More BLM feedback and opinion

[GartredZW]

Where does this line of thinking end?
Aggro management is too hard, so let's just make tank stance a basic "give aggro when dealing damage" toggle.
Healers having more than two buttons is too hard, so now they just have one spell to spam.
Positionals are too hard for some players, so we just remove them.
Cast times in general are too hard for some players, so we just remove them.
Melee needing to be close to the enemy to deal damage is too hard, so we made their range the same as phys ranged.
Combo actions are too hard.
Random Procs are too hard.
Keeping your GCD rolling at all times is too hard.

Eventually, you're going to have to tell people "Don't like this? well then play something you do like." "Too hard? do you want to put in the effort to make it work, or do you just want to play something without that thing?"
What's my option for that exactly? I don't like new Black Mage as much, so what should I do? Time travel back to Endwalker? I already tried all other jobs, and none of them got close to Black Mage in how fun they are.
Better yet, Maybe I should start using the tactics that so clearly work. "Dragoon is still too hard. I want to play this class, but the combos are too long, and I forget which half I'm in. Also remove the weaving."
How many people actually took a look at Black Mage and said "Well before, it was just way too hard, but now with an instant paradox that throws off the entire timing of the fire phase, it's way better. Now I enjoy it, and will play it more than my previous main."
Because in my experience, It's mostly just non-Black Mage mains who say "yeah, cool changes" then go back to playing what they already liked. Nothing of value was gained.
This expansion especially made these changes even more pointless because they also introduced a brand new easier caster at the same time. Not to mention that if Black Mage was too hard, there were already Red Mage and Summoner before, which are both far easier.

I worded this kind of weirdly, but I don't think easier equates to less fun. I just think that the changes to paradox and thunder are less fun even in spite of the fact that they're easier. I hear so many people who seem to not grasp that something being easier to pull off doesn't make it better or more fun.

You mention that the majority of the playerbase can't interact with a portion of the game as a negative thing, but I'd consider that to be the system working as intended. It's not that they can't play Black Mage, it's just that the skill curve is too intense, and requires too much planning and thought.
I don't blame these people for not wanting to spend the mental energy needed to play Black Mage all the time. Red Mage was my third class leveled this expansion after all. But I can respect when those people find something they can actually do and stay in their own lane. Instead, I'm to believe that there's this huge portion of players that far outnumber the already existing Black Mage enjoyers who cry out that they would love Black Mage if it wasn't Black Mage, and was instead some other similar, but easier and less deep job (including non-standard who most people never did, including myself). And Square ran the numbers to find that they would definitely gain more loyal subscribers and thus more money by changing one cast time, removing Sharpcast, and removing Ice's increased MP ticks.

I'm not even arguing that nothing should change about anything. I just think that changes should make sense and add to the fun of the class and not done haphazardly thrown out there without thinking, or take away gameplay. You won't hear many people complaining about the third Xenoglossy, Retrace, or even new Manafont (especially since you can late-weave it now). Those are good changes.

[Carighan]

Where does this line of thinking end?
Aggro management is too hard, so let's just make tank stance a basic "give aggro when dealing damage" toggle.
Healers having more than two buttons is too hard, so now they just have one spell to spam.
Positionals are too hard for some players, so we just remove them.
Cast times in general are too hard for some players, so we just remove them.
Melee needing to be close to the enemy to deal damage is too hard, so we made their range the same as phys ranged.
Combo actions are too hard.
Random Procs are too hard.
Keeping your GCD rolling at all times is too hard.

There is no hard cutoff.

This is one of those situations where, as a game developer, you cannot have hard and fast rules. You need to judge on a case-by-case basis which portion of your community to piss off vs which to make more happy. As your game ages, this changes even for existing groups due to a combination of naturally finding it difficult to attract new players and the number of buttons vastly increasing (which warrants some degree of re-trivialization of mechanics with each expansion, anyways, the alternative is doing the WoW thing where every time you add 3 new buttons, you remove 3 older ones again).

Can a MMORPG be made too easy? Sure. But it's not as easy as you might think, due to how MMOs work as leisure time brain relaxation experiences for many, not high-stress-high-focus exercises. It can also absolutely be too difficult. It's a balancing effort. There is no simple solution.

[Sylvain]

Can a MMORPG be made too easy? Sure. But it's not as easy as you might think, due to how MMOs work as leisure time brain relaxation experiences for many, not high-stress-high-focus exercises. It can also absolutely be too difficult. It's a balancing effort. There is no simple solution.

A good example would be Wild Star.
This mmo was just pure gold for any HC raider. It was hard, ruthless. You had to aim for everything. I'm currently main healer and GOD FFS that healing in that game was just a total blast.
Players could freaking dodge your heal, you had to do the boss mech while adapting to your party movement and throw heals.
Tanks had to actively dodge the boss attacks, not just "tank n spank" like current. Basically, any tank that would get hit without actively smashing everything they had to mitigate dodge etc would get wrecked.
The difference between a good heal/tank and a bad one was just outstanding. Basic dungeons were ruthless, f@ck even leveling was hard, any random mob could kill you if you weren't careful.
I LOVED that game, it was amazing.

It failed, utterly failed because simply no one could play the game. It was a game made for the HC players, except that for every HC that could enjoy the game you had 20 casuals who couldn't. (and casual range from week 10 savage clear to daily roulette dungeon only).
The end result was that the select few that could actually clear the game cleared it and then well... the exact same than FF. wait for the next raid.
The difference is that the game didn't have millions of casuals pouring money.

Where does this line of thinking end?

Exactly, you get it. It never ends, hence the whole difficulty,..
what should be hard?
what should be easy?
How hard... how easy...
Because everyone plays the same thing, it needs to correctly affects everyone.

Basically ask yourself the question, what would be your relationship with the game if, even by putting A LOT of efforts, you'd find every single job but 1 or 2 difficult. Like genuinly difficult to the point you're not having fun because everything keeps falling appart (like loosing enochian all the time or equivalent result even if they don't currently exist). You could say "i'd just laern to get better", sure, but let's assume you've already tried that.
Like, default game. Just playing regularly is already consumming most of your ability...
You wouldn't be having fun. Simply because nothing in the game would be within your reach. It could be mitigated by playing the easiest job but... what if you just dislike the visual?
You're a BLM right? I don't know you but just for the record, let say the only "range" you'd be able to play is the one you dislike the visual the most (like dancer i dunno..) Would you consider "I dunno man if you suck at the game just play dancer..." to be an acceptable response? Wouldn't you be like "NO! I wanna play BLM, I wanna throw some freaking huge @ss fireball at my enemy and not throw some dancing flowers and bird as my enemy" ?

Obviously the issue many of us have is the opposite, we consider that too many things are just too simple to handle and don't stimulate us enough.

Imo, (and that's just me), I think that the right call is to transfer difficulty from the jobs to the content. Because content is what separates a good from a casual.
Ultimate get to be as hard as the dev judge possible, and if you can't do it? well git good. And that's fine. The chill-island gets to be as chill (and boring to me) as it get, and that's fine, I won't play it.

Jobs design isn't. Everyone is affected by job design.

If you take 2 players who want to play BLM because the job fantasy appeals to them (like me and my bf), well BLM is hard enough for him and is almost boringly too easy to me.
You're a dev what do you do? Tell one of them "well too bad you suck at the game, just play smn scrub" ?
But then what about the HC summoner, "well SMN is for scrubby casual, just play BLM and be a real caster" ?

like, it is ridiculous and obviously no matter what you do someone won't have it good.
However, content is different. If you make savage harder, you get to decide what savage difficulty is because it is that, a difficulty level.

A mmo can be made too easy and I believe EW reached that point where too much of everything was too convenient like "no melee range" because of hti box the size of the arena, etc etc etc.
But they can be made too hard too. Obviously ff14 is more on the side of "maybe you're pushing the easiness a bit too far" but like, the gap in skill between two players is just so vast it's mindblogging. I take my bf again leveling a whm... a dungeon is effectively rough to heal for him and the whole time i'm watching him i'm like I scream in my head "... but;.. no..; wait.. omg.. wtf ... no this is wrong... why do u do that T_T... OMG PRESS THAT FUCKING ASSIZE FFS ITS BEEN OFF CD FOR 2 FREAKING MIN!!!", (but then I calmly go over what he could do to improve himself. I see change, but god what would it be if he were truly alone, and there are a lot of players who just kind of attempt to figure things by themselves.

And when I see that, I'm like, would it be right to make all those jobs more intricate to play considering how already overwhelmed some people are? Perhaps... perhaps not.
Atm I feel like the lesser devil is to just make hard content cleared with "simple" jobs.
At least casual who struggle at everything get to play the game.