Players and the game design's mindset has become increasingly individualistic

[Valence]

The more we go back into the past of the game and talk about it, the more it becomes clear to me that there is those days a big divide between two major types of players:

- One side does really miss a lot of of the old party teamwork, resource management, resource scarcity, aggro control, actual skill gaps in how to use the battle system and job toolkits, role identity, etc.
- The other side never liked losing aggro, or seeing a DPS rip off aggro because they didn't manage it properly (maybe one side, maybe both sides, doesn't matter). They didn't like being drained out of TP/MP during fights. They didn't like when their team mates were playing worse than the bar they expected of them (this is actually still something you widely read all over the internet and ingame, people complaining about how bad their random team mates were in that last run). They don't want to see a lack of performance or failure from others affect their perfect gameplay. They don't like unexpected variations.

Well, when it comes to myself, I actually do think that the former are more collectively minded than the latter. I don't mind losing a couple of minutes or even five minutes to a dungeon run because someone is having difficulties (or even slacking). I like carrying. I like adjusting to make up for the weakest link in the team. I like being required to do put more effort and find creative solutions to salvage a run. I also do like the unexpected, for that a never changing script is boring. The very reason I like playing healers in some alliance raids like Ivalice or Nier is that I can raise dead bodies or turbo heal through scuffed runs even though I don't like healing otherwise.

So yes, I used to like tanking before ShB because I had to adjust my enmity control depending on my team mates and healer. If my DPS were doing wild DPS, I had to play a bit more conservative. If my team was not using their aggro properly, or the healer overhealing, I had to adjust and do my actual role as a tank. Today, I don't like tanking because i'm invulnerable and I don't have to adjust for anything. I just follow a predetermined script. Even if my whole party dies in a dungeon, I still follow the script and I can solo the mobs or the boss down and waste everybody's time (unless I'm a DRK... and even then...).

I used to like healing (I actually started the game in HW as a healer, funnily enough), because I had to adjust to my tank's gear, how well they used their defensives, which granted, is still somewhat true today. But I also had to adjust when a tank was not positioning mobs properly and eating crits from the back like there was no tomorrow. I had to adjust when I was overhealing and generating too much aggro, and sometimes just because I had to else the tank or the party would die. I had to adjust my playstyle when the tank decided to pull more, or to pull less, and sometimes they pulled less when they were playing well, and sometimes more when they were not good players. It generated pretty wild gaps in what was required of me. On top of it, I had to also manage my MP, and if pulls took too long, my MP would run dry. I had to find a constant balance between spamming Holy and healing the tank, and this also changed according to all those factors. Back then, MP also was tied to varying pools depending on gear and builds, and regened very slowly overall, which put more emphasis on Lucid, party MP refreshes, etc. The time it took to kill trash directly impacted into my MP reserves and they would NOT regen fully between pulls. Sometimes it was scuffed I misaimed, and I had to go through pulls with very scarse resources, which meant no holy and sparing my use of heals. Today on the other hand, resources are not a problem anymore and tanks are undying. All I have to do is spamm my single AoE button after applying a glorified regen or prepull shields/mits.

I used to like DPS because depending on who you got in your team, damage was not equal, which is still true today, yes, but it also meant that the slower we killed the mobs, the faster we'd run out of MP/TP. Some say it wasn't fun, but to me it was because then it forced me to adjust and play with new constraints. It forced me to manage my resources like for healers, and I knew I could start pumping turret promotion, manasong, tp song, tactician, etc. As a DPS I could immediately measure my contribution to the group by indirectly helping the supports (healer and tank) in how much resources they had to pour into each pull as well. Today, I just have to do my rotation, but I can still measure somewhat if I'm being efficient by how fast stuff dies, and that's why I play DPS and nothing else. It's been hurt less overall and it's easier to carry for the weakest link with that role, ironically, if it even still means anything today.

So, there used to be a lot of failure states directly built into the system, and they could snowball to an entropic party death beyond just failing mechanics. The great thing was that you could make up for someone else's mistakes, up to a point where you got overwhelmed and wiped. It actually favored skill expression a lot more than what we have today, and I'm really not speaking about complicated job rotations actually, quite the opposite. Today, the only failure state there is left is failing encounter mechanics. You can only help your weakest links go through those so far if it doesn't outright wipe the party. But surprise, in savage, the only way to keep things difficult is to introduce body checks everywhere so if someone fucks up mechanics constantly, then you're screwed, you can't even help or use your skills to make up for it.

It's turned into a semi solo game experience where you just rage when somebody fucks up a mechanic.


Edit: And you know what? Seeing the BLM rip aggro and get shredded by the boss was hilarious and I'll die on that hill.