'I Think I've Fallen Out of Love with FFXIV'

[Jeeqbit]

I agree that job homogenization went too far. I understand why it happened to a degree, because there was a lot of unused, pointless or unintuitive stuff in Heavensward. They cut down on it a lot in Stormblood and they'd mostly got rid of it all by Shadowbringers. Also, when people don't have an ability they complain their job is not balanced ie. people asking for DRK to get heals, PLD to get a gap closer.

But it started to go overboard in Shadowbringers and Endwalker, removing things that are part of the job identity such as:

• random AST card management
• making WAR and SAM's conal AoE not a cone
• making PLD about as full of heals as WAR that no longer respected PLD's identity (casting heals and other magic)
• removing Kaiten
• DRK going from having too many ability interactions to having none except for TBN
• I understand why keeping stuff up was scrapped but it was still an enjoyable aspect for some players

I still find the jobs fun at max level, to be honest, but I find myself having to actually switch between them now whereas I didn't used to need to.

Anyway, they are going to look at this issue in 8.0. They should really do this through 7.x, but they said 8.0 so that's what they are doing. If job identity is that big of a sticking point for people they should probably just try the game in 8.0 and see if it changed enough, especially since they have been considering ideas like skill trees.

Jobs may not have mattered that much in dungeons, but now? You might as well remove job icons altogether. Hell, just remove healers as a whole, since they’ve become redundant enough that parties are statistically more efficient without them.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy self-healing myself in dungeons, and it did feel a bit frustrating to rely on the healer in the past. But I accepted that was part of the game and that I was doing my job (pull+mit), and they did their job (healing).
Now I can do all 3 jobs on my own in dungeons (tank, heal, dps). If a healer disconnects I pull anyway. If a tank disconnects, the party continues anyway because tanks don't matter and you can cast Sleep if needed. If a DPS disconnects, you only need 1 DPS anyway to do a decent amount of damage for it to not take ages. If a party member goes AFK, I continue going through the dungeon because they're frankly irrelevant.

The team play was always a part of what made it feel good. You worked together to tackle this dungeon. It was never that it was that hard, but if the healer didn't heal, people died. If the tank didn't mit a pull, it was a wipe. Although there are remnants of that, especially with tanks applying things like Nascent Flash, it's largely eroded in favor of "you can handle everything yourself" - with DPS literally healing themselves with Second Wind, Bloodbath, their own misc ability/attribute they have and why not throw potions into it.

It does seem better in High-End duties now. Even with all of WAR's heals, high-end duties still wreck me currently if the healers aren't looking, so they've restored that aspect somewhat. The autos hurt again. In Endwalker it was at a point where soloing through a few phases of Extreme/Savage was actually possible and it had got ridiculous.

When what little buffs and debuffs the game has mattered.

They announced moving away from status effects with the release of Stormblood and introduction of job gauges. I get why, because people who've never played MMORPGs before this one won't understand buffs/debuffs very much, but for those of us that understand them they are fine. But obviously they want to solve it for people that don't understand little status effects and cast bars hence those giant casts in the middle of the screen now. This is where I would like the old design but I understand why they are making it work for people new to MMOs.

The dungeons, with each new addition a predictable pattern of three to four bosses. Those bosses, separated by a few groups of trash mobs, further separated by a series of walls ensuring your group can pull just enough (but not too much!) to force one or two Cures out of your healer.

The leveling dungeons still demanded a lot of healing from me when I was leveling healers due to their tight sync. So there is an element of item level bloat just making the max level dungeons melt always. They have abandoned some of the unique ideas they used to do with trash as well like in Sunken Temple or Hullbreaker Isle. But I think the issue is more just that lack of variety in Expert roulette. They can make it the hardest dungeon ever but if you get it for 8 months, you become such an "expert" at it that it makes you sick to do it without at least changing job.

Remember when raids in FFXIV felt like, you know, raids?

It's obviously to reduce time wasting. If they are to add trash to Savage they should make it very easy, then it creates the feeling of a raid but you get to the boss quick at least. At the moment, the "travel" to the boss happens in a story instance or solo battle, with the Gates to Pandaemonium instance area being an example and the Omega solo battle being another.

[User202503201232]

Anyway, they are going to look at this issue in 8.0. They should really do this through 7.x, but they said 8.0 so that's what they are doing.

Improved combat encounters was supposed to arrive in 7.2, and there are only two days left to prove that wrong.

Improved job design in 8.0? They'll conveniently forget to say anything about it and hope everyone forgets about it with them.

[Jeeqbit]

Improved combat encounters was supposed to arrive in 7.2, and there are only two days left to prove that wrong.

Their aim is to fix the combat encounters throughout the 7.x patches and obviously 7.2 is where they are prepared to make stuff tougher than at expansion release. I expect that the assessment on these forums won't be positive whatever they do though, because it never is. We will see though.

I think that the first tier of raids and dungeons and trials are an example of their design changes so, ultimately if that doesn't make someone happy, they probably won't be impressed by 7.2 either.

There ARE actually people who have talked positively about Dawntrail content though, so really gonna depend what your expectations are and if they are met. I wouldn't personally expect SE to change that much.

Improved job design in 8.0? They'll conveniently forget to say anything about it and hope everyone forgets about it with them.

Maybe, but in my experience, if they say something they are planning it. They are media savvy and know that they can't say something unless it's actually happening.

A recent example of them saying something then not doing it was the Dragoon rework. But they did actually acknowledge that we were expecting a rework and just said it turned out they didn't need to change much, which is good because I was speculating they were going to make it a Reaper clone and destroy what little difference there is between them.

I think they will do something. Like usual, I don't expect it to be enough to satisfy you or most people on these forums though. At the end of the day, whatever changes they are planning, they probably aren't gonna be something that transform a person from not wanting to play, to wanting to play, because there's not much track record of that in this game.

[User202503201232]

I think they will do something. Like usual, I don't expect it to be enough to satisfy you or most people on these forums though.

I'm sorry but this isn't a "forum" issue or a "me" issue.

This is a SE issue.

I'm not sure how some people still have so much copium over the game when nearly a decade of live letters have shown them to describe minuscule, petty changes as being something far greater than what they actually are. And it's always written in the vaguest language possible, just so that they can get away with saying that they technically delivered on their promise.

I suspect the only reason they get away with it is because this game's churn rate is very high and there is no "memory" in the playerbase. Compared to a lot of other MMOs, most of the players in the game have played only one or two expansions.

Because of this when they hear things like "we're making healer DPS busier this expansion, please look forward to it", the playerbase thinks "we're getting a real DPS rotation!" or "maybe they'll make healers just like SB again". Instead what it actually means is that you'll get a combo action to Chain Strategem and you'll press that extra button that you will always press every 120 seconds and you will like it.

No, they will not deliver anything substantial. It takes a tremendous amount of bad faith to argue that things like Baneful Impaction delivered on their promise.

[Jeeqbit]

I'm sorry but this isn't a "forum" issue or a "me" issue.

I wasn't saying it was a forum issue or a you issue, but rather that I've been here long enough to know that SE ain't gonna change things such a substantial amount that everyone universally starts expressing positivity on the forums.

I suspect the only reason they get away with it is because this game's churn rate is very high and there is no "memory" in the playerbase. Compared to a lot of other MMOs, most of the players in the game have played only one or two expansions.

Pretty much that. It's also the casual/returner factor - where they take a break, come back and complete two expansions they missed. So the gameplay is catered to guarantee the smooth progression of the potential player that hasn't played for 4+ years and just came to do MSQ - maybe a percentage of them do an extreme or a bit of savage, then they get bored and quit.

It depends a lot if they find a social connection as well. That's the biggest thing to tie someone to an MMORPG long-term. A lot of people don't find this, but the ones that do often get pulled back regardless of their enthusiasm for the game itself. Managing an FC, RP, being in a static, hunting, their partner plays, etc. Once they lose that social connection they often question if they will continue playing.

so that they can get away with saying that they technically delivered on their promise.

It takes a tremendous amount of bad faith to argue that things like Baneful Impaction delivered on their promise.

What a lot of people have misunderstood when I've said things in the past is that I'm just arguing they technically did it, not that it's necessarily satisfactory.

[Valence]

I'm a newer player and thought coils and alexander royally sucked ass and weren't interesting whatsoever. Especially alexander. That felt so tedious and mind numbing.

Coils and Alex belong to another game at this point. Doing them with the current battle system (post HW) makes little sense: it's like the encounters and the modern game talk two different languages and one of them just bruteforces the other into submission anyway. That and the powercreep is so dire that you can steamroll almost everything.

They announced moving away from status effects with the release of Stormblood and introduction of job gauges. I get why, because people who've never played MMORPGs before this one won't understand buffs/debuffs very much, but for those of us that understand them they are fine. But obviously they want to solve it for people that don't understand little status effects and cast bars hence those giant casts in the middle of the screen now. This is where I would like the old design but I understand why they are making it work for people new to MMOs.

People can learn. They still had to add advanced hall of the novice to make them learn everything that's not a buff or debuff ANYWAY.
By doing this they literally changed the genre of the game. They alienated half of their vets.

It's obviously to reduce time wasting. If they are to add trash to Savage they should make it very easy, then it creates the feeling of a raid but you get to the boss quick at least. At the moment, the "travel" to the boss happens in a story instance or solo battle, with the Gates to Pandaemonium instance area being an example and the Omega solo battle being another.

Exploring actual raid and story tied environments, and dealing with trash on the way, isn't wasting time. Solo instances aren't the answer. You only do them once. I already forgot about all of them. If they were actually interesting they'd be burned into my memory. And if they were actually interesting, why not put them in the fucking duty in the first place? Aren't we allowed to have fun there?
If anything those days, it's the stupid trial bosses in a circle arena that are wasting time, because we just want to be over with them.

But... you just copy pasted someone else's article. You literally have nothing of substance to say yourself in this thread.

What is this ad hominem even for?
I don't care who wrote the article. It conveys a message, which I do agree with, and which provides matter to discuss. If you have something of substance to actually discuss instead of attacking the OP, do it?

[Exmo]

What is this ad hominem even for?
I don't care who wrote the article. It conveys a message, which I do agree with, and which provides matter to discuss. If you have something of substance to actually discuss instead of attacking the OP, do it?

Why are you following me around these forums and responding snarkily to my comments? Why do you target me specifically to respond to when OP did what you accuse me of right before my post? Your behaviour is transparent. I'd like you to leave me alone now, thank you.

[Memento]

You're literally adding nothing of substance to this thread. If you don't agree with OP just move along.

[Valence]

Why are you following me around these forums and responding snarkily to my comments? Why do you target me specifically to respond to when OP did what you accuse me of right before my post? Your behaviour is transparent. I'd like you to leave me alone now, thank you.

I'm sorry what? Are you unhappy that people are replying to you when you take part into a public forum? Do you think that you are the only person on those forums I do respond to?
The post before yours made by the OP specifically called out people for going ad hominem instead of addressing the content. Or are you saying that calling out an ad hominem, would also be an ad hominem? mind blown

Yes, i understand that and i agree, but when you already have like 15 buttons just to do DAMAGE, you can't have additional buttons to power up said buttons,

I don't like hat you all think "then just reduce it down to spamming 1 button" , that is not what my point is.
Especially the worse and new players suffer a lot from the button bloat, because not everyone can handle so many keybinds or has the right hardware to support that on a keyboard & mouse.
It is mainly an accessibility problem, how many hotkeys kan you handle comfortably? 10? 15? 20? some jobs have over 30, which is just obscene.


also healers got more than one button, so dont be silly.

I think what Kaiten did beyond just adding damage to damage buttons, was to introduce player agency and choice when it came to kenki management. Once removed, the only avenue for Kenki is essentially turning the gauge into a Shinten gauge, with the exception of Senei/Guren every minute that do act like kaiten did, but just on a hard timer. The looks and vibe of the skill aside, what people miss is this amount of agency and skill expression, which is more than what a lot of modern buttons can claim to offer.

[Arohk]

I think what Kaiten did beyond just adding damage to damage buttons, was to introduce player agency and choice when it came to kenki management.

Yes "The Illusion of Choiche" , Kaiten was never a Choice to use or not, it is a Mandatory Buff before every Iaijutsu,

Playstlye with Kaiten = always stay above 30 kenki
Playstlye without Kaiten = always stay above 10 kenki