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

[ZiraZ]

2 more weeks until they show us these amazing mechanics that will replace combos and dawn a new age of mmo job design.

[strawberrycake]

2 more weeks until they show us these amazing mechanics that will replace combos and dawn a new age of mmo job design.

You mean more ways for Yoshida and his team to be lazy about actual job balance since all these changes stem from them and not us since no one asked for the 2 min meta

[ty_taurus]

Here's my 2 cents about that.

No one will ever say "Bro you gotta try this game, its good cause the controls are so complex!". Its just not going to happen, its not what makes a game good.

I don't agree with this part in particular. I don't think complexity is a requirement for a game's success, but there are absolutely players who rave about complexity. I work for a mobile game company, for example, and my Boss and I both are into mobile gacha games like Genshin and Star Rail. He's particularly interested in the upcoming Wuthering Waves specifically because its combat is more technical and complex than Genshin's which is not entirely simple, but doesn't really feature many technical aspects to its combat largely because being on Mobile first means the controls make it difficult to perform at a technical level. Wuthering Waves is not going to be a mobile game and is emphasizing its combat more, which is a selling point to that game over its biggest competitor. This is anecdotal of course, but there are many games where the complexity and depth are a selling point for people.

Now, simple games can also be very successful, but I think something worth noting is a lot of games that are simple, are simple on the surface, yet have an ocean of depth beneath the surface that players can optionally engage in. Super Smash Bros for example is, on the surface, a casual party fighter game, but also has an entire community of competitive players who will break down details as small and seemingly minute as frame data. Super Mario 64, a classic masterpiece, is a simple game to play with lots of ways to engage with its platforming at a far more technical level. Look at any speedrun of the game, and you can see that in action. Even Tetris had a layer of optional complexity that drastically impacts how a player builds and clears their map: T-spinning.

FFXIV on the other hand was already a simple game. What they have been doing is not making the game more simple, but actively stifling the optional depth that used to exist within its job design. In that regard, I would argue FFXIV is gradually approaching Balan Wonderworld with each expansion, a game full of power ups that are all basically the same and a control scheme where every button does the same thing--A game where depth is stifled and you are forced to take the game at face value and nothing further.

Bushnell's Law: The best video games are the ones that are easy to play but difficult to master. FFXIV stands in opposition to this by being a game that has always been easy to play, but seems desperate to force it to be easy to master as well. It's like with this segment of Misshapen Chair's more recent FFXIV job design video...

"Because every single little tiny thing that requires any modicum of additional effort or is slightly outside of the exact scenario that they practice is frustrating."

In his video, he's referring to the types of players who want to be the best at the game, but have no interest in putting in any amount of effort to become the best. But that does seem to be how the design team are approaching changes. Anything that even sounds like it has the tiniest amount of complexity is something that needs to be purged, or sanded down into oblivion.

[strawberrycake]

Here's my 2 cents about that.

No one will ever say "Bro you gotta try this game, its good cause the controls are so complex!". Its just not going to happen, its not what makes a game good. The best games tend to have simple controls and their complexity come from game play mechanics. To me, almost all of the complexity of FFXIV has been stripped out, and it's all kinda mindless right now. I'd like to see that change more on a mechanical level rather than the buttons you press in sequence over the course of 10 minutes.

If the complexity of this game is resting solely on pressing 123 over 111, its too late for us. I functionally see very little difference between the two.

Elden Ring and the Entire Soulsborne series would like to have words with you.

[Supersnow845]

And a trinity system doesn’t necessarily mean paper tanks and healslut healers, hell DPS weren’t even originally part of the trinity, the last third of the trinity was CC/support (denoted by yellow)

The trinity can work with everyone contributing damage, 14 just enforces the trinity when most content doesn’t actually need it so the whole system falls apart

[strawberrycake]

again with comparing the action games to a tab target mmo?

a fair comparison is lord of the rings online, which i've played since 2012. somehow that old game has more class identity than ffxiv.
there's no GCD in that game, and the trinity exists extremely well.

guardians(tanks) have a shield bash combo to keep aggro, and you have to keep doing it all while adds pop out in boss fights or mechanics are happening. you NEED a lore master in some raids for their 30second stun ability, and ability to give teammates power. minstrels are like a white mage, strong group healing. rune keepers focus on healing over time and single target. LOtRO's healers don't do dps unless they're in red line.

even though lotro has combos or skills that proc, some of them have different functions. idk how to explain it but the 111 argument wont work in lotro but might be fine in ffxiv because skills really dont do anything other than X amount of potency. there's a plugin for that

They made a very generalized comment:

No one will ever say "Bro you gotta try this game, its good cause the controls are so complex!". Its just not going to happen, its not what makes a game good. The best games tend to have simple controls and their complexity come from game play mechanics..

And I gave a Response Based on that:

Elden Ring and the Entire Soulsborne series would like to have words with you.

Check and Mate.

Anyways let's get back on track from Semantics. I sometimes wonder if Yoshida and The Dev team made the gameplay uh....less involved,to reduce infighting in PFs and Prog, since there were so many different strats were floating around during ShB.

[Colt47]

If they want to make the jobs play better then they have to stop making raw damage output as the most efficient way to clear fights and challenges. It really comes down to that because otherwise they will constantly be trapped in a feedback loop where people will keep obsessing over simplifying and streamlining for easier DPS rotations, while minimizing the utility skills down into patterns. That's why they ended up having a 2 minute window: So people had an easier time maxing their damage output to efficiently clear fights.

For example, what if there was a fight where if you dps the boss down too fast a more powerful one ends up appearing, and the goal is to move objects from one side of the arena to the other?

At that point snares become more important than damage output, so people no longer care about the DPS they are doing: The most efficient way to clear is to snare and hold the existing boss while dealing with the primary objective.

[Niroken]

If they want to make the jobs play better then they have to stop making raw damage output as the most efficient way to clear fights and challenges. It really comes down to that because otherwise they will constantly be trapped in a feedback loop where people will keep obsessing over simplifying and streamlining for easier DPS rotations, while minimizing the utility skills down into patterns. That's why they ended up having a 2 minute window: So people had an easier time maxing their damage output to efficiently clear fights.

For example, what if there was a fight where if you dps the boss down too fast a more powerful one ends up appearing, and the goal is to move objects from one side of the arena to the other?

At that point snares become more important than damage output, so people no longer care about the DPS they are doing: The most efficient way to clear is to snare and hold the existing boss while dealing with the primary objective.

At one point certain fights had a negative impact if you pushed your parties DPS too high, you can see some small mechanics still used today as in if you kill too many smaller enemies they explode and you get AoE damage and potentially wipe the party. That no longer became a DPS mechanic, rather it became a heal check. If I remember correctly they don't really limit DPS anymore because "it felt bad".

[Supersnow845]

I don’t mind holding DPS for a more favourable combo but pushing with DPS runs the risk of bringing back something in the realm of T7 and that fight should never be repeated

[Colt47]

At one point certain fights had a negative impact if you pushed your parties DPS too high, you can see some small mechanics still used today as in if you kill too many smaller enemies they explode and you get AoE damage and potentially wipe the party. That no longer became a DPS mechanic, rather it became a heal check. If I remember correctly they don't really limit DPS anymore because "it felt bad".

Of course it feels bad the majority of people are so used to DPS = Good they feel like they are getting slapped in the face. And that is because of lazy game design from other MMOs that this one took inspiration from. If they don't put in things that force some kind of limit to the damage in a fight the red jobs just become a giant molase of the same thing.