Job Complexity and Difficulty

[Connor]

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

[Aravell]

I find it strange why some people keep repeating "You haven't done savage" as if it was some miraculous cure-all solution to the job design being boring.

It's not.

After reclearing savage enough times, you end up building your own script to follow and it becomes as boring as any dungeon run, the only difference would be that you can't wipe in a dungeon because one person stood 3 steps too far north of east.

[ForsakenRoe]

On the subject of 'toxic elitists will be toxic, and that is why we can't have additional optional complexity, they'll insist that it is not optional', that's the point of tuning potencies to be closer. In the example I gave previously on page 1 (the SCH one), if someone decided to be uppity in an EX roulette about how I was not using Biolysis on the boss, said player would lose like, 5 times as much damage due to angrily typing in the party chat. Alternatively, we can just ignore those players and their trash opinions because there exists a thing called the TOS, wherein anyone complaining about how Newbie Nathan isn't pressing his DOT as a WHM, can be reported by Newbie Nathan for trying to pressure him into playstyles he is not comfortable with

On the subject of XIVAnalysis pictures and Log analysis, please get a room


On the subject of 'why can't PVE be more like PVP' (presumably, the unpredictable nature of PVP), some things have already been discussed. However, I do think there are ways that SE could spice up some PVE encounters with randomness. Having fights be built from 'blocks' representing certain 'phases', and making those 'blocks' interchangeable within the fight, would go a long way to making the fights feel more fresh on repeat runs. IIRC, even as recently as Valigarmanda EX, we see this, with its Thunder/Ice phases being interchangeable in its timeline

Some examples that could have been applied to this tier's fights:

- M5S is constructed out of like, so many small 'chunks' (even the music for the fight is broken up into individual music track files!) that you could feasibly 'remix' every mechanic in the fight (leaving Arcady Night Fever 1/2 in their current positions). That's like, 8 or 9 'chunks' you could shift around to make different fight timelines from, making the fight feel pretty different on every run through

- In M6S, we have Desert Phase, Adds Phase, Riverscape Phase, and Lava Phase with the towers at the end. If we combine the River/Lava phases into one jumbo phase (as they're linked due to the Lava being a 'layer' she adds), then we have 3 large 'blocks' of fight design. If we assume that the Adds phase remains the 'mid point' of the fight and is locked in place, then the Desert phase and the River/Lava phase, could have been made interchangeable, such that some pulls she will do the Desert first, and others she will do the River/Lava section first.

- M7S actually does kinda do this already (slightly), in that after Debris Deathmatch, either the Ranged or the Melee will get the Seeds to drop in specific locations, while the other set of players gets chasing AOEs. Interestingly, whichever variation you do get, you don't have to do the opposite one in that run, which is nice (the fight would be so damn long if you did).

- In M8S, we have Millenial Decay (the 'go around in a circle and drop tornadoes' thing near the start), Terrestrial Rage (the bit right after add phase with the guns, clones, heads) and Beckon Moonlight (the 4 halfroom cleaves with spread/stack markers). These three could have been made interchangeable in the order in which they execute during the fight, such that one comes before the add phase, and two after. If there's some narrative thing in Terrestrial Rage/Beckon Moonlight as to why he has additional phantom heads as part of the mechanics (ie Tactical Pack gives him a power-up buff like in Normal Mode), then even having just those two interchangeable would still have been nice


So yeh, once again, I'm looking with lustful eyes at my beloved, Stormblood. Guardian O7S and his programs, Chaos O9S and his Elemental phases, etc, there isn't too much 'random'ness in those fights (the RNG of O9S meant that instead of one fight timeline, Chaos had 2, for example), but it helps the fights feel like they have a bit more staying power, and it can also be quite nice for progression. I would like to see if it's possible for SE to have a phase of an Ultimate like this, wherein every 'Trio' is done in a random order. For example, in UCOB, what would Phase 3 look like if Quickmarch, Blackfire, Fellruin, Heavensfall and Tenstrike Trio, were all in a random order each time (with Grand Octet being guaranteed to be the final one)? Would it be better, or worse, for progression, for the player experience, or the World First race experience? I think it'd be worth doing at least one time, just to find out the player reaction

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]SOMEONE POSTED A DIAGRAM of their casts. It’s right there, what more do people want

Did you called? :P

Is it hard to understand that I want something like this:


but NOT whatever garbage the following is:

I know it's not me but I thought it's a fine tangent for the topic on hand.

[Maltothoris]

So yeh, once again, I'm looking with lustful eyes at my beloved, Stormblood. Guardian O7S and his programs, Chaos O9S and his Elemental phases, etc, there isn't too much 'random'ness in those fights (the RNG of O9S meant that instead of one fight timeline, Chaos had 2, for example), but it helps the fights feel like they have a bit more staying power, and it can also be quite nice for progression. I would like to see if it's possible for SE to have a phase of an Ultimate like this, wherein every 'Trio' is done in a random order. For example, in UCOB, what would Phase 3 look like if Quickmarch, Blackfire, Fellruin, Heavensfall and Tenstrike Trio, were all in a random order each time (with Grand Octet being guaranteed to be the final one)? Would it be better, or worse, for progression, for the player experience, or the World First race experience? I think it'd be worth doing at least one time, just to find out the player reaction

Prob the best "modern"(that being post stormblood) example of this was SoSex. After the limit break, there are 5 phases you could say. The war/smn combo, whm/blm combo, drk/brd combo, ninja and Quintuplecast. Quin is always the second phase but the other 4 are in a random order.

[Valence]

Well, it wouldn't be the first time I've had a higher-skill player tell me I deserve nothing, and the end result would be that I just don't get to play any ranged DPS at all I guess. Though if other vets of other jobs got their way as well, I'm not sure there would be usable DPS jobs left for me period as they slide backwards into... whatever they were before my time. (And since I don't play healer or tank, welp.)

You shouldn't be left with nothing but easy and boring jobs of course, but I shouldn't be left with nothing but hard and complicated ones either, especially when the content its self is already doing its damnedest to skill-check me out of doing most of it that I don't really want my jobs being difficult too.

I'm a little amazed that what you took out of this was that you should have nothing, and I should have everything. And I'm actually sad that you continue to introduce unbridgeable gaps between jobs that have to be easy and jobs that can only be hard. I do not subscribe to that mindset and that's not what my values about good job design align with.

I just want my MCH and my ammo back. Where did I say it had to have an unreachable skill floor?

Edit: like honestly, if Yoshida was actually serious about changing their philosophy to make content for everyone at every piece of content instead of doing some content for a small portion and another piece of content later for another small portion of people, then perhaps they could also apply this to job design as well.

Like I said before, playing optimally won't remain "optional" and players WILL try and force others into spinning the same number of plates they are on those same jobs, and with the the power to kick/mute/blacklist, there's already tools in place to filter out the sub-optimal at every level. It happens right now even, over smaller inadequacies in job performance, and most of those were noob traps made by Square-Enix themselves (like Freecure) where people literally don't know any better. But once the ceiling gets raised this community will simultaneously raise the floor of what they deem acceptable when the complexities cease to be 1% of the job's expectation that can be safely ignored, and instead are 40-50% or more that determines if the run is efficient or a slog (or even a wipe). PVP already has "community enforced scripts" as it were, we would just be bringing that to PVE as well, and anyone who doesn't follow is going to be labeled "lethargic" and be hit with every consequence that comes with it.

Maybe you have a static/premade/friend group/free company that you roll with that would never give you any sort of grief over performance, but I don't really have that benefit, and I'll never buy into the lie again that "nobody cares in normal content" after what happened to me in Ivalice.

You're assuming a lot of things about me. I only had statics for savage/ultimate raiding (and extremes on the way). For the rest I tend to play solo 99% of the time and queue with randoms. If anything it's in a couple of HC statics that I've been given grief over performance (learning speed performance, imaginary or real), not in casual content. But I do understand that I cannot speak for players that struggle in casual content because I don't, and perhaps the only thing I struggle with in casual is luigi's mansions first two bosses (as an ex hardcore raider, I genuinely do).

Now that's out of the way, I want to point out that 1) people generally don't shit on party members because that's a surefire way to GM talks and 2) in all my 10 years of XIV history the overwhelming majority of the casuals that Ive ended up running casual content with were passable to mediocre with their job performance, and some died all the time, and nobody gave a crap about it.

If you however refer to how players constantly shit on "Oh I had another cure bot in my roulette today" then yes, it happens all the time. The community is as shitty and insecure as any other online community even with the current jobs: if anything, when the jobs were more complex, we didn't have more of this, in fact, perhaps less because today people just use the convenient excuse that "jobs are too brainless to fail" or some nonsense like that. I also do acknowledge that I'm actually very worried where the log rot mentality is moving the community to, especially with the appearance of tools like tomestone, but overall that's something you will encounter in challenging content, something that you don't run. Not in casual content.

I'm also talking from a perspective of someone that have played through a time where things were more complicated, and the skill floor wasn't always very accessible depending on the job and guess what, it was the same in casual content, nobody gave a crap, and everybody shit talked everybody behind the scenes on their FC chat or whatever. Nothing has changed one bit in my experience. It's not a difficulty or complexity problem, it's a community/human/species problem.

[Hallarem]

I'll give a simplified take. The fight and job design is flawed and not engaging

The game is so much against traditional MMO mechanics, and forces everyone to dps and play dodge dodge revolution. That I have not done anything above an extreme on release.

I want a game where healers' duty is to heal, and dps when they have time, not because they have to
I want a game where tanks are tanks, they guide the flow of battle, kite the bosses, position them right and swap etc
I want a game where dps have variety, unique mechanics that also help the battle in various ways
I want jobs to have varied unique flavored mechanics / talents / abilities that can be used for flavor and usefully in the open world as well

But I don't think it's possible with the current designers in the team, they don't want you to have a game like that. They want a streamlined soup of same, I am a 100% sure that the new people in the team have never played an MMO and are designing the game from a basis of "What is the most approachable for the general audience" which drives away the MMO crowd which this game is supposed to be catering to. Even ultracasuals are bored, I can guarantee you.

[Hallarem]

I'll give a simplified take. The fight and job design is flawed and not engaging

The game is so much against traditional MMO mechanics, and forces everyone to dps and play dodge dodge revolution. That I have not done anything above an extreme on release.

I want a game where healers' duty is to heal, and dps when they have time, not because they have to
I want a game where tanks are tanks, they guide the flow of battle, kite the bosses, position them right and swap etc
I want a game where dps have variety, unique mechanics that also help the battle in various ways
I want jobs to have varied unique flavored mechanics / talents / abilities that can be used for flavor and usefully in the open world as well

But I don't think it's possible with the current designers in the team, they don't want you to have a game like that. They want a streamlined soup of same, I am a 100% sure that the new people in the team have never played an MMO and are designing the game from a basis of "What is the most approachable for the general audience" which drives away the MMO crowd which this game is supposed to be catering to. Even ultracasuals are bored, I can guarantee you.

[YukioKobayashi]

Well, it wouldn't be the first time I've had a higher-skill player tell me I deserve nothing, and the end result would be that I just don't get to play any ranged DPS at all I guess. Though if other vets of other jobs got their way as well, I'm not sure there would be usable DPS jobs left for me period as they slide backwards into... whatever they were before my time. (And since I don't play healer or tank, welp.)

You shouldn't be left with nothing but easy and boring jobs of course, but I shouldn't be left with nothing but hard and complicated ones either, especially when the content its self is already doing its damnedest to skill-check me out of doing most of it that I don't really want my jobs being difficult too.

So one job that caters towards lesser skilled players in each role isnt enough? WAR for Tanks, WHM for Regenheale, SGE for Barrierhealer, DRG for Melees, DNC for Physranged and RDM for Casters isnt enough?
Every big MMORPG has Classes that are not meant to be played by every 2 Finger Johnny on earth except XIV and im seriously getting tired of it. Some Casuals in this game ruin the game for everyone.

While MCH in HW and SB was quite challenging to pull of and not meant to be played by people that dont put the time into it, there were at least 10 other jobs casuals could play.

[Shurrikhan]

And it's not as though your perspective isn't valid, given you can recall a time where "Square-Enix wasn't always like this" and believe they can do better if given the chance, while I don't have that frame of reference, I only have the last nearly 3 years of blunders and contradictions from them (and the community at large) and thus meet all these ideas with skepticism and pessimism, and assume harder jobs will happen while content also remains hard, leaving no room for my casual ass at all.

If you've already been limiting yourself to normal content where even half of optimal damage will easily get you through everything and half the effort of optimal play will already get you to 80+% of said optimal damage... why so much concern that the maximum damage (albeit with proportionately or more-than-proportionately increased effort) would increase on jobs currently considered and tuned by the devs as "easy" jobs?

Although there might for example be a couple more buttons to press, not pressing them would only leave you about the same as you were before, which would remain plentiful.

If you were at a tipping point, then those preferences could easily come into conflict, but we're talking about raising skill ceilings here, not floors, by stepping away from the "this job should only be allowed up to X degree of effort and therefore X degree of performance" concept that Yoshida himself says the game is tuned around. You'd still have increasingly diminished returns for increased effort / disproportionately high rewards for merely basic skill.

(That's not a critique, btw; imo, the game should be that way, giving just enough reward to meaningfully incentivize deeper engagement for those who feel comfortable taking that extra step with nonetheless minimal loss to accessibility.)