Job Complexity and Difficulty

[Quuoooote]

I'm really struggling to put into words my thoughts on this, but the starting point is, what do you mean by complexity? This is going to mean different things to different people and can muddy the water in getting across what you want. You then drop the word 'depth'. Is this the same as complexity? What makes a job deep? etc.

I'm glad you asked, actually, because between posting the OP and now I've been cooking the idea in my head some more and wanted to write either a follow-up or edit to clarify exactly this point.

When I say 'complexity' I am mostly speaking in terms of mechanical depth, and not mechanical difficulty. If simplicity and complexity are two ends of the design spectrum, so to speak, then depth is the goal that exists outside of that boundary.

Sekiro, for example, is one of my favorite games of all time. It's often jokingly reduced down to "parry at the correct timing, win game". But despite the mechanical simplicity at play, the game offers significant depth and complexity in how your limited, simple toolset interacts with enemies, bosses, etc. to create a satisfying core gameplay loop. In FFXIV terms, I think White Mage is a solid parallel — White Mage has always been a staple of simplicity relative to its peers, but it's still capable of having greater depth and has previously had a more complex, dynamic toolset without breaking its 'simple' design intent.

To dig back into the Bard discussion, you mention that 30 second DoT duration is "just pressing Iron Jaws every 30 seconds". That's true! And that's exactly the type of interaction I'm aiming for and hope the development team adopts. In a vacuum, just like the Sekiro example, it can be reduced to a very simple action that you perform in a rote fashion, buts is depth lies in how other mechanics interact and interfere with the simple mechanic to force decision making and encourage engagement. Even though you "just press Refulgent 90% of the time", or "you just cycle the songs faster", eventually these goals might overlap or conflict and create tension, or depth (and this will happen with greater frequency if more upkeep is needed). If your hypothetical Straight Shot buff and DoTs are both going to fall off on your next GCD, which should you prioritize? Is managing double procs causing distraction and rotational mistakes like this in the first place? How can you be more mindful of this in the future, to make sure it doesn't happen again? How much raw Bard gameplay will the average player need to iron out all of these rotational nuances?

Questions like these can't exist within the current system because there just isn't enough depth in most jobs' general gameplay. To create that depth, we need more complex systems that will create engagement through player decision making — even if the systems, at their core, are highly simple. Wanting increased complexity doesn't mean jobs need to be difficult (although I believe the two will inevitably correlate to at least some small degree), because simplicity isn't a bad thing as long as there is enough design room for depth to exist across all levels of play. Jobs are how players interact with and play the game at a fundamental level, so it's critical that they are engaging and fun for as many players as possible.

When I express that I'd like for the developers to look into HW or SB-era job design/complexity/depth/etc., I'm also not calling for a 1:1 return to HW or SB systems. Your points about HW vs. EW MNK complexity, HW job mechanics being punishing, and the lack of guaranteed Straight Shot procs within Bard openers aren't entirely relevant because the end goal of looking ahead for future improvements is to hopefully marry the best of both systems to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Meaningful QoL improvements or successful job systems should obviously stay, ideally with more complexity and/or depth added onto them to follow a design paradigm that's more aligned with older expansions. Older systems weren't perfect by any stretch, but at the same time I don't find it unreasonable to think we've strayed too far from one end of the extreme to the other, and could benefit from adopting some older design principles to improve what we have now. If I had to choose, I think Stormblood job design was overall the most 'balanced' between complexity/depth and accessibility, but I wouldn't want White Mage to be reverted back to having 4.0 Lilies for instance because the modern iteration of the system is clearly superior. Could it stand to have more under the hood like Aero, Cleric Stance, etc.? Judging by how healers are clearly unsatisfied with current healer gameplay, I'd say yes.

[Aidorouge]

NIN and RDM are already the "hard" jobs in their roles because of how low the bar has gotten. Even with changes like Ten Chi Jin having its movement restriction removed, simply needing to remember mudras automatically puts NIN over most of the other melees.

...Huh, I can't say I ever considered NIN and RDM to be hard to play compared to say... MNK, SAM, and BLM. But that's also been a subject of contention where "just because its easy for you doesn't mean its easy for everyone else" so how would I even recommend those jobs to someone anymore without sounding like I was bragging or being condescending? (I also can't comprehend that I might actually be good at something by choosing to be NIN and RDM main versus other, easier melee and casters, lol.)

Conversely, a large part of why I didn't care for VPR and PCT is because they were TOO "follow the glowing ball" with so little variance that there's content that when synced down, you literally only have 1 or 2 attack buttons to press. Mind you, I also considered VPR "brain dead" both before and after Gnoxious Gnash, and I couldn't tell corporate the difference between the two pictures, so I never understood the howling over that change.

[Kohashi]

I'm really struggling to put into words my thoughts on this, but the starting point is, what do you mean by complexity?

Let me make everything clear. They are just venting, for the sake of it.

Also, let me summarize the forums " Mi mi mi, DDR, I would rather stare at the Glamour dresser, then log off and type in the forums angrily because there is no game for me, SE never listened to me, WoW is so great, sad meow meows".

[Shurrikhan]

So yes +1 from me, the jobs should be the sliding scale of difficulty by which you interact with the game.

How so? And what should that then mean for encounter difficulty?

What's the sweet spot for each, and how much should the two interact?

If we consider 'Optimal Gameplay' with these Potency values as '100%', 'Optimal Dawntrail SCH' would be about 99%, and 'These Potency values, but you only press Broil and ignore the DOTs entirely' would be about 98% effectiveness. Every DPS check would be clearable with these hypothetical values, without touching a single DOT. Optimizers would still want to use the DOTs, because their goal is to deal as much damage as possible.

This would be the equivalent of a player splitting their filler into 3 buttons and hitting them in order, screaming internally if they ever skip ahead or repeat... as an equally pure nothingburger option. You will never be able to see a <2% gap over crit variance. You will never wipe to enrage over even 5% of healer damage. Filler-only doing some 85% of optimal striking dummy dps is plenty.

Hell, the more potential is wrapped into non-filler damage, the less healer output needs to scale linearly with uptime and therefore the less GCD healing costs the party its total damage (via healer), which is by far the larger complicating factor in healer DPS and probably the least enjoyed ("As a healer, you should [GCD] as little as possible [mostly by scheduling everything party wide and relying on tank AoE heals and DPS debuffs as much as possible]") aspect of it.

[Heavensward] Rotations were hard for new players to understand and rarely executed correctly, leading to a fraction of the damage they should be dealing on certain jobs. The jobs just weren't intuitive at all and had no tutorial, and the game is often played by partners of gamers who aren't that great at gaming.

They were neither hard nor unintuitive outside of simply and solely BotD and Enochian. Maintained, though, very little has changed rotationally for most jobs outside of certain enjoyable flukes that came up well after HW (4.3 TK Monk, non-standard lines EW BLM). Since HW, DRG for instance has been "apply buffs, do direct damage; repeat". The only rotational change has been that we went from 122223333 to 1111122222. Yes, we can now preposition for our first dragon skill per combo (and, as of DT, no longer have to position at all for the second), but the core is identical.

Make every ability useful and have purpose. And don't add damage to utility, otherwise we won't use it as utility ie. gap closers.

Food for thought:

I get what you're saying here, but it's mostly a matter of how one approaches value-norming (essentially, equality vs. equity).

Unless you make every fight cost melee the same amount of uptime if not for their gap-closers, those gapclosers will vary immensely in value. This matters, especially if you're looking at casters, rangers, and melee each having a different base and having to adapt to their circumstance (wherein anything that helps them do so is additive) rather than looking to have every job necessarily arrive at the same damage and then allowing each job a way to bypass what would otherwise cause any variance.

When looking at the gap-closer as a helpful tool offered to a job as comparable to what others get (so, from an "equality" mindset) rather than merely a way to remove any possible variance from melee relative to, say, physical ranged without restriction by proximity or cast-times (per "equity"), all XIV utility then exists ultimately for damage, because all XIV fights end from damage. If it does not make the fight end sooner, it has no utility, because it literally makes no difference / has no value. And allowing the tool to have some damage, then, gives it fall-back value so that it doesn't vary so immensely (say, some 8 GCDs of damage saved for ~3500 potency in value between uptime and reduced drift... to some pitiful 400 potency in value... if gap-closing is all it can accomplish).

If looking at utility as just a way to ensure equity no matter the circumstances of the fight, then either (A) the needs of the most mobility-intensive fights will glut your means of uptime for all others, devaluing any other tricks you may have in all but those fights, or (B) you're going to have to design fights around the frequency and charge counts of those tools, constraining variance in fight design.

(Yes, I realize that if people throw a fit over some 2% variance in a given tier, you're only ever going to be able to design per equity anyways; it's just food for thought.)

Make MP more likely to run out again, such as by having ability heals consume MP. Speaking of which, make healers actually have to heal in the first place which has eroded in higher level dungeons. All this will lend itself to bringing MP share abilities like Mana Shift and Bard's MP regen back.

Why, though? Like... why do we necessarily want our ability to even press our buttons to the extent we normally could before (still locked by CDs or at cost of offensive uptime anyways) to depend on both a composition check (is there a Ranger in our party) and competence check (is that Ranger aware/alive/not_griefing)?

I could see the logic behind this if it weren't purely a starvation mechanic, but the more we standardize MP usage, the more it goes from a shared CD system that allows for varied recharge times to "put in another quarter to continue playing", so I'm not sure I want much more to be placed on MP until such time as low MP can at least turn into something softer than "you literally can't use spells/skills" (e.g., both costs and potencies are scaled with %MP, so you lose up to 50% potency on one end but MP costs then fall so low that you're still MP-positive).

Having Skill Trees will help story-only players, non-gamer partners and journalists to play by having the default Skill Tree build be really easy and hard to get wrong, while others can be more sophisticated with greater control of party utility, buffs, debuffs or a bit higher damage potential.

Not sure what your vision of this is here. Like, would this cut down the number of actions in some way, or offer simplified versions? Otherwise, this sounds additive, and therefore only a way to, well, add further complexity, which wouldn't help anyone who's already struggling...

On that note, though, one thing I kind of wish the game had would just be like... easy hotbar setups/layouts to try out based on a given button arrangement. Something algorithmic such that if I like using 1, 2, 3, 4, R, F, C, V, B, T, G, Y; Alt-1, -2, -3, -4, -Q, -E, -R, -T; Shift-1, -2, -3, -4, -R, -F, -T, -G, -Y; Ctrl-Z, -X, -C, -V, -B... the game might suggest sets of skills to be arranged into those sets of keys (by contiguity).

To start with a simple example, let's say I'm a fresh player with the default keybinds of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, -, =.

I'm a Gladiator, so I start with Playguide on 9, Teleport on 0, Return on -, and Sprint on =. Fast Blade goes on 1, and as I level, Fight or Flight goes on 2, Riot Blade on 3, Total Eclipse on 4, Rampart on 5, Shield Bash on 6, Iron Will on 7, Low Blow on 8, and Lob on... Ctrl-1. To say the least, that's... kind of awful. All the more so when I end up with Provoke on Ctrl-2, Interject on Ctrl-3, Rage of Halone on Ctrl-4, etc., for a default combo of 1-3-c4.

What if, instead, upon acquiring Riot Blade, the game would make better and job-specific use of Active Help (as you suggested) to show that Riot Blade and Fast Blade are linked, and so one might want to place them together, across 1-2 or 2-3 or 1-s1? When acquiring Iron Will, it'd note that the action rarely ever needs to be used and might therefore suggest placing it further towards the edge, leaving room for other actions. And when acquiring Rage of Halone, again, it would note that it, Fast Blade, and Riot Blade are connected, suggesting a position for that.

Heck, let players sort choose among different recommended keybind layouts and import a recommended job hotbar layout for it, with mouseover on the not-yet-acquired skills making providing a simplified usage-centric explanation of the skill and making very obvious when you'll acquire it.

[Jeeqbit]

When I say 'complexity' I am mostly speaking in terms of mechanical depth, and not mechanical difficulty. If simplicity and complexity are two ends of the design spectrum, so to speak, then depth is the goal that exists outside of that boundary.

An easy way to explain it is to show a game like Final Fantasy 7 (the original version). The game is not difficult. Anyone can beat it. But there is enough depth that you can optimize it if you're that sort of person.

It's very easy to stick with the default materia setup and just let it level and upgrade your weapon. It's very easy to equip whatever materia the story gives you, and you probably will (summons in particular). Somehow, this system is super intuitive, almost more than any game does it now even. It was so ahead of its time, it even had a full materia tutorial at the start.

But if you want to really optimize it, you can go and buy other materia and go out of your way to link them to "All" materias, obtain W-everything materia, grind them all to max, grind to 99 and become like Sephiroth as early as you can.

You could defeat a boss by optimizing and being really good. Or you could just be really bad and have to spam potions and phoenix downs to just barely scrape by because you didn't gear or equip good materia. There are multiple ways to win and that's the depth.

The issue in this game is how everything has been stripped down to where there's almost just 1 way to go. You do your rotation and it's linear. There are no branching paths in said rotation. You do the fight mechanics, which are a script, so there are no branching paths there either. The entire experience is linear and the same every time, as a result.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm really struggling to put into words my thoughts on this, but the starting point is, what do you mean by complexity? This is going to mean different things to different people and can muddy the water in getting across what you want. You then drop the word 'depth'. Is this the same as complexity? What makes a job deep? etc.

Short Answer / Abridged Post:

Complexity: The net amount of "real" decision-making to be done (which can admittedly feel like more or less when that decision-making is more stressed).

No, this does not merely mean "more buttons" = "more complexity". Most safety actions (see Surecast, Arm's Length, Swiftcast) will reduce more complexity than they will produce, because you'll have replaced a crit-shield or Cover to prevent knockback and the raid rotating themselves to shuffle away from a flare on the healer with... hitting a button to make all a non-issue. Hitting each highlighted button in a sequence will not add complexity, nor will an individual dodge. Choosing a variable combo by which to arrive at a certain skill option on a particular GCD may, as might baiting something one moment to make room for another bait moments later so that you can then maximally reduce proximity AoE damage as you teleport to an ally later (rather than just running to tower, etc.).

On average, the more interrelated your choices are without becoming outright bundled (if A, then you must use B, C, D) or interchangeable, the greater the complexity.

Depth: The amount of cognitive load worth engaging with (which then depends on the risk-reward structure of those different considerations and the performance differences among decisions to be made based off those considerations).

Like complexity, this tends to be best measured holistically even if it's also worth looking at what considerations a new weaponskill/ability/spell may devalue (usually by overemphasizing another or by providing a glut of capacity for some purpose so that more intricate optimizations are no longer needed). The more depth, the more each additional bit of depth will often tend to push players. The less depth, the more independently a consideration can be made and therefore the less cognitive load it produces. Think "exponential", even if that's slightly an overstatement.

Long Answer / Original Post:

Etymologically, and close enough to common usage, "complexity" is the degree to which a set of tools create further (pseudo-)tools through their combination. Literally, there's something more "folded up" among what's visible from the surface, allowing a greater number of stuff (on unpacking) to appear within a smaller area/glance. "Depth" is usually the kind of cognitive load that goes into deciding among those additional choices.

Let's take ARR Monk as an example. You had essentially 9 ST rotational weaponskills: Bootshine, Dragon Kick, True Strike, Twin Snakes, Snap Punch, Demolish; Impulse Drive, Fracture, and Touch of Death. (I'm ignoring One-Ilm-Punch because it only saw use on two pieces of PvE content in XIV's lifespan, essentially becoming a PvP-only ability. Impulse Drive was TP-inefficient but was for a time the way to put out maximum DPS.)

Ultimately, though, we don't play with different isolated abilities except in odd snap-decisions (and in XIV, rarely even that, due to combos or modifiers massively making one choice outweigh all others). Instead, we devote certain amounts of attention towards different considerations to be tracked/estimated and decide on sets of actions accordingly. To my mind, the extent/breadth of what all is worth tracking and making decisions from can generally be considered "depth"; our "complexity" comes from what discrete actions we can choose accordingly at the level we actually think about this stuff / put it all into action or optimization. The more interrelated those decisions are without being interchangeable (or inexpressive in their differences), the greater the number of actions ultimately available per a given situation, and therefore the greater the complexity.

In ARR Monk's case, before considering ToD and Fracture, we'd just have <Dragon-Twin-Demo-Boot-True-Snap; Dragon-Twin-Snap-Boot-True-Demo; Dragon-Twin-Snap-Boot-True-Snap> and a "Dragon-down" rotation at higher GCD speeds of <Demo-Dragon-Twin-Snap-Boot-True-Snap-Boot-True>. With them, though, a ToD had to fit into every standard string (every .83, really), which then improved the efficiency of that standard rotation by reducing Dragon/Twin clipping, and could perfect this via a Fracture per Demolish.

And because ToD and Demolish were basically not affected by Dragon, our number of good openers was thereby enlarged to include, especially after PB, the likes of Snap-Snap-Snap-Twin-ToD-Demo-Dragon-Fracture-True-Snap-Boot-Twin-Snap-Dragon-True-Demo and what drifting ToD per string, Fracture per Demolish rotations would come of it.

Add to that the fact that Demolish would offer a ~2-second longer GL (just 10s back then, meaning you only had ~3.5s spare per cycle, with Demolish therefore adding over half) because it'd snapshot its use of GL at actuation but wouldn't apply it until after the long animation had completed, and you've then got fight-specific openers to deal with uptime gaps.

So, a decent bit of depth (know what adds can be Demolished, know what jumps/gaps can be Demo'ed and how much you should overclock or underclock Demo's accordingly with ToD/Frac --or Impulse Drive, if it comes to that-- or an extra Snap, know how this affects your strings before it, know how those strings in turn affect your best opener) and complexity (the choice-making from whatever knowledge and/or tracking/estimation is rewarded).

Now let's compare that to Monk as is now. How much of a performance gap stands between completely optimal play and "refill orbs when they run out", and how much cognitive load and/or situational decision-making goes into that gap?

If I were to now say that EW Monk was more complex than HW Monk, how would you react?

Depending on the GCD tier, since each had different permissible rotations (and therefore swaps one could make / levers to pull), I'd agree.

How about Dragoon? Blood of the Dragon was a punishing mechanic in HW, made easier coming into SB, did that add complexity? Or was it more of a hinderance to the gameplay? How about HW Enochian? Similar concept to Blood of the Dragon, but even more punishing. We know the community at large didn't like these 2 as they were much easier to manage in SB.

For many, there would have been more "engagement with" BotD after its simplification than before for the simple fact that many would drop access to their Dragonskills (Fang/Wheeling) without that ever being a deliberate choice -- say, for eeking out one extra Gierskogul per BotD.

And while their tuning was initially set in such a way that you absolutely could blow a ton of Gierskogul casts and be happy even without them for the downtime (and I loved dungeoning with a high-SkS DRG that would let me do exactly that for high AoE and focus target damage, both, without every having to worry about needing a Bard), I've no doubt that BotD felt to many more like a wonky CD than like a core mechanic. Its flexibility (to burst and to wreck oneself, both) back then had both pros and cons, for sure.

HW Enochian, on the other hand, I can produce no defense for, especially for so long as the Elemental Timer still existed anyways. As much as it did add some varying intensity between having just recently hit it and having it ready to go again if one failed to maintain element, its "floor" was 95% of its "ceiling", with the remaining 5% being redundant with prior optimizations anyways. If all you do now was what you already did before, it'd can't be said to increase "depth" (unlike BotD), only punishment (and on something that already had plenty of punishment -- enough to actually reduce options for the smallness of their reward relative to that risk).

By properly stating why you liked or disliked certain aspects, it can influence the devs more in the direction you might want jobs to go in, especially if they see people agreeing with your ideas. I have said this several times in the past, but just posting some vague notion of what you want improved, without explaining exactly what the issues are, doesn't help.

Agreed.

Let's face it, though: Details are damn hard. And many will balk at being, in essence, asked to design a game they're paying to have designed for them (even if that hasn't gone well so far, by their count).

[Shurrikhan]

I'm glad you asked, actually, because between posting the OP and now I've been cooking the idea in my head some more and wanted to write either a follow-up or edit to clarify exactly this point.

To dig back into the Bard discussion, you mention that 30 second DoT duration is "just pressing Iron Jaws every 30 seconds". That's true! And that's exactly the type of interaction I'm aiming for and hope the development team adopts. In a vacuum, just like the Sekiro example, it can be reduced to a very simple action that you perform in a rote fashion, buts is depth lies in how other mechanics interact and interfere with the simple mechanic to force decision making and encourage engagement. Even though you "just press Refulgent 90% of the time", or "you just cycle the songs faster", eventually these goals might overlap or conflict and create tension, or depth (and this will happen with greater frequency if more upkeep is needed). If your hypothetical Straight Shot buff and DoTs are both going to fall off on your next GCD, which should you prioritize? Is managing double procs causing distraction and rotational mistakes like this in the first place? How can you be more mindful of this in the future, to make sure it doesn't happen again? How much raw Bard gameplay will the average player need to iron out all of these rotational nuances?

And I'm glad you answered. It's always fun to see how we might (dis)agree on such things when we get down to the small bits.

I picked this little bit just because it makes a decent illustration of what I'd consider complexity... and what I wouldn't.

To me, Iron Jaws, itself, is just two parts:

Tracking (what all you'd likely be rewarded for paying attention to):
How many seconds are left on the DoT? Was anyone late on their raidbuffs last time and therefore will be again this time? How many seconds til raidbuffs so I can refresh under them or have my next refresh at its tail? - OR - How many ticks more can I hold Apex Arrow (or seconds left on Burst Arrow Ready) for to get it or Burst Arrow to line up with adds/raidbuffs? - OR - How many GCDs will compete for priority with IJ over the end of the raidbuff window? Will the enemy die within 8 seconds?

Decision (which mostly comes down to memorized thresholds and are therefore answered passively from what you track unless there are future codependencies and branching paths around them):
Do I refresh now and at the tail of the next raidbuff on the assumption that I'll hit 80 Soul Gauge, or do I wait and refresh last-second just as raidbuffs go up (if no one was late and hoping they'll all go up in the same GCD-gap)? Do I refresh slightly early to avoid the possibility of wasting a Hawk's Eye proc?

And... that's it for Iron Jaws. The only unique parts it has are TTK and a far higher-than-average cost for delays, as underlined above. The last part regarding overrides is decent, but still only half-unique at best. And since dungeons will just devolve to AoE spam, 99.9% of the time it is, for all intents and purposes, just a 925-potency attack... that happens to be reduced if the enemy dies in fewer than 45 seconds and only keeps IJ from being worth using if the target would die in fewer than 3 server ticks (or, untracked, 7.7 seconds average).

Its complexity is absolutely minimal despite ultimately taking up 3 buttons for a vapid, uninteractive action (here meaning that it doesn't conditionally reshape decisions, not just that its value is codependent) used once per 45s. What's worse, though, is that the impact of Iron Jaws isn't just what Iron Jaws itself does, but what it replaces: without it, you'd have roughly a fifth more actions beyond just Burst Shot->Refulgent Arrow filler. But by wasting Caustic and Storm, it has both wasted buttons and increased filler spam.

________

On that note, yes, I too would like to shrink the DoTs and song durations back down a bit, but I think that in itself would be a miniscule change and so I'd want to go further:

• Remove Iron Jaws or restrict it in some way,
• put Caustic and Stormbite on different durations (say, 15s and 21s),
• maybe let Hawk's Eye stack to 2 so there's at least some reason to have a filler buttons (Burst/Ladon) even when a stack of Hawk's Eye is active (even if they're still wasted on two except as a finger-trap) -- or make the proc something that actually feels like it ought to be immediately responded to instead of leaving a massive duration on it, and
• remove the CDs on songs in favor of a softer system by which to be pushed/forced to swap between songs, such as an MP drain that increases with use and declines back to normal with disuse (including, ofc, using a different song), with greater but balanced distinction between song effects (which may in turn, yes, require yet more interdependencies).

I highlight the last bit because unless a change is enough to add new optimizations (i.e., new context-dependence, rather than just replacing one rote rotation or Action Priority List with another), it's at best just a small stimulus, like an average of one more thing to dodge per minute without any disproportionate costs or worrisome alignments.

[Supersnow845]

That's the other thing too, one person's complexity is another person's contempt.

I mean, I love ya Valence, but I've seen the things you want to do with MCH and most of it doesn't appeal to me as someone who just wants to pew-pew things, and would rather all that stuff got dumped on BRD instead because I don't play it anyway, lol.

And then of course there's the old nugget of "if one job gets to be hard and another job stays easy, which one gets to be which"? Again I point to healers where a lot of WHM mains DON'T want to be the "derpy one" while SCH, AST, SGE get all the fun new stuff. Nor would I want NIN or RDM to become the "hard" melee DPS and caster thus forcing me to pick up different ones because I can't manage their hypothetical new complexity, but I also know full-well there's people who don't want them becoming any easier than they are because then THEY are out of a job.

So who gets catered to and who gets sent to the unemployment line? And what happens if there's not enough jobs left for someone to enjoy despite there being "so many"? What did all the BLM mains change to when what they wanted doesn't exist in another job for example?

Because people aren’t advocating for pushing up the floors of jobs (which is ironically why old BLM is a BAD example) they are advocating for pushing up the ceilings so every job is accessible but has multiple layers of complexity that you can interact with if you want to but don’t have to (don’t hit me with the “if you can interact with someone you have to, 14 has never had that sort of community enforcement)

Jobs shouldn’t top out at “WHM tops out at dungeon difficulty, SCH tops out at ultimate difficulty”, they should all have avenues of being more complex if you want to engage with the complexity to do more for the party

You should be allowed to be challenged by your job in casual content; not be forced to do hardcore content (which I did and don’t do anymore because I don’t enjoy its modern design) just to not fall asleep at the wheel and if you are currently challenged by WHM in a dungeon then the floor shouldn’t be changed

[Asari5]

i agree, jobs themselves should be more interesting since that would make any content more interesting.

there are people complaining about how fast the new dungeins are. that wouldnt be necessary if jobs offer more fun themselves. with the difference you are able to put your jobs mechanic on pause to concentrate on m
boss mechanics... thats not possible the other way around

we are in a dead end for dungeon mechanics... we should turn around

[Supersnow845]

I think the biggest current example of why “only encounter” doesn’t work is the phantom job system. In contrast to lost actions and logos actions which were primarily “create your own methods of play” phantom jobs feel like they are light augmentation of existing jobs (contingent buffs likes battle bell and occult quick, long nukes like comet or inanugi or just simple flat damage like heroes time)

And by and large people don’t like phantom jobs AND the ones they do like (namely oracle and zerker) are the ones that explicitly do try to change your rotation

In a way the phantom jobs aren’t enough to paper over the gaps in the actual jobs so the problems of the jobs still remain front and centre, which makes OC less enjoyable

The system is still rather unimaginative but you can bet time mate would be more useful and diverse on SB SCH than it is on DT SCH