Black mage changes are probably my breaking point with this game

[PyurBlue]

The least they could've kept was the cast time > recast aspect that made using instant casts have the trade-off. I don't know why even that's not allowed

It's difficult to just pick one thing to take back from old BLM. I totally agree that the long cast time interaction with instants was interesting, though with the repetitive nature of encounters I would usually use instants on cooldown for DPS. Randomized fights would have really made triplecast and swiftcast shine, though even with scripted fights there would be some occasions where I'd have to decide between mobility or going for damage and figuring something out to keep casts rolling during boss mechanics. The lack of the timer is what I feel the most. I've even gotten lost in my rotation without it because there is no planning beyond checking 1-2 GCD's ahead to make sure you're not overcapping resources anymore. It's so easy to zone out.

It's really frustrating that people in FFXIV see simplicity as a bad thing, when they should see shallowness as that. The ideal class has extreme simplicity (say, 5-10 buttons!)

Simplicity doesn't have to be bad, but I don't think it's good either and I wouldn't label extreme simplicity as an ideal of class design. Complexity by itself can be fun and I think there has to be some level of complexity somewhere to make an activity interesting once the novelty is gone. The complexity scale can also be a differentiating factor between classes. A class that is simple to play can feel different from one that is complex just as a slow class can feel different from a fast one. If everything is kept simple, you lose that flavor.

Our classes are highly complex, with lots of buttons that all mostly do the same thing ("Deal X potency of damage"), some have years of additive individually tiny blips of mechanics piled on top (e.g. Enochian timer, Paradox proc, Thunder proc, Umbral Ice, etc etc), and yet achieve exactly 0 depth with that as all of this has a fully static solution.

I can understand the view of FF14 as an example of complexity for complexity's sake and I agree that when that happens complexity has gone too far. Black Mage absolutely wasn't that though. If anything I've always considered it one of the simpler jobs. The timer wasn't there to make things difficult, it was there to make the really repetitive button pressing more engaging. Without the timer you're pressing Fire IV unless you need to press something else, and you don't have to think about any of it too much.

Since class and encounter design are linked I wouldn't dismiss different concepts for Black Mage outright, but I do feel that with the current encounter design, job complexity is needed or the game is dull.

[Carighan]

Simplicity doesn't have to be bad, but I don't think it's good either and I wouldn't label extreme simplicity as an ideal of class design. Complexity by itself can be fun and I think there has to be some level of complexity somewhere to make an activity interesting once the novelty is gone. The complexity scale can also be a differentiating factor between classes. A class that is simple to play can feel different from one that is complex just as a slow class can feel different from a fast one. If everything is kept simple, you lose that flavor.

Hrm, to a degree I agree, but again it's important to keep in mind that two separate scales are constantly conflated:

* Simplicity <--> Complexity
* Shallowness <--> Depth

As an example from board gaming, Chess is vastly more complex than Go. Yet it's not easy to argue it derives more depth from that added complexity, and a common take is that in fact Go is one of the deepest games around, despite it's almost laughable simplicity of design. On the other end, Frosthaven is one of the most complex games possibly playable, but once the original novelty of the new classes and items wears off, surprisingly shallow because it's one big source of depth (the action selection) struggles to float the mountain of complexity on top of it, and hence why many groups feel so burned out after enough time with the campaign.

Now of course, there is some interaction here:

* Adding depth without adding complexity is extremely difficult, and depends a lot on the specific context as to whether it can actually be done. Likewise, removing complexity without bleeding depth is often difficult just as much (although there are a lot of easy things to do in FFXIV in particular because much of the button bloat is super-artificial without any effect on gameplay).
* On the flipside, adding complexity that does not contribute to any depth of gameplay is almost trivial in particular in CRPGs and MMORPGs.

And sure, a job with just fully static rotation super complicated with 20+ buttons but very little depth (flat static rotation after all) can be fun, but only if it is in contrast to most which are low-complexity-high-depth. It's a break then. But in FFXIV, everything is high-complexity-low-depth, so ... eh?