The problem with Tripling Down on Shadowbringers Job Design

[AmiableApkallu]

Whilst, yes, calculus is more complex than basic maths, we can both also agree that differentiating X^2 is vastly less complex than integrating ln(Sin[x^2]/Tan[Cos{X}]) or what other made up nonsense you can come up with that will be difficult to do. SO, where is the complexity line drawn?

Complexity exists on a scale, a spectrum. There's generally broad agreement on the relative positions of things on this spectrum.

For the purposes of discussion, it's sometimes convenient to take a chunk of that spectrum and label it "simple", another chunk "complex", and so on. How that's done is more likely to vary from person to person.

[Mikey_R]

Complexity exists on a scale, a spectrum. There's generally broad agreement on the relative positions of things on this spectrum.

For the purposes of discussion, it's sometimes convenient to take a chunk of that spectrum and label it "simple", another chunk "complex", and so on. How that's done is more likely to vary from person to person.

I agree with this, however, to add on. Would you agree or disagree with the claim that after a person gains knowledge and or understanding on a subject, how complex they then perceive that subject could then change as a result and if so, would this shift it to be more simple, or, more complex.

[WaxSw]

Can you define job complexity? What would make a job complex? Does complexity not disappear once you have a certain level of mastery in that job?

No. Regardless of how intuitive or easy something may be percieved by an experienced individual, there is always a degree of objective complexity left. Someone that has mastered math may find an operation like an integration trivial from their perspective but even under that perspective they can easily identify that said integration is several leagues ahead of complexity when compared to a sum and even under their perspective they still may find some problems that, while being able to solve them, they find hard to do, engaging and complex.

On a game complexity is one of the wheels of the player growth and engagement. Its a constant supply of intrinsic (and extrinsic if properly designed) rewards that encourages them to find new approaches to an already known situation and dive deeper in the game's systems

[Mikey_R]

As someone gains knowledge of something, they may choose to reorder things on the complexity spectrum. Something that initially had the appearance of, say, "depth", might turn out to be quite shallow on further investigation, and vice versa.

Significantly relabeling which chunk of the spectrum is "simple" vs. "complex" is probably more akin to losing a sense of perspective.

So, more knowledge shifts your perspective on what it means for something to be complex, one way or the other. Which is the crux of what I was saying, admittedly, focusing more on the more knowledge means things will be perceived to be less complex rather than the potential it might be more, but I would say the former is a more likely scenario when put into the context of FFXIV.

I think you're misunderstanding what people want. I don't think people want complexity that remains just as complex forever, because that's not possible. I think what people are looking for is complexity that grants repeatable engagement. Little things you can tweak here and there for each fight that makes you think, even after playing that job for years.

Things can remain engaging even after you build muscle memory of it after all.

I've seen many people claim they want job complexity regardless of the encounter. The majority of what I say is in direct response to that. As you said, things cannot stay complex forever, this is why it is important to not forget about encounter design and how your job's kit relates to it.

No. Regardless of how intuitive or easy something may be percieved by an experienced individual, there is always a degree of objective complexity left. Someone that has mastered math may find an operation like an integration trivial from their perspective but even under that perspective they can easily identify that said integration is several leagues ahead of complexity when compared to a sum and even under their perspective they still may find some problems that, while being able to solve them, they find hard to do, engaging and complex.

On a game complexity is one of the wheels of the player growth and engagement. Its a constant supply of intrinsic (and extrinsic if properly designed) rewards that encourages them to find new approaches to an already known situation and dive deeper in the game's systems

Yes, objectively, you can define a range of complexity for a given item, however, how the person perceives the complexity is just as important as that determines where in that objectivity range that person in particular subjectively sees the complexity. As that person gains knowledge, their perspective of where this line lies shifts based on that knowledge. We are still inside the objective range, but perspectives have shifted. In FFXIV terms, there is only so many ways you can approach a job and, after a bit of playing around, you will find everything basically fits into place and yes, this is true of past expansions as well. With only a limited number of options, it doesn't take long for you to test out everything and pick the best option.

Again, to reiterate, you cannot design a complex job without taking into account encounter design, despite what some people might suggest.

Does an elaborate piece of classical music turn into twinkle twinkle little star if you listen to it enough?

That is a bad analogy as you are not the one performing the song. You are gaining no knowledge or extra mastery just by listening. A better example would be, assuming you start at zero knowledge, would more knowledge and mastery not help you to play that classical piece more easily?

[OgruMogru]

That is a bad analogy as you are not the one performing the song. You are gaining no knowledge or extra mastery just by listening. A better example would be, assuming you start at zero knowledge, would more knowledge and mastery not help you to play that classical piece more easily?

Whether it's familiarity as a listener or familiarity as a performer the thing you are becoming familiar with has not changed and it doesn't suddenly devolve into something lesser just because you've become more familiar with it.

"Does complexity not disappear once you have a certain level of mastery in that job?"

Likewise job complexity would not "disappear" once you have attained a level of mastery, you just....learned how to do it.

[OgruMogru]

Does complexity not disappear once you have a certain level of mastery in that job?

Does an elaborate piece of classical music turn into twinkle twinkle little star if you listen to it enough?

[MagiusNecros]

Critical thinking and high level gameplay not allowed in XIV. Just be like Dawntrail(yes that's right) DRK and hit your 1-2-3 over and over again. Even worse with Healers where you will will hit your 1-1-1 rotation over and over.

If Job's had identity like they do in PvP they would be more engaging to play. Such a shame they make PvE so braindead.

[GoatOfWar]

I'm just not going to tank in Dawntrail.
Let them feel the queue times. Warrior mains will fix it.

[Valence]

It's not so much that they decided they were afraid of job complexity suddenly after 6+ years of gameplay with a semblance of it, it's just they decided halfway for some reason to make their game into a different game altogether while alienating half the veteran playerbase in the process.

They do say they care about player's feedback and implement changes based upon it, and in a way, it's partially true, but only when it comes to minute details, number adjustments, and little ability changes here and there. When it comes to the bigger picture, they stay in utter silence, because that feedback is incompatible with what they envision for their new game direction. Sometimes it feels like some people in the game design department is hellbent on going all the way down to a model that they personally like, at the expense of everything that came before. It is not just about the natural evolution of a game that you can expect between expansion anymore, i'ts a radical shift that happened right in shadowbringers for a reason or another, and they seem perfectly happy with it, because apparently their veteran players only matter when they were 1.0 players and can get cool tattoos and reduced monthly fees.

[Jeeqbit]

It's not so much that they decided they were afraid of job complexity suddenly after 6+ years of gameplay with a semblance of it, it's just they decided halfway for some reason to make their game into a different game altogether while alienating half the veteran playerbase in the process.

I think it's more that ARR was a "shot in the dark" and that they took about 2 years to make changes (ie. they are made at expansion-level).

Heavensward tried to respond to the issues with that "shot in the dark" (like raids not having a story version, raids not being cleared by enough people, not having cross-world PF) and iterate on content ideas (trying out things like Diadem, Deep Dungeons, changing bosses from being WoW-like to scripted dances that involve brain-training/learning the script). Through that, they found their main content formulas that remain today.

Stormblood just cleaned up all the jank, still, from that "shot in the dark" that was ARR. Useless abilities, cross-class into role actions (arguably resulting in some homogenization), elemental stats/materia, parry/physical mit removed (resulting in most mitigation being homogenized). But this is where they made a major change in direction to stop making people track tiny status effects like in a lot of MMORPGs, and instead have a "job gauge". By this time, it had been about 4 years. Despite that job gauges arguably make things easier and things had started being homogenized, Stormblood is still seen as at least a compromise rather than reverting to Heavensward, since we're unlikely to stop having job gauges now.

Shadowbringers was the bigger change in direction, obviously, because aside from cleaning up the remaining "shot in the dark issues" that resulted in tanks stacking/melding Strength by rebalancing stats, they seemed to stop caring about job uniqueness and there were now too many jobs and too many issues to bother trying to balance damage types (piercing, slashing, etc). And they wanted to make jobs easy and intuitive to play and hard to mess up, something that has remained in progress for about 5 years now.

So what I think really happened was they just iterated on issues with their original "shot in the dark" on a 2-yearly basis, so it wasn't that they were ever fine with how it was so much, they were just slowly figuring out ways to address the perceived issues over time. Although I do think the exception is that they abandoned the concept of "job uniqueness" because all references to this just completely, noticeably vanished from their vocabulary around Shadowbringers.

(For the record, I agree they were issues, regardless of if they were solved the right way)