r/ffxivdiscussion: Most people who complain about job design have no actual clue

[Swordsman]

"Most people who complain about job design have no actual clue what they want." (Title got cut off due to character limitations)

This thread popped up on the subreddit yesterday which led to some interesting discussions about job design and how to make it more interesting.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Original Post:

I think I need to start of by saying that I agree with these people on a basic level. Jobs are way too samey and I wish SE would make them more distinct from one another and give them some meaningful gameplay differences.

What most people dont seem to understand is that for SE to give us that not only would encounter design have to change but it would also mean we cant have every single job perform near identically well on every single encounter in the game.

People keep talking about HW job design and how we should move back towards that without realizing that the changes towards what we have today were made because people kept complaining about how they werent allowed to bring certain jobs into content because certain jobs just performed much worse than others.

Making jobs more different from each other WILL lead to balance differences because the current design literally exists to allow SE to have every job perform the same. If you want them to make jobs different from each other and still want every job to perform equally well on every single encounter youre living in a fantasy world because that is not possible.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Some notable comments:

"I love job design tbh but I think the 2 minute meta is a bit of a crutch in a sense, it also just makes filler phases feel boring. They do let me concentrate on mechanics though."

"Only exception to this is Dark Knight players who seemingly keep getting it rough more and more each expansion."

"The players don't have to have a clue what they want. They have identified something they don't like and its SE's job to figure out how to make their game fun."

"I just want something that's a little more than 1,2,3 with cooldowns inbetween the gcd's."

"discussing basically anything about how things used to be in the game is practically useless at this point when 90% of the current playerbase started in shadowbringers or endwalker. most people are simply not informed enough to have opinions on old systems because they have never experienced them, and job and fight design discussion in particular sucks because of it. maybe a hot take but as an example of what i mean, anybody that hasn't used goad before shouldn't have an opinion on if tp was good or bad. that kind of thing extends to a lot of systems in xiv."

----------------------------------------------------------------

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...design_has_no/

Feel free to discuss below. Cheers.

[strawberrycake]

Yeah a lot of people don't have the basic understanding of how content and job design influence each other, how small job changes can affect how an entire job plays or why half of what people may just shrug off would be a massive change that completely changes how we approach a job. And it's why it's frustrating to even have conversations in the community about it.

[ReynTime]

One of the most stupid statements in gaming communities.
That's just the typical L take from Division III cultists.

It's not the players' job to tell the development team HOW to fix something. They can only tell you they don't like a feature or design. You have internal teams dedicated to actually testing and filtering for more focused feedback. 99.9% of the players don't have knowledge or experience in real playtesting or game design. Just like in any media form the audience is in the right to complain even if they don't know what specific solution to propose.

Moreover "meta" exists in every game with character or role options. I'm so sick of repeating this and the sheep continue to ignore the fact so many successful games don't shy away from giving options due to fear of "muh balance" or metaslaving. Speaking as someone who was around during ARR and HW, the struggle to get into raid parties because you were so or so job main is a MYTH spread by players who always come up with excuses not to socialize to get into statics or had unlucky runs on party finder... Which is still a thing to this day, that's just how party finder works.

[Swordsman]

Moreover "meta" exists in every game with character or role options. I'm so sick of repeating this and the sheep continue to ignore the fact so many successful games don't shy away from giving options due to fear of "muh balance" or metaslaving.

This is one of the things that other MMOs like wow did well. These games still presented off-meta specs/roles to players as an option. Sure, it's not optimal, but off-meta specs and roles still brought some crucial functionality to the group, like a raid-wide buff or a debuff for the boss. Even if a spec didn't provide anything beneficial, for easier content it didn't matter, and a "bad" spec can still be used just for fun.

[Eastwall]

Lol. Can't wait to see the ast rework

[CidHeiral]

It is true that if the community wants jobs to be unique they also have to accept that they're not all going to be balanced within 2% of each other.

However the notion that encounters would have to be dumbed down if jobs were made more complex is complete nonsense. There will soon be twenty one combat jobs in the game. Some can be complex for those that find that fun. If you find it too difficult to play a complex job during a complex fight, then play a simpler one. Problem solved.

[Deceptus]

It's tough to have faith in the job team:

1) When it consists of 4 people attempting to cover 5 different roles, 20 jobs between them (about to be 22). There's not even a dedicated designer for each role.
2) When they can't even do simple math. (Aero II having the exact same potency as Dia 1 (which was supposedly the "upgrade"). Yes it was a simple fix but it shouldn't have even went live if they actually checked their work. It just shows a general amount of SLOPPEHness.
3) They clearly don't have a clear vision on what exactly they want the Healer role to do.
4) They've hamstrung themselves to the 2 minute meta.
5) They've stopped giving out data (possibly due to fear of backlash).

But also:

It's not the players' job to tell the development team HOW to fix something. They can only tell you they don't like a feature or design. You have internal teams dedicated to actually testing and filtering for more focused feedback. 99.9% of the players don't have knowledge or experience in real playtesting or game design.

This is vitally important. It is not our job to fix this mess.

[Valence]

That's full of strawmen fallacies. People like throwing around that complainers don't know what they're talking about as a way to shut down any contrarian voices that don't serve their storytelling. I'm sure a lot of people don't know what they're talking about, but do those people actually do though? I don't about that chief.

Never have I seen much jobs being barred from actual content back then unless SE really dropped the ball in things that could be easily fixed, notably dps outputs.