Quote Originally Posted by Ramiee View Post
I'm specifically talking about western tab target MMOs. Almost all I have played are way more open in role design then current FF14. The only ones as strict as FF14 are ones from the 2000s.
"Tab Target" is not a genre.

It's either turn based (where time stands still), or active time battle (ATB) where time flows but commands are still executed based on speed variables. This is where you spend most of the time DPS'ing the closest target, or Healing/Casting from the back.

Or it's Action based where you have to be correctly positioned to execute an action or you miss. If you're in the AOE cone, you probably gonna die. This is where you spend most of the time dodging.


Quote Originally Posted by Ramiee View Post
Also I don't understand why you are bringing up the art design in relevance to this?
Please look at the marketing and screenshots for Blade and Soul. Now look at the marketing for Aion. Both of these are NCSoft. Both of these games adhere to class-lock. BDO also does class lock.

The most well known Japanese MMO's are FFXIV, FFXI, Dragon Quest X, PSO2, and Monster Hunter. PSO2 also does the class-lock thing, but the classes themselves are not locked to races. It costs P2W money to change class.

Players in Asian games care a lot more about how the characters look. So that's why there is such a huge focus on these big-chested characters in marketing materials, and then you flip the page and there's a character that is small-but-still-an-adult-I-am-sure.

Then go back to Western MMORPG's and what do we have...
1. Minecraft (modded)
2. WoW
3. SWTOR
4. Star Trek Online
5. ESO
6. Fallout76

Of these maybe SWTOR isn't ugly.

Basically what I'm saying here is a lot of these Japanese and Korean games tend to market on the character designs, and survive or fail based on how much players want to play that character/race/class. That character/race/class lockin is a feature to make players have to start over and pump their P2W monies if they want to play that new character. Meanwhile FFXIV is over here and going "Hey you can play all the jobs on one character! Look at how much less time you have to commit!"

The compromise being 14 has to basically make a new set of gear for every dungeon and raid for every race in the game, and not all of those are going to be good. Compare to Wizardy Online when it was still live, usually took it's cues from XIV, where it came out with gear every month, but you had to gacha for it. The character models weren't bad, but they were not nearly as beautiful as FFXIV's art was, especially considering that WO was released during XIV 2.0 launch period and had the opportunity to grab players from XIV.

Asian players tend to care more about how the game looks (again , look at how much the JP side cares about animations) over functionality. Players can complain all they want about Healers being a 1-button DPS in all the MSQ content, but it's never going to become more like a DPS because the JP side doesn't want it to be a DPS. Play DPS if you want DPS functionality and leave the healer role alone.

The easiest rip-off-the-bandaid approach Square Enix can take is to just disable all the DPS buttons in Trial and Raid content on the healer to get the point across that the healer should be only healing in 8-player content. Then in turn disable the self-healing buttons on all the DPS and the Tank. Healing should be amplified on the Tank if they are using their mitigations correctly. But players don't want to play content differently. They want to treat all content like a DPS, because SE keeps making the encounter design that way where half the boss fight is just dodging optional damage rather than bleeding.