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

[CelestiCer]

Statistics show the mechanically simpler jobs used the most, regardless if those happen to be top performing jobs or far behind. So apparently people enjoy those.

Can't really argue with your flawless take on the statistics. I guess this is peak Job-Gameplay! It cannot improve whatsoever, great job Square big obviously. It was never better and this the most enjoyable it can ever get, ever ( also big obviously ). Malefic / Broil / Glare / Dosis spammage = Peak XIV Healer Job design oki doki... mhm mhm ( big nods ) Now the only thing left to do is pick that lovely Healer job and" Just go play Ultimate " as Yoshi-P intended

[Supersnow845]

Hey guys I can make a job more popular by making it so it can one shot the savage boss

Square enix my consultation fee is 200k per year

[Supersnow845]

People keep saying this, but summoner and samurai were quite popular in Shadowbringers too. I don't personally care that the current SMN exists, but nothing like the previous playstyle of SMN exists anymore - that was more fun for me.

The way I think of homogenization is that "does repeating this content as another job (within the same role) change my experience", often the answer is no. It's partly because the jobs are easy but also party because they're similar. Some aspects of the jobs are different (timed heals on AST, self healing on WAR/TBN on DRK), but the majority of your role is still similar (kitchen sink this TB, weave a heal between DPS buttons). Other games build an identity around certain job mechanics, for example tanks that tank primarily by evading damage, healers who specialize in stacking regens or ramping up their bursty heals (current healer toolkits have a little bit of everything, for example closest thing to this is SCH being a pet healer, but only a small part of its kit interacts with the pet).

EDIT: Another example, SGE. As a DPS-based healer, do you ever feel like "I must DPS here to maintain my healing" - no, you still just heal by using cooldowns similar to scholar.

At the very very least at least at least energy drain correctly encourages you to focus on the fairy heals which is about the last shred of good design in the healer space

If energy drain didn’t exist then SCH would just dump down sacred soil for everything like SGE does with kerechole, having energy drain be the opportunity cost and making whispering dawn have such a short range really does make you actually consider the fairy even if there are only actually 6 skills+ embrace that actually interact with the fairy directly

[ty_taurus]

Knew it was bad, but only recently I tried healer? It feels terrible only after a few days...

My job got hit with eight simplifications ( give or take I'm losing count honestly ) and I tried looking up the casts done on my Job on why its so bad in late Endwalker patches or why it feels so more horrendous...

You should see Scholar's job change history. Not to play the game of "who has it worse," because I definitely feel for Samurai players out there, but imagine your favorite job just getting gutted expansion after expansion after expansion. Scholar was, I believe, an accidental masterpiece in ARR and HW, and while there are good elements that have been added to Scholar, it has never been quite as beautiful in respects to the current content as it was back then. SB was tangential to HW, and I think the changes to Miasma II (after it was taken away and then returned early in SB) were a great change despite the loss of Bio as a separate DOT to Bio II. Ironically Expedient is one of the most interesting things Scholar has ever gotten. But time and time again, they have gutted Scholar's two most prominent pillars of identity: DOTs and Faeries. Selene was publicly guillotined with Shadowbringers, and Scholar has gone from having at least four DOTs within its own kit (excluding cross class Aero) to having one unnecessarily long one.

And then there's Sage who, if you're familiar with Super Smash Bros, is the Dr. Mario to Scholar's Mario--a character with admittedly different properties and a different down special, but is dangerously close to being an echo fighter. And it's worth mentioning because context clues indicate that Sage was going to be something so much greater, but was kneecapped right before EW could officially start.

[Aravell]

At the very very least at least at least energy drain correctly encourages you to focus on the fairy heals which is about the last shred of good design in the healer space

If energy drain didn’t exist then SCH would just dump down sacred soil for everything like SGE does with kerechole, having energy drain be the opportunity cost and making whispering dawn have such a short range really does make you actually consider the fairy even if there are only actually 6 skills+ embrace that actually interact with the fairy directly

I really wish they leaned into the fairy more. It would be great if optimal gameplay on SCH involves micromanaging the fairy heavily to reduce GCD healing required instead of just throwing out heals for free.

Would be nice if the distinction between pure and shield healers is that pure healers have damage refunds and are required to GCD heal while shield healers have no damage refund at all and optimal gameplay requires you to heavily micromanage your tools (fairy and kardia) so that you're not forced to GCD heal unnecessarily.

[mallleable]

Many people use this statement to try and prove that every job is still unique, but this statement us flawed. If I give you a choice between 4 identical desk mats, one blue, one green, one red and one yellow, you'd definitely have a preference, despite all of the choices being identical desk mats.

People can prefer a job because of aesthetics, but that doesn't change the fact that some jobs play almost identically. Like how the burst profile of MNK and NIN is very close to the same, or how you can play SCH and SGE by using all the similar buttons in the same order.

You're not completely wrong, but aesthetics are absolutely important though. They're why Inner Release works, and Delirium does not. Game design very much requires artistic problem solving as it does engineering problem solving.

[Vyrerus]

It's quite simple really. It's because the original design intent for FFXIV jobs is a diverse spread of jobs that roughly do the same thing while playing completely differently with different minor advantages which could be mixed and matched to make different ideal compositions for different encounters.

But the human brain, especially the more casual human brain, eschews the ability to play every job and actually strategize through this flexible design in order to always play their favorite job.

Over the years this lead to the developers caving into the casual mindset, because the casual mindset is the majority of people.

It was made all the easier after the first time the hardcore community had proliferated a meta gaming 8 man party composition in mid-late Heavensward. Once this became a hot topic, there came the conflict between hardcores and casual players. The casual players won out, because they had more man-dollars vs. the hardcores. Likely always will.

The homogenization came gradually to us since the start of Stormblood, often packaged in a pleasing way. Bear in mind that the first time it happened was the worst, and people of all walks CHEERED LOUDLY for it. This was in the removal of Cross-class skills and Cross-class requirements to unlock and gird jobs. This brought role skills to the table, and the impact of them was downplayed at first, because they largely did the same thing as many of what were considered to be the, "Optimum" cross class skills for job function. Many were lifted wholesale, name and effect, from prior cross class skills.

This was the first blow of the smith's hammer that reshaped every job in every role into a standard format. All physical DPS would now have Second Wind. All tanks would now have Dark Dance(renamed to something I don't remember(Anticipation?). Parry +30%). All healers would have Shroud of Saints (Lucid Dreaming). All casters would have Mana Shift.

It didn't seem bad, because it let people go to endgame faster. It made sure everyone was raid ready on their chosen job just by leveling one job to max level. And some of the abilities got durations lengthened or cooldowns shortened, thus become more powerful versions of themselves. Some of the role skills were also new, and allowed for some exciting recovery options that weren't there prior (Example: BLM could go into Ice mode and then Mana Shift without much loss on their end, greatly supporting their healers).

But what people failed to realize, and still fail to realize, is that by homogenizing optional actions you could take, this removed the unique cross class spread that many jobs had prior to this. This lowered everyone's soloing potential, as well as any potential for fight specific optimizations with those, "non-optimal" choices. It also took cross class DPS actions from Healers and Tanks and even some DPS.

Then, because not every fight reflected well versus these role actions, and because SE decided that some of the role actions were confusing role responsibility, the role actions themselves were trimmed in SHB, and then again in EW.

This caused them to also evaluate job abilities on an individual level and grade them in a similar way. Everything unique that could cause a clear cut meta composition to pop up again like in late HW would get axed, nerfed, or significantly altered every time one came to play.

The worst thing about it being that the math for each job was still different, and due to the original nature of the game's design, still led players to still find the meta comps. So the solution then became to make fight design worse so that jobs brought mattered less. Or at least, mattered less in specifically a, "Specific Job X sucks for this entire tier and should never be brought." kind of way.

In that they succeeded. And again people cheered it on.

We're never going to get them to make the game fun in the ways it used to be ever again. They are chasing dollars from the easy going people who don't care how complex or fun a game could be. These are their ideal customers.

And we have to remember, if they do some how return the game's form, it will just be a return to what we had before, not an earnest effort or innovative idea driving them. This would be easy for them to do, so it's more or less a win for them no matter what the demands of them become.

If some miracle happened, and the majority of people wanted a return to complexity, they can fall back on what's already there but unavailable currently, in other words.

[Supersnow845]

I really wish they leaned into the fairy more. It would be great if optimal gameplay on SCH involves micromanaging the fairy heavily to reduce GCD healing required instead of just throwing out heals for free.

Would be nice if the distinction between pure and shield healers is that pure healers have damage refunds and are required to GCD heal while shield healers have no damage refund at all and optimal gameplay requires you to heavily micromanage your tools (fairy and kardia) so that you're not forced to GCD heal unnecessarily.

I wish they would lean into the fairy more as well but at least the fairy is actually a valid consideration for SCH like lilys are for WHM (I don’t like the lily system but I can appreciate it)

SGE and to a lesser extend AST fall over because their unique systems are a mess, SGE’s kardia is completely pointless, it was obviously meant to copy embrace but at least embrace is also tied to the fairy which has other uses, kardia is literally self and soteria, AST’s problem is its cards have no link to damage and they can feel like useless filler depending on the situation

[Aravell]

You're not completely wrong, but aesthetics are absolutely important though. They're why Inner Release works, and Delirium does not. Game design very much requires artistic problem solving as it does engineering problem solving.

I didn't say aesthetics aren't important. I'm pointing out that form and fuction are different things. There's nothing wrong with liking a job for its form, but it doesn't mean that the function is any more unique.

I personally liked SCH because of the function, I loved juggling the DoTs and micromanaging the fairy. I did not pick SCH because "owo cute fairy", so I'm losing out when function is erased. I don't have a favourite job because the jobs have all started functioning more and more alike each other, and that's a problem for people like me who put more importance into function than form.

[Nabril]

have you ever played a healer

I have. And yeah, in every single game, leveling healers is boring.