Complexity/Sensory Overload

[Reinha]

I like it the way it is tbh. Having to learn how to control the class causes people to favour a job or two (not necessarily the easiest) that they find fluid and intuitive. Sticking to the same job causes people to become really good at it over time. Specializing into a class to master it is not a bad thing. It makes the game interesting, especially so when you've played a job for a year and want a change of pace. I have never felt I can't enjoy the scenery during my adventures. First run of A8 I was blown away by the music, names and visuals of the place. And even with most of my spell effects turned off, Collective Unconscious and Draw still look fabulous as ever. If you need to look at your hotbars a lot during combat then some practice might be a good idea.

The way I read it most of this thread is complaints about how awkward controllers are to play with. [Insert obligatory PC master race comment here.] I would be very unhappy having the game made easier because some people don't play with suitable equipment (suitable to themselves). This is one of the few games left with proper complexity in classes. I want to be able to utilize more than half of my MMO mouse. I like spending time building my own hotbar setup and building necessary muscle memory. I want to work with both hands when playing the game, not just with the hand resting on the movement keys. Controller users should perhaps poke the devs to make it easier to use a controller and not the classes. If the global cooldown was shorter there could be a problem with certain jobs (*cough* DRK *cough*) but as it is we have luxurious amounts of time to hammer the keys.

That said, when the new expansion comes they might need to make choice between fusing existing abilities or only adding passive traits. Personally I think it should be a mixture of both. Fuse some abilities, remove the ones no one ever uses and perhaps allow less but more meaningful cross class skills. Also give a few cool new abilities and passive traits. But please do not go down the route WoW did. Their pruning was a freaking disaster and it's happening again. Some specs are unrecognizable because their defining spells don't exist anymore.

[zipzo]

They also were pretty quick to relieve people of abilities they'd had since the beginning of the game.

At the very least they could have coupled effects in together and kept some of the names but it's a bit heartbreaking to essentially feel like you lost a long-time friend. I mean when you've been using a skill for years and years, it certainly feels like a friend. They weren't careful enough on this front, and really left a sour taste in a lot of folks' mouth. It wouldn't be all that much different if they ripped some valuable nostalgic item you've been keeping in your bank since vanilla or something. A lot of people really felt like they took important pieces of their character away without choice, even if in a lot of cases were talking abilities with very situational uses. That's situations that will now go less interesting in the future without those abilities...

[Terribad]

I personally am not having an issue with any of it. I play on PC and PS4, it's a tad more annoying with a controller but MMOs have been designed around K/M. So with this not being an action based MMO, which I feel work loads better with controllers, that's just one of the cons when it comes to using them.

I also don't play every class since I have little to no interest in most of them, so that allows me to "master" my current job better. I know the skills and stuff by heart so I honestly don't have to look down at my hotbars. I don't know, I feel like if they make the jobs/classes and encounters any easier this will be as easy as Hello Kitty. If people are having troubles remembering skills perhaps focus on fewer classes/jobs? Just because it's an option, doesn't mean you have to do it.


The only thing I agree with is having high level skills replace the old ones, however I'd want the extra skill space to be replaced with different new skills.

[seraseth]

I can agree with this. Loved BLM throughout 2.x, the simpler rotation let me focus on the mechanics and such in coil and primals. With them increasing the complexity of all the dps jobs, as well as the number of mechanics in a lot of fights in heavensward, I just don't find it as fun anymore.

As stated by a few others previously it's everything added together that becomes too much. Watching bars and timers and stuff to dodge and remembering all the mechanics and timing for each fight. A good portion of my guild found the game far less enjoyable at 60 than they did at 50. I only just recently came back to finish the main storyline and work on the new beast tribes. As it stands, I just don't feel like doing anything further in the end game.

Here's hoping for some changes in 4.0

[Yukiko]

One example of many:
When you go into Bahamut-Stance you get the nice and cool animation, but what if you have a marking on your head at that time?
In Savage you are tied very strict on making damage, you cant delay skills much and sometimes its hard and very close to those "head-markings"...
I know some raiders disabling all animations and set everything on low, but then I ask you: "Where is the fun?"
We are not machines, humans like to have some eye-catchers!