Paladin Evolved (Dev Panel US Fan Fest)

[ZaqueXIII]

It seems that their concept of evolved jobs is to be more focused on job identity and a more active game play feel.

My major concern is that since it is such a revolutionary change effectively killing any concept of Macroplay for Microplay we will lose a great amount strategic depth from the game. For all the whining and issues it brought the two minute window built a strong foundation for much of the organized/higher end content in the game both on the player and dev side. Without getting my hands on it, I cant say for certain but if the implications of what was shown in the Dev panel today are anything to go off of there will be little concern or care shown towards doing much aside from pressing the glowing buttons.

For paladin specifically, I worry with a counter there doesn't exist a proper balanced state. Lets say that the counter is a DPS positive move, now every fight with paladin is an optimization to get as many perfect counters as possible meaning that your defensive tool is now a purely offensive tool not to mention you are just as macro restricted as with the 2 minutes if not more. If it is DPS neutral then sure it might be a cool move but why use it when your regular damage ability does as much, meaning you dont really get rewarded for doing something "Correct" so much as you are not punished and get a flashy animation to break up your combo. If it is DPS negative then why bother using it at all, it will still serve a defensive function but then you pretty much just ignore the proc and carry on.

I don't wanna yuck anyone's yum, and I love how many of the jobs currently function in PVP which I think is a rough baseline of what we might reasonably expect to see in Evolved jobs. That said, what was shown today I think is woefully behind what I would hope we get in the coming expansion. I really hope the Dev team is actively searching feedback and iterating on this system because I want this game to be the best it can.

[Carighan]

My major concern is that since it is such a revolutionary change effectively killing any concept of Macroplay for Microplay we will lose a great amount strategic depth from the game.

Interesting, because right now I feel the game has ~0 strategic depth to its gameplay, and that is in fact the core issue forcing their hand in doing a full class-rework, and frankly should have ~3 expansions ago.

[ZaqueXIII]

Interesting, because right now I feel the game has ~0 strategic depth to its gameplay, and that is in fact the core issue forcing their hand in doing a full class-rework, and frankly should have ~3 expansions ago.

I'd be curious to know a more refined version of this opinion. For my mind; having a worked out rotation, coordinating buffs, coordinating mitigation, and even making decisions on which abilities to burn/when to line up with both fights and compositions all factor into the current strategic gameplay.

With the changes present these arent outright gone however; the devs seem to want to not feel like they have to have bosses ocassionaly wait around/work down time into fights, the proposed system throws basically all buffs out the window, the recycle rate on many of the abilities was in general less than a minute meaning. All of those to me speak to a system where you are only ever concerned about your individual abilities and pressing them as much as possible.

Even if a strategy is solved or optimal it doesn't mean that its not still a strategy, I think everyone wanted something new and for the most part many want to blame the legacy system and 2 minute buffs. I think that while they weren't perfect the 2 minute buffs made an effective law/loop that even the dev panel showed was something that they wanted to account for from their side as well, like a hand shake agreement on how we played the game. So given that its difficult from the demonstration to see how removing the foundation of such a long standing system will allow for the same level of depth. of course this all remains to be seen as they iterate on it and we get closer to Evercold.

[Carighan]

I'd be curious to know a more refined version of this opinion. For my mind; having a worked out rotation, coordinating buffs, coordinating mitigation, and even making decisions on which abilities to burn/when to line up with both fights and compositions all factor into the current strategic gameplay.

Interesting, to me this is all stuff that someone else has solved for me. Now of course, lacking true randomization this cannot really be solved, but this leads me to the crux of the issue:

If the fight is to be static (fixed sequencing with fixed timings) and my job is to be static (fixed sequencing with fixed timings) then at the very least reduce the number of buttons I press in a 100% rote rotation. There's no reason to press 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 if I could just press 1 instead, both are... mental dead weight. They're busywork. They constitute no actual gameplay.

Ignoring of course the fact that if I play tank, I'm not even interested in having interesting DPS gameplay, I want interesting tank gameplay.

Does the new implementation truly improve any of this? Not really, from what I'm seen. But at the very least it's more honest: If you got nothing interesting to add, at least don't add filler spam instead! I'm hyped anyways as the shown abilities look worlds better than the 12 things they're removing for it, even put together. Like all jobs in FFXIV Paladin would benefit massively from strong randomization, but of course the devs are utterly unwilling to do that. Lacking that, at least having a very reduced and hence each-ability-is-actually-meaningful-individually set of abilities IS a huge huge boon.

[ZaqueXIII]

So; the game has 0 strategic depth which is the core issue, the other core issue is that if every interaction isn't random why bother playing. So you want to load into a fight against an ambiguous boss, that does a random spread of attacks in a non-specific order where your abilities and actions will produce unknown effects? I'm exaggerating a bit, but randomization does not allow for strategy, basically your two core issues are at odds.

I think even in its current form, especially recently we have seen the most interesting Tank gameplay perhaps since ARR, and its almost entirely done through fight design. That is to say that regardless of you interest you need not lose interesting aspects of one part of your game for another.

I'm really glad there are people who saw the presentation and are happy, I'm also glad that they willingly showed us such an early concept to allow us to even begin formulating feedback. But I'm not convinced that their implementation matches their intention with what was shown. Sure you can argue that the abilities seem more meaningful but I would argue that such is view is like saying my hand is meaningful, yes it is a core part of my being but it provides me no unique experience to most everyone else who has a hand. In the current design, the recent updates to the 120s tank mits were meaningful, in general they provided opportunities to access mixed mitigation types further enhancing the self protective/sustain abilities of the tanks.

[Sazuzaki]

I worry with a counter there doesn't exist a proper balanced state. Lets say that the counter is a DPS positive move, now every fight with paladin is an optimization to get as many perfect counters as possible meaning that your defensive tool is now a purely offensive tool

I mean, yeah that's the point. For a game that crowns DPS above all, mitigating should directly reward you with more damage and you should be optimizing to mitigate as much as possible as a tank. TBN is already controversial for being all risk and no reward, and while I don't mind it in its current state, I can understand the people who do. I will say that this will separate good PLDs away from bad PLDs, but I don't think it'll be anything that'll make or break a DPS check. There's still plenty of unknowns but I trust in the team to strike a good balance with all they've learned over the years.