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

[Maltothoris]

But Whitemage is certainly an outlier there, it was bad, really bad, and it was one of the first instances I can remember where the devs stubbornly insisted on a design that the playerbase told them in advance was going to be awful, only to then spend the rest of the expansion trying to fix said awful design.

Actually that was what ticked me about Stormblood. Throughout the entire expansion, they didn't do jack to improve the lily system. In 4.05, they made it that cure 1 was 100 percent instead of 50 and in 4.2, you didn't need a lily for divine bension. Other than that, they didn't try to make the cdr stronger or they could have to where each stage of the lily could of has different effects for the ogcds. ANd then in 4.5, it was them admitting defeat when they did those whm changes plus the most hilarious buff to a move I've ever seen in this game with Assize getting its cd changed from 60 to 45 seconds, and its heal and damage potency getting bumped from 300 to 400.

[Rekh]

They could've fixed lillies during stormblood but instead elected to make it a selling "feature" of shadowbringers.
Everything with cub3 know is a "feature for next expansion."

Take viera and hrothgar hats for example, something they could roll out in patches during dawntrail will INSTEAD be sold a "FFXIV 8.0 feature" 3.5 years from now.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

They could've fixed lillies during stormblood but instead elected to make it a selling "feature" of shadowbringers.
Everything with cub3 know is a "feature for next expansion."

Take viera and hrothgar hats for example, something they could roll out in patches during dawntrail will INSTEAD be sold a "FFXIV 8.0 feature" 3.5 years from now.

Inb4 somebody slides in to reply: "BuT tHeY hAvE tO sPaCe It OuT aNyHoW!! tHeY cAn'T pOsSiBlY kEeP uP wItH tHe PlAyErBaSe!!!"

/s

[CelestiCer]

The problem is it all becomes too stale too quickly. That's really the issue more than anything else and it carries over to PvP and other parts of the game. There's no way to shake things up in such a strict "do it right or not" type of rotation, and the game is super limited by the tab target system.

I'd be lying if I don't partially miss Black Deserts combat system, even if it had a heavy emphasis on PvP. Where in the first few seasons? you could outplay someone with 5000$ under their enhancements with pure skill, was exciting... until of course the P2W scale went through the roof in a few months later...

[CelestiCer]

Summary: Square can't or won't increase mechanic complexity of the dull/casual content that makes up XIV while simultaneously homogenizing Job-Designs with the solution being " Just go play Ultimate ".

Have I not seen this before in other MMO's in someway shape or form? besides some with P2W features and/or horrible Grind-Ladders towards RNG enhancements... even those, where they streamline the Class-Combat experience, Driving me away from those games? only to see it happen here... History repeats, it's just in a different game...

Isn't XIV simple enough for what the average player wants to clear? Or has the game been this bland for so long, that the meta-mindset has shifted in favor towards " Ugh! Lets get this over with pls " vs making it as exciting as it can be without forcing difficulty onto players? No, instead many players vouch for the opposite...

- I want less buttons for the sake of doing less
- I want it comfier, cozier
- I want to grind less and be rewarded for just login in
- I want margin for error to be even less
- I want easier mechanics and simplified Jobs
- I want a 0 button rotation Job don't stop at 1
- I want no gauge management
- I want no flavor no flare no excitement
- I want / I want / I want / I want / I want...

How much more dumber do players want it!? The game literally drags our dead bodies through the finish lines, do we want to start at the finish line? players get there as a freebee for spamming one button, then will players be happy that its easy and comfy enough? Its absurd...

Or perhaps Square expects all players to enjoy all Jobs and flex all Jobs at a basic level for all content as their definition of Job-Depth which boils down to forcing players to play Jobs they don't like ( think MSQ ) vs playing what many truly prefer for most of the time or most content? Who knows...

There are players who ask for the bare minimum of extra towards their Jobs... and that's somehow to much to ask, while Square shoves expensive $359.99 Figure into our faces on the Square Store. Can't improve your Jobs, but as consolidation? here's apparel of 59$ to 69$, use code " Just go play Ultimate " for a discount.

How is asking Job-Gameplay to improve so controversial...

[kuroashi_sanji]

I feel that Yoshida treats us like toddlers in kindergarten, as if he has to protect us from all the evil of the outside world and therefore has a duty to create a safe environment for everyone, without any risk of harm. As if he had to hold our hands all the time so we wouldn't get hurt. That's pretty stupid, man.

At this point, he should remove the battles from the game, after all, nothing is going to be easier and more comfy than a visual novel.

[ForsakenRoe]

I feel that Yoshida treats us like toddlers in kindergarten, as if he has to protect us from all the evil of the outside world and therefore has a duty to create a safe environment for everyone, without any risk of harm. As if he had to hold our hands all the time so we wouldn't get hurt. That's pretty stupid, man.

I've made these allegories in the healer section before, but I'll make them again:

My mother used to be big into gardening, and would use the top of a soda bottle (2 litre) to 'shield' the plants as they germinated from being picked away at by birds, dug up by cats etc. But after the plant got to a certain size, she removed it, so that the bottle didn't stifle the plant's growth. SE doesn't want to remove the protective bottle from players, and so instead of weathering the environment and growing stronger from it, the average player's growth potential is being stunted by the game refusing to offer any challenge unless it's specifically searched for. Effectively, we're like those bonsai watermelons that are weirdly shaped

A second analogy, a personal one. I never learned to swim for YEARS, because I was very tall for my age throughout primary school. As such, in the 'training pool' for lessons, I was too tall to actually 'swim' in it, instead banging my leg on the bottom of the pool rather painfully. Instead of just letting me into the shallowest end of the actual pool, the instructors kept me in the 'baby mode' pool until I showed I was competent enough to swim in deeper water, which never happened because of the aforementioned issue. Instead of helping my 'growth' in swimming skill, despite their well-intentioned decisions, they actually stopped me from learning to swim, and I even came to resent the school trip to the swimming pools for the lessons, because I knew it'd be more of the same: trying to reason with the instructors that their method is not going to work for me, as my unique circumstances (being tall as hell) required unique measures, and them thinking they could solve it with 'do it the same way we do with every other kid'. I ended up teaching myself to swim, several years later in high school, in an actual, full-depth pool.

But, even then with the swimming story, there's multiple ways to prevent someone from drowning, even in a pool with 'depth'. There's instructors on hand, there's a slope so one end of the pool is more shallow than the other, there's flotation devices like those pool noodles. And the same should/could apply with jobs. A job can have a very deep and technical rotation at it's peak level of optimization, but have 'accessibility' built into the basic kit. A good example from healer would be WHM, I think. You can use Misery whenever you like for movement. But ideally, you save it for raidbuffs. It, plus the three Rapture/Solace casts to prep it, give you four total GCDs of mobility, which can be moved around based on where healing is required vs movement required. If you don't care to optimize, you can smash Rapture in response to a raidwide without putting too much thought into it. If you want to perfect your gameplay, you can spreadsheet every healing GCD out

What's the problem with the stance of 'we have one system that is completely optional to optimize, and feels good to interact with because big damage number. What if we had two, that you can optionally combo together for one massive burst in raidbuffs?'

[Mecia]

Summary: Square can't or won't increase mechanic complexity of the dull/casual content that makes up XIV while simultaneously homogenizing Job-Designs with the solution being " Just go play Ultimate ".

Have I not seen this before in other MMO's in someway shape or form? besides some with P2W features and/or horrible Grind-Ladders towards RNG enhancements... even those, where they streamline the Class-Combat experience, Driving me away from those games? only to see it happen here... History repeats, it's just in a different game...

Isn't XIV simple enough for what the average player wants to clear? Or has the game been this bland for so long, that the meta-mindset has shifted in favor towards " Ugh! Lets get this over with pls " vs making it as exciting as it can be without forcing difficulty onto players? No, instead many players vouch for the opposite...

- I want less buttons for the sake of doing less
- I want it comfier, cozier
- I want to grind less and be rewarded for just login in
- I want margin for error to be even less
- I want easier mechanics and simplified Jobs
- I want a 0 button rotation Job don't stop at 1
- I want no gauge management
- I want no flavor no flare no excitement
- I want / I want / I want / I want / I want...

How much more dumber do players want it!? The game literally drags our dead bodies through the finish lines, do we want to start at the finish line? players get there as a freebee for spamming one button, then will players be happy that its easy and comfy enough? Its absurd...

Or perhaps Square expects all players to enjoy all Jobs and flex all Jobs at a basic level for all content as their definition of Job-Depth which boils down to forcing players to play Jobs they don't like ( think MSQ ) vs playing what many truly prefer for most of the time or most content? Who knows...

There are players who ask for the bare minimum of extra towards their Jobs... and that's somehow to much to ask, while Square shoves expensive $359.99 Figure into our faces on the Square Store. Can't improve your Jobs, but as consolidation? here's apparel of 59$ to 69$, use code " Just go play Ultimate " for a discount.

How is asking Job-Gameplay to improve so controversial...

Western playerbase :^)

[strawberrycake]

Western playerbase :^)

No, it's like this in all regions, the issue is that in gaming you have individuals who don't wanna play the game, they're used to a lot of other genres being baby easy and letting them get away with very little, then they play MMOs. MMOs at their core is based on DnD, which is adventure and working for cool loot, it's just been gamified. Now take the modern MMOs player who bases everything on stuff they heard from an older audience who played back in the 90s and early 2000s. NONE of the people have the original context for why MMOs were hard, why raiding, pvp, earning mounts, titles, and gear sets, were hard.

All of these people are baised based on second and third hand accounts of things and events they have no experience with, they watch youtube and talk to friends and read old forum posts and come to this hive mind like consensus that THIS MMO has to be easy because all the other ones are hard, and we all know it's just un-nuanced hate on whatever the MMO/Live service game thats not doing well atm.

The massive lack of Nuance on the subject of XIV being made more engaging is sad, and it;'s becuase most of these people don;t even know WHY they dislike raidimg and earning mounts or factions, or open world content. They don't have a nuance opinion why XIV should stay this way, and when they rarely do, it's boils down to, I don't wanna come home from my 3 jobs, 8 kids, and 9 wives and have to think.

[Mecia]

No, it's like this in all regions, the issue is that in gaming you have individuals who don't wanna play the game, they're used to a lot of other genres being baby easy and letting them get away with very little, then they play MMOs. MMOs at their core is based on DnD, which is adventure and working for cool loot, it's just been gamified. Now take the modern MMOs player who bases everything on stuff they heard from an older audience who played back in the 90s and early 2000s. NONE of the people have the original context for why MMOs were hard, why raiding, pvp, earning mounts, titles, and gear sets, were hard.

All of these people are baised based on second and third hand accounts of things and events they have no experience with, they watch youtube and talk to friends and read old forum posts and come to this hive mind like consensus that THIS MMO has to be easy because all the other ones are hard, and we all know it's just un-nuanced hate on whatever the MMO/Live service game thats not doing well atm.

The massive lack of Nuance on the subject of XIV being made more engaging is sad, and it;'s becuase most of these people don;t even know WHY they dislike raidimg and earning mounts or factions, or open world content. They don't have a nuance opinion why XIV should stay this way, and when they rarely do, it's boils down to, I don't wanna come home from my 3 jobs, 8 kids, and 9 wives and have to think.

Sure, it happens everywhere, but western audiences lean more into a sort of 'x has to change, not me' mentality. Nowhere is this more evident than PvP which is full of leeches and carrot chasers who dont want to put the least amount of effort in. General inability to accept something might not be for them and not engage with it.

I dont mean to put JP on a pedestal here as they seem to lean more into a complaisant attitude if healer discourse is anything to go by.