"I don't want to think while I play, so no one should be allowed to."

[anhaato]

So goes a large portion of responses to discussion threads about wanting jobs to be complex and diverse again. This is especially rampant for healer discussion, being that it's the role that takes the least effort to play with how simplified they've each become. A lot of people seem to like healers as they are now. Totally valid. However much of the playerbase they represent, beyond me! But either way they're ever present ready to tell us that healers as they are now represent what their idea of a healer is, and their idea is the correct one.

I think this illuminates a greater issue with the community: the "I got mine" mentality. That's to say, whenever we discuss having issues with certain content or lack thereof, wanting certain QoL features, or asking for a level of depth that used to be there but was removed recently, there's always a few combatting it because they enjoy what there is now and don't want the devs to begin catering to us, even if it would come at no cost to the content they enjoy.

Why should healer jobs not be more complex than they are? You're not held at gunpoint forced to optimize anything in this game. Job complexity is 100% optional difficulty. It would placate those of us who don't want to fall asleep during roulettes without necessarily needing to introduce an entire new midcore mode of content (though that would be nice too), while everyone else still has the liberty to play at as suboptimal a level as they want. If you want to do the absolute bare minimum dps you have the freedom to do so already, just looking at the number of curebots you get in your average daily roulette runs that you still manage to clear with.

Frankly, I don't understand the mentality. Even if I don't particularly care about deep dungeons, I was still happy to hear that we're getting one this expansion because I know there were a sizable number of people who wanted one. I feel we should be encouraging practices that cater towards every player, instead of only caring that the devs focus on ourselves and no one else.

And this is not to invite debate on "but overworked devs" or whatever. I've heard it all already, and it's a terrible excuse. They were capable of it back in Stormblood, which was when FFXVI development started, so they should be just as capable now. And for that matter, they'd have less workload if they weren't reworking (ruining) jobs just for the hell of it. It's a self fulfilling prophecy.

[Kolsykol]

There's certain things I think some people view as '' QoL '' that aren't, especially when it comes to merging combos and stuff like that which is more gameplay oriented.
The reality is that people would feel compelled to use it because not using it would handicap yourself, if something is borderline mandatory because it's just so much more efficient then it's no longer a QoL feature really it's just a design revamp.
This is a lesson we should've learned from boss addons as well as other addons that have become normalized in a certain other MMO, people find ways to rationalize why it's '' not a big deal, just a small QoL thing '' but in effect it's really not especially not when it actually starts creeping into the design of the actual gameplay.
I like the combo system too and I wish they'd instead do something more interesting with it ( more combos, I miss Dancing Edge on NIN but make it more dynamic with more real decision making sorta like MNK ).
If you go the PvP route then all it ends up being is a 1 button spam which begs the question why even have them to begin with, it's only a visual thing at that point there's no other purpose to it and the skill floor ( albeit low ) is completely removed.
It's not hard to see people feeling pressured into using it even if they don't want to.
Not gonna go further into this I could go on but I think my overall point is fairly simple to understand.
It's very different than something like a better glam system or more features for easier searching in the market board.
Or say a search system for teleportation.

In regards to the Healer and Job design issue I think people kinda just need to accept that they're not gonna perform as well if they don't put effort into it.
I think most reasonable people can agree that someone who puts more effort into something should reap a higher reward.
The problem imo is that not only the FFXIV devs but also a lot of other devs spend too much time worrying about everyone performing at an equal level, but players are not equal.
It's okay that players perform worse if their only interest is the MSQ and other casual content.
And if their interest lies in harder content like Savage or even Ultimate then quite frankly if they can't play their Job at a competent level they're unlikely to be the type of person to put effort into learning mechanics and practicing to begin with.
So what exactly is the point of designing the optimal play of Jobs for these players?
They can still play and making things easy achieves nothing but make their numbers appear bigger on screen, but it in turn kills it in terms of fun and engagement for another significant portion of the players.
For the former it's all take and no give, while for the latter it's all give.

[pikalovr]

snip

the issue is that when you suggest any complexity it gets shot down cause "hardcore raiders" want it and it'll hurt the new player who's at level 50. (and should at least have a bare minimum understanding of the game and their kit but i digress). so people don't want complexity fine then make it just be a 1-2button rotation and open up the slots for oGCDs that can be added at higher levels only. but no that can't work either cause it dumbs down the rotation complexity (LMAO) even further. thats the issue there is no winning with people.

just like people can't use 2 braincells and some common sense to realize that, no MNK wouldn't get put down to a 2 button combo cause thankfully his rotation actually has nuance and each step of both combos has a reason to be used indepently. and SAM would just go to 3 buttons.

[Shurrikhan]

There's certain things I think some people view as '' QoL '' that aren't, especially when it comes to merging combos and stuff like that which is more gameplay oriented.
The reality is that people would feel compelled to use it because not using it would handicap yourself, if something is borderline mandatory because it's just so much more efficient then it's no longer a QoL feature really it's just a design revamp.

I want to touch on this particular example.

Combo consolidation is not a pure benefit to the user, in that it also removes tactile cues from the user, which can be rather vital to many for tracking the timing of a given fight (both in terms of hitting button A at moment X and just not falling asleep from boredom).

However, yes, it does remove a very, very mild fail condition -- the ability to do something other than resetting, switching, or progressing one's combos -- which would otherwise waste combo progress for potentially pretty massive potency loss and desync.

Consider, though: What if you simply made it impossible to do anything with pure combo skills outside of the only three options that are actually viable -- to reset, switch, or progress a combo?

There'd be no advantage to combo consolidation outside of addressing repetitive motion injury or moving the saved button space to more comfortable bindings, which would be worth the cost of tactile cues only to those who most need that reduced movement.

And yet there wouldn't be a single bit of actual depth lost. One could still hit the non-option buttons, just to (if there would be zero use case for the given key) no effect (outside of GCD drift as you note the mis-press and correct it), instead of a destructive one. One could still make the wrong choice, such as by resetting or switching to another combo, but only from among actual potential use cases (no matter how rare those use cases might be).

I feel like that's what's so often lost in the conversation. We feign that there could be no change in context when looking at choices A and B (e.g., an advantaged combo consolidation or the existing system) in isolation, never mind that the present context provides no advantage in actual depth or complexity (as the number of actual, viable options remain exactly the same as per consolidation), only an increase potential punishment that disproportionately affect a small portion of players (e.g., those with RMI or impaired dexterity).

___________________


Lest this appear as cherry-picking, let me bring this back to the more general note:

Yes, QoL changes do tend to end up as design revamps to some degree, but we have a habit of treating them differently -- less imaginatively of surrounding warrants and prospects of design -- than we would other considerations of/around design revamps. But we shouldn't treat them separately, nor any less imaginatively. The choices at play aren't merely X feature in the existing context or nothing at all; most already encourage an examination of the present context and what parts of it are actually responsible for what we like, and what parts of what we dislike are not thus conjoined.

This ends up all the more strange and salient when compared against the QoL the devs themselves levy on us. CDs being reduced almost entirely to whatever easily matches to 120s cycles has mostly ended up considered as just wholly warranted QoL, regardless of however it may actually degrade the in-game experience... even while those same players will insist until hoarse that we should never have X, Y, or Z, even when those features have been much more carefully checked for negative implications upon the actual experience.

That's not to say that all mod ideas are good for the game. I'd agree, for instance, that boss mods would be bad for the game. I want to look at the screen, the actual audiovisual cues that give the fight more theme and flavor, not some new UI element that degrades all that. But by the same token I'd rather not have such skills as Arm's Length or Surecast even now, since those skills take up button space just to undo mechanics. Can we not apply the same criticality, the same warrants by which we might dislike a given mod idea, to the existing game, too? Can we not let each idea better polish our own understanding of what all we may like or dislike, and why, rather than just polarizing it all into oversimplifications (to mod or not to mod, should X be permissible or no)?

[RitsukoSonoda]

IMO one of the main issues is that the simplification of the game essentially removing most if not all actual FF RPG elements and mechanics from the game in the pursuit of making the game for "Everyone" has attracted hordes of ppl that want all the stuff without earning all the stuff so they can brag to their 5 friends on facebook that they have stuff in a popular online video game. The MSQ may be the main storyline of the game but it should also be the training path of the game to essentially make sure players understand mechanics while job quests educate players on how to make use of their kit.

[anhaato]

IMO one of the main issues is that the simplification of the game essentially removing most if not all actual FF RPG elements and mechanics from the game in the pursuit of making the game for "Everyone" has attracted hordes of ppl that want all the stuff without earning all the stuff so they can brag to their 5 friends on facebook that they have stuff in a popular online video game. The MSQ may be the main storyline of the game but it should also be the training path of the game to essentially make sure players understand mechanics while job quests educate players on how to make use of their kit.

The amount of people I've seen saying they're level 80+ and haven't done one single job quest and they're sooo backed up XD is beyond worrying. The game never forces you to learn your job so the idea that one might be forced to put in effort to be somewhat competent is genuinely offensive to these people.

[Izar_Chillen]

job quests educate players on how to make use of their kit.

It baffles me still that they never took the opportunity to make that the real goal of job/role quests with a bit of story added to give it its lore.

Almost all of them are almost exactly the same tasks . Walk to purple circle/glowing solo instance destination because job quest story , which is almost always help to kill/rescue , tells you to go somewhere and all you really do is the same stuff any quest asks of you .


It should have been something like :

Tank quests should throw hoards at you , and expect you to mitigate/use Cds you've recently acquired plus older abilities you have gotten used to on your way past 50, or perish with maybe a healer/dps friendly as back up .

Healer quests should be scenarios of having to heal in various ways coping with various new heavy busters , room wide /multiple monster attacks in a scenario of friendly npcs vs big bads , no matter the story flavour.

etc

[DPZ2]

It should have been something like :

Tank quests should throw hoards at you

What MMOs have you been playing that go to that level of 'tutorial'? I've encountered exactly zero in the years I've been playing MMORPGs.

[pikalovr]

What MMOs have you been playing that go to that level of 'tutorial'? I've encountered exactly zero in the years I've been playing MMORPGs.

GW2 in the first explorer dungeon level 35 has you fight multiple groups of enemies, hell there was one route in the level 45 dungeon that you would have to fight 2-3 huge groups of enemies if you didn't sneak around them and pull them one by one. some people would consider the 8-10 mobs we get now as hoards. but even in tank quests you never really get more than like 5 which is one pack at best, or if it is a large scale battle you normall have other characters that also eat aggro so you're kinda left tanking the few mobs the game has chosen for you to hit (i still try to pull all mobs in that scenario tho regardless cause it's more interesting). i mean if you wanna use open world events as the tutorial so to speak. there's quite a few even in the earlier zones that do a better job of letting you learn your kit and specialities than the role quests even at level 50+

[DPZ2]

GW2 in the first explorer dungeon level 35 has you fight multiple groups of enemies, hell there was one route in the level 45 dungeon that you would have to fight 2-3 huge groups of enemies if you didn't sneak around them and pull them one by one.

From my experience with GW2, you never ever have to enter a dungeon. Plus, that's not really a 'teaching moment' through a job quest. There are plenty of places where one had to learn how to CC properly in WoW, for instance --- thinking specifically about Sunken Temple and the green dragon area in particular. But those weren't 'job quests to teach you how to do your job properly', although I did have an experienced Shaman take two of us as hunters through that area and teach us how to CC. That game just threw things at you, like most games.