DT Job Reworks - Unconfident Developers and Poor Communication

[Tunda]

the real problem that jobs do not have clear vision.. not only jobs but also role!

tanks heal more than healers,
dps jobs almost the same and less skill expression.
healers 99% the same job.

Gameplay aspect need tons of improvement.. having flashy animation every 120s every 2 years will not satisfy players,

We need a clear vision, improvement and engaging gameplay

[SpeckledBurd]

This puts a lot of job changes into perspective for me. Monk, Samurai, Viper, Black Mage, and the like have not been reworked and reworked again because the developers have a confident direction moving forward. They have been reworked because the developers are just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, and they have no idea how things are actually going to ship until they have gone out.

I've been playing Monk since at the very beginning of Heavensward and it wouldn't be much of an exageration to say that "throwing things at the wall to see what sticks" pretty aptly describes the job's development history from then until now. Though it's also often been coupled with a lot of handwringing from the developers to please try out what they've made even though it's uniformly rejected by the playerbase leading to the Monk forum riots of 5.X.

Give the fast job a slow? We hate it. "Please try it" they beg, but we did, in fact we probably played it more than they did if subsequent interviews are any indication. Still they couldn't be assed to remove the Slow that we'd rejected and they knew we hated for the Shadowbringers launch.

Now it seems like there have been enough jobs added that everyone is getting the Monk treatment. While Monk continues to get the treatment it normally received outside of the aberration that was Endwalker, IE: Randomly changing a system with promises that it won't change the job flow and replacing our timers with Balls, only to screw that up because they seemingly prioritized the aesthetic of the gauge over how the job actually flowed.

[Carighan]

Now it seems like there have been enough jobs added that everyone is getting the Monk treatment. While Monk continues to get the treatment it normally received outside of the aberration that was Endwalker, IE: Randomly changing a system with promises that it won't change the job flow and replacing our timers with Balls, only to screw that up because they seemingly prioritized the aesthetic of the gauge over how the job actually flowed.

Eh, until the stance-system of monks actually ever does anything that a non-stance based melee rotation does not do - which it so far has not done once, it's just the thinnest veneer over the usual static rotation everyone gets - then it really could not matter any less.

None of the melee DPS does anything interesting right now. There are the odd ideas and promising individual skills in there that, being placed in an interesting system, could be fun and complement that well. But unless the job design massively diverges from wanting everyone to have a static pre-plannable rotation (except Dancer, which is kinda funky that the exception exists) then nothing can truly ever be done to salvage any individual melee DPS.

Monks for example could ideally have a system where only in the moment you get into a stance can you see the information needed to decide how to use it. Would that be workable on a 2.0s GCD? Of course not, in fact it'd only truly be doable if the opposite were true and Monks had a far far far slower GCD than other jobs, which funnily enough would work better with the underlying idea of being, well, a Monk. Someone contemplating and thoughtful, striking when and where is needed. But more importantly, such an in-the-moment system would if anything be done for Viper nowadays, since apart from also not being random, their system is kinda close to that already.

[jonimated]

I've been playing Monk since at the very beginning of Heavensward and it wouldn't be much of an exageration to say that "throwing things at the wall to see what sticks" pretty aptly describes the job's development history from then until now. Though it's also often been coupled with a lot of handwringing from the developers to please try out what they've made even though it's uniformly rejected by the playerbase leading to the Monk forum riots of 5.X.

Give the fast job a slow? We hate it. "Please try it" they beg, but we did, in fact we probably played it more than they did if subsequent interviews are any indication. Still they couldn't be assed to remove the Slow that we'd rejected and they knew we hated for the Shadowbringers launch.

Now it seems like there have been enough jobs added that everyone is getting the Monk treatment. While Monk continues to get the treatment it normally received outside of the aberration that was Endwalker, IE: Randomly changing a system with promises that it won't change the job flow and replacing our timers with Balls, only to screw that up because they seemingly prioritized the aesthetic of the gauge over how the job actually flowed.

Stormblood Monk is often lauded as being peak of the Monk experience. In fact it's often seen as the peak of job design, and for very good reasons.

Back then we had more potisionals, management dots, execution skills. Jobs which had gauges to manage had multiple skills to spend said gauge on. Basic combos had more branches (for tanks as well). Enmity management was still a thing leading to skills specifically designed for that purpose. There was just so much more to consider during a combat encounter outside of the boss pattern. That era in job design is often held is such high regard for a reason.

Honestly folks who either didn't play then or don't remember hit up the waybackmachine and open the FFXIV job guide page from the Stormblood era. It was a different time indeed.

I'm not sure how we got from that to where we are now, but it seems through the updates and expansions post-4.0 jobs have just had all their edges sanded down to the bland stumps we have now.

[SpeckledBurd]

Stormblood Monk is often lauded as being peak of the Monk experience. In fact it's often seen as the peak of job design, and for very good reasons.

Back then we had more potisionals, management dots, execution skills. Jobs which had gauges to manage had multiple skills to spend said gauge on. Basic combos had more branches (for tanks as well). Enmity management was still a thing leading to skills specifically designed for that purpose. There was just so much more to consider during a combat encounter outside of the boss pattern. That era in job design is often held is such high regard for a reason.

I mean on some level some of that is also rose tinted glasses requiring you to ignore entire jobs or aspects of those jobs.

Like again with Monk, Stormblood Monk being regarded so well is also really only in retrospect, and it really only considers 4.2 Monk and onwards without considering Stormblood Launch Monk (IE, the first half of the expansion).

Monk from 4.0 up until 4.2 in terms of gameplay was bad. Perfect Balance was on a 3 Minute Cooldown and Wind Tackle stacks didn't exist yet so GL recovery was still terrible compared to equivalent buff recovery of other jobs (BoTD, Enochian, etc). Riddle of Earth was poor as a GL refresh even though it was brand new because we were already in the thick of cinematically designed fights where boss's would take their time between going invulnerable and actually dealing damage (plus it could be blocked by shields). Worse yet, we'd already lost much of our DoT management (Touch of Death and Fracture were gone) so timer management was a worse experience if you enjoyed it in Heavensward. The newly added burst windows felt agonizingly slow with Riddle of Fire's slow debuff since the job was pretty light on oGCDs to begin with before 4.0 removed Howling Fist and the RNG that was meant to supplement it was structured to be the worst of all worlds. As was the nature of RNG you'd occasionally get bad chakra returns from Brotherhood where you wouldn't get a single full Forbidden Chakra but by design you could never get a frantic, fun weaving window since Forbidden Chakra had a 5 second recast making it so you could only be punished by bad RNG and never truly rewarded.

4.2 Monk played as intended went over pretty well since it made pretty much all content less of a drag to play Monk in. However the TK rotation itself was pretty hotly debated at the time, likely as an extension of the dislike of Riddle of Fire's slow. Some people enjoyed how fast and active the job felt with frantic stance switching and oGCD weaves, others disliked it because they didn't like how their GCD recast was jerked all over the place making it feel slow, others still disliked it because it felt like a bug (which to be fair, it was, TK did like 100 more potency than it should of which is why the entire thing worked). People only consolidated after the fact when Shadowbringers launch Monk was so catastrophically awful that there was no joy to be had in playing it and that having the option for the TK rotation was better than fishing for server ticks with Anatman.

[jonimated]

I mean on some level some of that is also rose tinted glasses requiring you to ignore entire jobs or aspects of those jobs.

Like again with Monk, Stormblood Monk being regarded so well is also really only in retrospect, and it really only considers 4.2 Monk and onwards without considering Stormblood Launch Monk (IE, the first half of the expansion).

This is all completely accurate, and I think what you brought up with 4.0 vs 4.2 Monk actually shows another interesting point. There was a time when the devs seemed capable of ironing out wrinkles in a job without completely gutting it's complexities wholesale. Stormblood job design certainly wasn't perfect, but the main reason it's often held up so highly is it represents a time when players had a variety of things to do during combat aside from following a set pattern.

Had the team stuck with Stormblood design philosophy and opted to build on those designs instead of what we got in Shadowbringers and beyond we may be playing a very different game.

[Carighan]

Had the team stuck with Stormblood design philosophy and opted to build on those designs instead of what we got in Shadowbringers and beyond we may be playing a very different game.

But this begs the question, what was the impetus for the changes?

[Mikey_R]

Stormblood job design certainly wasn't perfect, but the main reason it's often held up so highly is it represents a time when players had a variety of things to do during combat aside from following a set pattern.

No, combat was a set pattern still. There was still an optimal rotation, assuming you could keep 100% uptime.

And it is that last bit that has caused (one of) the issues. They changed fight design so that you could keep 100% uptime, without really fighting for it. It didn't come straight away, but it went that way by the end of the expansion, which is why EW had virtually 100% uptime fights for melee.

Without downtime, you don't need to adjust your rotation, you don't need to think on your feet about what to do, what is the most optimal, how can I make the most of this downtime, especially on Monk.

ShB was also the time where people were asking for raid buffs to be aligned and how it was frustrating that some didn't, which leads into EW.

Now, to make things clear, I do not believe this design direction was dictated by the more hardcore groups, quote the opposite infact. It was the ones who were struggling who thought making things 100% uptime and aligning raid buffs would help them. This is also a similar philosophy when people ask for job changes. More often than not, it isn't the main players of jobs asking for changes, or, more specifically, bigger changes. They might ask for small, QoL things, but getting rid of positionals on Monk, as an example, noone who played Monk seriously was asking for that.

Unfortunately, it is this group of people who are also the most vocal, so it looks like more people are asking for these changes, when it is infact just a vocal minority, where, even if these changes are implemented, there is no guarantee they will even play the job.

This is then also why jobs feel 'samey'. Jobs do play differently, but the act they all play into a 1-2 minute raid buff window is why they feel they have the same structure. For the absolute extreme, you need jobs to break away from the 2 minute meta, easiest way to do that is to make each job selfish and have no raid buffs (however, I do know this is extreme and not to everyone's liking) and buy doing this, you can really make jobs feel different. You want that sustain job back? Sure, it isn't being crippled by the 2 minute meta now. You can also play around with giving jobs more tools to get around an encounter, especially now that they are not constrained by the party buff window (to elaborate a bit more, since every job is designed around 2 minutes and 100% uptime, all jobs get the required gauge and resources needed for these windows every time. By breaking away, you can free things up).

As a last comment from me, I have been enjoying being in parties where there are no party buffs more than in ones where they are present. As an example, Viper. If you get into a party with no raid buffs, you don't have to worry about keeping 50 gauge around when you go into the 2 minute segment and you can place this Reawaken combo wherever you want. It is that freedom to choose that this is a safe place to use it where it won't get interrupted by mechanics. It turns into more of a planning out of your 'burst' over the whole fight rather than having to constrain yourself to a specific 20 second window. But, that is just my thoughts.

[jonimated]

No, combat was a set pattern still. There was still an optimal rotation, assuming you could keep 100% uptime.

I agree with a lot of what you said. I have to say though this statement right here I take issue with, and I think the dev team following this philosophy is at least in part responsible for why we are in the situation we are.

There is a chasm of difference between an optimal rotation, and being forced to follow a set pattern. RPGs since the dawn of time, hell any game with combat, has always and will always have an optimal way to play. This is not an excuse to completely remove player agency and complexity from a combat system. I think this is a lesson the FFXIV devs need to relearn.

[Mikey_R]

I agree with a lot of what you said. I have to say though this statement right here I take issue with, and I think the dev team following this philosophy is at least in part responsible for why we are in the situation we are.

If you don't agree with that statement, why not give examples? I have obviously either forgotten something, or there might be something from a job I don't know as well as others, so there is more behind the gameplay than what is presented that could give the player agency in what they do.