XIV EW Job-Gameplay is Terrible... Why?

[Aravell]

The fact the fairy oGCDs originate from the fairy are a functional difference.
Not that I recall any fight this expac where that fact actually mattered, but it is there. Also the risk of ghosting or getting oGCDs delayed if the fairy is moving.

P3S Fountain of Fire and Flames of Asphodelos (if not doing tank invuln), P8S P2 Natural Alignment (2 tiles) and High Concept. Those were where SCH's totem healing was helpful, not that it matters anymore now that Sacred Soil became Sacred Continent and Deployment Tactics can now deploy from here to Narnia.

[Supersnow845]

Hey guys I can make a job more popular by making it so it can one shot the savage boss

Square enix my consultation fee is 200k per year

[Supersnow845]

People keep saying this, but summoner and samurai were quite popular in Shadowbringers too. I don't personally care that the current SMN exists, but nothing like the previous playstyle of SMN exists anymore - that was more fun for me.

The way I think of homogenization is that "does repeating this content as another job (within the same role) change my experience", often the answer is no. It's partly because the jobs are easy but also party because they're similar. Some aspects of the jobs are different (timed heals on AST, self healing on WAR/TBN on DRK), but the majority of your role is still similar (kitchen sink this TB, weave a heal between DPS buttons). Other games build an identity around certain job mechanics, for example tanks that tank primarily by evading damage, healers who specialize in stacking regens or ramping up their bursty heals (current healer toolkits have a little bit of everything, for example closest thing to this is SCH being a pet healer, but only a small part of its kit interacts with the pet).

EDIT: Another example, SGE. As a DPS-based healer, do you ever feel like "I must DPS here to maintain my healing" - no, you still just heal by using cooldowns similar to scholar.

At the very very least at least at least energy drain correctly encourages you to focus on the fairy heals which is about the last shred of good design in the healer space

If energy drain didn’t exist then SCH would just dump down sacred soil for everything like SGE does with kerechole, having energy drain be the opportunity cost and making whispering dawn have such a short range really does make you actually consider the fairy even if there are only actually 6 skills+ embrace that actually interact with the fairy directly

[Aravell]

At the very very least at least at least energy drain correctly encourages you to focus on the fairy heals which is about the last shred of good design in the healer space

If energy drain didn’t exist then SCH would just dump down sacred soil for everything like SGE does with kerechole, having energy drain be the opportunity cost and making whispering dawn have such a short range really does make you actually consider the fairy even if there are only actually 6 skills+ embrace that actually interact with the fairy directly

I really wish they leaned into the fairy more. It would be great if optimal gameplay on SCH involves micromanaging the fairy heavily to reduce GCD healing required instead of just throwing out heals for free.

Would be nice if the distinction between pure and shield healers is that pure healers have damage refunds and are required to GCD heal while shield healers have no damage refund at all and optimal gameplay requires you to heavily micromanage your tools (fairy and kardia) so that you're not forced to GCD heal unnecessarily.

[Supersnow845]

I really wish they leaned into the fairy more. It would be great if optimal gameplay on SCH involves micromanaging the fairy heavily to reduce GCD healing required instead of just throwing out heals for free.

Would be nice if the distinction between pure and shield healers is that pure healers have damage refunds and are required to GCD heal while shield healers have no damage refund at all and optimal gameplay requires you to heavily micromanage your tools (fairy and kardia) so that you're not forced to GCD heal unnecessarily.

I wish they would lean into the fairy more as well but at least the fairy is actually a valid consideration for SCH like lilys are for WHM (I don’t like the lily system but I can appreciate it)

SGE and to a lesser extend AST fall over because their unique systems are a mess, SGE’s kardia is completely pointless, it was obviously meant to copy embrace but at least embrace is also tied to the fairy which has other uses, kardia is literally self and soteria, AST’s problem is its cards have no link to damage and they can feel like useless filler depending on the situation

[Vyrerus]

It's quite simple really. It's because the original design intent for FFXIV jobs is a diverse spread of jobs that roughly do the same thing while playing completely differently with different minor advantages which could be mixed and matched to make different ideal compositions for different encounters.

But the human brain, especially the more casual human brain, eschews the ability to play every job and actually strategize through this flexible design in order to always play their favorite job.

Over the years this lead to the developers caving into the casual mindset, because the casual mindset is the majority of people.

It was made all the easier after the first time the hardcore community had proliferated a meta gaming 8 man party composition in mid-late Heavensward. Once this became a hot topic, there came the conflict between hardcores and casual players. The casual players won out, because they had more man-dollars vs. the hardcores. Likely always will.

The homogenization came gradually to us since the start of Stormblood, often packaged in a pleasing way. Bear in mind that the first time it happened was the worst, and people of all walks CHEERED LOUDLY for it. This was in the removal of Cross-class skills and Cross-class requirements to unlock and gird jobs. This brought role skills to the table, and the impact of them was downplayed at first, because they largely did the same thing as many of what were considered to be the, "Optimum" cross class skills for job function. Many were lifted wholesale, name and effect, from prior cross class skills.

This was the first blow of the smith's hammer that reshaped every job in every role into a standard format. All physical DPS would now have Second Wind. All tanks would now have Dark Dance(renamed to something I don't remember(Anticipation?). Parry +30%). All healers would have Shroud of Saints (Lucid Dreaming). All casters would have Mana Shift.

It didn't seem bad, because it let people go to endgame faster. It made sure everyone was raid ready on their chosen job just by leveling one job to max level. And some of the abilities got durations lengthened or cooldowns shortened, thus become more powerful versions of themselves. Some of the role skills were also new, and allowed for some exciting recovery options that weren't there prior (Example: BLM could go into Ice mode and then Mana Shift without much loss on their end, greatly supporting their healers).

But what people failed to realize, and still fail to realize, is that by homogenizing optional actions you could take, this removed the unique cross class spread that many jobs had prior to this. This lowered everyone's soloing potential, as well as any potential for fight specific optimizations with those, "non-optimal" choices. It also took cross class DPS actions from Healers and Tanks and even some DPS.

Then, because not every fight reflected well versus these role actions, and because SE decided that some of the role actions were confusing role responsibility, the role actions themselves were trimmed in SHB, and then again in EW.

This caused them to also evaluate job abilities on an individual level and grade them in a similar way. Everything unique that could cause a clear cut meta composition to pop up again like in late HW would get axed, nerfed, or significantly altered every time one came to play.

The worst thing about it being that the math for each job was still different, and due to the original nature of the game's design, still led players to still find the meta comps. So the solution then became to make fight design worse so that jobs brought mattered less. Or at least, mattered less in specifically a, "Specific Job X sucks for this entire tier and should never be brought." kind of way.

In that they succeeded. And again people cheered it on.

We're never going to get them to make the game fun in the ways it used to be ever again. They are chasing dollars from the easy going people who don't care how complex or fun a game could be. These are their ideal customers.

And we have to remember, if they do some how return the game's form, it will just be a return to what we had before, not an earnest effort or innovative idea driving them. This would be easy for them to do, so it's more or less a win for them no matter what the demands of them become.

If some miracle happened, and the majority of people wanted a return to complexity, they can fall back on what's already there but unavailable currently, in other words.

[Aravell]

You're not completely wrong, but aesthetics are absolutely important though. They're why Inner Release works, and Delirium does not. Game design very much requires artistic problem solving as it does engineering problem solving.

I didn't say aesthetics aren't important. I'm pointing out that form and fuction are different things. There's nothing wrong with liking a job for its form, but it doesn't mean that the function is any more unique.

I personally liked SCH because of the function, I loved juggling the DoTs and micromanaging the fairy. I did not pick SCH because "owo cute fairy", so I'm losing out when function is erased. I don't have a favourite job because the jobs have all started functioning more and more alike each other, and that's a problem for people like me who put more importance into function than form.

[mallleable]

I didn't say aesthetics aren't important. I'm pointing out that form and fuction are different things. There's nothing wrong with liking a job for its form, but it doesn't mean that the function is any more unique.

I personally liked SCH because of the function, I loved juggling the DoTs and micromanaging the fairy. I did not pick SCH because "owo cute fairy", so I'm losing out when function is erased. I don't have a favourite job because the jobs have all started functioning more and more alike each other, and that's a problem for people like me who put more importance into function than form.

Right, your post kinda read that way to me, sorry. What I would like to see happen with jobs is that form becomes deeply intertwined with function.

[Rekh]

It's quite simple really. It's because the original design intent for FFXIV jobs is a diverse spread of jobs that roughly do the same thing while playing completely differently with different minor advantages which could be mixed and matched to make different ideal compositions for different encounters.

Yeah blame casuals while the raiders are the ones who whined required jobs like bard with piercing damage for savage content; as well as the fact that balancing ultimates (with very strict dps requirements) is much easier with homogenization. But yes, it's the dirty casuals /sarcasm.