New Missaphenchair video makes great point about the direction of job design

[xAFROx]

Here is the link: https://youtu.be/1d_fMH9Lwvs

He makes some really good videos. I hope more people take notice of this sort of thing so it can reach the devs to make an impact.

[Nizzi]

I agree with him about the skill floor and skill ceiling. I have no problem with jobs being "accessible" because I think everyone deserves to have fun. The problem with the direction of the game being stated as "We think the fun should come from the fights, not the jobs" makes it where as you start to get good at your job, the casual content, which is a majority of the content that almost every player interacts with becomes incredibly boring.
I wasn't around for Heavensward but I've seen videos of how my favorite job, Scholar, played during then. I know that if SCH had the level of depth that rewarded a good player for playing well, I would be playing it all the time. The game becomes incredibly stale and boring when jobs have the depth of a puddle and the ceiling is the same as the floor, and this is a BAD DIRECTION for the game to keep going in.

For games where you spend thousands of hours playing them, you should be rewarded with being able to have more fun on your job and do better at it because you've put the time in to master it. If a job doesn't have that level of reward after you've put a few hours into it, what's the point in playing? With the direction of all job design in this game, I'm increasingly wondering what's the point in playing the battle content at all? With MNK in ShB and SAM in EW, we can't even be certain that our jobs will play the same in a few months, let alone the next expac.

What is the point of getting good at this game and putting time into it if the developers are just going to push us down to the level of people who don't even care to try?

[ThorneDynasty]

Count me in with people who think the fundamental pitfall this game is rabidly falling into is the overt focus on accessibility.

The point of multiple jobs is that everyone can find something to love. When you make everything the same (cough, healers, cough), you are really just catering to one type of player and alienating everyone else.

[Theodric_Thorne]

Count me in with people who think the fundamental pitfall this game is rabidly falling into is the overt focus on accessibility.

The point of multiple jobs is that everyone can find something to love. When you make everything the same (cough, healers, cough), you are really just catering to one type of player and alienating everyone else.

These changes don't even solve accessibility problems. A toggle in settings to allow certain combo chains to be condensed (effectively providing the same functionality as some of the combo plugins, but without reducing entire rotations to a single button like PvP, even though people keep claiming that's what it would do) would go a long way towards solving accessibility problems. Actively removing skills and over-simplifying the way a job plays doesn't do any of that, it just makes that job no longer fun to play. I'd wager the only reason why healers aren't quitting in droves is because they want to be healer mains, but that doesn't mean they're happy with having over-simplified DPS rotations. If a new healer came out with more rotational complexity it would probably be very popular. I'm just not sure SE would understand why, and might just chalk it up to "new class shiny."

[Halfgeeek]

I'm salty about WAR overpower being a circle now. The cone + circle mix made it not entirely brain dead, and we all know WAR is not exactly complex as a kit. The cone also has advantages that players can maximize, such as longer range for running through packs of mobs and overpowering behind you, or you can step out of enemy AoE and still cone them down with the range.

Kaiten removal was a crushing blow to Samurai gameplay & job identity. It's all about building 3 Zens for a huge hit that you had to double-charge up with Kaiten, then a cast-time WS. If it crits, it just feels so satisfying. Now you get a weaker move that always crits, but it feels so bad compared to before, where yes, there's RNG, but that RNG is what you looked forward to each time you have 3 Zen to blow.

I'm not an elite player, nor a pure casual, somewhere in between, and these changes to me are horrible.

[Karious]

I checked out the video. He makes good points, and it's good to see so many in agreement in the video comments.

[ThorneDynasty]

You are talking about button bloat there, which is not really an accessibility issue (unless you are talking actual disabilities preventing you from using all keys/buttons). Condensing long combos where you need to stay aware of what exact step you are currently on only makes them more difficult to play by taking a ton of muscle memory and peripheral vision out of the equation. For something like Reaper, sure why not. It doesn't matter since it's just a 1-2-3 combo with literally zero distinct interaction with your kit.

But pressing 1-1-1 doesn't actually make the job easier than 1-2-3, you aren't going to forget to use your 1-2-3. You aren't going to miss any cooldowns because your eyes get information overflow from the 1-2-3 buttons (at least after a few days of playing any melee job). And for jobs where it actually matters which was the last combo action you took, it's just an active hindrance. You need more focus on counting your hits than knowing where your finger is at, or identifying symbols than knowing where the blinking light is.

[Theodric_Thorne]

You are talking about button bloat there, which is not really an accessibility issue (unless you are talking actual disabilities preventing you from using all keys/buttons). Condensing long combos where you need to stay aware of what exact step you are currently on only makes them more difficult to play by taking a ton of muscle memory and peripheral vision out of the equation. For something like Reaper, sure why not. It doesn't matter since it's just a 1-2-3 combo with literally zero distinct interaction with your kit.

But pressing 1-1-1 doesn't actually make the job easier than 1-2-3, you aren't going to forget to use your 1-2-3. You aren't going to miss any cooldowns because your eyes get information overflow from the 1-2-3 buttons (at least after a few days of playing any melee job). And for jobs where it actually matters which was the last combo action you took, it's just an active hindrance. You need more focus on counting your hits than knowing where your finger is at, or identifying symbols than knowing where the blinking light is.

That's why I stressed this would be an optional setting, possibly even adjusted on a per-combo basis. For jobs that do have straightforward combo progression, this can free up as many as 6 keybinds to be used for other skills that are now closer to reach. Speaking as a player with disabilities, this would be immensely helpful. What's not helpful is straight-up removing Kaiten from SAM. I like it. I like the flow of the job. That flow doesn't change if I go from pressing 1-2-3 to perform one of my Sen generators to pressing 1-1-1, 2-2-2, or 3-3. It just makes it easier for me to focus on mechanics because I'm no longer focused on making sure my damn fingers enter the right sequence of commands. It's not that I don't know the sequences, it's that my fingers don't cooperate because of my disability. It's annoying, like having to think about breathing while you're trying to keep your mind focused on your positioning. I can't really think of a better way to describe it to someone who doesn't have fine-motor impairments.

[ThorneDynasty]

It would be fine as an option, yeah, but it doesn't really help with the job design by reducing the number of buttons when you still have to account for people opting out. The total number of actions would still stay the same.

[Rilifane]

He made some great points and I agree with his critique on job changes being made for people that don't care about the job to that extend.
If you're making adjustments to a job for people that don't care about that job while alienating players that do, you're doing something seriously, seriously wrong.