The future of job design

[Kazuke_Miso]

How are “DDR” mechanics the scapegoat for black mage allegedly needing shorter casts to handle them, and jobs getting easier? Don’t more predictable mechanics make it easier to understand how to maintain uptime as a caster and to have a “correct” rotation as a tank/melee? Like I know when I want to use Sprint to slidecast better as healer or rdm if I know what’s coming up, and I can plan ahead when to use the specific things like Afflatus Misery or Acceleration. I might be misunderstanding what you mean by “DDR.”

My assumption is that if black mage casting getting easier, then it’s maybe for the sake of less predictable/rigid mechanics in the future. But I’ll only believe it when I see it. I’m still of the suspicion that their real intentions for the simplifications are to help worse players do enough damage, or because that’s their easy way of making it simpler to balance the jobs.

Most of the "busy" mechanics they've implemented are just faster-paced DDR mechanics. The only exception is something like M2S, but there is nothing unique or interesting about dodging a lot of AoEs in a row. I think a lot of players will see through just how creatively bankrupt the team is because it seems like they think the only thing they need to do is to just add a lot of rapid AoEs to dodge.

[Arohk]

i suggest you go reread some of your tool tips, there's a couple of jobs with a silence skill.

can you name one? i am not sure if Blue Mage has an actual silence skill i think it doesnt.

[Absurdity]

can you name one? i am not sure if Blue Mage has an actual silence skill i think it doesnt.

Your issue, and the reason you can never imagine anything besides dodging different AoE patterns, is that you only think within the confines of current job design.

We had some kind of crowd control on almost every job in the past. AST's Celestial Opposition had an AoE stun, WHM's Fluid Aura had a knockback, Ninja's Jugulate had a silence, PLD's Shield Swipe had a pacify effect, DRK's Dark Passenger had a blind, etc.

Of course you can't come up with any more interesting mechanics when only looking at what jobs can do since Shadowbringers, because they have all been reduced to the same tired, simplistic and creatively dead "do damage, take less damage and heal damage".

[Daudream]

can you name one? i am not sure if Blue Mage has an actual silence skill i think it doesnt.

i think they are mixing up tanks/physical range's interrupt skills? as how they work is kinda like "silencing" certain casts, no jobs other than maybe blue has stuff like silence in pve anymore and even if they did most bosses are just immune to everything because of how scripted they are, so eh

[JohnLakeside]

Thats a good comprehensive list of mechanics that we don't see anymore these days, good work on compiling that.
To add to that list, there is also a plethora of things in Pharos Sirius pre-nerf that was interesting, from a boss that punished you from doing too much DPS, to a boss where killing too many add spawners would result in a super powerful boss, or the staircase bit where you have to stop mobspawners while AoE's are created beneath you.
Or in Tam Tara hard, where you had to avoid killing adds on one boss, or soak other attacks to protect an NPC. Or spawning an add that temporary stuns the person spawning it.
Saint Mociannes had breakable walls where a team had to consider if their DPS was strong enough to break through and skip adds before spawning bees would final sting the tank to death.

Pre Stormblood, there was a lot of creativity and variance in the dungeons themselves already. Paired with the added depth of classes, there was a lot of joy just running dungeons with different jobs too.

I did Pharos Sirius for the first time around a few weeks ago, and I’m pretty sure we actually wiped to that “too much DPS” mechanic. I think that’s what it was.

Either way, doing Pharos right after running Vanaspati from EW for the first time was honestly kind of depressing—but not because Pharos was worse. In fact, it was the opposite. It fricking pisses me off that an optional dungeon from ten years ago ended up being far more interesting and engaging than a dungeon from the culminating chapter of the Hydaelyn saga.

[Kazuke_Miso]

Looks like they're just doubling down on DDR raids lmao.

[Taranok]

If you don't like "DDR" mechanics , what better and more fun alternative do you suggest?

keep in mind that the FFXIV engine is probably not capable of doing anything else than that.

The game has no i-frame or active block mechanics, jumping over obstacles also doesnt seem to be a thing, most jobs dont even have mobility skills like a dash or a stun/interrupt.

Honestly? Look at stormblood fight design, do that. It's still DDR, but at a fun pace with mechanics that specifically target individuals by role instead of everyone having to do everything. The fact that I have to point out things like neo exdeath having multiple mechanics that challenge individual roles instead of everyone should really tell you how bad mechanics design has gotten.

For example, vacuum wave? Challenging to all melee. Delta Attack? Challenging to all casters. Exaflares? Minor challenge to casters. Grand Cross Delta (iirc)? Unique stuff for healers and rphys to do.

What is everyone else doing during mechanics that's not challenging to them? Melee are running a path and otherwise don't care. Casters/ranged are standing out and don't care. Grand Cross Delta is mostly standing north and not caring.

It's phenomenal that the devs have completely and utterly forgotten the concept of fight pacing and allowing players downtime. Stormblood is the expansion that actually resurrected FFXIV, and allowed ShB to shine as brightly as it did.

As a bonus, if you look at stormblood's overall design, even though I don't think we should go back to SB class design in entirety, easier fights allow for harder classes to exist. Sure, BLM doesn't need timers to come back in my opinion, but being a full caster with only 1 triplecast a minute and 1 swiftcast a minute, not even instant xenos? It had enough movement to handle most fights, and fights like god kefka presented challenges that were hard but not insurmountable to solve for its movement sections. Which meant for sections that weren't that, I could prepare in advance and sit still and cast. Leveraging the best feature of caster gameplay, fight predictability and memorization to be where you need to be before it's a problem.

The DDR isn't going away, but literally every fight in stormblood is a vastly better experience. Especially because, and I will iterate myself, easier fights allow for harder classes to exist. That's not to say every class needs to be hard. You should always have a summoner alongside a black mage. It allows players to self-select into the difficulty they want. It is a vastly better system than the garbage path fight design has taken since tier 3 shadowbringers.

[Kazuke_Miso]

Honestly? Look at stormblood fight design, do that. It's still DDR, but at a fun pace with mechanics that specifically target individuals by role instead of everyone having to do everything. The fact that I have to point out things like neo exdeath having multiple mechanics that challenge individual roles instead of everyone should really tell you how bad mechanics design has gotten.

For example, vacuum wave? Challenging to all melee. Delta Attack? Challenging to all casters. Exaflares? Minor challenge to casters. Grand Cross Delta (iirc)? Unique stuff for healers and rphys to do.

What is everyone else doing during mechanics that's not challenging to them? Melee are running a path and otherwise don't care. Casters/ranged are standing out and don't care. Grand Cross Delta is mostly standing north and not caring.

It's phenomenal that the devs have completely and utterly forgotten the concept of fight pacing and allowing players downtime. Stormblood is the expansion that actually resurrected FFXIV, and allowed ShB to shine as brightly as it did.

As a bonus, if you look at stormblood's overall design, even though I don't think we should go back to SB class design in entirety, easier fights allow for harder classes to exist. Sure, BLM doesn't need timers to come back in my opinion, but being a full caster with only 1 triplecast a minute and 1 swiftcast a minute, not even instant xenos? It had enough movement to handle most fights, and fights like god kefka presented challenges that were hard but not insurmountable to solve for its movement sections. Which meant for sections that weren't that, I could prepare in advance and sit still and cast. Leveraging the best feature of caster gameplay, fight predictability and memorization to be where you need to be before it's a problem.

The DDR isn't going away, but literally every fight in stormblood is a vastly better experience. Especially because, and I will iterate myself, easier fights allow for harder classes to exist. That's not to say every class needs to be hard. You should always have a summoner alongside a black mage. It allows players to self-select into the difficulty they want. It is a vastly better system than the garbage path fight design has taken since tier 3 shadowbringers.

Let's not forget that fights like A6S and O8S literally showed mechanics that weren't DDRs at all. Using CCs, engaging heal checks, etc.

[Voryn]

I’m still confused about what a “DDR mechanic” is and how they lead to jobs being made easier. The only endgame raids I’ve done are EW/DT content with only a couple random savages from older expansions, plus UWU, UCOB, and TEA.

This whole time I’m thinking “Dance Dance Revolution” so I’m assuming people are talking about mechanics that are scripted, having specific solutions, and only ask players to move into the right position to resolve them. But mechanics being scripted means it’s easier to do your rotation when you know what to plan around and when things are happening.

[post with examples]

A lot of these are asking for things like fighting adds, or doing some duty-specific actions, or things that have players not be playing their jobs at all (turning into gorillas, O3 and Tender Valley mazes, interacting with objects, driving vehicles, getting trapped and needing to be freed). But some are still just “figure out the right solution and then move to in the right spot” like the Stormblood math boss or the E7 portals so are still DDR? But admittedly some examples are going over my head because of not remembering level 50 or 60 dungeons.

Is anyone able to give a better explanation of DDR and how they think it leads to jobs being made easier? They’re obviously two things that are annoying to people who like the older job designs and older mechanic designs but the correlation between the two doesn’t make sense.

[Absurdity]

Is anyone able to give a better explanation of DDR and how they think it leads to jobs being made easier? They’re obviously two things that are annoying to people who like the older job designs and older mechanic designs but the correlation between the two doesn’t make sense.

You're pretty spot on with your assumption about DDR mechanics.

If I had to add anything it's that the job rotations aren't getting easier because the fights are scripted, but that the devs have made them easier over the last 5 years, with the justification that they increased the frequency and speed at which you need to "stand in the right spot".

It's also not that people necessarily hate resolving mechanics by standing in the safe spot in general, but the devs have essentially reused the same 6 patterns for standing in the right spot for years.
Not only is it nothing but DDR mechanics nowadays, but it is the same DDR mechanics that we have seen over 50 times already, repackaged in a different wrapping paper and with a new shiny bow on top.