Why do the devs hate MCH so much?

[Avoidy]

One of my friends who mained mch in... stormblood? Or maybe hw. I don't remember. Point is, he mained it before it was heavily simplified. He quit the game around sb, and he was watching me stream it for him. When I told him that I had mch leveled up, he got really excited so I switched to it and showed him the gameplay (this was in shb) and he kind of had a fit. He went on about how the job used to require a lot of thought and now it was just "head empty, 123 gauge-spender."

Basically, I don't think the devs hate mch. I think mch was simply an early victim of streamlining gone wrong. I also think it lacks a purpose within the community's expectations. Other rangedphys jobs bring some element of a damage boost to the table, but not mch. No, mch gets to be a selfish dps job. But within the realm of selfish dps jobs, mch lags behind all of them. Even if you disregard the parser minmaxing, on a level of feeling alone it just sucks to feel like your job kind of lacks a viable purpose. So even if the devs don't necessarily hate the job, they have created a situation where lots of its players are deeply unsatisfied, so it'd be nice if they did something about it. Even if they just made more of the skills feel better to use, I think that would go a long way. The new aoe shotgun animation is fantastic, for example, but the overall aoe rotation is so boring that it doesn't fully make up for it.

[Deceptus]

Im pretty sure people here feel that Yoshida has severely lost base with how to handle this game and needs to step down. He CLEARLY has no clue how to run an MMO anymore.

Over the course of ShB and EW, I've actually wondered if YoshiP has lost touch with the game, players, and game direction, actually. Wondered, mind you, not claiming such.

My personal opinion is his headspace is in designing FFXVI first and foremost and FFXIV is an afterthought, or simply left to his underlings.

It does seem like the B team has been developing the game for the past expansion or two. I mean, extremely simple things like basic potency math for upgrade abilities have been overlooked (Aero 2 being higher potency than Dia)

[Shurrikhan]

My stand is that he knows how to make an MMO, just that he peaked and has since not done so hot in several areas. He's definitely lost base and is lacking in communication and touch with his playerbase, as many of his decisions seem whimsy and questionable. Even when the product is good, sometimes I wonder who realistically asked for it, and why take the extra mile of making something grand out of it (like Island Sanctuary).

Tbf, I wouldn't mind those oddball additions if we could easily see the mechanics/tech of that content seeing returns elsewhere, too, or at least hear how it'll be relevant further down the roadmap. We seem to in equal measure (A) leave content to rot unnecessarily and (B) fail to make it of use of to other content that's not an obvious and immediate sequel to it (Pagos -> Pyros, etc.).

[Midareyukki]

Tbf, I wouldn't mind those oddball additions if we could easily see the mechanics/tech of that content seeing returns elsewhere, too, or at least hear how it'll be relevant further down the roadmap. We seem to in equal measure (A) leave content to rot unnecessarily and (B) fail to make it of use of to other content that's not an obvious and immediate sequel to it (Pagos -> Pyros, etc.).

Agreed. Quite a fair bit of oddball additions are good. But a lot of other stuff either comes incomplete or just feels disconnected. Especially the content that rots away or otherwise gets abandoned. And it's a shame because what I meant by that was how much of it was just dropped despite the sheer amount of effort.

And while it's cool to have oddball additions, sometimes they need to understand they have other priorities. And not addressing them is going to bite them later on in the future.

[george357]

brd is my trash mob killer and death from above and knock it are my attacks while main boss's get dots and aoes and special attacks if you like mch pick another job till they fix it.

[ForteNightshade]

So why am I mentioning all this? Because it feels half of your post seem to assume I'm "ignorant" of what the terms and reality of the game, or that I'm making my points based of 2nd-handed information. And my "real experience" in game say that your approach to this argument seem to fudge over a lot of detail, or try to assert a warp-ed view by inserting just a small grain of truth. Starting with the above. I have seen (and do) enough melee uptime strat that knowing they're a real thing and not simply just a label. I also think you hold too much of a prejudice against PF adaption strategy.

In the very next paragraph I specifically highlight "where uptime is a concern" to denote both scenarios. You repeatedly mention Ruby 5, and Pandemonium as a whole, for your reference point which is plagued by faux "uptime" strats that barely requirement any adjustment whatsoever—sometimes none at all. As I went on to highlight, Ruby 5 "uptime" is safer, easier and basically has the Melee move up from where they went originally. There is virtually nothing to really change hence why PF has been somewhat more accommodating. I say somewhat because you still get quite a bit of pushback.

Speaking on PF and your accusation of prejudice. If they adjusted we wouldn't have Ilya Light Rampart, JP Void 2, Down Damage Intemperance and the list goes on. Down Damage Intemperance literally saw tanks in Crystal and Primal staging a coup in their respective PFs because it was so prevalent. They forced a change by refusing to join parties and leaving groups waiting. Perhaps an even better example of PF being extremely fickle is Pantokrator in O11S. PF (especially in JP) insisted Paladin/Dark Knight invuln because the Phys Range couldn't be bothered to learn how to do it. The argument was "safety" yet it literally required walking in a small circle. Much like Intemperance, PF Phys Ranger players just didn't want to do it when a tank could AFK. It wasn't about safety but laziness.

As someone with ample PF experience spanning hundreds of clears over the last several years. My supposed "prejudice" didn't come from nowhere. Maybe you got lucky and somehow managed to find every single PF very accommodating to "uptime" but excuse me if I find that suspect.

And guess why that has become an issue this tier in particular? While range still have to pay a range tax, the hitbox size of this tier basically nullify any levelarge range have over melee. Range class has always been behind melee, that itself is not a problem. The issue this is the margin and also how consistent across the board it is this tier. This is the first time I see it happen so I will see if the situation get fixed next tier. The dev already they would, and I will defer my judgment instead of making an uninformed conclusion atm.

I don't know how much clearer I can make my argument. So I'll try bold.

It is neither an advantage nor leverage to have "free" mobility if the jobs lacking said mobility still completely dwarf your damage despite being actively hindered by the fight design itself or simply their own poor performance.

If a Dragoon can quite literally stealth their weapon and not attack for several GCDs while still outperforming a top tier, speed ranked Bard, what advantage did their mobility award them?

Now for someone who not only raided during Stormblood but did so on Bard to claim the Phys Range never outperformed the Melee is... well, it calls things into question. Bard competed directly with Dragoon and Ninja throughout most of the expansion. With good RNG via procs it could overtook both. Bard was essentially where the Melee are now in the current landscape. It was an absolute powerhouse, and the actual reason Dragoon dominated. As for why the Phys Range never supplanted Melee was because Machinist kind of sucked (what else is new). Bard was so strong back then, even fights where you could run four Melee, you didn't. Bard was simply better.

You continuously hone in out the hitbox being the issue. What of Shadowbringers then? We didn't see larger hitboxes until Eden's Promise yet the Phys Range were buffed several times and still couldn't compete against average melee players. The even larger hitboxes in Abyssos only highlighted how overstated the mobility tax has always been.

Not my experience as playing SMN. Maybe I'm not just that good as SMN, I'm only a mid 80th percentile SMN. What I can say though, out of the 3 DPS class that I play often, DRG took the cake in term of difficulty.

Which highlights a lack of experience on the respective jobs not the jobs themselves are difficult.

But before I move on I would have to ask, what statistic we're using as the base line of the argument here.

You should know by my mention of rDPS what statistics are being referenced. I'm not going to mention the site, and I especially won't link to it for what should be obvious reasons.

Nevertheless, you continue with this accusatory tone and mention being a statistician then immediately follow up your argument with an anecdote. Phys Range have a low entry and mid-range but at higher optimization level they're on par with or even more difficult than most Melee. You don't have to take my word for it, go ask Mr. Happy how annoying Bard was to play optimally in P4S. Any sort of delay on raid buffs completely screws with its very rigid rotation. Dancer all but needed a Samurai to do well. Machinist is generally on the easier side. Going back to Bard, it is among the most punished jobs in the game for misalignment and death due to its rigidity once again.

As for your Melee friend. What you're citing is individual experience not job difficulty. Case in point, while you mention Dragoon being relatively difficult for you, I walked into several 90+ (including oranges) last tier after not playing it in Savage for well over a year. It just used to be my main that I still play regularly in easier content. And my own anecdotal take is it's among the easiest jobs to play well on. Same with Ninja, another job people often point to and say is difficult.

On the flipside, I know several people who would describe playing Bard the same way you described Dragoon. Even for myself, while I wouldn't call it hard at a base level, it's far and away more difficult to play than Melee for me. This is the issue with using personal experience. It's entirely subjective. All we can point towards are the smaller nuances each job has at the high level. Even if you did want to claim Bard has "lower mastery," that difference isn't 600 rDPS.

And this is the crutch of the problem. You're lumping BRD/DNC/BLM/MCH into one single package. But for me:

I did no such thing. You made a strawman by saying without a mobility tax "are you gonna argue a BRD or DNC should do the same damage as a BLM?"

This has never been my argument at any point. I subsequently outlined without a mobility tax, jobs would obviously be balanced based entirely on their contributions to the raid. In the very paragraph you quoted I outright state Bard and Dancer would likely remain the lowest DPS by virtue of their utility but Machinist might actually get to be a relevant job. At no point did I so much as mention Black Mage, or "lump it together" with the Phys Range. Once again, you're making up an argument I'm not making.

Putting all that aside. Let's address your claims.

- Black Mage isn't losing just because of fight design. In Shadowbringers they were stronger than the Melee. The issue is due to severely nerfing Red Mage and Summoner, they needed to bring down Black Mage otherwise they'd be obsolete. Verraise and Resurrection are another problem with Caster balance. In the past, they largely ignored the latter because of Summoner's difficulty but the re-work made it extremely easy by comparison. And their decision to balance around subjectivity has caused a lot of problem.

- We do agree on that. Machinist has largely been a failure for longer than its been decent. That being said, if they do insist on keeping it a selfish DPS then the range tax becomes a much larger issue. As I outlined in my first response to this thread, Machinist is impossible to balance under the constraints of that tax. There's simply too much of a rDPS/aDPS gap when you compare each Phys Range against themselves. Buff Machinist by 200-300 and you've completely killed any reason to play Bard or Dancer. Keep giving it these small, incremental buffs and you've doomed it to being the forgotten child of yet another expansion. Now in a hypothetical scenario where there was no mobility tax, you could bring it up closer to the Melee while still accounting for some mobility: i.e., it doesn't need to be doing Samurai damage. This is the only way to make a selfish Machinist work.

- We also agree here. It isn't just a lack of support per set but the absence of any responsibility. This does go back to the Range tax though because if their mobility mattered, you can justify it. As we've established even in tiers with smaller hitboxes, they're still hopelessly outgunned by the Melee (and Casters pre-Endwalker). Yoshida has openly admitted he doesn't want to design mechanics to specifically target sub roles because "it would feel unfair". This has relegated the Phys Range to little more than a gimped damage deal who lets Melee have a few extra GCDs. Not exactly an encouraging role for a lot of people.

[Dyvid]

MCH is just a symptom of an overall glaring problem in that the battle system has been slowly rotting and now we are at a point where it is obvious. The team has been so consumed with making it more and more streamlined that they have dumbed down the entire experience. Larger hit boxes, homogenized jobs, job roles designs that are painfully obsolete. I have no doubt that the team's hearts are in the right place but from a design perspective you have to know when to stop and say this doesn't make sense.

My personal opinion is his headspace is in designing FFXVI first and foremost and FFXIV is an afterthought, or simply left to his underlings.

It does seem like the B team has been developing the game for the past expansion or two. I mean, extremely simple things like basic potency math for upgrade abilities have been overlooked (Aero 2 being higher potency than Dia)

My feelings as well. It feels like B squad is running the game while Yoshi-P is focused on trying to save a failing company and playing BLM on the weekends when he has some free time off.

[Raven2014]

My personal opinion is his headspace is in designing FFXVI first and foremost and FFXIV is an afterthought, or simply left to his underlings.

It does seem like the B team has been developing the game for the past expansion or two. I mean, extremely simple things like basic potency math for upgrade abilities have been overlooked (Aero 2 being higher potency than Dia)

My feelings as well. It feels like B squad is running the game while Yoshi-P is focused on trying to save a failing company and playing BLM on the weekends when he has some free time off.

You know it's ... kinda interesting what people want to project or/and assume depending on their perspective.

There is section of the forum that dislike/distrust Yoshi. And to them Yoshi-P had grew had become the big old elephant that has been here too long and hinder progress. So he should just hand over the reign to someone new and let the game have a breath of fresh air.

Then you have onions like the above. I guess from the people who gave him more credit and respect. And they think the problem is due to the man had abandon the game and no longer in touch with its development as he once did.


So two group of people, perceive a similar issue, but come up with 2 completely opposite hypothetical reasons for it ... Perspective is king eh?

[Rithy255]

Personally I think it's two problems, One being obviously the Damage Just being low even compared to other phys ranged, but the other being that the other phys ranged brings a bit more to the table in terms of "utility", In general heres how I'd change "phys ranged Including Machinist"

In general I feel like Phys ranged needs to be slightly behind just for "balance" purposes, but what would be nice is a small utility focus on all of Phys ranged, Dancers could give out grouped up heals, shields ect. (Like it currently does) Bards could possibly like boost healing or mitigation abilities, maybe bring a speed buff, (somehow) and machinist can bring something more defensive wise (Just off the top of my head like something like tactician having two charges and being on a lower CD or something), giving them some other focuses, In general I'd like to see something that would make the Phys ranged classes generally still DPS but with a degree of party support, this way they can be a little behind in DPS, make it up in free ranged and full uptime but also bringing extra support.

I feel Like the 1% Buff needs to stay, the issue is Phys ranged should and will always be took for the 1% buff unless it does matching damage with other DPS which makes it unfair for melees, In general I do think the caster/Phys ranged, buffs were not nearly enough to fix any of the phys ranged, they need something else but you can't just give them the same Damage as jobs that have down time.

[Dyvid]

You know it's ... kinda interesting what people want to project or/and assume depending on their perspective.

There is section of the forum that dislike/distrust Yoshi. And to them Yoshi-P had grew had become the big old elephant that has been here too long and hinder progress. So he should just hand over the reign to someone new and let the game have a breath of fresh air.

Then you have onions like the above. I guess from the people who gave him more credit and respect. And they think the problem is due to the man had abandon the game and no longer in touch with its development as he once did.


So two group of people, perceive a similar issue, but come up with 2 completely opposite hypothetical reasons for it ... Perspective is king eh?

Doesn't matter how we got here, we are here and 6.XX is a good time to step back and re-tool the Battle System and address what isn't working. Here some examples:

Every Job has an MP bar, why? Resource management hasn't been a party issue since SB. Why not display a Job's Gimmick Buildup Gauge (Shroud Gauge, Masters Gauge, Balance Gauge) so jobs that buff know when to buff rather than this fixed cycle currently in use.

Job Roles, do they need to be reexamined? What is the purpose of Physical Range DPS in 2023? They used to restore MP & TP. Now some provide raid buff but so do a lot of non PRDPS jobs. Caster used to cast high damage spells at the cost of movement, now not so much. Range Tax on encounters with arena wide hitboxes.

Job Role homogenization. The further we go the similar a lot of jobs play. ARR had unique playstyles for each job but now most tanks and most healers have the same design with minor tweaks to make them feel different. Playing BRD and playing DNC feel like two different jobs but I can setup my tank job hot bars almost exactly the same. Is this a good thing?

Job Design and Redesign. The last few jobs that got a major redesign function well enough but seem hollow and lack the sort of depth we are used to. Jobs design should have a different playstyle that differ from one another in that Role so players have a choice in something that just feel fun to play. Jobs should have a fleshed-out job mechanic that makes sense. BLM cycles between Fire and Ice. BRD rotates through song stances. MCH just throws everything out the moment it's refreshed. SMN summons a spell then spams a button or two. Again, they function okay but where is the love.

But take my critic with a few grains of salt. I barely log in anymore because frankly I just don't find it fun to play anymore.