"Players who already like the way things are can feel at ease..."

[ty_taurus]

You know, when I read this statement in particular, I can't help but think about all the players who were explicitly not at ease when they saw what ill-befitting fate loomed over their favorite roles or jobs.

What about the players who liked non-standard black mage? Who liked that black mage had long cast times and was challenging to optimize for that reason? Where was your desire to preserve their enjoyment when you destroyed those elements?

What about the players who liked summoner's highly complex optimization strategy? Who liked DOT management? Where was your desire to preserve their enjoyment when you removed that job from the game and replaced it with one of the most shallow, basic DPS jobs to have ever existed?

What about the players who liked when monk had positionals on every main weaponskill? Where was your desire to preserve their enjoyment when you reduced monk's positionals to that of every other melee DPS?

What about the players who liked dark knight's riskier playstyle? Who liked its MP management and the original Dark Arts? Where was your desire to preserve their enjoyment when you changed dark knight into a reskin of warrior?

What about the players who liked scholar's arsenal of DPS spells? Who liked Miasma, Miasma II, Shadowflare, Energy Drain having higher damage and MP restoration attached, and who liked Selene? Where was your desire to preserve our enjoyment when you gutted Scholar's DPS down to nothing, removed Selene from the game, and turned what was supposed to be a combat medic into a Roman Catholic angel cosplayer?

What about the players who liked astrologian's original card system that featured a variety of random buffs? Who liked the idea of playing a fortune teller that must adapt to the fate of their draw? Where was your desire to preserve their enjoyment when you essentially made every card do the same thing with a tacky seal system attached? Or when you abandoned that system to return the variety of utility cards, but removed the RNG and failed to take into consideration how outclassed most of the cards were compared to all the other tools in astrologian's kit?

What about the tank players who liked having to actually manage the party's aggro? Or the positioning of the boss? Where was your desire to preserve their enjoyment when you took those qualities away and replaced them with no new mechanics to compliment the playstyle of tanking?

What about the players who tried viper and loved Noxious Gnash for how it was despite the incredibly short time that it was allowed to live? Where was your desire to preserve their enjoyment when you saw the overwhelming number of players begging you not to remove it and did so anyway?

What about the players who liked samurai having Kaiten? Who saw the announcement of the change, thought it would ruin samurai's gauge management experience, and desperately begged you to return it? Where was your desire to preserve their enjoyment when you ignored them?

What about players who heard you say sage was going to be a more DPS focused healer and then saw it release as a clone of scholar, then to see it live up to the DPS healer fantasy in PVP and not be allowed to ever experience that in PVE? Players who miss healers having more than one basic attack, DOT, and cooldown? Where is your desire to preserve their enjoyment when you went out of your way to assign that identity to a new healer and then fail to deliver?

Tell me, Yoshi P, when are you going to remove Fleche and Contre Sixte from red mage and shorten its cast times? When are you going to rework gunbreaker into a fourth warrior? When are you going to remove ninjustu from ninja and make something easier so that you can't fail it? No one wants these changes, but we all know they're coming anyway. It's just a question of when, right? Because one day your design team is going to look at the small nuances of these jobs, see them as a blemish that needs to be excised, remove something players enjoy, and justify it as "quality of life" or "ease of use" adjustments.

The reality of MMOs is that the game is bound to change over time, and not everyone will like every change. I get that. But I would hope that after years... years of many players expressing their dissatisfaction with the ongoing direction of their role, or their job, that maybe instead of continuing to bulldoze every semblance of depth or nuance in your path, that we could instead shoot for a more happy medium where jobs aren't too hard that they feel overwhelming to the casual player, but still offer more unique elements of mastery that feel rewarding to the players who want to engage with their job's design more.

But its statements like the title of this thread that kind of hurt me, as a player. I've seen and spoken to many players like me who get much of their enjoyment out of MMOs from fun, exciting, and dynamic class design, and yet it feels like we could not matter less to you. You say you want FFXIV to be a "game for everyone" but I guess we don't qualify as a part of "everyone" to you. But who knows? Maybe I'm wrong and we're just misinterpreting your statement from the PCGamesN article and we'll all be blown away come 8.0. I would genuinely love nothing more than to be wrong, so please, Yoshi P... Make me eat my words.

[ASkellington]

The answer to your questions are fairly simple: they don't care.

They don't care about the playerbase they fostered with original class designs and then shunned expansion after expanion.
They don't care, specifically Yoshi P, that you strang so many people along hoping for a REWORK of jobs and not "the same, but with".

This is pretty much my last expansion if I even decide to keep the sub going.

Glad to know that all our feedback meant NOTHING.

[Ephremjlm]

The answer to your questions are fairly simple: they don't care.

They don't care about the playerbase they fostered with original class designs and then shunned expansion after expanion.
They don't care, specifically Yoshi P, that you strang so many people along hoping for a REWORK of jobs and not "the same, but with".

Not to be a doomer about it all but like what actually black pilled me was after I started noticing the negative trends big time in EW, that have now built to a boiling point. I then went back and started researching what was really going on back in the 1.0-2.0-3.0 shift. What were people saying back then and how did the dev team handle it differently, while completely uprooting the system, and while making the player base seemingly so happy? What I found was that the NoClip Documentary is more of a marketing piece than a recount of what really happened. If you read those forums there were A LOT of people who were pissed and quit.

I implore anyone to go back to the old official forums and external forums and read the sentiment. There were A LOT of people that stuck around and supported the game who DID NOT want it to become a WOW clone. They just wanted the combat to be better than FFXI's but with the same RPG options. SE completely abandoned those people for a larger playerbase. Like we joke about it now, but the reality is that you really don't see a ton of 1.0 players anymore. What makes us think that we're any different? That if the data doesn't support it, that SE is going to make any significant changes to the combat and content associated if they can simultaneously feed slop to hardcore raiders and casuals who love it, if they outnumber the more normal MMO players/midcore players who some of which will stick around anyways? I mean what we're seeing now is simply a lack of content for everyone, but if they solve the casual and hardcore issue again, the people in the middle are still in the same boat and outnumbered.

And before anyone comes at my throat, yes there was crossover with wow players even in FFXI days so of course some people were stoked to get FFXI WOW, and to be fair 1.0's battle system was literally worse than their previous MMO FFXI. That said, people in those old forums stated (you can read it yourself or ask around, I asked on reddit and FB groups too) the combat by either 1.19-1.23b had improved significantly and they thought they were on the right track. I think I can agree that it wouldn't have made the game as "popular" as it is now but that's not the point im trying to make, just wanted to clarify my thoughts on this for the point I was making.

[Raikai]

Said in another post... this statement is contradictory to what he says previously wanting to make stuff less homogenized. I must be kind of short-sighted because to me, the homogenization is a consequence to how "the way things are".

Thinking a bit over this - maybe this statement is more related to the 2min meta than individualities of jobs. That's the only way I can see it without the contradiction.

However that brings another issue to light: What they can do with the 2min meta from now on? You can't just keep adding stuff to it because there's a time limitation. Honestly, the only way I stop complaining about it is if, including in this de-homogenization, they make the rotations engaging during the downtime phases. As food for thought, maybe something that is accessed after your big 120s action ends.

I wish Yoshida was a bit more direct about their goals and just stopped with those obtuse messages/interviews. If the interviewer asked stuff like this mixed with other subjects, they just gotta say "Can't talk about it yet" instead of giving those weird statements.

[Jeeqbit]

It didn't seem like a contradiction to me. He said something along the lines of the rework being on top of what is currently available, so we can take that either to mean that it's like Phantom Jobs which are applied over the top of what we have, or that the current system can be "chosen" in a skill tree but other, more unique paths are available. Those would be my guesses but one way or another, they are going to let us play it the way it is currently if we want to.

[Calysto]

I can only say I agree. The gameplay is no longer enjoyable for me. The story isn't really good either, and both goes against established lore.

At least, thanks SE for the free login. It took me a few hours to experience the next 4-5 months of content (minus the deep dung).
I even got access to the forum and extended my house timer, even if it's unlikely I'll come back for it now.

[Turtledeluxe]

It kind of depends on what exactly they are adding to jobs. He says they are expanding what is currently offered. Some people think it will be trivial one hits or cross skills. I don't think its completely unbelievable that we might see reworks that work on giving back some the job identity. It could go either way really. I feel like players have been complaining about things like role imbalance, two minute meta, skill removals like Kaiten etc

On the one hand it would be nuts to me if they did not take in some of that feedback. On the other hand it also would not be surprising whatsoever if say, they didn't.

I wish Yoshida was a bit more direct about their goals and just stopped with those obtuse messages/interviews. If the interviewer asked stuff like this mixed with other subjects, they just gotta say "Can't talk about it yet" instead of giving those weird statements.

Yeah this. Its always been a problem really. Its impossible to answer something you want to be a secret in a soundbyte. Just dodge the question rather than giving fans reasons to speculate/complain. I would rather see a surprise demo for AST or something than this.

[ASkellington]

Seems like a contradiction to me when I currently hate what's available, don't want extra skills to be tact on when the core issues of the job needs to be fix.

Take for example my previous main of AST. Underneath your idea of either P.Job skills or a skill tree: the RNG of the cards is still gone. The cards themselves are still horrible because they're repeats of what's in my kit on a 55second cooldown (when half of them come up every 30s by contrast and one has 2 charges).

None of that is fixed by talent trees or extra abilities. That requires a class rework.

Granted, AST has gotten one every expac since Shb, but considering they want to "keep things the same" I have 0 hope any changes I want to see are coming. Its better to cut my losses.

[Jeeqbit]

Take for example my previous main of AST. Underneath your idea of either P.Job skills or a skill tree: the RNG of the cards is still gone. The cards themselves are still horrible because they're repeats of what's in my kit on a 55second cooldown (when half of them come up every 30s by contrast and one has 2 charges).

None of that is fixed by talent trees or extra abilities. That requires a class rework.

So what if there were two trees. One with no RNG on the cards, and one with RNG on the cards?

[ASkellington]

So what if there were two trees. One with no RNG on the cards, and one with RNG on the cards?

In no way would they even bother. That's too much work, doubly so if you're trying to make both viable and not add RNG for the sake of RNG.

Oh sure. "You now have a choice between RNG cards vs consistent ones". Why would anyone choose the RNG path when you can get the same results without it? Adding on to that, lets assume to make the RNG cards more worth it (because picking RNG just for RNG isn't good enough there has to be some advantage/job related reason for it) they split the deck so to speak. Current AST set up has consistency but weaker cards vs RNG's stronger but obviously random cards. You really think the player base is going to accept that and not whine and complain and get us back to where we are now?

Plus, it still does not address that the cards have been an issue since Shadowbringers. AST mains didn't want the seals system then and want their OG cards back. Something the devs have been extremely reluctant to do as you can see.

I'll even add that talent trees don't fix my other issues with AST and other classes as a whole for one fact: talent trees or added skills should not fix fundemental flaws with a class.

SCH/SGE, AST/WHM and I'll even argue WAR/DRK at their core pretty much play the same. All my healers and tanks actually have the exact same set up with barely any differences and talent trees are supposed to fix that by changing how skills work? How bout they actually fix the classes themselves before talent trees get added instead, like they should be.

Talent trees should enhance a class and help define a class' playstyle (see: Disc/Holy/Shadow Priest for a WoW example), not fix the base class by adding in back things core to the class. WoW did this exact thing and no one liked it.