How would you *fix* battle content?

[Jeeqbit]

Making the trinity "matter" is pretty damn vague, tbh.

It's not because I've explained it a number of times recently when I've mentioned it. Also, any MMORPG developer should understand the concept of the holy trinity otherwise they shouldn't be in that position. The FFXIV team have played other MMORPGs, at minimum FF11, and Yoshi-P has played others.

And if done as a series of negations (e.g., by removing from each role anything outside of the narrowly defined "characteristics" of that role), it's likely to cause more harm than good.

The only "harm" it can cause is to make it harder for players to survive without cooperation from others ie. so a Warrior can't solo everything. Which is exactly the point. Yes, them being able to solo everything means they can function in a party of sprouts that don't know what they are doing, but it's also extremely anti-social and means the only factor that matters is the mechanics.

If the only factor that matters is the fight mechanics, and those happen exactly the same every time, then the run is the same every time. What made MMORPGs dynamic for so many years was the fact that it went very differently depending on the team dynamics.

They don't necessarily need to remove all cross-role aspects but we have to be honest that it's got out of hand across the board. Healers have too many heals and they cost no MP. Tanks having heals is one thing, but it's got crazy now to where they can heal themselves and half the time they can even heal themselves against the might of Savage mechanics if a healer is occupied ie. bleeds, ahk morns busters, autos. It just felt better in Heavensward where, yes it was annoying that I was powerless and relied on a healer that sometimes wasn't able to do the job, but it felt like eachother mattered, even in dungeons. And eachother mattering is important otherwise the game is anti-social, and the only thing that matters in mechanics - and since mechanics are mostly a static script, it makes people feel bored.

If by "make it matter", we mean giving healers more heal-y stuff to do, tanks more tank-y stuff to do, and DPS more to worry about with their damage-dealing than just the final enrage, then I'm all for that.

That's part of it.

If it means siphoning a bit of gameplay-unaffecting or even -devaluing power from tanks towards the other roles, then I'm all for that.

That too.

we could as easily just tune down the passive mitigation instead and retain a more interesting tank kit

I mean we could, or the abilities themselves could still exist but be nerfed. Either way works.

if it means excusing a bare minimum downtime kit for healers just because it'd be "too DPS-like" to get even a 4th offensive action

Just using ARR and Heavensward as an example, Cleric Stance made it interesting. White Mage and Scholar had a lot they could press in Stormblood. And the holy trinity mattered so much more in these expansions. The main issue isn't if they have a few more attacks or something like Cleric Stance, but just the fact they have loads of heal abilities and these abilities don't even hurt their MP. The MP that gets spent now is ironically from all the DPS they do.

When I use a Sage in the current expert dungeon, do I use any heals? Not really. Unless someone gets hit by a vuln stack. And it doesn't matter that much, because what is often a Warrior or Paladin will just use their heal raid wide to heal everyone, or heal the party member that took damage. Or, you know what, they'll just use Second Wind if I don't bother healing them. I just don't really need to heal at all. And to prove that point, you only have to get yourself killed as a healer and they'll still clear the dungeon. Is it any wonder people get bored of Expert now? Their role doesn't matter and has no importance to the point they can simply not participate in the boss fight and there will be no problems.

That's not exclusive to healers - the tank can be missing and healer+2 dps will usually beat the boss. Or 4 DPS, 4 tanks or 4 healers. Or a tank + 1 dps. Or better yet, just a tank.

And, it if means taking tank survival further out of the hands of DPS or meeting DPS checks further out of the hands of tanks and healers, denying them the incentives to be aware of the broader situation or partake in the risk-reward balances of timely at-cost offense... I'd rather not. If anything, I'd rather see DPS become more involved in party survival -- partly through selective, deliberate use of their DPS itself, but possibly also through the likes of Pacify, Interrupt, Stun, etc.

That's fine but another way is things like how we were able to apply mits directly to the tank in Stormblood. I achieve the same thing now by, say, using Addle to reduce the effect of a tank buster on a novice tank.

The point is that we need to rely on eachother and affect eachother and by our teamwork of lending eachother buffs, resources and esunas, we win together. If we can solo it or don't need one of our team members then the system is broken; the only thing that matters is the mechanics and the mechanics being the same every time has caused people to get bored in ways they were not in the past.