What era of design was your favorite?

[ovIm]

Firmly HW, not counting all the QOL we got over the years. Sure, some classes were jank, but the design principles were there and could have been improved.
ARR gave us some killer cool dungeons though. And Stormblood brought us some interesting experimental stuff too, ofc, like Eureka.

[Dahlinea]

Heavensward and Stormblood are my favorites when it comes to the PvE battle system, leaning more towards Heavensward here.
There was more jank in the jobs back then, sure, but they felt very different from each other and were more interesting compared to now.

[Soldier76]

Honestly, strictly speaking of raid tier + ultimates. EW was amazing. DT is awesome too in those aspects as well. I really enjoyed the raids, the music, and the themes. I love that the color of the gears is no longer muted and washed out.

I can't speak much about class design, but I also don't really care much about it. If I don't enjoy the class or role, I don't play it, I play something I enjoy.

Every single time, someone says this, and you check their profile and they started in ShB/EW.

[Kohashi]

Every single time, someone says this, and you check their profile and they started in ShB/EW.

With this particular account, yes. This is when I have returned and switched to FF14. I did play in ARR briefly and a good chunk in SB. However, I never cared about FF14 combat and class design because they have always been ass to me. FF14 combat and class design was and still is the worst aspect of FF14. they were never good at any point.

Also, I did do Alex savage tier just recently with MINE, and it's not really all that special, strictly speaking of mechanics. It's nice, it's fun, but nothing in the wow mind mind-blowing territory.

[Kozh]

With this particular account, yes. This is when I have returned and switched to FF14. I did play in ARR briefly and a good chunk in SB. However, I never cared about FF14 combat and class design because they have always been ass to me. FF14 combat and class design was and still is the worst aspect of FF14. they were never good at any point.

Also, I did do Alex savage tier just recently with MINE, and it's not really all that special, strictly speaking of mechanics. It's nice, it's fun, but nothing in the wow mind mind-blowing territory.

What a backward taste lol

I mean, to each of their own, but.. /shrug

[Jeeqbit]

Also, I did do Alex savage tier just recently with MINE, and it's not really all that special, strictly speaking of mechanics. It's nice, it's fun, but nothing in the wow mind mind-blowing territory.

To be fair, the jobs worked very differently back then, so it made otherwise simple mechanics harder: more positionals that had a greater effect on damage, all jobs did not necessarily have KB immunity, combos expired after about 3 seconds if you didn't continue them and were interrupted by stray GCDs such as ranged attacks, most jobs had tight keep-up timers like the one BLM just lost, pressing a button slightly wrong could lose you a huge amount of your damage compared with the minor difference there is now, abilities actually interacted with eachother, you had to face the enemy to auto, and mit was more complicated (ie. PLD didn't mit magic well, DRK could unlock 30% extra magic mit by doing their rotation well), tanks managed limited cooldowns with longer cooldown times and jobs timed certain attacks to be ready for adds. Healers would have Cleric Stance to do damage with which meant they couldn't heal while attacking.

We're also used to these mechanics a lot more now than at the time. Back then they were new, whereas now we've even had an easy version of a limit cut in a dungeon like Holminster Switch and numerous others added to dungeons as well. Over time, putting these mechanics into dungeons in a simpler situation makes people so used to them that they are more trivial in Savage.

The other issue with MINE is just potency differences and how much easier it is for an average player to do a level 60 rotation flawlessly than it was back then.

(There were also actual nerfs up through A8S which they stopped doing after that, until P8S).

It's still great MINE but the circumstances are different than it was then, so it's not completely fair to judge it as it is now. However, there are obvious design choices they moved away from in the expansions since then, which felt unpolished but also more varied and creative such as steamrollers, prisons, gauntlets etc. Speaking of that though, they are trying to get back to more creative design in Dawntrail.

I do agree that EW and DT content are good, and I'm saying that having played since ARR. But that's because I'm not like a lot of people here. If SE simply gets the same sort of thing (stack-spread-pairs and in-out), but gives it a different coat of paint, it's fine with me. I know that's not the case for a lot of people on this forum but for players like me it's enough.

[ThaCa]

I liked Stormblood era PvE content, though I do really like the current PvP but it could probably use another button on most Jobs.

[Divinemights]

I enjoyed Shadowbringer PvP design myself; especially Samurai and Paladin
I especially super missed the time to torture people mentally with Paladin

[Kohashi]

snip

I remember Monk having a million positionals at some point, but the entire design in terms of combat per se never appealed to me. Lately, SE has been improving, but it still feels janky and unrewarding for the most part. Anyway, it's a matter of preference, I guess.

As for experience regarding mechanics, you are right. I was saying the same thing to a friend of mine. Also, while doing them now, MINE is not exactly vanilla; the mechanics did remain unchanged. I did see every single mechanic as people saw them back in the day. It's not like we skipped anything.

In addition, I also did Coils (granted, not the savage version, that's on the todo list), also MINE (it's how I originally started getting into end content), you resolved exactly the same. Stay here and let it resolve, pairs.. spread, light parties, drop stuff, bait stuff..I don't get why people say mechanics were that vastly different back then

[Dahlinea]

I remember Monk having a million positionals at some point, but the entire design in terms of combat per se never appealed to me. Lately, SE has been improving, but it still feels janky and unrewarding for the most part. Anyway, it's a matter of preference, I guess.

As for experience regarding mechanics, you are right. I was saying the same thing to a friend of mine. Also, while doing them now, MINE is not exactly vanilla; the mechanics did remain unchanged. I did see every single mechanic as people saw them back in the day. It's not like we skipped anything.

In addition, I also did Coils (granted, not the savage version, that's on the todo list), also MINE (it's how I originally started getting into end content), you resolved exactly the same. Stay here and let it resolve, pairs.. spread, light parties, drop stuff, bait stuff..I don't get why people say mechanics were that vastly different back then

The jobs were vastly different back then and that impacted the perception of those mechanics more than you may think. Maybe people wouldn't be here complaining too much about boring mechanics if jobs maintained their earlier levels of complexity from Stormblood or Heavensward, for example.... who knows...