Thread: What if Enemy Design Evolved Alongside Jobs in 8.0?

One of the biggest weaknesses of FFXIV, in my opinion, is open-world combat. This also affects FATEs and, to some extent, dungeon trash packs.

With Evolved Jobs coming in 8.0, I think job design should not be the only thing that evolves. Enemy design should evolve as well.

Right now, most enemies are visually different, but mechanically they often behave very similarly. The solution is usually the same: gather them together and AoE them down.

What if enemies were built around a class system?

Instead of designing every enemy from scratch, enemies could belong to archetypes that act as reusable templates. Each archetype would have a clear role, strengths, weaknesses, and behaviors.

For example:

Assassin

Prioritizes vulnerable targets.
Uses mobility and disruptive attacks.
Lower durability.

Guardian

Protects nearby allies.
Harder to kill.
Lower offensive pressure.

Support

Buffs, shields, or assists allies.
Dangerous if ignored.
Limited direct damage.

Berserker

Becomes more threatening over time.
High damage output.
Less defensive tools.

Caster

Relies on spells, debuffs, and ranged pressure.
Vulnerable when interrupted or pressured.

Hunter

Uses traps, ranged attacks, or battlefield control.
Keeps distance from players.
Less effective when engaged directly.

The important part is that these are templates, not identical enemies.

For example, a Goblin Assassin might throw bombs, while a Lizard Assassin might apply poison. They share the same role but express it differently.

Some people may immediately say:

"Wouldn't everyone just focus the healer/support enemy first?"

Maybe.

But would you also ignore the Assassin that is actively poisoning or targeting vulnerable party members?

Once enemies have recognizable roles, target priority becomes a situational decision rather than an automatic one.

More importantly, this could give value to many underused mechanics that already exist in the game.

Crowd control, interrupts, binds, heavy effects, cleanses, debuffs, and utility actions could all become more relevant depending on the enemy composition.

For example:

Interrupting a dangerous Caster.
Slowing a Berserker before it reaches the group.
Cleansing a poison applied by an Assassin.
Separating enemies protected by a Guardian.
Using crowd control on a Hunter controlling the battlefield.

The goal is not to make normal content harder.

The goal is to make enemies feel like they have identities, and to make players think about what they are fighting rather than simply treating every enemy as another AoE target.

So basically standard fare you might see in a lot of earlier MMOs. Yeah, not sure which rock those went under but, I wish really they hadn't.

There's a FATE or two in upper Kozama'uka that got a bit of a chuckle out of me with the tanks' untelegraphed stuns and the healers healing others. "Oh we got them little glimmers of PvP in PvE again.~"

Unfortunately that seems to be the extent of that now, these literal one or two FATEs in recent expansions (and a cluster of places with humanoid mobs in ARR, or yeah in Guildhests) featuring loose job archetypes executing the most basic role actions.

If we could get that more often and in more advanced states, we might finally find reason to suggest a missing role type from this game (or in a soft state perhaps): utility cc'er. Or at least hand abilities like those back. Why was that ever scaled back on? Is that too overwhelming for the average modern FFXIV player or what? "Too many buttons"? Put that stuff back in I say. And not just the pathetically rare silence-able skill to use them on, or practically only Deep Dungeon content.

Inb4 "That's not how FFXIV works, go play a different MMO!" <sigh>

I think one of the biggest reasons enemy design became so simplified is the daily roulette structure.

When a dungeon becomes part of a daily checklist, many players stop approaching it as an adventure or a gameplay experience. They approach it as a task they need to finish quickly for tomestones, EXP, or weekly progression.

Because of that, any mechanic that asks players to slow down, interrupt, prioritize a dangerous enemy, use crowd control, or react to different enemy roles can easily be perceived as annoying, even if the mechanic itself is good design.

In my opinion, the developers did not really solve the daily content problem. They made the content safer, faster, and more predictable until many dungeons became mostly wall-to-wall pulls and AoE spam.

The issue is not that normal dungeons should become hard. The issue is that the reward structure trained players to value speed over interaction.

Maybe the better solution was not to remove or reduce enemy mechanics, but to rethink daily roulettes and rewards earlier, so players would queue because the content itself is enjoyable, not only because they need tomestones.

I think this is why enemy design and reward design have to evolve together. If the game keeps rewarding repetition above engagement, then any attempt to make enemies more interesting will feel like friction instead of fun.

This would basically mirror GW2's system where mobs show small "tags" under their name like "Large AoE zones", "Singles out targets" or "Stuns". I'd love that!

Originally Posted by BabyYoda

One of the biggest weaknesses of FFXIV, in my opinion, is open-world combat. This also affects FATEs and, to some extent, dungeon trash packs.

With Evolved Jobs coming in 8.0, I think job design should not be the only thing that evolves. Enemy design should evolve as well.

That's already the plan.

Aren't they limited in the engine due to the amount of buffs/debuffs? Or is it just DoT?

Originally Posted by Carighan

This would basically mirror GW2's system where mobs show small "tags" under their name like "Large AoE zones", "Singles out targets" or "Stuns". I'd love that!

Exactly. Small tags could help communicate enemy roles and make encounters more readable at a glance.

Originally Posted by Calysto

Sure would be nice, but the game is moving more and more away of anything like that.
There's almost no CC left : repose seems gone in evolved ; not sure but probably no more gravity/bind, and if there is, it's only on p.dist.

Beyond that, just look at enemies design : most are just reskin there is maybe like 20 enemies patterns for the whole game (apart from bosses)

It would also need an "advanced" targeting system but that would be easy compared to reworking packs

As for your Roles, one of the generic type you missed is the "backup caller" ; I guess that would be under support

I agree. The loss of CC and enemy identity is probably one of the reasons so many packs feel interchangeable today.

Originally Posted by SillyCrow

Aren't they limited in the engine due to the amount of buffs/debuffs? Or is it just DoT?

Possibly, but I think most of these archetypes could be implemented through enemy behavior and AI rather than additional buffs or debuffs.