Thread: They're thinking about job identities for 8.0

Originally Posted by Musashidon

well face value isn't a reboot. it was just said 8.0 will work on individualization and some players have taken that has some system overhaul.

Semantics, but regardless, it was a hypothetical about the best case scenario.

Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Well, if we take what was said at face value and assume 8.0 is absolutely going to reboot job identity, then we have to ask who is that change serving? Let's say the catalyst for this decision is, in fact, the voices of disappointed players that we see here on the forums as well as in a few other places on occasion. If that's the case, and the goal is to create a future where everyone is happy with the state of their jobs, then would it not make sense to be open and transparent with that community to ensure the changes you are making do actually appeal to the people you're trying to satisfy?

But there is also the possibility that they are in fact "lost" with how to proceed with job design anyway. In which case this identity reboot might more be inspired by their own uncertainty with how to maintain the current direction otherwise. Because if we look at the job actions we just saw, what new things have we actually seen? Upgraded animations and finishers all over the place. And that's kind of what Endwalker was as well. They can't do that forever, just add a couple animation upgrades and a new finisher or two. So maybe they're just feeling like the jobs need a reboot so that future changes after 8.0 can actually feel like the jobs are changing and evolving, or that there's actually room to add new things anyway. Because you can't physically fit so many finishers into a rotation. At a certain point, the balloon will pop and it will stop working correctly, which we've already seen a little bit of in Endwalker. Gunbreaker says hi.

When you continuously delete whole facets of your gameplay engine again and again with absolute peeks like when ShB happened, and you're left with so little to play with, then it only makes sense to me that thinking about bringing bigger, actual meaningful changes again is going to be a colossal work for the simple reason that you'd need to rethink a lot of general systems, intricacies between job design, battle system and encounter design, make sure old content is still playable and relatively decent with those new systems, but also code them and implement them, test them and reiterate the process again and again internally until it's workable. Building whole new things is long and arduous, I should know, I've worked in the game industry for a while.

But they only have themselves to blame for it if that's the case, I still maintain that ShB killed their battle system and they painted themselves into a corner with it. The only systematic reaction they seem to have to bring changes or fix things is to delete what they flagged problematic. They've been at it for so long that if they want to start and proceed differently, it's getting harder and harder as we go. But at some point they'll have to do it, and like for climate change in a way, the sooner the easier. Procrastinating isn't gonna do us any good there.

Originally Posted by Valence

So apparently we'll have to wait for 3 more years until we get a single consideration for actual job flavor?

Is this for real? You couldn't do that for this expansion?

Meanwhile everything is simplified in order to remove any failure state (notably gauge costs for bursts among other things).

They'd better just totally redo half the jobs in 8.0 or even earlier in DT patches:

* Replace SCH's Seraphism with Alexander/Eden or even Omega/Athena stuff.
* Replace SMN's Solar Bahamut with a Shiva Diamond Dust trance.
* Get rid of DRK's Living Shadow, not sure why DRK is a pet job.
* Get rid of WAR's self-sustain, wtf.
* Redo AST so that they play slot machine cards for their *own* damage instead of ruining the entire job fantasy for the sake of "consistency."
* Give WHM back Stone/Aero dammit.
* Give SAM Kaiten back, and fix the colors in the moon/snow sen symbols.
* Give Viper more of an identity than haste-Dragoon. Add some treasure hunter or corsair or judge or Zidane runes. Something to give a pretty flat job concept more dimension.
* Give Pictomancer more interesting things to paint. I'm really not digging hammer+landscape and then a weird creature gambler mini-game that should have been AST's gimmick.
* Reorganize RDM's flow so that it's not piling on finishers; also upgrade fire and stone to visuals that match the new aero and thunder.