Viper Changes Thread - Share your thoughts

[Embio]

This is just me basically reiterating my thoughts from another thread, but I'm also putting it here because this thread appears to be the one gaining the most traction. We all know SE only likes to read the big threads, so just in case:

I think part of the reason the new change feels so awful is because it effectively removed half of your combo chains. 2-1-1, 2-1-2, 1-2-1, and 1-2-2 do not exist in Viper's current design. They spent all this time designing this free form combo system for Viper, only to turn around and make the rotation completely static. Wasn't that supposed to be the point of the job? What was the goal of this change?

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I don't think it's too big of an ask for the "free form combo job" they designed to actually have free form combos, lol.

To add on a little bit though, I feel like the design team has an issue where they'll see players make a mistake in their rotation or not understand something immediately, and the devs see that as a flaw with the game. Whenever there's a curve in job difficulty or a skill to be mastered, they're incredibly prone to removing it out of a fear of scaring players away. However, the average player should be able to understand where they've made a mistake and where they need to improve. It's not a flaw in the game for a player to make mistakes and have to learn. That's the whole point of having any design in the first place. All of this says to me that the developers have a lack of confidence and faith in their own job design, and it's why we've seen so much decision-making and design removed, not added, to jobs over the years.

Now, there is something to be said about how the game conveys these mechanics to players through tooltips, and whether that's sufficient enough, but that's its own issue. Bad conveyance =/= bad mechanics; the job itself made sense once you actually played it. Maybe the game would stand to benefit from some MOBA-style video showcases for the jobs that teach players how to do their rotation. It doesn't stand to benefit from shooting its own design in the foot.

Like Sid Meier once said, "a game is a series of interesting decisions," but the only interesting decision the devs have left me with is whether I continue to sub to this game or not.