What abilities are you most sad got removed?

[Shurrikhan]

Adding old Celestial Opposition and targeted Embrace to the list...really just the old Fairy controls in general.

And I miss Flash for only one reason, being able to do some leveling shenanigans in Eureka since Flash didn't deal any damage and therefore didn't tag enemies as yours.

Pretty sure it's enmity, not damage, that tags things. You can tag things even just by hitting a self-buff oGCD so long as you face pull first. In fact, I'm pretty sure I regularly tagged mobs via flash while gearing PLD through Eureka in Stormblood...

But yeah, I miss manual fairy-ing quite a bit. Heck, probably even including when we had to make it dodge things.

[Absurdity]

Pretty sure it's enmity, not damage, that tags things. You can tag things even just by hitting a self-buff oGCD so long as you face pull first. In fact, I'm pretty sure I regularly tagged mobs via flash while gearing PLD through Eureka in Stormblood...n

But yeah, I miss manual fairy-ing quite a bit. Heck, probably even including have to make it dodge things.

I honestly have no idea how the system functioned, but what I do remember is that if you were max level and killed mobs for low level players they would get no exp, even if you weren't in their party.
With flash however you could keep everything aggrod to you while the low level players killed them and they still got the exp.

[Shurrikhan]

I honestly have no idea how the system functioned, but what I do remember is that if you were max level and killed mobs for low level players they would get no exp, even if you weren't in their party.
With flash however you could keep everything aggrod to you while the low level players killed them and they still got the exp.

I think that was due to the same mechanics as FATEs -- necessary contribution being an amount of Enmity relative to mob max HP (allowing heals and bonus enmity not to take a slice of the zero-sum pie despite gaining contribution for themselves).

[dspguy]

Stance dancing (tanks and healers), in general. And DPS hate shedding mechanics.

Actually having to stance dance with a penalty/lockout from switching back for 10s had some meaning. You had to know the fight. You had to pay a little attention to hate. If you were a healer, you had to know what abilities still healed for full potency when in Cleric Stance and which abilities didn't. And make your decision if you could stay in Cleric Stance longer.

When we consider that a tank's #1 job is to supposedly to hold hate, and we do that just clicking a single button - it says a lot about the state of the role.

[Shurrikhan]

What I've found most interesting across this thread so far is how much we probably... disagree on regarding lost skills. That or the gap between what X ability seems like it could have done vs. how it actually affected gameplay.

For instance, I miss absolutely nothing about stance dancing as it was (since swapping more than once per fight was both unnecessary and a loss), even if I'd have loved it if it were implemented better, and miss hate-shedding mechanics on DPS even less. Hate-shedding actions on a tank make sense, since it isn't just a maintenance action but instead situational, just as a hate-grabbing action on a DPS would make sense.

Just hitting things on CD over and over is, essentially, the majority of modern XIV gameplay, sure, so there's plenty of precedent for bloat actions like Distraction and the like, but they're still a hell of a lot less interesting to me than actual situationally valuable actions that incentivize designing encounters and balancing across roles to leverage them likely would have been.

Actually having to stance dance with a penalty/lockout from switching back for 10s had some meaning.

That was only ever true for one tank and for only two expansions. But yeah, it handled it way better than the others, imo, even if it still left much to be desired.

When we consider that a tank's #1 job is to supposedly to hold hate, and we do that just clicking a single button - it says a lot about the state of the role.

It's only ever been to increase the raid's efficiency (of damage dealt to damage taken), though -- be that by...

1. reducing the damage dealt to the party by directing unavoidables instead at oneself during active mitigation to reduce the required healing and therefore allow more healer attack GCDs (and/or at least preventing a death in the spaces too short to recover from, saving party damage relative to a DPS being smote), or
2. easing damage-dealing through the handy positioning of mobs.

Getting threat is necessarily a bottleneck for that, but generally among the smallest bearers of cognitive load or skill expression. When's the last time that you thought a tank was anywhere near making the most of their role by just getting threat and then doing nothing more? It's what you do after that that matters.

To be, the bigger part of the potential value of having a tank stance vs. offensive stance is just in allowing a safety layer for less knowledgeable tanks and a greed threshold for those more familiar with both their healers and the fight. When a tank stance overemphasizes threat contribution in a game that still limits you to the appropriate amount of tanks (and offers normal vs. heightened enmity actions or snap-threat/threat-shedding oGCDs besides), it just devolves the opportunities of that stance increasingly into a game of "The Price is Right", such that one need only pay the toll once per wave of mobs.

If you were a healer, you had to know what abilities still healed for full potency when in Cleric Stance and which abilities didn't.

ARR: All oGCDs. HW: Literally only Benediction. Pretty simple in both cases.

If anything, Assize's interaction was the more interesting precisely because it didn't heal fully through Cleric Stance, as you got 110% damage and ~20% healing or 100% the healing and only ~22% the damage, effectively creating two abilities from one.

Now that, especially on... say... SCH (who's thematically had this across Light Arts / Dark Arts), I would dig.

And make your decision if you could stay in Cleric Stance longer.

You had to decide when you could enter; you could always swap out after those first 5s, without even incurring an animation time's uptime cost. (Well, as long as it didn't lag or lose a packet and automatically double. Ofc, if you took even a smidgen of Spell Speed or didn't use CS immediately after cast-completion, it'd also go to 3 GCDs of lock-in instead of 2.)

Moreover, there was never a choice between using CS and not using it. With CS on, you'd be better off conserving MP than casting a heal before CS fell off, as the penalty was so damn high.

Had it incurred a cooldown for when it could be re-activated instead of when one could leave and had that cooldown scaled with GCD speed, though (and likely started from 4.5s instead), and had simply traded something like 40% healing for +20% damage, I'd have been more a fan, even if it was still just a mostly thoughtless bloat step on all but hybrid (damage+healing oGCDs).

[Carighan]

Agreed. All of those things people miss are in themselves good examples of why they were removed. People seem to assign a lot of nostalgia to the tedium, but they also seem unable to see how things such as tank stances provided exactly 0 gameplay depth, they were just extra buttons to press in a rote manner. And rote button presses only add RSI, nothing else. It's the same with cleric stance etc.

There could be actual meaning behind these things, but it's a fickle thing. For example tanks having to actually right for aggro is a thing WoW readily explored for other MMORPGs. In all possible variants and iterations. It has upsides and downsides, the biggest downside I bet would send people into a rage here is that if you are a DPS, and you get better at your rotation and could do more damage (or say you get better gear), than means nothing. If the tank isn't doing better or getting better gear first, you can't deal any more damage. The tank's output is a cap on the total damage you can deal for a given fight duration, with no wiggle room. That can be smart design (it makes it very easy to make all DPS effectively deal the same amount of damage, balance-wise, simply making the cap low enough), but it understandably also isn't very popular as damage dealers can't actually derive much benefit from player skill.

Likewise, stance-dancing if it's a rote thing (like the tank stances or cleric stance) doesn't provide value. A good test here is whether you could bake the effects into the skills themselves at no loss of external, perceivable, function. If yes there's no reason to switch stances unless there's an external lockout mechanism (CD can work, but is usually the cop-out if you don't have another one). A positive example here is how the "stance" - it ain't one, but this at least provides an example - of Holy Sheltron works in PvP: If the shield is broken because you're taking damage you fall into a defense stance (or buff, in the current PvP iteration) while if it ain't, you can be more offensive. This uses an external factor, something you need to play smart with depending on which outcome you are after at each point in time.

Whenever I bring up in a thread how many skills could be removed at 0 loss of depth to the gameplay, this is what I mean: we have so many rote buttons to press that require 0 brain interaction to decide when and whether to use them. There is no reason to press 5 buttons in 2 seconds to achieve X potency if the same could be done with 1 button if that sequence never changes. If there's no interaction. If your entire rotation is just a glorified DoT with animations, then you provide no more value (as a whole character) than a debuff on the enemy dealing damage every 3 seconds. Huzzah. Bemoaning skills lost that were nothing but this extremely flat and rote gameplay is wild to me: They are the very example of what the game needs to shed more of. All of!.

[Shurrikhan]

Whenever I bring up in a thread how many skills could be removed at 0 loss of depth to the gameplay, this is what I mean: we have so many rote buttons to press that require 0 brain interaction to decide when and whether to use them. There is no reason to press 5 buttons in 2 seconds to achieve X potency if the same could be done with 1 button if that sequence never changes. If there's no interaction. If your entire rotation is just a glorified DoT with animations, then you provide no more value (as a whole character) than a debuff on the enemy dealing damage every 3 seconds. Huzzah. Bemoaning skills lost that were nothing but this extremely flat and rote gameplay is wild to me: They are the very example of what the game needs to shed more of. All of!.

Despite being fine with the likes of Distraction being removed (and tank stances only if/since they weren't ever going to be made a real "dance-able" mechanic instead of a mere trap)... I think that's a bridge too far.

I like Continuation, for example, because I like the way my fingers move across the keyboard when using it, between the GCD and oGCD, and that I don't have to worry about accidentally delaying a defensive by an animation time's gap if I accidentally double-hit the action and they were consolidated onto the same key. But, that too is within limits to me.

The sweet spot imo is around the above, or Heat Blast -> Gauss/Ricochet. For others, though, it might well include having Gnashing Fang's combo each take a separate key as well (while I'd rather have all combos able to be consolidated via un-neutered macros and baseline removal of button-traps if combos are to remain just rigid sequences that bloat the number of buttons required per sequence despite enjoying that finger movement elsewhere, so long as the space saved isn't filled with other bloat).

Kaiten was the mid-point for me. It was bloat, but it was sexy and thematic and, alongside the previously varied Kenki costs formerly on Guren/Senei, was what gave any semblance of depth to Kenki. I could therefore actually miss that in ways I would never miss, say, old Power Surge (use on CD before Jump).

To me, some degree of bloat is okay, as long as it has bundles enough rule of cool to justify itself. It hurts a lot more when some else's failing to hit their bloat means your own damage gets capped, be that in the form of raidbuffs or especially Distraction (or, say, Lucid Dream, if healer MP were still more consistently relevant to your survival), but even then, some skills existing for the sheer buttonflow, animation, or over-subtle damage profile adjustments is okay. I just don't think I could ever miss it when it's lost.

While I could imagine a 4-button DRG that would have more cognitive load than the current one by having it shift between auto-battle schemas atop a couple timing-sensitive actives, that simply wouldn't be the game people signed up for or were ever fond of, and so it doesn't seem worth trying to pursue absolutely maximum cognitive load per button across all things. It's a damn good metric to keep in mind but hardly all-important.

[Carighan]

I like Continuation, for example, because I like the way my fingers move across the keyboard when using it, between the GCD and oGCD, and that I don't have to worry about accidentally delaying a defensive by an animation time's gap if I accidentally double-hit the action and they were consolidated onto the same key. But, that too is within limits to me.

This is actually a really good example of what I mean. Continuation is close to being a really cool mechanism, it just isn't. As-is, it could be removed at no loss of gameplay complexity or - if you prefer that - it could be kept and vast swaths of the remaining kit could be removed, again at no loss of gameplay complexity, folded into auto-combos via Continuation.

However, what makes it "close but not quite there" is essentially just that you always want to press Continuation. With just minor-tweaking to make it a "Usually, but not always"-skill, it'd have tremendous value, in particular as it gets added to more an more elements of the kit. It'd also make Gunbreaker elegant insofar that the raw hotbar space-usage would be low, instead there's a button that combos from ~most abilities into something else, should you need it or want it at the time buuuuut these combo options don't last, as they overwrite one another.

In particular I'd probably shift the cartridge cost of many skills onto their continuation. With some potency rebalancing this would already evoke much of this "Usually you want to use this, but sometimes you do not". If it then also has interactions with some defensive/utility skills, it'd be a really interesting job where a single mechanism is the centerpiece of it, and interacts with every single part of the job equally but without being a rote button press.

And yeah of course there's limit to simplification, at least in context. For animation-sake if nothing else, like you say, rule of cool. I have no qualms with having an absurdly long combo on an autocombo button, but the final button that has some sick big animation that you only get if you get to skill #8 while also having a specific buff up, that one probably ought to be separate just for that reason: It feels awesome to then hit the big red nuke button.

[SorceressVal]

oh this was a good question : For those who started playing post ARR
- back in the day they had " True cross class skills " this means if you played other jobs to unlock the skills ( not only would you get a feel for the jobs ins and outs ) you got access to their skills to use on whatever job you mained = What does that mean?
it means the jobs could activly cover for eachother to some extent if the healer went down the tank had cure and res granted it swallowed his mp but it was a good safty in case the healer was " my bad " prone not only that taks had access to dps buffs and dps had access... well you get the idea...
That said: back in the day the jobs were truely powerfull skill was important and widening your range of play was basic. there were no " my bad " moments ppl knew the limits to a job and respected it thats how the community was so non toxic to start with.
=Now : PVP is a retarded joke jist a button spam its so overly simplified ( may as well be a single tap mobile game ) you have no access to you actual loadout no skill required
And : PVE keeps gettin reworked skills in jobs erasing skills that matter adding depowered mix skills ( making jobs worse and calling it an improvement ) following that overly simplified line its killing the game slowly but surly it is killing the game
- if any of you knew what it was like to have true freedom to add to or customixe your main job as you see fit over this watered down mess you would yell at square enix in protest in a heartbeat - you think you lost someting now you have no idea how good it used to be

[Shurrikhan]

This is actually a really good example of what I mean. Continuation is close to being a really cool mechanism, it just isn't. As-is, it could be removed at no loss of gameplay complexity or - if you prefer that - it could be kept and vast swaths of the remaining kit could be removed, again at no loss of gameplay complexity, folded into auto-combos via Continuation.

More or less. It just squeezes into oGCD slots otherwise used for mobility/defensives/CD-attacks, simply typically forcing one to remember to use the other skill (since it has an actual CD you want to get rolling or needs to be out before the coming hit) before Continuation, akin to any other combo. But little low-thought flow-beats like that that can still feel good, albeit with diminishing returns (albeit with a small bump from regularity/cohesion if/once applied to everything). They're like the "ear-candy" mix-tricks of music -- mostly vapid, yet often memorable, and sometimes even conducive to broader theme.

Of course, if I could have my tyrannical way with all things job design, GNB would probably be a 'gigabrain' job wherein you swap into/between and consume different cartridges (now more alike to the Lost Skill sources from Bozja) almost akin to DMC5's Devil Breakers:

You could hold 2 [later 3] of these cartridges to swap between. Cartridge names should be techy but also vaguely tribal/primal and brutal/plainly-sublime in their vibes: Wolfbane, Shellshock, Boreal, Pulsar, etc. You are forcibly specialized in that you can only pick 2 [later 3] to take with you and swap between. The primary resource would instead be more akin to Kenki, spendable in varied ways based on cartridge type, including buff-nexts (Dark Arts), follow-ups (Continuation), or replacement enhanced GCDs (Burst Strike or Fated Circle, but now especially chunky even if still not optimal except as a window-closer over buff-nexts or follow-ups, which now includes more AoEs as well). The second gauge, meanwhile, would work akin to Reaper's in that spending the resource resonates with your own person (allowing cartridge-based self-buffs to carry onto the next cartridge for synergies), through which you get the bonus combos and a few of your oGCD sustain (i.e., healing and/or mitigation) and situational tools. You can overdraw from your Cartridge, but doing so damages it, penalizing max resource and generation thereafter. You can also choose to fully manually Overdraw from it, passively generating massive amounts of primary resource but increasingly damaging the cartridge until it destroys itself. Or, if you need to swap back to the utility of the other quickly, you can simply rotate it out and let it repair from any penalties amounts over time (say, 60s max unless Overdrawn, in which case it's maybe 75s). I.e., you basically have No Mercy constantly available to you; you just have to take the time to recover later. A new UI component now tracks your cartridges health in terms of how long it'd take to fully restore it.

snip

I'd like nothing more than to see the 1.x "build your own job" idea actually well implemented, but neither it nor ARR/HW cross class was that. Both were mostly just traps or inconsequential gimmicks that just allowed the devs to cut down on unique job actions relative to had Action Points or Additional Actions (crossclass) not been a thing. In practice, some of it stumbled into a better result than was typically arrived at via the Role Actions that replaced it, but it was mostly a haphazard mess. It didn't give "freedom to customize your job as you see fit", since cross class was barely of impact outside of vapid obligatories like Invigorate (Lucid Dreaming but for non-casters) or was completely imbalanced.

Also, no, people didn't particularly "know the bounds of their class" better back then, nor was that why there was less toxicity (if that was ever even a thing). (Personally, the last time I remember XIV being any less hostile, skeptical, instinctively defensive, or kick-happy than WoW, GW2, or the like was... well, whenever there was nothing of substance that'd reward stringency anyways, just as on any of those MMOs. It has nothing to do with job design and everything to do with people having something they want that others' underperformance could screw over, or, in the most extreme cases, treating the game as a non-hourly job.)

Don't get me wrong, though: Had they actually implemented the 1.0 to 1.17 (so, pre-Yoshida) idea well, that'd have been amazing. You'd feel like an adventurer with whatever skills and stats you'd acquired and tried to make the best use you could of, where experience and versatility across contents within static and matchmade play would count at least as much as having the hyper optimal setup for a given singular fight, rather than interchangeable Dragoon / purple shirt extra #44323.