The Evolved combat is needed

[Malthir]

The probem is they aren't just getting rid of the 2 minute meta. By removing raid buffs they are removing any reward that players got for playing in unity as a team which is important for a co-op game. It felt good to sync up buffs and have a nice burst window or in dancers case move dance partner in odd minutes to your VPR for double reawaken and a big dps boost which takes communication. I'm not overly against this going exactly but there needs to be something to replace it otherwise there is no difference between a party that plays well together and one that doesn't and that lowers the skill ceiling and floor even more.

The 2 minute meta is not the source of all evil with job design. A lot of the issues are that high end players want complexity and casuals want a much easier experience and SE doesn't know who to listen to and don't seem to be able to find a middle ground.

Evo mode costing jobs their current identity and skill is a net negative and we shouldn't have easy mode be the default.

Let's not pretend for one second that everyone popping a buff button every 2m was unity. It was a rigid forceful way of making players and rotations run.

The 2m meta was the source of a large amount of the hemoginisation of classes in the game, as I pointed out before with the examples of Drk and Asto.

They used to not actually have that many OGCD buffs in the game, in fact most classes had these buffs as part of their moveset, it was only as the 2m meta started to be leaned into and more and more classes had mechanics that lined up with it that it started to really impact the game. There were many classes that were more enjoyable at heavensward before the 2m meta became such a rigid sticking point. From the Stormblood combat rework all class design was done around the 2m meta.

None of the combat mechanics in the current state of the game are complex, with the exception of ninja. I would argue about 20-30% of the classes buttons are just buffs that should be baked into weaponskills and abilities instead of press button to do x more damage for 10s or x amount more mitigation. Nothing they have talked about really feels like an actual reduction in class mechancs in fact I would argue that the dragoon evolved combat is significantly more complex than the current dragoon state. They said the bards going to focus more on procing their music instead of posions which I would argue is significantly more thematic for the class, but again none of these changes have been shown in full yet.

[Heroman3003]

People keep talking about job identity being back with Evolved, but from what they showed, I don't see it, but I feel its partly because I view job identity differently than how a lot of others do. I don't care about DRG having jumps. XIV is my first FF so I don't care about how a DRG is "supposed" to play. When I think about identity, I think less about aesthetic and more about unique gameplay elements.

Well, that's the first and main issue, and one that most people seem to share. When the design team talks about job identity, that's what they mean. Aesthetics and vibe being distinct. Game mechanics are just whatever happens to come on top. It doesn't matter if Dragoon is a DOTmaster, a tank, a healer, a super burst guy or just a sustain DPS, all that would be irrelevant to the job identity. Dragon themed attacks and big jumps however are the core of dragoon's identity. Same way how Scholar's identity is tied to Tactics and Fairy, Summoner is Egis, BLM is fire-ice rotation, Ninja is ninjutsu, Warrior is being all mad, etc. All those core elements could take whatever gameplay form you wish, the only actually important element of job identity is that they feel naturally integrated into the kit and feel good to use.

Job identity is entirely disconnected from job gameplay in the eyes of the design team, and that was clear as early as half a decade ago. If you are only now realizing that... Sorry for your loss.

[Aidorouge]

Change was needed, but Evolved doesn't feel like much of one, especially if encounter design remains the same.

It could still end up being DDR, only faster and with fewer buttons to pay attention to.

[Falak]

I think a big part of the issue is that they aren't *just* getting rid of the 2m meta, but they're *over*simplifying the classes. Bard is a support class, that's a huge part of its identity. Which makes sense, that's what bards in RPGs do, they buff and support. So why are the songs on the evolved mode turning it into Summoner 2? That's... That's not a good change.

"So each of these songs grants parties a buff. Regen for the ballad, increased movements for the paean, and barrier for the minuet." They still have utility they just ALSO unlock further skills when you use them. They also aren't simplifying the classes that we've seen so far they're just condensing them and giving them contextual or conditional activation.

[hydralus]

I've been really hard on Dawntrail I quit as soon as I finished MSQ, came back for next patch quit again cause story sucked

Person who quit because of a bad story thinks the gameplay will make up for it, huh.

[Turtledeluxe]

Kinda tired of this debate. *Yawn*. Its not done. Its coming whether we want it or not. Even if the jobs are perfect, existing synergy is gone unless they somehow replace it. The team is not going to drop an xpac that is tuned for reborn to fail to clear. You will be able to play Reborn. You will be able to play Evolved. Its just that simple. As with all other job ruining that was ongoing for literal years shows us, our feedback isn't going to change what happens with jobs outside one offs and/or potency adjustments. Resistance is futile and defense is unncessary. We know this from experience.

Not saying feedback is totally useless its just, mostly pretty useless. Healer strike is 1000 pages and how much of that made it into Reborn OR Evolved? None.

[Yuella]

Because the problem with healers is not how the healers are designed. It's the battle content. Everything has a set rotation and predictable damage so you know the optimal time to heal and only heal during that time.

[Valence]

Make the masses desperate enough for change and they'll accept anything, or something like that.

Like the Dev team has the previous game design documents for Bard when it was super liked in SB, why not look back and integrate it back into play instead of turning it into Red DPS #18?

I don't personally understand why people say bringing PvP into PvE is a good idea, considering both game states are wildly different.

I actually think bringing PvP into PvE would literally save PvE, but that cannot happen with only changes on the job's side else we just end up playing pvp on dummies, which is incredibly boring (see Shatter).
PvP is engaging because it's not all about spitting out damage on a target that barely interacts while dancing around dodging mechanics totally unrelated to what your job is doing.
PvE would need a serious rework to bring actual variables to its gameplay that do interact with the jobs in meaningful and unique ways.

[Malthir]

Person who quit because of a bad story thinks the gameplay will make up for it, huh.

Yes because good gameplay can carry a bad story (Why do you think people still play WoW, it's certainly not for that sewage water they call a story) the same way for the last 10 years before dawntrail the good story did alot of heavy lifting for bad gameplay in FF14.
Bad combat purely isn't the only issue FF14 has, personally I feel the following are the big issues the game has for existing and more importantly on boarding new players, in no particular order:

1. Combat,
- 2m meta causing jobs roles to all forced into the same gameplay and mech style ruining class fantasy
- Limit break being functionally a melee dps only button
- Level sync causing you to not have a full rotation, this is boring as hell and players spend most of their time under max level so having a slow and boring combat style is just not enjoyable.
- 2.5s GCD is much longer than standard MMO's so is awkward for new players especially at low levels
- Status effects basically being non existent now.

2. Movement
- As posted above, having the character models not interact with the ground plane is a lazy and dated method of movement, it feels clunky and makes the character and thus the player feel less engaged with the world

3. UI
- The UI frames are poor, it's more reminisent of the deluge of F2P slop mmo's that came out in the mid to late 00's than it has any reason to be
- UI customisation options extremely limited such as poor sizing options and lack on font select

4. Netcode
- This has been discussed to death and has slowly been getting better but we've all been hit by aoe's we were clearly out of on our screens

5. Gameplay in general
- There's a serious lack of overworld gameplay that's not endgame or locked behind MSQ. This is most noticable one a second job play through, you do palace of the dead to get to 30-50 then just sit afk in limsa waiting for instance queues to pop till you can go heaven on high, then do the same till you can go bozja. The game is in serious need of some actual overworld content.
- The MSQ doesn't seem to involved gameplay at all this has been particularly noticable in Dawntrail where it took about 3 hours of cutscene before you did your first, go here and stand in circle then was ambushed by 2 enemies you basically insta kill, then back to reading walls of text. The MSQ story beats need to actually have gameplay in them not just us standing there while people talk then go talk to this person and read people talking to each other, then go there click that and listen to people talk to each other etc etc.

[StarryVera]

"So each of these songs grants parties a buff. Regen for the ballad, increased movements for the paean, and barrier for the minuet." They still have utility they just ALSO unlock further skills when you use them. They also aren't simplifying the classes that we've seen so far they're just condensing them and giving them contextual or conditional activation.

Except they aren't? BRD is actively losing utility, tying effects to damage limits use and forces them to be used at awful times because you have to keep the GCD rolling to do anything, and if you are overcapping and not collecting all 3 coda you are trolling by choosing to do less damage (the only thing that matters in this game). If the effects were separate from the songs, sure, but they sure as hell aren't from what we saw.