Evolved Skills Feedback

[FuturePastNow]

I appreciate the consolidated buttons. And not just the attack combos, but utility buttons where it makes sense. It makes sense for Provoke and Shirk to be one button that behaves contextually depending on your target. However, I do hope we'll have the ability to split these consolidated actions out into separate buttons if we want.

[hydralus]

The further simplifying of jobs would suggest they're going to go even harder on making fights faster and more difficult, to the point they actually gave jobs parry and roll skills now...

I guess Dawntrail was only the beginning, they really DO NOT want casuals playing this game anymore as they slowly turn it into some kind of Souls-like. Might as well have called it "Eldencold" instead.

Not parrying will likely only account for maybe a ~5% DPS loss, if that. I doubt it will be that serious, not like a win or fail outcome.

[Supersnow845]

The WHM one did just read as “the only feedback we took was from people who are still scared someone is going to yell at them for not doing DPS” and their proposed solution is to just make it so vomitting our healing would generate a refund so there is no wrong time to heal

When you think about it people are justifying this as “it leans into WHM’s nature as a GCD healer” but Lily’s are at their core a resource, allowing every cast of medica to function like a pseudo Lily doesn’t reinforce WHM’s identity it makes it so you can’t make the wrong choice

It also ignores how powerful GCD heals are, they’ve failed to scale healing to encounter difficulty for 3 expansions now, if you don’t need to heal spamming useless heals for a DPS refund or just glare spamming are equally unfun, having more “healing” is pointless if there isn’t more to heal

[GlowClam]

"Evolved Skills"... I had to chuckle. Square Enix selling us 1-2-3 combo consolidation as an "evolution" in the year 2026 is the definition of developer-induced misery. We are essentially just patching a problem that was self-inflicted years ago.

As a PS5 player, all I can say is: Thanks for nothing, Square! Anyone who has ever tried playing Machinist on a controller knows it’s not a video game; it’s a safe-cracking simulator. I had to ditch Flamethrower from my bars three patches ago just to keep my thumbs out of the ER. Moving combos to a single button isn’t a luxury—it’s self-defense for those of us who don’t have a literal piano in our laps.

And can we talk about this "Naming Lottery"?
Skills constantly swap names and icons while leveling or even mid-combo. I want to play my job, not carry a vocabulary cheat sheet into a raid! "Planning" should not mean dumping a heap of skills at our feet with a "Good luck, hope you don't misclick!" attitude.

My proposal for actual "Evolution" for Scholars:
Give us semi-autonomy and, for the love of Hydaelyn, bring back Fairy Personalities! Right now, Eos and Selene have about as much character as a soggy piece of toast.

I want Eos to shield and Selene to buff—on their own—whenever I’m not giving them direct orders.

And please: give healers more than just one-button damage spam. How about a subtle "Fairy Rage" mode? If my tiny companion loses their cool every 60 seconds and pummels the boss with a (visually discreet!) cloud of toxic fairy dust while muttering under their breath—THAT would be job identity.

At the end of the day, FFXIV needs to remain the market leader. But you don't achieve that by "ironing out" jobs until they all taste the same. We need controls that are intuitive (dedicated Evolved slots for controllers, now!), but a job soul that still has some teeth.

Fewer buttons? Yes, please. But give us more glitter-rage! ✨

[Ignatyus]

My 5 gil is that I'm tempted to interpret the entire explanation given for Reborn/Evolved mode as very poorly done and extremely confusing. Yoshi P first says that those who prefer the old mode don't need to worry, it's simply a different way to play (giving more freedom of choice, etc.), but then he says that the new mode will be STRONGER?

WTF!?

And what about the new skills? Will they only be for Evolved Mode?

And do you actually unlock ALL the skills at level 50? And what about the entire path from level 50 to 110? So confusing.

And there's also this MT/OT issue. I'm tempted to believe that the fights will have more swapping from now on, because I haven't met a single tank who likes being OT, they just tolerate that role. And I can understand the Warriors' frustration with that. Unless the OT role is being built to be something truly fun now.

The impression I get is that in order to hold back so much information to justify the other two Fan Fests, he ended up leaving out some truly crucial details that make everything they showed make sense.

I'm praying for Hydaelyn and the Twelve because of this (may they rest in peace).

[Arkdra]

I don't think it would take 9 months for it to lose the new car smell, assuming that what they showed of DRG is the standard (or even worse, the peak) for DPS.

It'll probably just be like everything else, some jobs will win, some will lose and nobody will agree on who is who. My takeaway from the presentation is that evolved bard looks way better than reborn bard (though also more homogenized after evolving than before lmao). Evolved paladin is a slight improvement, gained a parry mechanic, didn't lose anything I cared about. White mage was boring and dragoon looked like complete shit for the reasons sarantserel outlined.

[Absurdity]

I appreciate the consolidated buttons. And not just the attack combos, but utility buttons where it makes sense. It makes sense for Provoke and Shirk to be one button that behaves contextually depending on your target. However, I do hope we'll have the ability to split these consolidated actions out into separate buttons if we want.

The consolidation of actions with basically the same function is fine, the problem is that what is a "similar function" can be rather broad depending on how much the developer actually knows about the job, as is evident with Interject and Low Blow.
Having both a stun and an interrupt on the same ability, on the same cooldown, displays a clear lack of understanding.

My 5 gil is that I'm tempted to interpret the entire explanation given for Reborn/Evolved mode as very poorly done and extremely confusing. Yoshi P first says that those who prefer the old mode don't need to worry, it's simply a different way to play (giving more freedom of choice, etc.), but then he says that the new mode will be STRONGER?

WTF!?

And what about the new skills? Will they only be for Evolved Mode?

And do you actually unlock ALL the skills at level 50? And what about the entire path from level 50 to 110? So confusing.

And there's also this MT/OT issue. I'm tempted to believe that the fights will have more swapping from now on, because I haven't met a single tank who likes being OT, they just tolerate that role. And I can understand the Warriors' frustration with that. Unless the OT role is being built to be something truly fun now.

The impression I get is that in order to hold back so much information to justify the other two Fan Fests, he ended up leaving out some truly crucial details that make everything they showed make sense.

I'm praying for Hydaelyn and the Twelve because of this (may they rest in peace).

They really didn't do themselves any favours.
They spent at least half an hour repeating the same points while essentially saying nothing, it explained nothing, it contained nothing but marketing phrases.

The live showcase was a bit better but even there they were way too shallow.
If you keep repeating that evolved mode is in fact not "dumbing down gameplay even more" but then show us what boils down to mashing random glowing buttons then I'm sorry, but it sure looks to me like you just dumbed it down even more.

I'm still in "wait and see" but the first impression I got was not a good one.
Evolved mode is "optional", but it also performs better and is the only mode available for newer jobs (most likely also any job that gets reworked in the future)...so you're clearly looking to phase out the old mode eventually. It would be unrealistic to expect them to continue developing both modes in the future anyway.
Auto combo is not optional despite the issues that come with it. I have played Viper, I consider auto combos to be a net negative to my enjoyment of the job, really any job.
While removing the strict 2-minute burst design was a good idea, they seemingly overshot and removed all structure to the gameplay with it. It looks like the button spam of the same 5 or so actions that WoW has, but clunkier (because that's just an engine thing) and without any of the reactive parts baked into it's classes/specs.


*Edit*
Got something more to add, we needed to see more than the same 30 second segment of just pressing all the burst cooldowns and then calling it a day. It looked flashy, but so does pressing all the big cooldowns in PvP right now and that gameplay would completely fall apart if put into PvE.
What I want to see is how does that gameplay look over a longer period of time? Are there any choices to make? Is there any kind of tradeoff where I need to consider which option is better? Is there even a punishment for messing up anymore? Or am I just going to hit whatever button happens to light up in-between my filler rotation for 8+ minutes?

[Arkdra]

My 5 gil is that I'm tempted to interpret the entire explanation given for Reborn/Evolved mode as very poorly done and extremely confusing. Yoshi P first says that those who prefer the old mode don't need to worry, it's simply a different way to play (giving more freedom of choice, etc.), but then he says that the new mode will be STRONGER?

WTF!?

And what about the new skills? Will they only be for Evolved Mode?

And do you actually unlock ALL the skills at level 50? And what about the entire path from level 50 to 110? So confusing.

And there's also this MT/OT issue. I'm tempted to believe that the fights will have more swapping from now on, because I haven't met a single tank who likes being OT, they just tolerate that role. And I can understand the Warriors' frustration with that. Unless the OT role is being built to be something truly fun now.

The impression I get is that in order to hold back so much information to justify the other two Fan Fests, he ended up leaving out some truly crucial details that make everything they showed make sense.

I'm praying for Hydaelyn and the Twelve because of this (may they rest in peace).

All of this was covered though?

Evolved will be slightly stronger. How slight matters. If evolved is like, 1-3% stronger it's not really going to matter. At that difference the actual answer is play whichever mode you're better at performing.

Reborn mode is still getting new stuff going from 100-110.

They said that the evolved kits will be more or less feature complete at 50 and you will mainly have your skills upgrade to better versions as you level beyond that.

The MT/OT difference is unlikely to matter significantly in most cases. They aren't going to have 3 out of 5 tanks be unable to function as a MT because then all the roulettes have a chance to launch pre-screwed up. Worst case scenario, a warrior who really, really wants to MT is going to have to do it in Reborn mode. But really, let's get serious here. The advantage of the main tanks was parrying and "skilled at taking direct damage." When has the community ever cared about being skilled at anything that isn't cranking out big dps? And we already saw with pld that they don't need to be actually tanking to parry.

[Aviatorhead]

Now, it really is too early to make a proper judgement on things, especially healers and tanks as they have a reliance on the bosses actions and the incoming damage in order to properly evaluate their kit. However, I do not see a reason to go straight to thinking that it isn't going to work based on the limited info we have right now. Plus, it is all still in development, it could change.

Im not giving the devs leeway. They've had so flipping long to fix this, have given 0 indication that they even understand what's being complained about, and unless I missed smth they said nothing about adjusting tank healing. Until we get clear, direct evidence that they understand the problem and intend to fix it, I will keep complaining about it and not trust crap.

If they wanted my trust they should've tried to get it years ago and not justified their crap with lines like ‘go play ultimate’. I have no reason to put blind faith in them.

[Daralii]

People either don't get it that it's specific to evolved mode. So DRK, WAR and GNB can still be main tank as long as PAL disabled evolved mode before entering battle. Or you dont allow new tank job join the party that forces the situation.
But meh, my main take away is that it's actually good to have a separation for MT and OT because I dislike the aspect of trying to be MT in duty roulette, often enough another tank also wants to MT and it's just a annoying.
For me it just clears up the situation and alleviates the need to ask whos MT and who's OT.

There's zero chance that they will design and balance two separate kits for 21 jobs until active development ends. It's a question of when, not if, reborn mode will be deprecated.