If you continue to dumb down the game, you will lose half your player base

[Imoye]

Yoshi P said in a video that FFXIV wouldn't exist were it not for WoW. The game was a major inspirational source for this game. My question really is: Is the dev team willing to learn from the mistakes Blizzard made?

Blizzard literally went on a raging simplification spree. Notably pruning and removing tons of abilities from each class and specializations in the name of "accessibility". Shortly after the game went downhill big time. Skill expression is today completely gone in WoW. Every class plays braindead 1-2-3 button smashing that literally dulls your brain as you play.

I truly do not understand why the developers want to do the same thing to FFXIV. Heck, Blizzard even recently stated that pruning was a mistake. They're now trying to "undo" the damage, but that's likely going to take multiple expansions of work. Why on earth would you want to repeat this same mistake in FFXIV?

Having easy jobs is perfectly fine, but there needs to be jobs that offer also medium difficulty and high difficulty. Pruning and dumbing down existing jobs is not in any way acceptable, and is an insult to players who main those jobs. If you want to make something simple, then you need to create new jobs that are simple from the beginning - period. People are invested in their jobs and you're actively disrespecting their affection by making changes none of them asked for.

By all means, continue to remove abilities and make the game play itself. You will not gain more subs; but you will lose half your player base from your arrogance.

[MellowMink]

Might be concerns about button bloat after an entire 90 levels, especially for controller players, but there are also ways to address that without stripping away abilities; for instance, Gunbreaker got a useful change that makes one of their three-part combos that connects with another action limited to a single button that now changes over time. Why not do something like that for more 1-2-3 combos instead of deleting stuff?

[GrizzlyTank]

I will never get button fetishists.

10 fingers, we got 10 fingers. And with mouse and keyboards half of those are already preoccupied managing the cursor/camera.

[AngeliouxRein]

Might be concerns about button bloat after an entire 90 levels, especially for controller players, but there are also ways to address that without stripping away abilities; for instance, Gunbreaker got a useful change that makes one of their three-part combos that connects with another action limited to a single button that now changes over time. Why not do something like that for more 1-2-3 combos instead of deleting stuff?

I honestly don't get why us playstation players be used as an excuse to dumb things down. The real issue will always be people are too lazy to use all the different hot bar and control set ups to make their life easy. There's always be entire controller setup tutorials all across YouTube to get people started but big nope I guess. This is probably precisely why Yoshi has been working on a new hot bar format for controllers or at least that's the understanding that players have of the update across the board.

Towards the thread, yeah... I was burned first by the massive healer changes and then burned again by SMN changes. It's like, why couldn't they just create new easy to play jobs so the people struggling could go play those and leave the other jobs as they were? Other MMORPGS even made two different versions of the same job where the effects and gameplay of it would be different. If one was too much, play the other version. Other two boring? Play the more difficult version of it. Nevermind other games (even some mobile games have this) where they have a rank system that tells players as they're creating their characters, how hard each job is to play from the start. At least in these games, we can maintain our trust in developers that they will not strip our play style from us and instead just introduce new classes based on people who couldn't handle the current classes/jobs available.

Any option like those would've worked so much better then taking away what people prefer then to cater to a different side that didn't even care for the job before.

[SamsaraTrickstar]

Because it's not the reason. They take out the skills that differentiate the good from the bad players. The ones that you need to know when to use to maximize the DPS.

[ryouma17]

having to press 500 different buttons during combat does not make the game fun

[ForteNightshade]

having to press 500 different buttons during combat does not make the game fun

That's 498 more buttons than healers have. Jussayin'

[Imoye]

having to press 500 different buttons during combat does not make the game fun

Yes it does. Abilities create depth and foster interest as well as satisfaction and mastery.

wow's pruning and ffxiv's pruning are completely different in nature and even goal (and both with good and bad sides). if you aren't capable of seeing that, you either havent played one or the other or your opinion is not worth taking seriously.

This thread isn't about the philosophy behind the changes, it's about the inevitable effects.

If you aren't capable of seeing that, you either haven't played one or the other or your opinion is not worth taking seriously.

[aveyond-dreams]

Yes it does. Abilities create depth and foster interest as well as satisfaction and mastery.

This thread isn't about the philosophy behind the changes, it's about the inevitable effects.

I enjoy having lots of abilities in the style of FFXI. Realistically, there is no comfortable way to map excesses of those buttons onto a keyboard, let alone a controller which I used for a significant amount of time during Heavensward/Stormblood.

I prefer having smaller amounts of meaningful, upgraded abilities in this game for the sake of less needless complications, though it is my preference to receive abilities far earlier than the rate that the game currently gives them out.

The 20 spinning plates style gameplay of Heavensward however is never coming back, thank goodness. Too many people look back on that era as the glory days when in my experience the only job that felt playable at the time was Black Mage.