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

[Supersnow845]

To me the 4 best examples of where optional casual content (so anything not in the MSQ) difficulty should be are

-DRN
-tower at paradigms breach
-dalriada
-pre nerf orbornne

I’ll give honourable mentions to puppets bunker, edens promise Eternity and E11 (I can’t spell it), CLL and the second loop of thelia’s final boss mechanics (they aren’t interesting but when she does them randomly you can get some mean combos)

There are examples at lower levels but the barebones kits interfere with them being good examples

[Mecia]

- Casual PvE difficulty should remain the same
Heard/Read this often. Zero qualms with it. MSQ/Open World Mobs/Fates/Dungeons/Normal-Raids/Alliance-Raids has a nice barrier of entry to XIV's Skill-Floor. Great for new players.

Alright so, Orbonne difficulty as the baseline please and thank you.

[ty_taurus]

As someone who loves healing in video games, plays healers and supports whenever possible, and who once upon a time praised FFXIV’s healer design for its innovation, creativity, and shear fun factor…

I would rather have a tarantula lay eggs in my ear canal than play PVE healer in modern FFXIV.

[Ardeth]

Alright so, Orbonne difficulty as the baseline please and thank you.

You say that, but when Orbonne was current the amount of people that would instantly leave when they got placed in it randomly showed you it was too hard for the average player or at most not worth the time. I think Orbonne would've been better if they eased people into it. It's why the next two sets of Alliance Raids have been significantly easier. There is a difficulty limit. I'm not saying Orbonne is it, but the way everything else is super easy and then BAM is bad game design. Because you alienate the people who can't hang and have no business doing it in the first place. That's my take on it anyway. Now, with power creep, it's a joke to run. But back then...

[ForteNightshade]

You say that, but when Orbonne was current the amount of people that would instantly leave when they got placed in it randomly showed you it was too hard for the average player or at most not worth the time. I think Orbonne would've been better if they eased people into it. It's why the next two sets of Alliance Raids have been significantly easier. There is a difficulty limit. I'm not saying Orbonne is it, but the way everything else is super easy and then BAM is bad game design. Because you alienate the people who can't hang and have no business doing it in the first place. That's my take on it anyway. Now, with power creep, it's a joke to run. But back then...

This was only a problem in Shadowbringers, and a minor one at that. Orbonne had zero issues with people leaving throughout its entire relevancy. Sure, you might get the occasional Vote Abandon or people leaving but it wasn't some sort of crisis. So why did it happen? Because the reward structure was horrendously imbalanced. A guaranteed, braindead Syrcus Tower run gave the exact same rewards as a 30 minute Orbonne, which could take substantially longer with bad players. Crystal Tower existing in the state it's in severely damaged Alliance Roulette. Power creep as a whole has ruined a good chunk of old content.

With all that said, had they just nerfed Cid's tower mechanic slightly, I'd grudgingly accept it. Instead, they nerfed damn near everything and then tossed echo on the whole thing. It turned one of the best alliance bosses in the game into a complete chump who can barely touch you.

[VentVanitas]

there's just no meaningful decision making or any real agency in anything below savage/ult, and even then high difficulty raids still feel... hollow when job gameplay is so dull, in my opinion. I've spent the last few months deliberately avoiding playing my own main because I don't want to face the horrifying possibility of being burnt out on the one job that I actually enjoy playing.

[ty_taurus]

To me the 4 best examples of where optional casual content (so anything not in the MSQ) difficulty should be are

-DRN
-tower at paradigms breach
-dalriada
-pre nerf orbornne

I’ll give honourable mentions to puppets bunker, edens promise Eternity and E11 (I can’t spell it), CLL and the second loop of thelia’s final boss mechanics (they aren’t interesting but when she does them randomly you can get some mean combos)

There are examples at lower levels but the barebones kits interfere with them being good examples

As for easier content, like dungeons, I really liked where Dead Ends’ bosses sat difficulty-wise. The first boss was maybe a little less stellar, but Peacemaker and Ra-la were really nice examples of dungeon boss difficulty.

[MitsukiKimura]

When everything feels the same it loses its flavor. Same thing year after year jobs being simplified disappoints me. Miss the days where getting good at your class felt rewarding. I feel for the healers since I legit feel like they aren't needed for most content and that's a sad feeling.

[Rekh]

Never accept mediocrity, that's how we got FFXIV 1.0. We need a step up from the faceroll dungeons we've been getting since heavensward. A realm reborn still contains some of the best mechanically impressive dungeons to date, such as wanderer's palace HM and Keeper of the lake. They also happen to have a lot of non-lineat paths, elevations, and pve mechanics such as ground floor totems or things to interact with. FFXIV devs need to play Wow again to remind themselves what pve actually means and how bosses (and regular mobs) should start attacking the ENTIRE party again in a meaningful way.

Also, it should be required that dungeons no longer copy paste the 3 mobs before boss formula; even Yoship would yawn if he still played xiv like he used to!

[Aravell]

Square won't increase the difficulty of certain content because it probably just will be met with backlash, which is fine. Keep most player-friendly. But there's a clear desire for players to do more on their beloved Jobs if they don't do that. And it's not to increase the Skill-Floor, but add optional Skill-Ceiling to master. Allowing players to express their Job mastery wherever they go, not just High-End... everywhere. This is what I find sorely missing in XIV out of any MMO I played. Mastering a Job or Jobs means very little. Just faceroll that keyboard. Don't like that? Go Raid then don't die and faceroll that keyboard. Yes the game is balanced, but perfect balance is near unobtainable anyways, so at what cost was it?

I think keeping MSQ dungeons and trials as near minimum difficulty is fair, people want to see the story and that's totally fine. Just make the jobs fun again. I'm not sure why the dev team doesn't see that shifting all game complexity into fights just does not work when you also have to heavily limit the difficulty of much of the game content because of high participation rates. Complex jobs and easy content is always better than easy jobs and complex content.

As for perfect balance, they can't even obtain good balance with all the similarities all the jobs have now, as evidenced by them still needing to do buffs every patch to account for things they overlooked. One thing I will say though, perfect balance is actually very easy to achieve, but it requires every job to do the exact same things with different animations, and that won't be fun for anyone in the long run.