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

[Jijifli]

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

While you are correct that having a stupidly high amount (like the example'd 500) is not a great way to go about things, neither is dragging that number lower and lower until eventually there's nothing else.

Healers got heavily shafted in the damage department, having only 3 dps spells PERIOD, and you're basically just spamming the same one. It's painfully boring, and it's why I hate healing in this game when I use to main it.

There are much better options for pruning anyways than completely deleting a skill that was vital to the dopamine loop (Yes. It was. I do not feel that dopamine when I Midare anymore). I'd rather not watch more jobs in the game go towards the direction of healers, even if it's slow, it's happening.

[Droxybrobotnik]

I feel we have easy and hard classes already. For instance, summoner, which I main, is easy rotation wise, which lets me focus on learning mechanics more, while monk is so non-combo spam-ish that even the combo addon built to emulate pvp skill structure can't do anything for it. And then there is samurai, that has to juggle buffs, dots, resources, positionals, and situational attacks. Overcomplication is just as bad as oversimplification, and I think they are trying to find a good in-between, but here is a good stopping point. Now start adding new skills or buffing/reworking those there are without making it simpler.

[Thorio]

Healers got heavily shafted in the damage department, having only 3 dps spells PERIOD, and you're basically just spamming the same one. It's painfully boring, and it's why I hate healing in this game when I use to main it.

I don't get this, people want to have more damage skills when your focus is healing? Then playing anything but healer should be better imo.

[YukiB]

I don't get this, people want to have more damage skills when your focus is healing? Then playing anything but healer should be better imo.

Maybe they like healing, but understand that most healing can be done using oGCDs, and would like to do something else with their GCD than spam the same button 90% of the time.

[Elesh]

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.

Not to be too dismissive... but could you please state your specific grievances? A generic comment like this doesn't really help the dev team know what you're actually upset about.

I don't get this, people want to have more damage skills when your focus is healing? Then playing anything but healer should be better imo.

The issue is that FFXIV is designed around the idea of healers spending time DPSing. If that is going to be the case, then the act of dpsing as a healer should still be at least somewhat interesting.

If they wish to redesign FFXIV around the idea of healers NOT spending time DPSing, that's fine. Most healers would probably be okay with that. But it would mean a fundamental rebalancing of nearly every encounter in the game as well as a re-design of mana efficiency, gearsets, healing efficiency, etc... and that seems like a much bigger ask than simply asking 'hey if we're gonna DPS can you make it a bit more interesting please?'.

[Ayer2015]

To me the PvP rework made all the jobs feel better with a stronger job identity. I would much rather see limited skills with stronger identity and impact than multiple of the same with low impact.

[Akibaws]

F to doubt.

[MagicalChase]

To me the PvP rework made all the jobs feel better with a stronger job identity. I would much rather see limited skills with stronger identity and impact than multiple of the same with low impact.

hilarious they added kaiten to pvp

[Broken_Wind]

I feel we have easy and hard classes already. For instance, summoner, which I main, is easy rotation wise, which lets me focus on learning mechanics more, while monk is so non-combo spam-ish that even the combo addon built to emulate pvp skill structure can't do anything for it. And then there is samurai, that has to juggle buffs, dots, resources, positionals, and situational attacks. Overcomplication is just as bad as oversimplification, and I think they are trying to find a good in-between, but here is a good stopping point. Now start adding new skills or buffing/reworking those there are without making it simpler.

My issue, is that in ShB SMN was complex, and Monk was fluid and straightforward
Then in EW, SMN was completely reworked and MNK was completely worked. One became easier and had better class identity, the other had unnecessary complexity added, using something similar to a concept another class's core mechanic. It went from smooth to janky.

So as a whole we are left with one simple class, one less simple, but in reversed positions with two classes having their feel changed completely. if it was just simplification or giving better class identity then why was monk changed? Because it did neither for Monk.


And the choices they are making: removing Kaiten, nerfing overpower for no reason at all. These don't make sense.


'dumbing down' isnt an issue. Not everything is being made easier or less complex. But the changes being made often leave people scratching their heads

[Ronduwil]

The issue is that FFXIV is designed around the idea of healers spending time DPSing.

Yeah, I don't think it was designed around that. Rather, it's an expectation that's taken root in the modern MMO community for some reason. I get that a lot of healers are complaining that they have nothing to do, but these same people are likely raiding high end content with static groups of very competent players. Naturally, you're not going to have to heal very much in those scenarios. If you want to spend your time healing as a healer, then you need to run with random sprouts who constantly stand in stuff and collect vuln stacks. I can tell you that this makes for a much more engaging healing experience that doesn't even treat DPS as anything but filler. That's what the game is really designed around, but the high end community doesn't like to hear that. They want to run with the best of the best and then complain that the best of the best are too easily healed.