Making jobs simpler is a mistake, let players fail.

[CKNovel]

And how would you know what content us "casuals" have tried?

Profiles are public.

The point isn't to make a "ha, unfortunately I looked at your post history", the point is to get the profile of those players feedback.
Before disagreeing with an opinion, I feel it's better to understand where it comes from.

[noumen0nn]

I don't understand who these changes are supposed to benefit.

Hardcore players don't benefit, because we dislike how job simplification lowers the skill ceiling and kills the replayability of high-end content.

Casual players don't benefit, because most of them don't play their jobs to levels that make these things matter anyway. Living Shadow losing its blood cost doesn't matter to someone who doesn't press their abilities on cooldown in the first place. Ask any random duty finder player what "overcap" means and 9 out of 10 won't know or care.

So who does that leave? The only category I can think of is sort-of-good players who would rather complain about aspects of their jobs being hard to master (lmao) than put in effort to improve. And again and again they get their way. "Oh, you're frustrated that you keep overcapping resources because you got distracted by that tough mechanic? Well that's ok, we'll just remove meter management from the game entirely so that you feel better!"

(I wanna make it clear I hold no grudge against casual players, not everyone cares about playing super well and that's perfectly fine. My issue is with the devs being under the illusion that ripping every bit of complexity and thought out of the jobs is benefiting that section of the playerbase, who in reality largely don't care or even notice.)

[Ayan_Calvesse]

Your argument rings a bit hollow when it basically amounts to “I’m willing to sacrifice healers at the alter of balance as long as it means my role; which is not healer; is balanced enough that the job I like is never not viable

Square enix has shown in the last 3 expansions they can’t balance anything unless they make every job play exactly the same and EW over ShB showed that homogenising the jobs even further around the 2 minute window ironically made the balance worse compared to ShB, considering every job except PIC basically got “1 more finisher in the burst window” this is liable to become even worse

In the “balance vs homogenisation” argument we are losing on both fronts

I found it interesting folks comment that Yoshi does not force the meta.
I disagree on that point - the meta is all that matters - this is why enrage timers exist to stop folks from trying full clears with certain group comps; likewise the 2-min buff window and the % bonus for having different classes. What they want is to design encounters with no class introducing a "suprise" to the encounter - such as the fact that Hippo could be tanked by 1 WAR due to Holmgangs shorter CD.

[Araxes]

Many people do not understand or get it but people DO FAIL. Even on easy content. The casual Girl or Guy who can only play 1-3 Hours a Day if even daily fails at the normal Job quests. I have seen people who die in ESO's overland content which is so easy that others grind it while watching Shows or Movies.

When my Wife started this Game she died to her Job quests and needed to do them on easy mode. She has gotten better since then but Extreme Trials would be a No Go for her while they are pretty easy for me.

The Problem FFXIV has is not that its general Gameplay seems to become easier, it is that there is to few difficulties. There is only Very Easy and Very Hard. Nothing in between. THIS is the issue that needs to be adressed. At least in my opinion.

[noumen0nn]

Many people do not understand or get it but people DO FAIL. Even on easy content. The casual Girl or Guy who can only play 1-3 Hours a Day if even daily fails at the normal Job quests. I have seen people who die in ESO's overland content which is so easy that others grind it while watching Shows or Movies.

When my Wife started this Game she died to her Job quests and needed to do them on easy mode. She has gotten better since then but Extreme Trials would be a No Go for her while they are pretty easy for me.

The Problem FFXIV has is not that its general Gameplay seems to become easier, it is that there is to few difficulties. There is only Very Easy and Very Hard. Nothing in between. THIS is the issue that needs to be adressed. At least in my opinion.

These issues are directly linked. The reason that the gap between normal content and high end content has widened to such an extreme degree is specifically *because* jobs are so simple now, that making mechanics blindingly difficult is the only way to maintain the difficulty at all. And take it from someone who runs ultimates a lot: even they become easy with enough repetition, at which point we should be able to rely on optimization to keep them interesting- and we can't with decisions like these.

Also, if someone is failing their job quests, it is not because of any dps check or lack of mastery over your rotation. Removing and/or simplifying things like resource management, positionals, combos, etc. isn't going to help someone who struggles to like, avoid AoEs or simply pilot their character and press buttons in the first place.

[Rekh]

I don't understand who these changes are supposed to benefit.

Hardcore players don't benefit, because we dislike how job simplification lowers the skill ceiling and kills the replayability of high-end content.

Casual players don't benefit, because most of them don't play their jobs to levels that make these things matter anyway. Living Shadow losing its blood cost doesn't matter to someone who doesn't press their abilities on cooldown in the first place. Ask any random duty finder player what "overcap" means and 9 out of 10 won't know or care.

So who does that leave? The only category I can think of is sort-of-good players who would rather complain about aspects of their jobs being hard to master (lmao) than put in effort to improve. And again and again they get their way. "Oh, you're frustrated that you keep overcapping resources because you got distracted by that tough mechanic? Well that's ok, we'll just remove meter management from the game entirely so that you feel better!"

(I wanna make it clear I hold no grudge against casual players, not everyone cares about playing super well and that's perfectly fine. My issue is with the devs being under the illusion that ripping every bit of complexity and thought out of the jobs is benefiting that section of the playerbase, who in reality largely don't care or even notice.)

Highly disagree that high ceiling in job mechanics doesn't matter for casual content. The difference between a highly technical and skilled tank/dps/healer really showed in ARR, HW, and SB. And yes, it did matter in terms of fun; not that the content required it but it's what made casual content fun for those of us who could care less about raiding.

[noumen0nn]

Highly disagree that high ceiling in job mechanics doesn't matter for casual content. The difference between a highly technical and skilled tank/dps/healer really showed in ARR, HW, and SB. And yes, it did matter in terms of fun; not that the content required it but it's what made casual content fun for those of us who could care less about raiding.

Oh no I agree, I think jobs having high skill ceilings also boosts the fun of normal mode content, even for non-hardcore players. What I'm talking about when I say it doesn't matter is there are no hard consequences. I'm sure it was different back in previous expansions, but in the state of the game since Shadowbringers, a lack of skill and knowledge will not prevent you from clearing normal mode content. Your roulette might take forever and be annoying because your DPS doesn't know their rotation and your healer is spamming cure 2, but you'll get there. The reason drawing that distinction matters is that trying to make rotations easier and more thoughtless for casual players' benefit at the cost of skill ceiling, is not only unhealthy for the game, but is a vain effort because a.) no amount of simplification will help players who can't be bothered to learn the basics, and b.) helping casuals deal more damage in content that has no dps checks or skill checks shouldn't be a priority over making the game fun and interesting.

[Aidorouge]

I prefer all jobs being approachable and manageable because if something is too complicated and annoying to play, most people are going to ignore playing it, or even want to avoid bringing it along for harder content because the failure-rate is too high.

I've seen what happens in other MMOs when developers go too hard into thinking some classes require piano skills to play effectively (or at all), it results in player choice becoming homogenized anyway because most people, especially the hardcore crowd going for their world first races, are going to pick what gets the job done the quickest, not the one that can spin the most plates, and in general you don't really want to create a sense of "wow, this job sucks to play compared to this other job that performs the same function" given that unlike most MMOs, you can just change your job instead of being forced to reroll entirely, meaning people can and *will* leave certain jobs to wither if the extra effort isn't worth it because we aren't required to be over-committed to the one character with the one class we picked at creation.

The idea of "job fantasy" is a different beast altogether, given that for Final Fantasy specifically every job has had different variations throughout its history and they don't always come over intact or have parts borrowed from other jobs. I mean, there's *still* people who complain that certain jobs ended up tank/healer/DPS instead of some other role. Though, that just makes me wonder if jobs could "moonlight" as a 2nd role (but never all 3) with alternate skills and everything to make it work. Duty Support/Trusts already do it, so why not us? If nothing else it would be amusing to watch, would finally be a valid excuse to break down some role-specific glams, and they would be kinda forced to make jobs more uniquely engaging because they need to sell people on the idea of this "side role" concept otherwise nobody will be impressed and curious enough to try it.

[Rithy255]

I think ff14 is a good example of what happens when you try to balance everything to be so safe that it becomes boring and unsatisfying.

Drinking water is good for you, but drinking too much is bad, Balancing is good for a game but hyper fixating on perfect balance leads to a boring sanitised experience which leads to a bad game.

FF14 needs to find balance in balancing between job enjoyment and meta balancing if it doesn't find that balance the game is going to generally be worse off.

[Neoyoshi]

This feels like 2 separate types of conversations bumping into one another, dropping their identical handbags, and each one picking up the opposite handbag by mistake.

Simplification of the increased amount of skills we get expansion after expansion does not null out or negate failure in understanding the content a person is playing; so please can we separate these two concepts and give them their correct handbags back?