FFXIV Job Design Feedback

[fulminating]

1. It’s dire and I hope it’s unsustainable if only because it’d be depressing to think otherwise.

2. Stormblood +/-1. I don’t think any jobs are at their best outside of the hw-shb range. And shb is debatable.

3. Exactly 175 stuffed alpha housing items

[Rilifane]

1) It's the worst it has ever been by a mile. And I thought ShB was being problematic ...
The direction is clearly pruning, simplifying, taking away nuances, real choices and opportunities for skill expression in favor of streamlined, homogenized classes that are supposedly easier to balance but that STILL failed hilariously as we saw with part 1 this tier. The strict 2min burst meta that was forced on everyone is the bane of EW's job design. Massive hitboxes that make melee uptime practically guaranteed. Burst potencies getting completely out of control to the point they have to add more and more auto crits so crit variance can't affect the chance of a kill... too much.
This isn't sustainsable because it's already stale and will get worse as time passes, not better. The identities and gameplay differences between classes are more and more blurred to the point that you can have near-identical keybinds on all healers and tanks and even some dps jobs getting closer to that.
Action/ button bloat has often been brought up by the devs but then they proceed to add fluff buttons like flat potency cooldowns or aoe versions of a single target skill while deleting buttons that did give you some nuance like Kaiten or Seigan.
They stripped away many layers of gameplay through outright deleting things instead of adjusting them to work better like MP management, TP management, resistance down debuffs etc.

2) The sweet spot is imo somewhere between HW and SB. Some nuances and classes were better in HW overall, some in SB. Not ALL of it was good but overall gameplay was much more enjoyable, nuanced with clear identities, skill expression, more choices and less fluff buttons and the things that didn't work have potential to get adjusted so they do work.

3) They should do surveys on a regular basis but without a reward

[Renathras]

1) Really depends on the Job. Overall I love the state of most Job design in Endwalker. They've generally gotten rid of a lot of jank and clunk. My issue is more with the 2 min meta/burst and encounter design often not fitting the Job kits, which themselves are really fun. There are some annoying Jobs I don't like, namely DRK, AST, all the Melee other than NIN, BRD, DNC, and BLM. I love the other three Tanks and other three Healers, NIN is enjoyable enough though still has some clunk and button bloat, and I like MCH, RDM, and really like SMN. Some Jobs (WHM in particular) are probably the best they've been in the game's history. The biggest issue is the 2 min meta and encounter design having drifted away from making sense with the Job kits overtime and really blowing wide the gap between the bottom and top in ways that aren't good.

2) As a whole? Hard question. Again, it depends on the Jobs. EW hasn't been perfect, AST got worse for example. WHM got better, though. WHM was terrible in SB. New PLD feels far better than Old PLD did. And then there are several Jobs that have only been around one or two expansions (GNB and SGE) that are both fantastic. Overall, I think EW is the best for mechanics, SB had some more flavor distinctions between the Jobs, and ShB was kind of a happy medium. ShB without the clunk is what EW mostly is, so I guess EW is honestly really good. I do miss the more non-combat utility and situational stuff like Stoneskin and Protect, though.

3) Probably not. The games that do that tend to be gatcha type games, which FFXIV is not. Any exclusive rewards people will complain about having to do the survey or having missed the survey, so they'll have to put it on the Mog Station anyway. The only in-game alternatives are gil (and gil inflation's already bad) or tomes (which are useless after a patch or two and would only serve to get a little ahead on the cap).

Bonus: For anyone reading this, this thread was posted in response to a Survey that was posted here and here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...rvey/?sort=old
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...rvey/?sort=old

Discussed/linked here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-Healer-Survey

Also posted to here now: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...sign_feedback/

[RyuDragnier]

1. It's a mixed bag. Some jobs are pretty good, some are pretty horrible in terms of this.

2. I can't narrow it down to one expansion, as every single expansion has had its issues. HW dropped the ball for several jobs, as did SB. I guess ShB was the closest? Though it too had issues.

3. Really up to them, but I wouldn't mind a survey on how jobs are going like the one you set up. It's rather easy to do and gives them a general idea of what the community wants.

[Tarou_Noden]

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'm disappointed overall. Universal 2-minute windows has made DPS very swingy and drowns out job design; every job has to play well into buff windows or they just lag behind the rest of the pack. Every job starts to have the same rhythm and feel, and variety suffers as a result. Furthermore, concentration of DPS profiles into these short 2minute windows means crit RNG can have a greater impact on your DPS than skilled optimization. This, in turn, can make early prog in a DPS-check-tight environment (such as Week 1 Savage or TOP) dependent on RNG factors that raiders can't easily account for (beyond switching to different jobs).

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

Shadowbringers, if not Stormblood. Whilst some of the major issues with today's job design started to become present in Shadowbringers, the expansion overall had a greater variety in job design and feel (thanks to differences in buff and burst windows), as well as better job balancing overall. Practically every job could contribute in Week 1 during Shadowbringers; whilst now we're seeing RDM, PLD, and other jobs with relatively lower DPS being dropped due to their unreliability.

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?

Regular official surveys would be nice, and they'd be something I'd participate in regularly. Whilst I think the team is general alright at listening to player feedback when it counts, having a more direct and controlled pipeline for player feedback around job and raid design could give the developers more useful information on the sentiments of the raiding playerbase.

Any rewards they'd offer, however, would need to have minimal impacts on in-game progression (so either purely cosmetic, or only beneficial when leveling). So maybe the reward could just be Silver or Gold Chocobo Feathers? IDK.

[SpeckledBurd]

Monk Main here since Heavensward.

If I were to go through every iteration of Monk, I'd say my favorite iteration was HW Monk with Demolish, ToD and Fracture even if it had serious issues (couldn't sustain TP, lack of aggro control, didn't do enough DPS as the selfish melee compared to how absurd DRG/NIN's party buffs were in that era). I absolutely loathed Stormblood because of Riddle of Fire's slow, the RNG chakras were essentially added to give it a gauge without adjusting Meditate/Chakra as a whole and still are absolutely cancerous, Riddle of Earth was just a bafflingly bad answer to Greased Lightning upkeep being an issue and the TK Rotation was built on bugged potency and always felt like complete garbage to me. Shadowbringers Monk against all odds managed to be worse than SB with Anatman that started riots in the DPS forum due to the snowball effect of Monk not being fixed after SB and somehow managing to be worse. Then by the time they made it not miserable in 5.4 they did so by gutting the job's core mechanic entirely so it was just kinda boring and a little awkward instead.

Endwalker for Monk has been fine. I don't like it as much as Heavensward Monk but I definitely haven't been playing it out of spite specifically for fight specific examples of how it was a mechanical disaster like 4.0/5.0. Indeed, blitz is a decent new mechanic with room for developmental iteration and skill expression which is more than could be said for many jobs. Monk as a whole actually feels like there was some thought to put into it which is practically a novelty for me as a long time Monk main. With previous expansions if you'd told me Monk's design document was actually grease stained napkin from one of Soken's chicken lunches that the battle team found and hastily scribbled something on over lunch break I'd believe you without question. A bit hyperbolic, but it must be emphasized that Yoshi-P previously admitted they didn't know what they were doing with Monk in Stormblood's development in the ShB media tour during Larryzaur's interview and we all saw how Shadowbringer's Monk panned out. But the devs still haven't managed to completely clean up all of their bad decisions from when they were just throwing things at the wall. For example RNG Chakra just exists so Monk can have a gauge but no thought was put towards it in Stormblood or beyond since it can still only be used when completely capped despite having no overhead creating a deluge of lost procs.

As for the thread prompts:

1. Job design as a whole with the two minute meta is a different story than Monk. To put it simply, it isn't interesting to play, it isn't healthy for the game, and frankly I don't think it's sustainable. At the same time I don't think they can pivot out of it either due to the number of jobs they now have to work on at a given time, even if they were to forego one new job entirely they've reached a point where the amount of work would probably be impossible. The other thing is you can't just look at job design alone in a vacuum because fundamentally it interfaces with encounter design. What I think is part of the issue is that encounter design has also suffered in the name of smoothing out the experience, boss's shouldn't have hitboxes the size of the arena just to reduce perceived player friction when that's the reason melee jobs are supposed to have mobility skills for example.

2. The best expansion for design overall would probably be Stormblood or Shadowbringers. However even when looking at the expansions as a whole, both have had jobs that they categorically failed and took too long to address; IE: Stormblood Monk (played as intended because the TK Rotation was a bug) and Machinist both being absolutely rejected by the community for being nigh unplayable garbage, White Mage with SB Lilies. Shadowbringers had Monk still being rejected, Dark Knight, Healer satisfaction being low in general, and some Machinist dislike reacting to it being completely reworked to be overly approachable. I'd lean Shadowbringers because in general the balance as a whole was better (especially by the end which I'd say is when the game was at its most balanced), whereas Stormblood still kinda had the problem of Heavensward where jobs that weren't part of the meta (IE: SAM/MNK melee players, WHM) were getting side eyed or completely locked out of PFs.

3. As for an official survey I'd like to see one. If they though it would need rewards to coax everyone to fill it out then, people will pretty much always respond to glamour of some sort. Something as basic as an expansion themed pair of earrings would be enough to get a decent chunk of responses.

[ForteNightshade]

1. Job design this expansion is among the most uninspired and boring it has been. I won't belabor the point too much but the two minute meta is a prime example of the pendulum swinging too far in the opposite direction. Accessibility is a worthwhile pursuit but there is such a thing as too safe. Endwalker didn't so much cross that line but drive across it full speed ahead. The irony is it made everything worse. Players who didn't care to improve or simply pressed their buttons willy nilly continued doing so while the players who were actually impacted have criticised everything about it. Making matters even worse it punished players more because a death now absolutely destroys your damage due to every job being forced to burst in exactly two minute intervals.

2. Stormblood without a shadow of doubt. While I do prefer some aspects of Heavensward, I have to acknowledge that Stormblood struck a solid middle ground that the dev team keeps moving further and further away from.

3. I would love if they committed to some official survey instead of listening to seemingly random bits of feedback. A prime example of this being Stormblood Bard, a job with overwhelming praise and popularity being completely gutted from Shadowbringers onward to now being the least played DPS in the game. I suspect a survey may have helped prevent such radical changes but I'm not entirely sure on the reward incentive to get people to fill it out. Perhaps iconic gear from Final Fantasy characters. People have long wanted Tifa or Aerith's outfits added.

[Gemina]

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?

Generally, I am fine with it and don't echo the majority of thoughts being tossed around this thread. I had more issues with the game's job design in previous expansions. Particularly HW and SB. I find it odd that the same playerbase using job identity as a means for enjoyable gameplay also pushes for role, job, gender, and race restrictions to be lifted in terms of glamour; and mock when identity is used as argument for those restrictions to remain intact. In previous expansions, I felt many job designs and mechanics were clunky, trite, and unnecessary. It complicated encounters more than they needed to be, and made balance between all jobs and roles very cumbersome. Back in those days, there were a lot of meta comps that rules out many of player's favorite jobs, and attempts to make them viable only resulted in leap frogging patch after patch.

Based off of the above mentioned, absolutely I believe it is good for the game long term. These changes, which were implemented with the release of ShB has only resulted in this mmo becoming the most popular on the market, and this is despite its age as it is now considered an older mmo in maintenance mode.

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

It's tough to pick between ShB and EW. Each expansion did things I both liked and disliked. While EW was supposed to build off of ShB changes, I don't really think it hit the mark here. There were many things I hoped EW would improve upon the ShB changes, and was a bit disappointed in this regard. I think I would probably have to give it to ShB.

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 don't know. If the feedback is going to be constructive, and not a ranty wall of text then maybe I would support it. I just highly doubt that would be the turn out due to all the negative Nancy's who speak the loudest. The game, including job design can definitely be improved upon for sure. It is far from perfect, and I believe a middle ground can be achieved between the simplistic route they have taken the game's direction in, and the complexity found in earlier expansions. However, ground has to be given on both sides for this to happen.

[EliaStormblade]

Don't have much of a problem with Endwalker job design wheresoever applicable, but I'm morbidly curious to see the pendulum swing the other way so that we can get complaints about terrible imbalance or jobs being janky for the sake of janky. I can be a bit about schadenfreude when it comes to that kind of stuff. My main is Dragoon at the moment, and I quite enjoy it. It feels like it runs like a well-oiled machine, but comments by YoshiP and co. re it being too "busy" are giving me some cause for concern. If anything, I think it plays just right with the current meta in mind. I do play some other jobs, but Dragoon is my main one and I do enjoy it. I also enjoy Dark Knight (though I don't think having to use the keyboard like a piano player to cram out every oGCD asap during burst phases is ideal) I'm not historically that big on alting, so my opinion may be skewed there.

I think the 2-minute meta is a big boogeyman. You can go back to irregular timings, but I feel like all it'll do is serve to muddy things up and prioritize jobs that have more fortuitous timings on their abilities. Alas, the playerbase is free to find out for themselves what is preferable. I don't mind diverging from a central system or framework nor adding in flavor, but it needs to be meaningful, and not gimmicky and contrived.

As someone who is by and large positive about the jobs I am playing, though, I still have some things to say about Dragoon in its current state: I do not think Dragon Sight is a fun ability. They can automate it, they can make it easier to apply, they can replace it with another ability, I don't care. Other than the fact that it is currently tied to our damage output, I do not care for the ability at all. It might be neat in concept, but even then I don't find it very "iconic" or anything. Improve it, simplify it or replace it with something better and less clunky, I don't care.

As for the rest? I feel like there's two other ways in which it could improve. Its oGCDs could stand to be a little more interesting: particularly Spineshatter Dive and Dragonfire Dive. They're okay, but they're not really thrilling in any sense.

Lastly, I feel like it's weird that Reapers are more mobile than Dragoons and have both Elusive Jump. (with a teleport back) and a forward dash (also with a teleport back) People may cry homogenizations at me, but I feel like Dragoons ought to be more mobile and to have some movement abilities that reflect that. Hell, something like the Skyshatter Dive from PvP can be integrated in some way, except more movement-focused than a damage nuke. I don't know; something.

[ty_taurus]

Hey, just want to add I'll be working on a google sheet that will share the results of these surveys in the main post of this thread. I'll probably work on it over the next few days or so, and the info on that should update in real time for the most part. Lots of submissions came in today especially for a lot of jobs, so it's starting to look pretty exciting for me. Ideally I'd like to get at least 100 responses per job eventually since that's when we start being able to get a more stable picture of things.