Please Share Updates on 8.0 Job Design

[Calysto]

It's a dream.
At the latest 8 months to a year before the expansion, they should drop a site with it's own forum.
Then drop a job each week with key points, direction, gameplay loop and action trailer(so we don't have a repeat of seraphism).
Picking up to a dozen (valid) points from the forum each day to elaborate on the choices/reasoning, and being open to changes for that job, with a poll for each.
Then a few weeks later update it based on the feedback - real actual feedback - and iterate until satisfactory feedback or time runs out (at witch point, the concerned jobs must be flagged as "to be reworked during expansion")
That site should stay up and continue to work and be updated "forever", at least every few months, even if the Q&A is paused between patches.

[Valence]

Accessible skill floors, deeper skill ceilings all across the board.

[MayuAmakura]

I think Square follows a strict formula of;

- Make sure player cannot die or player might lose interest into the game.
- Make sure player cannot make mistakes or player might lose interest into the game.
- Make sure enemies react slowly and offer low resistance or player might lose interest into the game.

So now we get homogenized classes, nothing new, every class having same spells just named differently. Like why all 4 tanks have invulnerability? Why they have same defenses? Some have a bit more which is negligible. The only thing tanks distinguish themselves is the ability for one to solo things very easily while others (e.g. dark knight / gnb) will have a harder time or almost impossible.

The 2 minute cooldown meta is getting really boring. Healers have low amount of damage spells and bloated with healing spells. Dps also got more survive ability these days. Removal of some abilities and hole process of making the classes mega easy for everyone is what led to this boring thing. Devs just don't care, most of them think this is a good thing. If the game caters for you, then it means you won't ever quit as dark souls experience isn't there. But they don't realize that this creates another layer of issue where people get "meh" feeling and want to quit.

The copium that 8.0 will be better is a pure definition of insanity.

Edit: Just look at their other released games and you will see what I'm talking about. Same formula, same world design,etc.

[ty_taurus]

It’s less about expecting 8.0 to be better and more about calling their bluff. Do they actually want our trust back or not? Listening to criticism, being transparent, and trying to find better solutions is how they can do that for job design. If they can’t manage that then these talks about regaining trust are just empty promises.

[YovelaLindswood]

I think Square follows a strict formula of;

- Make sure player cannot die or player might lose interest into the game.
- Make sure player cannot make mistakes or player might lose interest into the game.
- Make sure enemies react slowly and offer low resistance or player might lose interest into the game.

So now we get homogenized classes, nothing new, every class having same spells just named differently. Like why all 4 tanks have invulnerability? Why they have same defenses? Some have a bit more which is negligible. The only thing tanks distinguish themselves is the ability for one to solo things very easily while others (e.g. dark knight / gnb) will have a harder time or almost impossible.

The 2 minute cooldown meta is getting really boring. Healers have low amount of damage spells and bloated with healing spells. Dps also got more survive ability these days. Removal of some abilities and hole process of making the classes mega easy for everyone is what led to this boring thing. Devs just don't care, most of them think this is a good thing. If the game caters for you, then it means you won't ever quit as dark souls experience isn't there. But they don't realize that this creates another layer of issue where people get "meh" feeling and want to quit.

The copium that 8.0 will be better is a pure definition of insanity.

Edit: Just look at their other released games and you will see what I'm talking about. Same formula, same world design,etc.

Dont forget once you step out of story dungeons it completely changes to
- You will die if you're a pixel off
- You will die to things that arent your mistake.
- Enemies snapshot slowly and players have no resistance to one shots.

[Sekundessounet]

Some people here are good at making themselves angry wow.

Otherwise, even if they could I don't think this would be a good idea. We're probably more than a year away from 8.0, and announcing anything would mean locking in place for the general public the current idea. And these designs are iterative, especially if you plan on shaking up the formula, there is a phase of back and forth, of testing, to see what sticks and what doesn't. It's not just "let's follow that and see what happens". (Exception would be DT I think because most jobs are basically EW+).

[ty_taurus]

Some people here are good at making themselves angry wow.

Otherwise, even if they could I don't think this would be a good idea. We're probably more than a year away from 8.0, and announcing anything would mean locking in place for the general public the current idea. And these designs are iterative, especially if you plan on shaking up the formula, there is a phase of back and forth, of testing, to see what sticks and what doesn't. It's not just "let's follow that and see what happens". (Exception would be DT I think because most jobs are basically EW+).

What are you referring to by “making themselves angry?”

Regardless, I don’t think being transparent means locking in a design choice now. Much like the graphics update or anything that has yet to be released, it would come with the caveat that anything mentioned isn’t final and is subject to change. Moreover, I imagine any information discussed at this stage would likely be more about communicating a direction. I also chose to bring this up now rather than later for a few reasons.

First, we just had a live letter where Yoshi P stated that they want to regain the trust of plays and be more responsive to feedback. This was likely a response to Forked Tower more than anything, but the game isn’t declining because of just Forked Tower. There are multiple issues where quality has been sacrificed, and it’s affected players. Job design is one of those big categories. Additionally, X.3 tends to be the patch where we know development of jobs has at least begun. It’s where we get hints to one of the new jobs. They need to know that job design is something we want to know about early so they are able to share their ideas for the direction of jobs as soon as possible. Give me a reason to want to return.

[Sekundessounet]

What are you referring to by “making themselves angry?”

Regardless, I don’t think being transparent means locking in a design choice now. Much like the graphics update or anything that has yet to be released, it would come with the caveat that anything mentioned isn’t final and is subject to change. Moreover, I imagine any information discussed at this stage would likely be more about communicating a direction. I also chose to bring this up now rather than later for a few reasons.

First, we just had a live letter where Yoshi P stated that they want to regain the trust of plays and be more responsive to feedback. This was likely a response to Forked Tower more than anything, but the game isn’t declining because of just Forked Tower. There are multiple issues where quality has been sacrificed, and it’s affected players. Job design is one of those big categories. Additionally, X.3 tends to be the patch where we know development of jobs has at least begun. It’s where we get hints to one of the new jobs. They need to know that job design is something we want to know about early so they are able to share their ideas for the direction of jobs as soon as possible. Give me a reason to want to return.

For people making themselves angry, people imagining wild statements and then getting angry over the imaginary wild statements.

I see your point on a personal level, but communication on this scale and to such a crowd doesn't work in that framework sadly. Even if you indicate it is "subject to change" (as they often do tbh), you'll get people talking about this specific idea, maybe for some getting hyped up for that. But then if game dev happens and you end up going in a totally different direction, you create unnecessary disappointment. And then you also give gas to randos spamming discussion with "they obviously don't know what they're doing since they changed course compared to what they announced".
If you compare to the graphics update, sure there were changes and feedback after announcement, but you can also notice that they had a clear direction in mind before announcing it, and every change keeps it in that direction too in the end.

Like you say I think they're aware that job design is something people look forward too, but that's probably for around 7.4 and the next FanFest, not earlier.

[ty_taurus]

For people making themselves angry, people imagining wild statements and then getting angry over the imaginary wild statements.

I see your point on a personal level, but communication on this scale and to such a crowd doesn't work in that framework sadly. Even if you indicate it is "subject to change" (as they often do tbh), you'll get people talking about this specific idea, maybe for some getting hyped up for that. But then if game dev happens and you end up going in a totally different direction, you create unnecessary disappointment. And then you also give gas to randos spamming discussion with "they obviously don't know what they're doing since they changed course compared to what they announced".
If you compare to the graphics update, sure there were changes and feedback after announcement, but you can also notice that they had a clear direction in mind before announcing it, and every change keeps it in that direction too in the end.

Like you say I think they're aware that job design is something people look forward too, but that's probably for around 7.4 and the next FanFest, not earlier.

Regardless, my concern is that job information will be handled like it has been in the past: radio silence until the last possible second when it’s far too late to take any feedback (assuming they’d be willing to take feedback that is). Whether it’s 7.3 or 7.4, talking about this now has the possibility (even if very small) to convince them to actually talk about jobs rather than hide every detail until October of 2026.

Still, if restoring job identity is actually going to be a part of 8.0 design, that implies change greater than “a new finisher and some animation upgrades” for every job. That could very well mean discussion and planning starts earlier than usual to give them time to revamp jobs. Honestly, one of the things I want to know about more than anything else is what do they consider the identity of each job to be? A set of slides going over what they believe the identity of each job to be would be a huge win.

Since I talked about Sage, I’ll use that as an example. Based on the identity it was described as having, and the identity it has in PVP, I would argue that Sage’s identity should match the following descriptions:
- A healer with a more aggressive play style; more DPS options than other healers — feels like a mini DPS. This will be expanded on.
- Main healing style should be through Kardia and Eukrasia. These should be a Sage’s go-to methods of healing and will be expanded upon; other heals should feel secondary for unexpected or tighter healing situations.
- Sacrifices utility for additional damage.

Bullet points like that would be enough.

[ty_taurus]

One other thing to note on the topic of when job changes are planned is we can look back at examples like Dawntrail’s Astro and Dragoon which we knew had changes planned for 6.2 originally, or Endwalker monk which had changes made in 5.4 with plans on bigger changes set for 6.0, and in these examples, the design process likely began much sooner— at least a patch.

So even if we don’t have any word on any changes in particular, if talk of 8.0 focusing on job identity is both true and not an exaggeration… Even if the changes aren’t full rework level changes, I have to imagine they’ve already started setting their course for at least some of the jobs. Because every job will likely see some amount of change, and that’s a lot even for less ambitious changes per job. Of course, that all assumes Yoshi P’s statement about 8.0 is legitimate.