What has the job team been doing this whole time?

[Souljacker]

The sad thing is, Paladin DID sort of have an identity in ARR when you could actually use some White Magic.

It did in XI as well - the whole point was it was this warrior who could use white magic and did so to protect the realm. Paladin was FUN there, it 'felt' like you were there to smite the wicked, pass judgement on evil and slap around some undead. I don't even know what I'm doing here, and every time I see "gains xyz gladiator points" or whatever the verbiage is I just seethe at how generic all these jobs were\are, all in the name of being as 'different' from XI as possible since at the time they were trying to get us to pay 2 subs.

Nothing short of completely scrapping the system would fix it though, they backed themselves into a corner with the Class -> Job foolishness and then tying the job itself to a weapon type instead of just... selecting the job you wanted to play and then the types of weapons you wanted at varying degrees of skill, complete with its own set of weaponskill abilities.

In many ways, XI is the superior design. These folks really should have spent some time learning at the feet of those folks. And the higher ups should have never given Tanaka the directive to make it as unlike XI as possible. They did him a disservice - he was a good producer and for every "Ps2 Limitation" - his team eventually came up with a brilliant idea to work around or otherwise inject life into content. A lot of the systems we have here, as watered down as they are, are thanks to the ideas over in XI.

[Souljacker]

Every time someone mentions a comparison between FF14 jobs and WoW classes it's safe to deduct at least 10 points from your estimation of their IQ.

It's about an apt comparison as apples and car tires. 14 has no skill trees. No specs. No crazy trinkets drastically altering job function. If you considered every largely different spec possibility in WoW (Disc Priest, Shadow, Demo lock, fire mage, ice mage, etc.) as an equivalent job you would have a much higher level of under performing and/or boring options in WoW. There is no equivalency.

They have reached a point where options are limited. They can't completely change how a job plays because it won't be the same job. People will complain. They have said they plan to do major job reworks starting in 8.0 which will likely be a replacement for one or both new jobs in the next expansion. They've reached a point where they are making more than 20 relics, artifact sets, weapons, etc. for every step of progression.

People will complain no matter what they do and having unrealistic expectations doesn't make an opinion better than any other.

Friend, there's no need to hurl insults around. I'm not just comparing this to WoW and other modern mmos, I'm comparing it directly to its predecessor, of which it's borrowed many, many job abilities from. Balance is hard. Job design is hard. Sometimes, some jobs don't shine in every circumstance and as a playerbase, I think it's a sign of maturity to accept that. We could talk all day about how some jobs were prepended with 'lol' until a 2 hand update and mobs weak to piercing dropped and made them gods. And how at the same time BLMs were relegated to manaburns because those same mobs had reflect. And you know what? We all lived. We all still leveled the jobs we liked. We found interesting ways to do it as well as overcome NMs and BCNMs and the sense of accomplishment that came with that, well, you can't put a price on it.


In that game the jobs had real differences. Every role here is so homogenized that SE doesn't get a free pass on not even putting in the barest level of effort to figure out how to make the jobs engaging, and adding more clocks to the cluttered UI is not the solution. It's not unrealistic to expect some effort for this paid product.

[NegativeS]

Every time someone mentions a comparison between FF14 jobs and WoW classes it's safe to deduct at least 10 points from your estimation of their IQ.

It's about an apt comparison as apples and car tires. 14 has no skill trees. No specs. No crazy trinkets drastically altering job function. If you considered every largely different spec possibility in WoW (Disc Priest, Shadow, Demo lock, fire mage, ice mage, etc.) as an equivalent job you would have a much higher level of under performing and/or boring options in WoW. There is no equivalency.

It's a very apt comparison. People in FFXIV only call their classes 'jobs' because the 'class' term is already taken by something else.

In spite of having the equivalent of 39 different classes to manage compared to FFXIV's 21, WoW has somehow made all of them reasonably unique to play and on average much more engaging and aligned to the class fantasy than the average FFXIV job. They can stand on their own without crazy trinkets. The talent trees are only a recent re-addition, and I can attest that they still stood on their own beforehand.

ABK might be a bigger company, but it shouldn't take being a big company to make a game fun to play.

[Isala]

It's a very apt comparison. People in FFXIV only call their classes 'jobs' because the 'class' term is already taken by something else.

In spite of having the equivalent of 39 different classes to manage compared to FFXIV's 21, WoW has somehow made all of them reasonably unique to play and on average much more engaging and aligned to the class fantasy than the average FFXIV job. They can stand on their own without crazy trinkets. The talent trees are only a recent re-addition, and I can attest that they still stood on their own beforehand.

ABK might be a bigger company, but it shouldn't take being a big company to make a game fun to play.

I mean, it's not just WoW who knocked it out of the park with making even specs feel like a different class. Back when I played SWTOR, the specs all felt different. And it makes you wonder, really. When other games in the genre can take a base class, and branch into multiple playstyles, why is XIV taking multiple classes and merging into the same playstyle...

[angienessyo]

As someone that mained ninja from SB to DT, they can keep NIN the same as much as they want. Shadowbringers and Endwalker both launched with the devs doing something new with the job and immediately having to emergency fix it because it was so bad it got locked out of PFs. I'll take something safe this round haha

[Hanayumi]

Our cope?
You're the one writing fanfiction about what you believe the SE dev team is doing and acting like you're their accountant and culture expert
There is literally no truth or source to anything you wrote there, you just made it up as a justification as to why you love to pay more to get less

While not directly apart of this dev team, yes have worked with several Japanese via logistics. Seniority, small teams, spread work, and a hesitancy to change, you'll see alot... of this with Japanese companies. In the end, yes the "Graphic upgrade" would certainly have slowed down progression of other content, the battle does not do everything with the jobs, they still have to go through several other teams to get the final product, others team which would otherwise be occupied with the "Graphics update." In all likelihood the current job structure/plan was probably known far in advance, possibly along with EW changes...

[Malthir]

Graphics update, understand these devs are only one major change at a time. Folks really really really dont understand the limited capabilities of SE vs something like Blizzard that now has the backing of Microsoft and can quite literally throw tons of money into its devs and hiring then letting go hundreds of employees. Not really a way most Japanese companies conduct themselves who love seniority and life time employees.

Right but as myself and others stated many many many times before on the forum, it's stupid as all hell to focus an expac on a graphic update when graphics are the least of your games problems. New player exp>UI/Movement>Job design>Gameplay(as in interaction with the word so we aren't basically playing a graphic novel walk here watch cutscene)>graphics.

[Ririta]

Both games are designing jobs that fit what the fights ask of them.

WoW already went through its "simplification" expansion in WoD, and it was bad for the game because dealing good DPS or HPS or good mitigation is the main challenge. Meanwhile FFXIV gets more and more successful the more they simplify the jobs, because the main challenge in this game is dodging mechanics. I mean, monks heal by channeling, that means sitting on your ass with your green tether at people... can you imagine that working here?

FFXIV's fight design is so strict that there's not much room for job creativity.

[elioaiko]

Honestly, the job changes are very phoned in and make almost no sense.

Why does every job need a new cool ability locked behind a 2min buff CD?

SAM getting an unnecessary Tsubame change that feels worse in practice.

[gllt]

I might not be able to propose the perfect job changes that make jobs interesting, diverse, and fun in all content while making sure they don't become overwhelming in the context of higher end fights and strict dodge based movement gameplay.

But I refuse to believe that such changes don't exist and I insist they're necessary because the experience of playing through older expacs and replaying that content to carry others through it for MSQ, to get to the higher end content where you do the funny dances to not die, needs to be more fun and engaging. It hurts both new and old players to be bored in older, casual content. And I can't imagine arguing that it's not important because it's casual.

And no one likes people who pay to skip it because they don't have any of the experience or knowledge that comes with playing through the content. So skips aren't an answer.

I hate that the answer seems to be play with NPCs. They're always there for you, you can't fight with them, they don't make you wait in queue no matter what role or job you pick, etc. I'm very thankful they exist but.. they are really boring too.