What is your RPG playstyle?

[Boblawblah]

Good thread! I like these types of topics.

RPG is such a broad term that I have different preferences depending on the type of RPG i'm playing and what genre it's crossed with.

For 'rpgs' like League of Legends, I generally used to play simple characters like Rammus/Udyr/Nasus (sometimes Kha'zix) though. Usually characters that do well on their own. That said, I love supporting my team mates and protecting/helping them (hence the junglers)

For D&D style of crpgs, I'm almost always a paladin type character, that can support but also bring the heat when needed. Morally good characters appeal to me in crpgs.

Action RPGs like Diablo, I love pet/summoner classes, lots of fun having a little army killing things for me.

mmos make me anxious, so I usually stick to DPS classes, hence Summoner and now Reaper being my two highest levelled jobs currently.

[TaleraRistain]

All over the place I think. Don't really have a style in single player JPRGs. I like to try it all.

In past MMOs I was an enchanter, a ranger, a paladin/warlock, and many other support or tank roles. It's XIV that has been the outlier for me where I was mostly a healer main, specifically WHM and played BRD for dps. I only leveled my tanks through FATEs and such but never played them. EW I went back to my tanking roots and became GNB/SGE. And I still dabble in those others though my main dps is now RPR with DNC and RDM for the other roles.

I think this has made me able to adjust to things as they change in XIV. If I don't feel this class, I can try this one on the same character. And I find a new love.

[Roda]

I typically see myself as an explorer type. I like to discover new things, places, interactions, and silly little tricks. Completing a task efficiently is fine and all, but turning it into a trickshot is more fun

For combat I prefer control/manipulation over any other role, though when that's not available I'll opt for damage over things like tanking and healing, but I am at my best when I have direct control over how a battlefield behaves and am allowed to set up complex systems on the fly.
I prefer to play casters/exclusive magic users over all other class archetypes, though my favorite flavors are unassuming magic users who use guile and wit over raw primal power. Trickster-types! (Bonus points if they're using vague non-elemental sparkle magics instead of throwing another fireball at a problem)

My go-to D&D class is Bard for its stellar crowd control and supportive magics and its ability to do some phenomenal RP ass-pulls.

Sadly I do often have to go to other games to scratch my archetypal itches since most content here is very straight forward "hold W until you hit a monster, then do a dance while maintaining your damage rotation then repeat" within non-interactive hallways or flat platforms. :x

My mains in other MMOs
GW2: Mesmer
Wildstar: Esper
WoW: Mage (though i've been dabbling in Evoker for DF because dragons are cool)
Warframe: (slow)Nova, Wisp, Titania

[Jeeqbit]

I wanted to start a discussion about what you feel your preferred playstyle is when playing RPGs and how that fits into FFXIV.

I usually try to experience the story and feel the story in the fullest way possible, and use other subtle aspects of the game like sidequests, walking and interactions to add to the character and feel of the experience.

So how it fits into this game is that I enjoyed ARR unlike a lot of people. I just make the most of things.

I especially liked the emotion aspect of it because that appeals to me.

Having only 1 or 2 attack buttons is pretty irrelevant to me, as long as I can attack, so this not being an issue for me in games made it not an issue like it is for others.

My logic toward other games doesn't entirely apply to this, because I was playing it due to it being an MMORPG specifically as well for social reasons.

Something I've learned over my years of gaming is there are certain things I always gravitate toward and try to achieve in games

In terms of actual achievement hunting like mount collecting, I never really cared about it until I saw others around me doing it, so it was a way of participating.

The game is also just not very fulfilling without achievement hunting ie. you do it once and the entire patch is done for the next 4+ months. But by achievement hunting it makes it more like other games in this genre that draw out the content with grinds.

On my part, I'm the kind of person that likes to take supportive characters or classes and augment them to be more aggressive.

I like to play what would logically make me able to survive in a roleplaying context. For example, I saw Bard and thought "the enemies would just run up to melee range and I would be defenseless". So I looked at Paladin, saw the offensive sword and the defensive shield, and thought it was perfect. The benefit was also bosses actually facing you since they just stood still earlier in the game.

I do want to augment a support character to be more aggressive though. That was always my goal on Paladin, even in Heavensward, where its damage was atrocious compared to the other tanks. I felt I was satisfied if I could attack an enemy on my own and feel like I'm making progress. I started to feel this was the case when stacking Strength, especially into Stormblood, and given how they've been simplifying the game, tank damage continues to feel good - we tanks can wreck mob packs in dungeons in a way we never could in the past with our little 100 potency AoE (or no AoE for PLD ).

Naturally, when I started playing FFXIV, Scholar was exactly my playstyle

What made SCH my favorite healer was when I discovered I could use it to heal without casting, in a way that felt superior to WHM at the time, who spread it across multiple OGCDs one of which had a long cooldown. I also literally did not need to cast a heal - not even a regen like I was doing on WHM.

[TheMightyMollusk]

My consequence-free power fantasy is being able to actually help people and make things better. Paragon for life.

[Cynric]

This looks like fun.

Ever since I was a kid I always gravitated towards characters that attacked/moved fast, this led to me playing lots of Thieves, Rogues, and Assassins, which in turn led me into playing lots of characters that dual wield. I also really liked swords a lot so if I had an option I'd usually pick a Sword as my weapon. Ironically even though I liked attacking fast and the rogue archetype, I wasn't actually a big fan of daggers.

Eventually almost every game I tried to play characters within that type. I was an Assassin Cross in Ragnarok Online(swords/katars/crit) , a Combat Rogue in WoW before they removed it, later a Frost Death knight (Dual Wield) and a Demon Hunter,(momentum), a Blade in FlyFF, Sith Marauder in Swtor, the list probably goes on, even in single player games I gravitated towards anyone who could dual wield and for a little while I was also really into playing stealthy too so it worked out. Like in Oblivion and Skyrim I played the typical assassin with sneaking.

Though at some point , probably around the time I started playing Death Knight in wow, I kind of stopped enjoying the stealth portion of jobs and wanted to be more of a frontliner, and really enjoyed being able to do that.
This sort of really hit home for me recently in Baldurs Gate 3 when I tried to play Rogue but wasn't enjoying it, and enjoyed simple Two Weapon Fighting Fighter / Ranger much more.

Anyway, when it came to ffxiv since I started way back at the start of the game, even though I was really excited to play the game, there weren't any jobs that really fit me either. Paladin had a sword but I didn't really want to be a tank and I'm not a huge fan of shields. I wanted to be a DPS but there really wasn't a rogue character at the time. The closest that the game had was monk since it had rear positionals and had a speed buff, but I still was kind of hoping for swords. So when Rogue released I was honestly super excited, but then it turned into Ninja and I was instantly disappointed.

Fast forward to now and we're getting Viper so that's pretty exciting for me, I've basically been waiting like 11-12 years to play the kind of character I usually play. lol

All in all I guess it evolved from stealthy rogue to fast attacking dual wielding frontline DPS, or maybe it was always that, and stealth just happened to always be shoehorned on to the dual wielder.

I'm not sure if there's a specific archetype for what I like in reference to the older ones anymore with how my playstyle changed over the years.

The only thing thats remained the same is I'm really not a fan of casting or charging attacks, probably because it's too slow for me and I like the "death of a thousand cuts" fast attacks coupled with dual wielding.

[LynxDubh]

I've always been a support type player when it comes to cooperative games. And when I have to play solo games I enjoy utility type mages. Supporting my team is where I derive a lot of enjoyment, being able to tip the scales in our favor and all that. Occasionally I do love roguish and stealth types.

For MMOs, I played RDM and BLU in FFXI for their support capabilities and wide range of skills. And HW/SB AST was pretty much built for me with the variety of buffs and enfeeblements it had in its kit. I've found that I enjoy DNC now to scratch that particular itch.

In ARPGs I find myself playing things like Wide Range Sword and Shield in Monster Hunter and status based builds to debilitated the monster during hunts.

In traditional turn based and tactical rpgs, classes like Darkest Dungeon's Antiquarian, FFT's Mystic, Triangle Strategy's Tacticians, Fire Emblem's Dancers, and Unicorn Overlord's Arbalests are my favorite type of units. Classes that really set you up for success or offer great utility and defensive capabilites.

And my tendencies really come through in TTRPGs. Artificers, Druids, Wizards, and sometimes Rangers are my bread and butter classes. Treantmonk's "God Wizard" from the old 3.5 forums is closest for what I strive for. My build typically excel in battlefield control, enemy enfeeblement, ally empowerment, and utility needs. Beyond D&D I've played things ranging from a Spider in Blades in the Dark (someone who weaves a web of connections to pull favors for the gang's advantage) to the Thaumaturge from Pathfinder (an occult knowledge class that takes advantage of foe's weaknesses and esoteric knowledge).

My favorite character from my D&D 4e days was an Artificer/Swordmage Dwarf named Morrend. He gave himself and his allies large amounts of temporary hit points, buffed his hammer for melee, buffed his allies' attacks, reduced enemies chances to hit, reduced the damage allies would take from enemies, healed a bit, and made utility items for the party. He was such a fun unkillable ball of health. I had to make someone who could survive dealing with a party of nothing else but squishy casters and no other frontliners.

[Aravell]

In RPGs that give a wide build variety, I usually go wild and try to break the game.

In FF1, my white mage was my damage dealer. I try and build characters to work differently than intended, like if a character is designated a healer, I'd try and build them offensively instead. Or if a character is designated a damage dealer, I make them a healer for fun.

In terms of FFXIV, that's why I vastly prefer the HW era. We had so much build variety back then because potencies weren't that high, so crit wasn't a must. I had a lot of fun on full skill speed ninja. Was it optimal? No. Was it fun? It was to me.

[Iscah]

Funny thing is Elden Ring's more of an rpg than FFXIV is; XIV now plays itself for the most part. Customization of stats? Nah, that's not allowed in my "perfectly balanced FFXIV, it makes the job for devs easier."

I'm right there with ya! And I think that's part of why it's taken me this long to look past the name and "genre" and really think about what activities the game asks me to do. And when I look at that, I don't see much RPG going on there, at least not in the combat.

[...] FF14 has mechanically changed, and with those its gameplay — and thus its genre — have shifted as well. When I started the game in ARR, the game was much different than it is now; there were things like sub-jobs and aggro management and fire materia. [...] in the past it used to be possible to actually customize the abilities and resistances you had in combat. Those kinds of choices are something I relate to RPG's, and they're now absent from the game. I could be wrong, but I don't think it would be a controversial statement to at the very least say that the game is currently less of an RPG than it was previously.

This seems like a really strange base definition of RPG to me. Are we talking the difference between western and JRPG here?

As far as I've known them, RPGs generally mean "epic fantasy storyline" and the degree of customisation is irrelevant to classifying the genre. Some might go deep with a job system or other ways to edit your characters, but you don't necessarily have to engage with it to clear the game.

If you have a party and you're on a worldwide hike, it's probably an RPG.

And I was only thinking generically when I wrote that previous sentence, but now I stop to think about it, FFXIV has felt like more of an RPG over time as we started to have party members travelling with us. I think it's what made Heavensward stand out initially and it's become stronger now that we have trusts.


Edit to add: The other defining factor is EXP and levelling up. At least as I was taught it, that's the absolute line between a game being an "action RPG" (eg. Kingdom Hearts) and an "action-adventure game" (eg. Legend of Zelda) where your strength and abilities either stay constant or have to be upgraded through collectables or progress.

[LilimoLimomo]

This seems like a really strange base definition of RPG to me.

Hehe, yeah, it's basically impossible to talk about genre without stumbling into semantics, because genres are these ambiguous, subjective vibes without any official definition. And so we all come to define every genre in our own way that's distinct to us, a collection ideas that in some ways overlaps what some people think, and in some ways doesn't. That's why generally speaking, I find it best to not talk about genre at all, but rather to unpack these ideas and talk about the actual traits themselves. Maybe when I say RPG's what I'm really talking about is player choice and strategic options. Maybe I'm talking about role-playing. Maybe I'm talking about epic adventures. Maybe numbers that go up? Maybe some of that, or all of that, or none of that. So it helps to specify, because that way even if we have different definitions of "RPG", we can at least talk about the things that person wants to talk about.

That said, OP didn't specify, and I didn't want to interrogate them with 20 questions, so I just did my best and rolled with it. ^^

The changes we have are not made because they must be made. They're made because someone in some seat of power wants to see the game streamlined even more than it already is.

Just to be clear, I don't think there's any change that would ever need to be made to any game. Games are fake, imagined from whole cloth. They can be anything anyone wants them to be. So yeah, I agree, and I hope nothing I said suggested that I thought the game was in need of change one way or the other. All I wanted to point out was that over 10 years the game has changed and become a meaningfully different experience compared to what it once was.