Dawntrail Dragoon Feedback

[mallleable]

To me, Starcross, and Winged Glide are the optimal conclusion for DRG that I've been afraid of for the job -- turning jump attacks into generic melee oGCDs, and generic utility abilities. I'm not a DRG main, but to me there is just something about how DRG's rotation is built to where jumps will have to be optimized out of it. I did enjoy how zippy it felt being able to enter Life of the Dragon just off Geirskogul when leveling it to 100, but I feel like they should have fully committed to the rework because what we have now feels weirdly liminal like its trying to hold on to the old way. In the mean time, I think they should do something about Life Surge so burst doesn't feel so much like a traffic jam.

[CidHeiral]

Slightly off-topic, but I've noticed a BUNCH of jobs, specifically melees, having less-than-stellar animations on some of the new attacks (Tendo Setsugekka's laughable ragdoll-spin comes to mind.)

Yeah the main issue is the gameplay of course but the choices they made with some of the animations are quite strange. Even if they're pivoting into a more weightless anime aesthetic with the way your character moves they didn't really accomplish that, the animations generally just look goofy, especially when they're playing out alongside the old animations that still have that power to them. Maybe some less experienced people were assigned to the DRG animations this time, who knows.

[velswen]

I loved the eye mechanic! It was thematically interesting and interesting in gameplay too! It allowed you to accelerate or decelerate your burst based on your usage of Mirage Dive which forced you to think in different situations more than you do now. Dragoon at present is just "press buttons off-cooldown" the job. Nothing to engage with really unless you're going for some super tight optimizations.

[Aco505]

Nothing to engage with really unless you're going for some super tight optimizations.

Sadly, there's not much of that either.

[Asari5]

they are probably like: 'oh look they still play dragoon, we did a great job.'

and i'm like: 'how am i supposed to play the game without battle class?'

[CidHeiral]

they are probably like: 'oh look they still play dragoon, we did a great job.'

and i'm like: 'how am i supposed to play the game without battle class?'

I've thought about that as well. I still consider myself a DRG main despite despising everything about Dawntrail DRG. I wonder how many other players are just dealing with it despite not liking the changes just because it's their favorite job.

[Carighan]

I've thought about that as well. I still consider myself a DRG main despite despising everything about Dawntrail DRG. I wonder how many other players are just dealing with it despite not liking the changes just because it's their favorite job.

The problem is that I can kinda see this from the dev perspective: "But we didn't do anything negative". Which is kinda true. If you end up pressing the same buttons in virtually the same manner and order, even if the underlying mechanic that first made you press them that way is removed, is it actually a real change? If the mechanic were invisible before, would you even be able to tell the change?

It's kinda weird like that.

It's also why I feel they need to first decide to what degree they want to heterogenize melee DPS before starting reworks/changes on any of them. I would love for Dragoon to be a job that has significant air time, and taken from PvP it's invulnerable while up there, but in turn attacks slowly (if strong) and is limited in movement as jumping takes commitment. It'd be a cool unique thing, limited mobility but also limited vulnerability. But similar niches and design paradigms need to exist for all melee jobs first, before putting any into action. Monks for example have this stance-dance, but it does absolutely nothing mechanically that it is usable for. But there is a concept that could be made into a unique "thing" at least.

Come to think of it, maybe Dragoon's "thing" would just be a +2y or +5y melee reach or so? Since we use a lance?!

[mallleable]

How I would like them to approach a DRG rework would be to really focus on the mechanics of jump attacks, make them distinct from regular attacks, and gap closers. Just making jumps oGCDs is what lead DRG to where it is now so they need to be handled differently. As a start, I think that there is a certain amount of bodily risk that I think should be present when using jumps so making jumps GCDs could open up a lot more design space for rotation mechanics, and bring back some of that risky play. Things can get granular like having an action for the jump which grants some air time, the dive where you rush to the target, and the landing where the bulk of the damage occurs. The rest of the rotation can be figured out once jumps as an action are in a great spot.

[Aco505]

Having so many oGCDs is an aspect of DRG that is quite unique as no other job has that many different ones to juggle, particularly within the DPS. It wouldn't be a good idea to remove such a trait when every other job is already GCD-focused when it comes to their biggest damaging actions.

Jumps can still feel powerful as oGCDs, as Stardiver shows. In fact, I think Starcross and Stardiver's potency should be swapped or at least be made equal to account for the fact that the latter is a single weave.

As a start, I think that there is a certain amount of bodily risk that I think should be present when using jumps

There's already risks when using jumps. Stardiver has a long 1.5 animation and movement lock and Dragonfire Dive is also a 0.8 lock. High Jump's lock can be bypassed by jumping just before using it, which can be seen as both good and bad.

How many jobs have to deal with such a mechanic? Some tanks, mostly, and most of their damage gap closers are low damage compared to DRG's jumps.

Additionally, DRG is the only melee job with no ranged GCD cool down, further adding to the risks when trying to keep uptime.

We didn't ask for our jumps to be reduced in number and the JP side of the player base often requests a further reduction of the animation lock on them, so either SE leaves them as they are or they further simplify them. I doubt they'll go back on that front.

DRG is fine as it is concept-wise. It simply needs to expand on it because right now it's a job in which you mostly do something for 40 seconds to then have a very boring filler with almost no thought for 80 seconds every two minutes.

Asking for the job to be more airborne and have invulnerability and such doesn't go well with the PvE aspect of this game, which is why this part is left for PvP and even there you're not invulnerable while in the air and can die while using Sky High.

[CidHeiral]

I'm still stunned that these changes happened. As far as I could tell DRG was widely regarded as one of the best designed jobs in the game. The people who hated it were people who hate anything that's "busy" and they already had many non-busy jobs to choose from. Why is the opinion of someone who hates the job apparently worth more than someone who has mained it for years? It's like turning your FPS into a side scrolling puzzle game to appeal to people who hate FPS and giving all the original players the finger.

With the encounter design changes this expansion they clearly made the decision to say "the bar is this high for success, rise to the occasion or don't." Why should the job design be any different? I'm not saying every job needs to be super complex but the devs seem to be on a holy mission to make every job as mindless and lacking in any sort of failure state as humanly possible.

If you end up pressing the same buttons in virtually the same manner and order, even if the underlying mechanic that first made you press them that way is removed, is it actually a real change? If the mechanic were invisible before, would you even be able to tell the change?

Probably not, but that isn't the case with DRG. It plays very differently beyond just the removal of the eye mechanic.