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

[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.