The problem with Tripling Down on Shadowbringers Job Design

[MagiusNecros]

Hard disagree.

I hard disagree with your hard disagree. All the classes in PVE play similar to a DPS Warrior. But hey whatever mental gymnastics you need to do to sleep at night. All I see is a poor strawman argument.

I answered your question. If the best you can retort is "No you are wrong" without rebuking with facts and reason then you have no argument. And given your response you are set in your ways. Good day to you.

[Rekh]

Before you are able to summon the turret or queen, you have to do something, unlike EW SMN, you Oprah the primals.

What's even funnier is that summoning does not have any cost, whatsoever. You are calling primals as if you are tagging in a mahvel game.

Well said well said. Just wanted to see if you were going to argue that having the queen auto attack for 1 minute was better tham temporary 1 time use summons.

But the angle you took with it is what I've said in the past as well; smn should've been building towards a grand summoning; and depending on the situatin you're in you summon garuda for dots, titan for aoe, and ifrit for slow but big damage. In this situation you would actually have to make decisions on the spot.

Just remove ifrit, titan, and garuda from the rotation and make them actual job gauge decision-based mechanics. When we asked to be able to summon primals like in past FFs we didn't ask to see them summoned 50 times in an alliance raid run.

On this point, use carbuncle colors to designate which primal-based spell you will cast on your enemy(s), so you would have to summon sapphire carbuncle to cast sapphire-catastrophe, which would be a water attack.

Now, I will not say I dislike current summoner, but it could've been so much better mechanically.

[Jeeqbit]

Isn't someone else in forum has pointed out the expansion credit rolls has showed that the size of FFXIV development team has increased?

That would have been me since I point that out usually.

Yet the months between patch release is increased

Yes, primarily so they can have enough of a break. Yoshi-P has always made sure that people avoid burnout, have opportunities to transfer to new roles or departments, to take breaks and has also forced people to take breaks if they refuse to. Preventing burnout is integral to this so providing more holidays is in line with this.

at the same time the amount of content on patch release is getting lesser and lesser.

That is not true. The content that is released is just not necessarily of interest to the people making these complaints ie. they aren't interested in variant dungeons, Eureka Orthos, Island Sanctuary, Ishgard Restoration and Ocean Fishing.

While they also decided that island sanctuary will no longer supported in DT.

This is not unexpected. They don't typically continue developing content like this once the expansion is over. Eureka was exclusively developed during Stormblood. The Firmament and Bozja were exclusively developed in Shadowbringers. Island Sanctuary will more than likely remain exclusive to Endwalker.

They might continue them when it makes sense to ie. more Ocean Fishing routes, but if it looks like something has "run its course", it probably has, and let's be honest, what really more is there to do with Island Sanctuary?

Strange don't you think? That even with the size of development team increased, they still refused to dedicate themselves on develop the big content feature they introduced on expansion

It is a little strange, but remember that the bigger the game gets, the more overhead there is ie. they have to balance things around more jobs, they have to QA more things, they have to adjust gear for more races, they have to make new models for more jobs each expansion ie. over 20 weapons now instead of around 10.

But also, the added development team is most in certain areas, like AI or web development. Got to remember that diminishing returns is a thing, and also that people quit/retire and have to train new staff. For example, some of the people who went to work on FF16 slowly trained other staff before moving over through Heavensward and Stormblood. I remember reading about Soken training people in Shadowbringers etc.

Much as the community may love the veteran developers, they also can't not be thinking about the future generations given their age.

The bigger thing for me is AI not resulting in a reduction in development time yet.

such as GC rank and squadron, deep dungeon, eureka/bozja, hard mode dungeon, recently island sanctuary.

GC rank and squadron isn't really popular enough as a concept tbh. Deep dungeons were completed and didn't need further development. Eureka was completed and didn't need further development. Bozja was completed (and yes the rest of the story was concluded, in the field records, for whatever reason), Island Sanctuary can't really have much more done (more visions, another mine, some more items to gather, come on... what's the point).

Hard Mode dungeons (which weren't hard for most of their time) were discontinued because we simply had enough dungeons. We were approaching 100 dungeons and the entire point in making them was when the game started, it hardly had any dungeons vs its main competitor (WoW). Now it does. The resources were invested in other areas.

And dropped some of introduced big feature on some expansion.

Related to resources being reinvested. Arguably, we are getting more this expansion than the last because we are getting everything we got in Shadowbringers + the new things we got in Endwalker (like variant/criterion dungeons), most likely more than 1 ultimate as well, plus the graphics update.

SB expansion introduced ultimate raid, introduced field operation such as eureka, continued hard mode dungeon as well as optional dungeon

Context is a type of content like Eureka existed in Heavensward called Diadem, but it was a failure for various reasons. Although they quadrupled the amount of Diadem-like areas in SB. They reduced dungeon development in Stormblood from 2 per patch to 1 > 2 > 1 > 2 > 1 to allow for this extra Eureka development.

SHB expansion dropped hard mode dungeon, turn optional dungeon into MSQ dungeon, dropped deep dungeon, delayed ultimate raid to EW expansion, continued field operation as Bozja

You missed a lot of stuff. Yes, ShB dropped 2 optional dungeons and 2 Field Operation areas, but in its place was:

Ocean Fishing, Ishgard Restoration (which was a massive player event spanning many patches of development you can watch on youtube and culminated in a new housing area), a crafter/gatherer rework, an ARR rework which saw flying added, a lot more raids in the Field Operation (instead of 1 like Eureka, we had CLL, Dalriada, DR, and a savage version of DR) and many of the CEs were designed more like dungeon bosses and frequently wiped everyone there, or left a few people to solo it, not to mention the duel content. Most of this was more mechanically complex than the NMs in Eureka, many of which were more like the Skirmishes in Bozja.

Remember this was all despite covid and despite working from home and despite all the companies they outsource to delaying things and despite a semiconductor shortage and despite what Soken went through. Delaying an ultimate and EW and not bothering with a little throwaway thing like Allied Beast Tribe Quests was understandable given all these things.

EW expansion introduced Island Sanctuary, merged optional dungeon with optional boss trial into part of the MSQ, introduced PVP Crystal Conflict, introduced Criterion Dungeon, dropped field operation, re-continued deep dungeon

EW dropped field operation, but revamped all MSQ dungeons and duties and indicators and as you said, added a new PvP mode, 5 series, several new PvP maps, a new content type (3 variant and 3 criterion) and Island Sanctuary and resumed the deep dungeon.

Quite frankly, we can argue that MSQ duty rework, Island Sanctuary, variant/criterion and deep dungeon replaced the Ishgard Restoration and Field Operation content cycle from ShB.

DT expansion, according on what we got so far, dropped Island Sanctuary

Cosmic Exploration should be seen as the successor. But it will be more like Ishgard Restoration than Island Sanctuary.

[Mikey_R]

I hard disagree with your hard disagree. All the classes in PVE play similar to a DPS Warrior. But hey whatever mental gymnastics you need to do to sleep at night. All I see is a poor strawman argument.

I answered your question. If the best you can retort is "No you are wrong" without rebuking with facts and reason then you have no argument. And given your response you are set in your ways. Good day to you.

you're the one who made the initial claim that all jobs played the same, so it is technically down to you to explain how they are the same, however, let's humour you.

Raid buffs, not every job has a raid buff, notably most healers and tanks, however it also extends to DPS with SAM, MCH and BLM having no raid buffs.

The 2 minute burst is problematic, yes, however, not all jobs technically burst every 2 minutes. Paladin as an example has no 2 minute cooldowns, so their 1 minute burst is the same as their 2 minute burst, so it is technically a 1 minute job, this would also apply to the old PLD.

Even jobs like Monk, Dark Knight and Ninja don't technically fully commit to the 2 minute burst as they have cooldowns which have a 90 second recast time on them, which means everything lines up every 6 minutes, though most of it is every 2 minutes.

5 action fell cleave window. Ignoring it is now 3 fell cleaves per Inner Release, this isn't true either. Even the job most compared to War in that regard, DRK, has other things to consider before you get to pressing Delirium that Warrior doesn't have to consider. However, again, not every job has '3 fell cleave button'. Monk, Dragoon, Samurai, Ninja, Reaper, Black Mage (they have more to consider than just no thought Fire 4 spam), bard, Machinist.

This is also forgetting the fact you have focused on very very little of the job's kit. Burst every 2 minutes (of which even the 2 minute raid buffs are different) and one button fell cleave equivalent. Okay, what about how the job builds resources in order to execute the bursts, how do jobs spend their time between bursts, do they have mini bursts at 1 minute, 30 seconds, are there things you need to plan ahead before going into burst, etc.

By making such generalised statements, that you haven't even checked to see whether it is true or not, you have failed to think about what you are saying. This is partly why I said I disagreed with your statement and only scratches the surface of why jobs are different.

i guess that means it's your move.

[rawker]

...

A better idea is for Carbuncle to be a filler summon.. to pay respect to its ACN roots.

Then, using Ifrit as example, you call out the egi version of the primal, order it around like Carbuncle all while you amass aether. When you have the needed amount of aether, Enkindle lights up, ifrit egi dissipates, then ifrit shows up, does his signature move, and leaves. Then summoning egis go on cooldown and are forced to summon carbuncle.(filler summon). Do filler stuff with it rhen when summoning egis are available again, call whatever egi you like. Rinse and repeat.

Now how will Phoenix and Bahamut fit into this? They will not have egi forms but instead, you will have fit the requirements of its summoning while doing your normal rotations. To spice it up, the rituals change from time ro time... think of combining BRD songs and DNC steps. Doing the right ritutals will fill the gauge faster. Once full, Enkindle Bahamut and Enkindle Phoenix lights up and you are given the choice what to summon. Once any of them are out, Carbuncle or the other egs will withdraw and you are now ordering Bahamut and Phoenix, when their timer expires or ordered to, they will cast their signature spell then leave, like MCH

[MagiusNecros]

you're the one who made the initial claim that all jobs played the same, so it is technically down to you to explain how they are the same, however, let's humour you.

You asked to define job identity and jobs playing similar in PVE all leads to a lack of identity

Raid buffs

This is correct, however raid buffs do not reflect how a job class plays

The 2 minute burst is problematic, yes, however, not all jobs technically burst every 2 minutes. Paladin as an example has no 2 minute cooldowns, so their 1 minute burst is the same as their 2 minute burst, so it is technically a 1 minute job, this would also apply to the old PLD.

With a few exceptions there are classes that have 1 minute bursts. However most have 2 minute bursts that they need to line up or delay for other classes 2 minute bursts. Sentinel, Cover, Passage are all 2 minute CDs. So the statement that PLD has no 2 minute CDs at all is false.

Even jobs like Monk, Dark Knight and Ninja don't technically fully commit to the 2 minute burst as they have cooldowns which have a 90 second recast time on them, which means everything lines up every 6 minutes, though most of it is every 2 minutes.

But they still have to conform to the 2 minute meta in a coordinated raid setting

5 action fell cleave window. Ignoring it is now 3 fell cleaves per Inner Release, this isn't true either. Even the job most compared to War in that regard, DRK, has other things to consider before you get to pressing Delirium that Warrior doesn't have to consider. However, again, not every job has '3 fell cleave button'. Monk, Dragoon, Samurai, Ninja, Reaper, Black Mage (they have more to consider than just no thought Fire 4 spam), bard, Machinist.

Warrior spams Cleave, DRK spams Bloodspiller(with new Delirium in 7.0 this may change), GNB spams Gnashing and Burst Strike and is limited by No Mercy windows, Monk has Perfect Balance phase, DRG is an outlier aiming towards triple Nastrond into Stardiver, SAM is Midare Spam, NIN is Raijin spam, Reaper is Enshroud spam, BLM is Fire 4 spam, Bard cycles through Bloodletter or Pitch Perfect spam, MCH is Heat Blast Spam. So it would seem that actually multiple jobs do indeed have a Fell Cleave phase after all.

This is also forgetting the fact you have focused on very very little of the job's kit. Burst every 2 minutes (of which even the 2 minute raid buffs are different) and one button fell cleave equivalent. Okay, what about how the job builds resources in order to execute the bursts, how do jobs spend their time between bursts, do they have mini bursts at 1 minute, 30 seconds, are there things you need to plan ahead before going into burst, etc.

So do your 1-2-3 a couple times to build meter and then you burst. And using your 2 minute which is usually generating half your gauge to have a bigger burst. Most jobs have this.

Check bolded.

[MagiusNecros]

However all this said going back to your original question what is job identity? It boils down to what does each job do that makes it unique from every other job. And in PVE it's mostly aesthetics. There is very little deviation.

In PvP however there is a LOT of deviation. Down to defensives that grant damage shields and boost defense, AoE stuns, draw-ins/knockback, HP sacrificing attacks, GNB draw changing skills in your kit based on what role you used draw on, polymorph, AoE invulns, attacks that render you invulnerable to damage, true stealth and Death Link, Counter Attacks, delayed damage, fear effects, aoe buffs, crowd control, charm, stance swapping among others. Not to mention personal Limit Breaks that gives every player their own moment of glory and satisfaction. Which all serves to give these classes the identity players are looking for.

[Sjol]

Define Job identity. This one I am curious about. I'm pretty sure people use this term to mean different things, so what does it mean to you and anyone else who wants to answer.

This wasn't directed at me, but I would love to answer it.

To me, job Identity is multiple things hence the confusion.

* Visual Identity - Does this job look like other jobs? Could you confuse its dress, style, or animations for another job?
* Thematic Identify - When describing this job to another person, (e.g., "Treasure Hunter", "Mage obsessed with destruction"), could it be confused for another job?
* Input Identity - How similar is the sequence of keys I have to press compared to another job? This is somewhat under the player's control, but mostly up to the job designers. Mudra input vs. Hypercharge vs. BRD procs all have different feel in how and when I press things.
* Mechanical Identity - If I were to describe the meters without visuals or names how easily confused could they be to another meter. E.g., meter that starts at 0 and goes to 100 in increases of 5, 10 or 15 based on user actions.

In all the above the sign of distinctness is how specific I can be and there still be confusion. This is our brain's attempt at grouping like things and removing distinctiveness in order to store the information more efficiently.

I think part of the issue is that there are jobs or parts of jobs that have gotten too close for some people in one or more of those areas. That's when they start to blend in their mind and feels same-y. The annoyance for the designers is that different jobs need to be distinct feeling in all those categories, not just one or two. The more jobs there are and the tighter the constraints around balance (more fights to balance around), the harder it becomes to maintain distinctness.

[Mikey_R]

Since I can't quote what's in a quote directly, lets make this hard on myself.

You asked to define job identity and jobs playing similar in PVE all leads to a lack of identity

But what is identity. You still haven't answered that very basic question. All you have said is all jobs play the same, but you haven't really laid out any criteria that would help to distinguish jobs and give them unique identities.

This is correct, however raid buffs do not reflect how a job class plays

No it doesn't, so why list it?

With a few exceptions there are classes that have 1 minute bursts. However most have 2 minute bursts that they need to line up or delay for other classes 2 minute bursts. Sentinel, Cover, Passage are all 2 minute CDs. So the statement that PLD has no 2 minute CDs at all is false.

So again, you agree they don't all play the same. Also, the fact PLD has 2 minute defensive cooldowns is irrelevant as the topic was about, and I quote, "2 minute burst".

Warrior spams Cleave, DRK spams Bloodspiller(with new Delirium in 7.0 this may change), GNB spams Gnashing and Burst Strike and is limited by No Mercy windows, Monk has Perfect Balance phase, DRG is an outlier aiming towards triple Nastrond into Stardiver, SAM is Midare Spam, NIN is Raijin spam, Reaper is Enshroud spam, BLM is Fire 4 spam, Bard cycles through Bloodletter or Pitch Perfect spam, MCH is Heat Blast Spam. So it would seem that actually multiple jobs do indeed have a Fell Cleave phase after all.

Yes, Warrior spams cleave, however there isn't much more they need to worry about. With DRK's Delerium, with it being paired with Blood Weapon every time, you need to make sure you aren't going to overcap on Blood during this window as, for 3 GCDs, you cannot get rid of any Blood (except the 2 minute windows with Living Shadow), Gnashing Fang is something that happens every 30 seconds and you need to make sure you have a cartridge ready to use it, it isn't activated by an oGCD buff, same with Burst Strike, however, Burst Strike is closer to a gauge spender than a fell cleave spam. PB is not in any way a fell cleave spam, it is using certain GCDs in order to perform a specific Masterful Blitz which takes more thought in it's execution than just spamming fell cleave. Midare Spam, which they literally cannot do to the same degree as Fell Cleave, Raijin Spam, You could claim this, however, that misses the fact you have to set them up with Raiton and not just pressing an oGCD, which does also mean getting the right Mudra combinations, a little bit more involved than just IRFC. Enshroud Spam, going between 2 buttons, with an activated oGCD and a cast at the end as well as making your GCD faster, yes, clearly the same. Fire 4 spam, if you ignore everything else you have to consider including the AF timer and anything caused by non standard lines. Bloodletter and Pitch Perfect are not even close to Fell Cleave spam. Heat Blast spam, which also reduces the cooldown on Gauss Round and Ricochet and you have to be mindful that you don't clip into the GCD of your tools.

So, there are some very dubious correlations and again, with some, you just focused on the fact a move was used several times in succession whilst ignoring the other things the job has to consider. Infact, I am shocked beyond belief that you did not say Paladin's Blade combo. That is, by far, the closest you will get to Fell Cleave Spam with about the only difference being you can use it at range.

So do your 1-2-3 a couple times to build meter and then you burst. And using your 2 minute which is usually generating half your gauge to have a bigger burst. Most jobs have this.

Which, again, is ignoring how you build to your burst. The gameplay between bursts is just as important as the burst phases themselves.

However all this said going back to your original question what is job identity? It boils down to what does each job do that makes it unique from every other job.

Such as?

In PvP however there is a LOT of deviation. Down to defensives that grant damage shields and boost defense, AoE stuns, draw-ins/knockback, HP sacrificing attacks, GNB draw changing skills in your kit based on what role you used draw on, polymorph, AoE invulns, attacks that render you invulnerable to damage, true stealth and Death Link, Counter Attacks, delayed damage, fear effects, aoe buffs, crowd control, charm, stance swapping among others. Not to mention personal Limit Breaks that gives every player their own moment of glory and satisfaction. Which all serves to give these classes the identity players are looking for.

Ah yes, everyone's favourite topic at the moment, let's go though this:
-Defensives that grant shields, got that.
-AoE stuns, WHM Holy says hi. Though you cannot have that on too many jobs, otherwise that is a loss of identity after all.
-Draw-ins/Knockbacks. Don't know if you suffered MCH's Blank and WHM Fluid Aura, they were a pain. Draw-ins could be useful, don't see much point mechanically, but no reason why it couldn't be there for flavour. Not that either would work on bosses.
-HP sacrifice, generally considered a bad idea. Your bad HP management doesn't tend to be a you problem, it tends to be the healer's problem. And don't get me started on trying to balance HP drain to balance it out.
-GNB Draw, use DPS, that is it. You might occasionally take a defensive, if you have nothing left, but that is a last resort.
-Polymorph, wouldn't work. Bosses would be immune and turning a trash mob into an imp for some amount of time isn't going to change much. Better off retooling the button for something else.
-AoE Invulns. Yes, lets trivialise whole mechanics. Not to mention they wouldn't work for important mechanics.
-PLD/GNB say hi to full invulnerability. Don't want them to lose their identity after all.
-True Stealth and Death Link. true Stealth would just be a buff that allows you to do something, wouldn't really affect anything fight wise. Death Link wouldn't be insta killing anything, so it is just another attack that does damage.
-Counter attacks, Vengeance. Don't want to lose that identity.
-Delayed damage, Wildfire, don't want to lose that identity.
-Fear/Crowd Control/Charm. Enemies running away is annoying, CC could be useful of our attacks didn't instantly knock them out of it, though this is the same as AoE stun. Charm, effectively a draw-in, but you take no damage.
-AoE buffs, 2 minute raid buffs say hi. As for more localised buffs, could be a pain in the arse to manage depending on bosses and how you move around the arena.
-Stance Swapping. Tank stances didn't do what most claim they do, BLM swaps stances between AF and UI, Bard's songs could be seen as stances as well.
-Personal LBs, basically a long cooldown action.

Here is the problem. People see things in PvP, think, oo, that's cool, but never think about how it would function in a PvE setting. Alot of things will not work.

[Mikey_R]

This wasn't directed at me, but I would love to answer it.

To me, job Identity is multiple things hence the confusion.

* Visual Identity - Does this job look like other jobs? Could you confuse its dress, style, or animations for another job?
* Thematic Identify - When describing this job to another person, (e.g., "Treasure Hunter", "Mage obsessed with destruction"), could it be confused for another job?
* Input Identity - How similar is the sequence of keys I have to press compared to another job? This is somewhat under the player's control, but mostly up to the job designers. Mudra input vs. Hypercharge vs. BRD procs all have different feel in how and when I press things.
* Mechanical Identity - If I were to describe the meters without visuals or names how easily confused could they be to another meter. E.g., meter that starts at 0 and goes to 100 in increases of 5, 10 or 15 based on user actions.

In all the above the sign of distinctness is how specific I can be and there still be confusion. This is our brain's attempt at grouping like things and removing distinctiveness in order to store the information more efficiently.

I think part of the issue is that there are jobs or parts of jobs that have gotten too close for some people in one or more of those areas. That's when they start to blend in their mind and feels same-y. The annoyance for the designers is that different jobs need to be distinct feeling in all those categories, not just one or two. The more jobs there are and the tighter the constraints around balance (more fights to balance around), the harder it becomes to maintain distinctness.

And here we have an example of someone who read and answered the question. We have different categories covering different aspects of a job and a brief description of what each category represents. This is fairly close to what I would also describe as Job identity.

As for the last paragraph, this is the problem with people at the moment. They have blurred the lines so much that everything looks the same. However, the miss the nuance associated with each individual thing that makes them unique. This is what I am trying to make people see. These things are not the same and they all have different considerations applied to each one. There is only so much you can do to make things feel distinct when everyone is looking at things from such a broad perspective. get in there, take in the nuance.