Job Complexity and Difficulty

[Quuoooote]

Even looking at the posts deeper Quuoooote describes depth as how different mechanics interact with each other and cause friction, whereas Shurrikhan describes a similar concept, but calls it complexity.

You're misreading my intent then, because my post was meant to place explicit emphasis on decision making over mechanical difficulty. Jobs don't need to be mechanically difficult to have depth, and I thought I made my point clear using Bard's "simple" mechanics as an example. By stacking up a lot of simple spinning plates, you can create depth by forcing friction in the form of decision making.

Either way, I find it very pedantic to dismiss the entire discussion as "going nowhere" because ideas don't align one hundred percent. Isn't that what having multiple jobs is supposed to be for? Ideally there would be different designs made to appeal to different playstyles, so harping on people for wanting different things seems a bit silly. In an ideal world there would be "decision" oriented jobs and mechanically complicated jobs for people interested in them, alongside simpler jobs for those not interested in pushing their personal limits.

Why does content difficulty have to scale with literal player enjoyment anyway? Seems a bit ridiculous to me. If your jobs are ‘good in raid content’ but boring as hell in everything else you’ve still a problem. I should be having the time of my goddamn life as a healer doing Guildhests Yoshi-P

I want to pull this up from earlier in the thread for emphasis, because I agree with it one hundred percent. People insist on jobs being as simple as they are because fight complexity is built for that in mind, so what happens when someone isn't engaging in Savage/Ultimate content? If the scales were balanced a bit more between jobs and encounter difficulty, the top end wouldn't suffer, and the bottom end would get engaging gameplay for their casual MSQ experience at the same time.

[Mikey_R]

You're misreading my intent then, because my post was meant to place explicit emphasis on decision making over mechanical difficulty. Jobs don't need to be mechanically difficult to have depth, and I thought I made my point clear using Bard's "simple" mechanics as an example. By stacking up a lot of simple spinning plates, you can create depth by forcing friction in the form of decision making.

That is laterally what I said. To quote you from the original post:

buts is depth lies in how other mechanics interact and interfere with the simple mechanic to force decision making

As I said, how mechanics interact with each other, check, and forcing decision making, which is a form of 'friction'. Check. So I really don't understand where your complaint comes from there.

Either way, I find it very pedantic to dismiss the entire discussion as "going nowhere" because ideas don't align one hundred percent. Isn't that what having multiple jobs is supposed to be for? Ideally there would be different designs made to appeal to different playstyles, so harping on people for wanting different things seems a bit silly. In an ideal world there would be "decision" oriented jobs and mechanically complicated jobs for people interested in them, alongside simpler jobs for those not interested in pushing their personal limits.

In order to have a discussion on 'depth and complexity', all parties must be in agreement in the definition of terms so that everyone is on the same page. This means, when these things get discussed, you both know what each other means. If there are different definitions, then, as ideas are talked about, things will invariably clash and go of course.

And yes, having multiple jobs to account for different levels of complexity/depth is a good thing, however, in order to compare the different jobs, you need to have a definition of what depth and complexity means in a general sense, which you can then apply to the individual jobs to compare them. Nowhere have I stated that jobs should be the same, I am just wanting everyone to work off of the same hymn sheet.

[Sinstrel]

I might be an outlier, but I'd like for the jobs to become more fun instead of more complex. Some examples of what would make playing my jobs more fun would be some abilities that interact with the world and abilities that interact with the environment.

Warrior - Smashes the ground with the axe and creates a dent in the ground that you can use to duck under attacks (Berserker from Hero's gauntlet duty)

Dragoon - jumps in the air for a few seconds and you can spam heavy lance throw attacks from above until you land and enemies cant hit you until you come back down into range

Summoner - Transform into your summoned primal to execute the attacks (you can choose which summon to transform into to fit the occasion; Titan to become tanky, Ifrit for big damage, etc.)

Black mage - Creates a lightning cloud that slowly floats around and applies paralyze to any enemies walking through it

Red mage - creates a black clone and a white clone that follow the red mage around casting white/black magic for a few seconds (similar to eureka orthos)

[TeresaFortell]

How do we fix the problem? Reintroduce greater job complexity, and finding the middle ground becomes much easier. Casual or 'easy' content will become much more tolerable for advanced players if they have a lot of spinning plates or job mechanics to engage with to distract them from simple mechanics, and raids can also shift away from the "DDR" approach that many seem to dislike because more focus can be placed on managing job mechanics instead of fast-paced 'dance' movements. If you like Eureka's Logograms or Bozja's Lost Actions over OC's Phantom Job system, then you can extrapolate that thinking to how FFXIV's jobs function and hopefully appreciate how greater depth makes for a much more entertaining and dynamic gameplay experience. 'Hard' jobs is not the end goal. Engaging jobs, though, open up the design space a lot.

Whilst I agree that job complexities could provide a bit more engaging gameplay, I find it a bit difficult to believe that it would shift the "DDR" approach in raids. DDRs seem to be how content was also designed, even back in ARR and HW, and that was during a time when you also had mechanics such as TP and positionings. The only major difference, in my opinion, was that the speed of DDR has increased significantly when you compare contents from those expacs to contemporary ones.

With that said, I find it unlikely that job complexity alone would be the bridge for the middle ground, for the content difficulty would have to shift, independently and regardless of job complexity, from a DDR design philosophy to not only be challenging but also engaging.

[BlisteringFrost]

If me push only button game highlights for me. Game boring.

If me have to learn how to push button to do more number but game no show me. It make me brain feel happy when me hit stuff and see HUGE number because it mean I do it correct.