Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[Renathras]

the job and the fight are separate entities with separate difficulties, why you choose to conflate them is beyond me. sure they interact when combined, but a fight isn't itself harder because another harder job exists.

I think the point he's making is valid - "difficulty" is based on a combination of Job and Encounter. It's why normally in MMO's harder classes do more damage, because for the average player in a given encounter, they're not going to be doing the 100% optimal output, so that 100% has to be higher than easier classes so that doing "less than 100%" is still functional/viable, even if it may be a bit lower (for the average player) than doing an easier class, where the average player could pull more performance. E.g. RDM vs BLM or SMN in ShB where RDM had a lower damage cap, but also a lower skill floor so the average player would do more damage on RDM than on BLM or SMN. This can't be too great, though, or everyone gets forced into the harder class unless it's just impossible to play.

If the overall class difficulty across the board increases, the encounters would need to be made easier since the Developer assumption would HAVE to be that most players would be underperforming either mechanics or output (or both). It's one of the reasons that encounters and Job kits have changed over the years. BLM's turret playstyle worked with simple boss fights without requiring a lot of movement, but as the movement got heavier, the average BLM couldn't keep up, so they had to be given tools to compensate, like Triplecast. You can argue proper use of Triplecast is a skill, but the point is, they only had to add it BECAUSE encounters didn't allow as much static casting. You also see this with Healer kits where they've gotten a lot more instants - even WHM's Afflatus abilities which are Spells (GCDs) not Abilities (oGCDs) were made instant cast so they could throw them while on the move.

Fights are considered harder or easier - and balanced as such - based on the Dev perception of the average difficulty of Jobs, as is Job balance, ultimately. I'm not sure if RDM or SMN do higher theoretical DPS, but SMN sure has a higher average performance. Same with WAR vs Old PLD (or, really, any of the tanks - WAR's spread between lowest quartile and highest is narrower than the other Tanks)

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I get you're saying they don't HAVE to be, but in practice, they are in a somewhat complex dance.

EDIT:

I appreciate the suggestion and it's probably a good one (more so in an expansion without 99% melee uptime built into the fights perhaps), but my ping is too high to doubleweave on MNK gcd timers, which is a problem for another thread.

I do feel ya on this one. I just like lower APM Jobs since I've never liked twitch gameplay, and certainly don't like it any more now that I'm not 13 anymore. XD

But I think the point is a valid one that there ARE a few other BLM-like Jobs in the game. MNK and NIN are both at that level, arguably AST as well between its burst and its main healing kit working best when executed preemptively. There used to be one for each role (other than Ranged) between Old PLD(/arguably DRK at one point), AST(/arguably SCH), MNK/NIN, and BLM (/SMN before EW)

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Yes, it's literally the same issue and I already talked about it earlier. I wouldn't like enjoying a simple job as a casual and suddenly see SE make it literally unplayable for me because too complicated, but I can only imagine because I'm on the other end of the spectrum (they made the job I like absolutely braindead). But you're right, there is no difference between those two cases and I do feel they're wrong and they should never happen. This is why people talk a lot about skill floors and ceilings.

Yeah, but that's generally people who like complex Jobs wanting every Job to have complexity and trying to sell the idea as "well, you can do decently enough playing it simple", which isn't the same thing.

Honestly, many Jobs already WERE simple, so keeping them such would largely solve the issue. For example, even in HW or SB, the "height of Healer complexity", WHM was really no more complex than it is today. It had a second DoT with annoying timers. Aero 1 upgraded to Aero 2 outright with 18 sec duration, and Aero 3 was an AOE DoT (and single target gain). It lost one AOE DoT and got Misery, which actually has some optimization on its own, so that was more a side-grade. Aero 1/2 went from 18 to 30 sec duration, but that was a bit more streamlining clunk than an increase in complexity (like Dia today, it was a fire-and-forget DoT which had no interaction with the rest of the kit in any way). Going from HW to SB, it saw the cast-time Aero 2 (it only had Aero 1 and Aero 2) side-grade into a cast time AOE Aero 3. So in that sense, it was also a side grade. The legendary Cleric Stance was converted from a toggle into a CD, but as I've said before, Cleric Stance is the most rose tinted goggle ability in all of MMO history, as it kind of sucked for WHM anyway.

So in strict terms, WHM has always been more or less as simple as it is today, with the only significant difference being in the past you might have hit Aero a few more times per minute, on the order of approximately 1.8 times more, which isn't exactly a step up in complexity. Not to mention that you now press 3 Afflatus abilities + Misery in a 1 minute timeframe, essentially making up for most of the extra button presses of the era. That is ~2 (slight less than 2) less Aero 2 casts and ~3 (slightly less than 3) Aero 3 casts are replaced with ~4 total Afflatus casts. The key difference being you had to GCD heal quite a bit more back then since there were less oGCDs. But in simple terms, WHM had a similar skill floor and ceiling then and now. You can argue Solace and Rapture aren't DPS abilities, but they are used as such in modern high end content. If anything, this actually makes WHM slightly less intuitive (and thus slightly more complex) in EW than in SB.

We can go back and look at more Jobs, but honestly, MOST Jobs in the game were simpler in ARR, HW, and in SOME cases SB than they are today. Others were more complex. EW SMN is approximately as complex as ARR SMN, they just focused on different things (ARR DoTs vs EW direct damage spells), it's just SMN got more complex each Expansion after ARR up through ShB then had a "record skip" back to simple. RDM was simpler in SB and arguably ShB than in EW. On the other hand, AST, MCH, and DRK were more complex and have been made simpler over time vs their original incarnations.

So one solution would be to simply KEEP the simple Jobs simple and KEEP the complex Jobs complex. No skill floor/ceiling changes needed. I suppose they could lower the skill floor on some of the super hard Jobs to make them vaguely more approachable, but I'm not sure it's really necessary. Provided there's at least one Job from each role that is simple and one from each role that is complex, with the rest falling somewhere in between, that's honestly probably the best solution. Keeping simple Jobs simple and complex Jobs complex also prevents the problem of people having a Job yanked out from under them like ShB to EW SMN had happen to it.

And part of THAT can be done by getting rid of this cursed 2 min meta - PLD wouldn't have needed to be changed if the 2 min meta didn't exist, for example. (You can argue it didn't NEED to be with it, but without it, it would have been far easier to keep old PLD and make it work than in our world of the 2 min met and it being incompatible with it.)

You really don't need to read the balance in this game to play a job decently,

Where did I say "to play a job decently"?

I don't believe that's what I asked...

You can ask other people to offer advice into how to play a job better without having to read all the mega advanced guides on the balance.

Who get that information...from.........

Or are you trying to say that everything should be easy to figure out immediately in solo for anybody without guides? That sounds extremely dull and limited in scope... And where do you put the bar?

Okay, several questions:

I didn't say EASY, but it should be doable without needing any out of game resources. Many single player RPGs actually have some pretty crazy stuff that you can do, yet people can figure it out based on in-game resources as they don't have things like parsers or theorycrafting scenes or whatnot. I would say SOME should be easy, but some should not. In FFTactices, for example, you can make a lot of powerful Job builds pretty easily, but you can also go ham into some pretty insane things if you really want to push it.

No, it doesn't "sound dull and limited". That's your projection based on incomplete information and an assumption that simple is automatically dull and limited and complex automatically interesting and expansive, neither of which are true.

As for where to put the bar - that's the reason for having different Jobs simply have different skill ceilings, with some being very low and some very high.

And no, it's not "lower the skill ceiling so hard that it's frightening". As I pointed out, WHM's skill ceiling was remarkably similar to today in SB and even in HW with old Cleric Stance. There's no "so hard" to merely keeping it the same and keeping some Jobs low while others are higher. Diversity is a good thing, sometimes, ya know?

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Cleared TEA on RDM without consulting the Balance for how to play my job, didn't parse before you ask, and am happier for it. Also it was really easy.

And yet, you couldn't answer any of those questions, and you dodged the question entirely. Good job.

Did I do the perfectly optimal rotation? No,

I rest my case...

And, as I noted before:

And keep in mind...RDM is one of the least complex and most simplistic Jobs in the game

Don't project at me ty

Look up the definition of projection.

Then look up the definition of Freudian Slip.

I already have for BLU before

Good for you?

I didn't ask about BLU, though...

Basically, you avoided answering the questions - which points out what I was trying to point out; that Jobs are already too complex for the average player (or even above average ones) to figure out directly on their own - and you dodged them because that's...well, that's the case. And I think everyone knows it. Jobs are complex enough that optimal performance requires a lot of add-on tools and normal players to consult theorycrafters who have done the hard work for them. At that point, all you're doing as a player is working on muscle memory and a simple to understand, cultivated priority system presented to you by people who did the hard work.

I'm kind of tired of people claiming that Jobs are "easy" who aren't really doing most of the work to establish them.

Maybe you're one RARE exception to that rule (I doubt it, based on you being unwilling or unable to answer the questions), but for the average player, and even the average person calling Jobs braindead and easy, they likely are not.

The only real exceptions to that are probably SMN and Healers. MAYBE WAR.

Which is fine. If they maintain one Job per role being simple, one per role being complex, and the rest being somewhere in between, that would probably be best for the game.

[Lyth]

Movement is tied to not dying. Square cannot or will not increase the skill-floor before Extreme and players don't want that content to be more difficult.

This is incorrect.

Positioning and movement are related to uptime. Plenty of fights at all difficulty levels offer you choices between playing safely and moving off the boss or playing more aggressively to maintain uptime. The main differentiator between players often isn't that you forgot what button comes after Hakaze, but that you lost a GCD or two by playing a bit safer than you actually needed to. Having more interesting movement tools available to the player also means that you have greater room to challenge players with this. That and designing less fights with arena-wide hitboxes and wall bosses.

I personally don't care much about movement. I care more about positioning

These two are functionally the same thing. It's about your spatial position on the map. Otherwise we'd be playing a text-based game with combo buttons.

[Payadopa]

I wouldn't be surprise that 8.0 they just give everyone the PvP skillset while patting themselves on the back.

That would actually be amazing. Imagine having more interesting abilities and not just "press this when it's out of CD".

[Arohk]

yes please , reduce the button bloat. I don' need 7 buttons to do AOE damage in a dungeon, 3-4 is enough.

[tearagion]

I think the point he's making is valid

Yes, I understand the point he's trying to make, I just think it's reductive.

If the overall class difficulty across the board increases, the encounters would need to be made easier since the Developer assumption would HAVE to be that most players would be underperforming either mechanics or output (or both).

Which is why I told him I just want a greater variety of complexity. Preferably introduced with new jobs, and without unrecognizably altering old jobs.

But I think the point is a valid one that there ARE a few other BLM-like Jobs in the game.

I can't speak to MNK because I haven't played it much due to ping, but I've played every other job a lot and they really don't even come close to your range of options on BLM when approaching a fight, nor do they demand nearly as much of your positioning if at all.

And yet, you couldn't answer any of those questions, and you dodged the question entirely. Good job.
...I rest my case...
...Look up the definition of projection.
...Good for you? I didn't ask about BLU, though...

I didn't realize you wanted me to jump through your RDM optimization hoops after your paragraph of "The answers, btw, are:" my bad? I usually read a whole post before responding, didn't realize this was a strange thing to do.

Not doing the optimal rotation for a given job in the third (debatably) hardest encounter the first time through =/= inability to optimize or understand a system. Sometimes I played around my party, sometimes I just made a mistake. Either way not sure how that goes against my claim that I did the fight without the Balance to guide me.

I'm aware of the definition of projection, which is why I insinuated it when you went on and on assuming that I wholly rely on other people to solve the game for me.

You didn't ask about any particular job, so I figured the job with more complexity breadth than any other by virtue of its spellbook system, and that fills three roles, would be a sufficient example.

[Valence]

Yeah, but that's generally people who like complex Jobs wanting every Job to have complexity and trying to sell the idea as "well, you can do decently enough playing it simple", which isn't the same thing.

If you mean that it feels extremely annoying not being able to master a job because the ceiling is too high, I can relate. This is one of the things that keep me away from current MNK and BLM, which I do believe have an almost infinite skill ceiling (esp BLM). I just don't like it, and maybe that's an ego thing. I also feel these designs weren't actually tailored to works with those ceilings because they definitely feel unintended (at least for BLM transpose lines, or like the old MNK double TK rotations back in SB that were only discovered by western players that looked at weird JP parses mid expansion). But anyway, I don't like not mastering a job, and that's what keeps me away from those very few I can't, but it doesn't mean I should suddenly wage a partisan war to remove or lower the ceiling for those who enjoy it. It's just wrong morally. And here I'm not talking about jobs I don't click with, I'm talking about absurd skill ceilings.

It's a me problem, not a job flavor problem.

[Valence]

WhM comparisons

I am not trying to advance an agenda with rose tinted glasses like a lot of people enjoy doing, and do not especially think that jobs are especially easier or harder than before, because that's in actuality not a black and white answer. Some are, some aren't, but overall most are more accessible today, which may explain the usual bias on top of rose tinted glassed veterans having naturally grown better at the game as well (this is an actual thing that should never be underestimated). However, one objective truth that has been extremely simplified is the general battle system in general, and this was mostly started in ShB: everything that's not damage focused (enmity control, party resources control, MP and TP management individually and collectively, boss positioning, more thoughtful burst synergies and raid plans, etc) has been cut out of the game either in shb or in ew. This on its own removes a decent chunk on the teamplay and cognitive load required to clear content.

Now then, you're conveniently forgetting a lot of things that made WhM for example, more complex back in the days, even without talking about actual MP management and economy. Aero 1 was still used for mobility when it wasn't possible to cast stone. The job was also a lot less mobile and weave friendly (even in shb) due to the mass amount of full GCD casts, like for most healers. In short it required a LOT more thought to play skillfully just because of that fact alone. Cleric Stance was also a huge skill hurdle especially for casual players (and I'm not saying I liked it, I actually disliked it, it was annoying and clunky). You can't just say that the difficulty of applying damage on healers has remained the same, because it hasn't. And i'm not even speaking about SCH and miasma 2 optimization back then.

[Valence]

I didn't say EASY, but it should be doable without needing any out of game resources. Many single player RPGs actually have some pretty crazy stuff that you can do, yet people can figure it out based on in-game resources as they don't have things like parsers or theorycrafting scenes or whatnot. I would say SOME should be easy, but some should not. In FFTactices, for example, you can make a lot of powerful Job builds pretty easily, but you can also go ham into some pretty insane things if you really want to push it.

That comparison is completely disingenuous and not even true an inch. I don't know what single player games you play, but a lot of them, and the old FFs actually, have so many hidden optimization or even ways to break the game that it's unreal, and if you're telling me you figured all of them on your own I don't believe you.

Diversity is a good thing, sometimes, ya know?

Okay, let's drop the nebulous, passive aggressive, clichés. If you truly believe that what make jobs diverse is their skill ceilings, floors, or whatever, then it's indeed frightening and dull.

[Vinal211]

You can't just say that the difficulty of applying damage on healers has remained the same, because it hasn't. And i'm not even speaking about SCH and miasma 2 optimization back then.

i am both interested and slightly concerned at what this means. it sounds like it was a lot of hoops to go through to keep good uptime on that alongside your other skills.

[Rithy255]

Jobs should have more variety in simple vs complicated, It's fine to have Jobs that are easier to play it's fine to have Jobs that are harder to play, I think the issue is that being "busy" doesn't mean difficulty when a lot Jobs designs are needlessly busy in the 120 minute windows, but outside of that they're just pressing a 1, 2, 3 filler.

I even think variety extends beyond rotations, I don't think Jobs should just only serve a purpose of being there to bring a slightly different rotation and cosmetic look, at least I would enjoy something that brings new options or something else.. But It feels like even expecting a Job with at least a nice rotation feels like I'm expecting too much. Raid buffs aren't even interesting you just click this 120 buff and yay. I don't think the current raid buff system works in favour of making jobs stand out unless they're Bard, Dragoon, dancer or Astro.

With Tanks & Healers, They should all stand out with utility kits especially, It's sort of there? (like some small differences?) but I feel like 7.0 will likely make things even closer then they are.. Paladin/Dark knight will likely be more inline with the other tanks in kit (Which some aspects of their kits such as Cover on PLD I don't mind changing), While something like Astro I', genuinely worried if it will be reworked into something that's easier I love Astro it's the only healer I like to play in casual content. Because it stands out, it feel active.

What I want is More interactive gameplay, Paladin for example should have more ways to interact with it's gauge, I hope healers like white mage have I don't know more damage buttons or something? Melee DPS should get a semi "support", Raid buffs should be more Unique to jobs instead of this boring ability you press every 2 minutes... Jobs in general should have some skill to learn while being welcoming to new players, I don't want to be afraid of balance changes or some forms of making a job more balanced, but balancing to ruin the purpose of a job and just making it like every other makes the job feel pointless to me.