DT Job Reworks - Unconfident Developers and Poor Communication

[Willemdarke]

Lack of vision, confidence and "throwing things at the wall to see what sticks" might as well have been the tagline for the whole expansion. Not just job design either, when in a recent interview Yoshida said he's not surprised the story was poorly received and previously during fanfest said they have no concrete plans for the future of the story and it will depend on player feedback.

Back to jobs, the lack of vision really shines in the changes to Dancer, minimal as they are, yet impactful in all the worst ways.

In DT almost all jobs were changed to provide a free use of their resource spender, instead of simply giving the resource (eg. RDM's Manafication, RPR's Plentiful Harvest). A simple, yet great change to avoid frustration due to overcapping and wasting resources.

In the very same patch, they make Dancer's Tillana give 50 gauge... Something it never did before... During DNC's burst window... When they are literally swimming in endless gauge due to party members using their own abilities gives DNC 10 gauge a pop... WHY??

In DT, Dancer has so many mandatory GCD abilities that must be fit within the burst window. You have no time to do your standard combo (aka fishing for oGCD feather procs), slowing down how the job feels to play, due to less oGCDs being used. Top that with the Tillana change it makes the job feel way more rigid, as ideally I'd delay Tillana until after a couple of Saber Dances when my gauge is very low.

From free flowing and fast paced RNG job to rigid and a bit slower... Dancer -_-

This wouldn't have happened if the people designing jobs talked to each other, as clearly someone on the team figured out the issue for RDM, RPR, etc, but somehow the guy designing DNC had no clue about it.

At the moment the whole game feels like there's no grand vision or plan for the future. Every dev is just doing whatever independently, while the manager is traveling the world giving interviews.

[ForsakenRoe]

Back to jobs, the lack of vision really shines in the changes to Dancer, minimal as they are, yet impactful in all the worst ways.

In DT almost all jobs were changed to provide a free use of their resource spender, instead of simply giving the resource (eg. RDM's Manafication, RPR's Plentiful Harvest). A simple, yet great change to avoid frustration due to overcapping and wasting resources.

In the very same patch, they make Dancer's Tillana give 50 gauge... Something it never did before... During DNC's burst window... When they are literally swimming in endless gauge due to party members using their own abilities gives DNC 10 gauge a pop... WHY??

DNC is the poster child of 'the devs didn't talk to each other' it feels like. In this expansion, we got a system that allows actions that are 'only useable after X other action' to replace one another on the hotbars to consolidate buttons a bit (eg, HighJump > Mirage Dive, or Ikishoten > Zanshin). We also got certain actions that grant gauge changed to grant a buff that allows a free cast of the gauge spender, to reduce overcap issues (eg Hypercharged on MCH, Ideal Host on RPR).

But on DNC:

Technical Step turns into Tillana, you can't separate the two

Tillana grants 50 gauge, during Tech Step when you're already drowning in gauge, and so it's super easy to generate 50 gauge and overcap within the 2 GCDs (spending gauge to get low, waiting for that GCD, then pressing Tillana and waiting for that GCD). Also, the ONLY thing that Esprit can be spent on is Saber Dance, so the excuse that'd apply to something like NIN (where you can choose to spend on Bhav, Frog or Bunshin) doesn't work here

Fan Dance 4 can only be used after Flourish, you cannot combine the two

Starfall Dance can only be used after Devilment, you cannot combine the two

Last Dance can only be used after Standard Step/Finishing Move, you cannot combine the two

Closed Position is still jank as hell to swap from one player to another (requiring a press to 'deactivate it' and then another to place on someone else), I wish it worked like Kardia (instant transfer, 5s CD)


But the biggest crime for DNC in my opinion is with Finishing Move. I get that they wanted to make it so your second Standard Step fits into the burst window easier, but this move removes 40% of the DANCING, from DANCER. You go from 4 Standard Steps and a Tech Step per 2mins, to just two Standard Steps and a Tech Step. Who asked for the Dancer to do Dance Steps less often? That's the thing that sets them apart from other jobs in terms of gameplay! It'd be like if NIN got a change that means 'press Kassatsu, it turns into Hyosho, press again to instantly use Hyosho at the cost of one Mudra Charge'. You'd be pressing Ninjutsu less, that detracts from the aesthetic/identity of the job

The only jobs that were somewhat well-thought-out are the Viper and Pictomancer, although even they have some minor oddities in their rotations.

'Render Hammer' doesn't replace 'paint Hammer onto your gauge, when tf am I going to paint another hammer without rendering the one I currently have on my gauge first?

Same could be said of Mog of the Ages replacing Creature Motif but there might be some wild opti I'm not aware of for that one

Comet doesn't replace Holy when you're in Subractive Spectrum, but you cannot use Holy while in Subtractive so why have the option there and greyed out?

Same applies for Fire/Aero/Water > Stone/Ice/Thunder, if I can't use FAW while in Subtractive why can't I just combine the two buttons?

Star Prism can only be used after Starry Muse, but the two cannot be combined. At least with Rainbow Drip you can hardcast it so there's a reason for it to be separate

I'm guessing the reason here is, if they combined some of the stuff that would make sense to combine on PCT, the job would have like 12 buttons (and another like 8 for role actions/sprint/potion/LB) and people would point at it and laugh and say 'haha look at the dumbo job with so few buttons'

[Ramiee]

'Render Hammer' doesn't replace 'paint Hammer onto your gauge, when tf am I going to paint another hammer without rendering the one I currently have on my gauge first?

Same could be said of Mog of the Ages replacing Creature Motif but there might be some wild opti I'm not aware of for that one

Comet doesn't replace Holy when you're in Subractive Spectrum, but you cannot use Holy while in Subtractive so why have the option there and greyed out?

Same applies for Fire/Aero/Water > Stone/Ice/Thunder, if I can't use FAW while in Subtractive why can't I just combine the two buttons?

Star Prism can only be used after Starry Muse, but the two cannot be combined. At least with Rainbow Drip you can hardcast it so there's a reason for it to be separate

I'm guessing the reason here is, if they combined some of the stuff that would make sense to combine on PCT, the job would have like 12 buttons (and another like 8 for role actions/sprint/potion/LB) and people would point at it and laugh and say 'haha look at the dumbo job with so few buttons'

Besides the stronger spells, for muses, and im being very generous with CBU3 here. I think they have this system for future sub-muses for example instead of a hammer we get a sword option but we use the same hammer attack button, If this is future proofing then its fine however if its not its just bloat. The stronger attacks and holy/comet is pretty dumb to be seperated, it would only work if you could use the normal spells and the stronger spells at the same time but the job is clearly not designed for that.

Yeah, the Blue Mage update being SO late in the expansion cycle is really bothersome, becasue by then we already have a lot to sink in.

I tried to structure that list to have something to do for every type of player, from crafters to battle content enjoyers per patch.
Limited Jobs are a very fun thing for midcore between patches so having them between the savage tier would be solid imo, especially considering blue mage updates are becoming worse and worse. If we are gonna have a medicore update they can at least make it happen early on so we can do the new raid series earlier.