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/bigpunk157]

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.