The current job design system is not fit for purpose

[Recon1o6]

As of shadowbringers, there have been many, many complaints about the direction job design has gone. Elements of it was present back in Stormblood but at the current moment in time the forums have much more redesign suggestions than any well designed game should have.

The complaints boil down to the following

1. Excessive homogenisation
Players accept that new players need accessible jobs to learn- this is the general outlook classes have: They aren't full jobs, but they are a good introduction to the various roles and duties. But when classes of 2.0 put full jobs to shame in terms of how fun they could be just by analysing what options were available should send clear signs something is very wrong.
Demolishing core gameplay styles, actions, spells, abilities etc to make many jobs play and feel almost identically even at level 80 has been extremely poorly received by the community and left many citing boredom or struggling to pick a main job.

A short list of playstyle homogenisation:
DRK and WAR- These two both have attacks that burn 50 gauge, a button to press to get a damage up boost and a gameplay style revolving around spamming the 50 gauge attacks every 90 seconds for high damage. Their dps kits are barely discernable
Healers- All 3 healers function in terms of basic healing, dps kit and essential actions identically for no discernable reason.
Ranged support and job gauge: All 3 have a party wide damage down and lackluster damge up support whereas previously it was all unique. The damage buffs are also insignificant enough a parser is required to see it.

Some unnneccessary homogenised buttons:
20% tank defence- Shadowskin, Rampart, Foresight all shoved into rampart
Stunning actions- Low blow, Brutal swing, Leg sweep, Arm shot (I think there's more but that's all I can remember off the top of my head)
Debuff removal- Esuna, Exalted detriment, Leeches
Mp restore- Shroud of saints, Aetherflow (Yes, really, it did 20% for 1 Aetherflow gauge) Luminiferous Aether

2. New skills keep being older removed skills under different name
Nobody likes a removed skill unless it was detrimental to the playstyle or completely useless such as RDM's aoe bind and Monk's elemental tackles.

But when important or fun skills are scrapped only to be readded later either the same or upgraded with a passive trait that wouldnt warrant its removal in the first place, its both insulting and unneccesary.
Examples:
WHM's capstone Temperance is Divine seal but with a damage down upgrade.
NIN capstone Bunshin functions exactly the same as Duality, just activated based on gauge now and with charges (charges which could have been added as normal upgrades)
MNK has many removed and readded skills. Forbidden Chakra is actually Steel Peak but has the worse effect of shutting down monk's stacks.

3. Mechanically, too many types of actions or effects have been removed or weakened and this is causing problems
Can anybody remember when we used to get standalone dots, stat reducers, mp/tp restore and similar utility, execution attacks, Crowd Control and enmity control buttons? Many players can and these changes were designed to make the game more accessible
They were also fun and useful in dungeons and in the open world in the case of executions and enmity control, and in the case of bosses, dots and enmity control were part of the challenge and filled gaps on the skill list.
Now, the community does understand why the enmity changes were made- to make it easier to tank large groups of mobs and bosses during intense healing periods. But all that was required was adjusting the enmity numbers a little, not scrapping entire actions.
Removal of dots, buffs and debuffs also brought down a lot of raid utility options. Nowadays we barely have raid utility that is visible without a parser which is not right. People don't feel like they are helping if they can't feel a difference, and if a 3rd party addon is required then its clearly not notiacble enough. 1% for the average player is not a buff its an illusion.

This is now causing problems in job design, we have Sch and Ast without their previous kits and lore causing a healer shortage. Dark knight has turned into Warrior lite and is far from its heavensward high skill high reward debuffing. Bard is now a damage buffer that doesn't actually seem to do anything, Monk still sits alone in the corner being clunky and lacking utility, Warrior is still fell cleaving and lacks anything unique that isn't generic tank buffs. Machinist has a very base breaking revamp, some like it, some hate how spammy it feels.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Nobody wants a job with 50 buttons to map. Frankly I think the 30+ I have on most jobs is excessive. I'd be much happier having around 20 abilities.

Also, the homogenization was necessary. It wasn't excessive. The "meta" being drg bard NIN, something" needed to stop.

Also, people always have disagreements over how the jobs work.

Remember bow mage? Lots hated it, but I knew people who enjoyed it.

I have also heard that monk is not disliked for lacking utility. They don't like how the 4.x rotation was changed.

The ast changes are fine, people just whine about "muh interesting card mechanics" because it was changed. Getting 15 boles wasn't fun. It was annoying.


Your point on "raid buffs and dots being removed, so you can't tell the difference without a parser" also makes no sense, as you wouldn't be able to tell anyway. Most people don't even know they are bad, how would having broken buffs change that?

Bards 2% flat damage buff is a lot. 2% doesn't "feel" like much, but it's party wide and they done have to do anything over than keep their songs rotating. 2% for people who know what they are doing is a lot.

Dps in encounters is hitting upwards of 150k in openers. A 10% buff would just be stupid there.

[Shurrikhan]

Nobody wants a job with 50 buttons to map. Frankly I think the 30+ I have on most jobs is excessive. I'd be much happier having around 20 abilities.

20 job actions =/= 20 buttons. Heck, if it went the Dragoon route, 20 job actions would barely constitute the need for 10 buttons.

Also, the homogenization was necessary. It wasn't excessive. The "meta" being drg bard NIN, something" needed to stop.

That meta had nothing to do with job diversity and everything to do with parity. It could as easily be that today, if Bard were the best among its role instead of the worst among its role, and Ninja had even the output ceiling when including perfect teamplay that Samurai achieves on its own.

Also, people always have disagreements over how the jobs work. Remember bow mage? Lots hated it, but I knew people who enjoyed it.

The actual components rarely see tremendous difference in opinion, however. For instance, I preferred Bow Mage to Stormblood Bard, but I hated much of the same things about Bow Mage that most everyone else does; I simply weighed its consequent decision-making and games of chicken with AoEs a bit higher and was more annoyed by the inflexibility of SB Songs than were most. Now, I prefer Shadowbringers Bard over either but still have many of the same complaints I had about Stormblood's version and lament the lack of point-support.

The ast changes are fine, people just whine about "muh interesting card mechanics" because it was changed. Getting 15 boles wasn't fun. It was annoying.

This issue, too, has little to do with diversity and everything to do with tuning and the way the Royal Road mechanic worked. Because Royal Road was preemptive and its use one set obligatory (rather than retroactive and optional), it was always a gamble. Moreover, Expanded always overpowered Extended and especially Enhanced by up to some 80% effect.

Had Royal Road been balanced and made a keystroke to hit after card usage (affecting the remainder of the card duration), wasted cards would be far fewer and within the ability of Redraw to deal with. Any card with a wasted effect in itself could still be put to significant use on, simply, another card. It'd arguably be less annoying than the Seal system we have now.

Bards 2% flat damage buff is a lot. 2% doesn't "feel" like much, but it's party wide and they done have to do anything over than keep their songs rotating. 2% for people who know what they are doing is a lot.

That's the thing, though. Buffs are moving further and further into territory that is perceptible only with parsers. You can still notice a 10% buff. But 2%?

And the problem isn't just the percentiles on the raid buffs --- it's how narrowed into burst windows jobs have become by stacking more and more of their ppm into CDs, how standardly aligned those CDs have become (which helps for compositional flexibility, just as would gauge mechanics, but expands the power of indirect percentile contribution), and, less significantly, buff multiplicity.

[ForteNightshade]

There's a lot to unpack here. So lets start with:

Nobody wants a job with 50 buttons to map. Frankly I think the 30+ I have on most jobs is excessive. I'd be much happier having around 20 abilities.

To each their own, I suppose. But 20 abilities gets you current Machinist and Bard who barely fill two hotbars worth of abilities. While it worked out okay for Machinist, Bard has become incredibly dull imo.

Also, the homogenization was necessary. It wasn't excessive. The "meta" being drg bard NIN, something" needed to stop.

No, it was not. That meta existed purely due to Piercing being provided by a single job and how FFlogs factored in parses; pDPS was absolute king and nothing compared to Trick Attack. Some homogenization is needed, yes. But Bard was absolutely gutted, Monk still has practically no identity and the tanks and healers are near palette swaps of each other. Put another way, making Vengeance and friends all two minutes is an example of good homogenization. Making Delirium an edgier looking Inner Release was lazy.

Remember bow mage? Lots hated it, but I knew people who enjoyed it.

I have also heard that monk is not disliked for lacking utility. They don't like how the 4.x rotation was changed.

They weren't the majority. Hence why Bard was revamped in Stormblood; to near unanimous praise. The devs then, baffling, stripped away nearly all its utility.

You really ought to look at the DPS forums to see the myriad of problems Monk has. It goes far beyond the 4.0 rotation. Cliff notes version? The job has a ton of situational to downright worthless abilities, hasn't changed or evolved since ARR and complaints have been largely ignored.

The ast changes are fine, people just whine about "muh interesting card mechanics" because it was changed. Getting 15 boles wasn't fun. It was annoying.

Considering Astro is still played less than White Mage or Scholar by a sizable margin at the Savage level despite being objective stronger, begs to differ. As does nearly every thread, poll or census, be it from casual to hardcore players, all complaining over the card system. You could literally take away all six cards, keep just Lord/Lady and virtually nothing changes. That isn't a good design. Astro is very reminiscent of Bow Mage. Some liked it; most hated it.

And you know what else isn't fun? Getting the same three seals in a Sleeve Draw window that will clip your GCD almost every time. That's far more annoying, and forces Lightspeed into babysitter role.

Bards 2% flat damage buff is a lot. 2% doesn't "feel" like much, but it's party wide and they done have to do anything over than keep their songs rotating. 2% for people who know what they are doing is a lot.

It isn't when accompanied by a 50 potency nerf to Bard's DoTs. Fun fact, that supposed "buff" actually wound up being a overall nerf which is why Bard now sits as the weakest job in the entire game except in fights with multiple targets. That 2% was worthless.

[kaynide]

Personally I'm fine with simplified primary rotations on jobs (mainly the tanks/healers), but I would enjoy more alternative actions to make the jobs a little bit more..situational? Like more stuff PLD could do that heals or defends (maybe a really long cool down raise?), or actually let Warrior get more DPS capabilities. DRK? I dunno, debuffs?

[DuskTS]

If Job design is so bad how come 11 million players and growing? Check & mate OP.

[LittleImp]

If Job design is so bad how come 11 million players and growing? Check & mate OP.

The game is actually down 180,000 active characters between the previous two census'. Active characters only hover around 1 million btw, with the most recent census indicating ~840k.

[PeacefulEdge]

If something is working fine there is no need to change it, even if it is for good.

[Billythepancake]

...

I'd rather have 50 buttons to map over the 1 anyone with a green icon currently has. Too much to do is better than not nearly enough.

Speaking of META, it's funny, despite all the homogenizing, it'd still be around, if it wasn't for the dreaded FFLOGS. Because you can't pad parses anymore, or at least, not nearly as effectively/easily because of the swap to rDPS rather than pDPS, the META would still be just as rampant. Not to say SE did nothing to hamper it, but it was by far that small change to FFLOGS that countered the META way more than anything SE has done this expac.

As for AST, on paper, I like the changes, because I hate RNG with a passion, nothing ruins fun for me faster than something being tied to RNG. However, I'd rather deal with RNG than the mess that is sleeve draw. Sleeve draw ruins any fun I could possibly have with AST.... Not to mention the RNG is still there and just as frustrating, if not moreso. At least the RNG back in SB didn't give me carpal tunnel, just a headache.

[SamRF]

I'd rather have 50 buttons to map over the 1 anyone with a green icon currently has. Too much to do is better than not nearly enough.

Same, I know more buttons doesn't necessarily equal more complexity and depth, but having abundance of buttons to map and use is why I prefer combat in this game over the other major MMOs (WoW/GW2/ESO/BDO). I want to have many buttons so I can get creative with keybindings and UI. Having long rotations and more CD abilities to optimize also adds a different kind of difficulty than in those other major MMOs, which may very well have more difficult classes overall but are imo more dependent on muscle memory and reflex for optimization. It's a different type of difficulty.

Generally I find it more difficult to zone out and relax with FFXIV dps rotations as a certain degree of focus is usually required to keep all those buttons and long rotations in play (which I prefer). While in those other games after you've mastered a class you may go on autopilot and still perform decent enough.