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

[Gemina]

I think keeping MSQ dungeons and trials as near minimum difficulty is fair, people want to see the story and that's totally fine.

I agree. The problem is they don't. I would have fewer issues with the game's encounter design if ilv creep didn't extend 50-60 ilvs above the minimum requirement to do the duty. More often than not, dungeon/trial/raid bosses can't even play out their more interesting mechanics because they melt before they even get to that part of their rotation. There are tons of examples of this from old content to new.

What's heartbreaking here is this dev team actually takes no issue with this.

Just make the jobs fun again.

This is too broad a statement. What do you mean, exactly? Right now, I am having a ton of fun leveling DRG. It is a fantastic job that I have very few gripes with (I still do have some problems with it). MNK, SAM, DNC, GNB, PLD, SCH and WHM are all jobs I enjoy playing very much. While other jobs such as RDM, SMN, NIN, WAR, and DRK are all jobs I have maxed out and do not care for at all. If jobs are so homogenized, then why do I find some enjoyable, and others I do not?

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.

By the nature of a role, jobs within any given role are going to have similarities. There's no getting around that. The question I asked previously is rhetorical. If jobs truly were all created equal, I would either enjoy or hate them all, and this is clearly not the case for not only myself, but just about everyone playing the game. You ask anyone what their main is, and more often than not they will answer you, or will be able to give you a list of jobs they enjoy playing the most.

It's the 2-minute meta that forces job design to conform to it, and this is the real reason why they all play/feel very similar. However, the only reason why this exists is due the existence of damage increasing raid utility in the first place. This has always been, and always will be the bane of both job and encounter design. It has always been a problem in any mmo I've played.

[ty_taurus]

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...

How can we ease players into that difficulty when we immediately backpedal at the slightest whisper of difficulty that actually pressures players to do mechanics? I was fine with most of Nier’s fights difficulty-wise, but I will never again use alliance roulette exclusively because myths of the realm are miserable to play with how boring they are.

[Ardeth]

How can we ease players into that difficulty when we immediately backpedal at the slightest whisper of difficulty that actually pressures players to do mechanics? I was fine with most of Nier’s fights difficulty-wise, but I will never again use alliance roulette exclusively because myths of the realm are miserable to play with how boring they are.

That's the issue, how do you? In my 20+ years of playing mmos, I've never seen a company nail difficulty. I remember the Mage Tower in Wow. It was supposed to be a harder solo challenge, but it was a casual player meat grinder. Most casual players never completed one fight, let alone the fact that there were 36 of them. Or solo Varient dungeons being boring and the bosses being mechanic city HP sponges.

I don't see this being solved anytime soon. But people always over estimate what the average player can do. I think that's why I like a game like Elden Ring. It's honestly fairly easy. The difficulty comes in how cheap the fights are. It's not that x boss is too hard. It's that x boss is exploiting something, and you have to find a way around it. Granted, how do you do that for 24 people, let alone 4 people without one of them blowing their stack? That's the issue more than spiking the difficulty. You can just do that, but don't be surprised if nobody does it. It's why hardcore content has the lowest completion rate.

[CelestiCer]

How can we ease players into that difficulty when we immediately backpedal at the slightest whisper of difficulty that actually pressures players to do mechanics? I was fine with most of Nier’s fights difficulty-wise, but I will never again use alliance roulette exclusively because myths of the realm are miserable to play with how boring they are.

Good question... XIV does a horrible Job at showing what the game can throw at you and how to deal with it throughout a players entire playthrough. Slidecasting / Self-Mitigation / Knockback / Cast-Bar of Enemies / Snapshots / Postionals and the list goes on. " Congrats on your new Job! Now go press some buttons ! " is the summary standard of what Square asks of players to do, making them complicit by setting no standard for most content besides don't die. This encourages players to never really improve as there is no urgency for it - until the Game throws everything at them which usually starts at Extreme/Savage.

The completely skippable Tutorial ( was it skippable? idk ) teaches nothing for how long it takes to even complete. Learned way more from Joonbob's video:" Basics of FF14 - Things the Game Doesn't Teach You " - which has the length of just six minutes. Players have a bigger desire to finish reading everything in the MSQ vs ever blinking once at their Tooltips. There's no need to understand your Job entirely, just faceroll.

Looking at Alliance Raids...

• ARR = Boring but quick Dailies amirite
• HW = VoidArk 1st boss !!
• SB = The most infamous
• SHB = Alright? but HP values in SHB are so high
• EW = A stroll through a park is more exciting

Clearly, some players will bail if its either to boring or to difficult? but will stick around if the rewards are worth it and not taking to long. Orbonne Monestary being the one I witnessed the most players leaving at any stage of its instance? when I found it the most memorable and exciting Alliance Raid. Ditto for Dead Ends for EW Dungeon.

Boring content + Amazing Jobs? is probably as bad as Amazing content with Boring Jobs, but currently? I find both boring. It's why I harp so badly on increasing optional Skill-Ceiling of Jobs without affecting the Skill-Floor to keep it all player-friendly. Cause I see no other middle-ground except that Square also tries to simplify Jobs every expansion. As a result? it makes players like me have to try so hard to care for the content is what's so sad about it and my excitement for Viper and Pictomancer is a shrug cause I'll predict it to be a copy-paste gameplay feel, even though I hope its not.

[Rekh]

How can we ease players into that difficulty when we immediately backpedal at the slightest whisper of difficulty that actually pressures players to do mechanics? I was fine with most of Nier’s fights difficulty-wise, but I will never again use alliance roulette exclusively because myths of the realm are miserable to play with how boring they are.

They really are boring, even when you die in Myths of realm there's no fear of a wipe or big danger like in Nier raids or Orbonne. Even World of Darkness has more "mechanics life" to it than Myths of Falling Asleep. Sometimes it's not even difficulty, but about how fast can things snowball or not. in Thaleia nothing matters, just res again; couldn't say that in old Void Ark raids, when those were current.

[ty_taurus]

They really are boring, even when you die in Myths of realm there's no fear of a wipe or big danger like in Nier raids or Orbonne. Even World of Darkness has more "mechanics life" to it than Myths of Falling Asleep. Sometimes it's not even difficulty, but about how fast can things snowball or not. in Thaleia nothing matters, just res again; couldn't say that in old Void Ark raids, when those were current.

Honestly, I say just pull a reverse Ivalice situation. Ivalice raids too hard so some people immediately leave? Maybe I'll just do the same. Maybe I will do the roulette, and every time I get Myths, I just leave. As a wise man once said:

"You've committed the cardinal sin of Boring me. And so, I shall retire to the shade."

Imagine if enough people were doing that that it was equally as "Bad" as Orbonne...

[Mithron]

Yoship: "If you want harder content, go play Ultimate. If you want to do damage as a healer, go play SGE."

I just want FFXIV to be fun again like it used to be in HW.

[4clubbedace]

Yoship: "If you want harder content, go play Ultimate. If you want to do damage as a healer, go play SGE."

I just want FFXIV to be fun again like it used to be in HW.

hw was unfun with a exploratory zone that was dogshit, two raid tiers that nearly killed the raid scene, and the very nature that "meta comps" were made near neccesary due to said killer raid tiers
DRK was mandatory , DRG + bard was too good, and ninja was too good esp with how enmity worked
AKA Monks int down was worthless, had no pierce synergy, and ninja took other melee slot, FU mnk

[Mithron]

hw was unfun with a exploratory zone that was dogshit, two raid tiers that nearly killed the raid scene, and the very nature that "meta comps" were made near neccesary due to said killer raid tiers
DRK was mandatory , DRG + bard was too good, and ninja was too good esp with how enmity worked
AKA Monks int down was worthless, had no pierce synergy, and ninja took other melee slot, FU mnk

I started right before 3.4 came out as a PLD main. A8s was my first savage. I got to experience day 1 Dun Scaith. I loved every single minute of all of it, even if PLD was "MNK tier." I felt like every job was the most fun to play and managing dots was enjoyable. I loved stance stancing, especially with healers. I loved NINs having what, 4 combos?

[ty_taurus]

How can we ease players into that difficulty when we immediately backpedal at the slightest whisper of difficulty that actually pressures players to do mechanics? I was fine with most of Nier’s fights difficulty-wise, but I will never again use alliance roulette exclusively because myths of the realm are miserable to play with how boring they are.

One thing you can do is make the punishment for failure less severe. The fight itself has something like Ozma difficulty mechanics, but rather than just killing you, you have to deal with misdirection debuffs, paralysis, petrification, being turned into a frog. There can still be damage, but it’s less likely to kill you, or perhaps is based on %current HP that way they can’t kill you.