Please stop simplifying and homogenizing the game. Please.

[elioaiko]

I agree, it's like they expect us to have the brain of a monkey or something.

Jobs are slowly but surely losing their identity.

The NIN one is so confusing. Moving the raid buff to Mug is literally the same as having two Tricks. NIN felt impactful when it had a buff every minute, now it's just the same 2 min buff to gotta hard on CD.

Same with them moving Divination off of the seal system for AST. Now it's just another button with the same impact.

And the fact they said they're going back to HW complexity is scary. At least SB had some ideas left. They think that making the job easy to play makes more players will be happy when it's the opposite.

[Ksenia]

It isn't that they are trying to simplify it that I question. It's that they don't simplify what matters.

Most PS4, PS5 and a decent amount of PC players run this game on Televisions as display outputs. A high end monitor has a 1ms or faster response time. The average television has a 15ms response time. So room wide floor disco and 'the mob waved his right arm for 1.2 seconds' as a telegraph in all instanced content post ShB is what is butchering quality. Not pushing 3-9 keys on your controller or keyboard.

[EnigmaticDodo]

So i've been playing since 3.3. 14 was my first MMO. I had such a bad understanding of the game when I started that when I got to Baelsar's Wall my item level was too low. I had to ask my FC what an item level was. I (a warrior) didn't know that pulling wall to wall was normal until the healer in that group told me to. I didn't know that Alexander was a raid, I just thought it was a cool set piece in the hinterlands. I didn't know I could do Alexander each week for gear. The first extreme I did was Byakko in 4.1 and I absolutely sandbagged. I didn't use any cooldowns on the TB since I thought I was just supposed to get shielded for it.
Since then, I've cleared every savage tier since Eden's Verse on content. I've gotten every job to 80 and a little over half to 90. I'm currently progging UCOB to prepare for DSR. All this to say that though i'm somewhat hardcore now, I wasn't. I know what it's like to be totally lost in an MMO. I WAS the skill floor for a long time. I, like literally all players, got better. I learned. I had fun doing it. I know i'm not the best player in the world, nor am I a game designer.

Damn, this bit resonated with me pretty hard! I 100% support your takes! I am worried about the games current track too, but meh. I can just complain about it and hope they'll listen to reason!

[Grann-Goro]

So i've been playing since 3.3. 14 was my first MMO. I had such a bad understanding of the game when I started that when I got to Baelsar's Wall my item level was too low. I had to ask my FC what an item level was. I (a warrior) didn't know that pulling wall to wall was normal until the healer in that group told me to. I didn't know that Alexander was a raid, I just thought it was a cool set piece in the hinterlands. I didn't know I could do Alexander each week for gear. The first extreme I did was Byakko in 4.1 and I absolutely sandbagged. I didn't use any cooldowns on the TB since I thought I was just supposed to get shielded for it.
Since then, I've cleared every savage tier since Eden's Verse on content. I've gotten every job to 80 and a little over half to 90. I'm currently progging UCOB to prepare for DSR. All this to say that though i'm somewhat hardcore now, I wasn't. I know what it's like to be totally lost in an MMO. I WAS the skill floor for a long time. I, like literally all players, got better. I learned. I had fun doing it. I know i'm not the best player in the world, nor am I a game designer. But, given what we were told in PLL 70 and the Famitsu interview from last week, i'm seriously worried about the game's design going forward. Specifically, it seems as though the devs are more and more designing the game for the lowest common denominator in terms of skill.

Same here o/

Besides, I have a very good group of close friends IRL.
Back in the days, we were playing WoW together at various occurences over the years and its different xpac. We never were hardcore raiders, but we enjoyed the leveling experience, and eventually we all left when the leveling in WoW became dumb and boring...

After that, I tried FFXIV alone. It was during Heavensward, and at that time, I tried many times to convince my friends to join me on FFXIV.
"Guys, there is a sync option is this game ! It's awesome ! Even the first dungeons stay playables and enjoyables for new players !"
Sadly, I never succeded (because of multiple reasons), but they seemed kinda interested nonetheless.

Today, when those friends ask me if FFXIV is still that good and how it is today for new players, I'm forced to tell them that it's easier than before during leveling, and that they will even add bots for low levels dungeons.
And now, all their interest is gone... :/
"it will end like WoW, they say..."

[silentwindfr]

Samurai: To reduce button bloat you're removing kaiten. Kaiten? Why? If you need to reduce button bloat (which is a problem on most jobs) you have so many better options. Ikishoten becomes Ogi Namikiri would work. Merging Shoha and Shoha 2 would work. I won't say that Kaiten is a cornerstone of the job or anything like that. Yeah, you only used it on a few skills, but that's still a bit of skill expression being lost. Plus it's one of only two or three skills you ever really spend kenki on. Oh, and guaranteed crits. No. Just no. This means that there's less synergy between Sam's, Drg's and Sch's and that's just bad. Yeah, there's a wide variance depending on what crits and what doesn't. That's the entire point of critical hits being a thing.

i want to answer this one because i see something super funny inside... making ikishoten into ogi, yes they can do it but we can already do it ourself, with macro.
merging shoha and shoha 2, they are two different skill with different purpose... like seinen and guren... one is for mono target and one for area dps... merging them have no point and action bloat don't happend because when i'm doing aoe dps i don't use mono target skill and end have something like 7 skill used... wow super bloated... same when i do mono target dps i don't used this action.
where the fact that midare getting a auto critical make the buff of critical less interesting? from memory the critical buff is a 15 second duration. the whole midare/ogi will be around 8.4 second... leaving us with 6.6 second of buff that can be used on everything else like seinen, shinten or our normal combo. yes samurai will be less dependant of this buff mostly because even with this buff the number of time where i land non critical of this 4 skill is more often than anything and i say this with dnc and drg buff... chance is chance...
since it's our hard hitter skill when it happend i feel like craps and feel like i did loose a massive windows of dps. and i'm sure other sam know what i means. do we will be less affected by the critical buff of the drg and sch... yes. do it's nullify them? hell no... i still taking it for seinen and other skill in this windows of damage!

i will repeat it as often as needed, the loose of kaiten is more like dealing with the less usefull of the button we have in terms of tool... it don't means the buff of potency is weak far from it... but at choose between skill to remove kaiten is by far the best of all since what it do can be done by increasing the potency of midare and ogi to the same level than when we was using it.
people are overeacting saying it's the cornerstone of our jobs when it's not... if the potency increase is the same as if we use kaiten... honestly it's a good change... because it was a in terms of tool a redundant action. worst it's a ogc skill meaning our cycle will not even change... we will have more shinten to add to the cycle... adding more activity to our toolkit instead to reduce it!

ps: i'm against oversimplification of a jobs, we are at the point where if you reach this level you need to know what you do and a bit of skill is welcome... some jobs change did make me hate jobs like what they have done with the dark knight that i found bland because too simple.
but i'm against too redundant action that create artificial gameplay and artificial feeling that we are doing something amazing... when is not the case!

[Payadopa]

I'd happily trade balance for more interesting job designs. The changes ever since ShB are just sad at this point. Like Eye of the Dragon and Earthly Star are just pathetic at this point.

[Rabin]

I agree. Stop the oversimplification.

I've played this game a long time now and have not been happy with the job changes in many instances. I am old, like pensioner old, and had to switch to controller last year because I can't work the mouse for long periods any more. I don't do savage and I accept it's out of my reach, I certainly don't want anything made easier so I can play it.

I clear all normal content. I run the occasional extreme with my FC. I play several jobs at a mediocre level. I liked the old HW DRK when it actually needed some effort. I played SMN for years before it was EW cool and hated the changes to pets when we lost our tank for soloing. I agreed with the old fixes to BRD, so it could be mobile, that made sense, even though I don't main one. I like the L90 additions to the PLD rotation, but still remember how different it was in 2.0, back when it felt more like a holy warrior.

AST was complex. People wanted only one card to come out all the time, was that a reason to destroy the individual card system that you worked so hard to teach us in the job quests back in HW? People who want 'easy' always have other job options. That's why we have so many jobs, I thought. So some of them could be easy, some average and some difficult. They're all heading towards easy and I don't like it.

SAM does not need an easier rotation. A good rotation rewards players willing to make an effort and gives them a level of satisfaction when they achieve it. Take that away and you lose those players. I don't play SAM, but I'll stand up for SAM players who don't want it changed.

I have no idea what has happened to the design team here. I can only assume corporate greed has reared its ugly head and once again SE are going for the easy cash until it breaks the game as they have done with others in the past.

I hope I am wrong.

[Rufalus]

They have a great team but are maybe too comfortable, not challenging themselves or being allowed to. Over time the edge of the blade becomes dull.
The game now has too many good assets to waste on this boring direction. It needs a renewal to maintain subscribers into the end of the next decade. Transplant these lovely enemies, glams, music, etc into an overhauled engine with fewer limitations.

Job design is actually pretty good to be honest compared to other games. At least aesthetically the jobs are unique. Their performance is hard to manage because on the one hand people hate homogenous design, on the other hand all these people with parsers complain that they aren't identical in potential. Now there's also too many jobs for them to receive much individual attention and love. At some point maybe you have to stop adding jobs and start focusing more on expressing their individual strengths and utility.

[Grann-Goro]

At some point maybe you have to stop adding jobs and start focusing more on expressing their individual strengths and utility.

Absolutely !

[Thorio]

I get wiped in normal dungeons sometimes but then again I'm still a sprout so who cares amirite?