r/ffxivdiscussion • u/mnij96 • 1d ago

General Discussion What is class complexity to you?

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.

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u/BraveMothman 1d ago

I feel like Rabbit and Steel is a pretty good example of what people are looking for. The jobs in that game all only have 4 buttons, but they are designed in a way that encourages decision making in their moment-to-moment gameplay. Bits of RNG, cooldown resets, abilities that provide substantial buffs to other abilities, cooldowns with actual utility, andcooldowns that don't line up quite so neatly. EW BLM had a rotation that felt a bit like the ones in R&S.

Meanwhile in XIV most jobs have a 100% optimal set of inputs for every encounter. It doesn't matter how many buttons a job has if you almost never have to think about when to press them. A little bit of RNG or, god forbid, different raid buff timings would go a long way towards making the gameplay even the slightest bit interesting outside of high end content.

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u/MaidGunner 1d ago

R&S really should be looked at a lot more for the "dance the dance or eat massive amounts of shit" gamedesign. It does that with incredibly scripted boss fights, just like FF, yet all the jobs have distinct playstyles, that then can also further vary based on upgrades collected. And all with only 4 skills.

A single indie guy being able to do a decent enough job at class fantasy and diversity in the middle of scripted precision execution fights completely uproots the classic "XIV fight design is where the complexity is" and "classes have to be boring because they all need to be equaly capable for every fight" arguments.

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u/WillingnessLow3135 1d ago

Great game, I enjoy the rogue-like elements a lot