Evolved Skills Feedback

[Arkdra]

People really are concerned about less Skill Expression, when Evolved mode allows you to take different routes in split-second choices, unlike the current system that forces you to press the same button sequence precisely every 2 min?

Because overall, the 'overcasualization' literally just opened a door for actual complexity to be brought into the game, so this is genuinely interesting to me how there are so many people worried.

The difference of routes is debatable. Like what routing did dragoon have? You get to pick whether you do a left flank or a right flank once every 30 seconds (since you will do the other the 10 seconds after that and then the rear 10 seconds after that). Not exactly exciting! Paladin doesn't have routing either, they have a filler combo and then their blade of valor is just something they can do for 40 gauge.

Bard on the other hand actually is cool to some degree. 3 different songs with 3 different mechanics and 3 different benefits. Mages ballad gives party wide regen and has you apply your dots so optimal use would be post-raidwide when you know the boss isn't going to go invuln at some point during the dot duration. Army's paean gives everyone a move speed boost and gives you a sped up gdc combo to use so it's best used during high movement phases. Wanderer's minuet is a group barrier so you'd want to pre-empt raidwides with it. It gives you a combo with your biggest hit but that hit has a cast bar so you want to make sure you don't use it right before a high movement phase. I think this is really cool personally, but the thing to keep in mind is that this forum is 99% haters by volume. They're just going to look at that and think new smn is mostly the same deal and we collectively hate new smn so we're going to hate this too.

[Kirutsuki]

Nobody is saying it's going to be bad as a definitive statement.
The problem is that what they've shown us so far looks pretty bad, and that's on them.

I am also not doing this whole "give them time" nonsense anymore. We have given them 7 years already, 3 expansions of increasingly stagnant mediocre gameplay.
This new mode has to be good on 8.0 release, no "wait 2-3 years until they've finally gotten it into a passable state".

I'm being hyper critical because we have, at best, 7 months to make the gameplay not suck for another expansion.
Or worse, potentially suck for the next 10 years if the system is fundamentally bad.

For me it looked great, for an alpha footage and what they are planning with it. I have no real concerns as of yet because of it is all.

As for the time stuff, I'm afraid I have to be a bit more straightforward here, it's true that 7months is very little time for them to develop the system that still
looks like it's being heavily worked on. But the sooner people wake up to their own reality the better, new systems like this will be released and then fixed in the upcoming years no matter what.

Every time I've asked the community if they'd be ok with extending the time between expansions and the answer is no. People don't like more time between expansions when nothing's going on.
I get the sentiment. But they also see how much the devs struggle to bring even the simplest of things into the game and just ask devs to push hard when investors and the community yells at them to release stuff earlier in the same breath.

And the entire community absolutely knows that the game is literally standing on straws and duct tape, we know that in order for simple things to be implemented it takes forever. We all saw what happened with the Strategy Board for example, it took almost the entirety of the
expansions update cycle to be implemented. We know that BLU was delayed, yet somehow we are asking new things implemented to be polished on release without much of a need to update them after.

It's an insane, mind boggling situation that the devs are in when you see YoshiP struggle to answer things in a simple QnA panel about glamour plates.
Don't get me wrong I would love the game to be in a spot where it wouldn't take such insane effort for something simple to happen, and maybe with the CEO's promises on stage, things can start to
actually look better for the team and they get to hire more people, get resources they need and more.

But I live in a reality where I've seen delay after delay, implementation for things come way down the line after years of waiting on them.
So I refuse to put my needs in front of the devs.

(Edit: this includes things like being overly critical about a system that's clearly still in development)

I would much rather they announce a 6month delay on the expansion if anything.

[StarryVera]

People really are concerned about less Skill Expression, when Evolved mode allows you to take different routes in split-second choices, unlike the current system that forces you to press the same button sequence precisely every 2 min?

Because overall, the 'overcasualization' literally just opened a door for actual complexity to be brought into the game, so this is genuinely interesting to me how there are so many people worried.

Where is this skill expression shown exactly? The single QTE effect with PLD mitting an attack? Something that already partially exists with Sheltron currently? BRD is being turned into SMN 2, they removed all "skill expression" of resource management and dot management for what is Garuda, Ifrit, and Titan in a different color. Nothing is changing except we are going from a 2 minute rotation to a 1 minute rotation. Giving a job with free movement what is most likely a DPS negative dash isn't skill expression and neither is a random assortment of minor buffs masquerading as a "job identity".

[SalamanderIX]

My main concern right now is when talking about synergy, they will just completely remove all buffs altogether.

Some buffs are really important to some jobs, and it helps keep things interesting. self-buffs at least should be maintained by some jobs? We can't just have jobs made entirely of a few alternating rotations. Seeing Dragoon with no buffs was weird, because it was one of their main things. What does that mean other jobs known for (non-maintenance) buffs such as Gunbreaker, Monk, Black Mage, Machnist, Ninja, or Warrior?
As for party buffs, i could understand getting rid of some but some jobs like Astrologian, Ninja, Bard, and Dancer are practically defined by them. Will we get some party buffs as an exception, perhaps at a significantly reduced power level, frequency, and at a cost to that jobs personal dps?

Other concern:
No autoattacks, combined with the 2.5 gcd timer, and less ogcds (by the looks of it), will feel much slower. I'm hoping that autoattacks are in the final build at the very least. but a faster GCD timer might be called for too.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

People talk about "pOsSiBlE, pOtEnTiAl CoMpLeXiTy In FuTuRe" probably have forgotten how that turn out for EW SMN. How's the lego crunching going?

Or maybe that's not their main so they never care.

[EaMett]

People talk about "pOsSiBlE, pOtEnTiAl CoMpLeXiTy In FuTuRe" probably have forgotten how that turn out for EW SMN. How's the lego crunching going?

Or maybe that's not their main so they never care.

People and devs have been saying this in some form or another about healers ever since SB. Also clearly never happened.

[Arkdra]

People talk about "pOsSiBlE, pOtEnTiAl CoMpLeXiTy In FuTuRe" probably have forgotten how that turn out for EW SMN. How's the lego crunching going?

Or maybe that's not their main so they never care.

I don't know why you expect them to ever do anything actually mechanically complex. Per Yoshi P himself at fanfest, only about 20% of the playerbase clears savage. The extrapolation from this is that 80% of players do not care about gitting gud and are just here to do whatever they do that isn't savage raiding. While there's a band of difficulty ranges they can operate in and some jobs will inevitably be easier than others, if you are clearing savage, a job that matches the complexity you want or can handle is never going to be forthcoming. Because frankly, it would be a stupid waste of time to cater their job design to 1/5th the playerbase.

Like look at how the crowd popped off for sky high. Whole crowd was pogging out over an ability that... lets you not play the game for 4 seconds with a hefty damage reduction attached to it that will only matter about once per 100 hours of playtime. But it was a Jump (the most dogwater ability in franchise history) and people ate it up! That's who they are designing around.

And its clearly not actually a problem for you because if it was, you'd be gone. I see snow posting in this thread. Snow has been complaining about the same stuff for 6 years now. Still playing though. Curious!

[EaMett]

I don't know why you expect them to ever do anything actually mechanically complex. Per Yoshi P himself at fanfest, only about 20% of the playerbase clears savage. The extrapolation from this is that 80% of players do not care about gitting gud and are just here to do whatever they do that isn't savage raiding. While there's a band of difficulty ranges they can operate in and some jobs will inevitably be easier than others, if you are clearing savage, a job that matches the complexity you want or can handle is never going to be forthcoming. Because frankly, it would be a stupid waste of time to cater their job design to 1/5th the playerbase.

Like look at how the crowd popped off for sky high. Whole crowd was pogging out over an ability that... lets you not play the game for 4 seconds with a hefty damage reduction attached to it that will only matter about once per 100 hours of playtime. But it was a Jump (the most dogwater ability in franchise history) and people ate it up! That's who they are designing around.

And its clearly not actually a problem for you because if it was, you'd be gone. I see snow posting in this thread. Snow has been complaining about the same stuff for 6 years now. Still playing though. Curious!

20% is huge, let's just start off with that.

As for the remaining 80%, what do they gain from lowering the skill ceiling? It does nothing for them they weren't anywhere near it to start with. Reducing the skill floor? maybe though I would argue time and time again that the game is really simple enough to play for the content that these players are doing. You don't need to align 2 minutes, you didn't need to stagger your dots (in the past before they removed them), you don't need to maintain uptime and get dps back for your heals, etc. etc. they didn't need the changes in the first place. Do they make things simpler? sure, but at the cost of upsetting your other 20%.. kinda yikes.
Next to that the much bigger elephant in the room is proper difficulty curbs to teach players. I'm glad to see they are addressing some of that but the game is still terrible at teaching you how to play (by design might I add, the obsession over not pushing the player base too hard costs them a lot here)

[Absurdity]

Eh, I'd say what they've shown so far doesn't look bad at all. Most people seem to be reacting positively to it, or at least reacting with curiousity and questions. If you think it looks bad then that's fine, to each their own, but that appears far from the general consensus.

Let me be frank, the "general consensus" is usually not the smartest tool in the shed.
The "general consensus" is doing it's usual hype cycle, where they start pogging over every single new flashy VFX, don't think for a second about the actual gameplay reality and only start complaining about obvious flaws when it's too late.

20% is huge, let's just start off with that.

As for the remaining 80%, what do they gain from lowering the skill ceiling? It does nothing for them they weren't anywhere near it to start with. Reducing the skill floor? maybe though I would argue time and time again that the game is really simple enough to play for the content that these players are doing. You don't need to align 2 minutes, you didn't need to stagger your dots (in the past before they removed them), you don't need to maintain uptime and get dps back for your heals, etc. etc. they didn't need the changes in the first place. Do they make things simpler? sure, but at the cost of upsetting your other 20%.. kinda yikes.
Next to that the much bigger elephant in the room is proper difficulty curbs to teach players. I'm glad to see they are addressing some of that but the game is still terrible at teaching you how to play (by design might I add, the obsession over not pushing the player base too hard costs them a lot here)

Claiming that 80% don't care is complete nonsense anyway. If none of the casuals cared about the combat gameplay we wouldn't have this rework.

My fear is simply that we replace the stagnant "1 minute 40 of filler ->20 seconds of burst -> repeat" with "mash these glowing buttons however YOU want".

People really are concerned about less Skill Expression, when Evolved mode allows you to take different routes in split-second choices, unlike the current system that forces you to press the same button sequence precisely every 2 min?

And did they show any of that? No? Hmm, curious...
Unless you mean the split-second choice is whether I press this blinking 800 potency GCD first or this blinking 1000 potency GCD.

[Turtledeluxe]

And did they show any of that? No? Hmm, curious...
Unless you mean the split-second choice is whether I press this blinking 800 potency GCD first or this blinking 1000 potency GCD.

I wonder when they actually decided on this, and many things we were shown. Mr. Ozma tweeted very recently about developing Beastmaster. Some things Yoshi P said gave me the impression work only just began very recently for things like the character progress, and we know for certain from the dev panel the job rework is (for whatever reason) a mostly one man show. I hope if Evolved and their new content fails, its not due to lack of polish/rewards which is the usual pitfall. Although I am positive on Evolved, I do agree we need more and I really hope they try to knock it out of the park instead of doing bare minimum.