Classes too similar and some have useless extra buttons. Needs big rework.

[Selsix]

Considering there's been people who quit in large swathes over the last year because they either:

A. Got bored of the simple jobs.

Or

B. Got frustrated by the complex fights.

I can rightly guess that "got bored of the simple fights" and "got frustrated by the complex jobs" is equally likely to happen, and that "simple jobs/simple fights" and "complex jobs/complex fights" probably won't go over well either.

It doesn't have to be so extreme. There isn't only "braindead" and "bull$%#@". We can have jobs with fair complexity and fights with fair complexity to match if the devs actually gave a damn.

[Arrius]

I played WoW and every single button was useful and had a distinct purpose. I had a spec with maybe 20-30 different buttons and all had their place. I had another spec with maybe 15 buttons and a bunch of passives which was fine. There was no bloat and fake options. Everything about the current classes and their abilities feel like fake choice.

There will be button pruning coming the next expansion to combat ability bloat and detangle some classes and their unnecessary high complexity - Especially on the healers, since need to manage a lot of buttons to perform decently on their role.

So yeah, they get heavily downsized as well. And put more responsibility to the DPS as nearly all healers now lose their interrupt/kick.

And I think that's fine.

[CidHeiral]

Dragoon has 7 skills for its 2 single target combos that mostly do the same thing. All of them are a single target hit. They can be compressed into 2 buttons. One button to apply the debuff+bleed and the other one changes to the next action each time you click it, the same way it works in pvp.

As a DRG main this would be an absolutely horrendous change. The looping combo is one of the defining aspects of the job. DRG already got lobotomized this expansion, they don't need to remove even more from it.

There will be button pruning coming the next expansion to combat ability bloat and detangle some classes and their unnecessary high complexity

So they've come full circle to another ability prune era. That worked out so well the first time I'm sure it'll be great!

[NegativeS]

I contemplate playing it again because it has such a nice combat system and movement and freedom and complexity with high skill ceiling, but the company sucks and the game design does not respect your time at all, and the mythic key down-grade system is toxic and time wasting af. You just can't play how you want to play. Gotta keep it up like a part-time job or you fall behind and can't do anything anymore because everyone wants top scores to minimize suffering the toxic systems that for some reason Blizzard refuses to fix. People already pay monthly sub but they still have to farm gold like a part time job to afford raid buffs and legendary gear crafting and all that. Do it all again for each alt you have too.

i've long been saying that all you'd need to make the perfect MMO is to mash the best parts of WoW and FFXIV together, both games are the best in the industry at exactly half of what they do. from WoW, the content diversity, engaging combat and class design, and gameplay customizability from races, specializations, talent trees, gear, etc. from XIV, the player expression, character-focused story, and casual prog. get a competent CS team from somewhere else and an artstyle to bridge the gap between WoW's timeless cartooniness and FFXIV's anime-realism, and you have the ingredients for an actual forever MMO

it seems like WoW has actually been making moves to fill in the gaps recently with the addition of player housing, a reasonable start to advanced emotes, and the introduction of higher level rewards through things like crafting and world activity... though still nobody at blizzard knows how to write a compelling story, apparently you have to be japanese or french to pull that off these days. regardless, i'm still honestly excited to see what comes of the IP after the end of the Worldsoul Saga, if anything

FFXIV is very much set in its ways though, and it will be the game's downfall. at this point they need to oust whoever is hiding in the corporate hierarchy yanking all the strings that keep the devs from implementing fun or interesting content in favor of max profit. despite how much i hate on him, i know it isn't yoshi, he's just the mouthpiece...

[Valence]

When it comes to button bloat and combo condensing discussions, it's always fascinating to watch both sides harping at each other without being unable to understand each other. One side sees button bloat as a problem of redundancy and a lack of mechanical purpose - pvp combos would work the same with less buttons because they're all used in the same scenario anyway. The other side sees the amount of buttons as part of tactile feel and memorization not too dissimilar to playing an instrument.

[Zered]

As a DRG main this would be an absolutely horrendous change. The looping combo is one of the defining aspects of the job. DRG already got lobotomized this expansion, they don't need to remove even more from it. :

No it wouldn't be horrible. They can add different abilities that actual do stuff instead of Single target attack #1, #2, #3, #4,#5,#6. Are we really going to pretend this is engaging gameplay?

In WoW you have an aoe that does slow, an aoe that does pure damage, a quick single target shot, a slow single target shot, a slower but bigger single target shot, mechanics to proc instant casting or mobile casting, crowd control abilities, defensive abilities, debuffs, buffs, utilities like evasion or cleanse or buff steal, etc. You use them all as appropriate as the combat situation changes and as enemies take certain actions.

In ff14 you have 10 buttons that do the same exact thing and we want to pretend we 'defining aspects' or actual gameplay? I doze off running dungeons because all you do is walk forward and then spam 3-6 buttons in rotation and throw in a few oGCD in between every few seconds that generally do the same thing the GCD is doing. Rinse and repeat until you get to the boss and hopefully that boss is in later expansions and has interesting mechanics instead of the usual aoe/cone/tank buster that all the early game bosses do.

You know what's funny? Pvp only has 6 class skills and 6 pvp actions and it is more engaging and dynamic than regular gameplay. Each button does a unique thing. You decide to go in or dip out, block damage, heal up, stall, LB, regular damage, burst damage, etc. So few buttons but so much strategy and engagement. You can dive into a crowd and kill someone and somehow make it out alive by playing your cards right.

[Valence]

No it wouldn't be horrible. They can add different abilities that actual do stuff instead of Single target attack #1, #2, #3, #4,#5,#6. Are we really going to pretend this is engaging gameplay?

In WoW you have an aoe that does slow, an aoe that does pure damage, a quick single target shot, a slow single target shot, a slower but bigger single target shot, mechanics to proc instant casting or mobile casting, crowd control abilities, defensive abilities, debuffs, buffs, utilities like evasion or cleanse or buff steal, etc. You use them all as appropriate as the combat situation changes and as enemies take certain actions.

In ff14 you have 10 buttons that do the same exact thing and we want to pretend we 'defining aspects' or actual gameplay? I doze off running dungeons because all you do is walk forward and then spam 3-6 buttons in rotation and throw in a few oGCD in between every few seconds that generally do the same thing the GCD is doing. Rinse and repeat until you get to the boss and hopefully that boss is in later expansions and has interesting mechanics instead of the usual aoe/cone/tank buster that all the early game bosses do.

You know what's funny? Pvp only has 6 class skills and 6 pvp actions and it is more engaging and dynamic than regular gameplay. Each button does a unique thing. You decide to go in or dip out, block damage, heal up, stall, LB, regular damage, burst damage, etc. So few buttons but so much strategy and engagement. You can dive into a crowd and kill someone and somehow make it out alive by playing your cards right.

Believe me when I say that I've been advocating for exactly the same paradigm that you describe. But at this point I think that's not the game FF14 wants to be anymore.

See my reply just above. We want to be challenged intellectually, but the current audience of the game wants to be challenged on rote memorization.

[CidHeiral]

No it wouldn't be horrible. They can add different abilities that actual do stuff instead of Single target attack #1, #2, #3, #4,#5,#6. Are we really going to pretend this is engaging gameplay?

In WoW you have an aoe that does slow, an aoe that does pure damage, a quick single target shot, a slow single target shot, a slower but bigger single target shot, mechanics to proc instant casting or mobile casting, crowd control abilities, defensive abilities, debuffs, buffs, utilities like evasion or cleanse or buff steal, etc. You use them all as appropriate as the combat situation changes and as enemies take certain actions.

WoW's closest analogue to DRG are the Arms/Fury Warrior specs, both of which center around hitting the equivalent of Lance Charge then spamming 2-3 single target attacks on cooldown until it's time to do step one again. The "combat situation" changes that very little. Of course there are classes with more going on than that, but the game isn't the universal paragon of deep class design that you're making it out to be.

I totally agree that FFXIV's job design is currently in an awful state, but FFXIV jobs don't need to become WoW classes, they need to return to their own roots. Feedback demanding jobs turn into totally different jobs is a significant factor in what got us here to begin with.

You know what's funny? Pvp only has 6 class skills and 6 pvp actions and it is more engaging and dynamic than regular gameplay. Each button does a unique thing. You decide to go in or dip out, block damage, heal up, stall, LB, regular damage, burst damage, etc. So few buttons but so much strategy and engagement. You can dive into a crowd and kill someone and somehow make it out alive by playing your cards right.

That is because you're fighting real people. Those same kits immediately become incredibly boring when you're playing Shatter and hammering 1111111211111111 on a block of ice.

The lesson SE should learn from the success of the PvP kits isn't that jobs should all have four buttons, it's that giving each job unique and engaging gameplay unlike all the other jobs is very fun. That used to be the case in PvE as well.

[MayuAmakura]

> wow has the equivalent of 40 classes and even the worst among them is more engaging than the best ffxiv job

how does blizzard keep getting away with it

Just looking at Wow Vanilla and it's already more fun and engaging than ffxiv ever will be.

[MayuAmakura]

No it wouldn't be horrible. They can add different abilities that actual do stuff instead of Single target attack #1, #2, #3, #4,#5,#6. Are we really going to pretend this is engaging gameplay?

In WoW you have an aoe that does slow, an aoe that does pure damage, a quick single target shot, a slow single target shot, a slower but bigger single target shot, mechanics to proc instant casting or mobile casting, crowd control abilities, defensive abilities, debuffs, buffs, utilities like evasion or cleanse or buff steal, etc. You use them all as appropriate as the combat situation changes and as enemies take certain actions.

In ff14 you have 10 buttons that do the same exact thing and we want to pretend we 'defining aspects' or actual gameplay? I doze off running dungeons because all you do is walk forward and then spam 3-6 buttons in rotation and throw in a few oGCD in between every few seconds that generally do the same thing the GCD is doing. Rinse and repeat until you get to the boss and hopefully that boss is in later expansions and has interesting mechanics instead of the usual aoe/cone/tank buster that all the early game bosses do.

You know what's funny? Pvp only has 6 class skills and 6 pvp actions and it is more engaging and dynamic than regular gameplay. Each button does a unique thing. You decide to go in or dip out, block damage, heal up, stall, LB, regular damage, burst damage, etc. So few buttons but so much strategy and engagement. You can dive into a crowd and kill someone and somehow make it out alive by playing your cards right.

Ye but pvp has also turned into a big mess with recent changes and making certain classes stronger than others. Scholar is just dominating now and it's super easy to play it. Even with mega bad players, you can consistently shield them forever and they will do the job. Try doing same with whm and you will fail every single time because scholar outheals you by a mile. Same with Astro and sage, can do wonders with recent changes. This all makes many games stall and very boring to play with insane amount of heals + shields. It used to be better. Purify changes also that nobody asked for kek.