/r/ffxivdiscussion: If you want WoW-style design, you're going to have to accept-

[WeebPolice]

Oh yeah, we'll never hear the end of it when it comes to the debate on addons/mods etc. I've heard that the current iteration of wow practically designs its boss encounters around the likelihood that the player will use an addon such as Deadly Boss Mods, so wow devs will intentionally make certain boss mechanics difficult to notice and they'll bank on DBM making up for the lack of visual and audio cues.

The negatives of having an add-on that's too useful for its own good, citizen. It's a very well made tool, however some players will complain that it nearly plays the game for you.




Do not fear the shadows.

[Fellgon]

Many young players on youtube complain about mmo genre because every game whants to be like wow. Those who enjoy fortnite cant find fun in wow style.

My thoughts is that FF14 is way better and thats the reason many left wow for this game.

I dont feel the need we go back 40 years and use add-ons again like wow because its a open door for trojans inside software. Really not interested in third party arquive to improve the game. I quit wow to play 14. Another think that this game feels better is the fact theres no talent tree. oldscholl talent tree and dragonflhight style didnt feels good. FF16 was really good action game and i wish another FF MMO could be like that.

I was exited about a LOL MMO but it was canceled.

[SeverianLyonesse]

I generally concur with this, and would much rather have distinct, imbalanced job fantasies in spite of all the concessions. When it gets to a point where I don't feel my class choice meaningfully changes up my skillset, I end up just considering the game "solved" and not worth wasting my time on.

I think there is enough middle ground to be had in identity versus balance, where jobs have unique utility/function without straying too far from a core set of expectations. I don't believe it to be as impossible as FFXIV's design implies it to be; I think jobs are so homogenized here as a matter of convenience to the devs, and could be differentiated with a less lazy design team.

But I also think that "balancing" distinct job fantasies requires a more holistic approach that the FFXIV devs just don't have right now. Instead of flattening all the jobs to conform to the same encounter design expectations, I think a more sophisticated approach to "niche"/"off-meta" jobs would be to simply design *more* content that specifically features/requires those jobs' mechanics. Kind of like the inverse of your "mudra-rock" example.

I don't really like WoW aesthetically or mechanically, but I do really appreciate that most jobs still maintain some kind of unique mechanical core, be it Druid transformations, Wizard portals, Shaman totems, etc. It just sucks that even in games like WoW and GW2 those identities are becoming more and more "aesthetic-only" as well.

[Swordsman]

The negatives of having an add-on that's too useful for its own good, citizen. It's a very well made tool, however some players will complain that it nearly plays the game for you.




Do not fear the shadows.

I can sort of understand the whole "nearly plays the game for you" point. Yeah the addon doesn't actually control your character for you, but the fact that its pretty much telling you what to do at each and every step of the boss fight seems a bit unfair to me. Like are you actually playing and figuring out the game for yourself or are you just doing what this addon told you to do? It's a bit of a grey area for me. But yes, DBM is a fantastic raiding addon, and when I played wow until I quit in Mists of Pandaria, we were required by our raid leader to show up to every raid with DBM installed and ready to go. The addon literally tells you everything about the boss encounter and it accomplishes that with very noticeable visual/audio cues like bright flashing lights and icons, and loud horns and sirens lmao.

[Payadopa]

Bro, I played XI. I want this. lol What's the point of even having jobs when all play so similar? You can change your job literally at the press of a button.

This game has so deteriorated from what an MMORPG is, people nowadays can barely fathom another system. xD

[Jeeqbit]

#1: Your class will wildly vary in terms of effectiveness based on tier, fight and current balance.

Yes, I agree with this point. If jobs are too unique then they will be good for some fights and not for others. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing; that's going to depend on how attached each individual is to their jobs. But we know it's easy to switch, so is it necessarily a problem for people willing to main a category instead? ie. ranged physical, ranged magical, melee, tank or healer.

In any case, I think the argument is they can be a bit more unique within the homogeny because they used to be so. This can be achieved by achieving the same thing, but in different ways, or only being slightly disadvantaged rather than entirely disadvantaged.

An example is each gap closer working in a different way. This is the case for many jobs - for example, SMN, NIN, BLM, DRG, DNC and RPR do their gap closers in unique and interesting ways. Maybe DRK, but it always felt like this was it being the tank version of Dragoon. I'm not sure about RDM, because although it was originally fundamental to their rotation, it always looked quite bland as well.

The other gap closers just came about "because the others have them" and are boring or copies really.

Another example is achieving mitigation differently. WAR would increase its HP and take the damage like a beast unmitigated, then heal itself up. PLD would heavily mitigate and block with its shield. DRK used to absorb HP from enemies like other FF games but this overlapped WAR (so it now absorbs it into a magic shield instead making it the magic shield tank). GNB was a jack of all trades. But in Endwalker they just decided they can all be the same and step on eachother's toes.

#2: At higher levels, a meta WILL evolve that the community will embrace.

This doesn't matter. I've seen people describe a meta for this game since Heavensward but if you PF or join an "average" static, this isn't a thing. The meta has always been for people being extremely picky with what PF they join or what static they join and ignored by the majority of people, who just play whatever they want.

A universal meta will develop if you literally can't clear the content with certain jobs, but if they are technically viable, a lot of players will just play whatever they want because that's what happens now.

A lot of people will argue PLD wasn't good in Heavensward due to physical mit and lower damage, but it was most definitely used to clear raids even then so it was viable despite these problems and average parties didn't seem to bar PLD's from parties since they were lucky to get a tank at all.

going to get people who poured all their time and effort into gearing Gunbreaker being told they need to hard-pivot to warrior

You find out very quickly after tier release if your job isn't gonna be good for it. With the savage delay, this is likely to be known just based on the normal mode. And gear is mostly shared amongst roles ie. amongst tanks so.

#4: WoW's raid and encounter design isn't built around 14's party size.

That's a good point, really. There's a world of difference between regular savage raids and DRS.

- "Why does everyone always seem to ignore that xiv literally just cannot become like WoW

Unfortunately people seem to just make it sound easy like that without really understanding this game.

"It's wild to see the gaps in performance between WoW's classes from patch to patch. XIV players have no idea how good they have it"

I've always heard this for years and, actually, am aware of how good we have it.

Does that mean I want WoW style specs

Uh... in 8.0 Yoshi-P is considering replacing leveling with an alternative sense of progression such as "ability points" and went on to basically describe skill trees, before mentioning talents outright as another possibility. He also took well to a suggestion for materia to be a UI instead of attached to gear but is concerned that may simplify the game too much so it's something he will think about.

[WeebPolice]

I can sort of understand the whole "nearly plays the game for you" point. Yeah the addon doesn't actually control your character for you, but the fact that its pretty much telling you what to do at each and every step of the boss fight seems a bit unfair to me. Like are you actually playing and figuring out the game for yourself or are you just doing what this addon told you to do? It's a bit of a grey area for me. But yes, DBM is a fantastic raiding addon, and when I played wow until I quit in Mists of Pandaria, we were required by our raid leader to show up to every raid with DBM installed and ready to go. The addon literally tells you everything about the boss encounter and it accomplishes that with very noticeable visual/audio cues like bright flashing lights and icons, and loud horns and sirens lmao.

Ah, yes, citizen. The air horn from DBM on Yogg-Saron continues to haunt me to this day. We lost many Weeaboo Police Troopers to this unforgiving and destructive boss in the world of Azeroth.




We serve so others do not have to.

[Sjol]

I don't know that the OP has proven their premise, but for me it doesn't matter because I'm not looking for WoW-style design. I'm looking for FFXIV to use the massive amount of design space that is just sitting there unused.

It's also not an all-or-nothing thing. You can allow for some additional variance in DPS/tankiness/HPS without actually going all the way to WoW-land with its "this spec is so garbage, we don't want you bringing it."

I think FFXIV just needs to start creating more variation within the roles and to use more of the design space that's available to them. You could absolutely have a priority-based tank instead of a rotational one. You could have a tank with shared-resource mitigation (e.g., you have a pool of 6-10 pips and different abilities use different amounts).

One thing that I think WoW has that adds a lot of variety in both feel and also builds is the Mastery stat for each spec. It would be interesting to have different jobs have a mastery stat (probably replacing direct hit) that interacts with each job's core identity.

Lastly, directly to the OPs point, balance is a big issues and symmetry has been a tool throughout history to help with balance, but the game I want to play doesn't rely on symmetry for balance. Yeah, it's harder, but it's also doable.

[Aurora428]

Can we stop using any comparison to WoW as a shield against criticism to FFXIV?

When someone says healing is more fun is in WoW you don't need to pull out a list of whataboutisms as to why FFXIV should never change anything ever.

[HighlanderClone]

"I don’t want wow style design. I want FFXIV 4.X design"

This should have ended the thread.