Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[Kansene]

Neither complexity nor simplification are inhetently good or bad imo, it depends what they do with it.

I strongly dislike the notion of having 10 buttons that serve the function of "deal x amount of damage instantly" for instance, with the only difference being various cooldowns or them being procs or oGCDs.
Sure, it's complicated to juggle 40 buttons that all do similar things, but is it any fun at all?

Conversely, if you dumb it down too much, you end up with abysmal snorefests like the current healer "rotation".
That being said, I'm actually enjoying SCH the most atm. I can make some decisions with it that yield really satisfying results.
A nicely timed spreadlo combined with sacred soil and seraph feels really good to pull off when the massive, apocalyptic raid wide deals 0 damage!
It feels good to activate Expedient during mechanics that require lots of speedy movement! I chose to do that, and I'm helping!
Likewise, it's fun to help fellow tanks or even struggling non-tanks as a GNB, tossing them a HoT or using Heart of Corundum on them and watching their health spike up. Wohoo! I did that, and I'm a tank! How out of the box! More please!

Currently my favorite job ideas are stuffed into the RDM job, but I still have issues with it. They have an interesting idea going on with the mana building, and I enjoy dual casting. A simple proc that provides options. Do I cast a white or black spell? Or maybe vercure or verraise?
Where I think it falls apart is the part where you're still essentially just waiting for the same 2min window as everyone else every single fight, where you then dump everything. Dump 2x melee combo. Dump your charge-oGCDs. Your gap closers have potency so you dump those in there too.
It's like they have an idea for a really versatile job that can duck and weave in and out of melee, build up different kinds of resources for different purposes, and use their toolkit in creative and clever ways, then halfway in they decided "nah, let's make them a job whose job it is to hit like a wet noodle, build up gauge, then every 2 min they deal lots of damage, that sure sounds exciting"

How cool wouldn't it be if White/Black mana had different properties? What if you could build 100/0 mana, and you'd get 3 different melee phases based on whether you have 100/0, 0/100, or 50/50?
50/50 could be the bog standard melee combo.
100 black mana would give you a melee combo that chains black spells and puts a huge thunder DoT on the target at the end.
100 white mana would give you a combo that chains white spells, then I dunno, something crazy! Maybe you'd trigger a huge raid-wide heal or something.

Or maybe the melee combos would give you a resource at the end, which you could save, then use the resource when you need it:
50/50: Big AoE damage
Black: Big AoE DoT
White: Big AoE heal or shield

Decision making! Options! Woo!

[Kansene]

(cont.)
My idea of a good gameplay loop is: simple toolkit with lots of depth. What if you only had 12 abilities, but they could be combined in various ways to change how you play?
And what if bosses did more off the wall stuff?

Imagine if there was a boss who every so often took flight and started circling the arena, spawning adds that melee have to deal with while ranged take down the boss.
Ranged would save their burst for the air phase, and melee would build gauge/save burst on adds, then burst the boss on the land phase. What if as certain melee you could choose a big hit or a really long DoT that dealt more overall damage, and put the DoT on the boss before flight? Then use the big hit during burst?
That feels more fun and dynamic than "you have to time burst to 2 min windows the entire fight or you're bad"

Heck, a fight from 2007 in another mmo feels more fun to make decisions in than most FFXIV fights I've seen:

Phase 1: weak melee attacks, occasional mechanics. You're getting used to the fight, chill times.

Phase 2: starts dual wielding. Huge damage. Use your burst and defensives to keep alive and shorten the phase time!

Phase 3: hits with fists and floating weapons. Less intense tank damage but oh no, AoE has slowly filled the arena since the start! The tank must move the boss somewhere safe, and the raid must adapt!

Currently, both rotations and fight mechanics feel like memory games rather than decision making, and that's a bigger concern to me than 'complexity' tbh.
But that's ultimately a preference thing, many people love the rigidity.

I started going on about encounter design here because I believe job design and encounter design are intrinsically linked. When boss fights' whole deal boils down to "move correctly" and "make the DPS check or hard enrage", jobs have to be designed around those two concepts. And the way they are designed around them is honestly 99% the latter part. Deal consistent, high damage through the 2min burst window, that's the only thing jobs are required to do. Even tanks and healers' worth seems to be heavily based on damage output.

The fight example above shows a case where there's a "soft enrage" where burst is necessary. What if some boss fights had these soft enrages instead of a DPS check hard enrage? Where it's more important to use burst at specific points rather than just be consistent with the 2min timings? There actually is one example I can think of that kinda does this in a HW Alliance raid, it's been done!

Of all things, a certain fight all the way back in ARR comes to mind. You LB the hecking shard! That's fun! That's different! More of that please! Maybe if encounter designs get more creative with different ways to do fights, job design can start varying more, and some can be simple, some can be complex, and OH MY GOODNESS, MAYBE SOME OF THEM CAN BURST AT DIFFERENT TIMES???++

Disclaimer: I know "phase skipping" etc have been strategies in the past, like a certain HW meme, but this doesn't seem like the norm, or even a semi-common thing.

[Renathras]

Neither complexity nor simplification are inhetently good or bad imo, it depends what they do with it.

This.

And honestly, I think it's best for a game to offer both. That way, you get maximum appeal. It's fine to have a Job that is relatively unwanted and has only 2% of players playing it; it makes 1 in 50 people happy, and that's still a lot. They should have a few complex Jobs for the people that like that and simple Jobs for the majority (I think the majority DOES want simple; the forums are a pretty small subset of the playerbase and even r/ffxivdiscussion, when analyzing the Lucky Bancho numbers, decided they were the minority wanting more complex Jobs), with some flavors of middle for people that want something in-between.

There's no reason not to have that, considering each role in the game has at least 3 Jobs in it, and most have 4 or more.

Well, no reason other than the 2 min meta, but I think just about everyone hates that. Maybe the Devs will abandon it come 7.0, but who knows.