Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[Valence]

It's fine if a game has several easy classes, several moderate classes, and several hard classes.

I won't develop more on my thought pattern since CelestiCer already pretty much nailed it above for me. But this point in particular, I hate it. Like, I really hate it. It's already kind of what we get and it's literally what has RUINED rphys for the past two expansions.

I'm sure you'll find some players at the raiding end of the spectrum that never cared about job flair and aesthetics at all, and I know some of them, but that's not the case of most people: there is classes that I'm sure you love for their flair and feel more than others, and being shoved a braindead model down your throat on a job you love is one of the worst feeling I've had the displeasure to experience, and I've been wandering around looking for other jobs that 110% click with me since then with no real success. I'm pretty sure the opposite would also be true, where you're a player that struggles more with difficult rotations, and get shoved a complex model down their throat with little accessibility... Fortunately that latter case is less and less possible because accessibility of most jobs has been really eased over years (which is a good thing).

This alone is why not even entertaining the notion of skill floors and ceilings is a path to nonsense. I'm not saying that they should be a cardinal virtue in every design ever, but they're literally what makes your casual and hardcore players tick.

But until the community decides to change its collective mind on the damage >>>> all thing, DAMAGE cannot be the thing hugely tied to skill ceilings, because it will NEVER be optional under that paradigm.

See, the community really has a problem with the damage and performance mindset (fortunately nowhere yet near to WoW, but it's following the trend), especially in casual content where it's always about "carrying bad players" and "bad players wasting muh time", you'd literally be preaching to the choir here. But not tying your job performance and results to damage, especially at least on DPS jobs, is absolutely unrealistic and wishful. That's literally THE satisfaction you can take out of playing them well.

Well, at least that's the satisfaction I take out of them. Executing interesting and complex enough mechanics and witness the results.

If you were saying that healers should take satisfaction in a well planned or executed healing, or clutch saves, or whatever makes them tick, then I'd be inclined to agree. I don't play healers for their DPS rotations (especially in their current state lol). I know a lot of healers that enjoy healing, and when they meet some savage content, they're left flabbergasted by the lack of healing skill expression, where their kits are literally 90% about healing tools.

But that's not DPS jobs.