The problem with Tripling Down on Shadowbringers Job Design

[Sjol]

There are certain choices SE has made at the core level that I think greatly reduces the design space they've allowed for themselves.

Passive healing inside combat.
Single Target off-tank attacks are telegraphed.
DPS checks include healers.
No long cast times outside REZ.
So many ground effects channeled abilities feel bad.
Casting times consistent within a job.
Role abilities.
Bad Proc Experience (only shows on bar and not in world).

[HappyHubris]

Since the only response I've had to my question on what actually would make a job complex is a sarcastic response, I think it is safe to say noone really knows what complexity is. The closest response I have got was in another topic, where the question I asked was slightly different. That question was on job difficulty and the only response I got was having multiple DoTs with different timings. Whilst this might seem 'difficult' at first, you will soon get used to when you refresh your DoTs based on instinct and also where you are in your rotation.

Which brings home the point. You cannot make something complex that stays complex once you master it. You can make a system where the resources you have form a web in how they interact, but there will still be one way that it seems to flow the best. Once you have this, after some practice, the underlying web becomes a non issue and intuition takes over. The complexity has now seemingly been taken out of the job.

This is why I ask, what actually counts as complexity, what makes a job complex and most importantly, why would your 'complexity' stay complex even after mastery?

Complexity is easy to explain by comparing classes.

PLD is more complex than Warrior. Warrior has one gauge that you fill up with 1-2-3 (and 1-2-5 every 30s to keep a buff up). You spend the gauge for damage. When the burst phase comes you click the "free fell cleave" button, spend your gauge and free charges, and then click your other free charges button twice to get more spenders off. In PLD, you have to manage both mana and blocky block gauges, you deploy two buffs in your burst phase, you have an additional mitigation spender, and your static rotation involves not just 1-2-3 but a free spender and mana recharge swings. Your burst rotation also involves a multi-part finisher series. Oh, and you have two oGCDs instead of one.

BRD is more complex than summoner. You're maintaining DoTs, watching for procs, and managing songs. Etc.

[HappyHubris]

I'm going to offer an answer to this that no one here is going to like: People who are happy to push simple buttons for impressive spell effects vastly outnumber people who enjoy the process of mastering a complex job. I'm sure the Endwalker SMN has been a huge hit from a "number of subscriber hours" perspective, and developers are eyeing other classes for a similar treatment.

The people on this forum and reddit are a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the playerbase.

Look at healers. Healers on these forums have been screaming for more engaging responsibilities (either through more incoming damage or more outgoing damage tools), but those jobs remain quite neutered. Because when Joe or Jane log on after work, they just want to slap some buttons and clear some content. And healing has to be "accessible" to them, with few to no failure modes for performance.

I imagine that future expansions will see less core choice and fewer tools while we get more cosmetic elements added, like the multiple stages of Confiteor that all add flashy graphics from the same button. Or how SMN has multiple EGIs that are more or less the same thing with different skins. We already see this in this forum, where some people are happy to ask for "additional summons" to reskin the same skills.

[OgruMogru]

I'm going to offer an answer to this that no one here is going to like: People who are happy to push simple buttons for impressive spell effects vastly outnumber people who enjoy the process of mastering a complex job. I'm sure the Endwalker SMN has been a huge hit from a "number of subscriber hours" perspective, and developers are eyeing other classes for a similar treatment.

The people on this forum and reddit are a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the playerbase.

Look at healers. Healers on these forums have been screaming for more engaging responsibilities (either through more incoming damage or more outgoing damage tools), but those jobs remain quite neutered. Because when Joe or Jane log on after work, they just want to slap some buttons and clear some content. And healing has to be "accessible" to them, with few to no failure modes for performance.

I imagine that future expansions will see less core choice and fewer tools while we get more cosmetic elements added, like the multiple stages of Confiteor that all add flashy graphics from the same button. Or how SMN has multiple EGIs that are more or less the same thing with different skins. We already see this in this forum, where some people are happy to ask for "additional summons" to reskin the same skills.

:C change your name to WoefulPragmatism immediately! [This is a joke this a joke! I just thought the dissonance between your name and the starkness of your comment was rlly funny]

[Sjol]

I'm going to offer an answer to this that no one here is going to like: People who are happy to push simple buttons for impressive spell effects vastly outnumber people who enjoy the process of mastering a complex job. I'm sure the Endwalker SMN has been a huge hit from a "number of subscriber hours" perspective, and developers are eyeing other classes for a similar treatment.

The people on this forum and reddit are a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the playerbase.

Look at healers. Healers on these forums have been screaming for more engaging responsibilities (either through more incoming damage or more outgoing damage tools), but those jobs remain quite neutered. Because when Joe or Jane log on after work, they just want to slap some buttons and clear some content. And healing has to be "accessible" to them, with few to no failure modes for performance.

I imagine that future expansions will see less core choice and fewer tools while we get more cosmetic elements added, like the multiple stages of Confiteor that all add flashy graphics from the same button. Or how SMN has multiple EGIs that are more or less the same thing with different skins. We already see this in this forum, where some people are happy to ask for "additional summons" to reskin the same skills.

I think you're mostly right with all of this with one big caveat. Other MMOs do have more interactivity and reaction in their healer and tank designs with the same casual appeal. So, it seems like there's room to grow even if it means they should be shooting for a slightly larger amount of complexity rather than a whole lot more complexity. Though, I'm loathed to use the word complexity since I don't think it accurately describes what even the players who ask for it want. It's too imprecise a word to be actionable, I think.

I'm still searching for other ways of describing what I feel SMN is lacking, though I probably don't think it lacks as much as others do. I'm currently starting from a concept of input depth -- the sequence of memorization required to process the rotation. I do think they have some interesting input variance at least at 90. The fast-paced A,b,A,b,A,b,A,b for Titan compared to A,A,A,A, long B for Garuda and long A, long A, B, B for Ifrit. Mostly I think it needs help in other areas because A,A,A,A,A for Astral Impulse and Fountain of Fire if given an oGCD will just make it feel like the Titan input sequence.

[SeverianLyonesse]

I'm going to offer an answer to this that no one here is going to like: People who are happy to push simple buttons for impressive spell effects vastly outnumber people who enjoy the process of mastering a complex job. I'm sure the Endwalker SMN has been a huge hit from a "number of subscriber hours" perspective, and developers are eyeing other classes for a similar treatment.

The people on this forum and reddit are a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the playerbase.

Look at healers. Healers on these forums have been screaming for more engaging responsibilities (either through more incoming damage or more outgoing damage tools), but those jobs remain quite neutered. Because when Joe or Jane log on after work, they just want to slap some buttons and clear some content. And healing has to be "accessible" to them, with few to no failure modes for performance.

I imagine that future expansions will see less core choice and fewer tools while we get more cosmetic elements added, like the multiple stages of Confiteor that all add flashy graphics from the same button. Or how SMN has multiple EGIs that are more or less the same thing with different skins. We already see this in this forum, where some people are happy to ask for "additional summons" to reskin the same skills.

I've been saying this for a while. The casual online gaming market has only grown in the past few years due to overly dense games cutting/streamlining a lot of complexity in favor of "accessibility" and "balance."

Not that I am in favor if it, I want to smack every myopic armchair theorist who brings up an accessibility or balance "issue" without thinking through the ramifications of engagement and fun. But that is the reality we live in: games like FFXIV are successful because their business models care more about the *appearance* of depth than actual depth, so long as the casuals stay fed. Because they, and the in-store glams and level skips, are where the money is.

[HopeEstheim]

SCH player since ARR chiming in. I usually lurk on the forums instead of posting because I deeply know they'll never listen to our complaints, they've been tone deaf about healers feedback since Shadowbringers, and, after seeing what we're getting in Dawntrail, this trend is about to continue another 2 or 3 years.

What baffles me the most is that they keep giving us more healing tools while our kits were already bloated back in Stormblood. Thankfully, back then healers were pretty much distinct from each other, and kinda fun to play ( even if WHM was lagging behind because of their useless job gauge ). SCH had a really fun kit, you had to make decisions, you had to find weaving space with Miasma II ( with it's huge mp cost and the requirement to be in melee range ), and we actually were pet healers. Seriously, right now Eos feels like a glorified oGCD. Why did they take away from us the ability to use pet actions while we're casting ? What's the difference between Physis from Sage and Whispering Dawn now ? To add insult to injury, since they removed the ability to manually cast Embrace, Kardia feels way more flexible... What's the identity of SCH besides Energy Drain and a janky kit now ? I guess Square doesn't really know either since we went from military tactician commanding faeries to priest with angel theming...

Now, here's something else that bothers me a lot : encounter design since ShB. I won't elaborate about the 2 minutes meta, to me it was a mistake, period. But what I hate the most about high-end encouters is that everything now is a mitigation check, and the fact that it requires the whole party to participate. Seriously, remember Virus ? E4E ? Disable ? Why did they shift the mitigation aspect to DPS jobs while removing DPS abilities from Healers ? Why do I have to rely on my melee using feint, or my Warrior to simply press any of it's buttons to play optimally ? I know this is group content, so everyone should participate in every aspect, but why do they remove bit by bit this layer from the ones who are meant to keep the party alive ? Do we really need all mitigations buffed in Dawntrail ? Did Pictomancer reeeeaally needed a healing pulse tied to it's raid buff ? Like come on, the only thing Square could come up with for healers was new dps abilities locked behind a two minute cooldown ? What's the point ? Who asked for this ? There's 4 jobs that spam a single button throughout an encounter and this is what they come up with ?

I know this is a lot of questions, but I'm quite puzzled with the direction this game is going, combat-wise. I can't take another 2 years of this...

[Mikey_R]

Complexity is easy to explain by comparing classes.

To an extent, I can agree with that sentiment. However, it also doesn't address the question. I can compare 2 jobs and come to a conclusion that one is more complex than the other. Fine, what if someone else comes along and says, I don't agree. Who is right?

Therein lies the issue. That grey area in the middle that noone really knows what it means. This is why it is important to define such terms and, if they cannot be defined, then a better explanation should be added. I think Job A needs more complexity and in my opinion, they could do that by doing something along the lines of X. That way at least people have an understanding of what what someone means via an explanation. As you have done, by comparing 2 Jobs, you compare the before and after for the job and analyse it to see what potentially comes of it.

Definitely a difficult thing to pin down.

I'm still searching for other ways of describing what I feel SMN is lacking, though I probably don't think it lacks as much as others do. I'm currently starting from a concept of input depth -- the sequence of memorization required to process the rotation. I do think they have some interesting input variance at least at 90. The fast-paced A,b,A,b,A,b,A,b for Titan compared to A,A,A,A, long B for Garuda and long A, long A, B, B for Ifrit. Mostly I think it needs help in other areas because A,A,A,A,A for Astral Impulse and Fountain of Fire if given an oGCD will just make it feel like the Titan input sequence.

I think Summoner is missing an overarching mechanic (After typing everything I am adding this in. I want to say it is missing some sort of build up. That ramp up to the burst). Something that takes summoning the primals to do and helps to break up the monotony of pressing the same button. One thing I notice is that Demi Summons do not use the Gemshine button and the Lego summons do not use Enkindle. Starting with the Lego Summons, there is no reason you couldn't have it activate and on use, it summons Shiva/Levi/Ramuh for an attack. Could be an oGCD, could be a GCD, let's have fun with it. We can then say, by using Enkindle here, you build up another resource, call it Zantetsuken gauge. Then, once you have your Demis out, gemshine turns into Zantetsuken and you effectively have a combo, on the oGCD, that is weaved between the Demi attacks.

What people think of that idea, who knows. Just spit balling ideas.

[kirinoodles_]

Look at healers. Healers on these forums have been screaming for more engaging responsibilities (either through more incoming damage or more outgoing damage tools), but those jobs remain quite neutered. Because when Joe or Jane log on after work, they just want to slap some buttons and clear some content. And healing has to be "accessible" to them, with few to no failure modes for performance.

I assure you that having more DPS buttons to press/responsabilities/job identity per healer in your healing kit will not affect Joe and Jane spamming the same healing GCD every 0.1% of health lost to clear content, because only high-end content requires DPS from healers which they probably wont' be doing since it requires time to learn, optimize and clear the fights

[Katalb]

I hope they'll bring back Foe Requiem