The end of Raidbuff - A solution for futur job Design

[Carighan]

The combat sequence is static because everything has to align, there is no room for variance in the current design paradigm. If the buff stacking, which has shackled job and encounter design, was removed, we could theoretically go back to less static rotations on some classes.

Are aren't very experienced with MMORPGs, are you?

(Not meant in a bad way, it just shows. What you're describing is not how this works, and in fact it isn't even MMORPG specific. Even in other games you align burst; say in a MOBA someone CCs and then everyone dumps their burst skills onto the CCed target. You don't just press them ~whenever.)

The goal you're after "I want to make combat rotations less staticky" is good. And in fact IMO it's the biggest thing the devs would need to go after to make combat less samey and boring in FFXIV. But the idea you have "Make buffs not align" would not cause this, in fact it wouldn't move the needle. It'd still be a fully static combat flow for every job, just a different one than the one you do now. This is because neither the encounter nor the job have (with marginal differences on Dancer but not enough to make a difference) no variable/random elements, and hence naturally will have a static, pre-determined, optimal solution for every single encounter. "Encounter" here also includes the teammates around them and their solutions, meaning the group as a whole can find an optimal solution, this will naturally include alignment of big bursts to buff windows, whether personal or shared.

[CalvinDescoles]

having to decide if we want to align and actively paying attention to it seems to be the more fun / less boring thing instead of just pressing it whenever the cooldown is ready.

it also pushes the skill ceiling up. which is a good rhing in a game.

or am i wrong?

For me, this is one of FFXIV’s core issues. The skill ceiling today revolves almost entirely around how well you align raid buffs, rather than how well you actually play your job. Over time, jobs are being reworked and simplified in ways that consistently lower their individual skill ceiling—and with every expansion, it feels like this trend only gets worse.

I understand that raid buff alignment involves coordination, and yes, that's part of what makes an MMO engaging. But this system also brings a number of problems—poor netcode, datacenter differences, latency, and ping issues all have a real impact. Plus, the dev team is locked into designing encounters with this fixed system in mind (or sometimes not, which causes even more problems—just look at E4S, P8S, M4S, M8S some ultimate...).

If job performance weren’t so tightly tied to strict buff windows, fights could be more dynamic, and boss design could be more creative. Job kits could be more flexible, and the skill ceiling wouldn’t disappear—instead, it could shift toward personnal expression of adaptability, decision-making, and mastery, rather than just timing.

Last Min EDIT : Oh yeah also, it would ease dev job regarding the job balance

[Carighan]

For me, this is one of FFXIV’s core issues. The skill ceiling today revolves almost entirely around how well you align raid buffs, rather than how well you actually play your job.

More specifically, playing well means aligning your buffs. You play well, because you align your buffs.

[Raikai]

More specifically, playing well means aligning your buffs. You play well, because you align your buffs.

You're right, but that (well, at least for my taste) is very uninteresting. Suddenly it is a game about remembering to press that 60s ability on the right off global "slot" or you'll delay x, that can delay y and push z out of the burst window. While not forgetting to hoard your personal reources at near capacity to dump when?... Yeah, the burst windows.

It's symptomatic that every new job is basically a gimmick + a handful of 30/60/120s abilities meant to fill in the burst windows.

I mean, removing the 120s meta is not guarantee that we'll get interesting jobs again. But I feel it would be at least one less obstacle.

[Valence]

XIV has become "a game about remembering" tbh. Encounter design, job design, almost everything. Only side content like deep dungeons or pvp do differently.

[Shurrikhan]

You're right, but that (well, at least for my taste) is very uninteresting. Suddenly it is a game about remembering to press that 60s ability on the right off global "slot" or you'll delay x, that can delay y and push z out of the burst window. While not forgetting to hoard your personal reources at near capacity to dump when?... Yeah, the burst windows.

It's symptomatic that every new job is basically a gimmick + a handful of 30/60/120s abilities meant to fill in the burst windows.

I mean, removing the 120s meta is not guarantee that we'll get interesting jobs again. But I feel it would be at least one less obstacle.

I mean, even that is more interesting than having nothing to align to. And it's not as if it's absurdly powerful. With how "selfish" jobs like SAM and VPR are tuned atm (generally top 3 for total contribution, including the true lead), having too many raid-buffers would be a loss to total party damage.

Syncing to raidbuffs is helpful, for sure, but the "multiplicity" (which is really just what it takes to make stacked raid-buffs nearly keep up with the higher pre-buff effective-potency offered by "selfish" jobs that thereby basically has that raidbuff's worth of damage baked in baseline, especially when more of that damage is concentrated into CDs) isn't allowing you enough excess DPS to afford an extra death or two. Apart from MCH being far behind BRD and DNC just due to tuning issues, raidbuff-fixation would be extremely optional if not for the fact that there's only 1 "selfish" comp even possible --SAM/VPR/BLM/MCH-- and that its requisite MCH is presently weak, putting it behind a comp with at least the inclusion Standard/Technical Finish.

"Use on CD" doesn't become any less dull just because you're no longer punished for not using them when others use their CDs. The latter is only a grain more complexity, but it is still more. If you want other things to hold CDs for, so be it, but that will still ultimately be "hold for X".

The only interesting "freedom" we'd be capable of is from having more than one thing worth holding for (we already do via deaths, but that's conditional upon player mistakes and shouldn't be treated as design), such as burst DPS checks that always remain relevant (e.g., because of scaled direct and DoT damage based on how long <thing> takes to die, with enough healing required before, during, and after that one doesn't just Sacred Soil + Panhaima/Macrocosmos and laugh) but can eventually at least become less oppressive, vulnerability windows that you can choicefully push (e.g., happens on mob X of Y getting reduced below Z% health), etc.

That is to say, unless encounter designs give choice in how to leverage varying party capacities (based on composition and, possibly, player skills both), there's never going to be any more meaningful choice, only more or less stricture/difficulty/skill-expression (even if in "banal" ways).

I mean, removing the 120s meta is not guarantee that we'll get interesting jobs again. But I feel it would be at least one less obstacle.

A "120s meta" is not particularly even an obstacle to job design so long as we don't have any meaningful content outside of 8-mans. Without it, we can just assume that a job that can't exploit raidbuffs as well should have higher overall personal damage such that it's in-context/in-practice damage is roughly the same as everyone else's in-context/in-practice damage.

Granted, I'd really love to see 4-man Extreme/Savage-level content that's more interesting and more mainstreamed than Criterion Dungeons, which then might require that raidbuffs split themselves (double the effect but add the clause "Effect is split proportionately when affecting more than 4 allies, thereby falling to as little as 50% when affecting 8 players"), but even then the same applies.

So long as you tune them fairly, burst vs. sustain essentially fall down to a decision between "100% value vs. tight DPS checks and 90% value vs. overall enrage" vs. "80% value vs. tight DPS checks and 100% value vs. overall enrage", with compositions gradually able to take more and more sustained jobs while still surviving checks and/or burst jobs needing to waste less and less time holding CDs as all gear up.

[Carighan]

I mean, removing the 120s meta is not guarantee that we'll get interesting jobs again. But I feel it would be at least one less obstacle.

Oh yes, of course. I kinda prefer a different route there, but I agree on that ultimate goal and that at some point the 120s meta has to be removed along the way for sure.

[Raikai]

I mean, even that is more interesting than having nothing to align to.

I mean, if we use jobs as they are and just remove the 120s raid buff element, I'd agree. But in my head, for that to really work through, jobs would also need to be revamped to offer kits that encourage thinking and deep engagement (in-itself mechanics and interactions), which is a huge undertaking, of course, and probably need an expansion with no new jobs at all for it to happen.

Plus there could be some other buffing variables, like a Dancer/Astrologian buffing a single person every 30s, or a Bard overlaying the party in set intervals. Maybe a Machinist debuffing the enemy every 20s for a couple of seconds - things that not only would enforce the support aspect of 'support jobs' outside of the 120s meta, but also promote you to adjust on the go based on your party composition or if you get to be the recipient for single buffs.

I'd agree with you that we need more content engaging enough for other aspects of the jobs kit to have some meaning. For example, everybody's AoE kits feel like an afterthough because of the very few chances you have to use it outside of 4-man trash that isn't that challenging to begin with. I'd love to see the other 'grazes' to be useful as aiming - to my surprise in the Occult Crescent they don't even work!

[PyurBlue]

I'd revise buffs by making their optimum use time variable instead of fixed. So enemies might have a vulnerable state where they take more damage and you'd want to save buffs for this state. The vulnerable state would not be scripted to occur at known times but instead have to be triggered by the party in some way, so they'd have to deal enough damage or reflect an attack or something along those lines. More DPS phases could have the same effect where the party needs burst damage to succeed at something but doesn't know when the burst will be needed. Buff themselves aren't the problem, it's their rigid implementation.

[Carighan]

I mean, if we use jobs as they are and just remove the 120s raid buff element, I'd agree. But in my head, for that to really work through, jobs would also need to be revamped to offer kits that encourage thinking and deep engagement (in-itself mechanics and interactions), which is a huge undertaking, of course, and probably need an expansion with no new jobs at all for it to happen.

Yeah basically it'd be a fairly big undertaking.

One big element is that for jobs that'll be based on a random pattern (meaning you have a nontrivial resource or proc you get randomly enough to not have a semi-reliable pattern to its usage) you can have big buffs, even party buffs, but due the extremely unreliable nature of the underlying resource system, this is fine. It can't be aligned. Not in a meaningful manner.

Another way of doing this is if a job is inherently resource-fluctuating, and has a small-ish party or single buff they constantly toggle on or off based on their resource state. Compare Revenants in GW2, particularly their Herald spec. They cannot keep their slew of party buffs going on for long. But they'll be constantly re-enabling it since they get their resource back just as quick.