Is Dawntrail going to bring new things again?

[Ardeth]

Existence of Melee Positionals never stood in the way of any mechanic or fight design being developed. Square already creates encounters/monsters/fights/areas where they don't care if you can or need to land any, most or all your Positionals. Think P2S (which is an extremely boring fight)or any wall boss of which most to me are extremely boring with the exception of P10S in EW. Players are incentivised to manage their True North charges on-top of a tiny layer of depth towards weaving it properly during busy moments and encouraging optional movement without forcing developers to make every fight have mechanic vomit at any difficulty.

• Are they hard to Land? technically No
• Does it take effort to land them all perfectly all the time? Yes
• Will its removal make the game easier? Yes
• Even if removed, are better mechanics Promised due to it? Definitely No...

Removing anything from Jobs does not translate to Square promising Better/Unique/Engaging Monsters-Bosses-Encounters-Raids-etc. Positional removal also does not make Square promise us that its going to be replaced with anything more engaging Job-wise or have more depth ( like with pretty much everything else they cull/rework from Jobs ). It just adds another thing to the list towards what they done to have made XIV simplified and streamlined which to me is terrible.

If I wanted to throw skills at the boss from whatever angle? I have that choice already that's called " Don't play DPS Melee ". Though I know some Parsers would be happy to have it removed. Read this many a times on the Balance Discord, this mindset towards removing anything getting in the way of a perfect parse ( players included )

" B-But I miss my pwositionals cause the bwoss always wotates wandomly wuining my perwfect pwarse run, whaa "

Or just don't do them. Which is what 90% of randoms do. But in saying that, I never do high-end, so grain of salt with the parsing crowd. I'm not saying removing them is some galaxy brain play. I'm saying that most people dont do them and don't care. And since none of them are tied to anything anymore, they exist only to make that crowd excited because number went up. So it really doesn't matter anymore.

[Raikai]

The problem with healing is that there's no decision making or room for player expression when it comes to improvisation, no resource management. We have a slight glimpse of that during early prog... but not long after, you just start mapping out healer OGCDs to the aoes and tankbusters and then the act of healing becomes... meh.

Healers could live very well with a 2 button damage rotation if the healing was actually more engaging (which does not mean necessarily healing more) and variable.

A true overhaul would mean reworking the encounters themselves and the damage profile.

[Valence]

The problem with healing is that there's no decision making or room for player expression when it comes to improvisation, no resource management. We have a slight glimpse of that during early prog... but not long after, you just start mapping out healer OGCDs to the aoes and tankbusters and then the act of healing becomes... meh.

Healers could live very well with a 2 button damage rotation if the healing was actually more engaging (which does not mean necessarily healing more) and variable.

A true overhaul would mean reworking the encounters themselves and the damage profile.

Healing as a choreography is even more boring than dps/tanking. This is literally what keeps me away from even going healer in any serious endgame content.

I like healing older alliance raids where everybody dies though, that's healing to me. Maybe i'm weird idk.

[CelestiCer]

I am going to enjoy casting my " Hissatsu: Kaiten " again in Dawntrail

...........................

[MitsukiKimura]

There's a saying that's been my go to statement whenever something I wish that would happen
"Set your expectations low and you'll never be disappointed"

[AlucaDragonheart]

If anything they are going to strip away job identity, and overall fun, even more in Dawntrail.

[Ritsuka-55]

Make all DPS Selfish as they should, and give those buffs to healers, so they do something besides filling spots on the party.

[Rekh]

Make all DPS Selfish as they should, and give those buffs to healers, so they something besides filling spots on the party.

Someone smart here, about time we got down to the truth of it all. Buffs should be a healer's thing, dots a tank's thing, everything else a dps's thing like debuffs on enemies.

[Ath192]

My general feeling is that everyone is going to be back for Dawntrail to see the graphics updates and see if anything else in the battle system and content has changed to be more fun again, if it's more of the same, that's when people are going to start quitting the game for good. We had a lot of that in EW, however, the graphics overhaul and the fresh start to the story is enough to still pull the crowds back in. However, the current way content is playing out in this game is not a reason to keep playing it.

Its just not good anymore. It works.... and when you're new for a while its great, but after a couple of raid tiers and playing the game daily its clear it's not a fun service to keep paying and playing for. Disposable is the word, the game serves it function for a time, just don't stay too long.

[Remember_The_Name]

Is Dawntrail finally going to bring new things?

I am trying to be optimistic and believe that after receiving feedback, they will try something new and intersting.

But after playing the entirity of Endwalker and reading/watching plenty of information from different people about older expansions - I am not hopeful.

Down below I cooked maybe a little too much about my feelings with Endwalker:

As some people already said, the current braindead battle system attracted A LOT of players. And while it is good for the game (money, fame, more money) for now, it is absolutely horrible for long time players and players seeking interesting gameplay.

And as long as the game will keep growing and generate money - things are going to get even worse. Because SE in their last two expansions are trying to polish away even the tiniest of edges that will bring average player dissatisfaction.


I totally can imagine them buffing other tanks survivability to Warrior level, so noone is upset. And to bury healer class another couple of feet deeper.

They are running into a corner with hard content design:
The healing/mitigation/recovery tools are so strong and free that there's nothing else for the boss to do except vomit body checks at every other mechanic, otherwise the dead players will be up in seconds and the whole party hp full.

And to somehow make pressing the same 2 minute rotation over and over again interesting, the party must do a combination of strict dance moves around the arena. Failing any of the moves will set off the nuclear explosion that will reset your run.

If this will carry over to Dawntrail raids - God help us.

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Now, about Normal content. I miss unique mechanics so much. Everything is just "Dodge, dodge, dodge" and a selection from the pool of basic mechanics: "Stack/spread, in/out, left/right". Rarely, an interesting gimmick mechanic emerges, but after a couple of weeks it gets outgeared into obscurity.

Raids, Trials and especially Alliance raids are all undertuned: bosses spend 80% of the fight just to show their mechanics and are mostly already dead before anything interesting even begins. Mechanics themselves takes years to arrive and if you are new - just follow a deathblob of players and in 99% you will be fine.

Player specific mechanics that can affect the party (that are not generic stack marker or Tankbuster) are fucking extinct in Endwalker.

If this trend also carries over to Dawntrail... this is just sad.

I will thorougly enjoy Solution Nine zone, because, damn, I like cyberpunk. But without significant gameplay changes, it is one month trip for the MSQ purpose only.