for both Fleche and Acceleration in the dual cast window, surely, there would be one that is better and so that one would be prioritised.

Now, I didn't get an answer to that question directly, I literally spent 5-10 minutes on the balance discord, I did find something else out that I hadn't considered and that is the parity RDM has between hard casts and insta casts and the fact it flips every time you do a melee combo. This might not seem like much but it is important if you want to maximise your 2 minute windows. You would assume you need to enter the 2 minute window on a certain parity, so coming out of 1 melee combo and having the parity flipped means you would need to flip it again. Acceleration and Swiftcast can both do this. This could also be a case of lining up your oGCDs, if you know they line up with one parity and not the other, swapping to a certain parity before hand could mean less drift in the oGCDs. Then there is also movement to consider etc.

Now, again, I am by no means a RDM expert, I only play it casually so I have no idea how much this impacts someone, however, assuming it is relevant, would this class as complexity? It would also be nice to know if this is something high level RDMs actually consider.

Obviously there's a 'puzzle' aspect about jobs. You need to figure out mechanics, which are superficially complex even nowadays. Most jobs seems unintuitive because the game does a really bad job with its tooltips, but with a few days of practice one might get it. Beyond that is what we don't have, which is engagement as job complexity.

I do agree with most of your post and it highlights what I have been trying to get at. Just increasing job complexity won't solve anything.

However, I will disagree with your point on jobs being unintuitive. I would say most jobs are intuitive if you go about learning them the right way. Most jobs just build on what came before, so, learning the level 50 rotation is a good baseline, learn up to 60, shouldn't be too hard, they just build up on the 50 rotation, up to level 70, again just builds on top of it, then 80, 90 and soon 100. That is really all there is to building a basic rotation that will get you through all pieces of casual content. The good thing is, once you have this knowledge, and you plan to go into Extreme/Savage/Ultimate, since you already have the baseline knowledge, it will be easier to parse the recommended rotations.