Skill expression and Evolved Mode

[ArsanL]

I'm very excited to see the new teasers from FanFest today about job battle design and Evolved Mode. I would like to express a hope that I have about the design philosophy between Reborn Mode and Evolved Mode.

Many of the Evolved Mode abilities that were shown in the demo today look very cool, very interesting. I am excited especially that they seem to be leaning into letting jobs have very different identities, and feel very different to play from one another.

I'm concerned, though, that you've higlighted Evolved Mode as "streamlined" and a modern experience for new players. This seems to imply to me that the interesting and different job identities are going hand-in-hand with a battle system that has less skill expression in it, compared to Reborn Mode.

Game balance is very difficult and I appreciate all of the hard work that goes into that. I do not envy the task of having to balance all of the Reborn Mode jobs and all of the Evolved Mode jobs at the same time. I trust that you will be putting quite a lot of care and thought into it, and I really appreciate that. I am also very thankful that you are removing party buffs to kill the "2 minute meta".

I just want to highlight that, as a player who very much enjoys difficult gameplay and difficult fight design, I am really hoping to be able to experience job designs that both:

• feel unique and different from each other
• have lots of opportunities for skill expression, like the current job designs do

[Miradelle]

Very much agree. I would've been fine with evolved mode doing same damage as reborn mode, 'cause I can emphasize with peoples desire for less buttons even though I don't think there's that many buttons.

However, I am very worried about the skill expression and skill cap of evolved mode, especially since reborn mode seems to be just a temporary stepping stone until it is permanently removed, since developing two different specs for every non-limited job seems like quite a bit of extra work. Besides, the removal of 2 minutes from reborn mode removes a massive amount of skill expression from those jobs, because you no longer need to time any of your gauge/resources/charges of oGCDs ... so there is really no reason to play reborn mode.

Ideally, they'd add more buttons to evolved mode, since it seems a little bit too barren, but otherwise they could try to add more punishing interactions like how with DRG missing a positional means you lose out on A STARDIVER. If DRG had something else going on, so that the pure focus wasnt just on a positional, then that would be ideal.

It will be incredibly difficult to fail damage checks with how streamlined jobs are going to be in evo mode, and I mirror the concern of the dev team using language of "ease of access" and attracting newer players ... "making WHM easier." This kind of rhetoric also makes me worry that there won't be an increase in difficulty in the content, because of the whole philosophy being aimed at making things more accessible and easier. Besides, making jobs too easy but the content hard isn't exactly super enjoyable either--the jobs should be engaging enough and require focus to the point that mistakes will happen.

It's going to be really sad if Bob that plays 4h a week will be able to do similar damage as week 1-3 savage and ultimate raiders, because those latter players can't distinguish themselves due to the limited kit and simplified rotation.

[OMGJesuis66]

Evolved mode has more skill expression than the Reborn, genuine do not know why you are all wondering about it.

[Claria-Vivian]

if you watched WHM footage, that no it is far less skill requirment. in fact they took the 80iq you need to play it and said here 10 needed for it.

[Brolucas]

Maybe because the snapshot we were shown was every job having 20 second resource generation to stack three blips to do a reaper/viper sickomode 1.5 sec cooldown fell cleave spam. Fams I dunno what all you are looking at that skill expression is more in this system if everything looks like carbon copies in mechanics just with different effects.

[ForsakenRoe]

Maybe because the snapshot we were shown was every job having 20 second resource generation to stack three blips to do a reaper/viper sickomode 1.5 sec cooldown fell cleave spam. Fams I dunno what all you are looking at that skill expression is more in this system if everything looks like carbon copies in mechanics just with different effects.

Funny because 'do a reaper/viper sickomode' is exactly what I have wanted for SGE for a long ass time, to accentuate the 'heal by doing damage' identity the Job tries to portray with Kardia, and yet because it's a Healer it's very unlikely that it will get one

[seolhyun]

what skill expression is there atm? you do an opener then a 2 min filler rotation until cds are up. everyone does the same rotation and prays for good crit.

[Hanzz96]

what skill expression is there atm? you do an opener then a 2 min filler rotation until cds are up. everyone does the same rotation and prays for good crit.

You have the job or syncing up buffs with a party for a nice burst window where you csn easily take 10% off the boss. It separates a group that plays well together and one that doesnt and there needs to be rewards for playing in unity in this co-op game.

Take bard for example currently skill expression is not drifting EA because its a 15s OGCD that gives a free song proc, looking at song timers, reacting to RNG and procs and generally just spinning multiple plates at once.

In the evo mode the showed us EA is now a GCD that procs from another GCD. No management, no punishment for drifting just hit glowing button and win.

Dots are gone and RNG is gone which is insane. There's no more looking at your dots with 5 seconds left and deciding if you should refresh early and miss a tick or risk a burst shot that could proc RA and if that does happen you then need to decide whether or not to risk dots falling off or risk refreshing them with an RA proc and overriding.

No more having 2 stacks of PP with EA coming up and deciding whether or not to send 2 stacks for less potency or risk waiting for EA for 3 and have the possibility of overriding if you get a tick. All gone.

Whm lost slidecating and the skill expression of managing damage and trying to balance OGCD heals and GCD if necessary.

PLD lost its combo which is skill expression because sometimes you just mess up or in prog you break a combo and you're punished with less potency and losing gauge.

Just because it isn't skill expression you like doesn't mean it isn't there. Evo mode is hit glowing button and win. Its a baby mode designed to get more casuals playing again.

[Heroman3003]

Ngl, most of these 'skill expressions' sounds like less about your skill at the actual game and more about your skill at tracking the terrible netcode and its inconsistent tickrate and gcd drifts, which are like, the main things that the team is trying to get rid of because those are not 'skill mechanics', those are just shitty game mechanic design holdovers that are being cleaned up. Just because you and some others learned to lean into it and maximize your outputs through that doesn't make it any less of a bad system to have in the game. THat's where all the removals of dots and simplification of gcd/ogcd cycles are really coming from.

But again, one man's shitty outdated jank is another man's core job identity.

[Renaclock]

is this a ragebait are we really saying current jobs are skillful cuz idk you can fat finger and ruin your 2min or get bad RNG and do less damage??