Classes too similar and some have useless extra buttons. Needs big rework.

[AmiableApkallu]

Pvp only has 6 class skills and 6 pvp actions and it is more engaging and dynamic than regular gameplay.

Go to the Wolves' Den, and try your favorite PvP kit against one of the striking dummies. You'll be bored to tears.

It's not the kits that make PvP engaging and dynamic. It's the encounter design -- namely, the other players. The kits merely exist in service of that design.

The same is true of PvE. For example: why does BLM today have no timers, shortened cast times, and a million tools to avoid standing in one spot? Because modern encounter design demands it.

In WoW you have an aoe that does slow, an aoe that does pure damage, a quick single target shot, a slow single target shot, a slower but bigger single target shot, mechanics to proc instant casting or mobile casting, crowd control abilities, defensive abilities, debuffs, buffs, utilities like evasion or cleanse or buff steal, etc. You use them all as appropriate as the combat situation changes and as enemies take certain actions.

The key observation here is, "as the combat situation changes." Until FFXIV encounters become more dynamic and variable (the combat situation is always: stand in the correct spot), there's little reason for PvE kits to have anything other than 53 variations on "deal damage to target."

[Valence]

That is because you're fighting real people. Those same kits immediately become incredibly boring when you're playing Shatter and hammering 1111111211111111 on a block of ice.

Okay but... is pve supposed to be like hitting a block of ice? Because if so that actually explains so much... and raises even more questions about the playerbase.

[Zered]

Believe me when I say that I've been advocating for exactly the same paradigm that you describe. But at this point I think that's not the game FF14 wants to be anymore.

See my reply just above. We want to be challenged intellectually, but the current audience of the game wants to be challenged on rote memorization.

do they though? So many people complain about homogenized classes and all that. A repetitive similar pattern of rote memorization is part of the complaint of homogenized classes because at that point, you are doing the same thing with the only difference being the animations that come out of your clicks.

Go to the Wolves' Den, and try your favorite PvP kit against one of the striking dummies. You'll be bored to tears.

It's not the kits that make PvP engaging and dynamic. It's the encounter design -- namely, the other players. The kits merely exist in service of that design.

The same is true of PvE. For example: why does BLM today have no timers, shortened cast times, and a million tools to avoid standing in one spot? Because modern encounter design demands it.

The key observation here is, "as the combat situation changes." Until FFXIV encounters become more dynamic and variable (the combat situation is always: stand in the correct spot), there's little reason for PvE kits to have anything other than 53 variations on "deal damage to target."

I agree. My point in bringing up those facts about pvp was more to point out that getting rid of all the fake extra buttons does not make the job worse. They can be replaced with ones that do something interesting. It's true that encounters should be improved too, idk if anything can be done for the older bosses that we have to keep fighting in roulette but maybe it is worth touching them up. The dungeon adds are another issue. Always the same "gather them up then stand around and spam aoe button" no matter at what level. One interesting change might be to let people keep all their abilities that they unlocked even in lower level dungeons but apply a down-scale of potency. That way people can still play their class as normal instead of being reduced to only having 5 buttons to use and having their muscle memory from a full setup messed with.

[Valence]

do they though? So many people complain about homogenized classes and all that. A repetitive similar pattern of rote memorization is part of the complaint of homogenized classes because at that point, you are doing the same thing with the only difference being the animations that come out of your clicks.

I think I've seen enough comments even on those forums to know that yes, a lot of people absolutely refuse for the model to change, even if they're complaining about job identity and homogenization.

And I think they're fooling themselves if they think this can be magically solved without addressing the core issue which is encounter model and the battle system as a whole.

[Zered]

I think I've seen enough comments even on those forums to know that yes, a lot of people absolutely refuse for the model to change, even if they're complaining about job identity and homogenization.

And I think they're fooling themselves if they think this can be magically solved without addressing the core issue which is encounter model and the battle system as a whole.

Perhaps it is better for devs to ignore such people. They only complain either way and prevent anything from ever getting fixed

[Valence]

I'm ready to bet that the 8.0 job shake up we'll see is going to be 100% focused on tactile feeling and class customization between different rotational sequence types. They're not going to suddenly change their current direction because that's what their current audience wants. They may have done it in the past when it came to their older audience but back then they had the benefit of still riding the wave if their game's success so it probably felt ok to butcher everything and bring up their new direction that started in SB for encounters and in ShB for job systems that's stayed since then.

That and older content would get in the way of major reworks anyway.

[Shurrikhan]

WoW's closest analogue to DRG are the Arms/Fury Warrior specs, both of which center around hitting the equivalent of Lance Charge then spamming 2-3 single target attacks on cooldown until it's time to do step one again. The "combat situation" changes that very little. Of course there are classes with more going on than that, but the game isn't the universal paragon of deep class design that you're making it out to be.

They're literally not, though?

Maybe come Midnight, but at present? Not remotely.

Even if we limit discussion to PvE -- or further to, say, M+ -- there is significant difference between an IcyVeins recommended APL (action priority list) and actual optimal play because of the timings of when new mobs will be pulled into the fray, when they'll die off, the focus damage required to avoid a shield being (re)cast or a hard hit going out, etc., etc.

And while Arms was massively simplified compared to DF (where it had Cleave as a situational ST skill in Fatality builds, Whirlwind as a nuke even for in ST that needed enough banked Rage to support atop a potentially immediately following Execute or Mortal Strike, Thunder Clap separately from Rend since the latter still had a decent enough direct damage efficiency bonus while TC had more Rage expenditure, Ignore Pain's oGCD defensive as a potential generator for Tactician procs due to its Rage cost that hadn't yet been excluded, and your execute rotation depended on how much you wanted to accelerate or delay your main CDs vs. getting slightly more damage-efficiency out), it still has...

• Bankable procced nukes (Sudden Death Executes) that can align multiplicative damage bonuses (Executioner's Precision) with 3 to 5 other sources (Martial Prowess, Follow-through, Avatar, Colossus Smash, and Brutal Finish or Demolish) on your rotational nuke, for which there is a huge amount foresight required in
• Said rotational nuke (Mortal Strike). Applies a DoT at least twice its cooldown in length, allowing one to maintain it across multiple enemies. Buffable (some additive, some multiplicative, therefore branching between quick and all in strats in a given rotational string with upcoming affecting CDs) via a variety of sources.
• Rotational AoE [optional] (Cleave). Also applies the above DoT, but at a loss at under 4 enemies except in certain builds or under certain conditions.
• An AoE filler [optional] (Whirlwind). Now mutually exclusive with Cleave, above.
• A second 2-charge rotational CD whose refresh chance scales with resource spent and the priority of which vs. Mortal Strike varies with resource scarcity, CD alignment (especially between Colossus Smash and Demolish or CS and Bladestorm), other multiplicatively synergetic stacks, etc.
• A filler.
• An empowered filler usable against enemies under 20/35% and stacks a buff to itself a la old Greased Lightning (but rising to 15 stacks) and usable early via procs (two sets thereof for the Execute-centric hero spec).
• A separate DoT, single-target, to be maintained.
• A backup AoE for resource excess before 35% and which applies Rend to up to 5 enemies though at lesser efficiency at 2 or fewer enemies.
• A GCD-CD blow that amps damage for 10 seconds that is accelerated by resource-spending and therefore cannot naturally sync to other CDs.
• An oGCD-CD that amps damage for 20 seconds and can opt into further rotation-affecting buffs.
• A channeled AoE CD that can amp Cleave and Whirlwind damage and next Mortal Strike. Accelerated by resource-spending and therefore cannot naturally sync to other CDs.
• A second 45s or 90s AoE CD that amplifies bleeds or critical strike damage, favoring certain other rotationals in its brief amp window thereafter.
• A gap-closer weavable for resource efficiency or saveable for actual gap-closing needs. Two charges.
• A second long-CD gap-closer that can be used to make the first more efficient in gap-closing.
• Active trinket.
• A 15s window of single-target attacks cleaving a second enemy and buffing the next cast of your rotational/filler AoE thereafter, allowing for exceedingly elaborate setup and CD-sync considerations.
• And I'm still skipping several aspects.

That is, I have to worry about several overlapping layers of sync, likely tank pull timings and pathing, where I'd have to be for interrupts and at what spreads/gathers, who else is going to burst at that time to guess at TTKs, when I'd have to bait shit out, etc., etc., all with rotational significance on optimal (even if not average) play and therefore requiring one to be able to quickly benchmark branching options across the string, up to the completion of the next CD, the next moderate burst, the next full burst, etc., and even on how to break up those bursts for max effect given the dungeon route.

And Fury has scarcely any less going on.

You can argue that such is cognitively bloated, with too large an effort gap between having learned well enough to do most things decently and having actually mastered a given spec, or perhaps even that the complexity should be less or even more hidden from players so they don't overcomplicate the basics for themselves or can better move up from said basics without either among a guide or actually playing the game in real content for any reasonable duration. And that's probably why WoW's seeing most specs' skill ceilings get gutted in Midnight, for better or worse. But alas...

I'd still generally take that over merely button-bloated.

And XIV IS button-bloated -- or, better put imo, failing to significantly leveraging its variety of skills. It's not merely lacking interesting contexts for interesting play, though that is a huge part. The foundation of how most jobs are built up, especially via combos, does not lend itself to skills being individually or synergetically of interest, only pieces each of singular rote decisions.

[CidHeiral]

They're literally not, though?

I played an Arms Warrior in a server first raiding guild for many years and on my own as recently as Dragonflight. Calling the class "cognitively bloated" might be the funniest sentence I've read all year. Writing long-winded over-explanations for simple things like Sweeping Strikes doesn't make them deep. You may fool some of the people here that don't know any better but we both know it's an incredibly simple class.

And XIV IS button-bloated -- or, better put imo, failing to significantly leveraging its variety of skills. It's not merely lacking interesting contexts for interesting play, though that is a huge part. The foundation of how most jobs are built up, especially via combos, does not lend itself to skills being individually or synergetically of interest, only pieces each of singular rote decisions.

I totally agree that FFXIV jobs are very boring right now and could use more interesting skills and decision making. I disagree that DRG's looping combo would need to be turned into two buttons to accomplish that, or that FFXIV jobs should emulate WoW class design.

[Shurrikhan]

I played an Arms Warrior in a server first raiding guild for many years and on my own as recently as Dragonflight. Calling the class "cognitively bloated" might be the funniest sentence I've read all year. Writing long-winded over-explanations for simple things like Sweeping Strikes doesn't make them deep. You may fool some of the people here that don't know any better but we both know it's an incredibly simple class.

raiding

M+

And there's half your Shatter vs. Crystalline Conflict difference in a nutshell, just in PvE.

Nor did I call the "class" (which Arms is not) cognitively bloated. I (with notable sarcasm) said that one could call those minitial optimizations cognitive bloat (despite their being pretty much exactly the goal of mantras like "easy to learn, difficult to master") simply because their relative reward is poor.

I disagree that DRG's looping combo would need to be turned into two buttons to accomplish that, or that FFXIV jobs should emulate WoW class design.

Cool. Literally not a thing I said to do. Even the latter isn't something I even hinted at beyond the likes of 'maybe these 7 buttons (True-Vorpal-Full-Fang/Drake-Bowel-Chaos-Wheeling) should be more than just seven rote parts of what amounts to the same action in 96+% of content'.

Which, yes, is a problem above and beyond a game's encounters themselves being dull; that failure to leverage those skills limits the actual design space available to us not to the dozen+ attacks we ostensibly have but the ~4-7 actions (ST-direct, ST-CD/DoT, AoE, 5-gcd bankable, stacked-CD-1+2+3, gap-closing attack, etc.) they actually amount to.