Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[Renathras]

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You're using subjective terms. How does it "feel pathetic"? It feels fast paced and really good to me. 1-2-1-3-1-2-1-3 with all those weaves in it feels great, like you're firing a machine gun or something, which is also how GNB feels with Continuation. Generally speaking, I don't like high APM Jobs, but I like MCH and GNB when they do it. Not only does it feed into the Job fantasy, it feels really smooth and fast pace.

I'm not sure what DOESN'T feel cohesive about it. You have several gadgets that have to recharge after use, and all of them hit hard and feel good to use. Drill has felt fantastic to hit since it was introduced. Honestly, the only thing that feels kind of stupid is the Battery Gauge since it doesn't really make a lot of sense that you generate "battery" by shooting things. They should just make Rook/Queen charge at a set rate, either CD based or a 1% per sec or something and let you decide when to use it, but either way. But that's honestly my only complaint about it. Queen hits hard and is always cool to get on the field. Though Queen (and DRK's Frey) are the only two that make me freak out on a Healer in fights when I see that "one person" still standing in the dangerous spot the boss is telegraphing before I realize it's not an actual party member, lol

They decided to strip down the job of all of its identity and what made it tick and defined it before, gave some of those good parts to other jobs (namely RDM, DNC), and kept all the awful crap that people were telling them to get rid of (the latency issues, the 1.5s GCDs, etc). It used to be the biggest burst job in the game, known for having to play piano and cram everything into it to get a VERY satisfying result, tempo-ed by downtime in between. It was a rigid clockwork job sure, and it definitely had clunk and problems, sure. But what doesn't sit well with me at all is that they decided to alienate a whole bunch of players by completely drastically changing the job identity and feel. If they wanted fixed combos and inner release spamm, they could have used it for a new rphys job instead as far as I'm concerned.

Honestly, this is the one part I can somewhat agree with. They fixed the 1-2-3 not always triggering (which was kinda dumb), but not the Hypercharge or Wildfire (the latter of which they STILL haven't fixed), but I disagree they stripped its identity. Though I still miss the Reload and Quick Reload animations (I feel those are what they should use for stuff like Rassemble and love how they always made me think of Outlaw Star and Jean Starwind's Caster gun), the rest of the kit is still there. The 1-2-3 combo, the oGCD attacks, Wildfire, sprayandpray machine gun cone AOE (now with added Shotgun awesomeness at high levels - the single most fun ability in the game to me to press aside from possibly Double Down; pity it isn't used in single target fights...), and an automaton you can call for additional help (I just wish they were still more persistent, but I get the Devs are just moving away from persistent pets in general...and am honestly surprised SCH Faeries still exist given how hard the Devs have been moving that direction...)

So I DON'T agree they stripped MCH of what it was to be a MCH.

The part I agree with is that I don't think they should change Jobs out from under people, since no matter the Job, there are some people that enjoy them. They've done this with PLD (most recently), SMN, MCH, MNK, and with AST several times; to a lesser extent, they've done this with BRD (twice), NIN, SCH, DRK, and WAR...and probably others that I didn't realize, though other cases may be a bit more debatable.

To a point, classes change over time, and that's the nature of an ever-changing game, which most MMOs are. Compare basically any WoW class today to its Vanilla WoW version, and very few are even...recognizable. I'm honestly not sure ANY are. And in FFXIV, the only Jobs that haven't had significant changes are the ones released in 4.0 or later. And even then, they've had CHANGES, just RDM, GNB, DNC, RPR, and SGE haven't had gameplay changing ones yet (SAM is debatable owing to Kaiten; RDM still plays MOSTLY the same it did in SB and ShB, just with a somewhat faster rate of resource generation, DNC and GNB still play the same, and obviously RPR and SGE's only changes have been tuning, not gameplay)

...but when it's a huge change all at once - like Green Caller...er, I mean, "Summoner" - then it's more stark and more alienating, and why those should be new Jobs added OR, if it's a change to an old Job, a new Job should be added for that. For example, changing SMN to New SMN isn't terrible, the problem is, they just threw all the Green Mage components into the trash instead of introducing a GRM Job.

Modern MCH is fine, the problem is that old MCH was removed and replaced with it, instead of them adding Corsair or Musketeer or something for one and new MCH being the other.

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I guess what I most contest is when people insist that new versions are garbage when they aren't. Read any thread on SMN and you'll see people calling it garbage and even unfixable (which, itself, assumes it needs fixing in the first place). Instead of just saying that they don't like it and that they think they'd prefer something else. The latter I will never fault someone for, because different people like different things, and I think it is good for everyone to always keep that in mind. The new versions of PLD, SMN, and MCH are all fine. But it's fair to complain that their previous versions were removed rather than new ones introduced or the old ones re-introduced as new Jobs if the old Job HAD to be changed for its class fantasy/identity or something (old SMN wasn't really a "Summoner" by most fantasy definitions, much less most FF games)

I do agree in many of these cases that it's odd they didn't just add new Jobs. Like they could have taken Old SMN, removed the Egis and Demis, and the remnant of what was left in the old rotation could basically BE Green Mage, just give it some big CD for where the old Demis were and replace Egi-Assaults with something thematically appropriate and you basically have a new Caster Job with almost no Dev resources expended (not to mention it already fit in the 2 min burst window meta)

I don't think it's an insult or "spits in the face" of people. I think it's the Devs genuinely trying to make things work better. But I do think something is lost when it's done, at least the major changes. But almost all Jobs over the age of "since SB" have had this happen.