Challenging Jobs + Easier content > Easy Jobs + Harder Content.

[Grizzlpaw]

It's no secret these days that Job design has been getting easier and more homogenized as time progresses.

I took a long break from this game, and decided to start from scratch recently. New account, new world, open mind. This game continues to kill it with the story, music, and visuals. The community is still just as fantastic as I remember. 99% of my interactions with other players have been positive, even when mistakes are made and things go wrong.

But there's a dark cloud that continues to loom over me whenever I play. I wish there were just... a bit more for me to sink my teeth into when it comes to job design.

Whether i'm traveling the world and getting immersed in the story, farming rep, or grinding for mounts. One aspect of the game that follows me everywhere I go is the job I play. It is the vehicle through which you experience the game's content. And an engaging job can make even the simplest of fights into a fun experience.

If jobs are too simple, then easy content becomes... monotonous. At some point, when the novelty of a new encounter wears off it's easy to mentally check out. Doing your big burst every 2 minutes is fun, sure. But what follows after is 100 seconds of pure tedium. (This is a big reason why I cling to GNB. The mini burst windows help break up the monotony a little.)

The common argument to critisism about job design is "If it's so easy, why don't you go clear Savage? I don't see you gold parsing".

And sure, The hardest content this game has to offer does offer a fair bit of challenge. But the problem is any time you are not explicitly doing savages or other difficult content, the monotony sets back in. You do the content, gather your rewards. Then you log out.

Make jobs engaging and anything a player decides to do will have some inherent bit of fun to it. Every mob you encounter is a chance to practice what you've learned and hone your skills. Please SE, I beg you. Make jobs challenging again.

Leave us some easy and accessible options so that everyone is able to break into harder content if they choose. WHM can still be an easy healer. MCH or SMN can be simpler DPS. WAR can be a beginner friendly tank. But for the rest, consider creating a wider spectrum of difficulty that players can choose to engage with.

Sincerely, Some random guy with an opinion.

[TheRealQuah]

IF you make content easier, it's irrelevant how challenging the jobs are as you could just half-ass them and clear the easy content. There is barely any harder content in the game as it is.

[Reap00]

If you are not getting what you need from this game I assume you can find something else on the market to fill your needs.

[Grizzlpaw]

I could. I have. During the break I mentioned, I played plenty of other games. But I have friends who enjoy this game, and I am offering feedback about what would allow me to have more fun in this game.

This sound, reasonable advice on the surface. But all it does is shut down the conversation. "Play other games" Translates to "Don't critisise the game, your opinions do not matter. Play something else if you don't like it". And... what is the point of a gaming forum if not to discuss the game and occasionally offer constructive criticism?

[Sebazy]

It's a good overall point, but I think it's a lot more complex than just 'jobs too braindead'.

For example, the overworld just feels even more worthless than that 1 dungeon a patch that we lost at this point. It's just entirely ignorable once you've levelled your job and done your fates. There's no sense of journey, no danger, no risk and no sense of awe in places that you'd rarely see because there wasn't a teleport point 10 seconds away on a safe and comfy flying mount.

One point to be cautious on with regards to job design though, it's important to be clear about the skill floor vs the skill ceiling. Keeping the floor low and accessible is good for a game with a huge casual player base and FFXIV does that well. Where it falls short currently IMHO is that the ceiling is often too low and often isn't even worth aiming for because there's just no tangible reward for working towards it.

There should be a gap that you can clearly feel between sub par play vs someone who's optimised things. In a game that's so deathly afraid of parsing, the easiest ways I can see of providing that are big number nukes to activate those neurons or gating resources so that a well played job has more to work with as a reward.

[Calysto]

The community is still just as fantastic

Nailed it

[CidHeiral]

Whether i'm traveling the world and getting immersed in the story, farming rep, or grinding for mounts. One aspect of the game that follows me everywhere I go is the job I play. It is the vehicle through which you experience the game's content. And an engaging job can make even the simplest of fights into a fun experience.

Agreed, but it's not a binary choice of either fights or jobs being braindead and the other being complex. In a game with 20 jobs, where you can switch between them at will, there is room for a mix of simple and complex jobs while still having challenging fights. If someone finds a complex job too difficult to play during a challenging fight, they can play something else. It's that easy.

[chaotix69]

I think it’s a losing situation no matter what you do just because of how long the game has been out now and how solidified its player base is. Regardless of whether you make the jobs more difficult or not, MMO gamers have no chill factor. They will play unhealthy levels of the game until once again, regardless of job difficulty, they will have everything optimized and it won’t feel any different than it does now.

Everyone keeps saying, “it used to be better, it used to be harder, etc.”. But they sound like the WoW Classic community that swore up and down that back in their day the game was a CHALLENGE! Well, then the game rereleased and people were clearing the final raids within the week, so yeah. Maybe not so challenging after all. This situation is similar.

Do the jobs need changing? Yeah, a little bit I would say. But will that break up the monotony or make the game more challenging? No, not very likely. Hardcore gamers will always optimize quickly, and then shortly after everyone else will follow suit.

[HikariKurosawa]

The solution to your problem is right in your post lol, just do savages if you want challenge. I don't find the rotations monotonous, because they are simply satisfying to execute and the animations are amazing. If your rotation becomes too complex you're never going to be able to actually enjoy the animations. Then again, like 99% of the playerbase misses out on animations because they have massive damage numbers turned on blocking their entire FoV.

The issue is, if they make rotations too complex, then savage raiding becomes either less engaging or less accessible. If rotations are approachable, then you can have a surprising amount of difficulty in the encounters while also having high levels of accessibility. If you want overly complex rotations and bosses at this level of difficulty, then accessibility will suffer and the raiding community dies outside of statics. If you want overly complex rotations while also having high levels of accessibility, then the boss fights become dumbed down.

I think the balance they have right now is the right direction. If anything rotations should be more simple and streamlined.

[Aravell]

It's true that jobs have gotten extremely monotonous and lacks any sort of skill expression anymore. Asking people to simply play harder content to have fun on simplified jobs is simply not a good argument, some of the savage floors have widely been regarded as boring, simplified rotations and boring fight means zero enjoyment.

One major flaw with fight design being the only source of engagement means that if the fight is a flop, there is no fun to be had. This carries over to casual content, where fights are simple (which, if part of the MSQ, is understandable that it's simple), but that also means you have no way to have fun if you're looking for anything more than simple gameplay.

There's nothing wrong with jobs being simple at the core where they're easy to pick up, but at least have some nuance that you can master over time with more experience.