Anyone else concerned by the extremely low skill ceiling?

[Dadbod]

Yeah? So it's a problem we can start the fight again after failing? What do you propose, a lock out if you die? That's pretty absurd.

I’m not proposing anything... you all are saying how the savage fights are too easy... I’m pointing out that even the best players still wipe and lose on the savage fights all the time during “clear” parties.

The lack of difficulty just Seems like a perception issue that failing doesn’t matter at all.. not that good players don’t “lose” these fights regularly

[Rilifane]

Many good players intentionally wipe if a try is botched for one or multiple players because of logs or simply because they don't consider the resulting kill smooth enough, even if they could still clear it. That's a matter of choice, not difficulty.
Also, mistakes happen because humans are.. well.. human. Even if you know a fight really well, a momentary zone out is all it takes to fail a mechanic you would usually easily play correctly without anyone reminding you to and that, in turn, often snowballs into more mistakes or deaths because of how the fights are designed.
Many mechanics aren't particulary difficult. You have patterns to follow, fixed positions you get assigned etc., it's mostly just a matter of memorizing and the boss is the vocabulary test. There is little "winging" involved outside of first week when nobody knows what they're doing yet.

[Kobalos]

How would you 'punish' players for dying in raids anyway? Loose gil? Exp loss? The FFXIV police comming round yah house and smashing up your pc/ps4? XD

[HyoMinPark]

How would you 'punish' players for dying in raids anyway? Loose gil? Exp loss? The FFXIV police comming round yah house and smashing up your pc/ps4? XD

Personally, I miss the old perma-death some fights had if you fell off the arena.

Notice the words "pretty much" and "for the most part". Bard is just 1 job.

There are more jobs than just BRD that were simplified to the point of being braindead. DRK and WAR also come to mind here. Upkeep of GL on MNK is a joke now. Positionals on the job are a joke now. ShB made just about every job overly simplistic, and we have people making threads still to advocate for making things even MORE simple (see the recent thread about how DNC’s Flourish is apparently difficult to use).

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Personally, I miss the old perma-death some fights had if you fell off the arena.



There are more jobs than just BRD that were simplified to the point of being braindead. DRK and WAR also come to mind here. Upkeep of GL on MNK is a joke now. Positionals on the job are a joke now. ShB made just about every job overly simplistic, and we have people making threads still to advocate for making things even MORE simple (see the recent thread about how DNC’s Flourish is apparently difficult to use).

Simplistic or just QoL? There was a lot of just bad design in some of the jobs. Not sure how war got more simplistic tho, it was pretty straightforward even in 3.0. It just seemed more complex to pld, and it's 123 rotation (or 145, 146. Even now pld is still the most simplistic rotation-wise)

[Samsta]

There are more jobs than just BRD that were simplified to the point of being braindead. DRK and WAR also come to mind here. Upkeep of GL on MNK is a joke now. Positionals on the job are a joke now. ShB made just about every job overly simplistic, and we have people making threads still to advocate for making things even MORE simple (see the recent thread about how DNC’s Flourish is apparently difficult to use).

Ehh, I can agree with you on WAR and DRK, I haven't really played monk myself, but the upkeep GL was never something you really could affect, most of the time it would either fall off because of too long transition or not, having it not fall off is more of a QoL change than anything. Saying that "every job" is overly simplistic is a huge stretch. Compare heavensward ninja, dragoon, black mage and summoner to their current versions, are they really simpler in any significant way? They have received as much new stuff as they have lost, if not more. And that is the heavensward version, the 2.x version of every job was the most simple version of that job hands down, it was a heavensward version minus 5 abilities. EDIT: Oh and paladin has only gotten more busy with the expansions, 3.x paladin was still pretty much 123 job with 1 dot, now it has a magic phase in it's rotation.

[HyoMinPark]

Ehh, I can agree with you on WAR and DRK, I haven't really played monk myself, but the upkeep GL was never something you really could affect, most of the time it would either fall off because of too long transition or not, having it not fall off is more of a QoL change than anything. Saying that "every job" is overly simplistic is a huge stretch. Compare heavensward ninja, dragoon, black mage and summoner to their current versions, are they really simpler in any significant way? They have received as much new stuff as they have lost, if not more. And that is the heavensward version, the 2.x version of every job was the most simple version of that job hands down, it was a heavensward version minus 5 abilities. EDIT: Oh and paladin has only gotten more busy with the expansions, 3.x paladin was still pretty much 123 job with 1 dot, now it has a magic phase in it's rotation.

DRG lost Heavy Thrust management going from SB into ShB, so they lost something to upkeep. BotD is a joke to upkeep compared to HW, where it was easier to drop it. SB simplified that and reduced punishment if one were to let it drop, since BotD’s cooldown is 30s now compared to 60s, I believe, in HW.

BLM got easier after HW—they made it easier to upkeep Enochian because people complained about how easy it was to drop it. Rotationally, it’s always been easy; but they took the “difficult” part of its HW rotation and made it less punishing.

NIN is a bit unfair since they’re getting a rework to fix gameplay issues. We’ll see how it is then. Same with SMN and it’s new Egi-Assaults, which I don’t think added any real rotational complexity, just annoyance with execution.

MNK’s GL upkeep on Form Shift can be seen as a QoL—but they also don’t have to worry about positionals virtually ever anymore, removing that aspect of complexity from the job.

PLD may have gotten busier with the introduction of Requiescat windows and such, but, as you retorted to me: that’s one job.


I disagree that a significant number of jobs retained complexity since HW. The jobs that were added post-HW were seemingly designed with low rotational complexity in mind (RDM, SAM, DNC)—the only one that seems to be the exception to this is GNB, which is more active (like PLD) compared to DRK and WAR, which are fairly boring in terms of rotation. SB BRD gained complexity in Repertoire management, DoT management, and Foe’s management...but ShB took all of that away to “close the gap between low-tier players and high-tier players”. It received nothing in return for what it lost. I wouldn’t say that MCH is overly complex now either—I never played it much in HW or SB, but things like Ammunition management added something to the job that you had to manage, I felt. I don’t think there’s much to Overheating anymore: it’s basically use Hypercharge at 50 gauge; make sure you have enough for Wildfire every 120s; and press everything else on CD as it comes up.

Saying that “DPS jobs have retained their complexity for the most part” when a significant number have not is a stretch, in my opinion.

[Samsta]

I disagree that a significant number of jobs retained complexity since HW. The jobs that were added post-HW were seemingly designed with low rotational complexity in mind (RDM, SAM, DNC)—the only one that seems to be the exception to this is GNB, which is more active (like PLD) compared to DRK and WAR, which are fairly boring in terms of rotation. SB BRD gained complexity in Repertoire management, DoT management, and Foe’s management...but ShB took all of that away to “close the gap between low-tier players and high-tier players”. It received nothing in return for what it lost. I wouldn’t say that MCH is overly complex now either—I never played it much in HW or SB, but things like Ammunition management added something to the job that you had to manage, I felt. I don’t think there’s much to Overheating anymore: it’s basically use Hypercharge at 50 gauge; make sure you have enough for Wildfire every 120s; and press everything else on CD as it comes up.

Saying that “DPS jobs have retained their complexity for the most part” when a significant number have not is a stretch, in my opinion.

I don't get why you only list things that they lost, when the fact is they actually also gained things. Take blm for example, yeah the Blizzard IV refreshed enochian back then, but as you said that wasn't hard to keep up, and your overall rotation was actually simpler back then, they gained polyglots to use and despair, both which actually make you press more buttons now on your rotation. The only thing I can say is that they raised the skill floor by making it so when you mess up you aren't punished as heavily as before, but that is raising the skill floor, playing the job as it's meant to be played involves more abilities now and the gameplay feels pretty much the same, thus the ceiling hasn't been lowered. Same with many other jobs, dragoon gained life of the dragon etc. I fail to see how losing something but getting something else in it's stead isn't retaining complexity for the most part, only thing they did was they brought the floor up so when you fail you aren't punished that much, but honestly that is irrelevant, you still have to play the job near it's potential to clear harder content, the ceiling of jobs is pretty much the same.

[Payotz]

I wouldn’t say that MCH is overly complex now either—I never played it much in HW or SB, but things like Ammunition management added something to the job that you had to manage, I felt. I don’t think there’s much to Overheating anymore: it’s basically use Hypercharge at 50 gauge; make sure you have enough for Wildfire every 120s; and press everything else on CD as it comes up.

It actually got a lot more thinking involved now compared to the SB version. SB version is just pure muscle memory so once you learn a wildfire and a midfire, there's really no optimization whatsoever.

ShB, on the other hand, has a tiny bit of optmization due to how Battery gauge works, like if you summon queen too early, a punch might land in raid buffs rather than a piledriver.

There's also stuff like banking ricochet for add phases and for things like front healer gaol, and I guess Queen AI during uplifts cause pet AI sucks in this game.

[Dadbod]

The penalty for wiping a fight is wasted resources and time. Lots of lots of time that adds up as a whole especially if your team really starts failing at about 7 min in or so.

It sounds like you want to do content like Baldesion Arsenal where the penalties for dying are far more strict due to the unconventional ways to raise and the threat of being kicked out by certain mobs.

The time spent playing the game during a wipe isn’t really a penalty... that’s just not being successful.. not being successful at what you were trying to do being the largest penalty for failing means there isn’t a penalty... I’m not suggesting this is right/wrong for majority of players or the health of the game or any debate like that.. I’m simply saying a byproduct of no failure penalty is a perception that content is easier.