The problem with Tripling Down on Shadowbringers Job Design

[Zolvolt]

FF14 does not have room for complexity in job design. Every fight in this game is on rail road tracks. You get on you, you press your buttons in the mapped out way, and you get off. It never changes. Once you get comfortable with the fight you never have to think about things, you just do it the exact same every single time. If we add complexity to the game it doesn't fit into the "every boss is just one elegant dance" boss design. You can add variety by removing the 2m meta, but you can not add job complexity without changing how they design boss fights and how they design jobs.

Senix controls their balance also very very closely. The job balance in this game is so freaking good because theres no job customization, no different builds, no trinkets or set bonuses and with a game that only has 8 job slots, the balance has to be on point. It has to be. My prediction is this game will never add complexity to it's battle/job design. not ever. The complexity will always come from boss mechanics.

[Zadood]

If CBU3 couldn't add anything meaningful skill outside of 2 min burst window.

Then why not shorten the period between burst window, like from 2 min to 1 min burst window?

So which means,
120s CD skill action became 60s CD,
60s CD skill action became 30s CD,
30s CD skill action became 15s CD,
45s CD skill action became 22.5s CD

It won't help a lot, but it at least ease the pain of current 2 min burst window design.
Not to meantion, 1 min burst window is much more easier to recover from screwed up and misplay.

[Lyth]

'Complexity' is a self-congratulatory feelycraft word as far as discussions about this game is concerned. Mutual agreement can be the byproduct of objective findings, but can arise just as easily as folie à deux.

Fight design is scripted to the point that you generally learn what you're doing on a GCD-by-GCD basis by the end of prog. There's very little that this game involves in the realm of on-the-fly decision-making. You're solving a chess position to which all the remaining possible moves have already been well mapped out.

I think that it's worth talking about making jobs more engaging to play, but I think the direction needs to be around creating uncertainty and variability. I'm interested in seeing what comes of these hotbar 'layers' (i.e. action swaps) in the future, and it may be that adding more context-dependent hotbar swaps may lead to more on-the-fly decision making. I think there's been a strong push to make pulls more predictable that dates back to Stormblood. Part of that is a reflection of players wanting to achieve the 'perfect' run and not tolerating any variance that might ruin that. I would much rather every pull feel unique in its optimizations.

[rawker]

BLM is the closest I can think off where its rotation evolved gracefully.

[Zadood]

'Complexity' is a self-congratulatory feelycraft word as far as discussions about this game is concerned. Mutual agreement can be the byproduct of objective findings, but can arise just as easily as folie à deux.

Fight design is scripted to the point that you generally learn what you're doing on a GCD-by-GCD basis by the end of prog. There's very little that this game involves in the realm of on-the-fly decision-making. You're solving a chess position to which all the remaining possible moves have already been well mapped out.

I think that it's worth talking about making jobs more engaging to play, but I think the direction needs to be around creating uncertainty and variability. I'm interested in seeing what comes of these hotbar 'layers' (i.e. action swaps) in the future, and it may be that adding more context-dependent hotbar swaps may lead to more on-the-fly decision making. I think there's been a strong push to make pulls more predictable that dates back to Stormblood. Part of that is a reflection of players wanting to achieve the 'perfect' run and not tolerating any variance that might ruin that. I would much rather every pull feel unique in its optimizations.

The reason why player want to "optimize" their run in dungeon and want get it quickly done because...

FFXIV is not a fun game to play in general. And that's precisely the reason why a lot content is heavily reliant on reward to stay relevant.

And now you might asking "If game is not fun for them to play, then why they keep playing it at all?"

Well the answer is, if you are a player that love MMORPG genre, but ALMOST every single MMORPG in the said genre is riddled with P2W, LootBox, Gacha, BattlePass predatory monetization.

What option you still have left in this otherwise what they so-called a "free market"?

[Lyth]

?

Not talking about dungeon content. I'm talking about optimization runs in Savage content.

That's part of the reason why things like Crit variance are progressively designed out of the game, because you reset if you're unlucky. I think a degree of variability and resultant run-specific optimization is important, and even necessary to keep things interesting. As things stand, when you've spent enough time in a fight, you know all your GCDs in advance from memory. That predictability is what's holding back gameplay more than anything else.

[Zadood]

Not talking about dungeon content. I'm talking about optimization runs in Savage content.

That's part of the reason why things like Crit variance are progressively designed out of the game, because you reset if you're unlucky. I think a degree of variability is good, and even necessary to keep things interesting.

But still doesn't change the fact that most content in FFXIV require reward to stay relevant.

As for Crit Variances, you can fault the encounter design team for that one. When the team was gauging how much health a boss should have, they SHOULDN'T factor in crit variances, but they obviously did.

If anything, scored a big critical damage on boss should means that the raid team can focus more on clearing mechanic without being too "stessed" out about passing dps check/enrage.

In another word, more rooms for mistake on a lucky pull that scored a lot of hard hitting crit damage.

[Awful]

I want job identity but that's not til 8.0, every job is being even more streamlined, it's sad to say after playing this game for so long I just feel 'meh' bout DT which pains me as I really love this game. I guess I'll just be playing for the story and maybe do the EXs if I can get through how back handed the tank designs are, hell VPR even has the same job gauge as RPR and almost the same abbreviation lol.

Just give me flavor, substance, none of this watered down job and encounter design combined with 2 min of rotations that you hit a button with 7 other people and yay raid buffs administered. Now do that again for another 6-8 minutes with lucky crits.

[Raikai]

I want job identity but that's not til 8.0, every job is being even more streamlined, it's sad to say after playing this game for so long I just feel 'meh' bout DT which pains me as I really love this game. I guess I'll just be playing for the story and maybe do the EXs if I can get through how back handed the tank designs are, hell VPR even has the same job gauge as RPR and almost the same abbreviation lol.

Just give me flavor, substance, none of this watered down job and encounter design combined with 2 min of rotations that you hit a button with 7 other people and yay raid buffs administered. Now do that again for another 6-8 minutes with lucky crits.

Yeah, it didn't sit very well with me knowing that they do have plans to revitalize job's identities but that'll probably be somewhere around 2026 with 8.0.

But sitting on the subject for a while... it kind of makes sense? They want to promote more unique fights in DT, which theoretically would be the actual foundation to apply whatever the reworked job identities are gonna get in 8.0. It's just sad that they can't have both together. And also, what's the point of AST and DRG rework? They could've just put on a band-aid to mend the most glaring issues about those two jobs.

Unless the rework they're getting is the actual band aid.

[Rekh]

Yeah, it didn't sit very well with me knowing that they do have plans to revitalize job's identities but that'll probably be somewhere around 2026 with 8.0.

But sitting on the subject for a while... it kind of makes sense? They want to promote more unique fights in DT, which theoretically would be the actual foundation to apply whatever the reworked job identities are gonna get in 8.0. It's just sad that they can't have both together. And also, what's the point of AST and DRG rework? They could've just put on a band-aid to mend the most glaring issues about those two jobs.

Unless the rework they're getting is the actual band aid.

2026? That's highly optimistic, I would say it will take them until 2028. Dawntrail's mid 2024, they usually don't count release year as that expansion's year. 2025 will be the first year, 2026 and 27 are filler years, with 2028 release.