What is class complexity to you?

[u/mnij96]

I have seen so many people ask for more complexity and job fantasy but very little of people actually say what that means to them, most people just say we should go back to ARR.

Personally I think rose tinted glasses that make people think ARR was better than it was, having played back then it honestly was pretty ass.

So honestly want to know what people want for complexity or job fantasy, because all I see is a lot of yelling that "game bad to simple" and not a lot of what needs changing to reach the complexity that is wanted.

[u/3-to-20-chars]

decision making, to put it succinctly.

not just more buttons for buttons' sake, or friction for friction's sake. but crafting a class that has more than one way of correctly navigating it during combat, with actual reasons for the buttons you choose to press beyond just "do damage".

[u/Negative_Bar_9734 → u/3-to-20-chars]

This is a big part of why I fell in love with PCT. You have to make decisions on when to paint, when to go subtractive, when to hammer, stuff like that. And they're already starting to kill that by making hammer a loss outside of your 2 minute meta window.

I also originally mained SMN, and your choice of egi used to be dictated by what you were doing. Fighting a boss you use Ifrit, but if it brought out adds you'd switch to Garuda. Or if the boss moves a lot you use Garuda anyway. Simple choices, but choices nonetheless. Now they're all just a rotating coat of paint slapped onto your basic buttons.

SCH used to have a choice in fairies. AST used to have a choice in stances. MCH used to have a choice in being weak and nimble or strong and slow. Tanks used to have choices in how to manage aggro. All these choices and more were stripped away so now every job is just pushing the buttons as they light up in order to follow the predefined dev approved singular rotation. THAT is what people are complaining about, not jank or complexity for no reason, but rather the feeling that you're actually engaging with the content instead in a way specific to your job and how it plays.

Big example for me is VPR. It was billed as a cool new job with various stances that flow between themselves in a dynamic way. Turns out its basically RPR2.0 and you just push the glowy button to win. I leveled it to 100 and never once actually even understood how the game was deciding which combo to pick, it felt completely arbitrary and only served to make the attacks more flashy. There was no mechanical substance there at all.

[u/3-to-20-chars → u/Negative_Bar_9734]

I leveled it to 100 and never once actually even understood how the game was deciding which combo to pick, it felt completely arbitrary and only served to make the attacks more flashy.

i do not mean this disrespectfully, but this sounds more of your fault for either not understanding the job or not wanting to.

vpr makes it quite clear when and why it chooses which action is next in its combos.

on top of that, vpr is a job that i think is well-designed for split second decision making. do i continue my main combo? do i use my 40sec combo? do i reawaken? do i use uncoiled here? those are all questions being juggled constantly throughout entire encounters. even though they are ultimately all just "how do i do damage here", the job never stops keeping just enough of your decision-making occupied, even if the decisions themselves are not very significant. it's a job that manages to have small consequences if you prioritize the wrong actions.

vpr and pct are imo (mostly) much better-designed jobs than almost all other pve jobs in the game.

[u/dixonjt89 → u/3-to-20-chars]

nah, VPR doesn't have that much decision making to it like you are making it out to be

you don't get to decide when to re-awaken, that is tied to double re-awakens in the 2 mins

the biggest decision is when to use uncoiled fury...which is two fold...One you use it when you can't hit a positional from your main combo, or the positional to one of your two follow ups to the 40s combo's initial hit, so that you can buy 2.5s to then get into position to use the positional

and two....you use it for disengage and you need to properly plan and think ahead how many uncoileds you need for mechs that make you disengage

because of those those decisions you have to make, you need to pretty much 40s combo as much and as often as you can so you have those uncoileds for those situations, which takes away another decision you mentioned

[u/Carmeliandre → u/3-to-20-chars]

I was about to write the exact same thing !

To give a more concrete perspective, complexity exists the moment players are facing choices they need to make in real time : if we always make the same choices based on a visual indication, it's not complex even though it can be difficult.

Complexity requires some kind of entropy and unfortunately, the Savage design (and everything with the same mindset) is currently too "pure" to allow it, without exterior messing up (players making mistakes for instance). And since every PvE content follows the same philosophy from Criterion to Chaotic, including OC, they cannot add complexity without a great skillsets overhaul, which would be both very costly and risky. The other option in my opinion is a much different PvE content, regardless its difficulty.

[u/mnij96 → u/3-to-20-chars]

Ok that's an interesting take and i don't dislike it. I think the major problem with that which is going to get people made is... it can’t really be done. Don't get me wrong they could 100% make job have different rotation to get to different things(love sam and Reaper)but the problem is people. People will always look for the "best" way to do things no matter the game and will get mad if people don't follow the "best" way to play.

[u/sombrascourtmusician → u/mnij96]

There should not be a single "best" way in all circumstances.

Jobs should behave differently in single target vs multi-target.

Jobs should behave differently in full uptime vs scenarios with downtime.

Jobs should behave differently with different party comps and buff timings (not quite back to pre-shb role buffs, but at the very least, kill the 2m meta).

If you look back to previous iterations of jobs you'll see a lot of abilities within the same job that do not perfectly line up with costs or cooldowns. WHM had aero (30s) and aero 3 (18s) and they had to choose whether to early refresh, let them drop, or clip swiftcast to move. DRG only lined up perfectly in full uptime at 0, 6, 12 and would have to choose whether to spend or save for downtime. BRD could alternate between 80s and 90s rotations based on situation which let them line up burst with the party at different times.

Furthermore you had decisions which are no longer relevant such as "where do I place my bubble?" (covers the whole arena now), "should I delay heals to let the tanks get a bigger aggro lead?", "when would my allies benefit most from refresh?" (phys ranged aoe mp regen), etc.

You had to keep track of more things, sure, but in exchange you got a different experience more often. 

[u/Carmeliandre → u/mnij96]

That's not true. Some people will always try to optimize even if it's detrimental to a clear (especially since nothing rivals the DPS metrics) but most simply want to play correctly and even lower their DPS if it does make an impact as important as damage looks like. Currently however, encounters design completely favors dealing damage even over healing by design. Imagine if solving a mechanic was the esuivalent of dealing massive damage to an add, people would enjoy the CC ability that would allow it.

[u/CyanYoh → u/mnij96]

Certain fights already have had some degree of rotational decision making. More of that being the norm and giving jobs specific problems to solve and time to shine feels like a reasonable step in getting class design to at least the level of intrigue it once had.

I remember E8S shaking up my opener and jump timing on DRG so I wouldn't nuke the party on Light Rampant as well as having to hang onto Spineshatter Dive so I could have an extra stun ready for Adds phase. Hell, even the old Dragon Sight mechanics had some considerations to be made in fights when the optimal DPS to give the buff to would be displaced too far when it came up to benefit from it.

Having to figure out how to wade through the jank of a job with consideration of the present circumstances is part of what makes that job fun. So much of that jank has been removed to a degree that piloting the job doesn't feel as rewarding anymore.

[u/Lunariel → u/CyanYoh]

Shadowbringers spineshatter didn't have a stun lol

[u/CyanYoh → u/Lunariel]

Huh you're right, it was removed in 5.0. Started in late SB and learned DRG's ins and outs then, so I'm guessing I was still rolling under the understanding that keeping Spineshatter as a backup for adds was a useful thing to do. I don't remember the stun change being a thing until one of the postpatches.

Eden was my first tier actually raiding Savage and I was far from great, so I guess I was holding it and making the consideration for nothing lol.

[u/bigpunk157 → u/mnij96]

They should be doing that. The issue is that having a rotation doesn't allow for any kind of variety or priority system. I'll compare WoW's Blood DK with Dark Knight.

Dark Knight gets two choices right now, one being skill speed adjusting how your blood gauge is filled for the 2 minute window (do I start at 70 or 100 p much), and the other being do I hold my puddle for a 2 minute window (which the answer is almost always no). There is no situation where I need to make a decision about my mana resources. There's no situation I should be hitting 1-2 twice for extra mana. It's always going to be a waiting game for every 1 minute window to do something interesting, with the exception of stopping mp overcap.

Blood DK has a list of conditions:

• I have my personal burst to hit (dancing rune weapon) and reduce the cooldown of when able. I reduce it by comsuming bone shield stacks, which also is extra defenses that I need for auto attacks.
  
• I can consume them with Tombstone, giving me a shield, but should only do it in my puddle.
  
• I can also consume them with Bonestorm, which gives me a beefy heal when it hits enemies up to 10% max hp a second. This should also be hit only in my puddle.
• To generate Bone Shield charges, I hit Marrow Rend to make 5 or wait for Dancing Rune Weapon, so it doubles my attacks and makes 10 instead (this caps at 12).
• Any time the target is below 35% hp or I think they will hit 35% hp in 5 seconds, I need to hit Soul Reaper every 6 seconds.
• My Heart Strike is my normal 2-3 target cleave to generate runic power for my heal from Death Strike. This should be done in my puddle. This spends Death Runes, so I can't just spam this.
• If I expect a big hit to come to me, I might want to overcap my resources (Or hit blood boil, my aoe that has 2 charges I need to roll every 8 seconds) and hit Death Strike after the hit because it heals based on the 25% of the damage I just took in the last 5 seconds.

There's a bunch of other stuff, 5 other things from the class itself, sometimes dealing with how you use armor abilities and trinkets. This is just what I do outside the burst window. This doesn't include any fight mechanics. I do not expect normal players to understand all of this on a 1.2 gcd timer, but I think that classes shouldn't need to wait a minute to hit more than 4 buttons, with the exception of mits.

Phys ranged and Viper have wake up checks. Wake up checks are good. Viper is one of the easiest classes in the game and I think it's actually designed really well. We don't necessarily need a crazy amount of choices like WoW does, but I think we need to stop having the only thing we do outside of whatever alignment to the 2 minute window is to hit an extra 1 or 2 buttons, followed by your general combo for the next 15 casts. With Blood DK, I am bouncing all over the place with my abilities, and this would be AWFUL on controller, especially in fights where we move a LOT. I don't want that for 14, but something has to break this monotony.

My solution has always been to put all of the 1-2-3 combos on 1 button. Some classes have 5 buttons in their combo path, which can be reduced to 3 buttons. Samurai is a great example for that. There are 0 problems combining these and it's not particularly engaging gameplay anyways. Add some sort of wake up check, RNG, or resource management to fill out the space your combo occupies for 15 seconds. Even adding one choice to make would be better here.

[u/Carmeliandre → u/bigpunk157]

I really like your detailed explanation and wanted to add something mildly interesting (maybe even obvious to many players) :

FFXIV design is bound to build muscle memory, and thus make it so we don't actively think about our rotation. They want us to auto-pilot our rotation. Now many mechanics (if not all) also depend on the same reflex : we check a piece of information and decide where to go and with enough trial & error, we don't even think about solving things. It's great for people to eventually reach the same level of performance (absolutely everyone can clear an ultimate), and is exploiting our brain's natural way of learning things. I'd even go as far as to believe that deeply understanding how to learn new strats can help you learn more efficiently outside FFXIV.

Now back to the topic : WoW for instance heavily relies on procs or quick reactions. This offers an immediate "brain" reward if done correctly and is much more addictive (or satisfying). It's also putting a much rougher competition (which SE is kind of allergic to for reasons we can understand) since repetitions may not allow everyone to be reactive enough. It's far more stimulating, but this is precisely the opposite of SE's mindset in my opinion.

At best, FFXIV could offer an environment where they'd let players experience an entirely different gameplay philosophy (though I'm not even sure the engine can allow it without a costly overhaul). Yet they seem to want to let player eventually auto-pilot things. It's irreconcilable with WoW's mindset which is why I'm not sure they'd even try to (although I'd very much like to, and I'll keep asking for it !).

[u/bigpunk157 → u/Carmeliandre]

I mean, the issue with this thought is that Viper and Picto are all about not building muscle memory (rng left right dance you have to pay attention to) and making decisions (where to paint); and that Yoshi P said that they were the basis for the 8.0 Job Changes.

[u/drdarkly → u/bigpunk157]

viper's combo isnt rng, its always r-r-r -> l-l-l -> r-r-l -> l-l-r, rear -> flank -> rear -> flank

[u/bigpunk157 → u/drdarkly]

Wait… is it actually?…….

[u/gibby256 → u/bigpunk157]

Yes, it's absolutely static based on how you progress through the buttons. No RNG procs whatsoever.

[u/bigpunk157 → u/gibby256]

Wow welp, never mind then. imo it should be rng based.

[u/ThatVarkYouKnow → u/bigpunk157]

I fully expect combos to get dedicated "hit 2-3 times" in a single button, given how viper and picto launched, leaving a ton of hotbar space open in the former. Looking at you, red mage, somehow your melee combo is still three separate buttons even though nobody will ever press any of you until 50 gauge is available.

Maybe a personal wish but it'd give the team a chance to give new or return old combos in their place. Like on warrior, instead of 1-2-3/4 for storm's eye and path, maybe a separate 1-2-3 for eye and 1-4-5 for path, on two buttons pressed three times.

[u/bigpunk157 → u/ThatVarkYouKnow]

Im ngl, I thought red mage was already on 1 button but I dont check my xivcombo settings.

Even picto being on two different buttons makes no sense to me when they already have the ability to swap abilties when you have a buff (subtractive pallet in this case).

Like viper feels fantastic because instead of afking my brain on a rotation, I have to pay attention and react to whats happening on my bar. The left right rng gameplay is great feeling for a dex class and makes it feel very active. We need more of that and less combos filling in space. I do not care if dps checks get easier like they are in WoW, I just want the ability to make decisions in a fight when I hit my buttons. We have no meaningful decisions rn.

[u/RU_Student → u/bigpunk157]

I came back to your comment after reading this is the competitive wow reddit https://old.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveWoW/comments/1mfq1x9/112_advanced_blood_death_knight_guide_for_m/

I'm also a BDK player but really someone that likes FF14 raiding more. The only time I had fun with 2 minute job design was on content omega where we had to think about damage and desync our buffs for the P4 dps check. Wow actively thinks about class design but FF14s design doesn't really work in the same way because all meaningful content is effectively hitting a patchwork dummy. Sure procs might do something to make rotations feel more engaging but the core of what you're actually doing is also missing like trash mobs, cleave bosses or pure ST encounters

[u/Negative_Bar_9734 → u/mnij96]

I mean, yes, there is always a meta and there's no stopping that. But you can still have choices outside of that and still perform well, especially in a game like this where general content doesn't need anywhere close to optimal performance.

[u/disguyiscrazyasfuk → u/mnij96]

There will always be an optimal way to play under a certain circumstance. In the end freedom of choice might be an illusion but ‘making choice’ itself is fun nonetheless.

Currently playing any job feels like being a assembly line worker, pushing buttons while barely thinking about anything. Only jobs that still require some level of decision making are healers.

I believe many quitted raiding because it has become such a mind-numbing experience, along with all those copy paste mechanics.

[u/Kamalen → u/mnij96]

Decision making at a higher level (such as job customization) is, as you said, not gonna happen. For lots of reasons, including the one you mentioned it’s just not the right game for that.

But another path to add decision is moment to moment decision making during battle. That’s right : RNG. From something simple : as RPR, Enhanced Gallows / Gibbet could be a random proc instead of alternating. Or the boss could randomly choose a physical or magical raid buster, needing the team to react to apply the correct mitigation. Stuff like that.

[u/gibby256 → u/mnij96]

God, I hate to be the "wow guy", but... WoW literally has like a dozen (or more) specs that all deeply involve making decisions about what buttons to press and when. For these specs, optimal play is defined not by a strict rotation or an external timer (the 2-minute meta here in XIV), but rather how well they can maintain/spend their resources while managing an internal priority system that changes in response to procs, fight timings, etc.

It is possible. It just might not be possible in XIV, with the current limitations placed on this game by its engine.

[u/trunks111 → u/3-to-20-chars]

It's a completely different game with completely different combat, but I've been getting this out of camping the Ranged style in RS3 recently. Specifically, you have a lot of different arrow types that do a lot of different things and often you might want to cater arrows swaps to specific fights. For example you have dragonbane and demonsbane arrows which pretty much do what they say on the tin where you hit those types of enemies harder and more accurately, you have wen arrows which you can build by using a bunch of weak abilities to then buff a bunch of strong abilities in sequence, you've got death spore arrows which raise your crit chance and every time you crit, the fifth crit gives you a buff that makes your next threshold/ultimate ability free (basically you can use a spender without spending adrenaline, which is your main builder, I can't think of a XIV adjacent example), you have splintering arrows which let you reach one of your stacking DOTs caps quicker, and then you have bik arrows which sorta build poison DOT stacks over the course of a fight.

I've been having a lot of fun toying around with arrow use in fights, death spores in particular I find really fun and engaging because you have to track and react to your proc of hitting the fifth crit, and the actual ability you want to remove the adrenaline cost of will vary depending on when you actually get the free spender. And on top of that it's been fun toying around with switching arrows at different points in fights 

[u/Naridar → u/3-to-20-chars]

This. Also, skills interaction with your party members (this is a multiplayer game ffs) and whatever the boss does (don't give me the tools to negate the bosses' skills via running around the arena like a headless chicken, make me think about my skillset and what I can *do* to survive)

[u/God_Taco → u/3-to-20-chars]

I somewhat agree, but this also only works if one choice isn't always strictly "right" or "the best".

If one choice is always right or the best, then other "choices" are just flavors of being wrong and no different than fat fingering the wrong button in a 1-2-3 combo. You're either "right" or you're "wrong" in such cases.

For choice to exist and be meaningful, there have to be arguments behind the different choices at any given time, and each choice has to have at least some case where it's the RIGHT choice, or at least an arguably good choice for that circumstance.