/r/ffxivdiscussion: If you want WoW-style design, you're going to have to accept-

[Amenara]

I'm hopeful some experimentation will take place, but I would caution that WoW healing is currently in the exact opposite place of FF14.

Instead of too little threat, there's arguably too much of it - a consequence of player strength through talents and defensive power creep. That's not an enviable position.

Sounds like there is a middle road that should be easy to occupy instead of sticking to the extremes.

[Keldion]

Sounds like there is a middle road that should be easy to occupy instead of sticking to the extremes.

That's the rub - no one wants the extremes, but it isn't easy to reach the middle road. When tanks and damage dealers are experienced at avoiding telegraph AOEs or mitigating what can't be avoided, the needed healing shrinks.

Everything is connected. I'd go as far to claim DRK is the best balanced tank regarding its reliance on healer support. I used to despise this fact, but I've had a change of heart.

[Ramiee]

Well considering ARR was inspired so much by Cata WoW, I think the devs can still take inspo from wow in certain ways.
Yeah we probably won't be getting 8 hour long raids or big open zones but the FFXIV devs looking at Preservation Evoker's DPS+Heal moves and thinking "hey these could work on Sage!" should still be on the table. WoW has its flaws over XIV but also its positives over XIV, fundementally both games are far more similar compared to other MMOs but with different design principals behind them, much easier to compare XIV to WoW then say Lost Ark. Healing in WOW is incredibly engaging and fun but at the same time extremely punishing when learning to the extent that you will probably have to look at guides to even understand what you are doing on some healers, while XIV healing is far easier to pick up and learn in game but incredibly brain dead and boring. Pretty much every trinity MMO has their flaws with the trinty, XIVs current problem is that the trinty is irrelevant while WOW has unbalanced specs and a large learning curve.

But yeah you can't really directly insert WOW logic into XIV, they have completely different logic and playerbases. Tanks in WOW have threat generation as incredibly important to the gameplay while XIV doesn't, Healing in WOW takes far more commitment you can't nearly full heal in an oGCD like in XIV constantly so if they do take inspo from WOW they'll have to adapt it to this or rework the healer role to be more like WOW if they decide thats a better route.
I for sure think if the 8.0 removal of levelling for another way of gaining power is being discussed the devs have to look at lots of games outside of WOW for inspo, a skill tree for example probably would not work in XIV. But I am cautiously optimistic about experimentation because the XIV endgame has remained pretty similar for most of its lifespan so a mix up of it should happen at some point.

[Tunda]

This could work only if a whole system is revamping:
1- stop leveling after 100
2- add gearset system and abilities attach to gear with bonus effect like monster hunter gear sets
3- diverse tanks and healers with different stats and other ways to play the role.

Example paladin passive increase defence but warrior increase max hp + percentage life steal based on HP

[Dzian]

"wow style" is misleading; FF fans already know this from FFXI.
Of course some jobs will be OP while others will be looked down upon, that's fine as long as it's not blatant to the point where it feels on purpose.

FFXI had a lot of cool ideas that were close to being great. The jobs were well designed but often hindered by the sub job system and how it was so limited..

For example a 75 war/ 37 whm could have been a really good tank if only the whm spells scaled better. Instead of cure being capped at 30hp cure 2 being capped at 90hp. Etc.

75 SMN 37 blm could also have been a strong choice if the low level blm spells scaled better at higher levels.

A lot of jobs would have had a lot of options if sub jobs scaled better. It was a cool idea that didn't quite reach its potential.

The other big issue XI had was it's bestiary was heavily biased. So many mob arch types shared the same weaknesses. You can see it just looking at xiclopedia. 90% of mobs weak to slashing ice and or thunder...

If the bestiary was better balanced a lot of those jobs would again have been a lot more promising and desirable.. again it was a great concept that came close but didn't quite make it...

It's job design was amazing. If only it had gotten the sub jobs and bestiary right to go with it.

[Eudyptes]

FFXI had a lot of cool ideas that were close to being great. The jobs were well designed but often hindered by the sub job system and how it was so limited..

I'm 100% with you on this. It was originally my hope that FFXIV was going to be the more natural progression of FFXI, bringing what made that game great into a new era, but it didn't happen. Don't get me wrong, I love FFXIV, but it never held the same place in my heart FFXIV (and even pre-cata WoW) did. There are a few reasons this is the case, but the main two are job design/identity and the other is that the world in FFXIV feels small and honestly kind of empty even though there are a lot of zones. I'm not sure the latter can be changed or is even worth doing so, but I'm still holding out hope that going forward in 8.0 and beyond they start making strides to overhaul the class design philosophy. Assuming FFXXII or XVIII isn't going to be an MMO and on the horizon that is.

I think they honestly should not even add any new classes next xpac, and overhaul the current ones in major ways. Like letting SMN summon primals on demand in any order with their own separate abilities and CDs (and adding the missing big 3 of course). Give tanks and healers their own identities in bigger and unique ways, like leaning into GNB being the "dps tank", adding a future evasion tank, revisiting the old cards system for AST and expanding on it to be much more impactful, making SGE actually heal primarily through damage, SCH through pets, etc. Also use this opportunity to figure out how to actually make BLU and BST real jobs. Heck, those could be the "new jobs". Sure, this leads to imbalance, but I honestly believe that as long as every class remains viable and/or excels at certain fights doesn't on others this won't really be a problem. It can be a problem in WoW, but FFXIV has already resolved that issue by allowing all classes on the same character and homogenized gear sets.

I know it's a big ask, but honestly this should have been the original progression track for these jobs from the beginning.

[Silberzerox]

I came from WoW when i started FF14. I love both Worlds, spend an insanely amound of time in them.

I never wanted FF14 to be like WoW, in particular not the mythic/m+, the skill-pacing and this freedom of mods. The mythic raids and the impact of mods completely broke to total balancing of WoW.

But i allways wished that FF14 would take some inspiration for how new Content can look like. New Content in FF14 so lame and cheaply made, its allways 30-40% of that what it could or even should be. To fast we reach the point of just repeating the same thing over and over again with nothing new coming in.
Daily quest of wild tribes are done in a few minutes. Some short cutscenes at some points and a few minutes of walking to a location to tell a little story. And thats all, you've seen everything after 2-3 days, "farm" the quests for 2-3 weeks and you are done with a whole contentpatch.

Or you have things like high sea fishing or the gold sourcer, 30-60% just waitingtime for the next possible interactiontime

Rynes Adventure to bring back the Elements in Shadowbringer. It felt so turned down to fit the standart 8-People-Raids-content.

Hunts! HOW And WHY is the Hunting-content in FF14 the most underdeveloped one? Hunting-trains are full with hundreds of players. Its good content to bring players out in the areas, great openworld group-content. But all crippled by stupid long SpawnCDs, no quests,no Hunting-faction, Archivement with out of reach kill requiements. It could be so much more part of the daily gameplay.

FF14 is lacking where WoW tends to have to much,ofc only in my opinion.

[Valence]

The fallacy is to think that because something bad happens in another game (here, WoW), then that bad thing is automatically going to crop up in XIV were it to attempt introducing variations, and that every attempt to do anything else than homogenization is doomed to fall into the exact same horrifying pitfalls.

[KisaiTenshi]

The fallacy is to think that because something bad happens in another game (here, WoW), then that bad thing is automatically going to crop up in XIV were it to attempt introducing variations, and that every attempt to do anything else than homogenization is doomed to fall into the exact same horrifying pitfalls.

Nah. Any time something "bad" happens in another game, all the other games in the genre go "oh, we can't have that", and usually just proactively try to prevent the bad thing.

While SE doesn't have anti-cheat programs in 14, they also seem to go about dealing with bots and players botting in a way that is ineffective, sweeping under the rug at best. If they really cared about enforcing the no third-party tools rule, they would use those sites that the programs report to to ban players that show up on it. And no "but I might get caught in someone elses data" is not an excuse. We all know exactly what is going on. Players chasing the highest DPS on said sites are clearly, shamelessly, using it, and SE is within their right to suspend those characters. These sites only exist because of the toxicity in WoW and players bringing that toxicity to XIV.

The problem will always come back to players mistakenly or brazenly lying about what they do with such data. Like if you have the common mod launcher for one of the trendy 4-player games you know what that launcher does when it sees 14 installed? It tries to sell you on modding 14 through it. Every time it launches. The problem here is that while modding might be acceptable behavior in these P2P 4-player games, it's not acceptable in 14, but they're not going to tell you that. You're just supposed to be smart enough to not get caught.

And as we've seen on the forum, time and time again, people will namedrop not only the websites, but the tools, and the moderators will come by and delete the threads. There is a section of the player base that don't know the "do not brag about your crimes in front of the courthouse" social cue.

By using things that players clearly identified as "coming from WoW"'s design, that was bait for WoW players to come here. And as I recall from the 2.x Novice Network, players were constantly asking how to do (WoW) thing and using the NN as a global chat channel. Many Mentors kept accidently inviting spam bots into it. Anyone who played ANY other game that had a global chat feature knew this was going to happen and SE just naively implemented it anyway. Maybe it's different now? I don't know, mentors are if anything worse players because they feel like they've been made customer service employees without their knowledge so they are excited to help until they get a party of ungrateful players that don't actually want the help. I've also done the Mentor thing in a different MMO, and it's the same problem there. Players don't really want "help" so much as a carry through a piece of content that is too hard without grinding for the gear needed to clear it.

[Valence]

... How did we even move from job balanced to cheats, bots and parsing again?