Stop making the jobs easy and nerf them because "they're not complex"

[Dzian]

I don’t care about buttons for the sake of buttons but square can’t seem to make a job that’s complex to save themselves these days

Because they're obsessed with simplicity and accessibility.. anything complex means a chance of failure and omg can't have that..

The jobs are braindead easy because all the mechanics that added depth and complexity are gone. Crowd control debuffs. Meaningful stuns and interrupts, enmity management, resource management. Mob strengths and weaknesses. Anything that adds anything to combat that isn't just hit it till its dead has all but been destroyed in the name of simplicity and accessibility..

A complex job can't function in a game that has no complex mechanics or systems to interact with.

[SilverSkyway]

Good.

/10char

[Keichi]

The jobs are braindead easy because all the mechanics that added depth and complexity are gone

Question:
What is depth in any role?

I havent seen any game in all this years, where i would say, that the class or gameplay had something, that i could call depth.
Complexity exist in this game (see mudra for Nin, beast chakra for monk and the multiple combos of samurai).

And there isnt anything wrong with braindead stuff. I liked the monk at the end of shb, because he was braindead.
No complex combos. I followed simply two sets of skills in endless looping. No ressources to watching. Practicly no dot to looking after. I that i had to do was punching my enemys, while im braindead from after the work.
Now, i have to watch by the beast chakra, that i have to use at one point 2 skills of the same time following the other, for creating dark chakra. I dont like it that much, because it interrupt my flow of buttom pressing.^^

[Renathras]

I ask for easier jobs. One of my biggest complaints is button bloat. But I'll take QoL fixes too. *looks at Paladin*

Same.

I get some people want galaxy brain Jobs. I prefer a bit closer to smooth brain for my ironed out gray matter to be able to handle it..

WAR, MCH, SMN - love those Jobs.

I also like GNB and main healers (other than AST - because I don't want to have carpel tunnel before I even turn 40 from that cursed opener and burst phase!)

I think the game SHOULD have some easy Jobs, medium Jobs, harder Jobs; low APM Jobs, high APM Jobs, some in between Jobs; complex and involved Jobs, metronome simple Jobs, and so on and so forth.

I think the trick is making them diverse and distinct - there's zero reason for all four healers to have basically identical rotations in the same game that we have tanks with WAR, PLD, and GNB different rotations - and then let players pick the ones they groove to the best. People insist "if they all do the same damage, only the easier Jobs will be picked!", but (a) would that be so bad? and (b) what is easier depends on the person - I find GNB easier than WAR because I don't lose my place in the rotation; people find BLM hard but its rotation is actually not so bad, it's the fight knowledge optimizing that makes it hard.

But yeah, I think it's fine if there are some of each as long as they're relatively well balanced. Players can then pick what suits them best.

I do feel like "remaking" Jobs should be avoided, though. I like MCH and SMN as they exist now. But I also liked old SMN. It'd be nice if something AKIN TO old SMN existed as Mystic or Green Mage or something. That way the players that liked THOSE gameplay styles would have those options, too.

.

I know, hot take to dare say on this forum I like easy Jobs but...meh, why lie about it? /shrug

[FireMage]

This is why you don't make difficulty a rubric of job balancing.

You can and should actually, the issue is that currently taxes aren't properly applied

[CKNovel]

As for the difference between depth and complexity, i believe that complexity is how hard to understand and execute something is, while depth is about how many options and possibilities it gives you.

I'm only quoting Google article but this is how I can explain it the best:
Complexity is defined by the numbers of inputs required to complete a task.
Best example I could find is Wildfire, the combo to pull off between then and now is day and night.

Depth is something that requires active thinking and decision making.
A good example would be stance dancing such as casting stance for Ranged and Priest stance for Healers.
Nowadays we establish and execute, that's the problem with XIV.

And no, choosing between AoE and Single Target isn't depth, the choice is already established based on the number of targets.

[JakkuPM]

Because we want complexity and the nature of tab targeting hot bar style mmos requires a large amount of skills to create that. WoW and SWTOR with their skill purges have proven just how shallow these kind of games can be when you nuke the skill list and simplify everything. I feel for controller players, I really do, but I'd dislike losing skills and complexity because of them and their limited button issues.

i've been playing on controller since 3.2, and i've never had too many buttons to work with on the 32-slot cross hotbars. especially when they added the double-tap trigger hotbars for another 16 slots; i put food/pots and other non-class specific skills there.

(tho i never played SCH in HW, that prob would've been too much but that was the most complex job in the game so it's fine.)

[Satarn]

I know, hot take to dare say on this forum I like easy Jobs but...meh, why lie about it? /shrug

What you've said isn't at all opposed to what the discontent voices on this forum have been saying for years though. Virtually nobody is asking for all jobs to be made galaxy brain difficulty and the game to become an inaccessible, hardcore mmo.

What most people who are unhappy about the job design direction tend to complain about, is how in the past we've had that diversity of playstyles and complexity levels to pick from and both have been gradually removed in favor of making every single job "the simple one" - be it via watering down and trimming of existing job mechanics or just downright reworks into something that doesn't resemble its old gameplay in the slightest. We used to have different jobs that catered to different players. Now it seems the goal is to make all jobs popular, but with only one type of player. That type might be the most common, but this direction is still leaving the many "minorities" that don't belong to it with nothing to play.

There is no problem with simple jobs, burst jobs, linear jobs - there is a problem when that is all there is though, especially when there used to be other options, they were just taken away. Having your favorite job not just totally changed, but then also nerfed with that change given as the reason, is just an extra slap in the face I imagine.

[Videra]

Thinkin' about how blissful Heavensward Machinist was, makes me rage about what it has become.

[Renathras]

I'm only quoting Google article but this is how I can explain it the best:
Complexity is defined by the numbers of inputs required to complete a task.
Best example I could find is Wildfire, the combo to pull off between then and now is day and night.

Depth is something that requires active thinking and decision making.
A good example would be stance dancing such as casting stance for Ranged and Priest stance for Healers.
Nowadays we establish and execute, that's the problem with XIV.

And no, choosing between AoE and Single Target isn't depth, the choice is already established based on the number of targets.

So what is the term for "kit where lots of things interact with each other, but not necessarily requiring a high number of imputs"? Like BLM has among the fewest abilities in the game, but most of the abilities in the kit interact with one another in various ways. Thunder interacts with Tundercloud procs, Firestarter with Fire 3, Sharpcast with both (and also Scathe and Paradox), Blizzard 4, Freeze, and Umbral Soul all interact with Flare via Umbra Hearts, and maintaining the Fire/Ice thing grants Xenoglossy/Foul. While having the among fewest abilities of ALMOST any Job in the game (I think just MCH and RDM or something have less?), its kit has a lot of interactions, both between the various abilities themselves and the overarching mechanics of Astral Fire/Umbral Ice uptime and Polyglot stacks. And it does this with the lowest APM in the game other than maybe WHM.

It's not complex - in it has few actions and a low APM, so not a high number of inputs.

It's not depth, per se - there is decision making, but it's not PARTICULARLY more advanced than RDM since it's context based on (a) your remaining MP and duration of Fire (Ice is a quick refresh then return to Fire) and (b) the upcoming boss mechanic; collectively, RDM has these same concerns with Mana and what the boss is doing.

...so what's the word for "not large number of inputs necessarily and not lots of decision making necessarily, but lots of interactions between the relatively smaller pool of options you have"?

EDIT:

i've been playing on controller since 3.2, and i've never had too many buttons to work with on the 32-slot cross hotbars. especially when they added the double-tap trigger hotbars for another 16 slots; i put food/pots and other non-class specific skills there.

(tho i never played SCH in HW, that prob would've been too much but that was the most complex job in the game so it's fine.)

My personal position is 29 buttons for a Job, as that leaves room for Sprint, LB, and potion (or mount when in the field). Jobs with more than 29 require dropping things. WHM/SGE this is an easy choice, as you only have to drop one thing (Repose). MCH and RDM you don't even hit that limit.

PLD, SCH, and AST have problems because they're up in the 33 range, and those extra buttons start to be an issue when they're all important and there's little you can drop. Contrasting PLD with WAR, the latter is super easy to set up on controller while PLD is...not.

What you've said isn't at all opposed to what the discontent voices on this forum have been saying for years though. Virtually nobody is asking for all jobs to be made galaxy brain difficulty and the game to become an inaccessible, hardcore mmo.

I didn't say everyone was saying it, but I've been attacked for expressing such an opinion. To hear some people talk, if you don't want every Job to be like Wildstar or something hardcore, you're a dirty casual bad who should uninstall and stop sullying their game. I get it's a minority, but it's a rather vocal and opinionated one.

I personally think SB got it ABOUT right. There were some cases that I think ShB got better, but I think SB was the gold standard.

HW was kind of a convoluted mess, which is why they went to the SB and eventually ShB model. And in some cases, ShB was an improvement. For example, SB WHM was kind of meh, and the Lilies added in ShB (in SB, they just had some weird chance to proc reducing your oGCD timers if you cast Cure 2 or something I don't even remember and which made no sense in practice), and I don't mind losing Aero 2 for it (though having Aero 3 for AOE situations might not be such a bad thing as long as it's still a DPS loss for single target vs Glare). But SB hit that sweet spot of a lot of the clunk and convolusion and imbalance of HW being hammered out, but most Jobs still had a fair bit of nuance and depth to them, and the few that didn't were honestly fine (like RDM has never been considered a hard/complex Job, and there was nothing wrong with that, imo)

I like some of the spreads we have right now - like I really like how there's a Tank right now to appeal to every playstyle and engagement/skill/whatever level (which wasn't really as true in SB), but I feel that others have gotten weird.

And the worst part is, we have cases like Melee with 100% uptime, but in a game design that still includes Ranged Tax for legacy reasons when it makes no sense with the current model where Melee don't really have the problem that brought about the tax in the first place.

Though I contest there are no complex Jobs. Anything is "easy" if you practice it long enough, but things like NIN and MNK are not simple Jobs; they are complex, people who have just mastered them don't find them so anymore. PLD has a rotation on par with a DPS Job and has a lot of optimization points (and cursed openers) making it the Tank for players who want a complex and nuanced gameplay style.

.

I dunno, I don't think things are unsalvagable OR as bad as people are saying, and there absolutely are some complex Jobs in this game - with the caveat that what we each call complex IS going to be subjective.

But I do agree IN PART that some Jobs transitioning back towards their SB states wouldn't be a bad thing. SCH going back to its SB kit while keeping the improvements (less pet jankiness/bad responsiveness) and abilities (like Expedience) would be fine and probably an improvement, imo. WHM going back to its SB incarnation would be horribad, though. Like...SB Lilies were a PAINFULLY bad mechanic, and I was glad for that to die and be replaced with ShB and later EW's variants. WHM's in a good place right now, imo. The only thing I might change is giving it Aero 3 back.