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.

[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.

[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.

[Baxcel]

The Dark Knight becoming Warrior Lite is what made me give up on the class this expansion.. i know people had mixed feelings with Dark Arts spam in Stormblood but I did enjoy the play style of DRK then..

Hopefully they look at the negative feedback from making all the jobs simular and diversify them in the next expansion.

[Claire_Pendragon]

Technically the game needs both "types".
Simplistic options for: Tank, healer, melee DPS, and "distance DPS" (Since "ranged" has a different meaning here) since some players want simplistic.
But it also needs harder/more complex of each of those. Lastly, the game currently lacks "faster" versions of each role. (2s GCD or even LOWER, like 1.5s) currently GNB is the fastest, but its still not as fast as some of the melee DPS. You can say AST has cards, but its GCD is still too long for ppl who want shorter GCDs. For ranged, they all have the normal GCD speed, with small buffs that occasionally shorten it. I have friends who ONLY play distance DPS, and quit the game due to the GCD slowness. I have tank friends who did the same, even with SBs DRK having a small window for GCD reduction by a tiny amount. (Same with healer)

I also have a friend who wanted a complex tank, and atm, the closest is PLD, and he's quickly losing interest, cuz it feels "medium" in difficulty. But I also have the opposite sentiment from a friend who only JUST got into tanking, with how over easy its become (DRK and WAR being the most notable), as he's always wanted an easy tank to play.

And thats just "playstyle". We have other issues regarding what players want, but thats for another thread.

[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.

[Sylve]

I would argue that its the 'meta' communities fault we lost so much uniqueness in jobs.

In a world where players are demanding that every Job be equal to every other job in all scenarios, its no surprise how things turned out.

Example: DRG providing a piercing resistance debuff was a cool interaction between Bard/MCH and DRG. It felt like teamwork for the DRG to buff the MCH/BRD who would in turn buff the DRG.
Reality .. DRG became absolutely necessary in the mindset of the loud meta crowd. Instead of being cool and unique, it became mandatory.
Same thing happened with NIN and Trick Attack. AST and Balance.

With so much player focus and "Happiness" being in parser log DPS numbers, we went from having cool and flavorful job unique functions to what we have now.

Though i strongly disagree with Jobs feeling samey with the sole exception of DRK Blood related stuff being a clone of WARs Fell Cleave playstyle. Would much rather have seen DRK remain as a purely MP driven job. (Also i really want Edge/Flood procs off TBN to use the same animation as the old Dark Arts as a visual indication of the proc being ready)
Every other job plays in a mostly unique way. Yeah, even Healers when you stop obsessing over DPS and look at how their Healing kits function compared to each other. Big pulls on AST feel very different to big pulls on WHM and SCH.
Yeah you can break it down to "build meter, spend meter" but the how of it is important. If you tried telling me that a MCH felt the same as a Dancer in combat I'd tell you to lay off the booze.

As a final note, i should like to point out that it was the Tank community's own fault that they're in this situation and Healers are heading down the exact same path.
We lost so many alternate combos on Tanks because it became pretty common here and ingame for someone to ask for advice and be told "You use Power Slash exactly once in a fight and then never, ever again because muh deeps" only to then be baffled when the Devs weeded out those combos that players were literally telling new Tanks to never use and left you with only one clear path to doing maximum damage for the role.