Quote Originally Posted by rawker View Post
But wouldn't that introduce more problems for making the game too forgiving?
Honestly, I don't care how forgiving the game gets. There are multiple things I think could stand to be more forgiving, things that would better benefit the casual player more than the current attempt at "forgiving" achieves, because I don't actually think job design is all that forgiving for the casual player. It's forgiving for the midcore player who already understands the game's core mechanics enough anyway. The thing I care about is that regardless of how easy the point of entry is, there is still elements that can be mastered for every job, and that every job's core gameplay feels intuitive and cohesive. One of the reasons I ponder on ideas like this is because I feel as good as the charge system is in most places, there are jobs that it hurts, namely healers. The pressure to store and dump is present on many jobs, but when trying to factor in other potential offensive options that the healers could have, charges for offensive actions are very often going to be a given. And we see this already with how the charges on Draw have made one of the core aspects of Astrologian something that is now largely a burst tool rather than a consistent part of their gameplay and contributes to one of the job's biggest pain points, which is how weave-heavy its burst window is so much so that Lightspeed is a mandatory part of their burst rather than the mobility resource it used to be.

And the thing is, even if we can move away from the 2 minute meta, there will always be some amount of pressure to save charges for moments where buffs are present. Now, I totally support the notion that not everything has to revolve around optimization. I think it's unhealthy how much we look at optimized play as mandatory in a game where most content could be cleared by a corgi sitting on a keyboard. But at the same time, I think the road to optimization should feel intuitive, and I think there is some amount of store-and-dump logic that is not. Not that I feel that store-and-dump is never intuitive, because there are jobs where I think it works well, such as Dancer's feathers. But that's also why I say that I'm not proposing this as a solution to replace charges. Just something that could be considered for some actions alongside others having charges.