Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[Connor]

Surely it makes more sense for them to just develop the jobs how they want and let the player(s) decide to themselves which is ‘easy’ and which is ‘hard’. It seems a bit too subjective to me to balance them around something like difficulty.

I’ve seen people say Bard is the most complex job in the game which I honestly find unfathomable, I honestly find Dancer more complex with managing Fan Dances lol. But then I’ve also been playing (complaining about) Bard since like 1.23 when it came out, so that’s probably a big factor in why I find it the easiest job in the game.

I feel like balancing jobs around arbitrary ‘difficulty’ levels just ends up with a situation where the ‘easy but weak’ jobs aren’t worth using. They should be designed around offering different gameplay experiences and letting players gravitate towards what they find easiest / most comfortable / w/e. That’s how I feel anyway. Plus there’s the RDM vs SMN thing. If Summoner is the ‘easy’ level job, why does it deal more overall damage than the ‘medium’ tier Red Mage? If Red Mage is the ‘easy’ level job, why does it have more complexity than Summoner (well, arguably lol, but then that’s kind of my point).

Basically, the categorisation they’re balancing jobs around is inherently flawed because the jobs within don’t actually adhere to the ‘sliding scale of difficulty’ they’ve tried to create. Giving jobs ‘difficulty tiers’ just gives people a reason to exclude one side or the other (i.e only wanting easy jobs for an easy time with mechanics, only wanting hard jobs for parse runs etc).

[Jirah]

I wouldn’t mind the jobs getting lobotomized over time, until they also started to lobotomize the core content.

But let’s be real, something is gotta give at some point. The button bloat, the road to 99, the jobs turning into multi colored versions of SMN, change is absolutely inevitable for the kits…but judging by the fanbase majority being completely blind to basic game design, and the devs who please them due to conveniently making it easier to develop small job. The change will be almost inadequate in the most optimistic sense

[Valence]

like DNC or RDM.

( I agree with your post )

I guess I'm gonna be pedantic while we're at it, but in my eyes the only saving grace of DNC is its priority proc system that constitutes its sole source of mechanical intricacy. Everything is extremely straightforward, even the base procs out of the burst, where one just needs to press what lights up without thinking much. Where it becomes a little bit more involved is during the burst combined with Feather charges and Devilment that will fill up your OGCD slots and need to be cautious not to overwrite (flourish + Fan Dance III), while very randomly filling the gauge and asking the player to keep an eye not to overcap esprit. Besides that burst every 2 minutes though, there is literally nothing more to do than for current SMN, with no casts to boot.

DNC actually is a good example of jobs that have lost a lot of ceiling and complexity since the last expansion and 6.0:

1) EW 6.0: No more AoE melee standing independently from their single target counterparts during bursts with flourish, which is obviously to make room for all the new GCDs to cram into the window, so it makes sense, but on the other hand it removed a lot of melee uptime shenanigans (not that it would have mattered much with those new hitboxes anyway *cough*).
2) EW 6.1: Standard Step "standardized" enough so that its potency isn't much of a huge gain compared to the standard core skills which makes drifting it or the whole rotation less of an annoyance and makes the job more fluid and flexible (and a LOT less annoying on the sks thresholds to respect, it used to be even more obnoxious than MCH).
3) EW 6.1: No more proc overwrites from flourish, which is a huge downgrade in complexity since you had to make sure before that to keep enough esprit to fill the last GCD before a flourish in the case of not having any proc to spend.

Now, I'm actually pretty happy for 2) because those long cd skills are extremely annoying and tend to work against their own rotations and sks, and not too miffed about 3) either, but when it comes to all of those, they remove a lot of ceiling from the job to a point where the only thing it has more compared to SMN is procs and charges.

Just a lot less happy with the loss of the old hybrid single target/aoe melee procs that imo were a lot more engaging than just getting a button to press (starfall) when I use devilment, which has been introduced to keep DNC comparable to BRD in terms of damage since BRD got made comparable in terms of raid damage support with Coda, but feels extremely uninvolved to me (much like Blast Arrow and all those finishers).

( yes, BRD may have been gutted as well for a lot of reasons in difficulty while a lot of its problems got fixed, but it still retains tons more of little intricacies to juggle with than DNC )

[DistantStar]

When I started back in late StB/early ShB, I loved MNK because of its multiple oGCDs, the positionals forcing you to keep on the move, and, of course, because it fights bare-handed. Other than just feeling plain fun to me (I'm a sucker for anything that has you pressing buttons often), they also contributed to its job fantasy of being a fleet-footed, fast as hell underdog. Just a constant stream of damage that, while smaller than someone with a weapon, will add up in the long run.

In EW, I love monk because it fights bare-handed. That's it.

Streamlining gameplay is fine, but streamlining it to the point of removing parts of the job's identity (or making them outright unrecognizable like DRK or SMN) is going really overboard, and imo it has the potential to bite Square in the ass in the long run. If the fans' reaction to a rework of a job they love goes from "Oh, I'll miss current *job*, but I'm excited to see what they have in store for it!" to "please please don't make me hate it" is a sign that something's off.

quoting this month old post because it is my exact experience. I don't really care about the numbers, I just want it to *feel* exciting, flavorful and fun in a way that stokes my imagination. having Riddle of Earth put at 120s instead of 30s just feels bad because I liked having a button to press that made me feel clever that I was paying attention to the boss's attack. They could still have nerfed it numerically, but now I get to push that button 1/4th as much! SE is missing the appeal of the job for me!

[dspguy]

SE should steal a page from LOTRO when it comes to job design. There was a job in LOTRO, Warden, that I'd swear is where SE got the idea for NIN mudras.

Warden had 4 abilities plus the "execute" ability. These abilities could be used in various permutations along with "execute" for AOE damage, single target damage, AOE DoT, single target DoT, self buff damage/mitigation/regen/group-regen, debuff enemy defense/attack/speed

You could use 2, 3 or 4 of these abilities to create various combinations. If I recall, you could even double up on the ability. I think the job had something like 30 or so combinations last time I played (almost a decade ago).

Of course, in the FFXIV universe, we can't have a job be able to buff/debuff/self-heal/group-heal/DPS proficiently due to the tank/heal/dps role restrictions. The LOTRO warden was mostly defined as a tank, so the "burst DPS" was a bit muted to offset how OP the job was.

I mainly bring this up because the job did not have button bloat (minimal buttons) but high job complexity.

[Mikey_R]

3) EW 6.1: No more proc overwrites from flourish, which is a huge downgrade in complexity since you had to make sure before that to keep enough esprit to fill the last GCD before a flourish in the case of not having any proc to spend.

Out of the whole post I just want to talk about this point right here. You say this change reduced complexity, I say it was a quality of life fix. I will preface this by saying I am not a dedicated Dancer by any means, however, in my experience in playing it, getting to the point where you used Flourish and still having a buff to use was problematic. You could use the buff and delay Flourish for the rest of the fight, or, overwrite the proc and this happened more in my limited usage of Dancer that it was starting to become a bit frustrating. Obviously, there might be something I am missing, but I can see why it was changed.

Which brings me to the main point I want to make. What counts as a reduction in complexity and what counts as a Quality of Life change? Going back to ShB, BLM got Despair as a single target flare option, so they needed a way for you to get back to UI smoothly, so Aspect Mastery was added. Come EW, Aspect Mastery is now gained at level 1. Now, it really isn't needed until level 50 when you get Flare as that is the first spell that drains all of your MP, but at the same time, I have been in situations where I haven't properly calculated MP and so end up with less MP than I thought and being unable to cast Blizzard 3 (at lower levels), so it helps there, but it has removed the need to worry too much about your MP. So, is this a reduction in complexity, or, a Quality of Life feature.

Maybe, Quality of life features for jobs ARE a reduction in complexity. Maybe some are and some are not. I'm sure there are plenty of examples that can be used either way, however, it (mostly) boils down to, the QoL feature changing something about the job that might have been considered a bit unintuitive or it just didn't flow right. So, in this regard, should a job receive QoL if it reduces complexity if it also means smoothing out the rough patches?

There is definitely an interesting discussion to be had there.

[Renathras]

These abilities could be used in various permutations along with "execute" for AOE damage, single target damage, AOE DoT, single target DoT, self buff damage/mitigation/regen/group-regen, debuff enemy defense/attack/speed

...

Of course, in the FFXIV universe, we can't have a job be able to buff/debuff/self-heal/group-heal/DPS proficiently due to the tank/heal/dps role restrictions. The LOTRO warden was mostly defined as a tank, so the "burst DPS" was a bit muted to offset how OP the job was.

I think this is unfortunately part of the problem. FFXIV's combat design has become EXTREMELY rigid. I'm honestly kind of surprised RDM and SMN can raise, and that they haven't shunted all party damage buffs to the Ranged and all party mitigations to either Tanks or Healers. They would probably have all Casters be able to Raise already if it wasn't at such odds with BLM's class fantasy, and they almost removed SMN's in the rework but left it in realizing the weight of legacy and meta on it existing.

In LOTRO (and other games like it), you have a lot more variance. You can have some classes that are more dedicated, and specs to swap them up. I didn't play much LOTRO, but they had one class (Captain) which can function in a Tanking, Buffing, and I believe Healing role. The Minstrel could act as a Healer of a couple types or as a Buffer or Debuffer, I think it was. Effectively, the game has 5 roles of Tank, Healer, Buffer, Debuffer, and Damage Dealer, and the DDs even are split into burst, damage over time, or sustained damage profiles - several of which didn't fit well in FFXIV's pre-2 min meta design, and none of which are allowed in it with the 2 min meta other than the burst. I think there are also some AOE specialists, which don't fit in FFXIV's combat designs which have only minimal add phases, so cleaves or multi-dotting specs wouldn't work with it.

WoW has seen a similar change over time like FFXIV, too. And most modern MMOs are built around a similar system to theirs. Exceptions are rare and generally kind of niche, but one of the draws of old school MMOs was that kind of variation. Of course, they paid for this in simplistic boss design, but that's because of the limits of AI and such at the time. But I think it is one of the downsides of not having a dedicated Support role or of being able to spec your Jobs. Granted, the flipside of THIS is that we can level all Jobs on a single character... but FFXI did that AND still had additional roles like buffer/debuffer, healers almost exclusively healing, etc.

EDIT:

...

There is definitely an interesting discussion to be had there.

Agreed.

I think it's honestly a matter of if someone likes it or not. If someone likes a thing, it's "quality of life" and a good change. If someone doesn't like a thing, it's "reduces complexity" or "dumbing down". The Living Dead change ABSOLUTELY dumbed down the ability. Before, your party had to be coordinated for its use. I remember Titania Ex having DRK's use their LD for the last three (or first three) of the lightning tether hits. It was clutch on timing, but basically they had to use it JUST before the second hit, and on WHM, I had to wait until JUST AFTER the third to use Benediction on them. This took coordination and good timing on the part of both players, and if there was no WHM, some clutch healing and CD use on the part of the AST/SCH. But it was doable. A similar situation would happen in 4 man dungeons when it was used.

...but it was also frustrating to many players, not the least, many DRKs.

So it was changed to have strong self-healing (basically Bloodwhetting's heal) for its effect. Not only did this CONSIDERABLY dumb down the use, but it also made it somewhat more viable if you had a Healer(s) down. Additionally, they made it where the unkilleable effect would persist even once you were healed for 100% of your health, something that in the past was not true as the invuln ended as soon as you got all the healing (which was why I couldn't use Benediction BEFORE the third hit above)

This VERY CLEARLY made Living Dead less complex and more "braindead".

...it has also been universally praised, not condemned.

People like to justify this as "quality of life" or "the previous version was bad/clunky", but it very clearly IS simpler now - very much so - and falls under the definition of making something less complex. It's arguably easier to use than Holmgang, because it doesn't potentially tie the effect to a target enemy (which can die, ending the effect early), and the DRK can self-heal to mitigate the effect of using it, making it almost risk-free.

So it seems that whether a thing is "braindead" or "quality of life/needed change" more depends on how people like the change than on the change itself.

[Zairava]

snip

I'd argue that Living Dead isn't the best example for this. The most complicated Living Dead has/had is/was the functionality, which at most required that you actually read the tooltip and communicated with the healer about it if they don't know how it works yet. Being the simple "heal me for up to 100% of my hp in total and I won't die"

Being that how Living Dead actually worked/works was and still is simple for both parties. For the DRK using it it was just "Hope the healer can remove my debuff", and for the healer it was just heal your heart out and hope it's enough. Which isn't necessarily complexity in my eyes, since, to me at least, that falls under party coordination.

I feel like complexity is more tied to the skill ceiling. The easiest reference for this being Summoner vs. Black Mage in this regard. I'm still going to use DRK for my end of this discussion though.

A better example of dumbing down DRK is, you guessed it, the removal of Dark Arts and general mp 'management'.

Dark Arts by name got turned into a damage neutral proc off of TBN. In execution, it's just Edge/Flood of Shadow now. So instead of you being able to empower abilities, they just made it an attack in itself. This also ties into your mp 'management', which is essentially just build up your mp and then spend in your 60s/120s burst, keeping 3k in reserves for TBN. On paper it sounds like something is there, but when the only mp spenders are edge/flood and TBN, it's incredibly shallow. I feel like mp usage should be more prominent for more active management, and I could sit here and theorycraft about DRK all day, but this isn't the thread for it.

Delirium used to be a combo ender, then a resource generator via 50 gauge, now it's just Inner Release without the crit/dh attached.

Anyways, old DA and old mp management provided a high skill ceiling, especially during Heavensward when Darkside drained MP. That is where I would label much complexity being removed from the job because you really needed a deeper understanding with it vs. Living Dead now being able to be sustained by the DRK themselves (point being, it isn't any more or less complicated than it was before, it's really just easier to survive. You could just stand there and do nothing and it's essentially the exact same it was before it got the QoL improvement). I don't really think it's debatable that LD is much better as it is now, it was long overdue.

[Renathras]

I'd argue that Living Dead isn't the best example for this.

I disagree. And rather, I'd point to what you just did here as an example of what I mean. As I said, it OBVIOUSLY made something simple that was not AS simple before. Yet here you give a perfectly logical...but entirely "dodging the issue"...explanation to try and categorize it in such a way as to NOT call it dumbing down, when that is, in fact, what it did. It wasn't (and still isn't) a "read the tooltip" ability. Most people don't understand that it only requires restoring HP equal to the DRK's total health, not restoring the DRK to full health, for example. A confusion easy to make considering several Doom effects in the game work that way (dispelled by reaching max health), so it was an easy mistake to make. Further, logic would make people think the effect wouldn't EXPIRE (the unkillable effect) just because the undeath effect was removed. Yet it was so.

There was quite a bit of nuance to using it correctly. As it turns out, party coordination is a kind of skill, thus related to skill ceiling. But more than that, knowing those effects was the difference between knowing when and how to use it correctly and not, which IS skill ceiling.

I used that example because it was a GOOD example.

I don't think complexity is tied to skill ceiling. There have been some Jobs with complex rotations that were, nevertheless, somewhat easy to actually do. Conversely, there are some Jobs that are mechanically simple, yet have a high skill ceiling. BLM is mechanically simple. If you ever sit down and look at its main use rotation in a vacuum, it's one of the easiest in the game - something BLM mains often say themselves. It also has one of the lower APMs of all Jobs in the game. Yet it's seen as having a high skill ceiling.

That is, complexity isn't even connected to skill ceiling. While in theory, logic would have one think that a more complex Job will have a higher skill ceiling, this isn't ALWAYS the case. While the two can be correlated, complexity doesn't cause high skill ceiling, nor does simplicity deny it - if it did, BLM would be an easy Job.

.

Now, we can talk about Dark Arts on the side, but again, this is proving my point:

Changes that people like (Living Dead) are justified while changes people did not like (Dark Arts) are condemned, when both are examples of dumbing down.

A second piece of this is that people tend to focus on DPS rotations AND NOTHING ELSE when talking about complex Jobs for the most part. Which is also the case here (LD vs DA). There is one particular exception to this, but only one in FFXIV I'm aware of, which is AST. AST has the easiest rotation in the entire game, and is the only Healer that has only two DPS buttons (Combust and Malific), yet is considered complex and with a high skill ceiling despite this. But for every other Job, people look at DPS rotations and kind of ignore everything else, including Tanking CDs and the like. Which is also why LD's change isn't considered dumbing down, despite being dumbed down.

...but I think the main reason is because of it being liked.

And I don't mean any of this as an insult. I just think it's a great example of how much people pick and choose what forms of "dumbing down" are and are not acceptable to them; partly by choosing to define things that they like as not dumbing down even though they very clearly are.

[fulminating]

The whole point of an invuln is that using it stops you dying. Often as not, old living dead just delayed it for 10 seconds. Is it perfect now? No. Are you noticeably less likely to die? Yes. I don’t think there’s necessarily any skill in praying for a decent pf healer or just planning cooldown usage in a static.