Evolved mode has zero failure states

[0blivion]

The weird pre-emptive whining about DRG being expected to take the TB with Sky High is really funny to me, because we had multiple occasions of similar strats happening on release or soon after. For instance, solo tank Zoraal Ja farm (once it got outdated on EX3 release) required the "off tank" to be a job with a lot of personal mitigation. I wanted to farm it like that, but several people didn't wanna deal with the hassle and so, many parties were atrociously slow. Similarly, E8S Diamond Frost required Esuna from a Healer, but substituting one Esuna for Bard's Warden's Paean was technically optimal since it saved the healer a GCD. Still only saw one static do it.

So... no, people won't miraculously require incompetent DPS players to use a single braincell. As for failure states, the average FFXIV player can barely keep their GCD rolling. I'd rather have an interesting fight with a fun-but-low-skill-floor rotation than a mediocre fight with 2min hell.

[Absurdity]

As for failure states, the average FFXIV player can barely keep their GCD rolling.

Maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't design the gameplay for everyone around the absolute bottom of the barrel.

I'd rather have an interesting fight with a fun-but-low-skill-floor rotation than a mediocre fight with 2min hell.

The fact that you consider the current 2-minute meta design to not be in the same "low-skill-floor rotation" camp as evolved gameplay is the more worrying part to me.
The current and seemingly future evolved job design are equally devoid of thought.
What exactly is it about "the same mindless gameplay we have right now, but without pressing party buffs every 120 seconds" that looks so much more fun to people?

[Bru_Tus]

"timing the jump well"

"not a failure point"

Ok

The problem is that in 99% of casual content it hardly matters. We need way more than a Sky High.

Even for most non-raidlogging Savage players, most of the content you do isn't going to require you to think about Sky High too much.

I think Sky High is a good start but holy if that's the ONLY thing Dragoon has going for it things are not looking good.

[0blivion]

The fact that you consider the current 2-minute meta design to not be in the same "low-skill-floor rotation" camp as evolved gameplay is the more worrying part to me.
The current and seemingly future evolved job design are equally devoid of thought.
What exactly is it about "the same mindless gameplay we have right now, but without pressing party buffs every 120 seconds" that looks so much more fun to people?

I'm going to be honest, I'd rather not sit in PF replacing DPS for several hours til I find one that uses their raid buffs at the right time. I agree it's a lot worse for static players, but I'm a (semi-?)casual (aka up to early Savage floors and the easier Ultimates maybe unless I actually care) with an unstable schedule and I despise PF enpugh to think that that is a decent change. I think aligning the gameplay more with the job fantasy is a good thing, and frankly, anything that requires less cooperation from other players is good. The skill the game, in PF that is, currently requires is being enough of a NEET that you have time to find players with braincells. I don't think that's all that deep. Button bloat is artificial difficulty anyway, and Evolve mode jobs aren't actively less skillful so much as they are self-sufficient. As a semi-casual, that's a good thing. I am assuming high end will be different, but I trust Tamaki Hikaru to handle it tbh.

But for me? Yeah, I do think that a lower skill floor (i.e. not having to hope your party member can press their 2mins) will make easier content go by a bit less painfully, and maybe the jobs will feel like different jobs again - Bard actually seems in line with its concept now, so imo, it's not the same anymore, and I like individualized movement tools.

[Reimmi]

Maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't design the gameplay for everyone around the absolute bottom of the barrel.


The fact that you consider the current 2-minute meta design to not be in the same "low-skill-floor rotation" camp as evolved gameplay is the more worrying part to me.
The current and seemingly future evolved job design are equally devoid of thought.
What exactly is it about "the same mindless gameplay we have right now, but without pressing party buffs every 120 seconds" that looks so much more fun to people?

an example for me is being able to send my viper re-awakens whenever i want, or reaper enshrouds whenever i want, instead of saving every bit of gauge possible for the 2 minute windows every time to only get to have fun every 2 minutes
It's not much, but it will 100% be better than the current only get to have fun every 2 minute system

[Kansene]

Like a lot of people have already said, we have too little information atm to know exactly what they're cooking, but it's always fun to speculate.
I for one am cautiously optimistic. I'm a fan of my output being my own business, so I welcome the removal of synced burst windows. It also opens up for more play styles.
Maybe now some jobs can have steady, constant DPS while others operate within bursts, maybe the doors will open for a DoT based job or two, and fight mechanics can get more interesting since they don't have to account for everyone hitting like wet noodles outside of the communal burst popping.

I think it sounds great if the way they're going is:
Damage = individual effort
Mechanics = team effort

[Valence]

Yes. If you aren't willing to level more than one job, a task that takes maybe a weekend's worth of effort, you should not be able to do all the content in the game.

I genuinely have no idea what this comment is referring to?

Honestly though, I don't know that I care for having failure states in the form that we've mostly had them. Weaving latency issues? Button bloat leading to fumbling? None of that is particularly appealing to me.

The sort of failure that is interesting to me is stuff like Astrologian's card RNG, where you have some cards and you have to decide what to do with them. You can decide to use them or you can decide to put them into a system such as Royal Road, Lord/Lady, or whatever "system" they have to recycle a bad card into something useful. It's different every time due to RNG, and if we have as many cards as at 5.0 release, it's utter chaos to the point you're struggling to do your rotation and heal and do mechanics due to the sheer number of cards you're trying to juggle. 5.0 Astrologian was such fun until they quickly nerfed the amount of cards to deal with.

I can't imagine them making Astrologian as good as it was but I suppose that's the only "unique" thing it's ever really had so it surely will have to involve cards somehow.

I suppose the other failure system that was alright was things like BLM's timer, Blood of the Dragon, Greased Lightning, etc.

I do like doing positionals but it's not fun when your failure is the result of the average tank suffering tanxiety and spinning the boss in the most clueless and anxious way, or Square Enix insistence on respositioning the boss and forcefully spinning it or bizarrely rotating it to face south for random casts (???).

I assumed it was obvious that I never meant failure states coming out of usability issues and bad UI design. Nobody in their sanity would promote that.

There is many, many different forms of interesting failure states, and I've been of the mind that they're a necessary component of satisfaction when overcoming them. If there isn't any pitfalls to fall into, then what's even the point in trying? What are you trying to achieve in the first place in such a case?
That's also said in direct succession to what Yoshida told us last expansion that there wasn't enough pitfalls in storymodes not to fall asleep. It's the same principle.

It doesn't have to be punishing, but it has to be rewarding.

[Daralii]

People REALLY need to stop mimicking this "DRG can take a tank mech!" nonsense, that will quite literally never be better than a tank taking their own mechanic. The game is designed around melees being able to get nearly 100% uptime, why are we suddenly acting like that's changing in 8.0? Did everyone collectively forget that 7.0 was the "Focus on Fight Design" expansion?

Even if it becomes the meta, I'm fully expecting things like tank towers to start unconditionally killing every job that isn't a blue DPS.

[UkcsAlias]

Even if it becomes the meta, I'm fully expecting things like tank towers to start unconditionally killing every job that isn't a blue DPS.

Even in the current state, from just a big enough shield any dps can survive a tank buster.

The problems start when people are taking out a tank in favor of a dragoon, then the meta will truly break. And even in this case, the current game already does enable this, no healer/tank challenges do exist. It just needs to be made difficult enough that a dragoon cheese isnt viable as strategy.
I suspect the following will be done regularly:
- Forced role based tank busters instead of enmity.
- Multi hit tank busters that take longer than the jump effect. (the tank swaps we see being an example of such mechanic), if needed with another swap so the 3rd hit there is no dragoon to save it.
- Fixed role splits (where during the split a tank buster can happen - being randomly assigned, if you go 5 dps there is an 80% chance the wrong dps will get it).
- Long lasting buster side effects (like m6s had with forcing swaps)
- Tanks busters at an interval shorter than the dragoon cooldown.
- Randomly assigned debuffs that require tanks to stand in front (again, randomly the dragoon might get such debuff).
- Hard coded systems that pierce the dragoon jump (while shielding/other mits still enables survival)

But my suspicion is that its just going to get nerfed, in maybe one of these ways:
- Lower percentage (boring, but effective)
- Staggered damage (allows healing, but at tank buster levels requires simply more).
- Only ignore aoe damage (tank busters are targeted so cant be directly dodged. but standing inside the tank aoe and jumping will dodge).

[Sarantserel]

That is one of my main worry as well regarding evolved.

Learning to work around failure states and friction points is one of the main things that keep me invested in XIV's battle content and Evolved seem to be severely lacking. Consolidating the combos to one button might seem like just QoL because of how simple hitting 1-2-3 is, but in the heat of a fight, I've had moments where I fatfinger the wrong button and break my combo. So just that is already removing *some* failure state and so far, Evolved doesn't really add other failure states to replace that.

Heck, on RDM, there are moments where it can be worth it to just do 2-2-2 if the fight is about to end and you're sitting at 45/45, just so you can access your powerful finishers at the cost of your melee's combo potency.

People mention making rotation this simple means they can make the fights harder, but there are multiple problems with making the fights carry all the challenge:

1. Every battle pre-Evercold will feel dreadfully boring
2. When I'm on week 8 of reclearing a savage fight, the main thing that keeps me invested is improving my rotation, since the novelty of the fight has long gone. If all jobs become "spam the 1 button", those reclears will become real boring, real fast.