Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[dspguy]

SE should steal a page from LOTRO when it comes to job design. There was a job in LOTRO, Warden, that I'd swear is where SE got the idea for NIN mudras.

Warden had 4 abilities plus the "execute" ability. These abilities could be used in various permutations along with "execute" for AOE damage, single target damage, AOE DoT, single target DoT, self buff damage/mitigation/regen/group-regen, debuff enemy defense/attack/speed

You could use 2, 3 or 4 of these abilities to create various combinations. If I recall, you could even double up on the ability. I think the job had something like 30 or so combinations last time I played (almost a decade ago).

Of course, in the FFXIV universe, we can't have a job be able to buff/debuff/self-heal/group-heal/DPS proficiently due to the tank/heal/dps role restrictions. The LOTRO warden was mostly defined as a tank, so the "burst DPS" was a bit muted to offset how OP the job was.

I mainly bring this up because the job did not have button bloat (minimal buttons) but high job complexity.

[Renathras]

These abilities could be used in various permutations along with "execute" for AOE damage, single target damage, AOE DoT, single target DoT, self buff damage/mitigation/regen/group-regen, debuff enemy defense/attack/speed

...

Of course, in the FFXIV universe, we can't have a job be able to buff/debuff/self-heal/group-heal/DPS proficiently due to the tank/heal/dps role restrictions. The LOTRO warden was mostly defined as a tank, so the "burst DPS" was a bit muted to offset how OP the job was.

I think this is unfortunately part of the problem. FFXIV's combat design has become EXTREMELY rigid. I'm honestly kind of surprised RDM and SMN can raise, and that they haven't shunted all party damage buffs to the Ranged and all party mitigations to either Tanks or Healers. They would probably have all Casters be able to Raise already if it wasn't at such odds with BLM's class fantasy, and they almost removed SMN's in the rework but left it in realizing the weight of legacy and meta on it existing.

In LOTRO (and other games like it), you have a lot more variance. You can have some classes that are more dedicated, and specs to swap them up. I didn't play much LOTRO, but they had one class (Captain) which can function in a Tanking, Buffing, and I believe Healing role. The Minstrel could act as a Healer of a couple types or as a Buffer or Debuffer, I think it was. Effectively, the game has 5 roles of Tank, Healer, Buffer, Debuffer, and Damage Dealer, and the DDs even are split into burst, damage over time, or sustained damage profiles - several of which didn't fit well in FFXIV's pre-2 min meta design, and none of which are allowed in it with the 2 min meta other than the burst. I think there are also some AOE specialists, which don't fit in FFXIV's combat designs which have only minimal add phases, so cleaves or multi-dotting specs wouldn't work with it.

WoW has seen a similar change over time like FFXIV, too. And most modern MMOs are built around a similar system to theirs. Exceptions are rare and generally kind of niche, but one of the draws of old school MMOs was that kind of variation. Of course, they paid for this in simplistic boss design, but that's because of the limits of AI and such at the time. But I think it is one of the downsides of not having a dedicated Support role or of being able to spec your Jobs. Granted, the flipside of THIS is that we can level all Jobs on a single character... but FFXI did that AND still had additional roles like buffer/debuffer, healers almost exclusively healing, etc.

EDIT:

...

There is definitely an interesting discussion to be had there.

Agreed.

I think it's honestly a matter of if someone likes it or not. If someone likes a thing, it's "quality of life" and a good change. If someone doesn't like a thing, it's "reduces complexity" or "dumbing down". The Living Dead change ABSOLUTELY dumbed down the ability. Before, your party had to be coordinated for its use. I remember Titania Ex having DRK's use their LD for the last three (or first three) of the lightning tether hits. It was clutch on timing, but basically they had to use it JUST before the second hit, and on WHM, I had to wait until JUST AFTER the third to use Benediction on them. This took coordination and good timing on the part of both players, and if there was no WHM, some clutch healing and CD use on the part of the AST/SCH. But it was doable. A similar situation would happen in 4 man dungeons when it was used.

...but it was also frustrating to many players, not the least, many DRKs.

So it was changed to have strong self-healing (basically Bloodwhetting's heal) for its effect. Not only did this CONSIDERABLY dumb down the use, but it also made it somewhat more viable if you had a Healer(s) down. Additionally, they made it where the unkilleable effect would persist even once you were healed for 100% of your health, something that in the past was not true as the invuln ended as soon as you got all the healing (which was why I couldn't use Benediction BEFORE the third hit above)

This VERY CLEARLY made Living Dead less complex and more "braindead".

...it has also been universally praised, not condemned.

People like to justify this as "quality of life" or "the previous version was bad/clunky", but it very clearly IS simpler now - very much so - and falls under the definition of making something less complex. It's arguably easier to use than Holmgang, because it doesn't potentially tie the effect to a target enemy (which can die, ending the effect early), and the DRK can self-heal to mitigate the effect of using it, making it almost risk-free.

So it seems that whether a thing is "braindead" or "quality of life/needed change" more depends on how people like the change than on the change itself.

[Zairava]

snip

I'd argue that Living Dead isn't the best example for this. The most complicated Living Dead has/had is/was the functionality, which at most required that you actually read the tooltip and communicated with the healer about it if they don't know how it works yet. Being the simple "heal me for up to 100% of my hp in total and I won't die"

Being that how Living Dead actually worked/works was and still is simple for both parties. For the DRK using it it was just "Hope the healer can remove my debuff", and for the healer it was just heal your heart out and hope it's enough. Which isn't necessarily complexity in my eyes, since, to me at least, that falls under party coordination.

I feel like complexity is more tied to the skill ceiling. The easiest reference for this being Summoner vs. Black Mage in this regard. I'm still going to use DRK for my end of this discussion though.

A better example of dumbing down DRK is, you guessed it, the removal of Dark Arts and general mp 'management'.

Dark Arts by name got turned into a damage neutral proc off of TBN. In execution, it's just Edge/Flood of Shadow now. So instead of you being able to empower abilities, they just made it an attack in itself. This also ties into your mp 'management', which is essentially just build up your mp and then spend in your 60s/120s burst, keeping 3k in reserves for TBN. On paper it sounds like something is there, but when the only mp spenders are edge/flood and TBN, it's incredibly shallow. I feel like mp usage should be more prominent for more active management, and I could sit here and theorycraft about DRK all day, but this isn't the thread for it.

Delirium used to be a combo ender, then a resource generator via 50 gauge, now it's just Inner Release without the crit/dh attached.

Anyways, old DA and old mp management provided a high skill ceiling, especially during Heavensward when Darkside drained MP. That is where I would label much complexity being removed from the job because you really needed a deeper understanding with it vs. Living Dead now being able to be sustained by the DRK themselves (point being, it isn't any more or less complicated than it was before, it's really just easier to survive. You could just stand there and do nothing and it's essentially the exact same it was before it got the QoL improvement). I don't really think it's debatable that LD is much better as it is now, it was long overdue.

[Renathras]

I'd argue that Living Dead isn't the best example for this.

I disagree. And rather, I'd point to what you just did here as an example of what I mean. As I said, it OBVIOUSLY made something simple that was not AS simple before. Yet here you give a perfectly logical...but entirely "dodging the issue"...explanation to try and categorize it in such a way as to NOT call it dumbing down, when that is, in fact, what it did. It wasn't (and still isn't) a "read the tooltip" ability. Most people don't understand that it only requires restoring HP equal to the DRK's total health, not restoring the DRK to full health, for example. A confusion easy to make considering several Doom effects in the game work that way (dispelled by reaching max health), so it was an easy mistake to make. Further, logic would make people think the effect wouldn't EXPIRE (the unkillable effect) just because the undeath effect was removed. Yet it was so.

There was quite a bit of nuance to using it correctly. As it turns out, party coordination is a kind of skill, thus related to skill ceiling. But more than that, knowing those effects was the difference between knowing when and how to use it correctly and not, which IS skill ceiling.

I used that example because it was a GOOD example.

I don't think complexity is tied to skill ceiling. There have been some Jobs with complex rotations that were, nevertheless, somewhat easy to actually do. Conversely, there are some Jobs that are mechanically simple, yet have a high skill ceiling. BLM is mechanically simple. If you ever sit down and look at its main use rotation in a vacuum, it's one of the easiest in the game - something BLM mains often say themselves. It also has one of the lower APMs of all Jobs in the game. Yet it's seen as having a high skill ceiling.

That is, complexity isn't even connected to skill ceiling. While in theory, logic would have one think that a more complex Job will have a higher skill ceiling, this isn't ALWAYS the case. While the two can be correlated, complexity doesn't cause high skill ceiling, nor does simplicity deny it - if it did, BLM would be an easy Job.

.

Now, we can talk about Dark Arts on the side, but again, this is proving my point:

Changes that people like (Living Dead) are justified while changes people did not like (Dark Arts) are condemned, when both are examples of dumbing down.

A second piece of this is that people tend to focus on DPS rotations AND NOTHING ELSE when talking about complex Jobs for the most part. Which is also the case here (LD vs DA). There is one particular exception to this, but only one in FFXIV I'm aware of, which is AST. AST has the easiest rotation in the entire game, and is the only Healer that has only two DPS buttons (Combust and Malific), yet is considered complex and with a high skill ceiling despite this. But for every other Job, people look at DPS rotations and kind of ignore everything else, including Tanking CDs and the like. Which is also why LD's change isn't considered dumbing down, despite being dumbed down.

...but I think the main reason is because of it being liked.

And I don't mean any of this as an insult. I just think it's a great example of how much people pick and choose what forms of "dumbing down" are and are not acceptable to them; partly by choosing to define things that they like as not dumbing down even though they very clearly are.

[Zairava]

snippy

In theory, how it works now would be less simple because it has another layer to it now. Which...doesn't really amount to much, but it's there.

What I'm trying to get at here an ability being easier to use doesn't always equate to dumbing it down. Living Dead is an example of making something more effective while keeping true to how it worked before.

Living Dead still works the exact same except the DRK can just do it themselves. You're still timing it the same way (that, being using it before you would die). You're also still dying without outside support if you aren't able to get the GCD's needed. If you don't get that healing totaling 100% of your maximum HP, you are going to die, that hasn't changed.

In fact, the main difference between then and now is on the healers rather than the DRK themselves. Groups would need to plan around it if they didn't have a White Mage to no diff it. They no longer have to time the expiration of the debuff as close to the end of the timer as possible, either, thanks to Undead Rebirth. In this sense, it's dumbed down for everyone except the Dark Knight using it, since the DRK in question would already being using their GCD's upon using Living Dead anyway.

The discussion for why the removal of Dark Arts is met with such negativity is because it was a part of the job at its core. It was a tremendous part of the identity that got rinsed and 'replaced' with something that feels half-baked.

Tanking CD's aren't really met with it mostly because it may be seen as a non-issue outside of the rare occurrence it actually is an issue. Take Paladin's recent rework for example. If I remember right, blocking doesn't work on bleeds, and that's why Holy Sheltron got changed and Bulwark came back. There's the base mitigations that every tank has (the role actions, Shadow Wall/Sentinel, etc), then the rest are more towards the tanks themselves (WAR's self sustain, DRK being more on the defensive side, etc).

We could just not be seeing eye-to-eye here, though.

[dspguy]

I think this is unfortunately part of the problem. FFXIV's combat design has become EXTREMELY rigid. I'm honestly kind of surprised RDM and SMN can raise, and that they haven't shunted all party damage buffs to the Ranged and all party mitigations to either Tanks or Healers. They would probably have all Casters be able to Raise already if it wasn't at such odds with BLM's class fantasy, and they almost removed SMN's in the rework but left it in realizing the weight of legacy and meta on it existing.

In LOTRO (and other games like it), you have a lot more variance. You can have some classes that are more dedicated, and specs to swap them up.

Good points. Simply put, we are pigeon-holed into 3 roles and SE has backed themselves into a corner. This is why we wind up seeing limited jobs like BLU. That's how they can allow these jobs to exist, but not allowing them to do any current content.

Warden was an example of what LOTRO would consider a fairly complicated job. I'd love to see something similar in FFXIV, but it would have to set into one of the three roles and would probably lose all its flavor.