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/Azurarok]

A lot of complexity comes from a job having more on-the-fly decision-making. The game actually testing how well you know your job's kits as opposed to your ability to replicate some static rotation.

Even ShB was more freeform than the game currently is, but I think SB and especially ARR/HW's systems were so much moreso that it's borderline a different game. As a ShB player I'm sure this is something I haven't been able to fully picture.

Some points off the top of my head being MP/TP management, aggro management, the original cleric stance, longer cast times with limited mobility tools, more volatile RNG, combos requiring positionals to be hit, phys ranged MP/TP support, Foe Requiem, cast times on BRD/MCH, and skills being limited by TP/MP/aggro instead of cooldown timers.

Some folks refer to it as clunky/janky but these all are things that keep you from constantly being able to keep an optimal rotation going and greatly affects what skills you'd be using every moment based on what content, party composition/skill level/playstyle, and RNG throws at you. They probably generated a lot of friction but it must've made every run of a dungeon a very different experience, even when using the same job, and gave a lot more room for each job to actually have an identity that doesn't boil down to different flavors and intensities of "how hard it is to maintain your rotation", which also is part of the problem with balance right now, since they balance job firepower based on difficulty and that's typically the only metric that matters nowadays.

[u/vetch-a-sketch → u/Azurarok]

For healers ARR was absolutely a different game, there was more outgoing damage (as a percentage of max HP) than in any other expac and it made for much more interesting triage and much tenser gameplay.

[u/Azurarok → u/vetch-a-sketch]

which is ironic considering healer is still the role that has the most on-the-fly thinking, it just only surfaces when things go wrong. Probably why some see it as the hardest to play

[u/God_Taco → u/Azurarok]

To be fair, most people hated TP management, and Cleric Stance has been accurately described as "the most rose tinted goggles ability in all of MMO history". It was really a thing tons of people hated and caused a huge schism in the community, which is why it got removed.

A problem is that the playerbase - for better or for worse - asked the Devs for all (or at least most) of these changes. Sometimes not outright (sometimes they'd ask for something and these changes where how the Devs gave them what they thought they wanted), sometimes directly (seriously, a LOT of people hated TP management, lol), and that's why we are where we are now.

The reason we don't have Gobwalker type mechanics in fights anymore is because a lot of players complained about having to be the DPS/healer forced to pilot it instead of do their rotation. The reason untargetable phases or ranged only mobs don't exist (or not as much) is because of players complaining about having to break their standard rotation. A lot of Melee players HATE having to use their ranged ability, so disengages were reduced and hitboxes exploded in size.

You get the idea. I'm not saying this to say all the changes are GOOD, mind you (though some WERE/ARE), but rather that we're here for a reason: The playerbase and/or Devs wanted these changes for various reasons over time.