What’s the point when BLM’s newfound success is PCT and SMN’s loss?

[CidHeiral]

Hopefully the devs are learning that dumbing down every job is futile. People who pick a job up because it's OP and braindead are obviously going to drop it immediately when something even more OP and braindead comes along. Then all you've accomplished is alienating everyone who liked it the way it was before. You're not gaining new players, you're losing players who were dedicated to those jobs while the same bucket of people play musical chairs. It's not a great long term strategy.

There are over twenty jobs in the game and counting. There should be a mix of different complexities and playstyles for everyone to choose from, every job doesn't need to appeal to everyone. Ryu is a very popular character throughout the Street Fighter series because he's generally pretty straightforward and easy to pick up and play, but would Street Fighter be a better game if every character was Ryu? Of course not. Some people like simple characters and some like technical characters and everything in between, so there's a mix of all of that in the roster. FFXIV shouldn't be any different.

[Valence]

There are over twenty jobs in the game and counting. There should be a mix of different complexities and playstyles for everyone to choose from, every job doesn't need to appeal to everyone. Ryu is a very popular character throughout the Street Fighter series because he's generally pretty straightforward and easy to pick up and play, but would Street Fighter be a better game if every character was Ryu? Of course not. Some people like simple characters and some like technical characters and everything in between, so there's a mix of all of that in the roster. FFXIV shouldn't be any different.

That would require SE to stop balancing jobs around difficulty and complexity (something they have said to be doing regularly in spite of recanting in early SB, only to double down on it later), and the community to accept that a job they see as "braindead" to be able to compete with a complicated one.

[ForsakenRoe]

That would require SE to stop balancing jobs around difficulty and complexity (something they have said to be doing regularly in spite of recanting in early SB, only to double down on it later), and the community to accept that a job they see as "braindead" to be able to compete with a complicated one.

Or, and hear me out on this crazy idea, SE could design jobs to have a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling, such that playing at the most basic level of a job (eg just smashing Broil over and over on SCH) is like, 90%+ of the damage output of the 'optimal rotation' (eg how you'd juggle 3 different DOTs with staggered timers in HW SCH). We have a system in the game called 'action potency', so it's incredibly easy to math out how much damage a certain rotation will do over a 2min loop. And because of that, it makes it very easy to make a rotation where 'playing at the most basic level' and 'playing 100% optimally' are very close in performance, or make tweaks to actions to close the performance gap as required.

Off the top of my head, an example for SCH:
Broil, 340p
Biolysis, 20p, plus 35p per tick for 30s (370p total)
Miasmalysis, 280p, plus 10p per tick for 24s (360p total, replaces Ruin2 hence the high on-cast potency)
Shadowflare, 100p, plus 50p per tick for 15s (350p total, drops an AOE puddle that damages enemies inside)

With these numbers, playing optimally would be '100% damage'. By comparison, playing 'Broil, and only Broil' would be about 98%, and playing 'Dawntrail SCH optimally' would be 99%. And I'm not SE, I'm just a random forum user with an arcane knowledge called 'basic mathematics'. There is not a single piece of content that does, or would, require a player to juggle these three example DOTs perfectly. A player could go into any content in the game, even Ultimates, and smash the example Broil over and over, and they would clear the DPS check. So the DOTs would be 'optional', to challenge yourself and your mastery of the Job. Alternatively, they could be used by a player specifically, and only, when mobility is required (IE instead of hitting Ruin2 3 times, applying each of the three DOTs so as not to waste part of their duration). Rather than adding difficulty for a 'casual'/'less practiced' player, there's ways to design Job kits to actually alleviate certain difficulties (ie 'How do I keep doing good damage, while needing to move for this mechanic?') that a newer player might face. Heck, with those example numbers, even if the hypothetical player were to press Miasmalysis 3 times for their movement, it'd STILL result in more damage than pressing 3 Ruin2's currently is!

Ironically, BLM already had this kind of thing, with Nonstandard, but SE has been adamant in removing those alternative rotations from the game in favour of 'you WILL press 6 F4s, a Despair and a FlareStar'. The BLM changes that facilitated 'increased mobility' to keep up with fights like M8S, weren't actually necessary at all, because Nonstandard was a potential solution to give the BLM mobility in those moments. SE had a solution to their problem already implemented, and instead went for an even more hamfisted 'solution', which introduced even more issues. Such as how Fire 1 is now a dead button for 30 whole levels (60-90, where you get Paradox) because you no longer need to press it to refresh the timer. Or how Scathe is now even more pointless because you have so much more mobility. Or how thanks to the potency changes, BLM's damage output might have been decreased in lower level content (like old Ultimates) because Fire4 got nerfed a bit, so they could hyper-buff FlareStar by 100p. Or how, thansk to Flare no longer having a cast time longer than the GCD, the Transpose-AF1 Flare-AF3 Flare-Transpose-Freeze-(Thunder4/Foul)-Transpose AOE rotation has potentially gotten even stronger, making High Fire and High Blizzard (which received no changes) even more of a waste to press. I've even heard that Flare-Flare-Flarestar, as a single-target line (presumably if the fight is about to end/boss jump away), might be a slight potency gain


Point is, we shouldn't be, as a community, accepting or rejecting the idea of 'braindead job competes with gigabrain job'. I think it'd be better if more jobs were designed in such a way that there's a 'braindead' way to play them, that does most of the work of clearing Enrages, and optional 'gigabrain' tech you can leverage, to further increase your output if you choose to challenge yourself. Melee is a good example of this mentality already existing: Not only with things like Optimal Drift MNK, or Double Communio on RPR, but a Role-wide system that applies to all 6 of the Melee Jobs: Positionals. Of course, there's a subset of players who want positionals removed. But this doesn't bring the floor up to the ceiling (which would be good), it brings the ceiling down to the floor (which is bad)

[CidHeiral]

That would require SE to stop balancing jobs around difficulty and complexity (something they have said to be doing regularly in spite of recanting in early SB, only to double down on it later), and the community to accept that a job they see as "braindead" to be able to compete with a complicated one.

I have no problem with that at all. In fact I would happily accept DRG's damage being in the dumpster if it meant I got to play EW DRG again.

[Valence]

Or, and hear me out on this crazy idea, SE could design jobs to have a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling

I've always been a supporter of accessibility + high ceiling across all the jobs, so you're preaching to the church.
However I do not like the idea of such a silly low gap in numbers, but that's just numbers. I do think that reaching a higher level on your rotation should be part of savage+ and have an incidence on the result, and the gaps you mentioned are irrelevant for this to happen. Jobs used to have a higher ceiling and micro complexities to manage especially in HW, and it was a system that worked, even in casual where DPS checks were virtually absent, allowing for lower skilled players to go by just fine. The real issue is that their new encounter designs are making this a pipe dream because they suck all the available air (aka brain power), which is why everything is dialed down to a bland soup with different skins depending on the job you pick, which isn't far from picking your icecream flavor of the day. You will never have higher skill ceilings with those encounters in the way, and I feel it's 1) the direction they're pushing in anyway so I feel like ultimately we're fighting against windmills and 2) the rabbit is out of the bag now anyway.

I have no problem with that at all. In fact I would happily accept DRG's damage being in the dumpster if it meant I got to play EW DRG again.

You're okay with... what? I feel like I'm getting mixed signals.
With damage output being balanced around effort and complexity? Ew. I guess you'd see most PFs starting to lock out a lot of jobs unless they do bring something truly valuable and unique to buy in their place in a party, if they're braindead to play..

[CidHeiral]

You're okay with... what? I feel like I'm getting mixed signals.
With damage output being balanced around effort and complexity?

I was agreeing with you on damage being balanced evenly. My DRG comment was to illustrate that I don't care if I do superior damage for a complex job, I just want my favorite job to be fun again.