Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[Renathras]

I don't think the SB MCH was fluid, or even fun to play, and like the summoner today, some people used to love it, but theses people aren't a majority, and probably devs didn't like it either.
-> Having full reload to be 1-2-1 to make us able to quick reload just after to be 3-2-3 wasn't intuitive.

Agreed on MCH.

Disagree on SMN: It's the single most played Caster and probably among the most played DPS Jobs today. It's very clear that the majority like New SMN over Old SMN.

Don't mistake me on this: I'm not a fan of the "X group of people aren't a majority!" type arguments in general; they're almost always wrong. Reality is often in thirds with a third liking a thing, a third disliking it, and the remaining third in the middle either liking some parts and disliking some parts or the people that simply don't care and have no opinion either way. The last group is often the largest - a plurality - but also not a majority. It's extremely rare to have a majority of ANY people group support ANY single position that isn't something basically universal (e.g. "people shouldn't have to pay for air to breathe" is PROBABLY something the majority of the population would agree with...at least I'd like to think so... <_< )

But a secondary implicit assumption of such an argument is that if only a minority of people want a thing, it's okay to walk all over them - a position I'm 100% opposed to. It's why I support Jobs being in the game that only appeal to a minority of the players like BLM, because those are still real people and they still enjoy it, they shouldn't be abandoned or walked all over. Minority or majority, as long as their preference can exist in the game system (e.g. it'd be hard to implement a first person shooter Halo/Call of Duty/etc Job into the game and it actually work, but things that DO work within the game, like BLM or MCH, etc...), I think it has a place.

So I dislike the "aren't a majority" argument unless it's pointed out that there really aren't majorities overall in any of this and that we still should listen to the minority.

But I ESPECIALLY don't care for the argument when the statistics suggest it's wrong - SMN is the most played Caster in the game right now. And "because it's easy" can't be the argument unless we're to suppose that people LIKE easy, which means they like New SMN more than they would have liked Old SMN.

But, I'm a fan of niche and random Jobs/classes that appeal to a relative few, even if I don't like them.

Further, I'm an advocate that games should, as much as possible, have Jobs/classes that appeal to the widest amount of people. This means having some niche ones that maybe not everyone plays. And that's fine, because the people that don't like them have other options. The problem only happens when other options cease to exist.

Having simple Healers or having New SMN and New(ish) MCH aren't problems themselves. It's only a problem when they remove the alternatives. I'll never advocate for a game where every single class is made to appeal to me and people like me...but no one else. That would be a boring game with a small niche audience, and that's not really fun for anyone. It's why I advocate for what I call "The 4 Healers Model", with the idea being "We have 4 whole Healer Jobs in this game, let's have them all be distinct instead of basically having identical rotations and kits; WHM can stay as it is, SCH get its SB kit back, SGE either stay as it is or get some kind of DPS rotation and more types of Kardia to heal party members while damage dealing, and AST needs...I have no idea what, but SOMETHING, probably a total Card rework and making its GCDs actually distinct from WHM's". That wouldn't mean EVERYONE would have a Healer they like to play, but it would get us far closer than the present situation where they're all mostly the same.

Tanks also have a similar situation, it's just not QUITE as bad, so perhaps a "The 4 Tanks Model" also needs to be introduced. And same for DPSers, though there are a lot more Jobs and flavors of DPS (Melee, Ranged, Caster) there. But the basic principle is that there are different types of players (more than 4, but we have to work with what we have for starters), so as long as one Job appeals to each (and ideally one Job within each ROLE), then we have a game we can all enjoy together.

And I think that's the ideal.

GNB may not appeal to traditional Tank players, but those players have PLD (or...had...PLD, anyway... <_< ), and neither of those may appeal to players that like simple and straightforward Jobs, but those people have WAR. Everyone wins. While sometimes their aesthetic preference may not match the class they like the gameplay of best, that's going to be true no matter how a game is made, and always has been that way to a point. But at least this way, everyone has SOMEthing they can enjoy rather than large groups of people left with nothing.

But in the interim, it would be nice if the Devs stop deleting Jobs/playstyles from the game. As I've said before, it's one thing if they want to add new Jobs, or even they want to rework an existing one for its class identity (SMN) as long as they add a new Job to replicate the parts they're getting rid of (GRM). But I'm always a fan of adding to the game, rarely will I be a fan of taking away from it. Like, would the game be so much worse off if New SMN was made but Green Mage was introduced at the same time as the DoT Mage new Caster Job? I don't think so. Even with its playstyle, Old SMN ironically fit perfectly in the 2 min meta system!

You're the one using subjective terms.

No, we're both using subjective terms. That's kind of my point. The Jobs you like/dislike aren't objectively good/bad. They just appeal to different people.

DRK isn't a gun based class (MCH, GNB, and arguably SGE are), so the class fantasies are different.

1) How does hitting hard and "feeling good to use" have anything to do with feeling like a cohesive toolkit?

Because all the pieces work together and there's not a lot of clunk that causes things to trip over each other and conflict.

2) They don't actually hit that hard

Nothing that isn't Misery, Double Down, or Hyosho Ranryu actually "hit that hard" in this game. They still hit decently hard and feel good to use.

3) Drill was like disneyland to me when it has been introduced: at first the magic is nice, and after a week it's faded off. Don't get me wrong, the skill animation is neat, we get to use that alexander robot skill, but I'm talking about mechanics here, not the visuals of the skill.

Mechanically, it has a high potency and lines up frequently with Reassemble. I always thought of it more like FF6's Edgar's Drill (which was an amazingly hard hitting ability in that game, too) just adapted to an MMO where having a sprite character with a drill wiggle back and forth drilling into the enemy made far less sense than in a 2d RPG. It's probably at least partly because of Edgar that I like it, fair enough, but it's still a neat ability. There is a part of me wondering why Air Anchor and Drill are separate abilities instead of a charge system on one, but MCH has few enough abilities that it's not really an issue.

4) My thought on the matter is that they should have tied the battery gauge to Hypercharge, where dumping heat to recharge electricity actually makes a lot of sense

Honestly, I just think the Battery Gauge is a solution looking for a problem. They could just have battery automatically recharge over time or just have Queen be on a CD timer and the same end result would be achieved with slightly fewer steps.

Are you for real?

Not trying to be offensive, but...that may be the dumbest question I've ever seen asked here, not gonna lie...

What was there even to fix?? That's the whole point of proc based jobs! Do you want to fix bard and dancer, or especially RDM that stole most of the design too while you're at it?

RDM is a proc based Job. What happens if Fire/Stone doesn't proc? You just use Jolt and continue as you would had they done so. What happened if Heated Split Shot didn't proc? If Heated Slug Shot didn't? Well, back to the drawing board for you! RDM's works because the procs aren't part of a combo system. BRD's procs work because they ALSO aren't part of a combo system - BRD is an entirely priority based system and none of its abilities are actually linked together in any way other than Iron Jaws needing your two DoTs to already be on the target.

I am not speaking how MCH looks. It looks good. I'm speaking about how it feels MECHANICALLY.

So am I.

It's a tight, high octane burst Job with (probably more than) 30-40% of its total damage crammed into that burst window. Keep in mind that the modern 2 min system has something like a 40-45% increase in DPS during 2 min windows.

It got rid of the proc based system that was broken and replaced it with actual patterns and priorities to think about and optimize that don't rely on RNG feast or famine.

Wildfire used to often not work or be heavily based in ping and RNG, and now it's normalized and actually...functional.

The things got rid of weren't core to the identity of MCH, I don't think, and haven't been to any of the prior incarnations in the series. Edgar was about tools and gadgets, not heat gauge management. Though we still have that anyway, it's just less clunky.

Though I do miss buffs and the ammunition system. To this day I feel like Reassemble should be Reload.

( I have no idea how people manage to line up more than 3000 characters in those forums :c )

Edit post. I have no idea why the regular post has such a tight character limit, but the edit doesn't have one at all. You'll notice a lot of my posts have "Edit for length" at the bottom, since that's the reason I put in when I...well...edit it for length. If you want to break it up further, you can use [hb ] and [/hb ] (without the space between the b and ] ) ("hide block [text]") commands, with the / last, which can be useful if you're talking to several people and don't want a post to be SUUUUPER long in length or want it to be a bit more organized to the specific person you're addressing.

I don't care about wow. I care about FF14.

Upon this, we agree. But that wasn't my point. My point was that FF14 is an MMO, and change is part of the nature of MMOs. The trick is to have the changes be natural progressions of the thing changed, not complete upendings of it. Like in real life whenever people push for change or accuse others of fearing change; not all change is good. But some change is good, and change in a very GENERAL sense is somewhat inevitable. BLM is arguably the least changed Job over the course of the game, but even it's had gradual changes. RDM has been MOSTLY unchanged since it was added, but it's had two additional hits on the end of its burst, the burst (Holy/Flare, Scorch, Resolution) have been made AOE so they work in dungeons on trash packs, the melee combo has been altered to generate the three gems which are also generated by the enchanted AOE cone attack (this allows burst to be achieved in single target or AOE situations, as well as the use of Manafication and/or Embolden between the 3rd melee strike and 1st caster strike in case it's needed then for some reason), Acceleration has been changed into a modified Swiftcast for proc generation and movement instead of a three charge system, Enchanted Reprisal was added, even if it's often ignored and was largely rendered unnecessary by the Acceleration change, Manafication was changed to give a flat 50/50 Mana instead of 2x what you had, Engagement was added as a safer DPS loss option vs Displacement, and then in EW, the damage disparity between them was entirely removed, and the single target melee combo was additionally changed (aside from the Mana Gem mechanic above) to only cost a total of 50/50 mana, allowing up to 3 uses in succession with Manafication up.

...I don't think I missed anything. Yet, no one really is going out there saying RDM's core identity was changed, so these changes - extensive though they've been - were clearly not above the threshold of "completely different Job stripped of its identity" or the like.

Point is: Even Jobs that are MOSTLY unchanged since their release have been changed in some arguably significant ways. And RDM is probably now the oldest Job that is closest to its original incarnation.

Of the Jobs older than it (pre-Stormblood), WAR and PLD have had significant changes, the removal of stances, the removal of at least one combo (two in PLD's case), and I think each has had at least one major rework. WHM had the Lily system added, a cast time DoT removed, several oGCDs added, and even though it's MOSTLY the same on paper, it plays pretty differently due to no Cleric and due to substituting Lilies for both the missing DoT casts and for GCD heals it used in ARR like Medica and Cure 2. SCH has changed even more, having more Faerie abilities added, half its DPS kit dropped, Lustrate changed from percent based to potency based healing, and Cleric removal, of course, as well as some other things like Eye for an Eye and Virus (which now belongs, in a different form, to the Caster role)

On the DPS side of things, DRG has a greatly extended combo vs its ARR equivalent (which may not even have been 4 long...I can't remember when that change happened), and a TON of oGCDs and some party utility buffs, none of which it had then. Oh, and it only has, what, 1-2 positionals? MNK has also dropped most positionals, Greased Lightning isn't an upkeep but rather is a Trait system now, the Nadi system is entirely new, it's gone through several versions of "Fist of Element", and I think it's had either 2 or 3 major reworks, depending on who's counting. NIN was late to the game, but has had a number of changes as well. The basic core of how it works is still kinda the same, but Mudras have changed, all the oGCDs added, the Ninki gauge abilities added, a few new Ninjutsus including the single hardest hitting ability in the game, and most recently, the Trick Attack/Mug change. BRD was changed to a Bow Mage and back again, and then had its DoTs and Songs tinkered with...several times. I think it's had low key as many reworks as just about anything else. SMN had something new tacked on with each expansion until it hit critical mass and had minor reworks of sorts in SB and ShB, and now we have its major rework in EW. BLM is really the only one at all the same, but its rotation is rather different than it was and it has a lot of side abilities like Xenoglossy, the Enochian system (I don't think that existed in ARR), Ley Lines (HW addition), and now Paradox.

And obviously, the HW trio of DRK, AST, and MCH have each had at least one major and several minor reworks a piece, and AST is slated for another major rework in 7.0.

SAM I don't know as well, but given the brew-ha-ha over Kaiten, I suppose it's had a major rework and no longer plays at all like it did before? This makes RDM the "last man standing" in the sense of actually sticking with its original identity and not having any major changes, alterations, or additions to it that really alter its core gimmick or how it functions (Acceleration doesn't really change how it plays, just how it opens, though the Manafication and reduced melee combo costs come the closest to this in the sense that they can significantly alter its burst phase...)

GNB and DNC have had some changes, though GNB is still pretty true to its ShB core and plays similarly (Double Down is just an additional button you put in the burst window, Bloodfest's timer has been changed to align with buffs but it's otherwise used in basically the same way as it was used in ShB every 3rd minute, and Burst Strike and Heart of Stone are just...better, but still has mostly the same use-case and isn't exactly a part of the "rotation" proper. Even RPR and SGE have already had some changes, like SGE's Holos getting a barrer effect added and Eukrasia Prognosis on them breaking now also generating a Toxicon charge, and it's only been out a year and some change.

It's not a "What WoW does/did" argument. It's a "What MMOs do" argument, and FFXIV is an MMO. As I said in the very sentence before the one you quoted and tried to make into a strawman of WoW:

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.

Note the actual argument. The latter was evidence for the argument, not the argument itself. Point me to one still running MMO that has had at least one major expansion and that has not had class changes during its run. I don't think any actually exist.

Now, that's different than having MAJOR REWORKS, mind you, but as I point out above with RDM and BLM, and even GNB and SGE, even those things that are MOSTLY unchanged have still been changed.

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Now, you DO hit on some valid points - for example, the stacks - where the Dev team isn't as sharp as they should be on listening to players. But that doesn't support your overall argument. Most of the Jobs changed (not ALL of them, but MOST of them) were due to players requesting/demanding changes in various ways over time. They just didn't always get the changes they WANTED out of the deal.

Red Mage core spells follow the exact same pattern and yet it's a popular job.

Also I never liked that "democratic" argument of authority where the majority always decides, and the (supposed) minorities be damned. Fact of the matter actually, HW MCH was played quite a bit even though it was even more of a difficult mess to make sense of than SB MCH (which was more finicky, but way, way easier rotationally).

No, they don't. As I discussed above, RDM's shortcast-longcast system doesn't break down if you miss a proc. If you don't get a Fire/Stone proc, you don't have to cast Jolt over and over fishing for one. That WAS the way MCH's 1-2-3 proc system worked. If you don't get a Fire/Stone proc on RDM, you simply cast Jolt then Thunder/Aero. Your rotation doesn't short-circuit, stutter, or skip like a damaged record; instead it proceeds smoothly into the next shortcast-longcast just using Jolt instead. And the worst part is, it wasn't even that bad - it was TWICE as bad as that. It was compounded. Imagine if you didn't get Verholy/flare with 50/50 Mana and a melee combo. INSTEAD, Flare/Holy have a 20% chance of procing off of a Thunder/Aero cast, and those have a 10% chance of procinng off Fire/Stone, and THOSE have a chance of procing off of Jolt. So if you cast Jolt and don't get Fire/Stone, you had to keep casting Jolt until you did. And if you DID get a Fire/Stone proc and cast it...and didn't get a Thunder/Aero proc? Well, back to Jolt fishing for Fire/Stone procs. And if you DID get the Thunder/Aero proc and cast it but didn't get the Flare/Holy proc? ALLLL the way back to Jolt for you!

Terrible, TERRIBLE system. There was something like Acceleration (Reload/Quick Reload) to help with this, but they had CDs so couldn't be used 100% of the time, leaving you at the mercy of several layers of RNG.

I get why some people would like that, but it was not a great system, and RDM's current system has removed all but one layer of that RNG, and the one layer it has doesn't disrupt your rotation when it doesn't proc. And I could be wrong, but I think Fire/Stone have a higher chance (50%) of procing than Old MCH's abilities did (I think they were around 20%?)

And keep in mind that the more tightly tuned a game is, the less allowance it has for things like variance or proc based Jobs/classes. WoW is WAY less tightly tuned than FFXIV is, and thus can have sustain classes, burst classes, proc classes, rng classes, cleave classes, and so on, because the system doesn't demand the tightest tuning and unlike FFXIV, the WoW community (ironic because it used to be more than FFXIV's...) hasn't taken the "damage >>> all" mentality to the extreme, so they will still take classes that are somewhat less optimal in some cases.

This is why PLD was changed, too, since it's hard to balance a sustain class in a game that focuses so heavily on burst.

...yet another example of the 2 min burst meta being a total disaster that needs to be revoked come 7.0.

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Further, though: RDM is also popular because it's EASY. In ShB, it was arguably the easiest DPS Job in the game. In SB when it was introduced, it likely was as well. It is simple to grasp and FAIRLY easy to optimize, even if it's a little undertuned right now, and is also very good in casual charlie-foxtrot situations (like 24 mans) or in high end content prog due to mass Verraising.

Conversely, Old MCH was clunky, constantly stutter/skipped, had a strong RNG basis in its performance, and did not have anywhere near the easy of play, ease of understanding, nor chaos/prog party potential. You point out RDM is a popular Job, but Old MCH was one of the LEAST popular Jobs in the game.

I could be wrong, but HW/SB MCH was one of the least played Jobs in the game. HW MCH might have been more played than HW BRD, but that's because "Bow Mage" was one of, if not the, worst implementations of BRD in all of FFXIV's history.

Though I will reiterate that I DO agree with the point that "majority always decides" is wrong. It's fine if a majority of Jobs are for a majority of the people, but having some niche Jobs on the side for people that want something different is both good and healthy for the game.

HW MCH was peak job design imo. Wasn't perfect but came pretty close to it. Sure it had cast times, but the job was purpose built around them and turning your Gauss Barrel on and off. Varied skill types, many different burst phases (If you remember Mild Fires and your Wild Fires where everything lines up)

Biggest problem with it was it was not beginner friendly, and VERY complicated and nuanced but if you stuck with it, it was endlessly satisfying and rewarding. That feeling is what I miss from the oversimplification that's been happening over the last three years as nothing really feels unique anymore. Things don't interact with each other like they used to and you can only push the instant reward button so many times before it gets really boring and dull.

Now am I saying we should go back to HW job design? No. That's a bit too far on the opposite side of the spectrum but a good balance needs to be struck somewhere and this aint it.

I tend to think SB was a good happy medium. Though I'd say "SB+", since SB was hardly perfect. WHM absolutely sucked in SB, for instance, and EW 6.1+ WHM is arguably the best the Job has been since ARR in terms of popularity and working well with encounter design and its own mechanics; possibly the best WHM has ever been in all of FFXIV history. So taking SB as a base and adding things to it that are sensible (all four of the Jobs added since, things like the WHM changes, etc) wouldn't be a bad place to end up.