What I think could help Make Gameplay More enjoyable.

[OgruMogru]

Remove crit

I mean not really but I do feel like there's too much focus on this random dmg potential that makes people very hostile if things do not 100% of the time provide them with the best possible outcome.

[Jeeqbit]

I do like the idea that Paladin can cast a heal at will on the GCD like a healer. It's one of the few unique things on a tank today. They solved the healing issue already with Holy Sheltron's regen and the heals on its magic attacks, so they don't need to mess with Clemency, although they could add the attack heals at earlier levels.

I've always wondered, what percentage of players actually deal with the 2 minute meta in any real sense?

Well since it has affected the design of the rotations, the answer is almost everyone.

[Jojoya]

I've always wondered, what percentage of players actually deal with the 2 minute meta in any real sense?

Should be limited to those doing EX/Savage/Criterion/Ultimate plus the occasional outlier like BA.

Dungeon bosses don't last that long. Open world combat either doesn't last that long or players join random parties without any attempt to coordinate cooldowns (the latter goes for Normal trials and raids as well).

But even if it's not affecting everyone, it does affect part of the player base the frequently engages in the longer boss fights. If it's not making combat more enjoyable for them, it needs to be reviewed.

Well since it has affected the design of the rotations, the answer is almost everyone.

You're assuming that everyone looks up the recommended rotations and strictly adheres to them. I doubt the percentage of players doing that is so high. No point in looking up a rotation if everything dies in 10 seconds in the content you regularly do.

[SargeTheSeagull]

What percentage of players actually deal with the 2 minute meta?

100%. Every single job in the game is impacted by it and so is every player, whether or not they realize it. Before the 2 minute meta (let's say back in stormblood before the gutting of tanks and healers) each job felt COMPLETELY different from every other job. You had jobs that focused on burst damage like SAM, RDM, and WAR. You had jobs that were about sustaining DoTs like BRD, SMN, and SCH. You had jobs that focused entirely on resource management like WHM, DRK and BLM. You had jobs that were about keeping up an in-depth strict rotation like PLD and DRG. Every job, despite what issues they had which to be fair were numerous, felt absolutely nothing like any other. Bard's only raid buff, battle voice, was a 3 minute cooldown. DRG's battle litany was 3 minutes and DRG's dragonsight was 2 minutes. SCH's chain stratagem was 90 seconds. And so on. Note, back then bosses' hitboxes were small, tanks had to position the bosses (they almost never went to center on their own), and very often bosses did things that made melees and tanks lose uptime.

Every job's buffs were on 30, 60, 90, 120 or 180 second cooldowns. This meant that damage was more or less evenly spread out over the course of a dungeon or raid and that the devs could allow jobs to have totally different playstyles. This also meant that if you died when you were supposed to use a party buff, you had to hold it for at most 30 seconds before someone else in your party had a buff of theirs up that you could sync with. "Oh but Rad that only impacts hardcores." Directly, yes. But it also impacts casuals. Back in Stormblood I was a casual. I'd cleared MAYBE three extremes and even then they took me weeks to prog. I played WAR, SCH, RDM and BRD. All of which played totally differently than each other in every way. A burst focused tank, a DoT focused healer, a party supporting caster with melee attacks (meaning RDM had to really think about when to use their melee combo) and a DoT management/sustained damage/party buffing ranged. All of which had vastly different things to think about during normal gameplay. Compare how these jobs are now: WAR is a bursty tank. SCH is a bursty healer (if you call holding AF stacks for energy drain burst but that's another discussion), RDM is a bursty caster that doesn't have to worry about when to melee bc boss hitboxes are the size of the arena, and BRD is a bursty ranged phys.

The 2 minute meta (among other design decision made by the dev team) have made these 4 jobs which were utterly unique 5 years ago feel very similar. Casual players, the majority of the playerbase, don't notice things like buff alignment (which is part of the reason so many of us were befuddled by the dev team's decision to implement the 2 min meta in the first place) but casuals do have to deal with the fact that if you ignore animations, almost every job feels damn near identical.

[Jeeqbit]

You're assuming that everyone looks up the recommended rotations and strictly adheres to them. I doubt the percentage of players doing that is so high. No point in looking up a rotation if everything dies in 10 seconds in the content you regularly do.

In the modern game, what you press next tends to highlight or it becomes clear that there isn't really another way to do it (such as with BLM). Depends on the job though. It doesn't really affect Red Mage what the meta is for example because it's mostly just jolt and swapping between black and white magic.

But you can notice the difference a lot on a Dark Knight where their previously varied ability cooldowns now all come off cooldown at 60s.

[Fyrebrand]

Remove crit

They could almost just get rid of stats altogether and just tell us our ilvl at this point. There are no subclasses, specializations, or talent trees in this game. Whenever I want to know what materia to slot on my gear I can look up the preferred stat priority for my job, but 95% of the time all the jobs use the same stats anyway.

I wanted to rebel a little, so I slotted Spell Speed on my White Mage staff just so I could prove I was in charge of my own destiny!

[Shurrikhan]

...

I feel like this slightly... conflates issues.


The 2-minute meta's optimizations are nothing new, fundamentally. It's just a lower floor and ceiling to understanding (i.e., you don't need as much knowledge of the other jobs in your party) but with higher punishment for failing its basics (use your CDs on CD after the opener) and having fewer available instances of optimized timing than before (no per 60s, per 90s, etc., sync-ups).

That is to say, they tried to simplify things, making it easier to optimize but more punishing not to. Since not all failings there are going to be from lack of understanding, the latter can feel a bit worse than they likely imagined in that exchange of 'ceiling' and 'lenience' for more broadly accessible/felt 'engagement'.

If not for the only times the difference really matters also being the times where the community was that much more likely to push set compositions (to the point where, optimally, you play a comp through a particular vantage point, not [just consistently playing] a job), I'd say our current state of 120s-buffs-only is a clear downgrade over what we had before, but... it's not a huge one.


Similarly, front-loaded (CDs and spenders from gauges that start full) vs. back-loaded (spenders, when gauge starts empty) aren't really that big a deal; they vary the opener, and that's it, while making it that much harder to balance short-but-difficult encounters (not that we have any at the moment, outside of maybe Criterion Savage) if any job swings too far one way or the other.

Yes, having CDs that you only pop during other CDs, and do not even alternate in their contexts are going to feel worse than those that see more varied contexts and therefore seem less... 'bundled' or 'bloated', but that's not wholly a matter of things being useful to the 2-minute meta (or burst windows in general) or not. It's more to do with simple button-efficiency, rhythmic variation, and the like.


In the end, the far bigger things are (A) just the available depth and the sort of "effort-to-output" curves of the given job's kits and (B) the designs of the fights themselves. Whether we start with full gauge to immediately blow our big damage, or unlock it with a CD, or the CDs themselves are our big damage... isn't super relevant/impactful overall, nor is what portion of abilities will naturally sync up to within 15s per 120s (so long as there's still variation in contexts between those raid burst uses).

[Atelier-Bagur]

I've always wondered, what percentage of players actually deal with the 2 minute meta in any real sense?

I know for one never dabbled on it. I quit EW Savages during its early days after realizing how stupid the loot system was.

Doesnt mean I dont perform well in fights. I just make sure I know how to play the job, but I just flat out ignore having to do optimal dps and align buff windows since nobody cares about it outside of EXs (some)/Savage/Ultimates.

[Avrintera]

-snip-

I will respond even though at this point people just highjack threads to talk about stuff that has threads for it already. I disagree with you saying that this is not important at all. The community has such a hard-on hatred for 2 minute meta and yet we havent really changed all that much? I play the shit out of paladin and guess what accepted by the community and the balance the changes were really good and make it more fun to play what a shocker. Do you know what changed on pld we went from a rotating small burst to a big burst every minute.
Paladins has no 2 minute buttons at all in the entire job not a single one that deals with dmg. So tell me how were they made it so pld can now flex and isnt a 2 minute job so bad and so horrible it isnt.

The thing I am suggesting and what I think the community doesnt understand is that we are so fixated on the 2 minute and how its so horrible, I mean am I the only one who realises its barely changed?? Before you had 60 90 120 180 buff buttons or rotations so to speak do you know what that made a change to all it did was change from having 4 party burst windows to the 2 minute meta of 5/6 if the fight is 10 minutes long or shorter. Now Yes you had more smaller partner bursts which could be interesting like 60 with 120s 90s with 180s but when the entire team could burst most party buffs were at the opener around the 3 minute 6 minute and 9 minutes now depending on the jobs you took it could slightly change, I will give it that but it was barely any optimiziation like some like to act it was.

The jobs in stormblood and shadowbringers were still all burst jobs they were never over time dmg jobs even PLD. Paladin just bursted ever minute but rotated causing it to be weaker when the change moved over to 2 minutes because one of the bursts wouldn't get buffed it was still a burst job and nouthing else. As long as we stick to having buttons that force us to get an many skills under a buff window our jobs will always be burst jobs no matter what timers you put onto them.

This is what I am suggesting to remove all buff buttons and unlock buttons that lock away the most dmg a job can do and lock dmging rotation buttons away from being used. As long as their are buff buttons jobs will burst under them. You know back under the not 2 minute buff meta guess what you would line up to burst under the most highest party buff when possible but you just hit shit on cooldown their was nothing fancy to optimise that was any different back then. If you have to hold burst guess what you still had to hold burst just like before.

Now some people will say but we could recover better no you could not in any way if you missed the 3 minute 6 minute or 9 minute party buffs on the old meta you still got fucked on your dmg since those were the team burst windows. So the buff buttons and unlock buttons are why we are hear not because they changed to 2 minutes. Hell technically because there are more party buffs in a 10 minute fight than on the old meta you actually have a better chance to recover dmg than before. Now was it as punishing to miss the window that depends on the job but I would say if you missed a 3 minute or 6 minute window it for sure would be just as punishing as now.

[Connor]

I don’t think it’s the fact the 2-min meta exists that people have problems with. It’s that they’ve adjusted the entirety of gameplay to revolve around it, to the point that they even make mitigation abilities adhere to the 120s cool-down rule. Which ultimately just results in jobs feels more ‘homogenised’. They can still have the majority of buffs adhere to the 2-min burst system without having to make everything fit that mold.

Plus there’s how much it limits game design, because as you say they can’t make jobs go for a ‘build-up burst’ approach to change things up from others, because all jobs must have access to their burst immediately to fit into it.

Basically the 2-min meta thing is not bad by itself, but the way it restricts jobs and player decision making can be.