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

[ty_taurus]

I still have never seen this question answered. What do you hope to see in a new expansion? All the same buttons or all completely new buttons? Old or new?

I can only speak from my own perspective, but I think generally it can be agreed upon that it can depend on the job first and foremost. For some jobs, expanding on relatively flat or linear aspects to their existing gameplay. For others, revamping old or outdated mechanics and elements. You can also consider Adding new problems to solve, and new tools on various jobs to solve those new problems. And perhaps its something that affects the overall vibe of the expansion.

If we take a look at something like Honkai Star Rail, for example, which got it's first major patch after its initial launch where we're visiting a new planet filled with new characters, we can see from the new characters, relics, and light cones (weapons), as well as rumors of upcoming character mechanics, that the game is expanding on two mechanics that were previously quite simple: breaking enemies by attacking their elemental weaknesses, and both the generation of and consumption of skill points. Misha for example has a passive that he gains stacks in every time any character consumes a skill point, which adds more hits to his ultimate. Sparkle, who's coming in a couple weeks, is supposedly increasing the skill point cap from 5 to 7 for the party while she's in it, and can restore 4 skill points with her ultimate, something we've never seen yet.

If we make a comparison to FFXIV, we could view the addition of job gauges as a similar type of gameplay update that we got back during SB. Something ripe with potential for them to take a similar approach with would be revamping MP, a resource that is literally functionless on almost every job in the game.

[CelestiCer]

So what would you suggest? They stop changing everything with each expansion? No more new spells? Keep everyone the same level so they don't have to rebalance everything? Genuinely asking.

To give a very rough metaphor... Take " Chess ", a very complex game with its existing pieces and slowly turn each Rook, Bishop, Knight, Queen into Pawns... you'd imagine the game with such Depth, played by mostly casual rated players becoming boring... To answer your question: I want homogenization preferably to stop of which Square show no sign to do so, that would be at least a start.

Yes I play Samurai. Not anymore cause of Loving it's Design vs Aesthetics and a Melee that slide-casts lots. All they did for me was add AoE versions of existing skills that could have been added as upgraded versions and not adding Bloat and I think they could have done this with so many other Job skills...

Current Button Bloat doesn't halt players to clear all content even on controller. These issues can be solved by suggestions made to consolidate/merge/fuse skills that Dev's ignore. More for the sake of more is equally meaningless as Less for the sake of Less regarding Buttons which is what we see allover our Jobs. ( Why do we still have Shield Bash again? ) Dev's can add Job-features creatively while keeping it player-friendly. Even our Gauge Resources has been made or is released in a laughably dull state.

There is definitely a group of players who would love XIV a lot more if it had something more to offer through its Job-Designs, even as optionality to master and a good portion of them, specially Healers? are forced to swim in " Shallow " waters. It isn't shocking that plenty of them after few years are asking for some " Depth ".

[Raikai]

So what would you suggest? They stop changing everything with each expansion? No more new spells? Keep everyone the same level so they don't have to rebalance everything? Genuinely asking.

They drop a new expansion and we're all still level 90. No new abilities because that requires that they remove old abilities which also angers everyone. If they add new abilities without removing or streamlining old abilities, console controllers will need 15 more buttons. BLM got really crazy with Enochian and Fire IV. That needed to be streamlined in order to add even more spells or it would have been too many buttons. You see that right?

So I ask again, what do you suggest with each new expansion? Zero new spells and nothing taken away and remain at the same level so everything can remain exciting and complex and balanced?

Or do you prefer a complete revamp with all new abilities and all new complexities each and every single time we get a new expansion? That way nothing gets "streamlined". You start out having to learn a whole new job even though you're still playing SAM. It's got to be one or the other or we just run out of buttons or face streamlining.

I still have never seen this question answered. What do you hope to see in a new expansion? All the same buttons or all completely new buttons? Old or new?

I quite agree here... It's the inevitable doom of a verticalized power level MMORPG. Happened a lot in WoW, for example. At some point, there's simply no room to add new 'toys', especially with the on-leash design that orbits the 2min meta - not only the jobs suffer from eventual design bloat, but there's also this second wall because there's only so much you can fit into the 15-20s of burst every 2 minutes. I'd say DNC is far from a button-bloated job, however I can't honestly think of what ever they can get in Dawntrail, given their Technical Step window is already at capacity of things to use there to the point that you might even end up with unused resources if RNG is good for you.

I'd say, under this vertical structure, FFXIV is terrible at future-proofing their job design, and honestly, the only solution I see is for them to get better at it so they can keep a good 'flow' of evolution for at least 2 or 3 expansions before having to rework stuff.

[SargeTheSeagull]

Seriously? You think PvE is just pushing one button over and over? You need to stop exploring low level areas. Get away from Limsa Lominsa and head into the current content. I mean sure, I CAN kill things as a BLM just by pushing Fire over and over and over, but the fights will take a lot longer. If I fight enough beasts, I'll run out of mana and I'll be forced to either stop fighting and wait for mana or push another button to recover my mana. If you're just pushing one button in order to make the fights last a long time or taping the keyboard to your head (I don't even want to know why you did that), that's your own problem.

Stop playing boring classes or stop lying to everyone here about all classes being played by pushing a single button.

Dude a quick glance at your lodestone shows that you don't do anything beyond normal content. And a quicker glance at your page on the naughty site shows that you literally just don't know how to play the game. There is no value to be found in the opinion of someone who knows nothing of the topic.

[CelestiCer]

Seriously? You think PvE is just pushing one button over and over? You need to stop exploring low level areas. Get away from Limsa Lominsa and head into the current content...

My current activity is helping Party Finder parties do Savage. Yesterday? I was helping a P10S party reach Enrage. Did so while simultaneously watching Netflix and type weaving Bonds 1/2/3 shot-call in XIV in-game chat while telling Kaiten & Coffee jokes without macros... That is the state of my Job's Gameplay. Boring. No amount of Content difficulty is changing this either.

Also, I'd never be caught dead in Limsa...

[Cyanamists]

Bro came in guns blazing and decided not to address the fact that he got btfo'd when minimal detective work was done as he got called out.

[tearagion]

ohhhh is it that easy? just grab some fresh players for your p5 DSR prog? why didn't any healer think of that? that's way more realistic than healer design just rewinding a couple expansions

[ty_taurus]

I just want to point out that from my example, if Eukrasia and Eukrasian Dosis weren't counted as separate actions, which they kind of aren't considering Eurkrasain Dosis is the only thing a good or at least decent Sage player will use Eukrasia on in the first place, Sage would have the highest percentage of level 1 basic attack spam. Our "Go play Sage if you want to DPS" healer, ladies and gentlemen.

At this point, I'd like to ask that SE redesign Sage to be a healer that DPS as little as possible, because seeing as how the only thing they know how to do with healers is the exact opposite of what they set out to accomplish, if they actively tried to make Sage DPS less, they'd probably result in it having the highest variety of DPS diversity. It's like that scene at the very beginning of Avatar where Katara had to waterbend backwards to freeze Zuko's crew. Do the opposite of what you're trying to do because what you're trying to do is cheeks.

[mallleable]

Maybe a take, but I'm kind of okay with jobs being somewhat simple -- at a glance, BUT I do want them to have more moving parts, and job mechanics that afford surprising interactions between actions. I think RDM is a good example 'simple on the surface, but has a lot of moving parts.' Like on the surface it's just 'cast spells, get gauge to use on melee combo,' but that's not mentioning dual cast, that it's two gauges that need to be filled at roughly the same rate, wanting to maintain a slight imbalance between gauges to force spell procs, the random spell procs, its movement abilities requiring an enemy to target and one of them being a backflip. It's that easy to learn, but fun, and challenging to master that all jobs should aspire to. All jobs need good 'buts' in their design.