Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[ty_taurus]

And that's fine...until you get to asking the question "What is clunk?".

There is no "right answer" in game design for how much is too much or too little for the player. But one way to look at things is to compare game design to your nails. Nail length is comparable to overall complexity in this example. The more complex a job is, the longer that nail is. How long or short anyone wants their nails is subjective, but there's also undeniably a state in which your nails can be too long or too short. In other words, there's a goldilocks zone that each job needs to hit in order to feel appropriate.

It's important to take care of your nails. Trim them before they get too long, remove hangnails, etc. This is comparable to pruning outdated or clunky mechanics from each job, but the problem that ShB and EW have is it feels like, for many jobs, the designers are aggressively filing away at the nail down to the flesh. They aren't just pruning clunk, they're eroding the healthy parts of the nail as well.

We are below the goldilocks zone in many ways, which is why there's so much unrest, and I don't even mean these forums. Everywhere you look, there's tension about SMN, about MNK, about the healers, about Kaiten... When you file the nail down past the skin, in hurts. There are too many people who feel an ache and soreness from the aggressive simplification many of the jobs are experiencing. It's like an unhealthy condition of OGCD, where someone is so aggressively cleaning the counter that they're causing damage to the wood, filing their nail down to the skin, washing their hair so excessively that they're drying the scalp. That is what EW feels like. There's not a right answer for where that line is. It's something you have to get a feel for, and that line may be in different spots for different people, but it's clear that we are below the goldilocks zone and have been for the last several years now.

[Renathras]

Ignoring realitty.

I get you don't like New SMN, but don't lie about it. Just because you don't like something doesn't make it EVERYTHING wrong in the world. Guess what? It's possible for it to be dumbed down, bad, and even a terrible idea while still being less disjointed than Old SMN. And what "by definition" are you referring to, EXACTLY?

You ignored my "colossal post" because it stated clearly WHY and HOW Old SMN was more disjointed than New SMN. New SMN has many things you can complain about with it, but being disjointed isn't one of them.

...

I think it ultimately depends on the player.

Which is kind of my point.

The terms are useless because they have no defined meaning and are just boogieman terms hurled at anything one doesn't like.

The problem with "get a feel for" is that different people "feel" different places. For example, I "feel" SMN is in a very good place right now, and is one of the only DPS Jobs that I don't "feel" has something obnoxious that makes it a chore to play rather than enjoyable to play. The only other one that comes close to me is RDM except for the proc system making it obnoxious. (Not the proc system itself, but how the procs aren't well displayed to the player). It's subjective to the point the term is useless as long as it doesn't catch those feelings like mine along with those like yours. I think we'd agree a Job that pressed one and only one button the entire time would be too much pruning, but the line above that of "cutting into the quick" vs "so long they're snapping off" we likely won't agree on unless there are some kind of objective measures we can employ.

I don't think there's tension "everywhere you look". It's just prominent people talking about it, while the rest of the playerbase remains blissfully unaware. It's kind of like politics. The extreme left and right are the loudest voices and get all the screen time, they're talked about in the news all the time, their politicians are the most outspoken and introduce the most dangerous bills...but then you have the normies which make up the vast majority of both the politicians and the public, EASILY outnumber the extremists on both sides added together, yet since you never hear from them, you'd think they were the minority instead. Listening to Fox or MSNBC and CNN, you'd think the world is about to end and the nation on the brink of one doom or civil war or another. But then you talk to normal people or listen to the middle of the road politicians and wonder where the hell the crazies are getting this from. I feel like FFXIV Job design is probably in a similar boat right now.

If anything, I think RDM is in more trouble than SMN is, for example.

EDIT: To clarify on that...

RDM mostly feels good to play and has its longstanding easy to understand conceptually and pick up, has nuance if one wishes to truly master it going for it. The problem is it is SEVERELY undertuned to the point of not QUITE unviable but not FAR from it for many comps.

It's kind of telling when, with ALL the utility RDM can bring (the Raise aside, it has an extra party mit and a party damage buff) that it is less played in TOP than BLM, the most difficult Caster that has the least utility and the most clunky mechanics. Though it IS possible this is just an artifact of Ultimate design (P8S-2 sees RDM in a far healthier spot, for example), there definitely seems to be a gap in overall damage that shouldn't be there.

When RDM is behind DNC and BRD...there's an issue.

Instead of trying to fix a problem that isn't in SMN, focus should be on fixing the problem that is with RDM. And the fact remains that SMN seems to be widely enjoyed by the playerbase as a whole, so it really ISN'T the problem.

Though as I've long been, I do think the next DPS Job added should be a DoT Caster like Green Mage or something with Old SMN's rotation. I doubt the Devs will do it, but the irony is...Old SMN was straight up 2 min meta, so it would be entirely compatible with the new paradigm...

[tearagion]

I get you don't like New SMN, but don't lie about it. Just because you don't like something doesn't make it EVERYTHING wrong in the world. Guess what? It's possible for it to be dumbed down, bad, and even a terrible idea while still being less disjointed than Old SMN. And what "by definition" are you referring to, EXACTLY?

You ignored my "colossal post" because it stated clearly WHY and HOW Old SMN was more disjointed than New SMN. New SMN has many things you can complain about with it, but being disjointed isn't one of them.

"(figuratively) Not connected, coherent, or continuous." Nothing in newSMN is "connected", it's an incoherent ("united as or forming a whole.") design as every individual design element exists separated mechanically from the others. The closest you get it that Demi summons give you gems, wow truly fantastic.

You should honestly be glad I ignored your post because it's not very good. For example:

You directly describe how HW SMN systems feed into each other synergistically. Aetherflow gives you Aethertrail, Aethertrail gives you Dreadwyrm Trance, Contagion still existed to link your Egi with your DoTs and your Trance. Was it somewhat devoid of classic ff SMN-theme/feel? Sure, but it was objectively a more nuanced and interconnected design.

You don't say anything in the SB paragraph, you just describe how Demi-Bahamut worked. This iteration of Demi-Bahamut could at least be considered "obtuse" which could be strung tangentially to a semi-out-of-context definition of disjointed. Current Demi-Bahamut just sits there and shoots after you press a button. This is disconnected from the rest of the kit compared to SB and ShB Demis.

Non-directional descriptions again. 2 minute meta is only a problem because EVERY job adheres to it, which is what makes it a meta at all, also Devotion was on a 3min CD anyway. Trance CD was 55s. Adding Dreadwyrm Trance's duration gave you lots of flexibility outside of that 2min cycle. You even admit in this paragraph you don't know where Further Ruin came from before lol (15%proc on Egi attacks). Calling newRuin 4 an element of cohesive design because you use it for movement while saying Egis don't do anything is mint.

And then you have 3 paragraphs of "newSMN is totally not disjointed, look at how well the kit slides over a smooth brain". Aetherflow doesn't even have DoTs to interact with, Bahamut and Phoenix don't give a fuck about you anymore and may as well just be the same summon (people would probably like it more if they were, as they would either get more consistent utility or another Deathflare to press), the Gems don't give a fuck about each other, Carbuncle is lobotomized, Your filler is all vanilla GCDs that only involve flat potency, oGCDs are also purely flavourless potency other than Energy Drain which gives you...well you know. How is this in any universe a more interconnected kit. It's a failure unless their only metric for success for the rework was accessibility, and maybe popularity, but we don't have the SE official #s for that and never will.

[Valence]

"(figuratively) Not connected, coherent, or continuous." Nothing in newSMN is "connected", it's an incoherent ("united as or forming a whole.") design as every individual design element exists separated mechanically from the others. The closest you get it that Demi summons give you gems, wow truly fantastic.

I'm happy some people see this as well since it's literally what jumped right at my face as soon as I saw new MCH in ShB media tour. Nothing is connected in the kit besides some arbitrary gauge generation from the basic filler. Everything is just a bunch of actions that all do a certain potency and have a certain cooldown. It's really, really not mechanically engaging, it's literally bottom floor of intricacy. Yet the job proved popular because the new visual identity had some flair and cool looking things added for the expansion, much like people lost their s*** when they saw the job trailers for SB SMN and bahamut was there, and same for ShB with phoenix, although now it seems to have really dialed down in popularity (the less people like it the happier i'll be, heh, i'm spiteful like that).

The only thing I like about new SMN is the possibility to swap the colored legos around. Too bad there is very little significance around that too (especially when BRD would love to be able to do this with songs, where it's a lot more meaningful).

I'm legit starting to wonder if the crux of the problem since SHB hasn't been all about this tbh: loss of intricacies in every kit across the board bar a few exceptions. The irony about it is that all the new pvp kits have an insane degree of intricacy with thrice less buttons.