Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[ForsakenRoe]

How does that track? These have been 2 of the easiest tiers since deltascape lol. Maybe p8s edges out Kefka, it's been a while. What is there in p8s that's remotely challenging? Subjective, sure, but they are definitely not leveraging this "extra complexity space" you claim exists.

Consider, how many times were there a fight in Delta/Sigma/Alphascape, where the strat was named 'braindead strat'? I don't remember a single one. Now contrast to now, we have Braindead Purgation, Braindead Death's Harvest (though it also gets called JP static positions too), Braindead positions for HC2 final mix (no, not like kingdom hearts), Braindead Intemp (which everyone later hated because it killed people's parses), and last expansion E7S was the pinnacle of 'a potentially interesting fight, made completely trash boring by the discovery of a 'braindead strat''. Closest to 'braindead strat' I remember from the SB days was stuff like Unreal (regular, not uptime) HW, Spyro strat for O10S with that accursed Bulwark that refused to pass properly, and arguments about whether it's better to 'die on 1st vs die on 3rd' in Grand Cross Omega. But nothing was referred to as the name, 'braindead strat'

We don't even have to think about hitting the boss during High Concept. We didn't during Grand Cross either, sure, but we did during Forsaken and Hello World. As for:

I don't know man....I keep thinking of P8S Phase1 and Phase 2....

Picture the Heavensward rotation and job design during that fight....and all I can think of is that fight would be just a boring Savage. The complexity of the fight would need to be dumbed down just so average players could even finish it. If you had an overly complex rotation and niche style gameplay it would seriously hamper the impeccable design of P8S...

I just don't know...that fight is ALMOST (not quite) touching Ultimate level mechanics. I would hate to see the fight become just less intense due to job design holding it back...it's incredibly tightly tuned....almost zero room for error...

Part 1: There is a world of difference between week 1 of that fight and week 'anything past 3', when the hotfix launched.

Part 2: That sounds pretty good, since it'd also mean that other content would have that potential for interesting gameplay from the classes, just without any of the expectations by the game that you'd use it. Like in SB, you could do an EX roulette by just spamming Malefic as AST, and not using any cards at all. But you COULD use cards, if you wanted to. If you're in P8S, you have the skill to adapt to a more intricate job design and rotation. You have to, if you're going to actually learn and solve the mechanics.

Part 3: lmao. Also, it is no longer 'incredibly tightly tuned, no room for error'. It WAS, in week 1. Now? Not so much, thanks to the hotfix, and gear. But even in week 3 it was easier by such a margin you could feel it. Also, is this fight not 'incredibly tightly tuned'? Or how about this one? Seems to me that they managed to deal with their 'more intense job design' and clear despite this supposed handicap. In fact, going back to HW's Creator tier, where the job design was (in some people's opinion) even more 'complex', the world first vid has them kill the boss before it even gets to START it's enrage cast, so even more leeway.

People can adapt, surprisingly enough, to a more complex rotation. Like, I'd personally argue that SAM got 'more complexity' going from SB to SHB, due to having to actually line things up cos of Tsubame's addition. Before that, it was 'spend sen on Hagakure, use kenki on Shinten, remember to save some for Kaiten, Midare if you got all 3 sen and Hagakure was still not ready'. Some people might find lining stuff up to make the 60s loop easy. I don't because I haven't practiced it. But if I WERE to practice it, for example, because it was my main and it just got updated with this new gameplay style, it'd eventually settle into the brain and things would be fine again. If anyone says 'people wouldn't be able to handle it because X Y Z reasons' I think it says a lot more about the person trying to make the argument, than the playerbase they're supposedly speaking for.

[CelestiCer]

English not being my main language feels like it limits what I can express and share in words. " Connor " put it way better then I could. " Hollowing ".

I think ‘simplification’ isn’t inherently a bad thing. Rather, it’s the ‘hollowing things out for the sake for simplification’ that’s the issue.

A brief discussion with " Stella_Khutga‎ ", who made the Mudra fix thread - where I asked the correlation between homogenization of Jobs? resulting in better/unique/complex/harder mechs and fight designs. Sadly? I require a history lesson since I started in ShB E9S Echo. Got told that " O3S - Halicarnassus ", is regarded as one of the best Savage encounters ever. Curious, I sought out for replay videos. And I saw...

• Smaller Hitboxes
• Lots Forced Downtime
• Shorter rotation loop
• Ranged tax making sense

Seemed like the Fight-Designers? didn't tried to appease the audience with 99% uptime, it looked like we had to fight for it.

VS EW's Pandæmonium Fights? Ginormous hitboxes. Never sensed the excitement of fighting for uptime with exceptions of P5S's knockback and P4S Act2/Act3/Act4. Not demanding fights to be harder... but more rewarding to do. I started comparing EW to ShB where I started. I find a mechanically easier fight like E11S more engaging and exciting then P8S simply because of the Job design difference.

Heck the thought of using my ShB rotation, and Kaiten Tenka-Goken a pack of mobs with Conal AoE is more exciting then anything PvE with my EW rotation. <- Had to reread this five times over and it sounds so dumb... yet this is how much I miss and value good rotation and job design. It makes telling me to find harder fights? or to " Go play Ultimate " with a soulless Job completely meaningless to me.

That's my horrible take... simpler fights with a more engaging job kit? was more fun to me. And I cannot find any evidence that the " hollowfication " of our Jobs? was indeed a necessity to create unique, better, harder engagements that players so desperately crave for. mhm

[Valence]

I don't think the fight design has especially become worse mechanically. We also had braindead strats in previous expansions, they were just not named as such, and I refuse to fall into the rose tinted glass syndrome that comes with that territory.

Some things are interesting or sometimes more fleshed out than the older fights, but on the other hand, they've been moving away from fight hurdles that make certain classes have to work harder to keep their rotation up:

- big hitboxes making melees sweat a lot less about it (even though they still lorded over rphys before as well in terms of damage alone, because they already had close to full uptime)
- weeding out of a lot of positionals on certain melee jobs (mainly monk)
- shorter cast times for healers, allowing for more weaving and mobility
- slower paced rotation loops
- removal of enmity
- removal of non lethal party resources management
- simplification of burst synergy

Which tends to make every fight extremely focused on damage more than ever because there isn't much more remaining to take care of, with the exception of cast times for casters, that are still here, but not as equally for most. For other jobs, it's full uptime (again, not that it was that much different for melees before, fights were literally designed already to favor full melee uptime, but melee disconnections were there).

If anything though, i'm starting to suspect they've been giving us harsher DPS checks recently (DSR, abyssos, TOP) just because of it.

[Naomishtola]

I feel like job simplification (and the 2 minute meta) have become a growing concern among experienced veterans, hardcore raiders and casuals to some extend. The same issue plagued WoW in previous expansions (namely Legion) and I would hate to see FFXIV go down that path further than it already has. Making jobs more complex again would mean that some of us wouldn't fall asleep during expert roulette and may actually enjoy the gameplay outside of whatever savage/ultimate is relevant.

[CelestiCer]

Have had a question for a while... " Can you execute older Rotations to the current EW content? ". Say max-level/peak ARR/HW/SH/SHB rotations of your favorite Job(s) in current EW Savage, DSR, TOP and Extremes? Without it coming at the cost of EW's fight designs, engagements, mechanics becoming less hard/unique?

I'd like to assume the answer to be " Theoretically? No ", as long DPS numbers are done correctly. Which would showcase... that any simplifications/hollowing/negative changes any Job received? isn't good grounds to use as an argument point for " It was required for better Fight Designs ".

And to be clear... I am not arguing which Rotation of what Job in which expansion patch was the most fun or the best. It's about rather any Job losing any complexity or depth was necessary for better unique fight designs to be created, plus if the difficulty difference of said rotations would matter to justify all the homogenizations every Job has gotten.

I haven't played enough to know every Rotation of every Job, nor all previous fights. I wouldn't know. But if all of it wasn't necessary for fight designs? and it comes at the cost of player enjoyment or engaging Job gameplay? then... why homogenize every job?... for easier Balance?

[Whalaqee]

Just give me back my note procs from dot ticks on Bard. It was a reward for actually keeping your dots active and why you had iron jaws as it basically was 1 click instead of 2 for reapplying your dots. Now stormbite and caustic bite and iron jaws just exist for the sake of only damage and not something that flows back into the rest of the job.

Black Mage is technically worse in this regard, as while it hasn't lost anything, it hasn't gained anything either. Thundercloud and Thunder 2 by themselves are not bad, they are actually good damage, but there is nothing about the rest of the job where Thunder flows back into the rest of the job. Its basically tripled down on the fire/ice motif while giving thunder nothing new since its ARR days.

Sage having the novel concept of putting a dot on a target with eukrasian dosis and having the dot act as a hot for whoever has kardion is great. It does something simple yet new as its serving two purposes. Oh and whats this, soteria, it grants 4 stacks and increases the heal potency by 70% to for kardion effects. Which while not going to be fully utilized by it as you have dosis and other spells that also damage and heal the kardion patient, but it does mean eukrasian dosis hot procs basically heal for an extra 70% for the next 1 to 4 ticks. Which as a healer means it flows back into keeping someone like the main tank or even yourself alive.

And thats not touching on old summoner and how it got so much right about what being a dot-mage meant. I'm not sad of what summoner has turned into, I am sad we didn't get a new job to scratch that itch for a job focused on dots.

[Vinal211]

And thats not touching on old summoner and how it got so much right about what being a dot-mage meant. I'm not sad of what summoner has turned into, I am sad we didn't get a new job to scratch that itch for a job focused on dots.

i feel like this is the best argument about the changes to summoner, in that it's not BAD, per say. braindead? yes. can it be changed around, expanded upon and given more complexity to it while keeping it in line with the changes made it? hopefully, though i don't think any of us are holding our breath with the dev team. but either way, it removed old SMN in the process, and with it a complex but rewarding experience, which could still readily fit on another class, yet players who want to play old SMN's playstyle don't have anything to work with.

[Whalaqee]

i feel like this is the best argument about the changes to summoner, in that it's not BAD, per say. braindead? yes. can it be changed around, expanded upon and given more complexity to it while keeping it in line with the changes made it? hopefully, though i don't think any of us are holding our breath with the dev team. but either way, it removed old SMN in the process, and with it a complex but rewarding experience, which could still readily fit on another class, yet players who want to play old SMN's playstyle don't have anything to work with.

Exactly. Much like how Eureka, or Housing, or Island Sanctuary or even the Gold Saucer for a few examples is not everyones cup of tea, the same should apply to jobs. Some people prefer different flavors of content that they just generally resonate with more. One person may find the job of Samurai boring, another may find it to be their favorite job. Having different jobs that are actually different from each other in more than just their aesthetics is what allows more of the community to enjoy the game, not less. I like jobs with dots as that aspect of micromangement alongside rotation is what resonates with me. If someone likes the current summoner and wants to see more of the class fantasy fulfilled with 7.0, more power to them, its just not for me.

[Raikai]

Enjoying Complexity shouldn't be limited to Ultimate. That's like saying " your job only becomes fun in Ultimate "

That is the worst rhetoric of them all because the content being complex still won't make a simple job suddenly become more complex lol.

Honestly, to me, the only thing that was a good riddance is positionals having a huge impact with a job's performance. Not because of the idea of positionals itself, but because I just don't think that it's a good mechanic with the responsiveness of the game's netcode.

[Mikey_R]

Sage having the novel concept of putting a dot on a target with eukrasian dosis and having the dot act as a hot for whoever has kardion is great.

I might not be understanding quite what you are implying here, however, the DoT ticks from Eukraisian Dosis do not trigger the effects of Kardia, only the initial hit does.