FFXIV Job Design Feedback

[Frodnoxx]

1. My sentiment has pretty much been echoed to death in this thread. I started in ShB, so I've only heard of how things were before. But from what I've heard the devs went with the nuclear option for balancing the jobs - all out homogenization. I think it's unaccaptable the extent they have taken it especially for a tab-targeting mmorpg. The jobs have almost no semblance of identity to them in their rotation design (2 min bursts and healers/tanks), their perception from other party members (situational utility), nor how they engage with boss mechanics (defensives and movement). They did this so that jobs are not excluded in public parties, but they need to realize the no amount of balance will stop meta sheeps from sheeping.

2. I only started playing in ShB but specifically from this thread, I have heard concepts from SB that make me wish I had experienced at least a little of what it was like. I read about unique abilities like letting you give MP to healers, micromanage aggro, and mass esuna and it's so sad to realize that all three of these vectors of the game's combat (mp management, aggro management, dispels) were erased rather than expanded and tuned. It's like having a symphony but your percussion section is weak so you murder them rather than get them caught up. Yeah your symphony sounds cleaner now, but you have dead bodies on the floor and the flutists are crying and traumatized.

3. No real opinion on this. I feel like regardless of feedback, the devs have the engine going full steam down this path and it would take several expansions or another realm reborn to change course. It could even be interpreted that the financial officers saw the huge burst of new players in ShB and thought, "Ah, it's the development design choices we need more of that" rather than realize the climate of the MMO world at the time.

[Rolder50]

1. How do you feel about the general state of job design in Endwalker in contrast to past expansions? Do you think this direction is good or bad for the game long term?

I think the job design is rather poor and getting worse as time goes on. They focus too hard on removing any kind of pain or failure points in a rotation and thus remove any chance of skill expression. Almost every job except BLM (wonder why) has had their skill floors put into the dirt with the ceiling being only a little bit higher.

I also think they ruined healer gameplay going from SB to ShB. Just homogenized the heck out of everything.

2. Which expansion do you think was the best for job design as a whole?

Stormblood since Shadowbringers was when they really started homogenizing everything. HW was good as well but had some questionable designs like bowmage bard. I did enjoy Summoner in Shadowbringers though, before they ruined it in Endwalker.

3. Other live service games generally release official surveys fairly regularly. For example, Genshin Impact usually has a new survey near the end of each patch. These games also reward players who take these surveys with in-game items or resources. Should FFXIV be doing this too? What kind of rewards would incentivize you to give feedback on new content or job changes?

Surveys yes, rewards no. If we really want a reward, I would just do something basic like those gold or silver chocobo feathers you get from refer a friend.

[drtasteyummy]

I absolutely hate the job design and rotation system in FFXIV, and without a doubt, I wish they would burn it to the ground. They are all the same, it's a copy and paste of group buffs, positionals, damage over time, and their respective range. Nothing is unique, and everything is rigid, there's zero adaptation but on the other hand even the slightest inconvenience or mismatch breaks everything. It's just so horribly boring, both complicated and not complicated, an abomination of the worst things you could patch together in a class system. I've never witnessed such a mishmash of dead and soulless design as I have here.

[aloneatsea]

1. How do you feel about the general state of job design in Endwalker in contrast to past expansions? Do you think this direction is good or bad for the game long term?

I've only been here since Shadowbringers, so I can't comment sincerely on this much as the difference between Shadowbringers and Endwalker in terms of design is rather small. That said, the current method of setting all raid buffs to the exact same timer (while having frankly insane potencies on certain abilities -- Tech Step, Hyosho, etc etc) is already incredibly detrimental to balance -- not even between jobs, but between making DPS checks reasonable vs coin-toss. We're likely headed into a world of auto-crits and smoothed potencies until 7.0. It's irritating because it's a band-aid fix, but it's better than having to fish for crits to beat a check, I suppose.


2. Which expansion do you think was the best for job design as a whole?
Again, I only have SHB and EW to reference, but between the two of them, SHB is the clear winner. While some jobs have distinctly improved in Endwalker, many jobs haven't, and the aforementioned damage variance due to raid buff stacking appeared (from my perspective) to be much less of a problem due to it being much more difficult to stack multipliers. It's not unusual at all that you might see up to +47% in raid buffs every two minutes in EW, plus any crit-up buffs that might exist. Spreading out raid buffs allows for burst windows that suit a job's natural rhythm (RPRs and RDMs, I imagine, would love to have something like Trick Attack or even old Brotherhood back, if only to have somewhere meaningful to put their excess burst).


3. Other live service games generally release official surveys fairly regularly. For example, Genshin Impact usually has a new survey near the end of each patch. These games also reward players who take these surveys with in-game items or resources. Should FFXIV be doing this too? What kind of rewards would incentivize you to give feedback on new content or job changes?

I think it would be wise for 14 to do this, but I don't expect it would result in any changes that anyone unhappy with the current state of job design would be pleased about. This sort of feedback would be, by nature, open to everyone, and it is my expectation that rewarding players for it would actually incentivise more casual/short-term players to give feedback, over less casual/longer-term players. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as you cannot reasonably only look at the top end of job performance/satisfaction and make adjustments based on that, but this will not result in the sweeping changes I'd personally love to see.


It might, however, lead to changes in some of the more persistent bugbears that most everyone can agree on, so I think it would be worthwhile overall. In terms of rewards -- well, I'm already here. I somewhat dislike the idea of rewarding feedback, as I'd prefer feedback to come from players who care enough about the game inherently to see it improve. That said, if it's unique glamour or otherwise genuinely desireable, even players who are jaded about SE's tendency to "ignore feedback" might throw their hat in the ring. Don't know.

[Arphene]

They murdered Summoner without giving us anything similar in exchange so all in all I've lost all kind of "hope" I had in the job design team, and I really doubt they will improve in the near future seeing how they like to pander to the lowest common denominator. Not blamming them tho, since clearly thats where the money lies.

[Deceptus]

They murdered Summoner without giving us anything similar in exchange so all in all I've lost all kind of "hope" I had in the job design team, and I really doubt they will improve in the near future seeing how they like to pander to the lowest common denominator. Not blamming them tho, since clearly thats where the money lies.

Counter argument:

Summoner actually feels like a SUMMONER now instead of pick an egi and stick with it the entire fight. I'd rather be summoning than spamming Ruin x 100.

If I wanted to do that, I'd play Scholar.

[fulminating]

Who cares if it feels like a summoner if it also feels awful to play? Surely the fact that the current incarnation is tainting the summoner identity is reason enough to desire a rework even if you're nominally in favour of the changes.

[EliaStormblade]

Who cares if it feels like a summoner if it also feels awful to play? Surely the fact that the current incarnation is tainting the summoner identity is reason enough to desire a rework even if you're nominally in favour of the changes.

Nay. I'm in favor of building upon the current framework rather than ditching it to return to dot mage.

[RyuDragnier]

Who cares if it feels like a summoner if it also feels awful to play? Surely the fact that the current incarnation is tainting the summoner identity is reason enough to desire a rework even if you're nominally in favour of the changes.

I'd say the current SMN feels BETTER to play than it once did. But this is just framework, and can be made better. I'd rather them not return to the previous horrible role of DoT mage (the ShB version I mean, I had no issues with HW or SB SMN).

[VentVanitas]

I'd say the current SMN feels BETTER to play than it once did. But this is just framework, and can be made better. I'd rather them not return to the previous horrible role of DoT mage (the ShB version I mean, I had no issues with HW or SB SMN).

What a terrible framework it is then, because if you want SMN to get any meaningful new additions in 7.0 it's going to need another rework to the structure of its rotation.