Please Share Updates on 8.0 Job Design

[ForsakenRoe]

I want what you're smoking. Drakesbane is the worst weaponskill in the entire game, it's slow, it takes way too long to apply the damage so you have a good chance to miss it if its your final gcd before a boss jumps away like bahamut in ucob and garuda in uwu who loves jumping. It also feels terrible to use there's no impact to it you might as well be hitting the boss with a wet noodle.

I wouldn't say it's the worst, that honour goes straight to Storm's Path (it's literally 3 autoattack animations stapled together).

In fact, in terms of 'what your player model does', my top 10 worst animation nominations would be:

1: Storm's Path
2: Medica 3 (the bug is still there)
3/4: Chaotic Spring/Heaven's Thrust (they're kinda equally awful)
5: Sepulchre (the PLD Atonement combo move)
6/7: Scarlet Delirium/Comeuppance (they end so abruptly, it's like they forgot to make part of the animation)
8: Ikishoten ('I have the power of god and anime on my side')
9: Shadow of Death (why am I hitting the enemy with the handle of the scythe)
10: Drakesbane probably goes around here, tied with a couple other garbage animations like Leaping Opo/Pouncing Coeurl for MNK, and Raiju for NIN (how do you take Chidori and make it look so... weird)

But since it's visual aesthetics related, it's all subjective anyway. Special shoutout to Pouncing Coeurl on MNK though, for having that atrocious MGM lion roar every time you use it. Pretty impressive for an action to look bad but also sound bad

The main purpose of the thread is to emphasize that job design has been in a very poor state, Dawntrail has only continued to break the trust of players who care about job design, and we want to know if these vague talks of job identity in 8.0 will do anything to course correct from this runaway train of oversimplification.

I think a live letter around 7.3 where Yoshi P can elaborate on what he and the designers see as the identity of each job and a rough idea of how they plan to fix each job would be huge

I do worry that 7.3 will be a massive downturn in player count, even compared to what we've seen thus far. These simplified Job designs are meant to allow for the encounters to be 'the source of the complexity', but said complexity source (Savage/Ultimate) won't be in next patch. It'll just be the usual, 24man and an EX trial, unless they give us another Forked Tower (which would be a bit odd to pull out so soon after the previous one IMO). So we'll be going another 4 months before getting content that the Job kits are actually designed around, which might be too long for a lot more players

[Kozh]

... am I the only one who don't like VPR reawaken combo? >_>
I appreciate they try the very anime "gotta go fast" moveset, but idk doesn't really feel impactful to me (except for the last hit)

[Lorika]

Share? Easy : New animations, new VFX, new SFX and some long overdue QoL.... And, also expect some old Jobs getting the DRG/BLM/MNK treatment.
Don't thank me, it's free ^^

[Altina_Orion]

Wow, people really don't care about how the game plays, but how it looks. Incredible.

[Kozh]

Wow, people really don't care about how the game plays, but how it looks. Incredible.

Chill, we're just being out of topic.

[ForsakenRoe]

Wow, people really don't care about how the game plays, but how it looks. Incredible.

We've talked about how the game plays for several years already, usually to the chorus of 'omg shut up if you don't like it play something else' or something to that effect

But when it comes to 'Job Identity', visual and audio design are an integral part of that just as much as the function and rotational place of the action, hence it's being brought up

I can't speak for everyone, but I absolutely do care about how the Jobs play. Why else would I have written this, if not because 'I want the Healers to play more uniquely from one another'

[ty_taurus]

I do worry that 7.3 will be a massive downturn in player count, even compared to what we've seen thus far. These simplified Job designs are meant to allow for the encounters to be 'the source of the complexity', but said complexity source (Savage/Ultimate) won't be in next patch. It'll just be the usual, 24man and an EX trial, unless they give us another Forked Tower (which would be a bit odd to pull out so soon after the previous one IMO). So we'll be going another 4 months before getting content that the Job kits are actually designed around, which might be too long for a lot more players

I understand more than most that pivoting direction in game design is no easy feat, but one of the most exhausting bad habits of XIV is the utter lack of urgency in virtually everything except for the 6.3 Paladin rework for some reason. Everything takes eons to change like the shaping of the planet. Why do we need to wait another year and a half for even modest gameplay improvements? I’m not asking for Pangea II, I’m asking for some shorter cooldowns on attack spells to make Dawntrail bearable enough for me to enjoy it before 8.0.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

God, I hate the new MNK animations so much. You leap into the air and start swiping your arms. What is so great about that? Bootshine was rapid punches with both hands, it made sense, and felt good.

Leaping Opo? Yeah, that's the worst of the three. Played on slowdown, our characters are performing 3 instances of scratching, two downward, followed by another to the opposite direction. Ignoring the odd animation choice, there's also the fact that the VFX used as a 'carry' to the aesthetic here doesn't deliver it (to me) either. They don't necessarily line up with the actual scratch - it feels like they're just floating in front of the character irrespective to what they're actually doing.

... am I the only one who don't like VPR reawaken combo? >_>
I appreciate they try the very anime "gotta go fast" moveset, but idk doesn't really feel impactful to me (except for the last hit)

To me they're messy, and another instance of heavily relying on VFXes. Taking an example of their first AoE move in their 1-2: Steel Maws. The animation shows the character doing 3 sword swinging. But the VFX used laid on top of them are showing 9-12(????) slashes and none of them necessarily lines up with the angle.

Wow, people really don't care about how the game plays, but how it looks. Incredible.

Speaking about healers specifically, you're about 5-7 years late to say that at this point. The gameplay has been an endless talking point with its fair share of "shut up nobody cares about healers but also pls nerf <insert job> because MY job is in the rut..!!" or "Lol clear high end ur opinion don't matter/think of the cashools!!!"-kind of responses.

That being said, visuals can be an important bullet point for players, too. That's part of the reason for good amount of SCH players took an issue when it's revealed they're giving SCH Seraphism, not just because how it functions to forgo what makes a SCH SCH, it's also severely clashing with the job fantasy of being a genius military strategist being made to wear chastity robe of all... for what? Only Creatively Bankrup Unit 3 knows the real answer.

[ty_taurus]

That being said, visuals can be an important bullet point for players, too. That's part of the reason for good amount of SCH players took an issue when it's revealed they're giving SCH Seraphism, not just because how it functions to forgo what makes a SCH SCH, it's also severely clashing with the job fantasy of being a genius military strategist being made to wear chastity robe of all... for what? Only Creatively Bankrup Unit 3 knows the real answer.

I don’t know if you remember this or not, but I imagine most viewers won’t recognize this. But during the job actions reveal for Heavensward when Summoner got Dreadwyrm Trance, they talked about the future of Summoner being to gain the power to transform into Bahamut, which was met with a lot of “where’s Ramuh/Leviathan/Shiva?” And “remember when Summoners actually summoned things in FFXI?” And then two years later during the Stormblood job actions reveal, where Demi-Bahamut was introduced and players cheered, they commented on how they received feedback that summoner players did not want to become Bahamut; they just wanted to summon him.

You know as I started writing this, my point was to go “what happened to those devs?” But then I recalled that Stormblood was also where they responded to White Mage players asking for buffs to compete with Astro, and said that would ruin the job fantasy of White Mage. So I guess cherry picking has always been a hobby of theirs, and healers are just never on the VIP list.

[Altina_Orion]

I don’t know if you remember this or not, but I imagine most viewers won’t recognize this. But during the job actions reveal for Heavensward when Summoner got Dreadwyrm Trance, they talked about the future of Summoner being to gain the power to transform into Bahamut, which was met with a lot of “where’s Ramuh/Leviathan/Shiva?” And “remember when Summoners actually summoned things in FFXI?” And then two years later during the Stormblood job actions reveal, where Demi-Bahamut was introduced and players cheered, they commented on how they received feedback that summoner players did not want to become Bahamut; they just wanted to summon him.

You know as I started writing this, my point was to go “what happened to those devs?” But then I recalled that Stormblood was also where they responded to White Mage players asking for buffs to compete with Astro, and said that would ruin the job fantasy of White Mage. So I guess cherry picking has always been a hobby of theirs, and healers are just never on the VIP list.

The devs don't even cherry-pick anymore, they just completely ignore.