Yoshi's Comment on Future Job Design - Are Jobs

[Levirre]

An article is making rounds about Yoshi discussing that they feel they will have to make brand new jobs tailored to xiv

I feel that job design is now squandered by their battle system. Right now all the jobs are basically a set 1 2 3 combo, a burst window with some buffs, and maybe flashy endgame skills that are basically just raw damage. They can't really create cool skill interactions like a MOBA can because they fear job pick disparity. However, I do recognize how much additional testing would be needed for any moderately hard encounters like ex, savage, and ultimate if they did diversify skills more. Ninja and early astrologian were the last jobs they pushed skill usage. Gauges, which originally seemed cool in stormblood, are left at the wayside now only meant to track a 0-100 resource and a 3 stack mechanic. Though there are some successes like BLM from its inception and Monk finally getting good treatment for endwalker, you don't really manage them as they just proc naturally with your burst rotation. Healers slightly have to manage it, but AST is just gutted.
The only job identity I feel now is in pvp skills. Even with just 9 skills, every job feels unique with a focused gameplan on how you want to utilize your kit. I hope someday PvE may feel the same. Though damage output may be the best so far, there's currently a lot of backlash with job decision like SAM for removing its ogcd and NIN for its clunky ogcd like 2 different raijus where they are effectively the same except one is a gap close. How do you feel about the battle system and current job design?

[Kranel_San]

I believe YoshiP has to stop playing BLM to try out the other jobs. Maybe then he will get a better idea of what needs to be done. PvE job identities are in a ridiculous state, to the point I may call it the worst in the genre.
Maybe someone else or a group of people has to take on job designs and work around an overhaul.

[Hezhi]

Job identity is gone it was replaced by role identity. Nothing can be unique, because all red / blue / green slots must be completely interchangeable or else people might be excluded. Nothing can be too complex or those who don't read tooltips will not get it. Nothing can too high APM or else people who don't like high APM jobs might dislike that job so watch em butcher Kaiten to remove 3 button press a minute. No job can be based around DoTs, in fact lets slowly phase all DoTs out of the game. All healers must operate on a Glare + Aero basis, all tanks must have 123 combo + some gimmick and a variation of TBN tacked on top. All AOEs must be circular. EVERYONE must get a job gauge. It's all baking into the same monotone mush.

Doesn't help that the devs are putting on baby gloves to design everything nowadays. Can't have skills like Blood for Blood that come with a downside, can't have CC like stun or sleep play any role in serious fights, can't have things like old WAR pacifying itself in exchange for a huge damage spike, none of that. Guess what these skills did? Add interactions between jobs and players. But no only GREEN RED BLUE now. Current PvP design is superior because at least jobs feel distinct in there. None cares about perfect balancing its never going to happen, give everyone some fun tools to play with, stuff like AST negating an entire p3s phase with one ability is FUN. Yeah it makes other healers cry, give them tools to be slightly better in other situations.

job decision like SAM for removing its ogcd

It's not just an OGCD that was removed for SAM, its one of the 2 main Kenki spenders. Removing it effectively turned Kenki, a resource to manage, into a braindead Hissatsu: Shinten counter, and the ability was so central to SAM's design that they had to pretty much retool the potency of almost every other SAM ability in the process, and while they were at it they made the genius decision of giving Iaijutsus less potency and making them guaranteed crits. That means having a SAM in your group makes buffs like Battle Litany or Chain Stratagem inherently less valuable. Awful decisions all around.

this post was made by SAM gang
#bringbackKaiten

[Avatre]

I personally feel that the more jobs the add, the harder it is going to be to keep job identity due to how much has already changed to reduce how many jobs used to be. Astro's lost the need to actually pay attention to what card did what, and which buff each would give if used to strengthen other cards. They also lost their shield stance. A lot of the stuff you used to actually need to learn has been gutted from many jobs to be so mundane that they aren't as engaging as they should be.

I would personally prefer if they didn't add more jobs, but fleshed out the ones we already have so that they actually can regain some of their identity and be more engaging.

[elioaiko]

I don't really get the disconnect with adding and not adding jobs. You can have new jobs while working on older ones and in some cases, help with balancing out pickrates/styles.

The real issue I think happening is that the devs themselves are burnt out of creative energy. They're a small team, and have been doing this for years. At some point, you'll run out of brain power to create something new. This is me saying they simply need more R&R, working constantly doesn't help you make better decisions, you're just wearing yourself out and lack the energy to think more than you've already put in.

On top of that, I think the devs need a seperate job design team. If they're so busy with other parts of storyline writing, art direction, battle content design, then working on job design should be handed off to a different team, specifically ones that have a person in each role. I find it baffling that most of the devs mainly play dps and make decisions for healers and tanks with a dps mindset. Ask your average dps player what a healer main will focus on or even what their skills are.

And lastly, they've been pruning old systems out the encounter design so jobs themselves have suffered from the lost of this.

Having aggro management used to be a real thing, tanks, Phys. Ranged, and NIN used to have niches for this. The devs removed the difficulty of it.

Weapon resistance debuffs. This was more problematic but some jobs were brought for the ease of maintaining the debuff.

Phys. Ranged used to help with MP management and had Palisade to help with autos.

Casters used to be able to help with Mana Shift.

Now they're so scared of jobs having too much uniqueness that they've pretty much put them in the same box. 2 min buffs, DRK/WAR having the same burst spam, DNC/BRD fighting for group buffs, deciding whether or not RDM/SMN should get hit with the rez tax, SGE/WHM/SCH having the same but slightly different variations of job gauge.

Essentially, they need new eyes and blood, they're burnt out on doing other content that they barely have the energy to think of unique ways to breath new life into jobs.

[anhaato]

Simplifying jobs into reskins of each other thus making it impossible to introduce new ones is literally their excuse. Like, that was their intent. They expressly want to lessen the work the job team has to do because there’s only 3 of them, and having to balance over 20 unique jobs would be difficult for them. Instead of hiring more people for the team they just decide to lower the workload.

[DanielNegreanu_Adamantoise]

The irony around a lot of rotation gripes and stuff like auto dcrit is that every job in the game is now like omg I need to line up my rotation and melding for literally 1 fkn ability, pretending that it was ever your damage contribution in the first place, it wasn’t, it was the ast’s/sch’s contribution.

Melding materia is not fun nor engaging nor skillful. Design jobs and rotations around bis and chain stratagem?

Sure why not, Chain Strategem 14 Online.

[OperaMorgana]

the problem is, all the jobs are the same, just differents skins and different names, they all do the same, just with different colours, they dont have an identity anymore, i wish we could have jobs that do different things, like support and buffers jobs, and pure damage dealers jobs, or something like that, but meh, all the new jobs would just be a different reskin of wht we have now

[AluneTempest]

They did a great job on PvP job design and identity, every job is unique and fun to play, if they put the same and more effort on PvE, will be very nice.

[Imoye]

I swear, I've never seen a game with such an extreme amount of homogenization. Literally every job plays the same and is based on the same core mechanics. Every raid/dungeon is cookie-cutter design from previous raids. New content isn't even new anymore because you've played it in a different skin before.

The game design has completely gone down the drain. There's no uniqueness. Everything IS the same, and everything PLAYS the same.