2 minute meta: Rework or Remove?

[Shurrikhan]

But aligning everything for 2 mins is exactly what we got.

So, two things here:

1. As compared to what? Hitting them on CD? Aligning them for <every X seconds, based on raid comp>? What stands as an improvement over this, and by how much?

2. What we got does not necessarily equal the only thing that was feasible even under those exact conditions.

So every job has to be designed around that philosophy, every fight has to be designed around that philosophy.

Until/unless we get mainstay difficult light party content, where the value of raidwide buffers is greatly reduced for lack of recipients, no, that's really the case. Jobs just need to put out the same in-group damage in practice. If a job with a less bursty profile has to do more DPS over 6 minutes of solo-play slapping a striking dummy than its burstier peers so that it then has the same party contribution amid an average composition, that's fine.

We shouldn't be attempting to balance jobs around their solo dps, nor exploiters (jobs whose party synergy is hidden from the rDPS metric) around their rDPS.

Was HW/StB perfect.. absolutely not... but did it allow more interesting job design? Absolutely.

Except our design opportunities still have all those same options and freedoms even now; the devs have just chosen not to use them. You're not going to hold a 90s CD for raid buffs, as proven by every 90s CD we've had in Endwalker. You're not going to hold a single-charge anything more than ~10% of its cooldown regardless of the timing of raid buffs. Job design could reinclude the old timings of personal damage amplifier buff CDs and direct damage CDs and they'd then be used at the old pace. The only difference is that you'd have to slightly compensate those faintly less synergetic jobs with that much more damage.

Yes, a super meta all-the-raidbuffs comp may thereafter still deal a fraction of a percent more damage than a near-buffs-less one (while non-buffers, in turn, would be further preferred for light party content), but that's also what you had before, often to a much greater degree.

[Llynethil]

He did say he got feedback from around the world about raid buffs, but nowhere in the interview did Yoshi P say that a majority wanted this. In fact, he said a majority of the hardcore playerbase hates the homogenisation.

Do you people also realise that because of the 2 min meta, they were able to create the raids and ultimates for ew, the ultimates being mechanically the most fun, interesting and hardest to date.

It's not the sole reason, but it's part of the reason those ultimates are so fantastic because they don't have to take into account the mess from before shb where for example a ninja would have to choose between using their cd or waiting to align it with the ones from others.

If they kept going with sb/hw system, none of these ultimates would be as complex and interesting in design at all and you people whould have whined about that instead.

Not only that but the 2min meta makes accessability to savage slightly better for midcore players (there's still too big a gap in difficulty though), who are the real ones who have suffered this expansion to begin with.

Raiders got all the usual savages, some of which were pretty tough aswell, the usual extremes and 2 ultimates this expansion, a lot of them having fantastic designs and some of them being the best too date in part thanks to 120s meta, so it DID work better than the old system.

It could be improved sure, but not before they add some serious midcore content first, hardcore raiders had their fill this expansion, there's 0 question about that.

And people complaining about homogenization, check job balance now vs hw ... yeah again it works better then what we had before.

You may not like it, but hard fact is jobs are prob the most balanced right now then ever (rdm needs a little love, but it's nowhere near an outlier like in previous expansion weakest jobs).

[Darkpaw]

Do you people also realise that because of the 2 min meta, they were able to create the raids and ultimates for ew, the ultimates being mechanically the most fun, interesting and hardest to date.

It's not the sole reason, but it's part of the reason those ultimates are so fantastic because they don't have to take into account the mess from before shb where for example a ninja would have to choose between using their cd or waiting to align it with the ones from others.

If they kept going with sb/hw system, none of these ultimates would be as complex and interesting in design at all and you people whould have whined about that instead.

Not only that but the 2min meta makes accessability to savage slightly better for midcore players (there's still too big a gap in difficulty though), who are the real ones who have suffered this expansion to begin with.

Raiders got all the usual savages, some of which were pretty tough aswell, the usual extremes and 2 ultimates this expansion, a lot of them having fantastic designs and some of them being the best too date in part thanks to 120s meta, so it DID work better than the old system.

It could be improved sure, but not before they add some serious midcore content first, hardcore raiders had their fill this expansion, there's 0 question about that.

And people complaining about homogenization, check job balance now vs hw ... yeah again it works better then what we had before.

You may not like it, but hard fact is jobs are prob the most balanced right now then ever (rdm needs a little love, but it's nowhere near an outlier like in previous expansion weakest jobs).

How many of you were actually here for Heavensward as compared to Shadowbringers? Yes Job balance was a bit off in heavensward but it wasn't such a massive gap as it's coming across.. Yes there was a meta comp and yes certain jobs were MUCH less desired than others. Same for StB where MCH was laughed out of PFs.

But I'm not looking to design and balance an entire job system on the back of "oh but this makes interesting ultimates." Ultimates make up a very small part of the community and has no business being in the discussion for whether this meta remains or not.

I am not saying that HW is better nor am I saying the 2 minute meta is better. Honestly they are two extreme reactions to the same problem. Truthfully the answer is some where in the middle. I think that for the best results..

I think Shurrikan is right in saying what we got was not the only solution within these exact conditions, and a more creative and less extreme solution needs to be found. Homogenization should not be the answer. Ever. I do not like that all jobs feel fundamentally the same. Because they are all a very similar tempo.

[Valence]

Do you people also realise that because of the 2 min meta, they were able to create the raids and ultimates for ew, the ultimates being mechanically the most fun, interesting and hardest to date.

It's not the sole reason, but it's part of the reason those ultimates are so fantastic because they don't have to take into account the mess from before shb where for example a ninja would have to choose between using their cd or waiting to align it with the ones from others.

If they kept going with sb/hw system, none of these ultimates would be as complex and interesting in design at all and you people whould have whined about that instead.

Not only that but the 2min meta makes accessability to savage slightly better for midcore players (there's still too big a gap in difficulty though), who are the real ones who have suffered this expansion to begin with.

Raiders got all the usual savages, some of which were pretty tough aswell, the usual extremes and 2 ultimates this expansion, a lot of them having fantastic designs and some of them being the best too date in part thanks to 120s meta, so it DID work better than the old system.

I'm not totally sure to see how the 2min meta changed encounter design drastically tbh... At best, the thing I'm actually noticing is a malicious tendency to align nasty mechanics with 2min bursts (pinax, superchain, classical, caloric, etc etc...), which to me is just a manner of increasing difficulty artificially or at least used as a balancing tool for difficulty, moreso than what truly makes an encounter shine mechanically or in the fun department...

I also fail to see how it makes it more accessible since the requirements remain basically the exact same: press your buff buttons on cooldown, and burst on cooldown... Always has been.

[Rychu]

Do you people also realise that because of the 2 min meta, they were able to create the raids and ultimates for ew, the ultimates being mechanically the most fun, interesting and hardest to date.

Ehhhh debateable. I definitely enjoyed my prog of DSR and TOP *DSR more*, but this savage tier was a whole herd of really great and pretty fucking shit. The tiers kind of just got a bit worst as we went on. P6S,P7S,P11S were all really boring fights and some of the worst designed I have seen in awhile, but at least P11S had cool visuals. P8S was a fun puzzle boss which made it the coolest thing on your first clear, but made it really boring on reclears. P12S was a disappointment by all counts, the second phase felt really underbaked compared to P8S and P4S. P4S especially was the best of the 3 finales by a wide margin. And we have to think about this P4S was the first savage tier made with this new meta in mind and it has only gotten worse overall. P9S was good and P10S was a surprisingly amazing second turn but that has nothing to do with the 2 minute meta. P10S's 2 minute bursts all did the same thing of 1 stack beam and 2 solo beams and just stood there and do your burst, that isn't interesting or game design changing, it's lame.

Not only that but the 2min meta makes accessability to savage slightly better for midcore players (there's still too big a gap in difficulty though), who are the real ones who have suffered this expansion to begin with.

I would like more clarification as to the gap in difficulty and how they have suffered this expansion the most. Not saying you are wrong, I just don't want to assume and be rude by mistake.

Raiders got all the usual savages, some of which were pretty tough aswell, the usual extremes and 2 ultimates this expansion, a lot of them having fantastic designs and some of them being the best too date in part thanks to 120s meta, so it DID work better than the old system.

I think that this is just comparing apples and oranges. Raiders would have gotten these things regardless of if they changed the meta or not so we can't just parade the 2 minute meta as this savior of raiding. We only didnt get a second ultimate in shadowbringers due to the pandemic throwing a whole shitstorm at the developers while they were also well underway of developing Endwalker.

It could be improved sure, but not before they add some serious midcore content first, hardcore raiders had their fill this expansion, there's 0 question about that.

Again, I would like to ask for clarification, also what do we mean by midcore content in the first place? Because I consider extremes to be midcore content, savage and ultimates are hardcore even if you only do them casually. People have this weird idea of what is casual,Midcore, and hardcore content in this game. Some people consider only the MSQ casual while others include exploratory zones into the casual group.

[Llynethil]

Again, I would like to ask for clarification, also what do we mean by midcore content in the first place? Because I consider extremes to be midcord content, savage and ultimates are hardcore even if you only do them casually. People have this weird idea of what is casual,Midcore, and hardcore content in this game. Some people consider only the MSQ casual while others include exploratory zones into the casual group.

Best example would be Bozja before everyone had the hp/dmg/healing buffs stacked up, but ofcourse it doesn't have to be a Bozja.

Extremes don't have nearly the longevity of Bozja or something similar to it, and DR and castrum had that perfect in between difficulty of not being casual, but not savage tier, you can't go brain off in them, but you don't need to be super dedicated to clear it neither.

The best thing they could have done for this in ew would have been criterion, they could have easily added a difficulty there that matches that, and match rewards to it, but instead we got .... well does anyone even play criterion?

[Rychu]

Best example would be Bozja before everyone had the hp/dmg/healing buffs stacked up, but ofcourse it doesn't have to be a Bozja.

Extremes don't have nearly the longevity of Bozja or something similar to it, and DR and castrum had that perfect in between difficulty of not being casual, but not savage tier, you can't go brain off in them, but you don't need to be super dedicated to clear it neither.

The best thing they could have done for this in ew would have been criterion, they could have easily added a difficulty there that matches that, and match rewards to it, but instead we got .... well does anyone even play criterion?

Fair fair. I think that the game really suffers when we don't have a zone like bozja and eureka. Yeah sure some of the Eureka zones kind of sucked on launch but it was their first attempt and by the end it was really good. Bozja and Zadnor were better zones for doing content, but the war-like battlefield made for a visually boring area to explore which probably hindered a lot of people's enjoyment. Honest if Dawntrail has a zone like Bozja/Zadnor with a more interesting visual design scheme like Eureka had, I think we got ourselves a winner.

[Aravell]

Do you people also realise that because of the 2 min meta, they were able to create the raids and ultimates for ew, the ultimates being mechanically the most fun, interesting and hardest to date.

I don't see how the homogenisation to 2 minutes is relevant to the creation of fights at all? The only thing that they've done is now they ruin everyone's flow equally with major mechanics since everyone has to burst at the same time, that doesn't look like great design to me.

As for the content you say is highly praised, TOP is highly controversial, P6/7/11S are widely regarded as very weak fights. I'm not seeing how the hardcore benefitted? Even Yoshi P himself says the intermediate players are the ones benefitting, so why exactly should I be happy about it?

[Valence]

I love how chill 11S is and how it flows, so I guess it goes to show how subjective this is tbh. On the other hand I hated the guts of 4S (pinax can go to hell) and most of asphodelos, visually, vibe, and mechanically, and the only one that I found fun or at least bearable was P4S part 2 because part 2 are always fun for me.

[Rika007]

I'm gonna add in my own two cents here as a primarily phys ranged player who raids but also actually still cares about the silly things like class identity, lore, and gameplay feeling, taking away all Raid wide damage buffs are an absolute non starter. Legitimately nothing good comes from that discussion. You will anger far more players then you appease for the POSSIBLE hypothetical of a better system that may or may not be better.

1) Class identity and feeling actually matters. There are players who actually choose jobs like Dancer and Bard because they love the idea of boosting other players damage, players who's biggest rush playing the game is hitting Technical Finish, Radiant Finale, or Divination and then watching as the rest of the party all trigger their most heavy hitting abilities in one coordinated blast. Removing everyones buffs destroys that sort of job fantasy and many players would flat out just no longer have a playstyle that fits the way they want to play the game.

2) Removing all raid wides but the ones who's identity is support centric also doesn't solve this issue either, it just doubles down on the problem. If you make it so that say all ranged DPS are the ones with the raid wide buffs, then all you have done is made it so that they are in control of the burst window. All the other roles will STILL hold their strongest abilities for those windows, they just now no longer can contribute their own raid wide to the cause. This also hurts those players who maybe dont want to be an all in support like Bard or Dancer, but also dont want to be pure greed like Samurai or Black Mage, as now they are basically told "you are pure support or you are greed, no in between".


3) Saying that it should be removed so that it can give devs a blank slate to work on and change up classes is basically the equivalent of "Trust me bro." I said the same thing about Summoners Endwalker, and sure I still stand by that, but that sentiment means nothing to Summoner mains who have to wait who knows how many expansions for Summoner to start being a full job again.

4) Going back to varying up the timers does not solve the issue like everyone thinks it does, and only creates problems that the 2 minute windows was designed to fix. When you have jobs that are out of alignment from what most other jobs you create outliers. The only way to handle it is either a) make it so that every job has major cooldowns at different intervals (which is almost impossible and highly impractical), or b) make it so the outliers are SO strong that they dont need to operate within the windows that most other jobs are in (which can be much harder to balance). Stormblood was most like this and hey, I loved Stormbloods meta and felt that in terms of combat design it was the best expansion we got. But not everyone agrees, and my opinion could be colored that I mained Bard and Summoner that expansion.

What I'm trying to put all this out to state is this, neither of these answers are good answers. The question is inherently flawed. Job design goes hand in hand with battle design, and currently battle design is far more of an issue then job design. I believe Shurrikan said it best in that you NEED to have battle design start forcing players out of their current paradigm of "hold everything for the window" mentality that has become 14's primary combat loop. Just gutting all raidwides for the hypothetical of a better system is only going to lead to higher dissatisfaction. I know I sure as hell would start looking at other games if Bard suddenly lost Radiant Finale or Dancer lost Technical Finish. I live for those moments in my static when I say it's going out and I watch every other ability in the raid light up and the bosses bar just chunk down.