Melbourne International games week Interview about content

[Valence]

Since some have already recounted their own stories, I guess I could indulge, even though no, I am not quitting. I am not quitting because I found a renewed enjoyment in 6.1 pvp and crystalline conflict, and I do wonder what would have happened to me and this game were this not coming out of the blue, unexpectedly. I have a house with months of hard work on invaluable submarines keeping me quietly on a leash, and am seriously invested into some community aspects that are hard to forego. It has taken a big place in my daily life and it's as simple as that, as MMOs can do.

I have started playing at the release of HW. I am part of the old guard and have been progressively and more consistently part of the "hardcore" community of players, which is obviously a sheer minority. I have been involved in the balance that I was offered mentorship, I have seen the casual as much as the high end raiding and have raided since SB. Still, that's how I am, and perhaps it's Asperger or whatever I have, but I can go deep into learning about things. I did enjoyed XIV precisely for what it offered mechanically, even in the most casual dungeons. I even started as a healer, and actually main healed for 9 months until Creator came up, even though I have always had a DPS profile. That we used to have a more varied and interesting kit on healers in freaking Sastasha than we do have at max level today should tell everything there is to tell about healers, and why even this role back then kept me engaged. Managing resources, managing kit interactions, having a more brutal and punishing battle system, tanks taking crits from behind, dangerous autos, MP being a thousand times more interesting and meaningful on every caster, but also rphys, PLD and DRK, actual role identities to play in most content where today everybody is the same with a blue, red or green colour (and tanks are all three). I could go on. That's where part of the meat of the game was. We had a lot of junk and clunky systems that I don't want to see back, but the core RPG system of the game was still there to entertain. Running casual dungeons wasn't that much harder than today because mechanically, they were like the old dungeons are today (for those not reworked), but we had actual depth behind jobs and the battle system where we could express our skill.

SB started something bad there but it was still a great expansion, the nail in the coffin was ShB that nuked everything. That's where the devs started inexplicably to alter their game so much that it became all about DDR mechanics, and more recently visual puzzles everywhere and everything based on memory games and formulaic patterns. There is no creativity mechanically anymore. The encounters don't interact with kits anymore. The jobs are shallow husks of what they used to be. They do have identity, perhaps more than before, but their gameplay and intricacies are gone. It's just about rehearsing the same dance again and again and I feel like I'm playing a game of ballet more than an actual RPG. I can't have fun anymore in casual content, even in dungeons that I loved running as chill content. It's faceroll on the enemies, and faceroll on the keyboard. And also facedesk when I get hit by a stupid DDR mechanic that is trying to challenge me, but it's not about intellectual challenges anymore, it's just attention span and perception or quick reactions. This is not fun to me. Perhaps I'm the only one like that, I don't know, but I feel so alienated by what the game has become those days that I don't know. Pve repells me. It repells me so much that I'm burnt out of raiding, and I honestly can say that I can't take of your rigid, scripted, savage identical bosses anymore. The intricacies I miss have been brought back in pvp somehow, with thrice less bloat on the hotbars to boot.

I never liked exploration areas / fields operations. Diadem was garbo but everyone hated it anyway. Eureka and Bozja were so divisive because while they had interesting concepts they were an utterly tedious, boring grind doing brainless tasks, and the only interesting thing was in between when making groups or tactically socializing, or the occasional gem like CLL or Dalriada (which should be the creative model for every non trial / standard savage pve content with varied environments and objectives, sorry not sorry). Farming mobs over and over or fates over and over is NOT the epitome of fun. At least to me. Relics? Same. I only liked dungeons because I could run some of them on a daily basis without losing my mind. Say what you will about tome relics, but at least you can get tomes through many ways you like (Hildi relics were obviously suffering from not even trying though). But at least in HW/SB I could have fun by running some pve content that was still interesting, even the most casual stuff. And sure, I was a newer player, so there was more things to do to catch up on content, but that mostly lasted HW tbh.

When are they going to make something new for pve? I mean actually new? Not regurgitated glorified fates, mob farm or trial bosses on a circle arena where you can fall on the edges? Are we doomed to eat the same porridge every day, every month, because that's the only thing the team is able to do? Not even trying to even shake the formula, change dungeons here and there, surprise us? I'm sorry but if doubling down on your "modern" encounter mechanics is your answer, I can't be arsed anymore. It's insipid. It's not satisfying. My jobs have been butchered. Even if I have a surplus of new content to run, what good is it gonna do me if the model is still the same bland old soup? How is this even better?

[ovIm]

SB started something bad there but it was still a great expansion, the nail in the coffin was ShB that nuked everything. That's where the devs started inexplicably to alter their game so much that it became all about DDR mechanics, and more recently visual puzzles everywhere and everything based on memory games and formulaic patterns. There is no creativity mechanically anymore. The encounters don't interact with kits anymore. The jobs are shallow husks of what they used to be. They do have identity, perhaps more than before, but their gameplay and intricacies are gone. It's just about rehearsing the same dance again and again and I feel like I'm playing a game of ballet more than an actual RPG. I can't have fun anymore in casual content, even in dungeons that I loved running as chill content. It's faceroll on the enemies, and faceroll on the keyboard. And also facedesk when I get hit by a stupid DDR mechanic that is trying to challenge me, but it's not about intellectual challenges anymore, it's just attention span and perception or quick reactions. This is not fun to me. Perhaps I'm the only one like that, I don't know, but I feel so alienated by what the game has become those days that I don't know. Pve repells me. It repells me so much that I'm burnt out of raiding, and I honestly can say that I can't take of your rigid, scripted, savage identical bosses anymore. The intricacies I miss have been brought back in pvp somehow, with thrice less bloat on the hotbars to boot.

...

When are they going to make something new for pve? I mean actually new? Not regurgitated glorified fates, mob farm or trial bosses on a circle arena where you can fall on the edges? Are we doomed to eat the same porridge every day, every month, because that's the only thing the team is able to do? Not even trying to even shake the formula, change dungeons here and there, surprise us? I'm sorry but if doubling down on your "modern" encounter mechanics is your answer, I can't be arsed anymore. It's insipid. It's not satisfying. My jobs have been butchered. Even if I have a surplus of new content to run, what good is it gonna do me if the model is still the same bland old soup? How is this even better?

gods I wish I could give you more than one like right now. I feel those issues deep in my soul.
The only last bastion of fun in this game is PVP for me, really. That feeling of HW and SB... those games did hit differently.

[Valence]

gods I wish I could give you more than one like right now. I feel those issues deep in my soul.
The only last bastion of fun in this game is PVP for me, really. That feeling of HW and SB... those games did hit differently.

This actually made me remember what made support roles actually interesting and miles ahead of what they are today. Sure, they had a few other battle mechanics, but they also had variable rotations. As a healer you didn't have more than tetragrammaton for example in HW as an OGCD heal, the rest, you had to hard cast. This fundamentally changed your rotation since you had to adjust to incoming damage profiles and encounters, and also to what your allies did. As a healer in dungeons you had to manage your MP a lot and the time taken to take down a pull and how much you needed to heal the tank would inform how many holy you could cast in between, and between pulls you wouldn't recover your MP like today either. As a caster besides BLM, MP also mattered (remember when Ruin III costed 1300MP to cast out of Dreadwyrm?). This in turn made rphys role fundamentally important. As a tank, you also had to adjust to aggro management and what your allies would do, as well as the party damage output and the encounter layout. This meant that your rotation would also not be static as you'd have to go between your aggro combo and your damage combo. All of this in spite of tanks and healers never having any RNG elements in their rotations whatsoever (AST excepted with cards). Fully deterministic toolkits, and yet the whole battle design made it so that you constantly had to adjust.

What's support today in comparison? It's so bland and braindead I have even stopped playing those jobs.

[Teno]

This actually made me remember what made support roles actually interesting and miles ahead of what they are today. Sure, they had a few other battle mechanics, but they also had variable rotations. As a healer you didn't have more than tetragrammaton for example in HW as an OGCD heal, the rest, you had to hard cast. This fundamentally changed your rotation since you had to adjust to incoming damage profiles and encounters, and also to what your allies did. As a healer in dungeons you had to manage your MP a lot and the time taken to take down a pull and how much you needed to heal the tank would inform how many holy you could cast in between, and between pulls you wouldn't recover your MP like today either. As a caster besides BLM, MP also mattered (remember when Ruin III costed 1300MP to cast out of Dreadwyrm?). This in turn made rphys role fundamentally important. As a tank, you also had to adjust to aggro management and what your allies would do, as well as the party damage output and the encounter layout. This meant that your rotation would also not be static as you'd have to go between your aggro combo and your damage combo. All of this in spite of tanks and healers never having any RNG elements in their rotations whatsoever (AST excepted with cards). Fully deterministic toolkits, and yet the whole battle design made it so that you constantly had to adjust.

What's support today in comparison? It's so bland and braindead I have even stopped playing those jobs.

How I wish we didn't have so many redundant ogcd heals. ARR/HW SCH was peak gameplay. Kinda like what blizz is doing with healers right now, where you can lean in a more hybrid damage/heal style and have multiple mini bursty dps abilities to weave in. Which in itself is inpired by old scholar, so it circles back.