Job design mindset need to change

[AmiableApkallu]

Another one that comes up is Scholar's Sacred Soil and Sage's Kerachole. Functionally, they are the same, but they are different in how the resources needed to use them are generated differently and the benefit to the SCH/SGE are different, plus, they radiate from different places (SCH is ground target whilst SGE is from self).

I can keep going with things that seem the same, but are different, but that isn't the main point here. In my eyes, things ARE different, the problem is, those differences do not necessarily shine through and this is down to things that have happened. To provide an example, using the above from SCH/SGE again, when they massively increased the radius of all these effects, it stopped mattering whether it was a ground target or from self, as the range is so big, it doesn't matter. It isn't that they have directly made them the same, they have just made that difference not matter.

The relevant concept here, I think, is distinction without a difference.

Which brings me onto the next point. What would it actually take to make things not homogenous?

Encounter designs that leave room for different kinds of solutions. (The details are left as an exercise to the reader. )

[mallleable]

Might be a take, but I think the whole 2 minute thing is kind of a red herring. Damage is damage whether it's a party buff, personal buff or pure potency. These actions will be expected to be used on cool down no matter what their cool down timer is, unless it is not advantageous to do so as dictated by a fight's timeline. My biggest critique is that a lot of the big 2 minute skills are just not that interactive, but for for the most part I think that a lot of 2 minute discussions are very surface level, and just lead to dead ends.

Instead I think the real meat of job design discussion is in the filler rotations. Filler is where you spend the majority of your time playing a job, and where most of the moment to moment gameplay happens. This is where I think jobs need the most improvement -- especially healers. If filler is great, then standardized bursts shouldn't matter.

[ovIm]

Might be a take, but I think the whole 2 minute thing is kind of a red herring. Damage is damage whether it's a party buff, personal buff or pure potency. These actions will be expected to be used on cool down no matter what their cool down timer is, unless it is not advantageous to do so as dictated by a fight's timeline. My biggest critique is that a lot of the big 2 minute skills are just not that interactive, but for for the most part I think that a lot of 2 minute discussions are very surface level, and just lead to dead ends.

It really is not too much of a red herring, at least not when you look into it in depth. The reasons we have this meta is a combination of the following elements:

1. The goal is to reduce the enemy HP to zero. Because of that, the more damage you do, the better.
2. Many classes have huge potency nukes on a long, 60/120s cooldown. Other attacks do not nearly do as much damage.
2a. to get to those huge potency nukes, you need to always follow the rigid "to do" list of your class, no matter the encounter. The only variance happens in fights where things happen at a 60s/120s point.
2b. if you die, your work towards the end of your "to do" list often gets erased. Recovery usually won't be fully possible until the next 120s window.
3. Damage calculation in this game is multiplicative. Which means, combining damage cooldowns will always result in more damage than if you were to not combine them. The reason the cooldown times of those were adjusted to 60s/120s is because players actively asked for that.

-> that all means that to do the most DPS, you all sync up your damage buffs and high potency nukes on the same time. it just makes more sense mathematically.

This is the reason we have the problem of classes being designed around this very specific mold. This mold is what players usually criticize, and makes classes feel "same-y".

Instead I think the real meat of job design discussion is in the filler rotations. Filler is where you spend the majority of your time playing a job, and where most of the moment to moment gameplay happens. This is where I think jobs need the most improvement -- especially healers. If filler is great, then standardized bursts shouldn't matter.

Thats an important bit too, yeah. Its annoying when the real fun of playing a class only happens once every 2 minutes.

[mallleable]

It really is not too much of a red herring, at least not when you look into it in depth. The reasons we have this meta is a combination of the following elements:

1. The goal is to reduce the enemy HP to zero. Because of that, the more damage you do, the better.

And that's the crux of it, burst damage in games is really good at reducing HP bars to 0 -- like really really good at that. And that's why game designers gate burst damage behind things like low fire rates, limited ammo capacity, skill shots, charge up meters, cast times, cooldowns, etc. XIV isn't special in this regard. To me, the toothpaste is kind of out of the tube on this one.

[AmiableApkallu]

And that's the crux of it, burst damage in games is really good at reducing HP bars to 0 -- like really really good at that. And that's why game designers gate burst damage behind things like low fire rates, limited ammo capacity, skill shots, charge up meters, cast times, cooldowns, etc. XIV isn't special in this regard.

Except burst damage in FFXIV is... just that thing you do every X seconds. It's meaningless. You could get rid of all the 2min buffs, adjust the DPS check for the encounters accordingly (assuming there even is one), and you'd end up doing the exact same thing, sans one button.

The point of burst damage should be to kill something post haste, within seconds, not be that rote thing you do because there's a hard enrage 10min out.

[mallleable]

Except burst damage in FFXIV is... just that thing you do every X seconds. It's meaningless. You could get rid of all the 2min buffs, adjust the DPS check for the encounters accordingly (assuming there even is one), and you'd end up doing the exact same thing, sans one button.

The point of burst damage should be to kill something post haste, within seconds, not be that rote thing you do because there's a hard enrage 10min out.

Oh no, the shotgun/sniper rife/rocket launcher in my FPS game can only deal deal burst damage, and has a specific fire rate of x.xx seconds, FPS weapons are meaningless...

[ovIm]

And that's the crux of it, burst damage in games is really good at reducing HP bars to 0 -- like really really good at that. And that's why game designers gate burst damage behind things like low fire rates, limited ammo capacity, skill shots, charge up meters, cast times, cooldowns, etc. XIV isn't special in this regard. To me, the toothpaste is kind of out of the tube on this one.

There is more to my post than that tidbit.

while burst is effective, it is only especially crass and noticeable in this game because of the combination of very high potency nukes and multiplicative damage calculation. One could easily reduce the impact of these things without affecting kill times too much if we flatten the damage curve, increase the potency of filler and decrease the potency of the nukes. Make burst satisfying and impactful without devaluing the filler as much as it does now.

I'm not against burst, but understanding why the burst this game has changes the way classes are designed is key when considering possible alternatives.

[BabyYoda]

There is more to my post than that tidbit.

while burst is effective, it is only especially crass and noticeable in this game because of the combination of very high potency nukes and multiplicative damage calculation. One could easily reduce the impact of these things without affecting kill times too much if we flatten the damage curve, increase the potency of filler and decrease the potency of the nukes. Make burst satisfying and impactful without devaluing the filler as much as it does now.

I'm not against burst, but understanding why the burst this game has changes the way classes are designed is key when considering possible alternatives.

No one is against burst there are jobs that designed around it,
The problem it is a meta if job do not follow it it will be garbage,
BLM can't win against PCT until you gutted the job or it will be like that.

Raid Buffs being removed for 90% of jobs is a good start, and keep buffs with jobs like DNC and BRD and AST ONLY

[Colt47]

What happened in this game is that they went to a straight pattern mini-game about pumping numbers and put more of the distinctiveness into the fights. So effectively, people aren't so much playing different jobs as they are different cosmetic options for a role. The game is very much been gutted of tactical choices and that is why sleep and other status ailments have been moved into obscurity.

In order to have jobs be distinct, there has to be tactical roles each job fills that makes them distinct and the game has to support the use of those tactics. Things like out of combat healing, crowd control, magic support and frontliner would need to make a comeback, and they'd have to completely rethink how the move sets are designed. You'd get more meaningful actions in that kind of a system, but the trade off is that you'd also see "big numbers" kind of play fade into obscurity.

I'm going to be the first to admit that I do want to have those tactical choices in a more up-to-date package than FFXI. The new raid series made me remember what good tactical play felt like and they could have had it in FFXIV if the initial attempt wasn't such a disaster in 1.0 from focusing too much on the graphics engine. As far as how successful that approach would have been compared to this one, I'd say the current direction is the one that would give the most money. It's similar to how PF2e vs DnD 5e pans out: The more decisions someone can make the more invested a player likely will be. On the flip side, that same complexity in decisions is what repels many people as they run into decision paralysis.

[Colt47]

I understand why people wouldn't like this current system in the game, though. The major weakness of it is that once a rotation is built there is really not much reason to expand upon it. If anything expanding on a rotation that is established is more likely to break the rotation than anything else, or create problems where the rotation changes across different levels like it was for the BLM. The only option they have to expand on the game is to make new cosmetic options through new jobs, and eventually its just going to be the same job but a different look.

That was the primary advantage older MMOs had that were tactical. If someone needed a new option, they could add one without it breaking anything on the class or job. They also could simply update the cosmetics on certain skills if nothing needed to be added, like making a bigger holy spell animation via a trait.