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

[CelestiCer]

PvE combat Content feels so Empty Excl. High-End Raiding, Square rehashes an overdone formula of the same behavioral TrashMobs with Bosses redoing the same mechanics that never changes in Difficulty. After years of that Formula going into EW? it is radiantly " Barebones ". It does keep XIV very player friendly + provides good pacing for your 1st MSQ run, but extremely dull if you have to repeat that content ever.


- 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.


- Meaning Engaging PvE combat comes from what?
There's Deep Dungeon/Eureka/Bozja/Criterion/Extreme/Savage/Ultimate. While there's enough to nitpick here? to simplify... There are players who don't care for how engaging or complex Fights/Mechanics can be vs how Fun of an experience x content is when running through it with their favorite Job. And there's the issue...


- Job-Design Gameplay is Terrible
Tried Healer/Tank on my 2nd account. I knew it was bad, but not this bad. The metaphor? Square gives an abused Harmonica, with few music sheets to play it with. Can play it slower or faster, but that's how I would describe playing DPS. Cut the Harmonica in Half and that's Tank. Replace the instrument with a 1 finger hole flute and that's how I describe Healer, it literally " Blows " ( hehe... )


- Square erases Job Flare/Flavor/Depth, because...
I have no idea... Beating the unique feel out of Jobs seems to have zero benefits to our gameplay experience. I can't tell apart Jobs anymore, they all function so similarly. If you told me Tank/Healer were 2 roles with not 4 Jobs but 4 Skill-trees, I wouldn't argue it at this point. 90% of XIV's Cakewalk content? demands Job-Design to shine, cause that's all there's left. Instead, how boring Jobs are becomes " Glaringly " obvious. ( That's a WHM pun... nevermind )

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?


- My personal hot-take...
PvE Combat Content comes and goes at varying excitements, boredom and difficulties. Regardless if you like Casual or High-End? you're going to have to pick a Job to do said content with. So the Job designs better be stellar. Not tolerable, not kinda okay, not spam 1 braindead button, not I duct-tape a keyboard around my forehead and faceroll another keyboard with it ( wait wha?... ) No... Amazingly Fun. But it seems sadly that Gameplay from Jobs seems heavily simplified, streamlined and neglected.

I love XIV still, for everything it has to offer. The MSQ, the Community, Friends, Gpose, Housing, Achievement farming, the Sidequest stories you name it. It is great! But if there is one thing I dislike the most? one big thing... its the current terrible Job-Gameplay experience, mhm.

[Supersnow845]

I’m also of the opinion that I really don’t care how good the class feels in savage and up content because even as a somewhat regular savage progger (well at least until EW dropped) the vast majority of content I am doing comes from casual content

I care just as much about if my job is enjoyable in TAPB as I do about it being enjoyable in DSR, and right now it’s arguable for most jobs that it’s enjoyable in neither

[Jeeqbit]

Square rehashes an overdone formula

Nothing really wrong with this, but it's a preference thing. I like the consistency.

with Bosses redoing the same mechanics

Mm, I disagree that they are the same mechanics. But that depends how you break it down as well. If you break down past the animations to stack, spread or move then sure, you are never going to enjoy the game.

that never changes in Difficulty

I disagree with this. Level 90 dungeons are harder than the earliest dungeons. In level 90 dungeons, they are willing to do mechanics that don't telegraph with red circles and instead ask you to observe your environment a lot to work out where lasers will fire, where tentacles will hit, where the wind will blow aoes to and give you doom if you get hit etc.

But no matter how hard they make them, they follow a script and do mechanics in the same order always. You farm them several times a week and become a literal "expert" at them, so they feel easier than they are to, say, a first timer who will usually rack up vulns and die to stuff.

extremely dull if you have to repeat that content ever.

That's mostly the issue, yes. I actually never minded doing old dungeons again in roulette, actually. What makes them boring to me is when the item level sync isn't good so the mechanics don't even matter.

I think the other thing that makes them boring is when they are current content and you are repeating them several times a week. We used to get 2 new expert dungeons every 4 months. Now one of them is always there for twice that timeframe. I think merging Expert and Level 90 roulettes would help.

Cut the Harmonica in Half and that's Tank. Replace the instrument with a 1 finger hole flute and that's how I describe Healer

I don't agree about tanks. They are fine. Some DPS play like tanks, such as Machinist. There are more distracting DPS with a lot to do while also trying to do mechanics, such as Ninja, but I don't personally think jobs need to be distracting like this so it's really just always going to be an opinion people have.

Healers I agree, that is the role you can choose when you are sleepy and want to do a dungeon while half asleep because you only spam 1 button. I don't personally mind this necessarily and it is good that we aren't punished for trying to heal, because then people might not heal due to the temptation of progressing their rotation.

But the healer role could use just a tiny bit more, such as a red mage style system to rotate 2 attacks to balance things, or to add a very long buff that enables a second combo attack, and then build up to a bigger attack. Doesn't need that much. Just 1 or 2 more things so it's not just spamming 1 attack.

On Scholar, Energy Drain is good and all but if we had something else other than that it would be nice. Maybe 2 Aetherflow slots could be spent on some sort of Super Energy Drain? Maybe we could dump the Faerie gauge on an attack by the faerie. Just something extra that isn't Energy Drain spam.

- Square erases Job Flare/Flavor/Depth, because... I have no idea...

It's pretty obvious why. Just look at the character page. We used to have half as many jobs as we have now. They appear to be making 2 of every job play the same to make it the same amount of work to manage ie. GNB/PLD, WAR/DRK, SAM/MNK, SCH/SGE, WHM/AST to a degree (excluding the card bit), probably RPR/DRG in 7.0, can we predict Ninja and Viper will play the same?

If you told me Tank/Healer were 2 roles with not 4 Jobs but 4 Skill-trees, I wouldn't argue it at this point.

I mean, tanks and healers are more similar than they used to be, but they always were similar generally, even in Heavensward. If you go back far enough, White Mage used to have shield capabilities just like Scholar, so combined with all the standard cures, esunas, area heals, rez, they were sorta the same even then... tanks always had a 20% mit, a 30-40% mit, an invuln, a stun, a stance, a ranged enmity attack, etc.

there's a clear desire for players to do more on their beloved Jobs if they don't do that.

I would like to be able to do more at least utility-wise. More situational things like Rescue, True North, Arm's Length, Reprisal, Cover, Nascent Flash, Shake It Off, Bloodbath, Swiftcast, Spineshatter, Elusive Jump, Aetherial Manipulation, Shukuchi, etc. But it would be nice if things like this were unique to the job. The problem is how these things used to all be the identity of certain jobs and now they are role-based, so you are expressing skill at the role rather than the job. Among the gap closers you can at least see a clear difference in the approach to gap closing between DRG, BLM and NIN, whereas the others are role-based.

[CaptainLagbeard]

In terms of difficulty for casual content, I'd say Orbonne Monastery was probably the best.

None of the mechanics are ultimately all that complex, but they were punishing enough that you couldn't just ignore them. Also the bosses had long enough scripts and low enough health that without a bunch of people dying, they generally didn't get to loop back to the start of their mechanics.

[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.

[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.

[Asako]

I disagree with this. Level 90 dungeons are harder than the earliest dungeons. In level 90 dungeons, they are willing to do mechanics that don't telegraph with red circles and instead ask you to observe your environment a lot to work out where lasers will fire, where tentacles will hit, where the wind will blow aoes to and give you doom if you get hit etc.

I'm gonna hard disagree with you on this. Expert dungeons are easier than Levelling dungeons. Levelling dungeons hit much harder than Expert. You're dealing with a sync and lack of abilities. 90 dungeons can all be facerolled mass pulled whereas you try that in a lot of levelling dungeons you're gonna end up face down in the graveyard.

Mechanically they are all similar. There is a limit on how many times we can see in/out/spread/stack without it getting boring.

As for the bosses themselves, I'd just be happy if they finally catch themselves on and stop making massive bosses that spin every 2 seconds. I love positionals but if they continue making these absolute units that do the Booker T Spinaroonie everytime they blink then just remove positionals. Even as a Tank main it's just boring, you just stand there and do 123 because you have no responibilities anymore, the boss will always center themselves and proceed to give generic indicator telling you exactly whats coming next. Personally I hate seeing the indicators but as the game is now made for casual players it's just the way it's gonna be. The game makes no effort to improve players and just spoon feeds them.

At level 4 WHM has their entire GCD DPS rotation. 86 Levels and the only other GCD you get is Misery which in casual content you never really use because you don't need to GCD heal. You end up spamming your healing Lillies between pulls just to burn them.