The trouble with Job redesigns

[Hanayumi]

Think id be alright with all the simplifing of jobs if they added like skill augmentations or skill trees later on. At least that way kinda future proofs jobs a bit better rather than the constant snipping skills out, just so they can add skills in for an expansion...

[SieyaM]

I don't know, people really didn't like bow mage so they changed that back to a regular bard, so sometimes they seem to appease most people. Obviously not everyone was going to be please by SMN rework, and there are a few very vocal people who will curse it with their dying breath because for some reason it is that important to them. I guess in the end you can just talk about how magnificent old SMN was and how much of an incredible player you are for being hardcore and getting it and finishing savage and ultimate.

[Dyvid]

I don't know, people really didn't like bow mage so they changed that back to a regular bard, so sometimes they seem to appease most people. Obviously not everyone was going to be please by SMN rework, and there are a few very vocal people who will curse it with their dying breath because for some reason it is that important to them. I guess in the end you can just talk about how magnificent old SMN was and how much of an incredible player you are for being hardcore and getting it and finishing savage and ultimate.

Except BRD was first a non caster, then added a caster timer, then removed it after backlash. Another key difference was BRD didn't have it's entire skillset wiped clean during 3.XX series. But since you brought up BRD that is a good example as to what I mean by keeping true to the original job design while moving in a new direction. 4.0 added the song gauge and song rotation. It still is highly mobile, kept most of it's original WSs / Abilities, and continues to use songs to buff the party.

[stellahawke]

I don't know, people really didn't like bow mage so they changed that back to a regular bard, so sometimes they seem to appease most people. Obviously not everyone was going to be please by SMN rework, and there are a few very vocal people who will curse it with their dying breath because for some reason it is that important to them. I guess in the end you can just talk about how magnificent old SMN was and how much of an incredible player you are for being hardcore and getting it and finishing savage and ultimate.

people are like that cause old smn catered to that group of players. the devs are the ones that changed who they wanted the audiance. its only right when the devs do something to mess with an established fanbase. and there will always be 2 sides. just look at what happend to sam and ninja. even people who do like the new smn do think the class is lacking in a lot of ways just the people who like old smn are more vocal about it.

[butchersblock]

I don't know, people really didn't like bow mage so they changed that back to a regular bard, so sometimes they seem to appease most people. Obviously not everyone was going to be please by SMN rework, and there are a few very vocal people who will curse it with their dying breath because for some reason it is that important to them. I guess in the end you can just talk about how magnificent old SMN was and how much of an incredible player you are for being hardcore and getting it and finishing savage and ultimate.

I love how people like you always water down players wanting some fun and complexity in their jobs to this kind of shit. Am I supposed to feel guilty that I want a little bit more engagement from my jobs? This has never been about bragging, and you're shaming people for wanting something better

[CelestiCer]

I love how people like you always water down people wanting some fun and complexity in their jobs to this kind of shit. Am I supposed to feel guilty that I want a little bit more engagement from my jobs? This has never been about bragging, and you're shaming people for wanting something better

Objection, facts. Also, I can't believe Fun-Shaming is actually a thing... in a game... this is still a game right .__.;? pinch me

[LeonKeyh]

I don't know, people really didn't like bow mage so they changed that back to a regular bard, so sometimes they seem to appease most people. Obviously not everyone was going to be please by SMN rework, and there are a few very vocal people who will curse it with their dying breath because for some reason it is that important to them. I guess in the end you can just talk about how magnificent old SMN was and how much of an incredible player you are for being hardcore and getting it and finishing savage and ultimate.

The fact of the matter is that people are fighting against the continual homogenization. Just because some people didn't like it whenever they did "something different" doesn't mean that doing something different isn't the right thing.

Having 19 jobs that play the same with tweaks to the theme is not the right way to design an MMO. Having 19 jobs which all play differently make it more likely that somebody will find a job that they enjoy. IDEALLY ALL jobs should have a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling. THAT is good design, that is what keeps people coming back. But, the next best thing would be to have jobs with a low skill floor for the people that want that and jobs with a high skill ceiling for people who want that. Those jobs with the high skill ceiling are on the endangered list at this point.

If SE isn't going to keep complex jobs for the people who enjoy complex jobs, they sure as hell better put skill expression in all of the jobs or they're going to lose people. There's nothing wrong at all with people enjoying being challenged whenever they play games. That's _fun_. There are plenty of things wrong with:

1. Shaming them for it and claiming that they're just being "hardcore" "elitists" and wanting to brag
2. Asking for their gameplay to be taken away so that you can enjoy it more.

[CelestiCer]

Job design is affected by FFXIV innately not being competitive.

Zero in-game Ranking/Leaderboards accessible with a press of a button. Square is allergic to competitive formats. It's not a " Good or Bad " it's their " Direction ". The downside of 0 competition means nothing in-game encourages players to become the best possible player " they " can be.

This results in simply the following

• Players who don't know what their doing
• Players not knowing proper rotations
• Players oblivious of mitigation skills
• Players enticed to learn bad habits
• Players can't and wont read debuffs
• Players not knowing about adjusting their HuD's
• Players neglecting Food and Raid buffs
• Players just wanting a dorito and damagedown strats
• Players becoming lazy and irresponsible

Partially Square is to blame for making the game as lazy and comfy as possible. Near nothing to push players to struggle to improve in-game even if there is a desire for it like FFLogs, where players compete even against their Own past performances. All of this affects " Job-Feedback " which will inevitably affect " Job-Simplification ".

How much " Comfier " can we silk wrap players to be " Pillowed " into the average content that is already made of " Fluff? ". And this direction this " Hominization " just hurts the game in the long run.

Design Jobs with a friendly easy barrier of entry, with a high skill-ceiling for skill expression. If Square keeps lowering the skill-ceiling? it alienates dedicated players, and only encourages players to not improve just to be more lazy which encourages even more Job-redesigns for more simplifications. Idk where this is even a good thing to make anything dumber...

• Chess with removing the Knights and Bishops
• Starcraft with removing workers just passive income
• League of Legends with removing all passives and Q button
• Black Desert with removal of grabs and half of Anti-CC
• Revelation online removing half of all Crowd Control
• Dart-board with removing half of the scores numbers and making the rest all 20
• Basketball with removing traveling rule
• Tekken with removal of Korean backdash

Game is more accessible yeah... and more boring and dumber, what does that do? this doesn't improve anything.

Is Competition required for good Job Design or Players to improve,... No

But without Competition of any kind in-game? means there's even less standing in the way of Square making job designs more and more and more simpler, easier, less depth, less complex, less nuances, more and more braindead.

[Lyth]

Many of the things that people put forward as 'raising' the skill ceiling generally don't. Being able to execute your job's opener and rotation consistently under target dummy conditions is a fundamental barrier to entry, sure. I absolutely agree that there is more that can be done in-game to give newer players feedback and help them improve. There's been talk about a 'Hall of the Intermediate/Expert' for years. It would be great to get players to do damage on a target dummy and replay it back to them showing places where they dropped buffs or held cooldowns for too long. You don't have to provide numerical feedback on which they can potentially be judged in order to help people improve. Perhaps allow them to specifically select recurring raid mechanics to practice while doing so. The majority won't bother with it, but there should be opportunities for those who actually seek it out.

But your rotation defines the skill floor, not the ceiling, especially when you've been mashing out the same button sequence for hundreds of hours. The only way that you're going to challenge players through 'job design' is if you design actions which actually require mechanical precision to use. Movement abilities. Skillshots. The sort of things that define skill expression in MOBAs. Otherwise, you're entirely dependent on fight design, which is the direction which we've moved towards.

[LeonKeyh]

snip

It really depends on what you consider the skill floor. I think most people understand it as "the bare minimum you need to complete the content" which is definitely difficult to define in a cooperative game, but I think that we'd mostly agree that it's fairly low. I'm sure that most content can be completed by just using the 1-2-3 combo, so anything more than that is at least.... a little skill expression? lol

I understand your point though. Skill expression is better...expressed...based on reacting to things that are happening. A Static "press these buttons in this order" offers a very low skill ceiling having mistakes be the biggest source of differentiating performance rather than pure skill. But even so, the skill expression is minimizing those mistakes while also keeping your GCD running. Which right now, as you pointed out, is mainly relying on the encounter itself, not the job design. The only real exception to that is BLM because the job design is so ingrained in how you interact with the encounter. Melee DPS USED to have positionals for a level of skill expression but that went from "Somewhat important" to "Not important" to "Negligible" to "Oh wow, I didn't realize it could matter even less."

Fact of the matter is that creating room for mistakes isn't a good way to increase the skill ceiling, but that's pretty much the only thing that is left. The game design based on 1 minute and 2 minute burst windows doesn't do a great job at lending itself to reactionary content when it comes to DPSing. Not saying it's _impossible_ to do with the current design, it's just more difficult. Skills are either "use when available" or "use in burst window" and for most things it's well... both.