2 minute meta: Rework or Remove?

[Lyth]

The majority of players aren't doing raid content, and are not affected by raid buff management to begin with. I can say that I've seen a lot of complaints about gameplay simplifications from people who actually participate in raid content, and removing raid buffs are a definite simplification.

...

I understand that you're keen to play freestyle WAR, and you still can under the current conditions. Don't worry, the job intrinsically allows you to work on your personal expression/'build variety' however you choose to smash the keys together. You do you.

The point being made here is that the original complaint around the 'two-minute meta' was that it simplified gameplay. Your proposed solution to eliminate raid buffs altogether is an even bigger simplification.

You can try to alter raid buff window timings to an extent, but current raid content is designed to allow full uptime while doing mechanics, and there's always the risk of pushing an existing buff window into an intermission phase without targets. Just do the mechanics, it's not a big deal.

[Ggwppino]

I can say that I've seen a lot of complaints about gameplay simplifications from people who actually participate in raid content, and removing raid buffs are a definite simplification.

Yes and no. Having a button to press every 2 minutes isn't that complicated.
Clearly if the meta remains what it is, you will practically lose just one button and it is still a simplification.

In my opinion, to modernize the gameplay we should move away from the burst phases every 60/120 seconds. Or rather, have classes that have different functions for damage and non-force output with 1000+ potency. This is above all to free ourselves from the homogenization and stagnation of classes.
At this point it would be better to have a few classes specialized in buffs and that their gameplay is highly influenced by this and that their buffs weigh heavily on both their own and the party's rdps, rewarding both those who buff (using them at the right time and/or on the right player) and team play.

Now everyone presses the single button every 2 minutes except for just a few classes (then okay there are fights that require you to delay the GCD but it's quite irrelevant since it's just 1 button).
There should be specializations to respect the fantasies also regarding the gameplay and not that everyone does everything but they do little.


This can very well be applied to mitigations etc.
Furthermore, it would be nice if some classes also had transversal utilities and not just buffs that directly increase damage. (Like mana regeneration or sch speed).

[Rychu]

Yes and no. Having a button to press every 2 minutes isn't that complicated.
Clearly if the meta remains what it is, you will practically lose just one button and it is still a simplification.

In my opinion, to modernize the gameplay we should move away from the burst phases every 60/120 seconds. Or rather, have classes that have different functions for damage and non-force output with 1000+ potency. This is above all to free ourselves from the homogenization and stagnation of classes.
At this point it would be better to have a few classes specialized in buffs and that their gameplay is highly influenced by this and that their buffs weigh heavily on both their own and the party's rdps, rewarding both those who buff (using them at the right time and/or on the right player) and team play.

Yeah see this guy gets it. People that choose option 2, don't choose it because "oh just get rid of it and let it be that". Option 2 is chosen under the assumption that getting rid of the 2 minute meta will free up the job designers to do different things with each job. I wouldn't want them to just remove the raid buffs, I would want it with reworks to job kits to be more varied. That is a huge ask to ask for such sweeping changes, but really where else can we go with our jobs as they currently are? Gunbreaker alone can barely fit their burst skills into the burst window, and we want to add more? For fucks sake those guys are drowning in gcds and ogcds while shirking or provoking the boss. Are we just going to extend the buff timers so that everyone can fit everything? I'm sorry but that is lame.

[Shurrikhan]

Yes and no. Having a button to press every 2 minutes isn't that complicated.
Clearly if the meta remains what it is, you will practically lose just one button and it is still a simplification.

In my opinion, to modernize the gameplay we should move away from the burst phases every 60/120 seconds.

Yeah see this guy gets it. People that choose option 2, don't choose it because "oh just get rid of it and let it be that". Option 2 is chosen under the assumption that getting rid of the 2 minute meta will free up the job designers to do different things with each job.

Those pace-making alternative additions aren't incompatible with at least having something to fall back onto (i.e., the pace-making caused by raid buffs) when those other elements aren't in place in the given fight, though?

You can have shorter DPS checks set pacing for CD usage. You can have new undermechanics set pacing for CD usage. You can have all of the above. And you could still have raidbuffs atop that. Net optimization is still a factor regardless; they are not mutually exclusive.

[Ggwppino]

Those pace-making alternative additions aren't incompatible with at least having something to fall back onto (i.e., the pace-making caused by raid buffs) when those other elements aren't in place in the given fight, though?

You can have shorter DPS checks set pacing for CD usage. You can have new undermechanics set pacing for CD usage. You can have all of the above. And you could still have raidbuffs atop that. Net optimization is still a factor regardless; they are not mutually exclusive.

Imposing a rhythm in itself requires that all classes are similar to each other in order to all be synergistically compatible.
This is exacerbated when out of 19 classes 10 "buff" (aka press the button every 120 seconds). among these 9 without buff of which 5 are all tanks.

My comment actually introduces several points:
1) the 2 minute rhythm is limiting and forces all jobs to have synchronized burst phases, force all jobs to work with burst GCD with 1000+ potency. (Don't get me wrong, it forces the designer to force the job into a very routed rotation where everything has to coincide perfectly with the 2 minute cycles.)

2) the buff should be part of the fantasy of the job and that it heavily influences the gameplay and way of thinking. If I choose MNK it's certainly not because I intend to buff my party mates.

3) Nowadays everyone does everything and there are no longer certain peculiarities that influence gameplay. Everyone mitigates, everyone buff. And they all (in general) do it at the push of a single button. (Because actually they are tools purely disconnected from the core or introduced rather forcibly)

4) There shouldnt be almost exclusively utilities that directly influence damage (inflicted -> buffs, received -> mitigations) but there should also be utilities that influence gameplay in some way.

[Shurrikhan]

Imposing a rhythm in itself requires that all classes are similar to each other in order to all be synergistically compatible.
This is exacerbated when out of 19 classes 10 "buff" (aka press the button every 120 seconds). among these 9 without buff of which 5 are all tanks.

Yes and no. It's required for balancing them across highly varied contexts, since you cannot have balance both across different jobs and different contexts if both significantly differ.

• If only jobs' ability to exploit those buffs significantly differ, not the contexts, you can just increase the less synergetic job's outputs so their total contribution is still as competitive as that of anyone else.
• If only contexts differ, then every job is equally helped or hurt in each context and thus job choice is not restricted.
• If both differ, then some jobs become slightly preferred for certain contexts.

Though, that begs the question of whether that's even such a bad thing, especially when homogeneity would otherwise be a requirement and we are comparatively free to swap jobs around.

At present, our only differing serious context is a one-off content form (Savage Criterion dungeons), so we're far from being unable to simply compensate less bursty jobs for their being less bursty if we so wanted.

While I'd be happy to see future-proofing for more content forms in the future, for now it's more likely that jobs tend to be more bursty primarily because the devs see the average players as preferring to having that dynamism in their output over, well, not having it.

1) the 2 minute rhythm is limiting and forces all jobs to have synchronized burst phases, force all jobs to work with burst GCD with 1000+ potency. (Don't get me wrong, it forces the designer to force the job into a very routed rotation where everything has to coincide perfectly with the 2 minute cycles.)

It doesn't, though. The design goal remains the same as ever: jobs should be competitive. If they all needed to have the same raw damage, then those with the best exploitable damage density would produce the most output, but not even every jobs without raidbuffs needs to all have the same raw damage. There can be a range between higher exploitability/burst and higher overall raw damage.

Consistent targetable buffers like Dancer would optimally swap Closed Position between the two, while non-targetable consistent buffers would faintly prefer the latter group and low-uptime buffers would prefer the former group, but they'd still be held in decent parity with each other, just like buffers and non-buffers have tended to be when one looks at more than half the picture (e.g., more than just their rDPS metric, for which exploitation gets no credit).

(SAMs having equal rDPS to a DRG, for instance, would signal an inequality in in-practice output, given SAMs they also produce more rDPS for the buffers they exploit through more potency dealt under those buffs, thereby producing more party dps for the same amount of rDPS -- just in a way that's hidden from the jobs' individual single metric.)

2) the buff should be part of the fantasy of the job and that it heavily influences the gameplay and way of thinking. If I choose MNK it's certainly not because I intend to buff my party mates.

While I'm tempted to agree, since that sounds more fun than just %dmg buffs, I have to ask: in what way? Even a rough example would be appreciated.

3) Nowadays everyone does everything and there are no longer certain peculiarities that influence gameplay. Everyone mitigates, everyone buff. And they all (in general) do it at the push of a single button. (Because actually they are tools purely disconnected from the core or introduced rather forcibly)

I'd agree that is a problem, but because of that last part: Most of those additional tools do not come out of the prior kits interestingly, but are instead obviously just tacked on (isolated and un-interactive).

To me, it's not a problem that Monk has self-mitigation. It literally started the game with the only instant and complete threat generator, counter-attacks, and multiple mitigation effects allowing it to snap-tank (just long enough to take the edge off the 'real' tank) or even off-tank (usually after ramping up and just for large dodgeable attacks or against adds, but still). All that is fine. But that shouldn't be done in the same way on Monk as it is on NIN as it is on BLM as it is on RPR, etc.

While interactions that give a pretense of depth on paper can often actually reduce the nuance available to a given skill, and there's plenty that can go wrong... we haven't even seen any real attempt to integrate them thus far...

Instead, a capacity is added to one job and then the creativity-vacuum sucks that up to spit out, sometimes cleaner, sometimes more muddled, into each kit the first job's competed with. It's yet more templating, rather than an attempt at role identity.

4) There shouldnt be almost exclusively utilities that directly influence damage (inflicted -> buffs, received -> mitigations) but there should also be utilities that influence gameplay in some way.

Agreed. That's far harder to design for, but I feel it'd be worth the attempt.

If there's one thing XIV seems to have in excess, it's complacency.

[SargeTheSeagull]

I've spent the last few days thinking my position through a bit more. As i've thought it through and read the discussion id like to add: By "remove every existing raid buff" I think it would work as a blank slate. Every current raidbuff is removed so the devs have 21 jobs with no party buffs so they can totally reevaluate how they want each job to function as it pertains to buffs/burst windows. For example, let's say they decide they want bard to be totally buff focused. 75% of bard's damage contribution to a party is done via its songs which it sustains over the span of a fight, not in short windows. This means a few things to start: 1. Bard no longer has any need to have a burst window as most of its contribution is via the party. 2. Bard can have a more sustained damage rotation similar to how it was in say, stormblood. 3. They can radically change how songs work. No longer would bard have to rotate between three songs to build up to radiant finale. Now one song can grant party members extra main stat for a few seconds and the bard can extend the song using its rotation. One song can be a flat crit increase. One song can have a tiny chance to decrease party member's personal cooldowns like bloodfest or manafication. Stuff like that.

On that note, because now dedicated 2min burst windows aren't a thing they devs can give jobs passives that reset personal cooldowns. Say SAM: Every iaijutsu has a chance to reset ogi namikiri's cooldown. Something like that wouldn't work at all now because if it happened at an inopportune time then your rotation would be completely thrown off the rest of the fight. In a world where buff windows either didn't exist or weren't remotely as consequential that could work and would be fun.

For the record, I think the majority of the issue with 2min's isn't "oh waah i have to press battle litany every two minutes". It's just the raw number of buffs that are on two minute cooldowns. If you have a comp of SCH, AST, DRG, NIN, RDM, and BRD that's eight 2 minute buffs. 8. Thats an insane amount of compounding damage buffs every two minutes. If they took some and put them on one minute buffs or even 30sec's for a few, that would go a long way to help.

[Turtledeluxe]

Remove.

The more I have looked into it the more I have realized that all of the job changes people hate and the two minute meta are driven by raiders and these concerns:

- FFlogs need to be "balanced" or roles risk not being taken to raids. Oh no. It's not like the participation rates are balanced for prog anyway even though we have achieved this alleged balance. Players are always going to decide a meta party based on the current Job design regardless of classes being balanced.

- Job X gets envious of job Y when they have utility, mitigation, healing etc that job X lacks. Job X says they need what Y has bc without it there is no way for their class to be viable or fun. Class x gets what Y has. This is why jobs have become homogenized outside perhaps BLM. Once again it is in the name of making classes preferred for group play.

-Raiders complained that managing buffs for bursts was too hard so devs have made it easy mode with the two minute burst with no regard for how it affects easier content.

Option 1 works too but Option 2 imo gives devs the breathing room to get more creative with classes and focus on their roles and how they feel. If a class has a buff it should be relevant to their role as a utility centric class.

[ZiraZ]

I'm curious if anyone that wants raid buffs completely removed even raids. I mean completely removed, asking for a raid buff rework is perfectly understandable, worth discussing and high IQ, but wanting them completely removed is just about the biggest smooth brain behavior I can think of, I can't fathom why anyone that actively raids wanting to go down this exit route.

[Kalaam]

Removing the damage raid buffs, yeah. Replace them by other buffs, outside of a few like bard songs or dancer's maybe.
And yes I do raid.