Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[Ggwppino]

SMN is easy

smn is not easy, smn does not give room for growth



SQE is continuing to flatten the player growth curve, that's the problem. Not being easy or being difficult. It's taking away from the player the gratification of mastering a class.
Raids and dungeons up to unreal can be played safely at any level, so I really don't understand this trend.

**EDIT** The numbers are random because canva.com put them like this, this image is just a way of representing how a class should have a floor and a ceiling. And don't be flat for the enjoyment of all players.

[Renathras]

...

Factually untrue.

When determining "room for growth"...okay, first of all: DEFINE that, please. In concrete terms. What does "room for growth" mean?

The most baseline you could play SMN (and still be playing the game) would be to press only the Ruin 3 button over and over again. That's the absolute braindead baseline.

Above that, you have using DWT, 3 Primals (in a random order), FBT, 3 more Primals (in a random order).

Above that, you have adding in your oGCDs and Ruin IV.

Above that, you have putting all your oGCDs into burst windows.

Above that, you have use of Primal based on boss mechanics (e.g. movement or non-movement).

And above that, you have optimizing Primals into burst windows, shifting based on fight mechanics.

And finally, you have some of the more esoteric things like spellspeed threshholds (which changes your actual rotation cadence and APM), if you really want get into the guts of perfect for each fight.

.

You presented a "graph" with no data.What is the axis on the left? 20 units of...what? "units of complexity"? What is "1 unit of complexity"? What is "60 units of complexity"? It's a meaningless picture with no data or factual basis.

So I'll ask again: DEFINE that, please. In concrete terms. What does "room for growth" mean?

[Valence]

The problem I have with arguments like yours is the framing.

"Enjoyable" is "asinine". "Not convoluted" is "braindead". "Fun" is "boring".

You realize that literally nothing, in spite of what you like to pretend, is objective in that kind of "discussion", right? Everything you have pointed as "factually objective" was biased as hell. I won't pretend hiding behind such false premises in order to construct an altar of questionable moral superiority. We're literally touching to 110% organic, deeply subjective feelings and tastes, and you constantly gesticulating at trying to split the cake between what's objective and what's not is a losing battle.

Even stating that this job has X or Y buttons, while being objective and a fact, suddenly stops being objective as soon as you emit a critical judgement upon it. If you can't grasp that simple fact, you're only going to continue coming as condescendingly pedantic to everybody and with reason.

Moreover, there's no "ENFORCE simple/easy jobs arbitrarily", especially when your own position is to ENFORCE complex/hard Jobs arbitrarily. This is the part that's really confusing to me. Why is it okay for your desired Job design to be forced on all Jobs and players but not the contra? Moreover, the simple side proponents aren't even arguing for ALL Jobs to be made simple, just a few.

You're fighting against strawmen here. You have been the one in the very first pages of this thread to rail against the notion of skill floor and ceilings and designs including both. You have literally here argued, I remember, for some jobs to be easy, and some to be hard. I'm not making up anything. Where I have always argued to have accessible jobs with some depth in counterpart, no matter the job. You can have both, but you were arguing against that, which I took issue with.

Ergo, yes, you're arguing to enforce easy jobs down the throats of people.

Here's the question that would resolve all of this fairly quickly:

WHY must all Jobs have a skill high skill ceiling?

Case in point.

Not "so people can improve". No WHY? Why is that important? Why is that necessary?

I never argued for anything remotely close to people needing to improve. I actually loathe the literal doctrine that constantly shoves improvement down the throat of every casual player people don't deem "gud enough" to their tastes, like it's high end esports or whatever silly notion they have about having fun on a game. You're preaching to the choir on that specific point. I don't even know what prompted that to come into this argument to be honest, but considering the literal essays like this one, it's possible I missed it in all the noise.

In WoW, you can get a little (not completely, but a little) closer to that because of Talents, but FFXIV doesn't have that. You can't choose talents on SMN to give you some extra DoTs or make Fester into old Fester. Those aren't options. You likewise can't choose Talents on BLM to turn it into an Ice Mage. Those aren't options.

What are you even talking about..?

There's not a way to play BLM that's "easy" right now. You have hard and ultra-hard (if you want to go Infinite Paradox transpose lines and explode your brain with 100% movement uptime). But there's no way to play BLM that is at SMN level.

What the hell are you talking about. I've seen casuals play BLM at a baseline level that is horrifying but functional. They don't get the right amount of F4s in astral, sometimes they don't have umbral stacks, dot uptime is not there... so what? They still play the job and swap between ice and fire, and the results are obviously, not optimal. They still understand how the job clicks, that's literally what a floor is about. Meanwhile the gap between floor and ceiling on new SMN is abyssmal. At best what you can screw up is drop your fire dash continuation, or miss a cast. For the rest you just have to press the buttons that light up. The only floor there is is to understand how all the summoning works at low level, which is actually more obscure than it needs to be because a lot of new players look at the Actions & Traits and get a stroke. BLM suffers from the same problem with the fire/ice mechanics, but every job does. I'm not complaining about floors, but ceilings. Once you understand how to summon, there is literally nothing left with the rotation to optimize or push further.

There's no way to play MNK at WHM level.

I know that people meme a lot about green DPS and whatnot, but still...

So the options are mostly just making a Job complex or making it not-complex. EVERY now and then the Devs stumble onto something that lets a Job be pretty simple but with quite a bit of nuance to optimize for a higher skill ceiling.

So make up your mind? What is it then? No option to make an easy job to approach but with quite a bit of nuance to optimize for higher skill ceiling, or is this possible? Make up your mind?

Ironically, considering how often people call RDM simple, it's the perfect and RARE example of an "easy to play WELL but with a lot of nuance to truly master". The basic concept of how the Job works is very simple to grasp and play, and you can do respectable damage just alternating your short/long casts, then rolling into your melee combo at 50/50, using the opposite Holy/Flare then Scorch, then Resolution, and popping your two oGCD attacks when they come up. On a surface level, it's very simple to play.

...then you start looking into optimization and the opener. "Why do I use Acceleration AND Swiftcast? Wait, there's a priority system between the two? I'm supposed to fit HOW MANY melee combos in the burst phase?? What's the optimal use of Acceleration? How much White/Black should I have at what time? How should I be using Manafication vs Embolden?" It's surprisingly nuanced to play at a 90-100 on it, even if the basic concept of it is far more simple. As much as it's derided, WAR has a similar situation. So does New PLD - also derided. Kinda sensing a trend here... The thing with New PLD is more that the differences are so negligible it doesn't matter and that's probably true of WAR. RDM it's not quite as true of, but relatively so.

So then it is possible, if RDM is one such example? If this is possible, why are you arguing against it?

What is absent from these conversations is WHY no Job may be ALLOWED to have a low skill ceiling.

It's said this is bad, but not WHY. "Boring" is subjective and many people find low skill ceiling Jobs engaging and fun. So that's not an answer. "No room for growth" runs into the same problem, as (a) there's at least SOME room for growth anyway and (b) again, subjective, as both not everyone finds that engaging and enjoyable anyway and different people at different skill levels may not see the growth the same way, meaning the skill ceiling/growth may not even be perceived the same way. Someone may struggle to get RDM down while another may find it child's play to master even BLM.

Again, make up your mind? Is this about low skill ceilings, or is it impossible to determine difficulty because it's very subjective (I tend to agree actually, I've been the first one to complain about the second rate dps jobs being subpar damage because of assumed arbitrary difficulties), therefore making skill ceilings a fantasy?

So WHY is the question. Not "Why should there be a simple Job", since the answer to that is obvious - having a low skill floor and ceiling Job in each role makes roles more accessible to new entrants, be they new players, new gamers, or people just wanting to dabble in a role for the first time.

Ceiling has nothing to do with accessibility.

To me, having multiple levels existing is the no brainer.

SMN is easy
RDM is medium
RDM optimized is hard
BLM normal is hard
BLM transpose infinite Paradox is galaxy brain

In fact, of ALL the roles in the game right now, I think Caster is the one that actually nails this. For Tanks, GNB is a bit harder and DRK CAN be harder depending on how you look at it, but WAR is pretty easy (with a bit of nuance) and PLD is near WAR levels. There's not a galaxy brain option, and there's debatably not a hard option. Healers.......should I go into that one? Most people consider them to have, at best, super easy, easy, and maybe a medium (SCH and/or AST) option. Melee don't really have an EASY option. RPR is the closest, but is probably more of a medium, and all the Melee Jobs other than RPR have pretty high skill ceilings to really master them, with MNK being obvious but SAM also having a pretty high bar for high level play. Ranged is just weird since all three Jobs are pretty simple to pick up but medium-ish to master, with MCH being the worst to do perfect on because of how its CDs drift if not used perfectly.

Caster is the one role that has a Job at easy, medium, and hard levels of play, and BLM has the option of going up to galaxy brain level if desired.

There's nothing really wrong with this other than "hardcore players want more".

And they have BLM and FREQUENTLY avoid playing it when offered any other choice.

You realize that you said just above that it's too subjective to make any rulings about difficulty, yet you just went on a tangent to determine arbitrary difficulty levels to triage and sort every job into their neat little difficulty labels within their respective roles?

It's a question of WHY what you want is actually necessary to the point it must and should be forced on everyone when even hardcore players avoid it if given the choice.

Why what I want, being every job being accessible yet with some mechanical depth, should be "forced" on everyone? I mean, are you arguing to force on everyone your arbitrary levels of complexity and/or intricacy/depth instead? I don't know man, but between the two, I do feel that my model is a lot more inclusive.

And on top of it, your model introduces yet another contradictory statement of yours, which bases itself on the fact that even raiders will often follow the path of least resistance (true!), yet surprisingly you'd advocate for easy jobs to play in the same roles than harder jobs to play. Why is that, if not to double down even more into totally lopsided play ratios even at high level?

And for the love of Hydaelyn and/or Zodiark (whichever cult you ascribe to more, of course ) - stop using the term "braindead". If you can't see how that poisons the well of literally any discussion ever, sit back in your chair, consider how you'd feel if people incessantly called things you actually find fun and enjoyable braindead, and then realize that you should stop doing it.

I agree with this and I apologize for the few times I've used it.

[Valence]

smn is not easy, smn does not give room for growth



SQE is continuing to flatten the player growth curve, that's the problem. Not being easy or being difficult. It's taking away from the player the gratification of mastering a class.
Raids and dungeons up to unreal can be played safely at any level, so I really don't understand this trend.

Thank you for putting it into better words than me. Difficulty is a red herring (and as pointed out, very, very subjective and variable depending on individuals).

Intricate mechanics and depth to a rotation though, is a little easier to gauge. A lot of jobs don't provide a lot of room for growth, or any at all. SMN is one such example, but DNC isn't far behind either. MCH does the bare minimum welfare (and has other problems with a capped performance ceiling). etc etc

[Valence]

That's the absolute braindead baseline.

And for the love of Hydaelyn and/or Zodiark (whichever cult you ascribe to more, of course ) - stop using the term "braindead". If you can't see how that poisons the well of literally any discussion ever, sit back in your chair, consider how you'd feel if people incessantly called things you actually find fun and enjoyable braindead, and then realize that you should stop doing it.

Like are you for real?

[Ggwppino]

Factually untrue.

When determining "room for growth"...okay, first of all: DEFINE that, please. In concrete terms. What does "room for growth" mean?

The most baseline you could play SMN (and still be playing the game) would be to press only the Ruin 3 button over and over again. That's the absolute braindead baseline.

Above that, you have using DWT, 3 Primals (in a random order), FBT, 3 more Primals (in a random order).

Above that, you have adding in your oGCDs and Ruin IV.

Above that, you have putting all your oGCDs into burst windows.

Above that, you have use of Primal based on boss mechanics (e.g. movement or non-movement).

And above that, you have optimizing Primals into burst windows, shifting based on fight mechanics.

And finally, you have some of the more esoteric things like spellspeed threshholds (which changes your actual rotation cadence and APM), if you really want get into the guts of perfect for each fight.

.

You presented a "graph" with no data.What is the axis on the left? 20 units of...what? "units of complexity"? What is "1 unit of complexity"? What is "60 units of complexity"? It's a meaningless picture with no data or factual basis.

So I'll ask again: DEFINE that, please. In concrete terms. What does "room for growth" mean?

1 hour: Oh I need to press all 3 buttons that light up, the order is not important
2 hour: Oh I need to spam my basically single oGCD when i use my buff
3 hour: Oh bahamut is sooo stronkk i think i buff there
4 hour: Im a fucking pro with this class, wheew, now? What other class do I play?


the hours change according to the player of course, but the smn offers this, that's it.

It doesn't offer a mechanic that can be explored well by going months and improving yourself. With the old smn, to learn to play it, I'm not saying in a perfect way, but well, it took me weeks and when things fit right in, I was very happy, and I rejoiced when I was right and i didnt using too many ruins 3 or not wasting my resources (ruin 4) or taking everyone with the buff or not forgetting the dots.
I used 5 ruin 3 instead of 4? Did I let the dots expire? Wasn't I making the most of ruin 4 or tri disaster? It doesn't matter, in normal-extreme content there is no dps check or it is very low. There is no need to perfect the rotation. There is no need, just have fun as you see fit. But the job gives you the opportunity to improve yourself, because it gives you ample room for personal growth. Clearly the more you demand, the more the complexity increases because you have to think about more things and pay more attention.

Now everything is phoned, has autopilot, like gatchas. I mastered the new smn the first day I was at 90, which is the second day of pre-release. I mastered the smn that the game wasn't officially out lol.

[Dahlinea]

Just answered your own question...

Having a basic spell set as baseline (Ruin II and Ruin III) and a lot of other GCDs and OGCDs means that the job was modular enough for you to actually move around pieces of abilities within the rotation to match the mechanics of the fights while trying to maximize the usage of your main basic hardcasted spell and preparing Further Ruin stacks and aligning oGCDs till Bahamut/Phoenix come from CD.

Now what's the baseline for new SMN? You have a forced Summon Bahamut to do to access your 3 legos, where 2/3 pretty much trivializes cast positioning since you can Swiftcast Slipstream. And talking about Slipstream, unless your tank loves to waltz around the battlefield during the fights, bosses' target circles are so big in this expansion that you'll rarely miss any of the ground AoE ticks. You have to also cast Ruin IV that's on a timer and it's also instacast, cast a Ruin III (if you didn't forgot to press your buttons for 2 seconds looking at the scenary) and proceed to Summon Phoenix to keep pressing the same button six times and Energy Drain (to hold Fester for Bahamut, but that's way too advanced isn't it?). From there you're forced to repeat. Sounds great, right? But all that is straightfoward and the game enforces this general path on you.
That's the baseline for new SMN which is also your near optimal rotation. That's why the graph shows a horizontal line indicating how the complexity of SMN pratically doesn't change from its entry level to its best performance, aside from meager tweaks along the rotation. Things that you had to think about and choose carefully during fights are now enforced in a general path with little to no meaningful choices, given the insta cast nature of most of current SMN spells that you HAVE to use regardless of what situation you're in.

The primal optmization is debatable but if you hold your bursts you'll be left casting only Ruin III, the thing you called braindead before.
There's nothing esoteric about spell speed. It always changed the APM of caster jobs that rely on cast/recast times, and that was true for old SMN too. The difference now is that new SMN basically doesn't have any casted spells so they moved the effect of spell speed recast times to Summon Bahamut/Phoenix and their spells. You just put the minimum amount of extra SS to be able to cast 6 of their spells, the rest going to Crit and Dhit, and just call it a day until/if the devs decide to change the modifiers of these stats in middle of the expansion, which will affect all jobs in such cases (if there was any case like that in past, I don't remember)

Also... Hello there! It's your favorite cultist again trying to make you see the light!

[VentVanitas]

There's no way to play MNK at WHM level.

[Renathras]

Okay going to try to make my posts shorter and more direct:

You realize that literally nothing, in spite of what you like to pretend, is objective in that kind of "discussion", right?

That's...
...literally...
...MY...
...point!

You're attacking me for doing the thing that you have been doing. <_<

/sigh

The reason I ask you questions is to try to establish a baseline. Maybe you like sweet things and I like sour things, but it helps to have at least a working definition of what sweet IS, otherwise we can't discuss it.

And stop trying the appeal to bandwagon/group fallacy. You speak for yourself and the 4-5 people that like all your posts, not everyone else. "to everybody" is clearly not so. And how do you think YOU look "to everybody", btw? But that gets into the realm of personal attacks and has no place here (your 5 loyal likers be damned). This is the third time, I believe, you're purported to speak for "everybody" or "we".

You have literally here argued, I remember, for some jobs to be easy, and some to be hard.

Yes, I have.

Easy and hard.

Not braindead. Not "skill floor equal skill ceiling". You made up those parts.

Ergo, yes, you're arguing to enforce easy jobs down the throats of people.

These quotes are all variations on the same theme, so grouping together:

This makes literally no sense if I'm only suggesting - not enforcing - that _A_ simple Job existing is acceptable. It's also very odd that you say this while YOU are proposing forcing complex Jobs on "down the throats of people". Again, you're doing the thing you attack me of doing. You're demanding that NO Job have a low skill ceiling. This means that you are demanding that all Jobs have a NOT low skill ceiling. I'm suggesting ONE Job having a low skill ceiling is acceptable. Which of those is forcing something down people's throats, exactly?

Why what I want, being every job being accessible yet with some mechanical depth, should be "forced" on everyone?

When you're saying any Job that does not have that is not allowed to exist, then yes. You want to force it on everyone.

Unless you've changed your mind and believe that Jobs with no mechanical depth are acceptable and allowed?

I mean, are you arguing to force on everyone your arbitrary levels of complexity and/or intricacy/depth instead?

No.

Because UNLIKE you with demands for greater complexity, I don't insist that the simple end of the spectrum be forced on every Job in the game.

I don't know man, but between the two, I do feel that my model is a lot more inclusive.

You think a model that disallows easy Jobs and only allows medium or above is more inclusive than a model that allows for easy, medium, and hard and above Jobs? How do you figure that, EXACTLY? How do you figure a model (yours) which excludes one category is MORE INCLUSIVE than a model that excludes none?

And on top of it, your model introduces yet another contradictory statement of yours, which bases itself on the fact that even raiders will often follow the path of least resistance (true!), yet surprisingly you'd advocate for easy jobs to play in the same roles than harder jobs to play. Why is that, if not to double down even more into totally lopsided play ratios even at high level?

This is a fascinating leap in logic.

How is saying "one Job being easy is fine" the same as saying "all Jobs should be made easy"? I want to know EXACTLY how you are arriving at that conclusion, because that's the strawman you're arguing against.

Case in point.

No - question you refuse to answer. I'll ask it again:

WHY must all Jobs have a skill high skill ceiling?

I never argued for anything remotely close to people needing to improve.

This is you YET AGAIN dodging direct questions. Moreover, the questions that actually get to the heart of the matter:

Why is that important? Why is that necessary?

If I'm preaching to the choir, great. Choir, please answer the questions.

.

Going to skim through some of this since you guys keep complaining about my post length. If you want me to answer more thoroughly, I can, but then you can't complain about the length.

What the hell are you talking about.

GENERALLY SPEAKING, to make Jobs with highly variable but EQUALLY VIABLE rotations, it requires something of a customization system, like a Talent system or some such. As FFXIV doesn't have this, it doesn't work.

A medium difficulty Job can sometimes be made with variable nuance, but they are not equally viable when played at both ends. The fact that there is only ONE example of it indicates how difficult it is to do successfully. It's not impossible to make a moderate difficulty Job have a scaling to high difficulty, it's just rare to do it where it works. And given RDM's damage, it arguably ISN'T working right now anyway.

Again, make up your mind?

Again I'll present the question so you can dodge it once more:

"What is absent from these conversations is WHY no Job may be ALLOWED to have a low skill ceiling"?

I agree with this and I apologize for the few times I've used it.

Fair enough.

.

There's a lot of "gotcha" attempts in that post I'm going to cut out to try and shorten this, because they're pointless bickering and derailing (what I'm always accused of due to other people doing it...) and are just that. Anyway, hope the shorter version helps. I may just start cutting everything out but the questions and just ask them again and again until you can answer them...since I really DO think that cuts to the heart of the matter:

Why can't there be low skill ceiling Jobs in the game? Why is it necessary that they all not be?

.

EDIT: UGH!!!

Like are you for real?

So...you took a quote, apologized for doing it, then brought it up a second time as an attack?

Like...are you for real?

[Renathras]

1 hour: Oh I need to press all 3 buttons that light up, the order is not important
2 hour: Oh I need to spam my basically single oGCD when i use my buff
3 hour: Oh bahamut is sooo stronkk i think i buff there
4 hour: Im a fucking pro with this class, wheew, now? What other class do I play?

And if you get to that point? BLM: Exists. RDM: Exists. Basically EVERY OTHER JOB IN THE GAME: Exists.

It doesn't offer a mechanic that can be explored well by going months and improving yourself.

Not every Job NEEDS that. In fact, it would probably be very unhealthy for the game if every Job DID take months and months to get anywhere close to optimal with.

With the old smn,

We're not talking about Old SMN.

We all agree Old SMN shouldn't have been removed from the game.

lol, fair enough. Viable, then? Or optimal, perhaps...

Also... Hello there! It's your favorite cultist again trying to make you see the light!

Who are you?

I feel like I should be saying something like "But for me, it was Tuesday" here...

The graph isn't data. It's a meme. Come back when you can turn that into actual data. Again, what's the Y-axis in that "graph"? It's nothing, because it's a meme and has no actual meaning. That graph isn't a valid "argument".

Yeah, the Devs need to seriously reexamine stats and builds, maybe in 7.0. But that's not the problem (of discussion) here. Nor is New SMN not having higher optimization. Again, no arguments yet why it's necessary for it to, only people saying it "should".

Far as I can tell, there's no objective reason that New SMN NEEDS to be more complex and ISN'T working as it is. All the data suggests that it's working as it is and is very well liked and used by the community. It seems odd to insist so strongly that it's bad and broken given that. While popular doesn't always mean GREAT, it generally does mean at least somewhat GOOD. There are reasons perfume doesn't come in "skunk" and "rotten cheese" or "cow manure". Because, it turns out, things that are pretty awful...tend not to be very popular or well liked.

There's an extremely vocal minority that hates it, but in terms of play numbers, it's the Caster players are gravitating more to than the others.

PART OF THAT - I think - is because RDM seriously needs some potency buffs to be above Ranged levels of damage. But that doesn't change the fact people would probably still pick SMN more, and that BLM is still being sidelined as soon as people get the chance.

I again contend that the problem isn't New SMN, and that New SMN is fine. The problem is that Old SMN was removed - something no one's contesting, so I assume we all more or less agree on that point, at least.

.

Oh, and for reference, in case anyone is somehow misunderstanding the Hydaelyn/Zodiark remark...it's because "for the love of God" is somewhat less fitting in a FFXIV discussion group, and there are two prevailing - for lack of a better word - cults in the mythos, those being that of Zodiark and ARGUABLY Hydaelyn. Religion doesn't seem QUITE the right word for it. But take from that what you will.

.

But hey, at the end of the day, I'm not going to convince any of you because you aren't basing your positions on data or metrics or even player behavior and apparent preferences...and the Devs aren't listening anyway. So I guess it doesn't matter in the end... /shrug

I'm still putting in my vote for Green Mage Caster next Job added..