A plea for RNG and proc based gameplay

[ShadowNyx3]

It makes no sense to me that they create rng/proc based jobs, only to then delete all rng/proc elements from said jobs, without every having a replacement for people who liked the initial playstyle.

Which frankly seems to be just how things go in FFXIV. A playstyle is created, someone complains, devs go absolutely crazy removing all traces of said playstyle, then never attempt to put it back together properly. I mean, look at Summoner going from a DoT class to a ‘big hitter’ class. Like I enjoy the current Summoner (yes obviously I’m aware it has many, many, many issues) but I can’t fathom why they wouldn’t then take the pre-existing playstyle and apply it to a job that was more thematically/mechanically designed for DoT style gameplay.

Arguably Ranged DPS between Stormblood and Shadowbringers is another one; they went from being slightly supportive dps to copy-paste clones with the exact same raid buffs as literally every job in the game. If you liked supporting the party? ‘Fuck those guys’ seems to be SE’s response

Definitely agree on SMN. I can be much more at peace with leaving SMN behind for the ravenous hyenas and their constant arguments over the theme of that class if I have a different DoT managing spell caster to play.

The problem with Phys Range was the removal of TP and the irrelevancy of MP, as supporting refuels on those resources were a core mechanic of that support role. They were never given a replacement party mechanic that justifies their role, as Silencing (Interjecting) is hardly ever used and tanks can just do it anyway. In my opinion, seeing Scholar receive Expedient kind of shows that the battle team has completely forgotten that there even are role actions to begin with. Why is there a movement speed buff tied to a healer mitigation when that would make a lot more sense being a Phys range role action?

[Connor]

Definitely agree on SMN. I can be much more at peace with leaving SMN behind for the ravenous hyenas and their constant arguments over the theme of that class if I have a different DoT managing spell caster to play.

Why is there a movement speed buff tied to a healer mitigation when that would make a lot more sense being a Phys range role action?

Yeah that’s the thing I can’t really forgive. Redesigning a class with a new playstyle is perfectly fine, but at least find a way to accomodate the old playstyle for people who want it. Plus, surely it’s easy for them to design a job if they’re using technically pre-existing spells and abilities lol?

And yeah, giving Scholar an actual in-combat Peloton tied to mitigation, but then leaving ranged phys with their pointless out-of-combat only Peloton? Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I mean, surely if Peloton worked in combat Scholar wouldn’t be super valuable for raids because it was the only job that could give the party Sprint lol. Like, Do you want balance or not Yoshi-P?!

[Valence]

Shamelessly necro-ing this thread of mine. I reached a point where I do wonder if us rng enjoyers are still even wanted in this game?

[Titania40]

Personally, I love the Dancer job. But I absolutely hate playing Bard. It's boring, it's not fun, and I don't like it. But you might wonder why that is. Both are RNG heavy jobs. The differences are two fold.

First, Dancer has more then just one aoe and one single target ability in their non-rng rotations. Even if luck is absolutely not with you and no procs trigger, you've got more to do then just spamming one ability over and over while waiting for a proc. The RNG procs for additional abilities also triggers with a 50% rate, so while it's possible nothing procs for a while, that's very rare to actually see. The proc abilities might trigger a proc allowing still more abilities, with a 50% chance. So this too you'll see happen fairly regularly.

Archer, and to a slightly lesser degree Bard, on the other hand consists of mostly just hitting one button. It's either your only non-proc single target or only non-proc aoe over and over. When it's available, you can hit a second OCD single target or aoe ability, but those are both on the same 2 uses cool down. Maybe you'll get lucky and can hit your third single target or aoe ability, but that's only a 20% chance to proc. Your bardic songs might let you use the OCD or proc abilities more often, or you might get very unlucky and the songs never trigger their procs. A third song might repeatedly proc being able to use an entirely different ability, or might not. So in the end, your typical damage rotation ends up usually looking like "1-3-1-3-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-3-1-1-1-1-1-2-1-1-3..." If you get REALLY lucky, the songs might replace that with spamming 2 or 3 instead of spamming 1 for about a minute or so.

Maybe bard gets more variety later, don't know. I've gotten it to 55 or 56 so far. I put leveling bard further to the side until I got other things to level 61 or so. Mostly because I don't like playing Bard. It's slightly more tolerable to me then ninja, but not by much. And I've only been leveling Ninja to remove the temptation to buy another level skip for fast unlock of Pictomancer.

[sindriiisgaming]

After the release of job changes in the media tour, it becomes obvious to me that the devs just hate RNG and proc gameplay.

• AST sees all rng removed from cards, in spite of being THE gambler job. What kind of astrology is this without rng? It was explained that this is a very divisive topic, yet they choose specifically to axe rng out of the job: I struggle to understand the logic there, except if to alienate all the people that actually enjoyed it.
  
• BLM sees all of its remaining rng in the form of Thundercloud and Firestarter removed outright. Perhaps it was a shadow of the rng it used to be due to the overabundance of sharpcasting, but the effect remains the same: rng has been axed out of BLM.
  
• DNC sees the addition of three deterministic, non RNG big attacks to its toolkit (Dance of the Dawn, Finishing Move and Last Dance). The burst segment of dancer is packed to the brim already with moves, notably from the sheer amount of potential Sabre Dances that can happen there. While fortunately Sabre Dance still takes precedence over Last Dance in terms of potency, it still leaves a lot less room for those in the burst, which not only increases dramatically the risk of overcap, but also pushes RNG/proc gameplay further out of the burst sequence, unlike BRD that still has a lot of room. This essentially removes a lot of the player choice and agency on the fly into what to use and when, and how to triage resources accordingly. Most of the rng seems pushed into the filler phase, which is boring and doesn't involve much triaging at all: Sabre is mostly a gauge spender in the filler, with little rng in its generation behind. Of course, the job still retains rng procs on its feather system, fortunately.

With that in mind, no new rng jobs based on a proc system have been added since the last one was added in ShB (dancer).

MCH also had all of its rng/procs stripped back in ShB, and it was like BRD a fully rng proc based job (meaning it had no basic deterministic combos). I have stopped hoping the job would see Reload and ammo come back to make its filler less boring for a long time as obviously it's never going to happen: they'd rather delete rng from controversial jobs like AST than do the opposite to any job.

As someone that literally loves playing that kind of jobs, am I doomed to see less and less of it? I am very worried about it considering how little options I have left for me to enjoy. I find it very depressing, do you just hate rng and proc jobs?

no thanks. rng gameplay would be to much micromanagement for me. its the reason i do not play dancer or bard. because i want to know that the skills i need to do damage will be there. with proc based jobs, this is not the case.

[Titania40]

Something else to consider, with non-proc rotations you can learn the rotation and then not have to think about it beyond keeping track of where you are in the rotation. This lets you give more focus to doing things such as dodging aoes or avoiding boss mechanics. With a proc reliant rotation on the other hand, you're constantly having to take your focus off the battlefield to check what procs (if any) have triggered. And one of the design goals the devs have mentioned is simplifying rotations so that players can pay more attention to fight mechanics. Having to track a dozen different procs at any given moment is not simplifying rotations. Thus why RNG has been getting removed left, right, and center. I wouldn't be surprised if future passes reduced or removed RNG from bards and dancers too.

[Supersnow845]

Something else to consider, with non-proc rotations you can learn the rotation and then not have to think about it beyond keeping track of where you are in the rotation. This lets you give more focus to doing things such as dodging aoes or avoiding boss mechanics. With a proc reliant rotation on the other hand, you're constantly having to take your focus off the battlefield to check what procs (if any) have triggered. And one of the design goals the devs have mentioned is simplifying rotations so that players can pay more attention to fight mechanics. Having to track a dozen different procs at any given moment is not simplifying rotations. Thus why RNG has been getting removed left, right, and center. I wouldn't be surprised if future passes reduced or removed RNG from bards and dancers too.

And people have been increasingly pushing back against “everything is on the encounter” because it made the EW savages stale as they were crammed full of body checks to imitate mechanical complexity and shoving everything on the encounter makes anything below savage boring as hell as there is no complexity in the jobs themselves

The rotation being background noise shouldn’t be a desirable end goal

[PyurBlue]

Random proc rotations have never had a lot of appeal with me, I'd prefer the random elements to be in the encounter itself. On the rotation side I like more situational elements where one action is better than another under certain conditions rather than becoming available at random. The player has to decide when to use something and is rewarded for making a good decision. Random procs, in my opinion, feel disconnected. They just happen and there isn't anyway to influence them. The way that they have been integrated into some classes has also been hit and miss. BRD and BLM hardly give you any time to react to procs and if you don't react instantly, you're losing out.

[Azurarok]

I mean this is why we should even have multiple jobs: cater each role to different tastes

I'd guess complaints regarding balancing in endgame and 'locking out' players who likes the job's aesthetic but can't stand the playstyle is what's led to the homogenization of the existing jobs.

[Valence]

no thanks. rng gameplay would be to much micromanagement for me. its the reason i do not play dancer or bard. because i want to know that the skills i need to do damage will be there. with proc based jobs, this is not the case.

No thanks what exactly? It's not like I'm asking them to make every job affected by rng... If you do not play BRD and DNC, that's perfectly fine. There is a lot of jobs I don't play as well and that's ok.

Unless your point is that every one of the 21 jobs we have should be devoid of any rng at all? That's what you meant?